644 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1702. 



cranium, in a few days putrefied and exposed the brain itself to view, several 

 portions of which came away fresh and untainted ; and that which is most 

 extraordinary, he perfectly retained his senses, and rose every day to dress the 

 ulcer himself, till a considerable quantity of the brain was come away ; and 

 when he was confined to his bed, his speech first failed, and he died about 4 

 days after ; his brain being totally consumed, and nothing remaining in the 

 cranium but a small quantity of black putrid matter. He had neither spasms 

 nor convulsions of any part, all the time of his illness. 



On several Natural 'Curiosities. Bi/ Mr. Ralph Thoresby, F. R. S. N° 277, 



p. lO/O. 



On perusing the catalogue of the natural curiosities in my poor musasum, 

 you desired a more particular account of the skin of the fish's stomach from 

 the Indies ; of the crystal, and the ways of its concretion ; of the iron turned 

 into ore ; and of the octoedra from the copper mines in Sweden. The first 

 was given me by Mr. Robert Midgley, apothecary, of this town, [Leeds,] who 

 made 5 voyages as surgeon to the East Indies. It is the outward skin of the 

 maw of a fish that was taken at Macassar, and was given him at Batavia by a 

 Dutchman, who took it out of ihe fish. Its fibres or vessels curiously re- 

 semble a tree, with its stem, branches, leaves, &c. the skin is very thin, whitish, 

 and transparent, and the veins that compose the stem and larger branches, are 

 now rather black than dark red, as I presume they were at first ; the leaves a 

 sort of dark and faded green, variegated. The crystal, with other natural 

 curiosities, was given me by Dr. Jabez Cay, of Newcastle, who brought it from 

 Milan : I shall give you the description of it, together with his arguments on 

 a sort of spar within a flint, sent me at the same time. That within the flint, 

 says he, seems to difi^er from the rest of its substance, and somewhat to re- 

 semble spar : though after all, spar being nothing else but a crystalline sort of 

 lime-stone, it differs not from flint in reality, but only in appearance, i, e. in 

 the manner of concretion : and if the inclosed matter had differed in its nature 

 from the rest of the stone, the thing had not been very uncommon, it being 

 usual enough for stones, especially those of a globular or oval form, to have 

 coat upon coat, and those coals sometimes very different from one another, 

 some being soft, others hard, nay, sometimes, after a long spnce of time, one 

 of these coats will shrink from theoti.er, after the manner ot a kernel, when 

 the shell grows dry ; and then, if the inclosed substance continue soft and 

 marly, they call that stone geodts ; but if stony, it makes one of those rattling 

 stones that are known by the name of the aetites, or eagle stone. Many in- 

 stances might be brought to confirm, that it is no unusual thing for stones to 



