[ 93 3 



Ocean. In the fecond voyage of this celebrated navigator, he 

 obferves : 



" We found none of thefe iflands of ice fait in tafte, whereby 

 it appears that they were not of the ocean water congealed, 

 which is always fait, but of fome ftanding or little moving lakes ; 

 the main fea freezes not, and therefore there is no Mare Glaciale" 

 In his third voyage he moil: anxioufly repeats this fame opinion, 

 and in ftill ftronger terms, fo that what he hath thus laid down 

 was not an occafional obfervation merely, but what he had much 

 reflected upon, and found to be confirmed by his experience 

 in thofe Northern Seas n . 



This opinion of Sir Martin Frobimer's feems not to have been 

 difputed by any one, till the time of Mr. Boyle, who obferves, 

 that there are feveral in Amfterdam, who ufed to thaw the 

 ice of fea-water for brewing, and then cites Bartholinus De Nivis 

 zifu. " De glacie ex aqua marina , cert urn ejl Ji refolvatur, falfum 

 faporem depofuife, quod non ita pridem expertus eji ClariJJimus 

 Finkius in glaciei fruftis, ex portu noflro allatis 0 ." 



I mall not now criticife either what falls from Mr. Boyle 

 himfelf, or from Bartholinus, though it is very clear that the 

 ice alluded to by both muft have probably been formed from 

 frefh water, either in the rivers, or lakes which empty themfelves 

 into the Zuyder Sea, becaufe I mail hereafter contradict the 

 affertion of Bartholinus, by the actual experiment, which I have 

 tried myfelf during the late hard froft. 



* See Hakluyt, Vol. II. p. 62 and 67. In 1776, Mr. Marfhall, 

 Captain of a Greenland Ihip, was fo good as to bring me a bottle of 

 water, which was melted from ice found floating in the Spitzbergen 

 feas, and which had not the leaft faline tafte. 



0 Boyle's Works, Vol. II. p. 264. Folio, 



To 



