264 PHILOSOPHICAL TKANSACTION. [aNNO 1738. 



this symptom went off on the 7th or 8th day. He perfectly recovered, followed 

 his business, and found no inconvenience from the want of the part of the 

 spleen which he lost. The wound through his arm was also quickly cured.* 



Concerning a Ball of Sulphur supposed to be generated in the ^ir. By Mr. 

 Benjamin Cooke, F. R. S. of Newport in the Isle of Wight. N° 451, p. 427. 



The great heats we have lately suffered, were ushered in by a very gloomy 

 night of almost continual lightning, accompanied with very loud claps of thun- 

 der, which, as usual, were towards the morning followed by very heavy showers 

 of rain. Early next day, in a meadow near the sea-shore, far from any house, 

 and where it has not been known that any improvement has been carried on, a 

 husbandman found a beautiful yellow ball lying on the turf. It proved to be of 

 sulphur, of which it smelt uncommonly strong. It was frosted, as it were, all 

 over with an efflorescence of fine, shining, yellowish crystals, which soon fell 

 off" with the lightest touch. 



It has on one side, a deep hole, admitting the end of a middle-sized knitting- 

 needle, and on the opposite side a deep depression ; which would induce one 

 almost to think its form had been at first nearly spheroidal, formed by a revo- 

 lution round a supposed axis connecting those two parts. It has several other 

 holes scattered irregularly up and down its whole surface, some fit to admit a 

 hog's bristle, others a hair ; as if it had been made of a fine powder, and some 

 thin liquid, and after mixing had suffered some fermentation ; but those parts 

 of it which are solid, seem more compact than those of the common roll brim- 

 stone of the shops, and the powder of it burns with a whiter flame, and less 

 acid fumes. Its longest diameter is between 8 and g, and its shortest betwixt 

 6 and 7 tenths of an inch ; its weight is 108 grains. 



We find frequent mention, in the description of thunder storms in hot cli- 

 mates, that there falls often a flaming bituminous matter to the ground, which 

 sometimes burns not to be soon extinguished, but more frequently spatters into 

 an infinite number of fiery sparks, doing great damage where they strike, 

 always attended with a sulphureous suffocating smell, commonly compared to 

 that of gunpowder. 



"Whether this sulphureous ball was intended for one of these, but by some 

 accident missed firing, it is now time to consider. Had it been formed in the 

 earth, how should it get to the surface, without losing that most elegant frosty 

 covering of fine shining crystals, and appear not in the least sullied, or its pores 



• Mr. F. in the letter prefixed to this account remarks, that though the spleen had been often 

 taken out of dogs, yet this he believes to be the first instance of the extirpation of a considerable por- 

 tion of it in the human subject. 



