dgS , PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS, fANNO 1702. 



Steeped in the solution of salt of walls. The pea and wheat steeped in the 

 solution of saltpetre, were about half up, but the barley and oat quite up. 

 Those steeped in nostoc were none of them come up, nor scarcely sprouted. 

 The barley and oat steeped in urine were come up, but the pea and wheat 

 scarcely sprouted. And lastly, to my great surprise, the pea, the wheat, the 

 barley and the oat that were not at all steeped, were all of them as soon up as any 

 of the former, except only the wheat, which was about half up. I set them all 

 a finger deep in the ground, and there was all the time of their growth very 

 fine weather. 



From all which I suppose that alum water is against the nature of peas, and 

 retards their growth, but agrees well enough with wheat, barley, and oats. 

 That the solution of salt of tartar is not friendly to the nature either of peas or 

 wheat, but agreeable or concordant to the nature of oats and barley. That 

 the water of saltpetre had not here any of the great power or virtue that I 

 expected, &c. And that these steepings did not further any of the said grains 

 in their growth and coming up, but manifestly and plainly retarded some or 

 most of them. 



I then dug them all up, except three spires of barley, which I let stand about 

 a foot and half, or two feet, one from another, which grew and increased so 

 exceedingly, that they had 6o, 65, and 67 stalks apiece from their single grain 

 and root, with every one an ear on, and about 40 or somewhat more corns each 

 in them, which increase proceeded perhaps not so much from the grain having 

 been steeped in any liquors, as from the fertility and goodness of the soil, and 

 their competent distance from each other. I observed that new shoots con- 

 tinually struck up from the root ; and that, as in the East and West Indies, 

 there are trees that always bear blossoms and flowers, green and ripe fruit, at 

 the same time, so here if the invigorating heat of the sun had not been weakened 

 by the approach of the winter season, there would have continually been new, 

 ripe corn, and empty ears on the same root. 



On the Influence of Respiration on the Motion of the Heart. By J. Drake, M. D. 



F.R.S. N°28I, p. 1217. 



Though several accurate treatises on the heart, and its action, have been 

 written by learned men of several nations, especially by two of our own country; 

 Dr. Harvey to whom we owe the discovery of the circulation of the blood j* 

 and Dr. Lower, to whom we are beholden for a complete display of the me- 



* For an account of this great disco«ery, the reader is referred to p. 319, volume i. of thia 

 Abridgment. 



