VOL. IV.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 843 



the best general method, taken from nature itself, of digesting all plants, and 

 reducing them to certain classes or heads, according to the difference of their 

 seeds, pods, and flowers. 



II. CI. Salmasii * Praefatio in Librum de Homonymis Hyles latricae: Ejus- 

 dem de Plinio Judicium. 



This book is an introduction to a large volume, composed by the famous 

 Salmasius, and now in the hands of Messieurs Lantin and De la Mare; the 

 volume gives an account of the many and great mistakes hitherto made in the 

 history of plants with respect to the naming them ; in which it has come to 

 pass, that several names being often given to one and the same plant, and vice 

 versa, one and the same name to different plants, there has ensued a great and 

 dangerous confusion in that large part of the Materia Medica, highly requiring 

 to be rectified. Now to that work this preface prepares the way, by showing 

 to the jstudious in botany and medicine, the argument, order, and usefulness of 

 the same, interspersing the causes and origin of those many errors which both 

 ancients and moderns have fallen into upon this subject; as also the negligence 

 of those ancients, the progress of physic among the Romans, and the age of 

 the chief writers on this argument ; adding also the author's opinion concerning 

 Pliny, what is to be approved, what to be condemned in him, and how far we 

 are to proceed in the admiration of that writer. 



Instructions concerning the Use of Pendulum Watches, for finding the 

 Longitude at Sea. By M. Huvgens. N" 47, p. 937. 

 These instructions were first published by M. Huygens, and afterwards 



* Salmasius is much better known as a critic and philologist than as a writer on subjects relative 

 to natural history and medicine. He was bom at Semur (not Saumur) in 159^, studied at Paris, 

 became a convert to the Protestant religion, and was professor of polite literature at Leyden, from 

 whence he removed to Stockholm at the invitation of Queen Christina, but soon returned again to 

 Holland. He was employed by Charles II. to write (l649) a defence of his father (Charles I.) and 

 of kingly governments. This brought on Milton's famous reply, l651. Both these tracts were 

 written in Latin, of the knowledge and use of which, in its highest degree of purity, each party had 

 sufficient reason to boast. But Milton's style was most admired, and this circumstance (according to 

 some biographers) accelerated Salmasius's death, which happened while he was at Spa in l653. 

 This event however (it is highly probable) was chiefly attributable to the gradual decay of his 

 constitution from excessive application to literary pursuits. This eminent French critic began to 

 exercise his pen at a very early period of life, appearing as an author when no more than 15 

 years of age. A list of his writings is to be found in almost every work on biography. Although he 

 was not a physician, he published other treatises besides that above-mentioned, on subjects relative 

 to natural histor}-- and medicine; viz. Exercitationes Plinianae in Solinum, 1629, (a large and learned 

 commentary' on the writings of the elder Pliny.) Interpretatio Hippocrat. Aphor. 79> Sect. iv. l640, 

 and De Annis climactericis, l678. In this last treatise there are many observations on longevity, 

 and in tliis, as well as in his other works, tliere is a vast fund of erudition. 



