400 - PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1778. 



coughs and pectoral disorders. Oats tliey prepare and grind in the manner of 

 malt, and make a sort of fluiniTiery of this meal, which they eat with quass, 

 their favourite sauce ; and sometimes milk supplies its place for these sorts of 

 dishes. 



The foregoing is the greatest part of their food and its preparation ; being a 

 regimen so consistent and uniformly calculated toward off the disease that their 

 situation threatens, that the most enlightened physician of our day could not 

 have prescribed a better, and there are some articles in it which, from their 

 cheapness and antiscorbutic qualities, might be permitted to accompany, for 

 trial, their old northern companion sour cabbage. 



However, after saying every thing of and for the food made use of by the 

 people inhabiting the northern parts of this extended empire, we nnist not omit 

 to give the share of merit due to some customs hinted at in the beginning, and 

 which probably have their share in effecting the great end treated of in this 

 letter. These are their clothing, baths, and manner of sleeping. In the first 

 place, they go very warmly clothed when out of doors, though they wear 

 nothing but a shirt and a pair of linen drawers when within ; the legs and feet 

 in particular are remarkably guarded against the cold by many plies of coarse 

 flannel, with a pair of boots over all, at the same time that their bodies feel all 

 the warmth of sheep-skin coats, and nothing is left open to the action of the 

 air but the face and neck, which last although never covered, yet coughs and sore 

 throats are seldom heard of. > 



. Their religion happily conspires, with the unavoidable bodily dirtiness attached 

 to their situation, to send them to their vapour baths once or twice a week : 

 here they wash away with aqueous vapour, and afterwards with water in its con 

 densed state, the dirt that by obstructing the pores is so well known to promote 

 putrid diseases, at the same time that they most effectually open the cuticular 

 emunctories, and throw off any obstructed perspiration that might have other- 

 wise acted as a fomes to begin the septic process in the. body ; and lastl)', they 

 undergo niglilly a degree of perspiration that enables our coachmen, for example, 

 to sit the whole day and severe winter evening on the box, or at least out of doors, 

 without once dreaming of what we call catching cold, as they tlirow off every 

 night what may have been retained in the day, and, to use a vulgar phrase, may 

 be said to clear out as they go. But keep them from the nocturnal luxury of 

 their oven, and you kill them in a week. 



XXX. Astronomical Ohservntions made in the Austrian Netherlands in the Years 

 1773, 1774 and 177^- By Nathaniel Pigott, Esq. F. R. S. p. 637. 



By a great number of observations, Mr. P. foundtliatthe medium of all gave him 



