VOL. II.J PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 279 



hard, as it is sold in the shops. This substance seems to be a kind of marl, or 

 to have great affinity with it; of which we here also have great store, yet not 

 near those places where I have found osteocolla. It requires time to come to 

 maturity; which appears from hence, that in the very same place where I dug 

 some of it the last year, I this year found others ; yet with this difference, that 

 those were grown hard, after the manner before described, but these remain still 

 soft and friable, though now in the fifth month. 



I shall further observe, that on the 1st of March last, there fell an unusual 

 kind of snow, which I considered with more than ordinary attention. It had 

 none of the ordinary figures, but was made up of little pillars, whereof some 

 were tetragonal, some hexagonal, with a neat basis. On the top they were 

 somewhat larger, as the heads of columns are. Considering the whole shape, 

 we thought fit to give it the name of Nix Columnaris. 



Extract of a Letter ivritten hy an observing Person to a Friend of 

 the Editor, concerning the Virtues of Antimony. N"" 39, p. 774. 

 I found that a boar, to which I had given an ounce of crude antimony at a 

 time, became fat a fortnight sooner than one without antimony on the same 

 food. Antimony will recover a pig of the measles;* by which it appears to be a 

 great purifier of the blood. I knew a horse that was very lean and scabby, and 

 could not be fatted by any keeping, to which antimony was given for two 

 months together every morning, and that upon the same keeping he became 

 exceeding fat. One of my own horses having had the farcins, and being cured, 

 had notwithstanding extreme running legs; so that he passed the course of 

 farriers twice without being cured, but on my giving him antimony one week 

 only he was presently healed. 



The manner of using it is this : Take one dram of crude antimony powdered 

 for one horse, and when you give him his oats in the morning, shake it upon 

 his oats in a little heap in the middle : if he be hungry, and you keep off his 

 head from every other part of the oats, he will snap it up in his mouth at one 

 bite when you loose him. Some horses like it much, others refuse it after the 

 first ; if so, cover it with oats thinly, or make it into balls. 



An Account of some Booh, N° 39, p- 779. 

 I. Olai Borrichiij-f- Medici Regii, et in Acad. Hafn. Prof. publ. De Ortu et 

 Progressu Chemiae Dissertatio, 4to, Hafniae. 



* Commonly so called ; but probably a leprous or scrophulous aiFection. 



f Olaus Borrichius was bom at Ripen in Jutland, in 1626. He studied at Copenhagen under 

 Worraius and Bartholin©, and afterwards travelled into Holland, England, France, Italy and Ger- 



