354 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1707- 



1440; and in its right-hand the letter A in a square, with other figures, as 

 little boys naked, and in their hands ABC, with the picture of Fame, holding 

 the letters CD and E ; which was taken from the story of Junius in his 

 history of the low countries. There are other stories painted on the walls of 

 the summer-house, as one of the lords of Haarlem in his armour, &c. All 

 these pictures, with the statue of Coster, are painted in distemper, and are no 

 older (as appears by the date on the ceiling) than l655. 



Now as printing is only another way of writing, and brought to perfection 

 by degrees, like other arts ; and as pictures, either painted, cut in wood, or 

 engraved, were called the Laymen's books; for every one could read a picture, 

 and say this is a house, and that a tree; so I may say, that the pictures, or 

 drawings of the ancients, gave the first hint of printing ; and if the scribes, 

 in process of time, had not brought their art of writing into the decorum, 

 uniformity, and rule in their several volumes, the printers could not have 

 followed them so exactly in the imitation of their letters and pages of their 

 books. Pictures first were those of devotion; then the making of cards was 

 another introduction to the invention of piinting: the making of cards I take 

 to be very ancient. The first specimen of printing, was on one side only ; as 

 that at Bennet college, most in figures, with some few words only on the 

 side in labels like that at Oxford. The next step is that book at Haarlem ; the 

 designs of the prints are better performed, and then they came to have not 

 only lines, but whole pages of words, besides the pictures on a page. The 

 next step was ballad-printing, with the like pictures, and that only on one side. 

 The next improvement of this noble art, was the cutting of the whole pages 

 on wooden blocks or moulds, and printing on both sides of the page ; and 

 the first specimen of this nature was a Donatus, and, as authors say, was 

 printed at Haarlem and at Mentz; although some say a bible was printed the 

 game way in 1457» 



A Pyramidal Appearance in the Heavens, observed near Upminster in Essex. 

 By the Rev, Mr. William Derham, F.R.S. N" 310, p. 241 1. 



On the afternoon of Thursday April 3, 1707, I perceived in the west, a 

 quarter of an hour after sun-set, a long slender pyramidal appearance, perpen- 

 dicular to the horizon. The base of this pyramid I judged to be the sun, then 

 below the horizon. Its apex reached 15 or 20 degrees above the horizon. It 

 was throughout of a rusty red colour ; and was, when I first saw it, pretty 

 vivid and strong; but the top-part much fainter than the bottom, near the 

 horizon. At what time this appearance began, whether at, or how soon after 

 sun-set, I cannot say, being at that time in a friend's house. But after a 



