VOL. Xlf.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 3^5 



The worthy and learned author of this work having very generously under- 

 taken to make a fuller and stricter survey of the natural and artificial things of 

 England than has been made hitherto, and being induced to this undertaking by 

 the consideration of advancing thereby both the knowledge of nature, and the 

 business of trade; has begun to execute this noble design by giving us a very 

 particular account of what occurred to him, for the most part upon his own per- 

 sonal inquiry, in Oxfordshire. An attempt so considerable, that if it were pur- 

 sued by fit persons all over the world with care, judgment, and diligence, would 

 in time produce a just history of nature, and furnish both the philosopher with 

 good materials to work with, and generally all sorts of men with the pleasure 

 and useful knowledge of the riches and wonders of the world. 



But Dr. Plot's work is too well known to require the reprinting of the very 

 minute account of it first given in the Philosophical Transactions. 



II. L' Architecture Navale, avec le Routier des Indes Orientales et Occi- 

 dentales. Par le Sieur Dassie. A Par. l677, in 4to. 



The author of this book desires it to be considered as a small essay or fore- 

 runner of abundance of excellent researches of his curiosity, which he says, he 

 is preparing for the public. His main design in this work he affirms to have 

 been no other than to reduce into art, as methodically as he could, a science so 

 necessary and useful to the state, to render it familiar, and to quicken those that 

 are skilled in the mathematics and in naval architecture, to inquire after infal- 

 lible ways of making ships sail better, and to find out the just weight of a ship's 

 burden, and its true symmetry, and so to bring this art to perfection. 



III. Philosophical Dialogues concerning the Principles of Natural Bodies. 

 By W. Simpson, M.D. Lond. 1677- 



' A work replete with false theories and reasonings. 



IV. A New Treatise of Chemistry, &c. written in French by Christopher 

 Glaser,* and now faithfully translated by F.R.S. Lond. 1677, in 8vo. 



1688 he received the title of historiographer to James the Second, In 1690 he resigned his profes- 

 sorship of chemistry, and also his place of keeper of the museum, to which he presented a large 

 collection of natural curiosities, being such as he had figured and described in his Histories of Staf- 

 fordshire and Oxfordshire, and those distinguished by the title of Scrinium Plotianvun StafFordiense. 

 In 1694-5, Henry Howard, Earl-marshal, nominated him Mowbray herald extraordinary, and two 

 days after he was constituted registrar of the court of honour. He died of the stone in April 1696, 

 leaving two sons by a wife whom he had married in I690, His principal works are the Histories of 

 Oxfordshire and Staffordshire, both in folio. He was also the author of several other learned and in- 

 genious productions, and left several manuscripts behind him, among which were large materials for 

 the natural history of Kent, Middlesex, and in particular of the City of London. 



* Christian Glaser, a native of Basil, was held in considerable estimation as a chemist in the 17th 

 century. He settled at Paris, and became apothecary to Lewis XIV. and to the Duke of Orleans, 



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