As it will be my bufinefs, proceeds Mr. Bryant, to abridge hiftory of every thing fuperfluous and foreign, I fhall be obliged to fet afide many ancient lawgivers, and princes, who were fupposed to have formed republics, and to have founded kingdoms. I cannot acquiefce in the ftale legends of Deucalion of Theffaly, of Inachus, of Argos, and Agialeus of Sicyon: nor in the long line of princes, who are derived from them. The fuppofed heroes of the firft ages in every country are equally fabulous. No fuch conquefts were ever atchieved, as are afcribed to Ofiris, Dionufus, and Sefoftris. The hiftories of Hercules, and Perfeus, are equally void of truth. I am convinced, and hope I fhall fatisfactorily prove, that Cadmus never brought letters to Greece; and that no fuch perfon exifted as the Grecians have defcribed. What I have faid about Sefoftris and Ofiris, will be repeated about Ninus, and Semiramis, two perfonages, as ideal as the former. There never were fuch expeditions undertaken, nor conquests made, as are attributed to thefe princes nor were any fuch empires conftituted, as are supposed to have been established by them. I make as little account of the hiftories of Saturn, Janus, Pelops, Atlas, Dardanus, Minos of Crete, and Zoroafter of Bactria. Yet fomething myfterious, and of moment, is concealed under these various characters and the investigation of this latent truth will be the principal part of my inquiry. In respect to Greece, I can afford credence to very few events, which were antecedent to the olympiads. I cannot give the leaft affent to the ftory of Phryxus, and the golden fleece. It feems to me plain beyond doubt, that there were no fuch perfons as the Grecian Argonauts; and that the expedition of Jafon to Colchis was a fable.' It is the defign of our Author, after having cleared his way, to proceed to the fources from whence the Grecians drew their mythology and hiftory; and to give an account of the Titans, and Titanic war, with the hiftory of the Cuthites and ancient Babylonians. This will be accompanied by the Gentile history of the deluge, the migration of mankind from Shinar, and the disperfion from Babel. The whole will be crowned with an account of ancient Egypt; wherein many circumstances of high confequence in chronology will be ftated. Many furprizing proofs will be brought in confirmation of the Mofaic account: and it will be found, from repeated evidence, that every thing, which the divine hiftorian has tranfmitted, is moft affuredly true. It will be found that the deluge was the grand epocha of every ancient kingdom.Under whatever title he may come, the first king in all countries will appear to be Noah.-This circumftance will be difcernible even in the annals of the Egyptians and though their chronology has been fuppofed to have reached be Hh 4 yond yond that of any nation, yet it coincides very happily with the the accounts given by Mofes. In the profecution of his fyftem, Mr. Bryant does not mean to amufe the reader with doubtful and folitary extracts; but to collect all that can be obtained upon the fubject, and to fhew the univerfal fcope of writers. He propofes to compare facred history with profane, and to prove the general affent of mankind to the wonderful events recorded. His purpose is not to lay fcience in ruins; but instead of defolating, to build up, and to rectify what time has impaired to divest mythology of every foreign and unmeaning ornament, and to display the truth in its native fimplicity: to fhew, that all the rites and myfteries of the Gentiles were only fo many memorials of their principal ancestors; and of the great occurrences, to which they had been witneffes. Among thefe memorials, the chief were the ruin of mankind by a flood; and the renewal of the world in one family. Their fymbolical reprefentations, and the ancient hymns in their temples, all related to the hiftory of the first ages, and to the fame events which are recorded by Mofes. Before our Author can arrive at this effential part of his enquiries, he must give an account of the rites and customs of ancient Hellas; and of thofe people whom he terms Amonians. A great deal, he tells us, will be faid of their religion and rites; and alfo of their towers, temples, and puratheia, where their worship was performed. The mistakes, likewife, of the Greeks in refpect to ancient terms, which they ftrangely peryerted, will be exhibited in many inftances; and much true history will be afcertained from a detection of this peculiar mifapplication. As the Amonians betook themselves to regions widely feparated, we fhall find, fays Mr. Bryant, in every place, where they fettled, the fame worship and ceremonies, and the fame hiftory of their ancestors. There will, alfo, appear a great fimilitude in the names of their cities and temples; fo that we may be affured, that the whole was the operation of one and the fame people. The learned Bochart faw this; and taking for granted that the people were Phenicians, he at tempted to interpret thefe names by the Hebrew language; of which he supposed the Phenician to have been a dialect. His defign was certainly very ingenious, and carried on with a wonderful difplay of learning. He failed however; and of the nature of his failure, I fhall be obliged to take notice.' Bochart's etymologies, in the opinion of the able writer before us, have not the leaft analogy to fupport them. That the reader may fee plainly our Author's method of Analysis, and the bafis of his etymological enquiries, he gives a lift of fome Amonian terms, which occur in the mythology of Greece, and in the hiftories of other nations. Moft ancient names, names, he thinks, have been compofed out of thefe elements; and that they may again be refolved into the fame principles, by an eafy and fair evolution. In short, it has been Mr. Bryant's purpofe throughout, to give a new turn to ancient hiftory, and to place it upon a furer foundation. We must look, fays he, upon ancient mythology as being yet in a chaotic ftate; where the mind of man has been wearied with roaming over the crude confiftence, without ever finding out one fpot where it could repofe with fafety. Hence has arifen the demand, T8 5, which has been repeated for ages. It is my hope, and my prefumption, that fuch a place of appulfe may be found; where we may take our stand and from whence