VOL. XXXI.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 537 



Being persuaded to it by an ingenious gardener, Mr. Millar pulled off all the 

 male-flowers of some melon-plants as soon as they appeared; but instead of 

 finding, as his friend informed him, that these flowers exhausted the nourish- 

 ment from the fruit ; he found that, without these flowers none of the melons 

 would grow, so that he was deprived of the fruit which he expected. 



As this experiment is a plain indication of the necessity of the farina, so it 

 confirms the use I have assigned to the leaves, viz. that by entering the capil- 

 laries of the leaves, and returning again, the nutritive particles may be more 

 attenuated; so here, the petala of the male-flowers may serve for the same 

 purpose; for by the largeness of the tubuli in these pomiferas scandentes, a 

 gross viscid sap is received, which even the leaves themselves are not suflicient 

 to attenuate, so as to be fit for composing the more subtile part of the fruit, 

 till by repeated circulation through the petala of the male flowers, it may be 

 rendered fit for such a purpose. Indeed the female flowers on the top of the 

 rudimentum fructus, may in some measure serve for this purpose. But as the 

 male flowers are, generally speaking, more numerous than the female, so their 

 being removed, must deprive the embryos of a very great assistance towards 

 being perfected ; I may add, that the orifices of the pedicles, when the flowers 

 are pulled off, must lose so much of the sap, that the whole plant must 

 be thereby so impoverished, as not to be able to bring forth the designed 

 fruit; and all this, besides the want of the considerable supply of the farina 

 faecundans. 



On an extraordinary Height of the Barometer. By Mr. George Graham y* 

 Watch-maker, F. R. S, N'^ 369, p. 222. 



On Thursday, December 21, 1721, observing the barometer much higher 



* Mr. Graham was justly esteemed the most accurate and ingenious mechanist of his time. He 

 was born at Gratwick in Cumberland, in l675. After being a short time in London, he was en* 

 gaged, on account of his promising talents, by the celebrated clock-maker Mr. Tompion. He in- 

 vented several astronomical instruments, and improved those before in use, constructing them with 

 an accuracy that had never before been attained. The second mural arch at the Royal Observatory 

 was made for Dr. Halley under Mr. Graham's direction, and the limb divided by his own hand. He 

 invented and made the sector with which Dr. Bradley discovered two new motions in the fixed stars. 

 He comprised the whole planetary system within the compass of a small cabinet ; from whence, as 

 a model, all the modern orreries have been derived. He furnished the members of the French 

 Academy, who were sent to the north to make observations to ascertain the figure of the earth, with 

 the instruments they used on that occasion. He was many years a very useful member of the Royal 

 Society, to which he communicated several ingenious discoveries, viz. from the 3 1st to the 42d vol. 

 of the Philos. Trans., chiefly on astronomical and philosophical matters; particularly a kind of horary 

 alteration of the magnetic needle; a quicksilver pendulum; and many curious particulars relating to 

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