18 U.] On the Laws governing the Material Universe. 
203 
Q. Have you any idea or apprehension 
>n your own mind how long you may 
live ? 
A. No—no more than you have» 
Q. Do you feel yourself weaker now 
than when I before visited you? 
A. Yes. Conversation exhausts me 
much more than formerly, or when you 
was before with me. 
Q. Many reports have been and still 
are in circulation, stating your having pro¬ 
phesied that an earthquake would take 
place, and you yourself would die at a 
certain time. Is it true you ever made 
such a declaration ? 
A. I have read myself in the public 
papers many such things as you mention, 
but every word is false. I never prophe¬ 
sied, neither have I seen visions as some 
say I have, nor do I believe in them. If 
a person was to tell me of such things for 
ten years, I should not believe them. 
Q. What quantity of snulFdo you take 
pi the course of the week? 
A. It is impossible for me to say, for I 
give a great deal away, I perhaps may 
take a I: of an oz. in a week. 
Q. What think you occasioned the loss 
of appetite, was it not by frequently sit¬ 
ting up with one Samuel Orange, who 
was diseased with scrophulous ulcers. 
A. I sat up one night only with Samuel 
Orange. It was the washing of his linen 
and the dressing of his wounds I believe 
which affected my appetite, for all I eat 
and drank afterward presented to ray 
imagination the like disagreeable taste 
and smell, although iny digestion w'as bad 
for several years before, so that for five 
years or more before iny illness I always 
felt pain after eating. 
Thus I have stated the principal points 
of conversation I had with Ann IMoore, 
and placed the questions and answers 
nearly in the same order which they were 
proposed. 
Her person is rather above tlie com¬ 
mon size; and the just proportions of her 
features evidently show the remains of 
a fine face. fShe seems naturally to pos¬ 
sess a lively disposition, her understand¬ 
ing exceeds much the attainments usually 
made by women in her sphere of life. 
She is ready in conversation, of a religious 
turn of mind, occasioned by her present 
sickness; her appearance does not greatly 
differ from what it was on my last visit; 
her voice is at times amazingly strong, 
hut greatly weakened by the paroxysms 
of pain. In her person she is clean, 
and there is no offensive smell in her 
fOOIlU 
On my returning home I compared my 
memoranda I,made on my former visit, 
and found them greatly to correspond 
with the above. 
However the extraordinary and singu¬ 
lar case of Ann Moore differs from ordi® 
nary life, the evidences of it are so clear 
and strong as to preclude all suspicion 
of art and fraud, though the principle by 
which her life is maintained is to me uu« 
accountable. Edward Corn. 
Birminghainf Aug. 20fA, 1811. 
For the Monthly Magazine, 
SPECULATIONS in regard to a new 
THEORY of the LAWS govemiug the 
MATERIAL UNIVERSE. 
HE mechanical means by which 
nature operates in the great pro¬ 
cess of impelling bodies towards each 
other, by the invisible agency called 
Gravitation, does not appear to have 
been explained by any system of physics. 
The principle of mutual attraction, as 
exhibited in the phenomena of falling 
bodies, was exactly recorded in the first 
constructed tables of weights; and the 
general law's of the same phenomena 
have been demonstrated and applied to 
nature by Newton, in his Illustrations 
of the mutual Gravitation of the Heavenly 
Bodies. 
Still, however, nothing has been suc¬ 
cessfully attempted tow'ards explaining 
the cause of the phenomenon itself. It 
has been called by the name of Universal 
Gravitation; but?; the name, like all 
names, explains nothing, serving only to 
record the fact of the phenomenon, and 
ascertaining no more in a philosophical 
sense, than had been known by the vul¬ 
gar in all ages. In truth. Gravitation 
is merely a new and scholastic name for 
the zeeiuht of bodies. 
*•0 
It has, however, always been consi¬ 
dered as one of the most surprising phe¬ 
nomena in nature, that masses ofmatter, 
having no visible conirectinn, should 
so act upon each other as to appear to 
draw (»ne another together. Tliat the 
sun should without contact retain the 
enormous mass of the earth in its place, 
at tlie distance of one hundred millions 
of miles by an invisible agency—that the 
earth should have a similar effect on the 
moon at the distance of a quarter of a 
million of miles—and that the planets at 
the distance of 2 or 300 millions of miles 
should niutually affect each other’s mo¬ 
tions, witliout any visible intervention,, 
are perpetual miracles; the proximate 
i came 
