twice in ten sheets writing; yet as easily and certainly read and known, as if it stood but for one and the self-same letter constantly signified.

6. How at a window, as far as eye can discover black from white, a man may hold discourse with his correspondent, without noise made or notice taken; being, according to occasion given or means afforded, ex re nata, and no need of provision before-hand; though much better if foreseen, and means prepared for it, and a premeditated course taken by mutual consent of parties.

7. A way to do it by night as well as by day, though as dark as pitch is black.

8. A way how to level, and shoot cannon by night as well as by day, and as directly; without a platform or measures taken by day, yet by a plain and infallible rule.

9. An engine, portable in one's pocket, which may be carried and fastened on the inside of the greatest ship, tanquam aliud agens, and at any appointed minute, though a week after, either of day or night, it shall irrecoverably sink that ship.

10. A way from a mile off, to dive and fasten a like engine to any ship, so as it may punctually work the same effect either for time or exe

cution.

11. How to prevent and safeguard any ship from such an attempt by day or night.

12. A way to make a ship not possible to be sunk, though shot an hundred times betwixt wind and water by cannon, and should lose a whole plank, yet in half an hour's time should be made as fit to sail as before.

13. How to make such false decks, as in a moment should kill and take prisoners as many as should board the ship, without blowing the decks up, or destroying them from being reducible, and in a quarter of an hour's time, should recover their former shape, and to be made fit for any employment without discovering the secret.

14. How to bring a force to weigh up an anchor, or to do any forcible exploit in the narrowest or lowest room in any ship, where few hands shall do the work of many; and many hands applicable to the same force, some standing, others sitting, and by virtue of their several helps, a great force augmented in little room, as effectual as if there were sufficient space to go about with an axle tree, and work far from the

center.

15. A way how to make a boat work itself against wind and tide, yea both without the help of man or beast; yet so that the wind or tide, though directly opposite, shall force the ship or boat against itself; and in no point of the compass, but it shall be as effectual, as if the wind were in the poop, or the stream actually with the course it is to steer, according to which the oars shall row, and necessary motions work and move towards the desired port or point of the compass.

16. How to make a sea-castle or fortification cannon-proof, and capable of a thousand men, yet sailable at pleasure to defend a passage, or in an hour's time to divide itself into three ships as fit and trimmed to sail as before. And even whilst it is a fort or castle, they shall be

unanimously steered, and effectually driven by an indifferent strong wind.

17. How to make upon the Thames a floating garden of pleasure, with trees, flowers, banqueting-houses, and fountains, stews for all kind of fishes, a reserve for snow to keep wine in, delicate bathing-places, and the like; with musick made with mills; and all in the midst of the stream, where it is most rapid.

18. An artificial fountain to be turned like an hour-glass by a child in the twinkling of an eye, it holding a great quantity of water, and of force sufficient to make snow, ice, and thunder, with a chirping and singing of birds, and shewing of several shapes and effects usual to fountains of pleasure.

19. A little engine within a coach, whereby a child may stop it, and secure all persons within it, and the coachman himself, though the horses be never so unruly in a full career; a child being sufficiently capable to loosen them, in what posture soever they should have put themselves, turning never so short; for a child can do it in the twinkling of an eye.

20. How to bring up water balance-wise, so that as little weight or force as will turn a balance will be only needful, more than the weight of the water within the buckets, which counterpoised empty themselves one into the other, the uppermost yielding its water, how great a quantity soever it holds, at the self-same time the lower-most takes it in, though it be an hundred fathom high.

21. How to raise water constantly with two buckets only day and night, without any other force than its own motion, using not so much as any force, wheel, or sucker, nor more pullies than one, on which the cord or chain rolleth, with a bucket fastened at each end. This, I confess, I have seen and learned of the great mathematician Claudius's studies at Rome, he having made a present thereof unto a cardinal; and I desire not to own any other men's inventions, but if I set down any, to nominate likewise the inventor.

22. To make a river in a garden to ebb and flow constantly, though twenty feet over, with a child's force, in some private room or place out of sight, and a competent distance from it.

