476 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1681. 



At the same time exactly, the two rivers only of Adour and Gaue, which fall 

 from the Pyrenean hills, as well as the Garonne, and some other little rivers of 

 Gascony, which have their source in the plain, overflowed after the same man- 

 ner, and caused the same devastations. 



The inhabitants of the Lower-Pyrenees observed, that the water flowed 

 with violence from the entrails of the mountains, about which there were 

 opened several channels, which, forming so many furious torrents, tore up the 

 trees, the earth, and great rocks in such narrow places where they found not a 

 passage large enough. The water also which spouted from all the sides of the 

 mountain in innumerable jets, which lasted all the time of the greatest over- 

 flowing, had the taste of minerals. — In some of these passages, the waters were 

 stinking, as when one stirs the mud at the bottom of mineral water, so that 

 the cattle refused to drink of it, which was more particularly taken notice of at 

 Lomber, where the horses were 8 hours thirsty before they would endure to 

 drink it. So that M. Martell believes he had found out the true cause of this 

 overflowing to be nothing else but the subterraneous waters : for if the heavens 

 have not supplied this prodigious quantity of waters, neither by the rain, nor 

 the melting of the snow ; it cannot oome elsewhere than from the bowels of the 

 earth, from whence passing through divers channels, it had contracted and 

 carried along with it that stinking and pungent quality. 



j4n Account of the Sieur Berniers Way of Flying. Philos. Collect. 



N° 1, p. 14. 



The art of flying has been attempted by several persons, in all ages. Not to 

 notice more remote and fabulous accounts, we may observe that it was believed 

 possible by our countryman Friar Bacon, who assures us that he himself knew 

 how to make an engine, in which a man sitting might be able to carry himself 

 through the air like a bird : and affirms, that there was then another person 

 who had actually tried it with good success. And it has been credibly reported 

 that about the year l640, one Mr. Gascoyn tried it with good effect; though 

 he since dying, the thing also died with him. — The following method it is said 

 was practised in France, between 1670 and 168O, and thus described. 



The Sieur Besnier, a smith of Sable in the county of Maine, had invented an 

 engine for flying, consisting of 4 wings, to be moved by the strength of the 

 arms and legs of the man that flies. 



It consists of 1 poles or rods, which have at each end of them an oblong 

 chassie or wing of tafi^ety, which folds from above downwards, as the frame of 

 a folding window. In fig, 1, pi. 14, A represents the right wing before, B the 

 left wing behind, C the left wing before, and D the right wing behind ; E is 9 



