TOL. X.] PHILOSOPHICAL TBANSACTIONS. 22Q 



a plant so like it in all circumstances, except that the branches are not so erect, 

 that I cannot find any difference from that of England. 



The springs here are all near the sea, so that those who live up in the country 

 have no benefit of them. They made ponds formerly to receive rain; which 

 served well enough, being kept cool by a broad leaved weed and duck-weed, that 

 overgrow most ponds. But now almost every sugar-plantation has a well that 

 yields very good water. 



The soil is fertile, though not above a foot or two thick, upon a white and 

 spongy limestone rock ; which affords good quarries here and there, that serve 

 for building. Every dwelling-house, with the sugar-work, and other out-houses, 

 looks like a handsome town ; most being now built with stone, and covered with 

 tiles or slate, brought hither in the ballast of ships, as are likewise sea-coal for 

 forges, and so are brought cheap enough. Indeed the whole island appears in a 

 manner like a scattered town which, with the perpetual green fields and woods, 

 makes the place very pleasant. 



The blood of negroes is almost as black as their skin. So that the blackness 

 of negroes is likely to be inherent in them, and not caused by the scorching of 

 the sun, especially seeing that other creatures here, that live in the same clime 

 and heat with them, have as florid blood as those that are in a cold climate.* 



^n Account of some Books. N° WJ, p. 401. 



I. Marcelli Malpighii Anatome Plantarum; cui subjungitur Appendix, iteratas 

 et auctas ejusdem de Ovo Incubato Observationes continens. Lond. 1(575, in fol. 



Having given a full account of Dr. Grew's book on the anatomy of vegeta- 

 bles, at p. (56o, vol. I. of our Abridgement; (between whom and this author 

 there is a great coincidence), we shall only detail the more remarkable observa- 

 tions contained in Malpighi's work. 



The author begins with the bark, and proceeds to the woody part, and the 

 knobs, and so on to the fabric of the buds, blossoms, leaves, and seeds : pro- 

 mising at the end to prepare another work about the roots and excrescences of 

 plants. 



Concerning the bark, he finds it to be made up of several parts, of which 

 the principal are those he calls ligneous fibres, in his opinion analogous to nerves, 

 which he says are pipes pervious to a clear liquor; the structure of which pipes 

 consist in many square partitions, opening into one another. These vessels he 

 finds to lie neither straight nor parallel, but to be for the most part compacted 

 like little faggots ; of which some do make a kind of net-work, whereby the 



• It is the rete mucosura, not the blood, which is the cause of the blackness of the complexion in 

 negroes. 



