Old Tranflation. 2 AND the fear ́ of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beaft of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the fea; into your hand are they delivered. 5 And furely your blood of your lives will I require at the hand of every beaft will I require it; and at the hand of man," at the hand of every man's brother, will I require the life of man. 10 And with every living creature that is with you, of the fowl, of the cattle, and of every beaft of the earth, with you; from all that go out of the ark, to every beaft of the earth. 12 And God faid, This is the token of the covenant which I make between me and you, and every living creature that is with you, for perpetual generations.* I 'OBSERVATIONS on CHAP. IX. 2 The two firft prepofitions, upon, are governed by the fentence, and the fear of you, &c. shall be—; but the two laft, over, have no verb to be governed by; therefore I thought it neceffary to make an addition, in this verfe, of the verb and you shall have dominion, which is certainly understood; and this prepofition is proper to this verb. Vide Hebrew expreffion in chap. i. v. 16 and ver. 18. 3, 4. Here a permiffion is given them to kill beafts for their food, which is another indication of the remiffion of Adam's fin? 't 5 From the first part of this verse the crime of fuicide and its punishment, I think, may be fairly deduced; and, if fo, the immortality of the foul is proved from fcripture. [Happily for Chriftians they have proofs from Scripture lefs ambiguous than this.] 6 10 By the tranflation of the English Bible it appears as if the laft-mentioned beats of the earth had not come out of the ark, which is abfurd; and therefore I made a tranfpofition in this verfe, calling this last wild beasts, because to the first the words with you are added, which I fuppofe means tame beafts. 12 The verb, which I put, refers to the token, not to the covenant; therefore, which I make is wrong, and the Hebrew verb n is to put.' E 'OBSERVATIONS on CHAP. XVI. 2 I take this to be rather a condefcenfion than an entreaty, as the tranflation of the English Bible feems to imply; for, if fo, she had no reason to complain against her husband, as in v. 5. 8 This is merely by way of introduction to a difcourfe, as obferved before; for the angel knew very well every thing concerning her. 12 This verfe is not intelligible; therefore I think that the prepofition should be rendered in its first natural meaning, which is in. Note. The Ishmaelites or Hagarites, were fituated in the neigh..bourhood of Egypt, and the Egyptians were her brethren, agreeably to this prediction. Molf 13 She called the name of the angel El Roi, which gave rife to the name of the well; and this fpeech of hers means a surprise of her feeing there the glory of the Lord (as fhe was accustomed to fee it at Abram's house), now that God saw her affliction; for the meaning of feeing me is, in my affliction.' We leave it to our readers to determine whether Mr. Delgado's mode of rendering the twelfth verfe adds any thing to its perfpicuity. The fubfequent note is ingenious and well introduced. These specimens are fufficient to fhew the plan of this useful performance. We heartily with the author encouragement to purfue his undertaking, and hope, as a foreigner, he will not be afhamed of afking the affiftance of his friends in correcting, if not polishing his language, ART. ART. IV. Philofophical Tranfactions of the Royal Society of London, Vol. LXXVIII. For the Year 1787. Part I. 4to. 8s. 6d. fewed. Davis. London, 1788. Art. I. OF the Methods of manifefting the Prefence, and afcertaining the Quality, of small Quantities of Natural or Artificial Electricity. By Mr. Tiberius Cavallo, F. R. S. Mr. Cavallo juftly observes that, notwithstanding the amazing discoveries made in electricity, the science is still in its infant ftate. We can reafon vaguely about fome striking phenomena, but, with regard to the intimate nature and mode of operation, we are still in the dark. To promote our inquiries, we ought to examine the electrical power in its incipient state, when its effects are minute, and do not strike the fenfes. Various inftruments have been propofed for this purpose. Mr. Canton was the firft who conftructed an electrometer. It confifted of two fmall balls of the pith of elder or cork, fastened to the extremities of a linen thread. Mr. Cavallo improved the fenfibility of the electrometer by contracting its fize. He fufpended each ball by a feparate thread, and, to avoid the twisting, he afterwards fubftituted fine filver wires. The inftrument was screened from the disturbance of the wind, by being inclosed in a bottle, and was found to answer remarkably well. M. de Sauffure has made feveral alterations, but does not feem to have improved the conftruction. The pith balls are inferior to the conical corks, because they are more apt to cohere, and, having lefs furface, do not exert fo great a repulfion. Mr. Bennet employed two flips of gold leaf; by which conftruction the bottle electrometer is more fenfible, but at the fame time it is lefs portable, and more eafily fpoiled. But befide delicate electrometers, other inftruments have been invented, by which fmall quantities of electricity are made manifeft. These are M. Volta's condencer of electricity, and Mr. Bennet's doubler of electricity. In the condencer, the electricity to be examined is communicated to a flat, fmooth metal plate, refting upon a femi-conducting plane. The capacity of the plate for the electrical fluid is increased by this pofition, and it manifefts ftrong indications, when removed by an infulating handle. This apparatus, therefore, does not detect a minute quantity of electricity, but only condenfes an expanded quantity of the fluid. Mr. Bennet's doubler consists of three brass plates, of about three or four inches diameter; the