earth from which vitriol is made; but this is of such a caustic nature, that if but a small piece of it be held to the tongue, in a moment it causes as sharp and excruciating a pain, as if a red-hot iron had been held to it. The marl, or rather chalk pits, at Cantley White House, about 3 miles from Norwich, are made in the side of a long chain of hills, which runs along the side of the river Yar, and about a furlong or two now and then distant from it. These hills seem to have been formerly the boundaries to an arm of the sea, which made Norwich a famous sea port. This some of our ancient histories make mention of as an undoubted truth, though now considered as a mere fable, as no vestiges of it remain above ground at this day. * In the abovementioned marl pits he discovered a stratum of shells, of about 2 feet thick, running nearly parallel to the horizon. He examined carefully this stratum, where he found a great many kinds of shells; but none which had withstood time's all-devouring teeth, so as to bear the handling; excepting the common wilk, some of which were very perfect. Among the variety of things he noticed in this stratum was a piece of coal, which he picked out from among the shells. This must have lain here as long as they, and been brought from some other county, as nothing of its kind is to be found here, but what is brought from distant parts. These shells lie 14 yards above the surface of the river, and nearly 6 beneath the top of the hill, and he believes 34 yards above the surface of the sea at Yarmouth. And it is very remarkable, that in these marl pits, 6 or 7 yards lower than the abovementioned stratum of shells, are found a vast quantity of stags' horns lying in all directions. Several I took out with my own hands; so much so, that the workmen, which are employed here, say, that they scarcely work a day, but they find more or less of them. But none are found entire. These horns have been very large ones; some of the spines measuring 12 inches and upwards in length. Many of them are more than 24 inches in diameter, and several of them above 12 inches from spine to spine. Another curiosity was the entire skeleton of a man, which was found in the same stratum with the abovementioned horns, as one of the workmen assured me; he said, he took the pains to lay it altogether on the grass, as regularly as he was able; but his curiosity being then satisfied, he left it to be ground to pieces by the carts and waggons that came thither for the marl; so careless were these poor ignorant people of so valuable a specimen of the human race. in Helmet stones and belemnites are found here in abundance, at all depths, and every different stratum, which shows that the fish which produced these fossils * Verstegan says, that many places which were sea became dry land, at the breaking of the German Ocean through the Isthmus which once joined England to France. Verst. p. 117.-Orig. have been very plentiful; and so they must have been all over the country, as the like are to be found in every place wherever the earth is broken open, or a pit is digged. About a mile south of a little country town called Kisick, and near 2 furlongs from Hartford-bridge, or 3 miles south-west of Norwich, is a pit, in which the country people dig a particular sort of clay to lay on their sandy lands. Among this clay lie a great many knots, lumps, or nodules, of a bluer kind of earth, not widely differing from that which is found in Harwich cliff; these, when digged up, are soft; but when they have been for some time exposed to the open air, they become almost as hard as flint. In and upon these lumps are the impressions of the cornu ammonis, or snake-stones, in a beautiful manner, from 1 inch to 5 or 6 in diameter, and several have part of the shells on them, of a yellowish white. Many other shells are found in these lumps; as the pectunculus, helmet stones, belemnites, common cockle, turbos, &c.. but these are most of them very small. But still more curious than all the rest are certain lumps of petrified crystallized matter, of a very odd form, such as he had never seen or ever read of. They appear to have been originally lumps of blue clay, cracked by some subterraneous heat, or other unknown cause, into which the water has insinuated, and their contained salts have crystallized in the cracks. When these lumps are taken up and become dry, the clay part falls from out the exterior cells; and then they may be thought grossly to represent a honey-comb. On a Polypus at the Heart, and a Scirrhous Tumour of the Uterus. By Peter Templeman, M. D. N° 481, p. 235. ་ Ann Hicks was brought to the workhouse of St. Andrew's, Holborn, on Saturday, Nov. 15, 1746. Her complaints were, a difficulty of breathing, from a cold she had caught about a fortnight before, with a violent pain and palpitation of her heart. The pulse was scarcely