11. That a Solid Body, as ponderous as any yet known, though near the Top of the water it will sink by its own weight; yet if it be placed at a greater depth, than that of twenty times its own thickness; it will not sink, if its descent be not assisted by the weight of the incumbent Water.
These are the Paradoxes, evinced by our Authour with much evidence and exactness, and very likely to invite Ingenious men to cultivate and to make further disquisitions in so excellent a part of Philosophy, as are the Hydrostaticks; and Art deserving great Elogiums, not only, upon the account of the Theorems and Problems, which are most of them pure and handsome productions of Reason, very delightful and divers of them surprising, and besides, much conducing to the clear explication and
thorow-understanding of many both familiar and abstruse Phænomena of Nature; but also, upon the score of its Practical use, since the Propositions, it teaches, may be of great importance to Navigation, and to those that inquire into the Magnitudes and Gravities of Bodies, as also to them, that deal in Salt-works: Besides, that the Hydrostaticks may be made divers waies serviceable to Chymists, as the Author intimates, and intends to make manifest, upon several occasions, in his yet unpublisht part of the Usefulness of Natural and Experimental Philosophy.
These Propositions are shut up by two important Appendixes, whereof the one contains an Answer to seven Objections by a late learned Writer, to evince, that the upper parts of water press not upon the lower; the other, solves that difficult problem, why Urinators or Divers, and others, who descend to the bottom of the Sea, are not oppressed with the weight of the incumbent water? where, among other solutions, that is examined, which occurs in a printed Letter of Monsieur des Cartes, but is found unsatisfactory.
II. Nicolai Stenonis de Musculis & Glandulis Observationum Specimen; cum duabus Epistolis Anatomicis. In the Specimen it self, the Author, having described in general, both the Structure and the Function of the Muscles, applies that description to the Heart, to demonstrate that that is also a true Muscle: Observing first, that in the substance of the Heart there appears nothing but Arteries, Veins, Nerves, Fibres, Membrans; and that that, & nothing else is found in a Muscle; affirming withall, that which is commonly taught of the Muscles, and particularly of the Heart's Parenchyma, as distinct from Fibres, is due, not to the Senses, but the Wit of Anatomists: so that he will not have the Heart made up of a substance peculiar to it self, nor considered as the principle of Innate heat, or of Sanguification, or of vital spirits. He observes next, that the Heart performs the like operation with the Muscles, to wit, to contract the Flesh; which action how it can have a different cause from that of the Contraction made in the Muscles, where there is so great a parity and agreement in the Vessels, he sees not. And as for the Phænomena, that occur, of the Motion of the Heart, he undertakes to explicate them all, from the Ductus or Position of the Fibres; but refers for the performance of this undertaking to another Treatise, he intends to publish.
Conglobate Glanduls are called those, that do consist, as it were, of one continued substance, having an even superficies; whereof there are many in the Mesentery, and in other places: contra distinguisht to those, that bear the name of Conglomerate Glanduls, which are made up of several small Kernels, such as the Pancreas, the Salivating Glanduls, &c.
As to his Observations about Glanduls, he affirms, that he has been the First, that has discover'd that Vessel, which by him is call'd
Salivare Exterius, passing from the Parotides (or the two chief Arteries that are on the right and left side neer the Throat) into the Mouth, and conveying the Spittle: Where he also gives an account of several other Vessels and Glanduls, some about the Lips; others under the Tongue; others in the Pallate &c. To which he adds the Vessels of the Eye-lids, which have their root in the Glanduls that are about the Eyes, and serve for the shedding of Tears. He mentions also several things about the Lymphatick vessels, and is of opinion, that the knowledge thereof may be much illustrated by that kind of Glanduls that are called Conglobatæ, and by their true insertion into the veins; the mistake of the latter whereof, he conceives to have very much misled the Noble Ludovicus de Bills, notwithstanding his excellent method of dissection. And here he observes first, that all the Lymphatick vessels have such a commerce with the Glanduls, that none of them is found in the body, which either has not its origine from, or is inserted into a Glandule: And then, that Glanduls are a kind of Strainers, so form'd, that whilst the Blood passes out of the Arteries into the Veins through the small Capillary vessels, the Serous parts thereof, being freed from the Sanguineous, are by vertue of the beat expell'd through fit pores into the Capilaries of the Lymphaticks, the direction of the Nerves concurring.
Of the two annex'd Epistles, the First gives an account of the dissection of two Raja's or Skates, and relates that the Author found in the bellies of these Fishes a Haddock of 1½ span long, and a Sole, a Plaise, and nine middle-sized Sea crafishes; whereof not only the three former had their flesh, in the fishes stomack, turn'd into a fluid, and the Gristles or Bones into a soft substance, but the Crafishes had their shels comminuted into very small particles, tinging here and there the Chyle near the Pylorus; which he judges to be done not so much by the heat of the Fishes stomack, as by the help of some digesting juyce. Coming to the Uterus of these Fishes, he takes occasion to examine, with what ground several famous Naturalists and Anatomists have affirm'd, that Eggs are the uterus exposed or ejected out of the body of the Animal. Taking a view of their Heart, he there finds but one ventricle, and discourses of the difficulty arising from thence. As for the Lungs, he saw no clearer footsteps of them in these, than he had done in other Fishes: but within the mouth he trac'd several gaping fissures, and found the recesses of the Gills so form'd, that the water taken in at the mouth, being let out by these dores, cannot by them re-enter, by reason of a skin outwardly passing over every hole, and covering it. Where he intimates, that though Fishes have not true Lungs, yet they want not a Succedaneum thereto, to wit, the Gills; and if water may be to Fishes, what Air is to terrestrial Animals, for Respiration: affecting, that whereas nothing is so necessary for the conservation of Animal life as a reciprocal Access and Recess of the Ambient to the sanguineous vessels, tis all one, whether that be done by receiving the Ambient within the body, or by its gentle passing by the Prominent vessels of the Gills.
The other Epistle, contains some Ingenious Observations, touching the way, by which the Chicken, yet in the shell, is nourish't, videl. not by the conveyance of the Yolk into the Liver by the Umbilical vessels, nor into the Stomack by the