VOL. XLVIII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 411 



Captain Adriaanz, commander of the Britannia, wliile he was on the whale 

 fishery last summer. The captain sounding one day in very deep water 236 fa- 

 thom, 2 of them clung to his line. He says the arms or tentacula of the polypes 

 were of a bright yellow colour, and fully extended, when he brought them to 

 the surface of the water; and made a most agreeable figure, like a fine full-blown 

 flower, which the captain took them for. Mr. Ellis further observes, that the 

 encrinos, or the lilium lapideum of the curious in fossils, so little known before, 

 is thought to be of this class. 



Rejtrenct's to the figures in pi. Q. — A, the clustered polype in its natural size, 

 extending itself; b, the same polype, as it was received, after it had been soaked 

 in water, and the tentacula laid straight; a, the polype in miniature, with its 

 stem of bone or ivory ; c, part of the ivory stem twisted ; d, the lower part of 

 the stem, covered with a cartilage ; e, the cartilage opened, to show the tapering 

 of the bony part ; f, the cross section, to show the position of the several bodies 

 of the polype; h, the cross section of the bony stem magnified; g, one of the 

 bodies cut open, to show its internal muscular form; 1, the eggs or spawn in the 

 natural size; l, the same magnified; i, the cuticular covering, which is con- 

 tinued from the bladder at m to the cartilage at e, or from one end of the stem 

 to the other; n, the indented muscular base, where the bodies of the polype all 

 unite; k, a figure of the encrinos, or lilium lapideum, from Rosinus. 



XLFIL Extracts of two Letters from Father Gaubil, of the Society of Jesus, at ' 

 Pekin in China, translated from the French. Dated Pekin, Nov. 2, 1732. 

 p. 309. 1 . To the R. S. 



The Chinese, without being consummate, or even passable astronomers, might 

 be capable of obseiTing an eclipse, and of making observations on it, and of 

 looking on the shadow of the gnomon of a sun-dial. The knowledge, which 

 they had from time immemorial of the rectangle triangle, and of its principal 

 properties, might easily teach them a thousand curious things in geometry, with- 

 out knowing the theory of trigonometry. 



The Chinese, from time immemorial, knew the passage of the sun in the 

 ecliptic ; they knew the stars ; they had globes and hemispheres ; and, by means 

 of divers practices and precepts, received from their ancients, without any great 

 knowledge of spherical trigonometry, might be able on the globe itself to resolve 

 many problems. We ought to conclude, that our ancients were possessed of 

 several kinds of knowledge, received from the patriarchs, and transmitted to the 

 Chinese. Without these kinds of knowledge, and these traditions, by mere ob- 

 servations alone, the Chinese could not perform what they did at first. They 

 never well understood the stations and retrogressions of the planets. Reflections 



3g 2 



