QQ2 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO I676. 



of the civet becomes more perfect by being kept a while, nor that it is of an 

 offensive smell when new, as Amat. Lusitanus affirms; this smell not seeming 

 to them better after a year's time than at the time of the dissection. 



The seventh is the elk, of which they examine very solicitously its claws, 

 together with the tradition of this animal curing itself of the epilepsy, to which 

 it is said to be very subject, by putting one of his feet into his ear; whence 

 the claw of that foot is also much celebrated among the vulgar, as a specific 

 against that distemper. Of its brain they take notice, that the glandula pi- 

 nealis was of an extraordinary size; and consider that lions, bears, and other 

 bold and fierce animals, have that part so very small that it is hardly discernible, 

 and that the same is exceedingly large in those that are very timorous, as the elk; 

 this animal being esteemed to be so fearful that it even dies of fear when it has 

 received the slightest wound, it having been observed that it never survives 

 when it sees any of its own blood. 



The eighth and last is the coati mondi, a Brasilian animal, recorded by Mar- 

 grave, de Laet, and others, in whose books the description of that animal differs 

 only in the description here made of it, that in the former the authors describe 

 not their teeth, which have a peculiar conformation, nor the spurs on their 

 feet ; and that they make its tail much longer than the whole body ; which in 

 this coati was but short in comparison; but it may have been eaten off by the 

 animal itself, as de Laet says, that this kind of creatures are wont to gnaw 

 their tail,* and sometimes quite off, which when they do they die of it. 



The other treatise, being a new and very accurately performed Mensuration 

 of the Earth, has been fully described in N*' 1 12 of these tracts. 



III. Britannia Antiqua illustrata; or, the Antiquities of ancient Britain, de- 

 rived from the Phoenicians, &c. The first volume. By Aylett Sammes, of 

 Christ's College in Cambridge, since of the Inner Temple, London, 1676. 



The learned and curious undertaker of this great work has endeavoured, in 

 this his first volume, after Bochart, to attribute the first discovery of Britain to 

 the Phoenicians, and to make a German nation, and not the Gauls, the first 

 planters of it, and to impute that near agreement which was between the an- 

 cient Britons and Gauls, in point of language and customs, not to their being 

 originally the same people, but to the joint commerce with the Phoenicians, the 

 ancient and great navigators throughout the world. 



From this commerce with the Phoenicians he deduces the original trade of 

 this island, the names of places, offices, and dignities, as also the language, 

 manners, idolatry, and other customs of the primitive inhabitants, illustrating 



* Monkeys are also apt to gnaw their tails. 



