276 PHILOSOPHICAL TRAKSACTIONS. [aNNO 1 685-6. 



face was painted with it, and the bodies of those that entered in triumph. The 

 factitious cinnabar is that which we now use; and is made by a sublimation of 

 mercury and sulphur. ] O. Carmine, made of cochineal. 1 1 . Lake, thought 

 to be an Arabic word : it is made of flocks died, or shavings of scarlet-cloth, 

 or of the cochineal insect, or else of kermes-bei ries, their tincture being ex- 

 tracted with a lye of pot-ashes, and then precipitated with a solution of rock- 

 alum. After the same manner a lake may be made of any plant or flower. 

 There is also another sort of lake made of gum-lac, by extracting its tincture 

 with urine. 12. Sanguis draconis, (dragon's blood) is the gum of a tree, which 

 looks like dried blood ; it is brought out of several places in the East Indies ; 

 and the tree which produces it is well described in the Hortus Malabaricus. 

 13. English reddle or ruddle, is found in many places of England ; among the 

 rest, near Witney in Oxfordshire. 14. Lamp-black, by Pliny thus described: 

 it is made of the soot of rosin or pitch, burned, houses being built on purpose 

 for it, that keep in the smoke. Its use is in writing-books, lib. 35, cap. 6. 



Accounts of Boohs. 

 I, An Essay towards the recovery of the Jewish Weights and Measures, coitipre- 

 hending their Money, by help of Ancient Standards compared with ours qf 

 England. By Richard Cumberland, D.D. 8vo. Lond. \686. N° 179, p. 33. 

 The learned author of this treatise has here collected the several testimonies, 

 both ancient and modern, sacred and profane, that may give any light into the 

 discovery of the ancient Jewish weights and measures. For this purpose, de- 

 pending chiefly on the experience of Mr. Greaves, whose integrity was never 

 yet questioned, and who with his own hands compared our English standard foot 

 with the several foreign measures our author has occasion to use. The book 

 consists of four chapters ; the first gives an account of the method proper to be 

 used in this inquiry. The second proves by many arguments the probability 

 that the Jewish ammab or cubit, was the same with the present Egyptian cubit ; 

 for that the usual rise of the Nile, necessary for the fertilizing of Egypt, was in 

 the days of Herodotus, as well as now, about 16 cubits ; whence he concludes, 

 that the old cubit of Egypt is not altered, but the divisions on the Nilometre are 

 the same as in all antiquity : also that the constant necessity of surveying 

 their lands, by reason the annual overflowing effaces the land-marks, obliged 

 them to observe a constant standard to avoid confusion. Next he alleges that 

 this cubit has not been altered by any conquest ; the Babylonian cubit of 5 

 palms being shorter, and that of 6 being the same ; that their next conquerors, 

 the Greeks and Romans, have their cubit considerably shorter ; and that the 

 Turks, their present masters, have not introduced theirs, which is much lopger. 



