<dium, for the samne ten years, from 1743 to 1753 inclusive, • by the number 4935. • From which, by the way, we may fee, as this difference « between the births and baptisms must be occafioned by diffen ters, that the number of such, of all denominations, both < protestant, and popish, with the Jews, do not make above one fourth of the whole of the people within the bills of mortality, and consequently that the protestant difsenters, exclusive of Quakers and Jews, are not above an eighth part of the whole, And we may also observe, that as the < difference between the births, 19561, and burials, 24867, • is 5306, there must be a constant supply, yearly, of at least 5000 strangers, to keep up the people within the bills, to their « present number: and the births are to the dead, yearly, about four to five. Now, from the births found, 19561, and the numbers of < the dead in the different periods known by our bills, it will be easy to form a table of the decrements of life; because • the dead in the intermediate years may be found by what has been taid above. And accordingly I have computed the < following, which is constructed from the London and Bre« slau bills together; which I think is a surer method of com puting for us at London, than from either of them alone. . The firft part, to the 21st year, is done from our bills, and o the other part from the Breslau ; but it is formed in such 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 same ratio to one another, as the dead at Bre• slay. It suppofes one thousand persons born in one year, and < fhews the annual decrease of them by death till eighty-seven + years of age, which may be considered as the utmost period of life. The intermediate numbers marked d, shew the dead c in each year. The use of this table is well known to all who can compute the value of annuities for lives. Age Perf. Age Perf. Age Perf. Age Pers. 11 406 16 386 1000 6 417 323 d. 13 d. 4d. 3 d. 7 677 12 402 7 434 9d. 17 383 4 d. I 27 d. 8 425 18 379 45 d. 7 d. 9 418 13 398 4 d. 14 394 4.d. 15 390 32 d. 4 da 19 375 3 d. 372 4 d. 20 6 d. 473 4 d. 73 68 4 d. 23 360 74 61 4 d. 6 d. 4 d. 4 d. 348 4d. 43 60 151 1 77 61. 145 4 d. 28 5 d. 4. d. 22 4 d. Age Perf. Age Perf. Age Perf. Age Perf. 21368 38 288 55 72 75 7 d. 22 364 39 282, 56. 175 7 d. 40 277 57 169 6 d. 6 d. 24 356 41 .271 58.163 75 55 6 d. 25 352 42 265 59 157 76 49 6 d. 26 259 6 d. 6 d. 27 344 44 253 78. 37 6 d. 79 31 7 d. 29 335 46 63 132 80 26 6 d. 30 330 47 235 64 126 81 6 d. 31 325 229 82 18 3 d. 32 - 320 65 83 15 7 6 d. 84 13 7 d. 2 d. 34 310 51 208 68 IOI ' 85 m 2 d. 35 305 52 69 95 86 9. 6 d. 6 d. 36 299 53 194 70 89 7 6 d. 37 293 71 82 7 d. The above table having been, at first, erroneously printed *, and since hastily recailed with all its errors, tho' some of them could not well have escaped a critical reader, induced us to believe the insertion of it, perfectly correct, would not be unplealing. Hence the preceding calculation became the more neceffary, for the readier understanding of the table: which we the rather mention as an apology for having allowed to much room to this article. * The Society have ordered the leaf to be re-printed, with the necessary corrections, with which the possesfors of this volume may be supplied by the publisher, Art. 29. Some account of a Sheep Mewed alive to the Royal So ciety, in November 1754, having a monstrous horn growing from his throat; the stuffed skin of which, with the horn, in Jitu, is now in the Museum of the Society. By James Par . Sons, M. D. and F. R. S. This preternatural horn measured two feet seven inches on its convex, or anterior surface, and two feet, one inch, on the concave side; its greatest circumference, two feet, two inches; middle circumference, one foot, six inches ; and near the apex, one foot; and weighied sixteen pounds, averdupoise. But what was still more surprising, upon opening "the sheep, there was found, in the top of the horn, next t the throat, which is hollow half way down, a skul), of a i contracted round form, with blood vessels 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 mutton.' Art. 30. In this article Monf. Daviel, Consulting Surgeon in ordinary, and Oculist to the French King, shews, that the cancers of the eye-lids, nose, great angle of the eye, and its neighbouring parts, called the noli me tangere (b), deemed hitherto incurable, both by antients and moderns, are as curable as other distempers. : Mr. Daviel lays it down as a rule, that those cancerous tu'mours have their seat in the Perioiteum and Perichondrium, from whence they sometimes shoot into the bones, &c. themselves; and asserts, that unless the diseafed membranes, &c. are renoved by total excision, the disorder regenerates, which caustics only irritate. This theory is backed by ten instances of its success. Art. 32. Some Observations upon an American Wup's Nift, Amewn to the Royal Society. By Mr. Israel Mauduit, F. R.