VOL. IV.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 421 



to explain the cause of sanguification, ascribing it neither to the heart nor the 

 liver, but principally to the lungs in those that are born ; but in foetuses to 

 the maternal blood and the umbilical vessels. 



Next he proceeds to explain the many problems of respiration by the de- 

 livered hypothesis : and chiefly why respiration is so absolutely necessary to life, 

 viz. because life principally consists in the motion of the blood, which soon 

 ceases when respiration is stopped. Upon which question, thus resolved, 

 depends also the solution of divers others to be found in this book. 



END OP VOLUME FOURTH OP THE ORIGINAL. 



Extract of a Letter from John IFinthrop, Esq. Governor of Connec- 

 ticut in Neiu England, to the Editor, concerning some Natural Cu- 

 riosities of those Parts, especially a strange and auious Fish, sent 

 for the Repository of the R. S. N' 57, p. U5l. Vol. K 



I know not whether I may recommend some of the productions of this 

 wilderness as rarities or novelties, but they are such as the place affords. There 

 are, among the rest, two or three small kinds of oaks, which are so slender and low, 

 bearing acorns, that the hogs can reach them on the branches. Of this sort of 

 dwarf-oak there are whole forests in the inland countr}^, which by the spreading 

 of the roots makes the land very difficult to break up at first with the plough. 



There are also sent you some pieces of the bark of a tree, which grows in 

 Nova Scotia, and in the more easterly parts of New England. On this bark 

 there are little knobs, within which is a liquid matter, like turpentine, of a very 

 healing nature. 



In the same box are pods of a vegetable, called silk grass, which are full of 

 a kind of very fine down-like cotton-wool, many such flocks in one and the same 

 pod, ending in a flat seed. It is used to stuff" up pillows and cushions: being 

 tried to spin, it proves not strong enough. 



You will find also a branch of the tree called the cotton-tree, bearing a kind 

 of down, which is not fit to spin. The trees grow high and thick. At the 

 bottom of some of the leaves, next to the stalk of them, is a knob, which is 

 hollow, and a certain fly, somewhat like a pismire fly, is bred therein. 



There are also some of the matrices, in which those shells are bred, of which 

 the Indians make the white wampanpeage, one sort of their money ; they grow 

 on the bottom of sea-bays, and the shells are like periwinkles, but larger. 



