water's canal, in a powdery form, and when mixed with part of clay is burnt to quick lime. All the above marls crack and fall to pieces when exposed to the weather.

The foregoing experiments were undertaken with a view to ascertain how far it would be advisable to attempt burning the marls of this country into quicklime, for the purposes of agriculture; they may likewise furnish us with some useful hints relative to the kind of marls proper to be used on different kinds of lands. Perhaps the calcarious earth united with clay, as in N° 1, 2, 4, &c. may be the best for light sandy soil; and N° 6, 9, 10, 11, where the calcarious earth is united with sand, the most eligible where the land is already stiff, and abounding with clay. How far the different quantities of fixable air, or other volatile parts, contained in each of the marls, as shown by the 5th column, will influence their preference in agriculture, must be left to the experience of the farmer to determine.

XX. Of a Fiery Meteor, seen Feb. 10th, 1772; and also on some New Electrical Experiments. Dated Eccles, Berwickshire. By Patrick Brydone, Esq., p. 163.. On Monday the 10th of Feb. 1772, exactly at 7 in the evening, as Mr. B.. was riding through Tweedmouth, a village at the south end of Berwick-bridge, he observed that the atmosphere was suddenly illuminated in a very extraordinary manner. The light of the moon, which was about half full, seemed to be extinguished by the blaze; and he saw his shadow projected on the ground, and almost as distinct, and well defined, as in sun-shine. He turned round to see whence the light proceeded, when he beheld a long, bright flame, moving almost horizontally along the heavens, It was of a conical form, and from the base to the apex could not be less than 6 or 7 degrees; its height, when he first observed it, seemed to be about 50 degrees; but it descended gently, and appeared to burst about 5 or 6 degrees lower. Its course was from N. w. to s. E., and seemed to have an inclination to the horizon; but this might be only a deception. The base of the cone was rounded like a sphere; and apparently of about of the diameter of the moon at her greatest height; but its light was brighter than that of the planet Venus, and in colour resembled the flame of burning camphor. Near the end of the tail there was a kind of waving motion, which, with the whole appearance, is endeavoured to be represented by the annexed figure. In about 10

or 12 seconds it seemed to burst, dividing into a number of small luminous bodies, like the stars in a sky-rocket, which immediately disappeared.

As Mr. B. had formerly observed explosions from meteors of this kind, he had presence of mind to pull out his watch, which has a 2d hand, to measure the

exact time the report should take in reaching him. He waited upwards of 4 minutes, which in his state of expectation appeared a much longer time; when, despairing of any report, he rode on, but had not got to the middle of the bridge, when he was stunned by a loud and heavy explosion, resembling the discharge of a large mortar, at no great distance, and followed by a kind of rumbling noise, like that of thunder. He examined his watch, and found that the sound had taken 5 minutes, and about 7 seconds, to reach him; which, according to the common computation of 1142 feet in a second, amounts to the distance of at least 66 miles. It did not occur to him to measure the duration of the light, which probably did not exceed 10 or 12 seconds; and during this short period, the length of the path, the meteor seemed to describe, could not be less than 30 degrees. He expected to have scen some account of this phe nomenon from Newcastle, as, by its direction and distance, he imagined it had burst pretty near the zenith of that town; but no notice was taken of it in the newspapers there. About a week after, he mentioned what he had seen to Sir John Paterson of Eccles, who told him he was at that time on the road, between Greenlaw and his own house; and as he was riding to the south, he observed the meteor from its first appearance, which was about 3 or 4 seconds sooner than he had time to turn about and view it; and this perhaps is the reason that it appeared so much higher to him than it did to Mr. B. That gentleman observed, that when it first became luminous, it was almost vertical, but went off descending to the s. E., and had in other respects the appearance above described. He added, that some considerable time after the light disappeared, he heard a great report, which he took for a clap of thunder; for the interval was so long, that he did not imagine this sound had any connection with what he had seen.

