284 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1668. 



very strong, being inlayed with sinews all over their body, which may be drawn 

 out thirty fathoms long. 



As to the age of our inhabitants here, some live to a hundred years and 

 something upwards ; many live till they are near a hundred, but few above : 

 and when they die, it is age and weakness that is the cause, and not any disease 

 that attends them. The air here is very sweet and pleasant, but the diet coarse. 



Here are spiders that spin their webs between trees standing 7 or 8 fathoms 

 asunder ; which they do by darting their web into the air, where the wind 

 carries it from tree to tree. This web when finished, will snare a bird as large 

 as a thrush. 



The houses are thatched with the leaves of the palmetto ; some of which are 

 eight or ten feet long and near as broad. 



Of the polishing of Telescopical Glasses hy a Turn-lath ; also of an ex^ 

 traordinary Burning-glass at Milan. N" 40, p. 795. 



There is an artist at Paris who polishes optic-glasses on a turn-lath, with 

 the same ease as he turns wood. 



Signer Settalla, at Milan, causes a burning-glass of seven feet in diameter 

 to be made. He pretends to make it burn at the distance of fifty palmes, 

 which is about 33 feet. 



Concerning Cochineal. N° 40, p. 796. 



It is generally believed that the cochineal * comes out of a fruit called the 

 prickle-pear, bearing a leaf of a slimy nature, and a fruit blood-red and full of 

 seeds, which give a die almost like to brasiletto wood, that perishes in a few 

 days by the fire : but the insect engendered of this fruit or leaves, gives a per- 

 manent tincture, as is generally known. 



There grows a berry in the Bermudas and New-England^, called the summer- 

 island-redweed, which is as red as the prickle-pear, giving much the same tinc- 

 ture, out of which berry come worms, which afterward turn into flies, some- 

 what larger than the cochineal-fiy, and feed on the berry. It is said to yield 

 a colour not inferior to that of the cochineal-fly, and as to medicinal virtue 

 much exceeding it. It might be useful to try whether this Bermuda berry 

 might not grow in England ; also whether out of the berry of brasiletto wood 

 the like insect might not be obtained in respect of colour or tincture ? and 

 whether a fading colour yielded by certain vegetables, might not be fixed by 

 causing such a fermentation in the concrete, as may engender insects giving 



* Coccus cacti, of which a description is given in the 52d volume of the Transactions. 



