508 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1742. 



lyes, which they would have no occasion to have recourse to, if they employed 

 true salt of glass-wort, seeing this strong lye of salt of glass-wort makes soap 

 immediately ; besides, the salt of glass-wort contains sea-salt, as he has demon- 

 strated by making Glauber salt with pure salt of glass-wort and oil of vitriol. 

 If instead of sail of glass-wort we make use of pot-ash with oil of vitriol, it will 

 not make Glauber salt, but instead of it produce tartar vitriolate. 



In describing this sort of soap, the Doctor had no other view, than not to 

 deviate from the way of making Alicant soap, and to know well the proportions, 

 in order to apply them to the making of the soap proposed, and to fix them 

 with regard to the lime and the salt of glass- wort, which for many and various 

 reasons is preferable to other fixed salts, as being that which forms the best, 

 the most detersive, and the mildest soap, as it has been found by experience in 

 all our manufactures. 



The observations he had laid before the Academy, prove that the oil 

 which has passed through the lyes of lime and salts, is perhaps easier to di- 

 gest than any other. He there demonstrates, that the oil separated from the 

 soap by means of acids, as he has pointed out, is found to have acquired a pro- 

 perty which it had not before ; for it dissolves in spirit of wine, and perfectly 

 unites with it ; which it could not do while it was crude, that is, before it had 

 formed soap, or had been boiled with metallic limes. 



Account of the Earthquakes felt in Leghorn, from the l6th to the 27 th of Jan. 

 1742. By the Rev. Sig. Pasqual R. Pedini, Principal of the Clergy of the 

 College of Leghorn. N°463, p. 77- 



Jan. 16 was a very temperate day, with a gentle breeze between south and 

 west. A little after 24 hours, (about 6 at night, according to our English way 

 of reckoning) Sig. P. observed a certain dark cloud, which passed with a bad 

 smell, settle within a foot and a half over the tops of the houses, like the smoke 

 that the peasants make in an evening, when they burn their garden rubbish, or 

 such like. At 2 hours in the night, (8 o'clock English) they thought the pave- 

 ment gave way, and the chamber shook. On going to the window, he found 

 a small air from the south ; the dark cloud was no longer to be seen, but a thin 

 slight obscurity in the air. Scarcely a quarter of an hour passed, when the 

 chamber received a more violent motion than the former, and the candles on 

 the table moved from west to east. He smelt the stink no longer, but ob- 

 served the clouds increasing and thickening on every hand, but always with a 

 white hue, like the circle which is often seen round the moon, but of a prodi- 

 gious extent. A few minutes after 4 in the night, another violent shock be- 

 gan, far superior to the two former, which lasted about the time one might 



