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wont to observe this current, and commonly keep on the African side, to wait for and follow it; partly because the coast is less dangerous, and partly because the flux and reflux is much greater than on the Spanish side. These side currents prove the possibility of several currents existing at one time in the same channel, running one below another, and in contrary directions.

When two drops of water touch, and unite according to the laws of attraction and cohesion, if one be considerably larger than the other, and be put in motion, it draws the other to it, and carries it along. A current is nothing else, but a multitude of cohering drops in motion; it must therefore carry with it a part of the water on its sides. 1760, Feb.

XXX. Immense Chesnut Tree at Tamworth.

MR. URBAN,

ages to come, I

As your monthly labours will be records to submit the following calculation of the age of a celebrated chesnut tree, which in all probability is the oldest, if not the largest tree in England, being 52 feet round, to be transmitted by your means to posterity.

This eminent tree is the property of the Rt. Hon. Lord Dacre at Tortsworth, alias Tamworth, Gloucestershire.

I may with reason fix its rising from the nut in the reign of King Egbert, anno 800. From this date, to attain to such maturity and magnitude, as to be a signal tree, for a boundary or land-mark, called, by way of distinction, the great chesnut tree at Tamworth, in the reign of King Stephen, I cannot allow less age than 335 years, which brings it down to the first year of King Stephen, anno 1135; from this date, we are certain of its age by record to the present year 1762; 627 years. In all 962 years.

Mr. Evelyn, in his fifth edition, has this remarkable passage relating to this tree, viz. Boundaries to great parishes, and gentlemen's estates; famous for which, is that great chesnut at Tamworth, in Gloucestershire, which has continued a signal boundary to that manor from King Stephen's time, as it stands on record.

If any regard is to be paid to the three periods given to oak and chesnut, viz. 300 years growing, 300 years standing, and 300 years decaying; it favours my conjecture, that this

stately old chesnut tree is very little less, possibly more, than a thousand years old; and yet such vigour remains, it bare nuts anno 1759; from them young trees are raised.

1762, Feb.

Yours, &c.

P. C.

XXXI. Remarkable Phenomenon of the Bath Waters.

A Letter from Dr. D. W. Linden to Dr. Sutherland, at the Hot Wells, Bristol, concerning a remarkable Phenomenon of the Bath Waters.

DEAR SIR,

IN compliance with your request, I send you a brief account of my last examination of the Bath waters. The phenomenon which most struck me, were certain cakes, of a blackish colour, which at this time of the year are found floating upon the surface of these waters, and which I had never seen before, having been at Bath only in the winter months, when they do not appear. I had, indeed, heard much of them, and was told that they were a vegetable substance, the conferva gelatinosa; but, upon examination, I found this to be a mistake, and that the black cakes were mineral.

That they are not the conferva gelatinosa is manifest, from their appearing so early as the beginning of May; for the conferva does not appear till July, and it does not flower till August. Besides, the conferva is found only on stagnant waters; and it is absurd to suppose that a mineral hot spring should have any communication with a standing pool, whence it could receive this plant, as it could not receive the plant without such a mixture of the water as would render it cold, and annihilate its virtue: that the Bath water cannot originally produce the plant, is certain; for it is continually in a state of agitation, which renders the growth of it impossible.

Upon a close examination of these cakes, some of which have a greenish hue, I found that those which had lain near the wall for some time undisturbed, had caused a natural crystalization of the salts in the Bath water; and these salts, on some of the walls in the Abbey-house spring, were more than half an inch thick: such a crystalization could not be caused by a vegetable substance.

Having now shewn what these cakes are not, I will tell you what they are; for, upon applying the common vitrio

line solvent, I found them to be neither more nor less than the mucilagium ferri, or slimy substance, that is always a concomitant of iron-stone, iron-earth, or iron-ore; if there is any medical virtue in iron, it ought to be sought in this slimy substance: and I shall shew, in a Treatise on the Bath Waters, which I am now preparing for the press, that the Bath waters derive great medical efficacy from these cakes, especially in external applications.

Those persons who have supposed these cakes to be vegetable, have been deceived into that opinion, by the solid fibrous parts which they have discovered in them, after having washed them from the mud and other extraneous bodies, that have been found mixed with them. But those who are acquainted with practical mineralogy, a science which is essentially necessary to those who undertake the analysis of mineral waters, know, that the slimy substance in iron-ore, when agitated in waters that contain salt, will form itself into fibres and branches, resembling those of vegetables; and upon this principle it is, that, in curious chymistry, small branches and fibres are formed in liquids by the solution of metals and minerals, and have obtained the name of philosophical trees.

