214 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 166&, 



Exper. 1 1 . Having put into the receiver a large piece of wood, whose lumi- 

 nous superficies might be perhaps ten or twelve times as great as that which the 

 eye saw at once of the surface of such fragments of shining wood as were be- 

 fore employed; and though some parts of this large superficies shone vividly, 

 yet upon withdrawing the air it was deprived of light as the smaller ones liad 

 been formerly, the returning air restoring its light to the one, as it had done to 

 the other. 



Exper. 12. Having put into the receiver small pieces of rotten fish, that 

 «hone some of them more faintly and some of them more vividly in respect to 

 one another, and having in a very small and clear receiver so far drawn off the 

 air as to make the included body disappear ; after thus keeping out the air for 

 V about twenty-four hours, and then allowing it to re-enter in a dark place and 

 late at night, upon its first admittance the fish regained its light. 



Exper. 13. Having put a piece of shining fish into a wide-mouthed glasSj 

 about half filled with fair water, and placed this glass in a receiver, the air was 

 exhausted for a good while ; it could not be perceived that either the absence 

 or return of the air had >any great effect upon the light of the immersed body, 



Exper. 14. Placing a very luminous piece of shining fish in the receiver, after 

 exhausting it was kept there 48 hours, in which time its light gradually and 

 wholly vanished ; but on restoring the air it recovered its light again, as in the 

 former instances. 



All these experiments were made with whitings, being the fittest kind for 

 such trials. 



The suddenness with which the included body appeared to be as it were re- 

 kindled on the first contact of the air, revived in Mr. Boyle some suspicions he 

 had about the possible causes of these short-lived apparitions of light, which, 

 disclosing themselves upon men's coming in, and consequently letting in fresh 

 air into vaults that had been very long close, did soon after vanish. 



An Account of the Pathologice Cei^ebri & Nervosi Generis Specimen: 

 in quo agitur de Morbis Convulsivis et Scorhuto, studio Thomjs 

 Willis, M. D* iV" 31, p. 600. 



The author gives here a very good specimen of what he formerly promised 

 of the whole pathology of the brain and nerves. The knowledge of the dis- 



* Thomas Willis was bom at Great Bedwin, in Wiltshire, in 1621. He was educated at Oxford, 

 and was appointed Sedleian professor of natural philosophy in that university in l660 j in which year 

 he also took his degree of doctor of physic, though his original intentions were for the church. Some 

 years afterwards he removed to London, became a member of tlie Royal Society, and made himself 

 fiirther known by several publications on medical, anatomical, and pharmaceutical subjects) viz. by 



