VOL. XVII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. • 515 



set about with a great quantity of yellow fine silken down, -f-of an inch long, 

 having a 2-inch long stylus or string, and yellowish membranes enclosing the 

 stylus and tomentum, being feathered at top with feathers for the same purposes, 

 and like the former. 



I cannot find this mentioned by any author, unless it be that of Breynius, 

 in the appendix to his first century, p. 22. Frutex Africanus, fruticis terribilis 

 narbonensium folio capitulis oblongis squammosis, gathered by Wilhelmus Ten 

 Rhyne, and sent to him from the Cape of Good Hope. 



Extracts of four Letters* from Mr. John Banister -^ to Dr. Lister, communi- 

 cated by him to the Editor. N° 198, p. 667. 



Account of digging and preparing the Lapis Calaminaris, in a Letter from Mr. 

 Giles Pooley to Sir Robert Southwel, President of the R. S. N° J 98, p. 672. 



The lapis calaminaris, or calamine, is dug and prepared near Wrington, in 

 Somersetshire. The groovers have no certain method of discovering it, either 

 from the surface of the earth, or the nature of the ground ; it being sometimes 

 found in meadows, sometimes in arable, and sometimes again in pasture grounds ; 

 neither is it discoverable from the colour or taste of the waters running there- 

 abouts, as being much of the same colour, taste, clearness, and wholesomeness 

 with other water ; nor from the withering of the grass on the surface of the 

 earth, or of the leaves of the trees, these being as fresh where calamine lies, 

 as in any other place. But I observe that they always dig for it upon, or near 

 the hills; for they expect none in those grounds which have no communication 

 with hills. 



^ * These letters of Mr, Banister contain notices of several plants, and other subjects of natural 

 history, observed at different times in Virginia, but are not of sufficient consequence to be reprinted. 



f " John Banister is mentioned by Mr. Ray in very high terras, as a man of talents in natural his- 

 tory. He first made a voyage to the East Indies, where he remained some time, but was afterward* 

 fixed in Virginia. In that country he industriously sought for plants, described them, and himself 

 drew the figures of the rare species ; he was also celebrated for his knowledge of insects, and medi< 

 taied writing the natural history of Virginia, for which Mr. Ray observes that he was every way qua- 

 lified. He sent to Ray, 16"8(), a catalogue of plants observed by him in Virginia, which was published 

 in the second volume of Ray's history, p. 1928. 



" The world was deprived of much of the fruit of his labours by his untimely death. Banister in- 

 creased the list of martyrs to natural history. In one of his excursions, in pursuit of his object, he 

 fell from the rocks and perished. His herbarium came into the possession of Sir Hans Sloane, who 

 thought it a considerable acquisition." 



Pultney's Historical and Biographical Sketches of the Progress of Botany 

 in England, vol. ii. p. .55. .;<;^t,.,^a: -'.tsil .Iwll 



3 U2 



