VOL. XVI.] VHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 26 1 



tables of large and most elegant cuts, with explications of them ; the draughts 

 were taken by the curious Gerard de Lairess, and are said to be all originals. 

 The method observed is, J. Of the head. 2. Of the breast. 3. Of the ab- 

 domen. 4. Of the womb, as it is in pregnant women ; «nd of the foetus, &c. 

 5. Of the muscles of the limbs. 6. The osteology. It is a beautiful work, 

 which, without engaging in controversies concerning the uses of parts, repre- 

 sents to the eye the whole anatomy of man. 



lineationum Anatom. and another against Cowper, entitled Gul. Cowper Criminis Literarii citatus 

 coram Tribunali See. Anglicanae. In this last tract he accuses Cowper, or his bookseller, of having 

 purchased from the Dutch proprietors the copper-plates engraved for his (Bidloo's) Anat. Corp. 

 Hum. and of having used them in his own (Cowper's) work, after altering the explanations, &c. 

 without once ackaowledging the quarter from whence they were derived. The engravings belonging 

 to Bidloo's anatomy do credit, as Haller observes, to the artist j and many of the parts, and especially 

 the viscera, are not unfaithfully represented. It is otherwise, however, with the muscles and some 

 of the blood-vessels, where we find much inaccuracy, for 'which Bidloo and not the engraver is cen- 

 surable; and with regard to his microscopic representations, they are in a great measure imaginary, 



END OF VOLUME FIFTEENTH OF THE ORIGINAL. 



A Discourse concerning Gravity and its Properties ; together tvith the Solution 



of a Problem of great Use in Gunnery. By E. Halley.* N" 179, p. 3. 



Vol. XVI. 



Nature, amidst the great variety of problems wherewith she exercises the 

 wits of philosophical men, scarcely affords any one wherein the effect is more vi- 

 sible, and the cause more concealed, than in those of the phaenomena of gra- 

 vity. Before we can go alone, we must learn to defend ourselves from the 

 violence of its impulse, by not trusting the centre of gravity of our bodies be- 

 yond our reach ; and yet the acutest philosophers, and the subtilest inquirers 

 into the original of this motion, have been so far from satisfying their readers, 

 that they themselves seem little to have understood the consequences of their 

 own hypotheses. 



The notion of Descartes seems to be quite incomprehensible ; he 

 would have the particles of his celestial matter, by being reflected from the 

 surface of the earth, and so ascending from it, to drive down into their places 

 those terrestrial bodies they find above them : this is as near as I can gather 

 the scope of the 20, 21, 22, and 23 sections of the last book of his Principia 



• It would seem that the numbers of this l6th volame of the Transactions were collected 

 and prepared by Dr. Halley, as tb» volume is addressed in bis name, to tbe earl of Carberg. 

 the president. 



