608 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO IJOQ. 



their timbers in building are placed in a very particular manner ; they have no 

 attic story, only warehouses, and one floor over them. 



Perhaps the drawing, now sent you, of a singular sort of monkeys, male 

 and female, may not prove unacceptable. These animals are called golok, or 

 wild people, and are thought to be originally a mixture with the human kind, 

 having no tails. They come out of the forests in the interior part of Bengal, 

 from the country called Mevat. They inhabit the woods: their food is fruit, 

 leaves, bark of trees, and milk: flesh only when caught. They are very gentle, 

 and extremely modest. They are of the height of a man; their teeth are as 

 white as pearls; and their legs and arms are in due proportion to their body.* 



JCII. Demonstration of a Law of Motion, in the Case of a Body Defected by 



Two Forces tending constantly to Two Fixed Points. By Mr. John Robertsoti, 

 . Lib. R. S. p. 74. 



The late Mr. Machin, who was, for many years. Sec. r. s.; and Greshain 

 Prof, of Astronomy, gave to the editor of the English edition of Sir Isaac 

 Newton's Principia, published in the year 17^9, a tract entitled, " The Laws of 

 the Moon's Motion according to Gravity," which was annexed to that impression: 

 Mr. Machin, in the postscript to that tract, after apologizing for not mentioning 

 the fundamental principles of the demonstration of the propositions relating to 

 the moon's motions, says, " Some of which, I am apt to think, cannot easily be 

 proved to be either true or false, by any methods which are now in common use." 

 One of these principles he gives in the following words: There is a law of 

 motion which holds in the case where a body is deflected by two forces, tending 

 constantly to two fixed points. 



" Which is, That the body, in such a case, will describe, by lines drawn from 

 the two fixed points, equal solids in equal times, about the line joining the said 

 fixed points." 



And, after observing that Sir Isaac Newton has proved, that Kepler's law of 

 bodies describing equal areas in equal times about the centres of their revolution 



* The monkey, of which Mr. De Visme has sent this drawing and short account, seems to be 

 very like, if not the same with the ape without a tail, described by Mr. De Buffon in the 14th 

 volume of the Histoire Natureile, p. 92, under the name of the Gibbon, which it bears in some 

 parts of the East-Indies. This species is found, he says, along the coast of Coromandel, at 

 Malacca, on the Molucca islands, and on the confines of China. It grows to be upwards of 4 feet, 

 walks on its hind legs, and sometimes on all four. The hair, with which it is covered, is either 

 brown or black: round about its face is a circle of greyish hairs; its eyes are large, but sunk in its 

 head; its ears naked; its face flat, and of a copper colour. It is of a placid disposition; its motion* 

 are gentle; it was fed with bread, fruits, almonds. But the most singular characteristic is, the 

 great length of its arms; and though Mr. De Visme takes no notice of this circumstance in his 

 description, his drawing seems to indicate it; but in a less striking manner, than that of Mr. De 

 BufFon, who adds, that, when the animal is upright, it can touch the ground with its hands.— Orig. 



M. Matt. 



