VOL. l.J PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 147 



ders their daily food. And he mentions some men Avho ate even toads without 

 receiving any hurt. 



The same gentleman relates, that once seeing a spider bruised into a small 

 glass of water, it tinged it somewhat of a sky colour ; and he was told that a 

 dozen of them being put in they would dye it almost a full azure. Indeed it 

 seems not more incredible that this creature should yield a sky colour when put 

 in water, than that cochineal, which also is but an insect, should give a fine 

 red when steeped in the same liquor. 



He also gives an instance of a boy, who, by bruising a toad, and receiving 

 some of the noxious juice upon his lips, had them swollen to an enormous size, 

 which swelling continued during his life.* 



An Account of some Boohs. N° 22, p. 392. 



I. Le Tome troisieme et dernier des Lettres de M. Descartes.*}- 

 As the first two tomes of M. Descartes's letters contain questions for the 

 most part of a moral and physiological nature, proposed to and answered by 

 him ; so this consists of the contests he had upon several subjects with divers 

 men eminent in his time. 



Besides other particulars treated of in this tome, there occur many pretty 

 questions concerning numbers, the cycloid, the manner of working glasses for 

 telescopes, the way of weighing air, and many other curiosities, mathematical 

 and physical. 



nature; jocularly excusing herself by saying she was bom under the sign Scorpio. Several other in- 

 stances of a similar nature may be found in the work of Rosel. Mouffet, in his history of insects, re- 

 lates a story of a profligate quack, who was employed by a rich London matron to cure her of a tym- 

 pany, which he had the audacity to attempt by giving her several spiders to swallow in tlie disguise 

 of pills J stipulating that half tlie proposed reward should be immediately paid, and the remainder 

 when the cure was completed. He then absconded ; not doubting that he had poisoned her : but 

 hearing some time afterwards that the lady was perfectly recovered, he immediately waited upon his 

 rich patient, and apologizing for his long absence, received the remainder of his reward, with many 

 praises for the efficacy of his medicine, 



• With respect to the noxious quality of the fluid here said to have been received from the toad on 

 tlie boy's lips, the account seems by far too exaggerated to deserve any credit j a slight temporary 

 swelling being the utmost that can be supposed to have happened in such a case, even from those 

 species of toad which secrete tlae most acrimonious fluid from their skin, as the Ra/ia alliacea, 

 mcphitica, SfC. 



f Rene Descartes, a very celebrated French philosopher and mathematician, was bom at la Haye 

 in Turenne, in the year 1 596", and died at Stockholm in Sweden (whither he had been invited by 

 queen Christina), in l650, in the 54th year of his age. Descartes was a man of a fine genius, 

 which he had cultivated by a life spent in intense application to study. The result was a great num- 

 ber of ingenious and learned works, on geometry, dioptrics, philosophy, music, &c. &c. the two 



T 2 



