VOL. LXXXIX.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 457 



but, not brooking restraint, he languished about 40 days, after he was secured, 

 and then died. 



In the course of this narrative, I have, in general, related only such particulars 

 concerning the elephant as came within my own knowledge, and which were either 

 not known, or not published. To enter into a particular history of the elephant 

 was not my intention ; and though the procreation of tame elephants has been 

 proved, yet the expence incurred by breeding them, may deter others from making 

 attempts of this kind. But it opens a field of curious inquiry to the naturalist; 

 and, now that the facility with which it may be done is ascertained, it suggests 

 itself as a mode by which the breed of elephants may be improved, in size, strength, 

 and activity. In this way, any expence which might be incurred, would more 

 than repay itself, in the future benefits to be derived from a superior breed of 

 elephants. 



VI. On the Decomposition of the Acid of Borax or Sedative Salt. By Lawrence de 

 Crelly M. D., F. R. S., &c. From the German, p. 56. 



The salt called borax, so useful in various manufactures and arts, and hitherto 

 imported only from Thibet and Persia, or in small quantities from Tranquebar, has 

 ever excited the attention of natural philosophers. This attention was principally 

 directed to the acid contained in it, called sedative salt; its other component part, 

 the alkaline salt, (soda or natron), being better known, and found in many other 

 natural productions, either alone, or in conjunction with other acids. The acid 

 above-mentioned has hitherto been discovered only by Hofer, in the lagone of 

 Castelnuovo ; by Martinovich, in the petroleum of Gallicia, mixed with alkaline 

 earth ; and by Mr. Westrumb, near Luneburg. The scarcity of this acid, and 

 its being found only in the substances and situations above-mentioned, occasioned 

 a supposition, in the minds of those who minutely observe and examine the course 

 of nature, that it is not a simple substance, but is formed afresh from a variety of 

 other substances, previously decomposed, by a singular coincidence of operative 

 causes ; and consequently that it belongs to compounds. 



Numerous have been the experiments made by chemists, who supposed they 

 had formed this salt by composition : some described experiments, which they 

 declared to have succeeded with them, though they always failed, when attempted 

 by others ; from which Leonhardi concludes, that nothing more can be expected 

 from any similar attempts to produce sedative salt. I was surprized that these 

 chemists had never, so far as I knew, examined the subject by the way of analysis, 

 and endeavoured to decompose the sedative salt already formed by nature. Indeed no 

 great hopes of success could be entertained, as daily experience shows, that though 

 this salt be kept fluid, in the hottest fire, for many hours together, till it becomes 

 a vitrified substance, yet when it is afterwards dissolved in distilled water, the solu- 

 tion is complete, without any residuum, and it then shoots into crystals of pre- 



vol. xvin. 3 N 