Now, as this gentleman was at least 20 miles to the west of the spot where Mr. B. made his observation, and as the appearance and height of this meteor seems to have been nearly the same to them both, it is probable that it was at a very great distance from the earth, and much beyond the limits that have been assigned to our atmosphere. The smaller meteors, called falling stars, Mr. B. frequently observed from the mountain of St. Bernard, one of the high Alps; and last year he had the good fortune to see several of them from the highest region of mount Etna; an elevation still more considerable, and probably the greatest accessible one in Europe, and they always appeared as high, as when seen from the lowest grounds; so that probably the height of 2 or 3 miles, bears but a small proportion to the common altitude of these bodies.

From their frequent appearance during the last frost, Mr. B. was inclined to believe, that the air was then in a very favourable state for electrical purposes; but not being provided with a common machine, he bethought him of a whim

sical one to supply the want of it. The back of a cat, it is well known, often exhibits strong marks of electricity; being therefore desirous to try what effect. this might produce, when made use of instead of the glass globe, he cut a quantity of harpsichord wire into short pieces, of 5 or 6 inches, and tying them together at one end, made the other diverge like the hair of a brush. He took a large metal pestle of a mortar for a conductor, to the end of which he fixed the brush of wire; and insulated the whole, by placing it on a couple of wineglasses. He then took a cat on his knee, and bringing her back under the wires, he began to stroke it gently. The animal continued in good humour for a few minutes, and he had the satisfaction to see that the conductor was so much charged, that it emitted sparks of a considerable force, and attracted strongly such light bodies as were brought near it; but the cat at last becoming uneasy, threatened to put an end to the experiment. The passage of the electrical fire, from the hair of her back to the small wires, occasioned, it seems, a disagreeable sensation, which she could not bear; so that turning about her head to defend her back, the tip of her ear happening to touch the conductor, and a large spark coming from it, she sprung away in a fright, and would not allow him to come near her more. However, after a long interval, the animal seeming to have forgotten her adventure, a young lady in company, less obnoxious to her than he was, undertook to manage her. Having first covered the back of this lady's hand with a piece of dry silk, that none of the electric fire communicated to the wires might be lost, she then began to stroke the cat as he had done, and the conductor soon after appeared fully charged: they drew large sparks from it; and if the animal would have continued quiet, he had no doubt that they should have showed many of the common experiments in electricity; but she soon became so outrageous, that they were glad to put an end to the operations, without any hopes of being able to repeat them, at least with the same instrument. In this dilemma he recollected, that a lady had told him, that on combing her hair, in frosty weather, she had often been sensible of a little crackling noise; and in the dark had sometimes observed small sparks of fire to issue from it. He proposed, therefore, that one of the young ladies would suffer the experiment to be made on her head, which she agreed to. The conductor was then insulated as before, and the lady having placed herself so, that the back part of her head almost touched the brush of wire, he desired her sister to stand behind her, on a cake of bee's wax; who, as soon as she began to comb the hair of the former, the conductor emitted sparks still of a larger size than those they had hitherto seen. The hair was extremely electric, and when the room was darkened, they could perceive the fire pass from it along the small wires to the conductor. The young lady who was on the wax, was not a little surprised to find, that the moment she began to comb her sister's hair, her own body became electric, dart3 H

VOL. XII.

They found Mr. B. then

ing out sparks of fire against every substance that approached her. however that these sparks were not strong enough to fire spirits. coated a small phial, and soon charged it from the conductor; but afterwards he did it more completely from the hair itself in the following manner. He fixed a brush of small wires to the large one that went through the cork of the phial; and taking the phial in his hand, he followed every motion of the comb with the brush of wires; and, in the dark, could observe the fire pass by these wires into the bottle. In a few minutes he found it was highly charged; when taking a spoonful of warm spirits in his left hand, and with his right, which grasped the phial, bringing the hook of the great wire near the surface of the spirits, a largespark darted from it, gave him a smart shock, and at the same time set the spirits on fire.

The day following, he wanted to repeat the experiments; but as the weather was hazy, and the frost had greatly abated, they did not so well answer. However, from making them on several heads, he found that the stronger the hair, the greater was the effect; whereas soft flaxen hair produced little or no fire at all. These experiments were made in a warm, dry room, before a good fire, and at a time when the thermometer, in the open air, was at 6 or 7 degrees below the point of congelation. The hair, which succeeded best, was perfectly dry, and no powder or pomatum had been used on it for some months before..

