372 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1767 . 



Ma-la- Yesa says, " Absinthium is a Greek word, in Persic it is called Mowi- 

 Chowsheh. This is a plant which grows freely and largely ; it rises in a stem, 

 from which shoot out many branches, on which are many thick and tufted leaves; 

 it bears a flower like that of a jjarthenium, small and white; in its middle it has 

 a part yellow; its head is small, in which is a small seed; its taste is bitter and 

 styptic. Some sorts of it have a leaf like the dauciis, and a yellow flower. The in- 

 habitants of Egypt call this kind of it Demsisah. It grows plentifully in the east, 

 and in Syria, Chorasan, and Irak. The two last sorts of it are less esteemed, and 

 of less value." Absinthium " some physicians call this Alshich Alroumi", i. e. 

 Absinthium Ponticum, or Romanum. Look into the canon of Avicenna, 

 under the article Absinthium, you will find there several things concerning 

 Mamithsa. 



///. ^ General Investigation of the Nature of the Curve, formed by the Shadow 

 of a Prolate Spheroid, on a Plane standing at Right Angles to the Axis of the 

 Shadow. By Mr. George IVitchell,* F. R. S. Dated Fleet-street, Jan. 7, 

 1767. p. 28. 



The following is an investigation of an irregularity in the duration of the 

 eclipses of Jupiter's satellites, occasioned by the figure of his body. It has been 

 long known, that Jupiter's body was not truly spherical, but a prolate spheroid, 

 and that in a much greater degree than any of the other planets; but yet it was 



* This excellent astronomer was born in 1728, and died of a paralytic stroke in 1785, conse- 

 quently at 57 years of age. He was descended by the mother's side from the celebrated clock and 

 watch maker Daniel Quare, and was himself brought up to that business. He was educated in the 

 principles of the quakers, all his progenitors for many generations having been of that community ; 

 but he quitted them on arriving at years of maturity for those of the church of England, or rather 

 for those professed by Sir Isaac Newton, Dr. Clarke, and Mr. Whiston, and many others ; though 

 he all his life continued to act with the same simplicity and integrity of manners and conduct, as the 

 best of those whose community he had quitted, being a man of a most worthy and upright charac- 

 ter. It appears that Mr. W. cultivated the study of astronomy at a very early age indeed, as he had 

 a communication on that subject published in the Gentleman's Diary for 1741, which must have 

 been written before he was 13 years of age. Soon after he became a pretty constant correspondent 

 both of the Diaries and the Gent. Magazine, which he continued a long lime, sometimes under his 

 own name, but more frequently under the initials G. W. In 1764- he published a map of the pas- 

 sage of the moon's shadow over England in the great solar eclipse of April 1 that year, the exact 

 correspondence of which to the observations gained him great reputation. In the following' year he 

 presented to the commissioners of longitude a plan for calculating the effects of refraction and paral- 

 lax, on the distance of the moon from the sun or a star, for facilitating the discovery of the longi- 

 tude at sc-a ; and for which the commissioners gratified him with a very handsome reward. Having 

 been elected k. r.s., and taught mathematics in London for many years, with much reputation, he 

 was, in 1767, appointed head master of the Royal Naval Academy at Portsmouth, on the recess of 

 Mr. Robertson. There he died, after a residence of 18 years, and was succeeded in that office 

 by Mr. Bailey. » 



