.[ ] 
I 
LETTER. II. 
From Mr, Philip Miller, F. R* S, to tht 
Reverend Thomas Birch, D, D. Secret, 
R, S, 
S I R, 
Read May T N the Abbe Mazeas’s letter, which was 
* 755 - i before the Royal Society, on the 
19th of December laft, he mentions, that while he 
was making fome experiments upon the painted 
cloths made in Europe, in order, if poffible, to bring 
them to greater perfed:ion, he received a letter upon 
the fame fubjedl from the Abbe de Sauvages, of the 
Royal Society of Montpellier, in which is communi- 
cated a difeovery of a plant, the juice of which ad- 
heres, without the leaft acrimony, to a cloth, with 
more force than any other known preparation. The 
colour is black, and the plant, which produces it, is 
the Toxicodendf'on Carolinianim foliis pinnatis^ jiorU 
bus minimis herbaceis. 
The Abbe Mazeas afterwards mentions fome trials, 
which he made with the juice of this plant, as alfo 
thofe of two other fpecies of toxicodendron, which 
•were growing in the garden of Duke D’Ayen at St. 
Germain : by which he obferved, that the juice of 
the other two fpecies ftained his ruffles of a finer 
black, and in much lefs time than that of the firft- 
mentionedj which he fuppofes may have been occa- 
fioned by the quantity of the juice, which flowed 
from the two laft, as the plants w^ere much fironger, 
VoL. 49. Y and 
