VOL. LIV.3 PHILOSOPHICAL TKANSACTIONS. 171 



escaping it: 52 Indians had it, 39 of whom died: those who recovered were 

 chiefly of the younger sort. The appearance of the distemper was much the 

 same in both these islands; it carried them off in each in 5 or 6 days. What is 

 still more remarkable than even the great mortality of the distemper is, that not 

 one English person had it in either of the islands, though the English greatly 

 exceed in numbers; and that some persons in one family, who were of a mixed 

 breed, half Dutch and half Indian, and one in another family, half Indian and 

 half Negro, had the distemper, and all recovered; and that no person at all 

 died of it, but such as was entirely of Indian blood. Hence it was called the 

 Indian sickness. 



There had been a great scarcity of corn among the Indians the preceding 

 winter: this, together with the cold moist season, have been assigned by some 

 as the causes of the distemper among them. These circumstances, it is true, 

 may have disposed them to a morbid habit, but do not account for its peculiarity 

 to the Indians : the English breathed the same air, and suffered in some mea- 

 sure in the scarcity, with the Indians; yet they escaped the sickness. 



LIX. Astronomical Observations made at the Island of Barbadoes; at IVil- 

 loughby Fort; and at the Observatory on Constitution Hill, both adjoining to 

 Bridge Town. By Nevil Maskelyne, A. M., F. R. S. p. SSQ. 



The object of Mr. M.'s voyage to Barbadoes was, on the part of the Board 

 of Longitude, to observe the going of Mr. Harrison's timekeeper, in keeping 

 the longitude at sea; though that object is not noticed in this paper, nor the re- 

 sult of it. The observations here stated being chiefly of eclipses of Jupiter's 

 satellites, and occultations of stars, &c. are not now of importance to be re- 

 printed in these Abridgments. 



Besides the above observations, says Mr. M., I have taken a great many of the 

 difference of right ascension between the ])'s enlightened limb and proper stars 

 (which I have not yet reduced) by means of parallactic wires in the focus of my 

 18 inch reflecting telescope ; from which, after making the requisite calculations, 

 I make no doubt of being able to deduce the moon's horizontal parallax in that 

 latitude, and thence, by proportion, the equatorial parallax of the moon with 

 great exactness, which has never yet been done in so direct a manner. 



LX. Further Remarks on M. FAbbe Barthelemy's Memoir on the Phoenician 

 Letters, containing his Rejections on certain Phoenician Monuments, and the 

 Alphabets resulting from them. By the Rev. John Swinton, B. D., F. R. S. 

 p. 393. 



M. Barthelemy's memoir on the Phoenician letters has again, with very large 

 additions been comnmnicated to the learned. Some at least of those additions 



z a 



