VOL. XXXI.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 48 J 



flask, I set both the flasks in a pail, and poured boiling water about them, 

 keeping the flask of water down by force, that it might be as low in the hot 

 water as the mercury. After the fluids in the flasks had received a sufficient 

 degree of heat from the water, which was round the flasks, for the space of 5 

 minutes, I took the flasks out of the hot water, and putting that which held 

 the water into a cylindric vessel, that had 3 pints of cold water in it, and at 

 the same time plunging the flask with mercury into another cylindric vessel, 

 containing also 3 pints of cold water, I observed which of the cold waters was 

 most heated, in the following manner. 



A small thermometer being held in the first vessel of cold water, so as to have 

 its ball covered with the water, on putting in the flask of warm water, the spirit 

 rose 2 degrees; then putting the thermometer into the water where the flask 

 that had the mercury was, the spirit rose 3 degrees higher. The thermometer 

 being again put into the first vessel fell 4 degrees, and afterwards again into 

 the last, it rose almost 3 degrees. 



This shows that more heat is communicated by warm mercury than by an 

 equal bulk of water equally warmed ; and therefore that there is more matter in 

 the mercury; but how much more matter there is in the mercury, is not deter- 

 mined by this experiment alone. 



N. B. The warm mercury and the warm water were not poured into the cold, 

 but only communicated their heat through the flasks. 



An Account of a Contagion among the Cattle in the Venetian Territories, in 

 Autumn 17 n . By Dr. Peter Antony Michelotti. W 365, p. 83. 



Dr. Michelotti, being in the Venetian territories about October 171 1, took 

 that opportunity of making a particular inquiry into the circumstances of the 

 mortality that then raged among the black cattle; and was himself an eye- 

 witness of the greatest part of the facts contained in this account, and received 

 the rest on the spot from persons of integrity and credit. 



Almost all the sick cattle refused every kind of food and drink; they hung 

 their heads, had shiverings in their skin and in their limbs, they breathed with 

 diflSculty, and their expiration in particular was attended with a sort of rattling 

 noise ; they were so feeble that they could scarcely go or stand upon their legs. 

 Some few of them eat a little and drank very much, others had fluxes of excre- 

 ments variously coloured, of a very ofl^ensive smell, and frequently tinged with 

 blood; many of them had their heads and their bellies swelled in such a man- 

 ner, that, on clapping them with the hand on their paunches, or along the 

 vertebrae of the loins, they sounded like a dry bladder when full blown. In 



VOL. VI. 3 Q 



