VOL. XVII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. SQ^ 



Abstract of a Letter, from M. Samuel Dale to Mr. John Houghton, S. R. S. 

 concerning the making of Turnip- Bread in Essex. Dated Braintree, Dec. 6, 

 1693. N° 205, p. 970. 



Take peeled turnips, and boil them in water until they are soft or tender ; 

 then strongly pressing out the juice, mix them, being beaten or pounded very 

 fine and small, with their weight of wheat-meal. Then adding salt and yest, of 

 each q. s. and warm water, knead it up as other dough or paste; and having 

 suffered it to be a little while to ferment, let it be baked as common bread. 



j4n Extract of a Letter from Sir R. Bulkley, concerning the Propagation of 



Elms by Seed. N° 205, p. 971. 



I have met with a poor labourer who has followed the propagating of elms by 

 the seed, a way, if known, totally neglected among all planters ; which seed 

 he finds in the former part of the year; and he has raised in small beds such 

 vast numbers of them, that he is enabled to sell them at a very low rate 

 indeed. 



An Account of a Booh entitled, PhaLvnologia Nova, sive Observationes de rariori- 

 bus quibusdam Balcenis in Scoti(B Littus nuper ejectis, &c. Aut. Roberto 

 Sibbald,* Edinburgi, in Quarto, 1692. N° 205, p. 972. 



The author of Scotia lUustrata, has here given a curious specimen of the 



^ Robert Sibbald (according to the editors of the biographical Dictionary in 15 volumes, London, 

 1798) was born at his paternal estate near Leslie in Fifeshire, Scotland, in the year l643, and wag 

 educated in the university of St. Andrew's, where he took his degrees, and afterwards travelled into 

 France and Italy. Being extremely curious in his inquiries after knowledge, he obtained the friend- 

 ship of the most eminent persons in the literary world ; and, on his return to his native country, 

 projected the plan for establishing a royal college of physicians in Edinburgh. He also pla.ited a 

 botanical garden there. In 1686' he is said to have embraced the Roman Catholic religion, but after- 

 wards renounced the errors of Popery. His practice was said to be very extensive, and in his hours 

 of leisure he studied the antiquities and natural history of Scotland. He was knighted by Charles 

 the Second, and had also the title of King's Physician and Geographer Royal conferred upon him. 

 Although (says Dr. Pultney, in his account of this author) Sir Robert Sibbald did not carry his re- 

 searches so far as to rank high in the character of a naturalist, yet as having led the way in that 

 branch, and singularly promoted the study of the antiquities of his country, he is justly entitled to 

 that honourable station he bears among the writers of North-Britain. His name is immortalized by 

 Linn^us under a genus called Sibbaldia. 



He published a work entitled Scotia Illustrata, sive Prodromus Historue Naturalis Scotia, folio, 

 besides the abovementioned Phalanologia Nova, or Observations on some Animals of the Whale 

 Genus lately thrown on the Shores of Scotland. And in the year 1706 he communicated to the Royal 



