536 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1741. 



Dr. M. had seen in the magnificent museum of Sir Hans Sloane, Bart, a piece 

 of wood, sound without, having a cavity within, wherein was found alive a sort 

 of beetle, but he thought of a different species. It came from Jamaica, if he re- 

 membered right. 



At the same time, that curious gentleman, Mr. Bankley, showed him the 

 horn of a fish* that had penetrated above 8 inches into the timber of a ship, 

 see fig. 3 ; and gave the following account of it : " His majesty's ship Leopard, 

 having been at the West Indies, and on the coast of Guinea, was ordered by 

 warrant from the Navy Board, dated Aug. 18, 1/25, to be cleaned and refitted 

 at Portsmouth for Channel service ; pursuant thereto, she was put into the 

 great stone- dock ; and, in stripping oflT her sheathing, the shipwrights found 

 something that was uncommon in her bottom, about 8 feet from her keel, just 

 before the foremast ; which they searching into, found the bone or part of the 

 horn of a fish of the figure here described; the outside rough, not unlike seal- 

 skin, and the end, where it was broken off, showed itself like coarse ivory. 

 The fish is supposed to have followed the ship, when under sail, because the 

 sharp end of the horn pointed toward the bow ; it penetrated with that swift- 

 ness or strength, that it went through the sheathing l inch thick, the plank 3 

 inches thick, and into the timber 4^ inches." 



With what prodigious force must this fish have moved? for had it met the 

 ship, the motion of the ship would have assisted the penetration of the horn ; 

 but the direction of it pointing from the stern towards the head, shows that the 

 fish struck against the ship, either while at anchor, or that it overtook it, 

 while under sail ; in which case the force of the fish must have been still greater; 

 and this was probably the case, because nobody in the ship remembered the 

 shock. Several able workmen on the spot assured Dr. M. that, with a hammer 

 of a quarter of a hundred weight, they could not drive in a pin of iron, of the 

 same form and size, into such sort of wood, and to the same depth, in less 

 than 8 or 9 strokes. 



Abstracts of the original Papers communicated to the Royal Society by Sigismond 

 Augustus Frobenius, M. D. concerning his Spiritus Fini JEthereus. Collected 

 by C. Mortimer, M. D. Seer. R. S. N° 46j, p. 864. 



Dr. Frobenius being dead, and some learned chemists at Paris, in Germany, 

 and in Italy, having endeavoured in various manners, and with different con- 

 trivances, to make this ethereal spirit; Dr. M. thought it would be acceptable 



• This fish was probably the scomber gladius, Bloch. Xiphias platypteris. Shaw's General 

 Zoology. 



