102 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1684. 



if the air be taken from them in the winter season. Now let such an exhausted 

 recipient, with the included phosphorus, be placed in a tomb or vault, which are 

 commonly dark, and if ever found, and the outer glass broken, as usually such 

 things are by ignorant men employed in digging, possibly there will appear, upon 

 admission of the air, as good a perpetual lamp as some that have been found in 

 the sepulchres of the ancients, though in all probability of a different kind from 

 all or most of them.* 



Thxit the LacteaU frequently convey Liquors that are not white. By Mr. Win. 

 Musgrave, Sec. R.S. N° l66, p. 812. 



Exper. I. — I kept 1 dogs fasting, one 48 hours, the other 3 days, and then 

 opened them; in both a considerable number of the lacteals appeared pellucid, 

 like lymphatics, only not so full and turgid as those under the liver generally 

 are, or as the lacteals themselves are sometimes seen. I cut several of them in 

 each dissection, and immediately a transparent liquor flowed out of the orifice. 

 Exper. II. — A dog which had neither eaten nor drank for 3 days, was suf- 

 fered to lap a quart of common water, an hour after which he was opened; and 

 the lacteals appeared in great numbers all limpid, from the liquor contained in 

 them, as in the former experiments; part of the water was supposed to be still 

 in the stomach and small guts ; for the quantity of water seen there was far 

 greater than that in the primes vise of either of the dogs killed fasting. 



Exper. III. — Another dog, after 3 days fasting, had a piece of fat meat given 

 him ; an hour and a half after which he lapped about a quart of common water, 

 and half an hour after this was opened. 1 first tied the ductus thoracicus, then 

 examined the lacteals, which I saw in as great a number, and as full as perhaps 

 they were ever seen in this species of animals, 8 or 10 of them appeared per- 

 fectly white; very many of a faint diluted white; but most of them were pel- 

 lucid, especially at the latter end of the dissection; by which time several which 

 at first were either of a lively or of a fading white, were now grown transparent. 

 That I might satisfy myself as to this difference in the colour of these vessels, I 

 opened the intestinum jejunum and ileum in several places, and found the water 

 was got as far as the caecum, and had carried down divers little particles of the 

 meat with it, by which means the liquor seen in the lacteals, at the first view of 

 them, was either of a perfect or of a diluted white, or else pellucid, according 

 to the mixture of the meat with the water in the guts. 



* For many particulars relating to such lamps, with an historical account of several of them, and 

 reflections on the possibility of them, see Montucla's Philosophical Recreations, translated by Dr. 

 Hutton, vol. iv. p. 496, &c. 