23. To set a clock in a castle, the water filling the trenches about it; it shall shew, by ebbing and flowing, the hours, minutes, and seconds, and all the comprehensible motions of the heavens, and counter-libration of the earth, according to Copernicus.

24. How to increase the strength of a spring to such an height, as to shoot bumbasses and bullets of a hundred pounds weight, a steeple height, and a quarter of a mile off, and more, stone-bow-wise, admirable for fire-works, and astonishing of besieged cities, when without warning given by noise, they find themselves so forcibly and dangerously surprised.

25. How to make a weight that cannot take up an hundred pounds, and yet shall take up two-hundred pounds, and at the self-same distance from the center; and so proportionably to millions of pounds.

26. To raise weight as well and as forcibly with the drawing-back of

the lever, as with the thrusting it forwards; and by that means to lose no time in motion or strength. This I saw in the arsenal at Venice.

27. A way to remove to and fro huge weights with a most inconsiderable strength from place to place. For example, ten ton, with ten pounds, and less; the said ten pounds not to fall lower than it makes the ten ton to advance or retreat upon a level.

28. A bridge portable in a cart with six horses, which in a few hours time may be placed over a river half a mile broad, whereon with much expedition may be transported horse, foot, and cannon.

29. A portable fortification able to contain five-hundred fighting men, and yet, in six hours time, may be set up, and made cannonproof, upon the side of a river or pass, with cannon mounted upon it, and as compleat as a regular fortification, with half-moons and counterscarps.

30. A way, in one night's time, to raise a bulwark twenty or thirty feet high, cannon proof, and cannon mounted upon it, with men to overlook, command, and batter a town; for though it contain but four pieces, they shall be able to discharge two-hundred bullets each hour.

31. A way how safely and speedily to make an approach to a castle or town-wall, and over the very ditch at noon-day.

32. How to compose an universal character methodical and easy to be written, yet intelligible in any language; so that, if an English-man write it in English, a French-man, Italian, Spaniard, Irish, Welsh, being scholars, yea, Grecian or Hebritian, shall as perfectly understand it in their own tongue, as if they were perfect English, distinguishing the verbs from nouns, the numbers, tenses, and cases as properly expressed in their own language as it was written in English.

33. To write with a needle and thread, white, or any colour upon white, or any other colour, so that one stitch shall significantly shew any letter, and as readily and as easily shew the one letter as the other, and fit for any language.

34. To write by a knotted silk-string, so that every knot shall signify any letter with a comma, full-point, or interrogation, and as legible as with pen and ink upon white paper.

35. The like by the fringe of gloves.

36. By stringing of bracelets.

37. By pinked gloves.

38. By holes in the bottom of a sieve.

39. By a lattin or plate lanthorn.

40. By the smell.

41. By the taste.

42. By the touch.

By these three senses, as perfectly, distinctly, and unconfusedly, yea as readily as by the sight.

43. How to vary each of these, so that ten-thousand may know them, and yet keep the understanding part from any but their correspondent.

44. To make a key of a chamber-door, which to your sight hath its wards and rose-pipe but paper thick, and yet at pleasuré in a minute of an hour shall become a perfect pistol, capable to shoot through a

breast-plate commonly of carbine proof, with prime, powder, and firelock, undiscoverable in a stranger's hand.

45. How to light a fire and a candle at what hour of the night one awaketh, without rising or putting one's hand out of the bed. And the same thing becomes a serviceable pistol at pleasure; yet by a stranger, not knowing the secret, seemeth but a dexterous tinder-box.

46. How to make an artificial bird to fly which way, and as long as one pleaseth, by, or against the wind, sometimes chirping, other times hovering, still tending the way it is designed for.

47. To make a ball of any metal, which thrown into a pool or pail of water shall presently rise from the bottom, and constantly shew, by the superficies of the water, the hour of the day or night, never rising more out of the water, than just to the minute it sheweth, of each quarter of the hour; and, if by force kept under water, yet the time is not lost, but recovered as soon as it is permitted to rise to the superficies of the water.

48. A scrued ascent, instead of stairs, with fit landing-places to the best chambers of each story, with back stairs within the noel of it, convenient for servants to pass up and down to the inward rooms of them unseen and private.

