56 JAMES SMITHSON AND HIS BEQUEST. 



was feared that the rebels, as they actually did, would have destroyed 

 the bridge over the Charles Eiver. In a letter referring to Bunker Hill, 

 Percy mentions the death of Dr. Warren and that of Major Pitcairn. 

 While Percy was in America he was advanced in rank to be a lieutenant- 

 general, yet he was anxious to return home, and he was allowed to do so 

 near the close of the war. He was the first to suggest making peace 

 with the colonists, and he was selected as minister plenipotentiary 

 to secure such an end. Owing to dissensions in the British cabinet, he 

 delined that honor and retired to private life. 



NOTE 4. 

 NOTICES OF SMITHSON'S PAPERS, 



On Tahasheer and Calamine. 

 (I. From the London Monthly Review. ) 



" The first paper is an account of tabasheer, an article of importance 

 in the materia medica of the ancient Arabians, and still a medicine of 

 great note in many parts of the East, though neither the substance itself 

 nor its origin were known in the Western World. Dr. Russell ascer- 

 tained it to be a natural concretion from the juice of the bamboo cane, 

 and accordingly it, is distinguished in different oriental languages by 

 names signifying iSamboo milk, bamboo camphor, and salt of bamboo. 

 Dr. Russell had many green canes brought to him at Madras, and on 

 splitting them, found some joints full of a watery liquid, some with the 

 fluid much diminished and in different states of consistence, and others 

 with some grains or particles of tabasher, either loose, in which case 

 the reeds containing it are known by a rattling sound on shaking them, 

 or adhering to the extremities or sides of the cavity. The quantity of 

 the tabasheer appears to be very inconsiderable, the whole produce of 

 twenty-eight reeds from five to seven feet long, not much exceeding two 

 drachms."* 



The following account of his paper in the Philosophical Transactions 

 is given in the Monthly Review for January, 1792, vol. vii, pp. 75, 76. 



" We have seen in a former paper that tabasheer is a vegetable pro- 

 duction, formed by spontaneous concretion from a fluid in the cavities 

 of the bamboo cane. Its chemical constitution, however, is very difl'er- 

 ent from what might be expected in a body of such an origin. The ex- 

 periments of Mr. Macie, very judiciously executed, and hero stated in 

 detail, show it to be a siliceous earth, nearly the same thing with com- 

 mon flint that has been attenuated by artificial solution. 



" Neither water, alcohol, nor acids will act on it, but by imbibing 

 water it becomes transparent ; the white bits in a low degree, the bluish 

 nearly as much so as glass. It dissolves (as the precipitate from liquor 

 silicum does) in caustic alcaline lixivium; and the solution (like the 

 liquor silicum itself, or the precipitate redissolved) becomes gelatinous 

 on exposure to the atmosphere. In the fire it becomes harder, more 

 compact, and diminished in volume, without any loss of weight, except 

 of a little moisture, which it soon recovers from the air. With two- 

 thirds of its weight of fixed alkali, in a i^latiua crucible, it ran into a trans- 

 parent glass ; phosphorated ammoniac and litharge readily acted on 



* Monthly Bevieto for September, 1791, vol. vi, p. 16. 