XXI. Of a Fossil lately found near Christ-Church, Hants. By the Hon.. Daines Barrington, V.P.R.S. p. 171.

The shining divisions on the surface of this stone, seem to be the scales of a fish, which Mr. B. conceives to be the acus maxima squamosa, engraved in Willoughby's History of Fish, tab. p. 8, and described by Ray, in his Synopsis Piscium, p. 109. It appears by the catalogue of English fossils, in the collection of Dr. Woodward, that a still larger specimen of the same sort was found in Stansfield quarry, near Woodstock, though Dr.. Woodward could only procure a single scale, v. 2, p. 53, c. 24. Single scales from the same quarry are also to be seen in the noble collection of fossils, given by Mr. Brander, F. R. S., to the British Museum. Though this fish therefore is a stranger to our seas, yet its exuviæ are by no means so to our cliffs and quarries.

P. S. Mr. Hunter, F.R.S., having seen the fossil at Crane-court, happened to dissect a beaver's tail very soon afterwards, which he showed, as bearing a strong resemblance to the scaly divisions in this specimen; Mr. B. however still thinks that the form of the scales in the acus maxima squamosa of Willoughby is still. nearer to it, than those in a beaver's tail.

XXII. Description of a Rare American Plant of the Brownæa kind; with some Remarks on this Genus. By Mr. Peter Jonas Bergius, F. R. S. p. 173. As the Leucandendra, Bruniæ, Diosmæ, Phylicæ, Hermanniæ, &c. are peculiar to Africa, so are likewise the Varroniæ, Ehretiæ, Samydæ, Malpighiæ, Cacti, Brownæa, &c. peculiar to America, not having been found in any other country: at present Mr. B. confines himself to the last mentioned kind. Mr. Jacquin, during his botanical travels in America, founded this genus, in memory of Dr. Patrick Browne, the celebrated English botanist; but Jacquin found only one species of this genus; neither was Sir Ch. Linné hitherto acquainted with any more. Mr. B. has now specimens of a new species of this kind, which he received from Mr. Pihl, who gathered it in Portobello in America, which will afford an opportunity of exhibiting the whole genus of the Brownæa, and the specifical differences of it. If we compare Mr. Jacquin's description of his species with this, we see how carefully nature has observed the same order and position of the essential parts in both; a circumstance common to all natural genera. Mr. B. does not know whether this plant will vegetate and thrive in our stoves or green-houses; if it does, he is convinced it will make a beautiful appearance with its assemblage of purple or blood-red flowers.

Genus Brownæa.-1. Brownæa (coccinea) B. with separate umbellated flowers. Brownæa coccinea. Linn. Spec. Plant. 958. Jacquin, Hist. Stirp. Amer. 194, t. 121. Native of rocky and woody places.

2. Brownæa (Rosa de monte) B. with aggregate headed sessile flowers, with very long stamens. Hermesias. Loefling. Itin. p. 278. Native of mountainous places.

Descr. Trunk arboreous; branches torulose with a cinereous bark; branchlets (or common petioles) subalternate, cylindric, smooth, with a cork-like wrinkled joint at the base, spreading; leaves coriaceous, a span's length, opposite, per fectly entire, ovate oblong, lengthened sharp, smooth on both sides, with obsolete alternate nerves, shortly footstalked, the lower ones gradually smaller, the lowest ovate, subcordate at the base; petiolets short, thick, wrinkled; flowers within a common calyx, aggregated into a roundish head or fascicle, very beautiful, of the size of a fist; fascicles solitary, alternate, distant, sessile, subaxillary; calyx common imbricate, leaflets or bractes ovate, rather sharp, submembranaceous concave, rather lax, smooth, about two thumbs breadth long, red: each including single, or even two or three flowers; deciduous; the exterior rounded; the interior smaller, gradually linear; perianth. proper cylindric, tubulate, above rather enlarged, red, villose, bifid; with the divisions ovate, sharpish, subequal, erect; corol. universal uniform, blood-red; proper double; exterior infundibuliform, longer than calyx: tube cylindric, subangulate, narrowed downwards, sub