VOL. LVIII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 5 iQ 



They are very fat, but taste very fishy, not unlike our puffins : as they are 

 very full of blood, it is necessary to cut off their heads as soon as they are killed, 

 in order that it may run out; it is also requisite they should be flayed, for with- 

 out these precautions their flesh is scarcely eatable. When salted it becomes a 

 good food, as navigators have often experienced, in particular Richard Hopkins, 

 who preserved that way l6 hogsheads, which lasted above 2 months^ and served 

 as beef. These birds and seals seem to have been bestowed in quantity on those 

 desolate shores, as resources in extremity to distressed voyagers. 



Name. — The proper name of these birds is Pinguin, on account of their fat- 

 ness. It has been corrupted to penguin ; so that some, imagining it to have 

 been a Welsh word signifying a white head, entertained some hopes of tracing 

 the British colony, said to have migrated into America, under the auspices of 

 Madoc Gwineth, son of Owen Gwineth, a.d. 11 70. But as the two species of 

 birds that frequent that coast have black heads, we must resign every hope 

 founded on that hypothesis of retrieving the Cambrian race in the new world. 



We give this species the epithet Patagonian, not only because it is found on 

 that coast, but because it as much exceeds in bulk the common kinds, as the 

 natives are said to do the common race of men. 



I must not quit this subject without making my acknowledgments to Mr. 

 Banks for communicating this curious bird to me, which he now permits to be 

 laid before the Society for their examination. 



XF. The application of Dr. Saundersoris Theorem for solving Unlimited Equa- 

 tions, to a curious Question in Chronology. By Mr. J. Horsefall, F.R.S. p. lOO. 



By old tables it appears that Easter day happened on the 22d of March, which 

 is the soonest it ever can happen, in the years of Christ 105, 69/3 1229, and 

 lastly in I761. Quest. 1. What is the next year of our Lord, when it will hap- 

 pen so again before IQOO ? For, from thence to 21 99, the paschal full moon, or 

 the golden number 14, which distinguished the years above, will be fixed on the 

 22d of March ; consequently Easter day cannot happen before the 23d of March 

 in that period. 



Ansiver. In the act for altering the style, it appears by the table for finding 

 Easter till I899, that this can never happen in that period, but when the golden 

 number, or lunar cycle, is 14, and the Sunday letter is d. 



Also, by making a solar cycle for that century, the first year of it will fall on 

 1812, the Sunday letters ed, therefore all the years in that cycle, which haveri 

 for the Sunday letter, are 1, 7> 1 8, 24: and now the question is reduced to this : 



Quest. What year of our Lord, in the 1 9th century, will have the solar cycle 

 either 1, 7, 18, or 24, when the lunar cycle is 14 ? Or, which is the same thing. 



