638 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO I694. 



rules about the reduction of the given equation, and the variety of the signs + 

 and — , which have hitherto rendered this part of geometry so troublesome. 



II. The History of the Church of Malabar, from the Time of its being discovered 

 by the Portuguese, in the Year 1501. Giving an jiccount of the Persecu- 

 tions and violent Methods of the Roman Prelates, &c. Lond. 8vo. I6y4. 

 N° 209, p. 115. 



A Letter from Monsieur N. JVilsen, to Dr. Martin Lister, respecting the famous 



Persepolis. N°210, p. 117. 

 There is no information of any consequence in this letter. 



Dr. Gwilher's Discourse of Physiognomy. Communicated by Mr. Owen Lloyd, 

 Sec. of the Phil. Soc. at Dublin. N° 210, p. 118. 



Soft wax cannot receive more numerous and various impressions, than are 

 imprinted on the human face by objects moving the affections ; and not only 

 the objects themselves have this power, but also the very images, or ideas : that 

 is, any thing that pyts the animal sprits into the same motion that the object 

 did when present will have the same effect with the object itself. To prove 

 the first, let one observe a man's face looking on a pitiful object, then on a ridi- 

 culous, then on a strange, then on a terrible or dangerous object, &c. For 

 the second that ideas have the same effect with real objects, dreams often 

 confirm. 



The manner I conceive to be thus : the animal spirits, moved in the sensory 

 by an object, continue their motion to the brain ; whence the motion is pro- 

 pagated to this or that particular part of the body, as is most suitable to the 

 design of its creation, having first made an alteration in the face by its nerves, 

 especially the pathetic, and oculorum motorii, actuating its numerous muscles, 

 as the dial-plate to that stupendous piece of clock-work, which shows what is 

 to be expected next from the striking part : not that I think the motion of the 

 spirits in the sensorium continued by the impression of the object, all the way, 

 as from the finger to the foot ; but I conceive it done in the medulla of the 

 brain, where is the common stock of spirits ; as in a organ, whose pipes being 

 uncovered, the air rushes into them, but the keys being let go, they are stopped 

 again : now, if by repeated acts or by frequent entertaining the ideas of a 

 (avourite passion or vice which natural temperament or custom has hurried 

 one into, the face is so often put into that posture which attends such acts, 

 that the animal spirits find such passages into its nerves, that it is sometimes 



