VOL. VI.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 6l5 



This book being translated from a fair Arabic manuscript, in the Pocockian 

 library, into Latin by the care of the learned Dr. Pococke, and printetl in both 

 the languages together, is a very ingenious and elegant piece. The design is 

 to show, how from the contemplation of things here below, man by the right 

 use of his reason may raise himself unto the knowledge of higher things; whieh 

 is here performed by a feigned history of an infant exposed, he knows not how, 

 on an island not inhabited; where he was nursed up by a gazel, or kind of wild 

 deer, and coming afterwards to years of knowledge, did by his single use of 

 reason and experience, without any human converse, attain the understanding, 

 first of common things, as, the necessaries of human life; how to shift among 

 the beasts for his food, &c. ; the use of cloaths, of weapons, to keep the beasts 

 in order, who were before too hard for him ; then to the knowledge of natural 

 things, of moral, of divine, &c. And afterwards by an accident coming to 

 know that there were other men in the world beside himself, and being removed 

 out of his island to them, and having learned the language, was found to excel 

 their studied philosophers. 



The whole design handsomely laid, and ingeniously prosecuted. The epistle 

 written by Abi Jaafar, contemporary of Averroes, who lived about 500 years 

 ago ; at which time, it seems, it was already known, that the cx)untries in the 

 Torrid Zone were habitable, as appears by the preface of Dr. Pococke to the 

 reader. 



Afi Intimation of divers Philosophical Particulars, noiv under^ 

 taken and considered by several ingenious and learned Men. 

 N" 74, p. 2216. 



First, we learn that at Paris the excellent Signior Cassini has lately again 

 detected spots in the sun, of which none have been seen these many years, 

 that we know of. The last observ'ation in England of any solar spots, was 

 made by Mr. Boyle, as follows, viz. Friday, April 27, l66o, there appeared a 

 spot in the lower limb of the sun, which was entered about ^ of the diame- 

 ter of the sun, itself being about -ri-oi "^ its shortest diameter, of that of the 

 sun ; its longest about -^ of the same. It disappeared on Wednesday, May g, 

 though we saw it the day before, about 10 in the morning, to be near about 

 the same distance from the westward limb, that it first appeared to be from the 

 eastward limb. It seemed to move faster in the middle of the sun than to- 



tumed to England, and was presented to the living of Childrey in Berkshire. In 1^48 he was ap- 

 pointed Hebrew professor at Oxford. After a long and useful life, of 87 years, having pubhshed a 

 number of valuable works, he died at Oxford, the 10th of September, l6^1. 