perceptible. The surgeon, Mr. Tait,' being present, Dr. T. ordered him to open a vein; but to keep his finger on-the pulse, and if it did not rise on her losing a little blood, immediately to desist. On losing 1 oz. or 2 of blood, the pulse grew more languid, and he accordingly desisted. Dr. T. then ordered a large blister to be applied to her neck, and gave her oily medicines with the volatile salts. He did not visit at the workhouse again till the Wednesday following, when he found her much easier in her breath, but the pain and palpitation of the heart continuing. As the oily medicines had occasioned a violent purging, he ordered her the elixir asthmaticum in cinnamon water. Her pulse was still so little discernible, that though he thought it intermitted, yet he could not be positive. She, however, died on Friday, and her body was opened on Saturday. On exposing the body naked on the table, there appeared a very large and hard swelling in the hypogastric region, which was supposed at first view to be a child, and the more so, as the woman had never made any complaint of an uneasiness in those parts. Having opened the body, it was found to be a swelling of the uterus, which was greatly enlarged, and extremely hard. Besides the whole body of the uterus being thus enlarged and hardened, there were 2 large protuberances distinct from each other, that grew prominent out of the upper surface of the uterus, and were each of them of the size of a large egg. There was likewise a third protuberance on the opposite side, but much smaller than the other two; and another that seemed to be but just budding. The operators cut down directly through one of the large protuberances into the very body of the uterus, and found nothing but a solid mass of a cartilaginous substance. The texture indeed of the protuberance was somewhat laxer than of the body of the uterus. They then introduced a probe from the os tincæ, to examine if there was any cavity in the uterus; and found a small one reaching to the fundus, and barely large enough to admit the probe. The ovaria and Fallopian tubes were in their natural state; except a small deviation of the Fallopian tube on the right side. Dr. T. knows no writer that has taken notice of a similar appearance in the uterus, but Ruysch, in his Thesaurus Anatomicus Decimus, N° 106. He has not given any plate or description of the dimensions of his enlarged uterus; but this, which Dr. T. has described, was in its greatest breadth 44 inches; its length from the os tincæ 6 inches; thickness 34 inches; and its weight, including the ovaria, Fallopian tubes, &c. 2 lb. 12 oz. Avoirdupois. Whatever Ruysch had observed of that kind were in old women. This woman Dr. T. considered to have been between 30 and 40. He does not mention having seen more than one small additional scirrhus; whereas in this there were 3 or 4. And lastly he does not mention any thing of the hard cartilaginous substance of the uterus. There were several remarkable adhesions in the abdomen and thorax; as of the omentum to the peritoneum, of the lungs to the pleura and diaphragm, of the pericardium to the pleura. The liver and spleen appeared in their natural state; the kidneys were enlarged beyond their usual size; the coronary veins of the heart were much distended with blood, and the lungs inflamed to a degree of mortification. On examining the cavities of the heart, they found in the right ventricle a polypose concretion, of a fleshy fibrous substance, that adhered to the ventricle, and in separating it from thence was rent into 2 pieces. On the Communication of Electricity. By Mons. le Monnier, the is this electric virtue to be communicated to such bodies as have it not, and which are not capable of acquiring it by bare friction only? How is the electric matter propagated? And, lastly, in what proportion is it distributed? As to the first, the author observes, that this electric virtue is no other way to be communicated, but by the near approach of a body already actually possessed of the same; that the rule laid down by Mons. du Fay, "That bodies never receive electricity by communication, unless they are supported by bodies electric in their own nature," does not always take place, and that it is subject to great exceptions. For, first, in the Leyden experiment, the phial filled with water is strongly electrified by communication, even when carried in the hand, which is not a body electric by nature. 