482 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO I67O. 



size, with claret, and placing it upon a convenient pedestal in a tall receiver, 

 we caused some of the air to be pumped out, whereupon in a short time there 

 emerged through the slender pipe such a multitude of bubbles, darted, as it were, 

 upwards, as much pleased and stirprised the beholders; but it forced us to go 

 warily to work for fear the glass should break, or the wine overflow. Where- 

 fore we seasonably left off pumping, before the receiver was any thing near ex- 

 hausted, and suffered the bubbles to get away as they could, till the present 

 danger was overpassed, and then from time to time we pumped a little more air 

 out of the receiver, till we were weary, the withdrawing of a moderate quantity 

 of air at a time sufficing, even at the latter end, to make the bubbles not only 

 copiously but very swiftly ascend, for above a quarter of an hour together. 



The little instrument, made use of about these trials, being designed for the 

 examination, among other things, of the quantity of bubbles lurking in several 

 liquors, is to be applied to spirit of wine and chemical oils, which are more sub- 

 tle liquors than wine itself. And some circumstances of our trials made us 

 think that it might be worth examining what kind of substance may be obtained 

 by this way of handling aerial and spirituous corpuscules. But of the other uses 

 of our instrument elsewhere. 



The Sixth Title. 

 Of some Phcenomena, afforded by Shell Fishes in an Exhausted Receiver. 



Exp. I. — An oyster being put into a very small receiver, and kept in long 

 enough to have successively killed three or four birds or beasts, &c. was not 

 thereby killed, nor, for aught we could perceive, considerably disturbed, only at 

 each suck we perceived that the air contained between the two shells broke out 

 at their commissure, as we concluded from the foam which at those times came 

 forth all round that commissure. About twenty-four hours after, coming to see 

 in what condition this oyster was, I found that both this and another that had 

 been put at the same time into the receiver were alive, but how long afterwards 

 they continued so, I did not observe. 



Exp. 11. — ^That same day we put a pretty large crawfish into a pretty large 

 receiver, and found, that though it had been injured by a fall before it was 

 brought hither, yet it seemed not to be much incommoded by being included, 

 till the air was in great measure pumped out, and then its former motion pre- 

 sently ceased, and it lay as dead, till, upon the letting in a little air into the re- 

 ceiver, it began forthwith to move afresh. And upon withdrawing the air again, 

 it presently as before became motionless. Having repeated this trial two or 

 three times, we took him out of the receiver, where he appeared not to have 

 suffered any harm. 



