500 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [anNO 1682-3. 



There is also added an appendix, by the Doctor, containing a brief account 

 of the ancient harmonics, according to the different sects of the authors, com- 

 pared one with another; and with the music of this age: showing how and 

 wherein the Greek music agreed or differed from ours ; and how the several 

 particulars of it are retained in ours, but differently expressed; and what in 

 them answer to each other. Here is a short collection of most of what occurs 

 material in the several Greek authors on this subject; as well those published by 

 Meibomeus, as others yet remaining among us in manuscript. 



II. Observations on the Dublin Bills of Mortality, 168I. And the State of 

 that City. By the Observator on the London Bills of Mortality, Lond. l683. 



III. Johannes Godartius of Insects. Done into English and methodized; 

 with the Addition of Notes. By Martin Lister, Esq. The Figures etched 

 upon Copper, by Mr. F. PI. York. Printed by J. White, for the Publisher, 

 l682, in quarto. 



This author seems rather to have diverted himself by conversing with these 

 animals, which he did for 40 years, than to have given himself the trouble of 

 well understanding them. And yet after all this, says Mr. Lister, we shall find 

 him every where very just and true in his observations. That all the insects 

 he writes of he most industriously fed, and brought up to their change, which 

 is more than any man ever did before him. And though the histories he has 

 given may seem but few, for so long a time ; yet in these few we have some- 

 thing of all the genera of insects that are in nature. 



Mr. Lister has also taken great care, and at his own expence, to have all the 

 figures finely etched upon copper plates. The whole impression intended for 

 the more curious, consists of but 1 50 copies. 



IV. Epistola Invitatoria, ad Observationes Magneticas Variationis, communi 

 Studio junctisque laboribus instituendas. Dat. Altorfi Noricorum Pridie Festi 

 Paschalis, l682. 



Dr. Sturm ius, mathematical professor at Altorf, the author of this letter, 

 herein first takes notice of the several steps by which the doctrine of the mag- 

 net has been advanced to its present state. That its power of attracting iron 

 has been noticed in all times; but that its verticity to the poles was first ob- 

 served about 400 years since by our countryman Roger Bacon. That it gives 

 the same virtue to steel, whence the invention of the needle between 300 and 

 400 years since, by the Italians : the various declination of the needle from the 

 meridian in various places, by Sebastian Cabot : the inclination of it to the 

 nearer pole, by our countryman Robert Norman. And that within these few 

 years, the variation of the declination, and that in one and the same place, has 

 also been noticed by many authors. 



