VOL, XLl.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 303 



21. Mr. C. has been told, that one of their famous wiochists prophesied, 

 that bearded men, for the American Indians have no beards, should come and 

 take away their country, and that there should none of the original Indians be 

 left within a certain number of years, he thinks it was 150. This is very cer- 

 tain, that the Indian inhabitants of Virginia are now very inconsiderable in 

 number; and seem insensibly to decay, though they live under the English 

 protection, and have no violence offered them. They are certainly no great 

 breeders. 



22. Though they are sluggish by nature, and slow of speech, yet their me- 

 thod of expression seems vehement and emphatical, and always attended with 

 strong gesticulations. They are generally well proportioned, and for the most 

 part are rather taller than the English. They have all either a very dark brown 

 hair, that may well be called black, or a jet-black, all lank. 



An Experiment, to prove that Water, when agitated by Fire, is vastly more 

 elastic than Air in the same circumstances. By the late Rev. John Clayton, 

 Dean of Kildare in Ireland. N" 454, p. l62. 



Mr. Clayton having contrived a curious digester, in which bones could be 

 easily dissolved in a very short time, he performed some trying experiments 

 with it. In a small one having included about a pint of water, and, about §ij 

 of a marrow-bone, he placed the vessel horizontally between the bars of the 

 iron grate, about half way into the fire; and in 3 minutes time he found it 

 raised to a great heat; on which he thought to have taken it out of the fire, 

 lest it should have burst. For he remembered, that the screws of a digester, 

 made after Mr. Papin's method, giving way, the head flew one way and the 

 screws and irons another, with such violence, that the head having struck a 

 brick, cut a piece quite out of it; which was one reason for his contriving a 

 digester in this way, that the screws cannot possibly start, but that the vessel 

 would sooner break in any other part. On a sudden however it burst, as if a 

 musquet had been discharged. A maid that was gone a milking, heard it at a 

 considerable distance; the servants said it shook the house. The bottom of the 

 vessel, that was in the fire, gave way; the blast of the expanded water blew 

 the coals quite out of the fire, all over the room ; for the back of the fire-range 

 was made just like an oven, so that circulating in it, it brought out all the coals 

 at the mouth. Ail the vessel together flew in a direct line across the room, and 

 striking the leaf of a table, made of an inch oak plank, broke it all in pieces, 

 and rebounded half way of the room back again. He could not perceive any 