firft is thinly varnished on its upper surface, the third on its under, and the second on both. The electricity is communicated to the under furface of the first plate, and the fecond is placed upon it. The varnishing of the plates prevents their contact and the confequent equilibrium of the fluid, but allows them to enter each other's atmospheres. The fecond plate will therefore acquire the oppofite electricity to the firft, and, if it be touched with a finger, it will possess it in the fame intenfity. The fecond plate is then removed, and the third applied to it, which thus acquires the fame electricity with the firft. The second plate is now placed between the first and third, and, by this pofition, acquires an oppofite electricity equal in intenfity to both, and therefore double of the first. By proceeding in this way, the electricity will be continually doubled and multiplied prodigioufly. But even when no electricity has been previously communicated, the apparatus, after twenty or thirty operations, will become ftrongly electrified. This may naturally be attributed to the friction of the varnish of the plates, -and, to avoid it, Mr. Cavallo conftructed three plates without the leaft varnish, but which could ftand within an eighth of an -inch of each other, upon glafs fticks covered with fealing-wax. But he was surprised to find that these laboured under the fame defect. Without any previous communication of electricity, -they would afford fparks, after doubling ten, fifteen, or at most -twenty times. All his endeavours to deprive them of electricity were ineffectual. Even after remaining for a month untouched, during which time they were connected with the ground by means of good conductors, they were ftill found to give the fame indications. Sometimes the electricity exhibited was po-fitive, at other times negative. In fhort, difficulty and uncertainty obtrude upon our inquiries; and the doubler of Mr. Bennet, .though very ingenious, is not altogether to be depended upon. It appears, from Mr. Cavallo's experiments, that the electrical equilibrium which fubfifts among connected bodies does not obtain in a very accurate degree, and that the tendency of the fluid to diffuse itself is diminished with the intensity. In the conclufion of the paper, Mr. Cavallo hints at the explanation of the production of electricity by friction, The cylinder, he conceives, always retains some positive electricity, and the cushion, from its proximity, becomes negative. When another part of the cylinder is applied, it becomes more strongly positively electrified, from the reaction of the cushion; and thus, as the parts of the cylinder come fucceffively into contact, they receive electricity from the loweft part of the rubber, and afterwards, when their capacity is diminished, they readily part with it. Hence the under part of the rubber is covered with amalgam, and the upper is furnished with a piece of filk. The idea is plaufible and extremely ingenious. Art. II. The Croonian Lecture on Mufcular Motion. By George Fordyce, M. D. F. R.S. The fubject of muscular motion is naturally involved in obfcurity, and eludes the keenness of human research. A few curious facts have been observed; but from these, conclufions have been drawn at once puerile and abfurd. Dr. George Fordyce very properly apologises for the trite remarks which the annual difcuffion of the fubject obliges him to make. He talks of the vis inertia, of matter, the communication of motion, &c. He mentions the theories of vous fluid, of the vibration of the nerves, of æther, &c. and properly treats them as chimeras. He points out feveral inftances where ftimuli produce action in parts at a diftance, without any communication of motion by the nerves. ner The muscles in the living body are always in a flate of contraction; and this principle he terms the attraction of life. He illuftrates fpafm by means of magnets; but takes care to inform us in a note that he is no abettor of animal magnetifm. He next gives a fhort view of the progress of medicine. He seems to infinuate that several alterations introduced into the practice of phyfic, by reasoning from the modern anatomical difcoveries, were improper. Art. III. An Account of a Mafs of native Iron found in South-America. By Don Michael Rubin de Celis. Communicated by Sir Jofeph Banks, Bart. F. R.S. This letter is curious and interesting. It contains a fhort description of the face of the country, and of the manners of those roving Indians who fpend their gloomy lives in the fearch of wild honey in the impenetrable forefts of America. But the moft extraordinary fact is the difcovery of an amazing mafs of native iron in a wide extended plain, at a distance from mountains and mines, and in a country where the degraded natives have never been acquainted with that useful metal. Don Celis examined it in February 1783. The exterior appearance was perfectly compact, marked with various impreffions; the interior was full of cavities, and feemed to have been formerly in a liquid ftate; and he infers that it was produced by a volcano. He mentions that many of the Indians have feen, in another part of the country, a mafs of pure iron, with the fhape and ramifications of a tree. Some fpecimens of the native iron accompanied this paper, and were laid before the Royal Society, who afterwards prefented them to the British Museum. Art. IV. Frigorific Experiments on the Mechanical Expanfion of Air; explaining the Caufe of the great Degree of Cold on the Summits of high Mountains, the fudden Condensation of Aerial Vapour, and of the perpetual Mutability of Atmospheric Heat. By Erafmus Darwin, M.D. F. R. S. Communicated by the Right Hon., Charles Greville, F. R.S. Reflecting upon the production of cold by evaporation, Dr. Darwin was led to imagine that elastic fluids, when expanded, would absorb heat from |