rOEi X.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 271 



The industrious author of the History of Birds gives me occasion to wish, 

 that some other would undertake that of other creatures, as minerals, insects, 

 fishes, &c. reducing them to their classes with philosophical observations, 

 useful to illustrate many passages in experimental philosophy. 



By the Royal Almanack we see it is the ingenuity of this age, that being freed 

 from the slavish opinion of the government of the planets, they cancel their 

 power in events, and show their operation on the masses of matter, and some 

 peculiar sympathizing bodies, as in the essay of hidden qualities in the air, 

 which is the true end and perfection of astrology, and natural magic. 



By accurate baroscopes we may regain that knowledge which still resides in 

 brutes, and we forfeited by not continuing in the air, as they do for the most 

 part, and by intemperance corrupting the crasis of our senses. I remember 

 that Kircher, in his description of China, speaks of a stone, (how true I know 

 not) which being made into a human shape, by nature or art, by change of co- 

 lour prognosticates fair or foul weather. 



Some Pneumatical Experiments on Animals in the Air-pump, By M. Huygens 



andM.Papin*. N° 122, p. 542. 



We included in the vacuum an insect which resembles a beetle, but is a lit- 

 tle larger ; and when it seemed dead, on giving it air again, it soon after reco- 

 vered. Putting it in the vacuum again, and having left it there for an hour, 

 we readmitted the air, the insect required then much more time to recover. In- 

 cluding it the third time, and having left it there two days, on giving it air 

 again, it required above ten hours before it began to stir again, yet it recovered 

 again at last; but having put it in again the fourth time, and left it there eight 

 days, it never recovered more. 



Having inclosed a butterfly, on readmitting the air, the top of its back, which 

 before was much swelled, shrunk in more than it did before, and the insect 

 never recovered. 



Several birds, mice, rats, rabbits, and cats, being inclosed, some of them 

 recovered by quickly giving them air again, before the engine was quite ex- 

 hausted ; but none of them revived that had been in a perfect vacuum. M. 

 Guide made frequent dissections of such animals thus killed, and observed 

 among other things, that their lungs fell to the bottom in water. And he says 

 that the solidity or closeness of the lungs of animals that die in vacuo is owing 

 to the blood, which is propelled into the lungs by the vena^arteriosa, so strongly 



* Compare No. 62 and 63 of these Tracts, where many experiments of this kind, made by Mr. 

 Boyle, are recorded. 



