VOL. XXVII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 67I 



ponds, where the water is stagnant; for where there are springs, or a current 

 of water constantly succeeding under the ice, the effect most likely will not be 

 the same. 



Of the Asbestos, or Lapis Amiantus, found in the Highlands of Scotland. By 

 Mr. Patrick Blair. N° 333, p. 434. 



The following is the relation of a gentleman in the Highlands, not many 

 miles from this place, (Coupar of Angus) who has lately built a house of a 

 singular kind of stone, dug out of a quarry not far from him. This stone, 

 after the rubbish, which is not very deep, is cleared away, lies horizontally in 

 a bed having parallel fibres, with few interstices. It is soft at first, and 

 easy to be smoothed and polished, without any tool, but rather with sand, or 

 another hard stone, of a bluish colour, which afterwards hardens so, that it 

 resists the injuries of air and fire. When first the quarrier began to dig it, 

 endeavouring to cut and raise it after the ordinary way with wedges, and the 

 other usual tools, it broke and crumbled all to pieces: but afterwards, observing 

 more narrowly the direction of its fibres, he endeavoured to cut it lengthwise 

 with spades ; and by this means he procured stones as large as he pleased, 

 which smoothed very easily along the direction of the fibres ; but when cut 

 transversely, no means could render them smooth, but their surface remained 

 as unequal as the extremities of a piece of wood. In the said interstices lies 

 the true asbestos, which is of a whitish silver surface, consisting of several fas- 

 ciculi with parallel fibres, like those of the muscular fibres of salted beef, easily 

 separable from each other, till it becomes so small as the finest flax, and so 

 ductile, that it may be spun into the finest thread, of which it were easy to 

 make the incombustible cloth, so famous for shrines among the ancients. In 

 other places of those interstices, was likewise to be observed a reddish substance, 

 near the colour of dragon's blood, which the gentleman believed might be good 

 for dying. I am apt to think the second kind was fibrous too, which might 

 make a beautiful cloth, being striped with the other. This whole quarry may 

 be said to be asbestos of different colours, the bluish being of a much coarser, 

 and the white and red of a finer grain. 



The Dimensions of sortie Human Bones, of an extraordinary Size, dug up near 

 St. Albans in Hertfordshire. By W. Cheselden* Surgeon, F. R. S. N° 333, 

 p. 436. 

 The circumference of the skull lengthwise, is 26 inches ; and according to 



♦ This celebrated anatomist and surgeon was educated under Mr. Cowper. He was a native of 



