YOL. X.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 255 



lived, and takes almost two months time in hatching her eggs; and the wild 

 kind of swans have their wind-pipes passing into the sternum, and there re- 

 flecting or turning back; the use of which is thought to be, that when this bird 

 sometimes for near half an hour with his whole head and neck dives to the 

 bottom for food, turning up his feet on high, there may then from that part of 

 his wind-pipe, which is included in the said sheath of the breast, as from a re- 

 pository, be furnished air sufficient for so long a time of diving. 



But we must refer to the author himself for many other curious particulars: 

 among them, of the extraordinary melodious singing of some birds ; the annual 

 moulting of all birds; the medicines to be prepared out of some of them and 

 their very excrements ; the artificial nests of many of them ; the tasting of the 

 Indian raven of nutmegs, on which he feeds, &c. 



II. The Comparative Anatomy of the Trunks of Plants; together with an 

 Account of their Vegetation grounded thereupon, by Nehemiah Grew, M. D. 

 and F. R. S. in 8vo. 



As there has been a very happy concurrence of these two eminently learned 

 persons, Signor Malpighi and our present author Dr. Grew, both Fellows of 

 the Royal Society, in making and exhibiting their ingenious and accurate be- 

 ginnings, concerning the anatomy of plants, and thereby giving a new coun- 

 try of philosophy ; so they have both been very industrious in pursuing this 

 subject, in many things confirming each other's observations, and in some 

 few supplying one another's defects. 



In general, it is noted by our author, that here are found some things which 

 are little less wonderful within a plant than within an animal; that a plant, 

 like an animal, has organical parts, some of which may be called its bowels ; 

 that every plant has bowels of divers kinds, containing divers liquors; that 

 even a plant lives partly on air, for the reception whereof it has peculiar organs. 

 Again, that all the said organs, bowels, or other parts, are as artificially made, 

 and as punctually for place and number composed together, as all the mathe- 

 matical lines of a flower or face ; that by these means the ascent of the sap, 

 the distribution of the air, the confection of several sorts of liquors, as lym- 

 phas, milks, oils, balsams, with other acts of vegetation, are all contrived and 

 brought about in a mechanical way. 



In particular, we find in the first of the two parts of this book; 1. A de- 

 scription of six several trunks of plants, as they appear to the naked eye; viz. of 

 borage, dandelion, colewort, holy hock, wild cucumber, endive. 2. An accurate 

 description of several tninks, and parts of trunks, as they appear through a 

 good microscope ; which parts are, the bark, the wood, and the pith. Of the 

 bark he describes the skin, the parenchyma, and the vessels ; the last of which 



