VGL. IX.] PHILOSOPHICAL TBANSACTI0N8. 207 



of four, whatever be the grain. For after four crops, it is the custom to leave 

 the land to pasture for 6 or 7 years, before tilling it again. And the grass will 

 be so good immediately after tillage, that it is commonly mowed the first year ; 

 and is called mowing of gratten. 



The Cornish acre is 8 score yards, of 1 8 feet to the yard ; in one of which 

 acres good husbands bestow according to the nearness or distance. Near the 

 sand, 300 sacks are laid; at other distances 200, or 150, or even 80. And so 

 proportionably in greater distance, even to 20 or 30 sacks in an acre, rather than 

 none. 



The effect is usually where much sand is used, the seed is much, and the 

 straw little. I have seen in such a place good barley where the ear has been even 

 equal in length with the stalk it grew on. But where less sand is used, there is 

 much straw, and but little, and that hungry grain. 



After the corn is off, the grass becomes mostly a white clover, with some 

 purple, if the land he deeper. And this grass of well sanded ground, though it 

 be but short, yet as to feeding, giving good creams, plenty of milk, and all 

 other good purposes, it far exceeds the longer grass, where less sand is used. 

 Garden herbs also and fruits, in those places, are more and better in their kind. 

 In those well sanded places also little or no snow lies ; there is a continual 

 winter spring ; an early harvest, a month or 6 weeks before what is within 6 or 

 7 miles of the place; and such a vast difference of the air is found in so little a 

 distance, that a man may in an afternoon travel as it were out of Spain into the 

 Orkneys. 



^n Account of some Books. N° 113, p. 296. 

 I. Hermetis Egyptiorum et chemicorum Sapientia, ab Hermanni Conringii* 

 Animadversionibus vindicata per Olaum Borrichium, Hafniae, Anno 1674, 

 in 4to. 



* An account of Borrichius having been already given in the 1st vol. of our Abridgement; we 

 shall here insert some biographical particulars concerning his opponent. 



Herman Conringius was a man of universal erudition, and acquired a great reputation in all tlie 

 tliree professions of divinity, law, and physic. He was born at Norden, in East Friesland, 1606, and 

 died at Helmstadt, KiSl, aged 75. He was of a remarkably diminutive stature, but possessed great 

 dimension of intellect, and a very retentive memory. Besides tlie professorship of physic, he held 

 other appointments in the university of Helmstadt, and had the title of councillor of state conferred 

 upon him by the province of East Friesland, and by tlie courts of Brunswick, Denmark, and Sweden. 

 He also enjoyed an annual pension from tlie King of France. His historical works are very volumi- 

 nous. Of his writings which relate to physic, the most celebrated are his de (rermanicorura corporum 

 habitus antiqui et novi causis, 4to, l6i3, andhis Introductio in unlversam artem medicam, 4to, l654. 

 It is his Treatise de Hermetica iEgyptiorum medicina, which is attacked by Bonichius, in the work 

 of which an analysis is given by Mr. Oldenburg. 



