662 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1/34. 



ment, or to be the excrement itself (Kaempfer Ainoenitat. Exot. Fascicul. iii. 

 635) an opinion which he in Hke manner rejects. This is the substance of this 

 first part of Dr. N.'s dissertation. 



In the 'id part he examines the accounts given by Dr. Boylston (Phil. Trans. 

 N° 383,*) and by Mr. Paul Dudley (ibid. N™ 387f), who relate that amber- 

 gris is found in the spermaceti whale, in a peculiar cyst or bag, corresponding 

 to the musk-bag in the musk-deer, &c. thus making it to be a peculiar secre- 

 tion. But from considering the situation and connexion of this bag, and the 

 description of the supposed balls of ambergris found in it, Dr. N. is induced 

 to believe, that the abovementioned cyst or bag, was the urinary bladder of the 

 whale; that the supposed balls of ambergris, were nothing but calculous con- 

 cretions ; and that the yellow liquor in wliich those concretions floated, was the 

 whale's urine; an opinion which had been previously entertained by the Rev. 

 Mr. Price of Boston. — If ambergris were a peculiar secretion, resembling musk, 

 castor, civet, &c. it should be found in every spermaceti whale; whereas, ac- 

 cording to Dr. Boylston's account, it is found scarcely in I whale out of 100 

 male, or bull-whales, and never in the female or cow whales ; not to mention 

 that some of the specimens of ambergris are too large ever to have been con- 

 tained in the aforesaid cysts. ;}: Again, if this were a secreted substance re- 

 sembling castor and musk, how, he asks, could the beaks of birds, fish-bones and 

 other foreign bodies be found in it? But what after all is with him the strongest 

 proof that ambergris is not of animal origin is, that pure ambergris yields by 

 distillation, products very different from those obtained by the same process 

 from animal substances. 



Being himself convinced, for the reasons given in the two preceding papers, 

 that ambergris is neither of vegetable nor of animal origin, Dr. N. in the next 

 place endeavours to prove that it belongs to the mineral kingdom ; being (as he 

 is of opinion) a species of bitumen issuing from the bottom of the sea, at 

 first soft and viscid, and afterwards hardened by the action of the salt-water. 



Having thus explained (as lie thinks) the origin of ambergris, he proceeds, 

 in the 3d part of his communications on this subject, to give an account of its 

 physical and chemical properties, showing at the same time in what manner 

 the genuine may be distinguished from the fictitious or adulterated ambergris. 

 He states that by distillation he obtained from it a water, oil and salt, possess- 

 ing the same properties with the water, oil and salt obtained by similar treat- 

 ment from amber (succinum) itself. He says that it is soluble in highly rectified 



* Vol. VII. p. 57, of these Abridgments. 

 + Vol. VII. p 78, of these Abridgments. 

 X Dr. N. mentions instances of masses of ambergris having been found which weighed many cwt. 



