184 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1675. 



In the first of these tracts, the author, passing by those obvious qualities of 

 the air, heat, cold, dryness and moisture, and such others, as are now also com- 

 monly known, I mean gravity, elasticity, refractiveness, &c. inquires into, and 

 delivers his conjectures about, some yet more latent ones. And the chief ac- 

 count on which the air may be thought endowed with hidden qualities, he 

 esteems to be those exotic effluvia, that probably proceed partly from beneath the 

 surface of the earth, partly from the celestial bodies. Towards the end of the first 

 part, occasion is taken, in a peculiar discourse, to inquire, whether, as it is thought 

 no impossible thing that nature should make, so it may not be an unpracticable 

 or hopeless thing that men should find, or art should prepare, useful magnets 

 of the exotic effluvia of the lower region of the earth, or the upper of the 

 world ?— To this part are subjoined some observations on the growth of metals ; 

 also some new experiments about the preservation of bodies in vacuo Boyliano, 

 or with exclusion of the air; tried on bread, milk, cream, cheese, roasted meat, 

 blood, violets, July flowers, roses, strawberries, blackberries, beer. All which, 

 except the milk, cream, and blood, remained good, and without any notable 

 alteration, after a considerable time. — The second tract of this book being 

 written dialogue-wise, examines Mr. Hobbes's arguments for the absolute pleni- 

 tude of the world, and shows them to be far short of cogency. — ^The third exa- 

 mines the cause of suction ; and having rejected fuga vacui to be the cause of 

 the raising of liquors in suction, and declared also, that he cannot acquiesce in 

 their theory, who refer it to the action of the sucker's thorax : which done, he 

 makes out, by experiments, his thoughts concerning that cause; which thoughts 

 amount to this, that liquors are upon suction raised into pipes or other hollow 

 bodies, when and so far as there is a less pressure on the surface of the liquor in 

 the cavity, than on the surface of the external liquor that surrounds the hollow 

 body; whether that pressure on those parts of the external liquor, that are from 

 time to time impelled up into the orifice of the pipe, proceed from the weight 

 of the atmosphere, or the propagated compression or impulse of some part of 

 the air, or the spring of the air, or some other cause, as the pressure of some 

 other body quite distinct from air. 



II. R. P. Claudii Franc. Millet de Chales* e S.J. Cursus seu Mundus 

 Mathematicus, universam Mathesin tribus Tomis complectens. Lug. 1674, 

 in folio. 



The first volume of this body of mathematics, comprehends eight books of 



* This learned mathematician was born of a noble family at Chambery, 162I. He was of the 

 Society of tlie Jesuits, and professed mathematics with reputation at Marseilles, Lyons, Paris, and 

 Turin, where he died l678. The best edition of his course of mathematics, is that of I690, in 4 

 volumes. The treatise of navigation is a part highly esteemed. 