Some experiments, indeed, have been made upon these cakes, by distillation; and it has been presumed, that they are vegetable, because they yield only an insipid water, without any metalline or mineral particles; but this is wholly fallacious and inconclusive; for the mucilagium ferri, or any other metal or mineral, mixed with common or saline water, will, in distillation, yield only an insipid water, without mineral particles, because these particles are prevented from rising in the steam, by their own weight. I am, Sir, Yours, &c.

1762, May.

D. W. LINDEN.

XXXII. Account of Fires kindled of themselves.*

THE great consumption of sea coal in the port of Brest made it necessary to form a kind of magazine, constructed of timber and planks rudely joined together, where many hundred chaldron were kept piled in a vast mass, and constantly exposed to the weather. No accident was ever

From the Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Paris.

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known to happen from this manner of keeping coals since it was first used, which was about the year 1681. But some persons took it into their heads, that coal thus exposed to the weather lost some of its quality, and that it would be better to keep it under cover.

While they were deliberating upon the form of the new magazine, somebody remarked that it would be proper to leave a considerable space between the top of the coals and the roof of the building in which they were to be kept, that there might be sufficient room for fresh air; because it frequently happened, that this coal took fire when shut close down in the hold of the vessels that brought it, if the voyage happened to be longer than usual, or the weather so bad that they could not open the scuttles: this opinion, however, was not regarded; the new magazine was built very close and compact, and covered in at the top: it was divided into two equal parts, within, by a wall; one division being called the Magazine, No. I. and the other the Magazine, No. II.

No. I. was filled quite to the top, and contained about twelve hundred chaldron: in a very short time afterwards it took fire, which was perceived by the smoke that came out at the chinks of the door; as soon as the door was opened, the smoke burst out in great black clouds, and the labourers, who had been ordered to get the coal out, were obliged to throw great quantities of water upon it, before they could begin to work.

They found a rafter of deal, which was within the building near the door, half burnt; and a beam which the coal touched, in the same condition; they had not flamed, but were burnt quite through to a cinder: the coals that lay on the top of the heap were only warmed by the smoke that had passed through them, but those in the middle had lost their inflammability, and were reduced to a kind of calx; and near the bottom they had suffered no injury, nor even contracted the least heat. About half the coals were then taken out of this magazine; the good were separated from the damaged, and part of them put back again, and the rest put into the other magazine,

It was now a second time proposed to give the magazines air; and it was urged, that though the coal should not again take fire, yet it would probably grow hot, and lose part of its quality; but the magazine was already built, and they thought all accidents would be effectually prevented, by not filling the magazine to the top; but a great quantity of coals arriving soon after in the port, and not daring to lay

them up in the magazine that had once taken fire already, they yet foolishly filled the other magazine with it quite to the top, without considering that this magazine was then in the same circumstances as those which had caused the accident that happened to the other; the consequence was, that this magazine also in a very short time took fire, and would have done the same damage if it had not been sooner discovered; the top of the heap being hot, the middle in part consumed, and the bottom unaltered. Add to this account another most remarkable instance of the same kind.

The sail cloth generally used in France, is made of coarse hempen thread; after it is woven, it is wetted, and shrunk, as we do our drab cloth, and is then painted on one side only, with red ochre ground with oil.*

On the 18th of July, 1757, the workmen had painted about fourscore yards of this cloth; and the weather being very hot, the sun dried it very soon: on the 20th, about 4 o'clock in the afternoon, the weather changed, and a sudden storm of thunder and rain being expected, the sail-cloth which had been thus milled and painted, was very hastily folded up while it was yet very hot by having lain exposed to the sun, the folds being so managed that the painted side did not come in contact with the other, but with itself only; the folds were pressed very close, that the cloth might lie in the least compass possible, and it was then put up in bales, and deposited, one upon another, in the warehouse, upon a kind of iron grating, the squares of which were about three inches wide, and which was about a foot from the ground: this warehouse is level with the ground, but floored; and it is the custom to place a kind of brasiers, or close chafing dishes of lighted small coal dust under the grating, to keep the cloth that lies in bales over it perfectly dry, iest being moist in the middle, it should rot; and the warehouse is every night close shut up:

On the 22d, about four in the evening, one of the workmen having been lying some time upon these bales, found

*The experiment frequently repeated at St. John's Gate, by mixing a brown earth, found in the mines in Derbyshire, with linseed oil, is worth noting upon this occasion: the result was, that, upon grinding the two bodies together, upon a stone, the whole mass took fire, and burnt with a most intense heat till the oil was consumed, and nothing but the dry earth remained. May not other earthy substances so mixed, produce the same effect? It was by grinding this earth with oil to make a paint, that its inflammable quality was discovered.

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