VOL. XXIX.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 181 



said that the deepest part of water, when we were there, was not above 2 

 fathoms. The dimensions of this cave I guess to be as follows: — Length about 

 35 yards, breadth 12, ordinary depth 14 from top to bottom. On the further 

 side grows some white stuff, which the peakman told us was saltpetre. There 

 was both ice and snow in it when we were there : and the ice was of a great 

 thickness, covered with water about knee deep. We let down a bottle at the 

 end of a string for some of the water, in which we put some sugar and drank 

 it, but it was the coldest I ever drank in my life. The ice was broken just 

 under the mouth of it, where we could see the stones lie at the bottom, for it 

 was very clear. A little to the right-hand within this cave the ice was risen up 

 in a high heap, in form of a spire steeple, or like a sugar-loaf; and in this 

 place I believe the water comes in. 



In our way home, we came by a cave 3 or 4 miles from the peak, where are 

 a great many skeletons and bones of men; and some say there are the bones of 

 giants in this cave. We came home to the port at about 6 o'clock this evening, 

 being Thursday, August 15, 1715, N. S. 



j4n extraordinary Dilatation or Enlargement of the left Ventricle of the Heart. 

 By Jas. Douglass, M. D. and R, S. S. N° 345, p. 326. 



I lately saw opened a young man in St. Bartholomew's Hospital, who died of 

 the palpitation of the heart, the violent beating and prodigious subsultory mo- 

 tion of which, for some months before his death, was not only easily felt by 

 laying the hand on the region of the heart; but seen to rise and fall by raising 

 the bedcloaths that covered it. And, which is almost incredible, sometimes the 

 trembling and throbbing made such a noise in his breast, as plainly could be 

 heard at some distance from his bed-side. This was accompanied with frequent 

 deliquiums, sometimes slow, sometimes swift, and often intermitting. 



Johannes Fernelius in his Pathologia, lib. 5, cap. 12, gives an observation of 

 a very uncomition and surprising case of this kind ; where he says the frequent 

 concussion of the heart was so violent and powerful, as not only to displace or 

 luxate, but even to break some of the adjoining ribs. Franciscus de la Boe 

 Sylvius, another writer of unquestionable integrity, has a parallel observation in 

 his account of this disease. Theodorus Kerkringius relates the history of a 

 woman he opened, whose heart was of a prodigious size, in his Spicileg. Anatom. 

 obs. l6. And, to mention no more. Monsieur Dionis, at the end of his 

 anatomy, gives a large description of a very uncommon case, in which the right 

 auricle of the heart was prodigiously dilated, to the size of the head of a new 

 born child. 



