446 THE CENTURY, 



being come down, finding the coaft 

 proving 2 3 unfecure unto him. 



2 proveth insecure for him. P. 3 proveth. 



[A Tobacco-tongs Engine. ] The designation here 

 given, when published in 1663, was doubtless generally 

 understood, but the smallness of the u engine,&quot; its very 

 nature, and not less, its long discontinuance of use, 

 now renders the passage obscure. It so happens, 

 however, that a scientific experiment, in which this 

 humble instrument was employed by the Honourable 

 Eobert Boyle, has preserved, for our information in this 

 matter, the true figure of the &quot; tobacco-tongs.&quot; In the 

 3rd Volume of Boyle s Works, folio, published in 1744, 

 is recorded his pneumatical experiments on the falling 

 of bodies in vacuo. Treating of &quot;New experiments 

 physico -mechanical, touching the spring of the air,&quot; 

 illustrated by the well-known experiment of drop 

 ping at the same time a guinea and a feather within 

 an exhausted glass receiver, he says : &quot; We so fas 

 tened a small pair of tobacco-tongs to the inside of the 

 receiver s brass cover, that by moving a turning key, 

 we might by a string tied to one part of them open the 

 tongs, which else their own spring would keep shut.&quot; 

 In an illustrative engraved plate, accompanying 

 his description, the fourth figure therein is 

 designed to show the tobacco-tongs,&quot; which 

 appear in the form of a figure of 8, as in the an 

 nexed diagram, where #, is the top or hand por 

 tion, being the largest oval, while the lower 

 oval J, is not above one third its size, at which point 

 this steel spring instrument was cut through, to form the 

 tong or nippers. We imagine that a side view would 

 be like the dotted figure 0, d, where J, shows how the 

 ends of these nippers were probably elongated a little, 

 the more readily to take up and part with the tobacco 