2dly. All bodies that are electrified by means of a phial of water fitted to a wire, and which has already received a great degree of virtue by communication; all such bodies, placed in any curve line, connecting the exterior wire, and that part of the bottle which is below the surface of the water, acquire electricity, without being placed on resin, silk, glass, or the like. Thus one may give a violent concussion in both the arms to 200 men all at once, who holding each other by the hand, so form the curve just mentioned, when the first holds the bottle, and the last touches the wire with the end of his finger; and this, whether these persons actually touch each other's hands, or whether they are connected by iron chains, that either dip in water, or drag on the ground; whether they are all mounted on cakes of resin, or whether they only stand on the floor; in all which cases the experiment equally succeeds. Electricity has in this manner been carried through a wire of the length of 2000 toises, that is to say, of about a Paris league, or near 24 English miles, though part of the wire dragged on wet grass, went over charmil hedges or palisades, and over ground newly ploughed up. 3dly. The water of the basin in the Thuilleries, whose surface is about an acre, has been electrified in the following manner: there was stretched round half the circumference of the basin an iron chain, which was entirely out of the water: the two extremities of this chain answered to those of one of the diameters of the octagon; an observer, placed at one of these extremities, held the chain with his left hand, and dipped his right at the same time into the water of the basin; while another observer, at the opposite side of the basin, held the other end of the chain in his right hand, and a phial well electrified in his left; he then caused the wire of his phial to touch an iron rod, fixed upright in a piece of cork that floated near the edge of the basin; at that instant both observers felt a violent shock in both their arms. This same fact was again confirmed by experiments made on 2 basins at the same time, that it might distinctly appear that the electrical effluvia did really pass along the superficies of the water. 4thly. It has been confirmed, by repeated comparisons, that a bar of iron placed in the abovementioned curve, does not at all acquire more electricity, when it is suspended in silken lines, than when it is held in the bare hand. Whence it appears that, in this case, the contiguous non-electric bodies do neither partake af, nor in any way absorb the electricity that has been communicated. Besides many strong exceptions to the rule laid down by Mons. du Fay, the author adds another yet stronger, and indeed directly contrary to that rule; which is, that the same phial of water, fitted with its wire, receives either no virtue at all, or at least none that is sensible, so long as it is either placed on a stand of glass that is very dry, or that it is suspended by a silken thread, while its wire rests on the globe; and that, to make it receive the virtue, the part of the phial which is below the surface of the water, must communicate with some body that is not electric; as is evident, when it is touched, while it rests on the stand of glass, with the finger, for it then instantly becomes electric; and the same also happens when it is touched with a piece of metal; but not when touched with a dry tube of glass. The electrical rests produce here on the bottle an effect so contrary to M. du Fay's rule, that if one places a phial, perfectly well electrified, and which throws out the pencil of fire copiously, on a dry stand of glass, or on a line of silk; its light immediately goes out, and its electricity is as it were laid to sleep. We may then securely approach the finger to its wire, and no electrical sparks will come from it. The author has even drawn out of it entirely both the wire and the cork, and has kept it half an hour in his pocket, without destroying the electricity. But in this case we must only touch the wire, and not the phial itself; for by touching the 2 at the same time, we return to the Leyden experiment; but on touching the phial only, the electricity revives in the wire, and the pencil of fire displays itself again, provided we have not staid too long: but when the wire only is touched, the body of the bottle becomes strongly electric, and draws to it, from a considerable distance, any light substances. This last case gives room to an experiment that looks at first like magic: there was hung up a little tinkling bell by a silver wire, at the height of 8 or 9 feet, and there was placed on a glass stand well dried, a phial newly electrified; the centre of the bell, and that of the phial, were nearly in the same horizontal line; but the bell was 6 or 7 inches from the surface of the phial. Every thing being in this state, the bell remained quite still when the stand was very dry; but the instant we either approach a finger, or any other non-electric body, to the wire of the phial, the bell leaps to it: and we might begin again, and repeat the experiment 20 times together, without having any occasion to new-electrify the phial. With regard to the propagation of electricity, the velocity with which the |