388 PHILOSOPHICAL TRASANCTINOS. [aNNO 1740. 



ledge of the manner how an immaterial being acts upon matter, we shall then 

 reason in consequence about what the soul can do, and cannot do. Daily ob- 

 servations demonstrate, that the disordered and disturbed imaginations of wo- 

 men often hurts the infants. And this is a reason, which he adds to all the 

 others, to think he had good grounds to conjecture, that all monsters were 

 accidental; and to believe, that by the hypothesis of animalcula one may better 

 explain the phsenomena which are observed in generation, than by any other. 



On a Bregma of a Gigantic Magnitude; with a Problem to determine the Size of 

 the Giant according to the Rules of the Art of Drawing. By James Theodore 

 Klein, Secretary to the Republic of Dantzic, and F. R. S. N° 456, p. 308. 

 From the Latin. 



Having obtained, from Wittsen's museum, at Amsterdam, a bregma of a 

 gigantic size, in height Q English inches, and its breadth 7, with a description 

 and figure by Ruysch, representing the height of the head, from the chin to 

 the crown, 20 inches, and the breadth at the temples 12 inches; and also 

 another bone of the same kind, the height of which was 5f inches, and breadth 

 5 inches, but without a figure and reference to the head, it is easy to find, ac- 

 cording to the rules of painting, by taking 8 lengths of the head, that the 

 giant's stature was 13 feet 4 inches. But being desirous also to know the just 

 proportion of the other bregma, according to strict mathematical rules, M. 

 Klein proposed the following problem to Dr. Henry Kiihn, professor of mathe- 

 matics at Dantzic, viz. 



If, in two human bodies of different stature, the height of the bregma in the 

 former, be Q inches, the breadth 7> the height of the whole head 20, the 

 breadth 12 ; and in the latter, the height of the bregma 5^, and the breadth 

 5 ; to determine the height and breadth of the whole head of the latter, and 

 the proportion of its stature to that of the former. 



Now the stature of the first body being 20 X 8 = l6o inches, or 13 feet 4 

 inches, if the bodies were similar, the question would be easily answered, by 

 making a simple proportion, viz. as any dimension of the one is to the like 

 dimension in the other, so is the stature of the former, to the stature of the 

 latter. But because 9 to 7 and 5-|- to 5 are dissimilar ratios, the bodies are not 

 similar. Therefore we must take a kind of mean between tlie stature required, 

 as determined both by comparing the lengths and breadths of the bregmas to- 

 gether. Which may be done in three different ways, as follows : 



1st. As 9 : l60:: 5-|- : l02f inches = 8 feet 6f inches, the stature of the 

 latter body as determined by the heights of the bregmas. 



