VOL. IV.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 365 



Extract of a Letter, dated September, 1668, from Mr. Muraltus, of 

 Zurich to M. Haak, F.R.S. concerning the ley and Crystalline 

 Mountains of Helvetia, called the Gletscher. Translated from the 

 Latin by Mr. Oldenburg. N" 49, />• W2. 



The highest icy mountains of Helvetia about Valesia and Augusta, in the 

 canton of Bern; about Taminium and Tavetsch of the Rhaetians, are always 

 seen covered with snow. The snow, melted by the heat of the summer, other 

 snow being fallen within a little while after, is hardened into ice, which by 

 little and little in a long course of time depurating itself turns into a stone, not 

 yielding in hardness and clearness to crystal.* Such stones closely compacted 

 compose a whole oblong firm mountain, though in summer time the country 

 people have observed it to burst asunder with great cracking, like thunder, 

 which is also well known to hunters to their great cost, forasmuch as such cracks 

 and openings, being by the winds covered with snow, are the death of those 

 that pass over them. 



At the foot of these mountains crystals are with great labour dug out ; they 

 are found among other fossils of two sorts and colours; some of them are 

 darkish and troubled, which by some are called the crystal-ore, to be plente- 

 ously found in the ascent of Mount Gothard ; others transparent, very pure and 

 as clear as Venice glass; hexangular, great and small: as in the mountains about 

 Valesia, and the town called Urselen at the foot of the hill Schelenin they are 

 dug out, and sold at a good rate. Of this latter kind my parents, four years 

 ago, transmitted a very large and fair one to Milan for 80l, sterling. 



Some Observations concerjiing Japan, made by an ingenious Pci^son 

 many Years resident in that Country. N° 49, j&. 983. 



The Japanese doubt not at all of their country being an island ; though it be 

 separated from the continent by such narrow channels that no vessel of any 

 considerable burthen can pass them. The air is there very salubrious, but of 

 different temperature on each side of the mountains which divide Japan. The 

 plague has never been heard of there; but the small-pox and fluxes are very 

 frequent. Their mountains are fertile almost to the very top. There are found 

 almost all European sorts of fruit, peaches, apricots, cherries, prunes, apples, 



their chemical composition or medicinal powers, should consult the tracts written by Dr. Fyconer, 

 and the more recent publications of Dr. Gibbes. 



* This assertion, that the ice of these glaciers is gradually converted into stone, is founded in error. 



