VOL. v.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 505 



fright many from daring to meddle with it : whereas this our red spirit has 

 been found potently medicinal for some distempers of the lungs by a doctor of 

 physic, whom I desired to try it. The other phaenomena of this liquor I 

 shall not stay to describe, as not belonging to this place, and the liquor itself 

 with very little variation I have in the history of colours communicated. 



The Seventeenth Title. 



Of tJie long Continuance of a Sloiv-worm and a Leech alive in the Vacuum made 



by our Engine, 



In the often cited digression about respiration, there is mention made of the 

 great vivaciousness of house-snails as they call them, and how little operation 

 the withdrawing of the air had upon them, in comparison of what it is wont to 

 have on other animals. I shall now add, by way of confirmation, that I made 

 trial upon ordinary white snails without shells, whereof two of different sizes 

 (the largest about an inch and a half, and the other about an inch in length) 

 were included in a small portable receiver, which being carefully exhausted, 

 and secured against the return of the air, was attentively considered by me, 

 presently after it was removed from the engine; whereby it was easy to discern, 

 that both the snails thrust out and retracted their horns (as they are commonly 

 called) at pleasure, though their bodies had in the softer places a quantity of 

 newly generated bubbles sticking to them : but though they did not lose their 

 motion near so soon, as other animals were, in our vacuum, wont to do ; yet 

 coming to look on them after some hours, they appeared motionless and very 

 tumid, and at the end of 12 hours the inward parts of their bodies seemed to 

 be almost vanished, and they seemed to be but a couple of small full-blown 

 bladders ; and on the letting in of the air they immediately so shrunk, as if the 

 bladders having been pricked, the receding air had left behind it nothing but 

 skins ; nor did either of the snails afterwards, though kept many hours, give 

 any signs of life. 



Upon a supposition that the cold, and clammy constitution of snails might 

 be a main cause of their being able to endure the absence of the air so well, I 

 thought it worth trial, whether efts and leeches might not yet be more able to 

 continue in our vacuum than a snail ; and accordingly some experiments were 

 made pursuant to that curiosity ; the most fully registered whereof are these 

 that follow. 



Exp. I. — ^We included in a receiver, whose globular part was about the size 

 of a large orange, one of that sort of animals vulgarly called efts ; having with- 

 drawn, but not solicitously, the air, and secured the vessel against the unper- 



voL. I. 3 S 



