discovery of his own: but, that accurate botanist Philip Miller, F. R. S. in a letter added to the abbe's description, gives us to understand that the American toxicodendron, is the fame fpecies of plant from which the inhabitants of Japan procure the varnish used upon their utenfils; and that the Calicuts are painted with the juice of this fhrub, called by the Japanese fitz, or fitz dsju, but denominated by Kampfer, in his Fafciculus amanitatum exoticarum, arbor vernacifera legitima, folio pinnato juglandis, fructu racemofo ciceris facie. The inhabitants of Japan procure the varnifh in the following man ner: they first flit the bark of the branches of the fhrub, in different places, with a knife: from thefe wounds there. flows out a white clammy juice, which foon turns black • when exposed to the air: the fame juice, he fays, is contained in the leaves and ftalks of the plant. This juice has no other taftable quality but that of heating without turning four, but it is dangerous to handle, being of a poisonous naWhen they make thefe incifions in the branches of the trees, they place wooden veffels under them, to receive the juice as it drops from the wounds; and when these become dry, and will afford no more juice, they make fresh < wounds in the ftems of the fhrubs, near their roots, fo that all the juice is drawn out of them: then they cut down the fhrubs to the ground, and from their roots new ftems arise which in three years will be fit to tap again.

<ture.

The 28th article confifts of a letter to the earl of Macclesfield from the rev. William Brackenridge, D. D. and F. R. S. concerning the method of conftructing a table for the probabilities of life at London. This gentleman, after having demonftrated the defects of other computations on the fame fubject, and explained the difficulties attending the construction of fuch a table at London, where there is a continual fluctuation of inhabitants, and an infuperable uncertainty with refpect to the births of diffenters and Jews, proceeds to form a new table of probabilities, compounded of that which Dr. Halley deduced from the bills of mortality in Breslau, and those erroneous calculations which have been made in London. From the births found 19561, and the numbers of the dead in the different periods known by our bills, it will be eafy

to form a table of the decrements of life; because the dead in the intermediate years may be found by what has been said above. And accordingly I have computed the following, which is constructed from the London and Breslau bills together; which I think is a furer method of computing for us at London, than from either of them alone. The firft part to the 21ft year, is done from our bills, and the other part from the Breflau; but it is formed in fuch a manner, that it goes on as if from the bills of one place only. For, after the age of twenty, it is continued by proportion, by ‹ making the dead at London in the decennial periods, to have the fame ratio to one another as the dead at Breslau. It fuppofes 1000 perfons born in one year, and fhews the annual decrease of them by death till 87 years of age, which may be confidered as the utmost period of life. The intermediate numbers, marked d, fhew the dead in each year. The use of this table, is well known to all who can compute the value of annuities for lives.

The fheep, having a monftrous horn growing from his throat, defcribed in the next article, by Dr. Parfons, and exhibited in a plate, is a curious lufus nature; and the following circumstance extremely remarkable: It is faid by the perfon, who brought the ftuffed fkin of this fheep to the fociety laft • Thursday, that upon opening him there was found, in the top of the horn next the throat, which is hollow half way * down, a skull of a contracted round form, with blood-veffels running upon it, and a bag filled with grumous blood, among which was a substance like a sheep's liver and lungs; and a perfect found kidney, like that of a fresh loin of mutAnd this is attefted by the names of three houfe-keep⚫ers of credit, who were present when the animal was opened, and who, if required, are ready to make oath of it.'

ton.

The thirtieth article contains a differtation upon the cancer of the eye-lids, nose, great angle of the eye, and its neighbouring parts, commonly called The noli me tangere; by monfieur Daviel, oculift to the king of France, who declares that these tumours, far from being incurable, as they have been generally deemed, are eafily extirpated without any bad

confe

confequence. The examinations I made in these kinds of tu'mors, fays he, have informed me, that cancers of the lids, nose, ' and adjacent parts, have all their feat in the periosteum, and 'perichondrium; and that we cannot hope for a thorough C cure, without taking them intirely off: in a word, the veflels C that go from the cancerous tumor are so strongly connected < with the periosteum and perichondrium, that they feem but < one body, which becomes at length fo greatly fwelled, that ' the very bone is often affected.

'

• When a wen or wart (which is often the beginning of a cancer) begins to appear, and they endeavour to pull them off, they become irritated, and spread to that degree, that the edges are reverfed, and become callous and livid, accompanied with a pain, and every other symptom which cha⚫racterize the cancer. These kinds of wens, warts, and tubercles, which are fituated in the great angle of the eye, upon the lids, or the nose, very often shoot out their roots upon the cartilages, that is, upon the very membranes which · cover them, and the roots fink in sometimes to the fubftance of the cartilage itself, which they fwell and tear in the • end.

The more cancers are touched with cauftics, the more they are irritated; therefore there is but one method, but it is a fure one, of curing them, and hindering their pro'grefs; which is, to take them off with a cutting inftrument, destroying the periosteum and perichondrium, or even the lids, if the cancer has penetrated them in their fubftance, ' with their cartilages.' These affertions he confirms by a number of curious obfervations.

This article is fucceeded by an account of four Roman infcriptions, cut upon three large ftones, found in a plough'd field near Wroxeter, in Shropshire, in the year 1752: with some observations upon them, by John Ward, LL. D. Rhet. Prof. Grefh. & V. P. R. S. These are three tomb ftones erected to the memory of as many Romans there interred; and from the learned observations of Dr. Ward, we find that in two of these infcriptions the tribe of the defunct is mentioned, whereas in Horsley we have the monuments of three foldiers, without any mention of their tribes: that indeed at

Bath

may

Bath there is an infcription of another foldier, faid to have belonged to the Legio fecunda adjutrix, whofe tribe is there expreffed but as that legion does not appear to have ever been in Britain, he may be fuppofed to have come hither for his health, for which reafon it might be thought proper to mention that circumftance. And perhaps the most probable way of accounting for the fame thing, in the perfons nominated in the first and laft of thefe infcriptions now under confideration, be to suppose that the character here given of the former, as beneficiarius legati principalis, might occasion that regard being paid to his memory in this funeral monument. And the latter might come over on fome particular occafion, not here mentioned, while the Legio quarta decima gemina, to which he belonged, was ftationed elsewhere. But, feveral gentlemen, in that neighbourhood, defigning fhortly to renew their fearch in and near the place, it is to be hoped that fome further light may, by that means, be gained, for the clearing up these difficulties. We with them all the fuccefs that the importance. of the inquiry deferves, and hope they will, in the course of their researches, discover the names of the good nurses who attended thofe foldiers in their last moments: a circumftance that would conduce alike to the elucidation of history and the fatisfaction of the public.

The thirty-fecond article contains fome obfervations upon an American wafp's neft, by Mr. Ifrael Mauduit, F. R. S. who has difcovered the compofition to be a kind of paper, which, tho' not fit for writing, may be well adapted for another domeftic ufe; tho' we would advise our readers to use it with caution, even for that purpofe, left it should prove a stinging experiment.

By the 34th article we learn that the charr-fifh is called torgoch in Wales; that they appear in three lakes, at the foot of Snowden, about the winter folftice; and that the whole number of charrs annually taken in the two pools of Llanberries does not amount to an hundred dozen.

The fubfequent article defcribes a method to restore the hearing, when injured from an obftruction of the tuba Euftachiana, by Mr. Jonathan Wathen, furgeon in Devonfire-fquare. This gentleman, after having given an accurate description of the tube's opening into the pofterior part of the nofe, as demonstra

ted