49. A portable engine, in way of a tobacco tongs, whereby a man may get over a wall, or get up again being come down, finding the coast proving unsecure unto him.

50. A compleat, light, portable ladder, which, taken out of one's pocket, may be by himself fastened an hundred feet high, to get up by from the ground.

51. A rule of gradation, which with ease and method reduceth all things to a private correspondence, most useful for secret intelligence.

52. How to signify words, and a perfect discourse, by jangling of bells of any parish church, or by any musical instrument within hearing, in a seeming way of tuning it; or of an unskilful beginner.

53. A way how to make hollow and cover a water-scrue, as big and as long as one pleaseth, in an easy and cheap way.

54. How to make a water-scrue tight, and yet transparent, and free from breaking; but so clear, that one may palpably see the water or any heavy thing, how, and why it is mounted by turning.

55. A double water-scrue, the innermost to mount the water, and the outermost for it to descend more in number of threads, and consequently in quantity of water, though much shorter than the innermost scrue, by which the water ascendeth, a most extraordinary help for the turning of the scrue to make the water rise.

56. To provide and make that all the weights of the descending side of a wheel shall be perpetually further from the center, than those of the mounting side, and yet equal in number and heft to the one side as the other. A most incredible thing, if not seen, but tried before the late King, of blessed memory, in the Tower, by my directions, two extraordinary ambassadors accompanying his Majesty, and the Dukes of Richmond and Hamilton, with most of the court, attending him. The wheel was fourteen feet over, and forty weights of fifty pounds a-piece. Sir William Balfore, then lieutenant of the Tower, can justify it, with

several others. They all saw, that no sooner these great weights passed the diameter-line of the lower side, but they hung a foot further from the center, nor no sooner passed the diameter-line of the upper side, but they hung a foot nearer. Be pleased to judge the consequence.

57. An ebbing and flowing water-work in two vessels, into either of which, the water standing at a level, if a globe be cast in, instead of rising, it presently ebbeth, and so remains until a like globe be cast into the other vessel, which the water is no sooner sensible of, but that vessel presently ebbeth, and the other floweth, and so continueth ebbing and flowing until one or both of the globes be taken out, working some little effect besides its own motion, without the help of any man within sight or hearing. But if either of the globes be taken out with ever so swift or easy a motion, at the very instant the ebbing and flowing ceaseth; for if during the ebbing you take out the globe, the water of that vessel presently returneth to flow, and never ebbeth after, until the globe be turned into it, and then the motion beginneth as before.

58. How to make a pistol to discharge a dozen times with one loading, and without so much as once new priming requisite, or to change it out of one hand into the other, or stop one's horse.

59. Another way as fast and effectual, but more proper for carbines.

60. A way with a flask appropriated unto it, which will furnish either pistol or carbine with a dozen charges in three minutes time, to do the whole execution of a dozen shots, as soon as one pleaseth, proportionably.

61. A third way, and particular for musquets, without taking them from their rests to charge or prime, to a like execution, and as fast as the flask, the musquet containing but one charge at a time.

62. A way for a harquebuss. a crock, or ship-musquet, six upon a carriage, shooting with such expedition, as without danger one may charge, level, and discharge them sixty times in a minute of an hour, two or three together.

63. A sixth way, most excellent for sakers, different from the other, yet as swift.

64. A seventh, tried and approved before the late King, of ever blessed memory, and an hundred Lords and Commons, in a cannon of eight inches half quarter,to shoot bullets of sixty-four pounds weight, and twenty-four pounds of powder, twenty times in six minutes; so clear from danger, that after all were discharged, a pound of butter did not melt being laid upon the cannon-breech, nor the green oil discoloured that was first anointed and used between the barrel thereof, and the engine, having never in it, nor within six feet, but one charge at a time.

65. A way that one man in the cabbin may govern the whole side of ship musquets, to the number, if need require, of two or three-thousand shots.

66. A way that, against several avenues to a fort or castle, one man may charge fifty cannons playing, and stopping when he pleaseth, though out of sight of the cannon.

67. A rare way likewise for musquettoons fastened to the pummel of the saddle, so that a common trooper cannot miss to charge them, with twenty or thirty bullets at a time, even in full career.