VOL. XX.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 323 



A Catalogue of Electrical Bodies. By the late Dr. Robert Plot, F. R. S. 

 N° 245, p. 384. Translated from the Latin. 



Not only do amber and the agate stone attract small bodies, but also the 

 diamond, sapphire, carbuncle, the iris gem, the opal, amethyst, the fiilse dia- 

 mond, Bristol-stone, beryl, and crystal ; also the hyacinth, the Bohemian- 

 garnet, glass, and preparations of glass and crystal, false gems, glass of 

 antimony, glass of lead, all the fluors of the mines, belemnites, sulphur, 

 mastic, sealing-wax of gum-lac, hard rosin, arsenic, (but weakly,) and in 

 dry weather sal-gem, talc, and roch-alum. 



An Account of a Book. — Histoire ties PlaJites qui naissent aux Environs de Paris, 

 avec leur Usage dans la Medecine par M. Pilton Toiirnefort * de C /Jcademie 

 Royale des Sciences, Docteur en Medecine de la Faculte de Paris et Professeur 

 en Botanique au Jar din Royal des Plantes. A Paris de P Imprimerie Royale. 

 1698, 8vo. N° 245, p. 385. 



The author of this book is already well known by his former works. In the 

 present he gives an account of the plants growing wild about P.iris. The pre- 



* Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, the most celebrated of all the French botanists, was born in the 

 year 1656, of a good family at Aix in Provence. He discovered in his early years an uncommon 

 passion for botany. He was designed by his parents for the ecclesiastical profession, but the study of 

 nature and medicine attracted him with such irresistible ardour that theology was abandoned, and the 

 church obliged to yield her unjust acquisition, in l677 he visited the mountains of Dauphiny and 

 Savoy, where he collected many curious plants. In \679 he went to Montpelier, where he greatly 

 advanced his botanical knowledge, and in 168I set out for Barcelona, and wandered about the pro- 

 vince of Catalonia, accompanied by several students in the same science. The lofty Pyrenean moun- 

 tains stood too near not to afford a powerful temptation : he well knew that in these vast solitudes he 

 must lead the life of the most austere and rigid anchoret, and that the miserable inhabitants who were 

 to furnish him with his slender subsistence scarcely exceeded in number the robbers he had to dread ; 

 and indeed it so happened that he was often stripped by the Spanish miquelets, but he at length con- 

 trived to hide some money in the small coarse loaves which he carried with him ; by which means he 

 occasionally eluded their rapacity ; and once the tears which he shed on being robbed of his small 

 stock had such an effect on his plunderers, that they restored hiiu all they had taken. About the 

 year l6Sl he returned to Montpelier, and to Aix, his native town, where, having remained some 

 time, he was induced to visit Paris, and being introduced to Mons. Fagon, was made professor of 

 botany in the Royal Garden founded by Lewis XIII. In I694. appeared his first work, en. 

 tilled Elemens de Botanique, which was afterwards, in its enlarged state, published under the title 

 oi Instituliones Rei Herharice, a work of too great celebrity to need any particular desciiption. In 

 1698 he took the degree of Doctor of Physic at Paris, and in I7OO was appointed by Lewis XIV. 

 to undertake botanical travels. He visited Greece, and went to the frontiers of Persia, but the 

 plague prevented him from pursuing his African researches, and he returned spuliis oiientU onustus, 



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