Š. In the memoirs of the Royal Academy of Paris, for the year 1730, page 243, Paris edition, M. Reaumur has given a very curious descripcion of one of these nests. The outside of the nest is a kind of paper, composed of the fibres of wood in its first stage of decay; when, by having been long exposed, in the air, to the action of the fun and rain, its external parts begin to separate, and give these inleits an opportunity to tear off certain smaller filaments, which are then (b) There is an impropriety in this term, as fargeons do not call those tumours noli me tangere till they are in their ulcered and pread. ing state, which none of M. Daviel's cases were, loosened, Bb 3 loosened, and which they collect together into a little ball : and having moistened it into a kind of paste, spread it out with their talons and four feet, into its present form. These nests are suspended on the lower kinds of trees, in the thickest parts of the American woods. - · The figure is that of a conoid, or " accumulated oval : its longest diameter is twenty inches, the shorter, near the base, is twelve. . It is perforated on both sides, for the inhabitants to enter or go out at.' Mr. Reaumur adds, that the wasps always enter at one hole, and come out at the other; and tho' each hole will admit but one wasp at a time, yet by this regulation their motion is never retarded. Art. 33. An Extrait of a Letter written by the Magifirates of the City of Mascali, in Sicily, and sent from their public office to Naples, concerning a late eruption of Mount Ætna. Tranfated from the Italian. "On Sunday the gth of March 1755, about noon, Mount Ætna began to cast from its mouth a great quantity of flame 6 and smoke, with a most horrible noise. At four of the clock s of the same day, the air became totally dark, and covered with black clouds; and at fix, a fhower of stones, each of (which weighed about three ounces, began to fall, not only all over the city of Mascali, and its territory, but all over the neighbourhood. This shower continued till a quarter after seven; so that by the darkness of the air, the fall of • stones, and the horrible eructations of the mountain, the day of judgment seemed to fome to be at hand. After the • ftones had ceased falling, there succeeded a shower of black « sand, which continued all the remainder of the night. The next morning, which was Monday, at eight o'clock, there sprung from the bottom of the mountain, as it were, a ri ver of water; which, in the space of half a quarter of an < hour, not only overflowed, to a considerable distance, the rugged land that is near the foot of the hill, but upon the 5 water's suddenly going off, levelled all the roughness and in equalities of the surface, and made the whole a large plain of fand. A country fellow, who was present at so strange a sight, had the curiosity to touch this water, and thereby • scalded the ends of his fingers. The stones and fand, which remain wherever the inundation of the water reached, differ ' in nothing from the stones and fand of the sea, and have even the same faltness. This account, however fabulous it appears, is most exactly true. After the water had done Aowing, there fprung from the same opening a small stream 6 the of fire, which beina < of fire, which lasted for twenty-four hours. On Tuesday, about a mile below this opening, there arose another stream sa river began to overflow the adjoining fields, and actually <continues with the same course, having extended itself about two miles, and seeming to threaten the neighbourhood. Art. 34. Some account of the Charr.fih, as found in North Wales. In a letter from the Rev. Mr. Farrington, of Dinas, near Caernarvon, to Mr. Thomas Collinfon, of London. Com municated by Mr. Peter Collinson, F. Ř. S. * Mr. Farrington tells, that the charr is called in Welch, torgoch, a compound of tor, the lower part of the belly, and gach, red; in English, red-belly; and that it greatly resembles the trout, but is much more elegant and delicate. “They appear to us,' says Mr. Farrington, but at one season of year, about the winter solstice: their stay is but of short continuance, as if an act of necessity, and they were in haste to be gone to some more remote and private habitations. Three lakes, or large pools, at the foot of Snowden, afford being and subsistence to this remarkable finny race. They never wander far from the verge of these lakes, or the ç mouths of the rivers issuing from them; but traverse from one end to the other, and from 'fhore to shore indifferently, or perchance as the wind sits, in great bodies; fo that it is a common thing to take in one net, twenty or thirty dozen at a night in this place; and not above ten or a dozen fifh in all at any other. Thus in winter frosts and rigours, they sport and play near the margins of the flood, and probably deposit their spawn, and continue their kind; but in the fummer heats, they keep to the deep and center of wa ter abounding in mud and large stones, as the shoaler parts do with gravel.' Mr. Farrington adds, the whole number of the charrs annually taken in the two pools of Llanberris, does not amount to an hundred dozen. Art. 35. A method proposed to restore the hearing, when injured from an obstruction of the Tuba Eustachiana. By Mr. Jonathan Wathen, Surgeon. ini This is done by injection, Mr. Wathen gives some instances of its salutary effects. He acknowleges, in a note, that he had the first hint of this method from Mr. Douglas, the Surgeon ; and we could have wished, that Mr. Douglas, himselt, had communicated it to the Society; Mr. Wathen's anatomy of the parts being far from accurate ; nor has he ascertained those Bb 4 |