SgC -PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [anNO I67I. 



country, when it rises above id braccia or Italian ells; which when it stops 

 short of that, the inhabitants are not obliged to pay any tribute to the G. Signior. 

 The cause of this inundation is principally the plenty of rain falling in Abyssinia. 

 The waters of the Nile, being generally esteemed very good, are cleared from 

 their turbidness by bitter almonds beaten and thrown in. 



He speaks of the great variety and abundance of birds there ; also of the 

 vast number of vegetables ; he says the stones of dates are given to camels in 

 long journeys ; also, that horses as long as they feed upon trefoil, have no 

 drink given them. Treating of the fossils of Egypt he observes, that their 

 nitre is most abounding in the desert of St. Macare ; and that about Thebes 

 there is dug up plenty of marble, porphyry, alabaster, granite, &c. 



As to the oeconomy of the Egyptians, they do not cut, but pull up their 

 corn, and their corn harvest is from the middle of April to the middle of May ; 

 and sometimes even before the middle of April new bread is eaten in Cairo. 

 In villages, for want of ovens, they bake their bread under the hot ashes; and, 

 in making their bread, some put nitre into the dough, to raise and colour it : 

 which must be eaten new, or else it is not good. Among their drinks they 

 have jnead, which, though it inebriates, yet they are permitted to drink, 

 though wine be forbidden them : also a very refreshing liquor made of liquorice 

 by the Moors. 



III. Theod. Kerckringii, M. D. Commentarius in Currum Triumphalem 

 Antimonii Basil. Valentini,* a se Latinitate donatum. Amstelodami, 1671, 

 in 12mo. 



* It is supposed that tlie person who wrote under the name of Basil Valentine, and who lived at 

 the end of the 15th or beginning of the l6th century, was a Benedictine monk at Erfurt. He was 

 author of several chemical and mineralogical tracts, among which the most celebrated is tliat which 

 he entitled Currus Triumphalis Antimonii, written originally in German, but afterwards translated 

 into Latin and other languages. A collection of his works was published at Hamburg, in two vols. 

 12mo. 1740, by which time they had become very scarce. Basil Valentine appears to have been the 

 first who extracted a regulus from the ore of antimony, the process for which he has described, as 

 well as various other preparations of this semi-metal, making chemists acquainted with many of its 

 properties and combinations, before unknown j and, although he was extravagant in his commenda- 

 tions of the medical virtues of antimony, and employed the language of empiricism j yet ought he to 

 be ranked in the number of those who have increased our stock of useful and efficacious remedies. 

 Against chemical preparations, and particularly against preparations of metallic substances, (if we ex- 

 cept iron) the strongest prejudices existed at the time when Valentine wrote, and for many years after- 

 wards. Hence at the solicitation of the Parisian physicians (among whom Guy Patin was the most 

 conspicuous) an edict was passed by the parliament of Paris, prohibiting the employment of antimony 

 in medicine. Some years afterwards, this injudicious legal restriction was removed; but it was a long 

 time, indeed, before the physicians of France could get the better of their prejudices, or rather of 



