lOl PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO \6Q7 . 



by reason of the brimstone and saltpetre, become sour, and without a natural 

 taste. 



We are in fear because of the mount Gounong Apy, wliich burning conti- 

 nually, throws out so great a quantity of fire and ashes, that the trees of the 

 country Neira, and part of those on the high country of Loutoir, are so much 

 covered with ashes, that no fruit is to be expected from them. 



At Neira there is neither leaf nor herb. The ground is covered with stones 

 and ashes ; and many houses crushed down to the ground by their weight, and 

 buried under them. 



Observations on an Infant, ivhere the Drain was depressed into the hollow of the 

 Fertebrce of the Neck. By Dr. Ediuard Tyson, F.R.S. N° 228, p. 533. 

 The midwife informed me, that she was very sensible that this child was alive 

 at first, and that it died in the birth, or a little before. I found it well grown, 

 all the limbs and body well proportioned, and plump ; the face well featured, 

 only from the eye-brows ; the scull was perfectly depressed down to the 

 OS sphenoides, or basis of the calvaria : so that it had no forehead. I 

 opened the cranium in several places, before I could find any brain at all ; the 

 cranium being every where so depressed and touching the calvaria : but at length 

 I observed, near the passing out of the medulla oblongata to the medulla spinalis, 

 a small quantity of the brain, the whole might be included in a walnut-shell. 

 It was covered over with a bloody matter ; but thrusting down my little finger 

 through the foramen, where the medulla spinalis passes, I observed a very large 

 cavity in the hollow of the vertebrae of the neck. ; which I found to be filled 

 with a substance like the brain, or medulla spinalis, or both ; but far larger than 

 the medulla spinalis itself could be in so small an infant. 



How far the medulla spinalis may answer the office of the brain, especially 

 in embryos, where there is no exercise of the senses, nor the imaginative faculty, 

 will be no great difficulty to comprehend ; since for the functions of life in them, 

 the spirits generated even in the medulla spinalis may suffice, especially in this 

 instance, where I suppose a great part of the brain to be detruded (by a bruise 

 the mother received) into the cavity of the vertebrae ; and I query, whether in 

 those instances that are given of births of infants without brains, there might 

 not be the like accident of the brain, or the principal parts of it being depressed 

 into the vertebrae, which in embryos are parts capable of distension. But the 

 brain being confined in so narrow an inclosure, it stints its growth and enlarge- 

 ment, yet it may be sufficient to supply spirits for maintaining those offices of 

 life the foetus enjoys whilst in the womb. 



But somewhat to confirm these instances given in the same Transaction, of 



