12 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1 094-5. 



should be thus joined with the rest, which are perpetually raised in respiration, 

 and whose motion is upon the vertebrae as its centre; and we see motion hinders 

 the lips of a wound from closing, and a broken bone from uniting. The author 

 supposes the bones to have been thus united in the fcetal state. 



He further remarks, that necessarily the body of this person must have been 

 immoveable, that he could neither bend nor stretch himself out, rise up nor lie 

 down, nor turn upon his side, having only the head, feet, and hands moveable. 

 The great difficulty seeming to be in the respiration, how that could be per- 

 formed when the ribs were thus immoveable : he endeavours to obviate this by 

 observing, first, how little motion of the breast is necessary to continue the 

 motion of the blood through the lungs, as is visible in hysteric fits, &c. Again, 

 the ribs of his skeleton, though fixed at the centre, might yet be moved at the 

 extremities, and so the thorax be enlarged by a much less strength than that of 

 the muscles used for that purpose; besides, the diaphragm, the chief organ of 

 respiration, was in this subject free in its acting. But it is likely this person 

 breathed very short, the quickness of the returns supplying the defect of a large 

 draught of air at once. And possibly the foramen ovale might continue open, 

 and by it and the arterial canal the blood might pass from the cava to the 

 aorta, and but a part of it pass through the lungs. He confirms this by an 

 observation he lately made in a girl of 4 or 3 years old, in whom the foramen 

 ovale was but half closed up, and in the form of a crescent. 



To this our author adds another observation of the bones of the thigh and 

 leg growing together in an adult person, the place of their joining being much 

 more solid than any other part. These bones were so bent at the knee as to 

 make an acute angle, yet were they without any exostosis, rottenness, fracture, 

 or unnatural figure. It is more surprising to find the knee, whose motion is 

 free and large, to be thus united than that of the ribs of the skeleton, whose 

 motion is obscure, and scarcely sensible. 



Concerning a Spout of Water that happened at Topsham, on the River between 

 the Sea and Exeter. By Mr. Zachary Mayne. N° 215, p. 28. 

 These phaenomena are very frequent abroad, yet rarely if ever seen with 

 us, though some pretend to have seen them in the Downs. The French call 

 them trombes, I suppose from their figure, and the noise they make, that word 

 signifying a sort of humming top. They are certain elevations of water, during 

 storms and tempests, reaching from the surface of the sea to the clouds. They 

 happen several ways ; sometimes the water is seen to boil, and raise itself for 

 a considerable space round, about a foot from the surface, above which appears, 

 as it were, a thick and black smoke, in the middle of which is observed a sort 

 of stream or pipe resembling a tunnel, whicli rises as high as the clouds ; at 



