450 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. ' [aNNO I7O8. 



had the shape of a pear ; some of which, at the smaller end, were bent a little, 

 others roundish, but none of them had any part that answered to the stalk, of a 

 pear." 



After the matter, which he had taken from his tongue, had lain above a 

 fortnight in the water in which it was boiled, and the water was almost evapo- 

 rated, he poured a little fresh rain water upon it; and 3 or f) days after- 

 wards he took a thin slender glass-tube, one of the ends of which was open, 

 and turned it hastily upside down into the bottom of the china cup, in which 

 most of the particles which he scraped from his tongue lay, with this design, 

 that by the rushing in of the water into the tube, some of those particles of 

 the tongue should be likewise carried upwards into the glass tube, and that by 

 this means he might have a fresh opportunity of viewing them, when he disco- 

 vered an inconceivable number of exceedingly small animalcula of different 

 sorts ; the greatest number of them were of one and the same size, but they 

 were so little, that without a careful observation, and a very good microscope, 

 they would have escaped the sight. Most of these animalcula were in that 

 part of the water where the said matter of his tongue lay, which made him 

 think whether those animalcula might not receive their nourishment from the 

 aforementioned particles ; after these animalcula had been about 2 hours in the 

 glass tube, he perceived that a great many of them were dead. 



Concerning a Colliery that took Fire, and was blown up near Newcastle, killing 

 6q Persons. Communicated by the Rev. Dr. Arthur Charlett, Master of 

 University College in Oxford. N" 318, p. 215. 



On Wednesday the 18th day of August, 1708, at Fatfield, in the parish of 

 Chester-le-street, about 3 o'clock in the morning, by the sudden eruption of a 

 violent fire, which discharged itself at the mouths of three pits, with as great 

 a noise as the firing of cannon, or the loudest claps of thunder, 6g persons 

 were destroyed in an instant. Three of them, viz. two men and a woman, 

 were blown quite up from the bottom of the shaft, 57 fathom deep, into the 

 air, to a considerable distance from the mouth of the pit ; one of the men 

 with his head almost off, and the woman with her bowels hanging about her 

 heels. The machine by which the coals were drawn up, and is of a great 

 weight, was blown off by the force of the blast ; and what is more wonderful, 

 the fish which were in the rivulet, that runs 20 yards under the level, and at as 

 great a distance from the mouth of one of the pits, were in great numbers 

 taken up dead, floating on the water, by several of the inhabitants. 



Stith, commonly so called by the pitmen, I think corruptly from stench, or 

 stink, is such a foulness in the air, as both suffocates the men, and extinguishes 



