402 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1740. 



boil) as he could see, without turning it. By this girding-in of the body, 

 the lower part of it was almost round, it being without either legs or 

 thighs ; but had 2 feet joined unto the lower part of the body, the heels 

 inward, the toes, of which it had not the full number, pointing towards the 

 "sides. As to sex, this creature was a female, and born alive. It was the opi- 

 nion of the women about her, that the midwife had injured the head in the 

 birth, by which the rising in the head was produced ; and this surprising crea- 

 ture that was born alive, was thus soon deprived of life. This woman, who 

 had been the mother of several children, before this strange production, and 

 all in perfect form, was by some free-speaking persons, charged with having 

 been guilty of some practices both unnatural and unlawful, which she very 

 positively always denied ; and said that she knew nothing that could give any 

 change to the natural form of this creature, but the strange apprehensions 

 that her sentence had put her under, from the uncommon creatures the country 

 to which she was sentenced might bring in her sight. These odd ideas that 

 she had formed to herself, was all and the only thing, that had occasioned so 

 great a change from the natural form the child might otherwise have had, as 

 she often asserted. 



Concerning the Mola Salu,* or Sun-Jlsh, and a Glue made of it. By the Rev. 

 Mr. JVilliam Barlow. N° 456, p. 343. 



There was brought to this place, struck the day before in our river, a sun 

 iish, weighing about 500lb. The form of it nearly answers that given by Mr, 

 Willoughby, except that the tail of this was scolloped. It differed very much 

 in one thing from that described by Mr. Willoughby, whose flesh, he says, was 

 very soft : on the contrary, the flesh of this was hard and firm, rather a gristly 

 substance, than soft flesh. 



A commander of a vessel told Mr. B. that his people took a sun-fish, south 

 of Newfoundland, which, by his description, was considerably larger than that 

 brought hither. They made no use of the flesh ; but he remembers it was a 

 gristly substance, hard and firm. , 



A piece of the flesh boiled, to try how it would look and taste, was all turned 

 into a jelly. Being soft and tender, it could not be taken out of the saucepan 

 with a fork, but only with a spoon ; in colour and consistence nearly resembling 

 boiled starch when cold. It had little or nothing of the fishy, but a grateful 

 and pleasant taste. 



By the sticking together of his lips, and from what he observed by touching 



* Diodon mola. Bloch. 



