VOL. XI.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 28^ 



In this eclipse it is to be noted, that all the sections never entirely covered 

 Mount Porphyrites: but it remained clear in the very limit of the shadow, even 

 in the greatest obscuration. 



An Account of some Books. N" 124, p. 59 1. 



I and II. Memoirespour servir k I'Histoire Naturelledes Animaux; to which 

 is joined another tract totally different, entituled. La Mesure de la Terre. A 

 Paris, 1671, in fol. 



These two works came from the joint body of the Royal Academy of Sciences 

 at Paris, being part of their memoirs. They have been partly noticed already 

 in these Philosophical Transactions, viz. N°* 49 and 1 ] 2, but now again more 

 particularly. 



These memoirs give us the anatomical descriptions of 13 species of exotic 

 animals; of which five, viz. a cameleon, castor, dromedary, bear, and gazelle, 

 were formerly published, and described by the same persons in a book in quarto, 

 printed at Paris, 1669; which now are reprinted here in a more magnificent 

 manner, and augmented with the number of eight species, which are, two lions 

 and a lioness, a chat pard, supposed to be engendered by a leopard and a she 

 cat, a sea fox, a lupus cervarius or lynx, an otter, a civet cat, an elk, and a 

 coati mondi of Brasil. 



First, they discourse of two lions and one lioness, and^ among other obser- 

 vations, they remark that one of the two male lions sickened of a surfeit: as 

 having been informed, some months before he died, that he would not only re- 

 frain coming out of his den, but hardly eat; and that therefore some remedies 

 were ordered for him, and among the rest, not to eat any other fiesh but that 

 of young animals, and to eat them alive. To which his keepers, to render this 

 food the more delicate for him, added the extraordinary preparation of fleai ng 

 lambs alive, and to let him eat divers of those: which at first recovered him by 

 restoring his appetite and some chearfulness. But yet, say they, this food in all 

 appearance bred too much blood, and such as was too subtile for this animal, to 

 which nature has not given the industry or care of fleaing those creatures it 

 feeds on, it being probable that the hair, wool, feathers, and shells, which all 

 animals of prey devour, are a kind of necessary corrective to prevent them from 

 filling themselves by their greediness with too succulent a food. 



Next comes the chat pard, wherein they chiefly note the defect of spermatic 

 vessels, and of other parts absolutely necessary to generation, which they found 

 did not proceed from castration, but from some other cause: where they take 

 occasion to observe, that the sterility which is ordinary in some of those animals 

 that are born of two different species, must have in this subject a very particular 



VOL. II. Pp 



