VOL. XVII.J PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 52^ 



ning, furnished with very many vessels, consisting only of oblong and round 

 particles. The rest of the seed consisted of two lobes of a dark herby colour, 

 made up of globules ; and between these, two very small points rising up, which 

 where the beginnings of the leaves of the tree or embryo plant, which the lobes 

 themselves were to nourish till it should be furnished with a root to provide 

 for itself. 



I took some of these very small seeds, and sowed them in wet sand in my 

 closet, in June, the better to discover the manner of their growth. These 

 seeds being very much dried, and thence shrunken, appeared through the mi- 

 croscope, as fig. 12. ABEF is that part whence the root shoots forth. When 

 they had lain in the wet sand 36 hours, they showed as fig. 13, the proportion 

 of the part GHKL being then considerable, and in so short a time 6 roots 

 were shot out from it, and the two lobes HI K began to show themselves. 

 In 72 hours the roots began to divide and ramify, and to take hold on the 

 sand. It is observable in this tree, that the seeds come to their perfect maturity 

 before the leaves of the tree have their full growth, whereas other trees do not 

 perfect their seeds till after the fruit in Autumn ; so that this tree has its young 

 plant grown up the first year. The same is observable in the elm ; some of 

 its seeds I gathered in May, dried and sowed them, and in three days they 

 sprang up. I tried the same in the downy seeds of the poplar and Indian 

 cotton. If these distinctions of parts are so soon visible in these small seeds, 

 why should we doubt the production of an animal from the so often named 

 animalcules. Indeed we must own ourselves at a stand, when we would find 

 out how these animalcules receive life, and that not before the male has attained 

 a certain age ; and the rather, since we hold that the matter whence these 

 animalcules proceed, was likewise in that animalcule itself when it was first 

 committed to the matrix. And indeed that very extraordinary minuteness, by 

 which one creature is transmitted to another, is incomprehensible. ' 



Part of a Letter from Sir R. B. S. R. S. to Dr. Lister, concerning the Giant's 

 Causeiuay* in the County of Antrim, in Ireland. N" IQQ, p. 708. I 



Old Bawn, April 24, l6g3. 

 The Giant's Causeway is in the county of Antrim, about 7 miles east of 



* For a more satisfactory descriptioti of these basaltic pillars, the reader is referred to the Rev. 

 Dr. Hamilton's Letters on the Northern Coast of the county of Antrim. 



In a postscript subjoined to Mr. Molyneux's notes on the communication relative to the Giant's 

 Causeway, inserted in one of the subsequent numbers of the Transactions (in No. 212), it is re- 

 marked, that the above account of these extraodinary basaltic pillars is extremely inaccurate,- 

 VOL. III. 3 Y 