we may have a full view of the mighty expanfe before us: from whence alfo we may defcry the original defign, and order, of all thofe objects, which, by length of time, and their own remoteness, have been rendered fo confufed and uncertain.' Such is the fcheme laid down by this writer; thus various and important are the things which he propofes to carry into execution. His promises are fo mighty, that, we must confefs, we should esteem it very philosophical to retain a strong ineredulity with regard to the accomplishment of them, were not our hopes raised by the Author's extraordinary learning, and great ingenuity. The account we have given of his plan must have entertained and furprized our readers; and it cannot fail of having excited their curiofity. This curiofity we shall endeavour to gratify, in one or two fubfequent articles, as far as the limits of our journal, and the progress hitherto made by Mr. Bryant in his defign, will admit. K: ART. VII. CONCLUSION of the PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS; PAPERS relating to Zoo LOGY. Art. I. An Account of the Discovery of the Manner of making Ifinglass in Ruffia; with a particular Defcription of its Manufacture in England, from the Produce of Britifb Fisheries. By. Humphry Jackfon, Efq; F. R. S. IN N our diftribution of the remaining contents of the prefent volume of the Philofophical Tranfactions, we defervedly give the first place to the interefting and useful discovery made by the ingenious Author of this article, and here communicated without referve to the Public. Though ifinglafs forms a very effential article of our foreign imports, and is employed, in very confiderable quantities, in many of our arts and manufactures, the true nature of this fubftance, and the method of preparing it, have hitherto been totally misunderstood. By writers of the best au thority thority it has, we believe, univerfally been represented as procured by boiling the skin, tails, sounds, or finewy parts of certain fish in water; by which means a glutinous substance is faid to be extracted from them, which is afterwards infpiffated and reduced to a folid form by heat. In the repeated attempts made by the Author to procure ifinglafs by following these inftructions, he found himself conftantly disappointed: glue, not ifinglafs, was the refult of every process. Nor was a journey which he made into Ruffia productive of any discovery; but fteadily perfevering in this inquiry, he at length not only found out the true nature of this fubftance, and the method of manufacturing it, but likewise discovered a matter plentifully procurable in the British fisheries, which has been found, by ample experience, to answer similar purposes. Accordingly, in confequence of the Author's fuccefs in this investigation, upwards of forty tons of British ifinglass, we are told, have been fince manufactured and confumed; and the price of that commodity has been very confiderably reduced. On the whole, it appears that ifinglafs is actually nothing more than certain membranous parts of fishes, which undergo no other previous preparation than that of being well cleaned, and afterwards exposed to stiffen a little in the air; so as to be made capable of being formed into rolls, and twisted into the forms in which we receive them ;-that a fibrous texture is one of the most diftinguishing characteristics of this drug ;-that no artificial heat is neceffary to the production of it; neither are those parts of the fish, which conftitute it, dissolved for this purpose. They may, indeed, as well as ifinglass already formed, be diffolved in boiling water; but the produce will be a glue, or a fubftance which becomes brittle in drying, and snaps short afunder. By fuch folution, its organization, or the continuity of its fibres would be for ever deftroyed; and it would lofe those peculiar qualities for which it is employed in many of the arts and manufactures ;-particularly in the brewery, where an imperfect folution of ifinglafs, called fining, poffeffes a peculiar property of clarifying malt liquors; while the fame quantity of glue, diffolved in the fame menftruum, and added to turbid beer, increases both its muddinefs and tenacity. According to the Author's rationale of this procefs, the fining is not effected by any elective attraction, fuch as frequently occurs in chemical decompofitions, but by the formation of maffes composed of the filaments of the ifinglafs, combined with the feculencies of the beer, which defcend in their combined ftate to the bottom, in confequence of their increafed bulk, and greater fpecific gravity. In the 18th Article, Mr. J. R. Forfter circumftantially defcribes fome curious filhes fent to the Royal Society by the Hudfon's Bay Company. BOTANY. BOTANY. Art. 15. New Obfervations upon Vegetation. By M. Muftel, of the Academy of Sciences at Rouen. The ingenious Dr. Hales, who threw fo much light on the principles of vegetation by his curious statical experiments, has fatisfactorily fhewn that there is no circulation of the fap in vegetables, analogous to that of the blood in animals; though the Author of this article imputes to him a contrary opinion; misled, probably, by his obfervation, that the fap fometimes moves forward from the trunk to the branches, and occafionally recedes towards the trunk, in confequence of the alternate changes of heat and cold, and the viciffitudes of dry and moift weather; as the Reader will find on confulting his first volume of Statical Effays, page 142, &c. 3d edition. Such was the idea, as we have formerly obferved, that fome of the antients entertained of the motion of the blood; making it confift of a Aux and reflux, like that of the tide, in the fame veffels. The obfervations made by M. Muftel not only fhew that there is no circulation of the fap in vegetables, but prefent us likewife with fome curious phenomena relative to vegetation; fome of which, however, have been before obferved, in the practice of leading the branches of certain trees into a hot-house. Having placed feveral fhrubs in pots near the windows of his hot-house, fome within the house, and others on the outfide, he paffed a fingle branch of each through feparate holes made in the panes of glafs: fo that the trunks which were in the open air had a branch within the hot-houfe, and thofe that grew within the houfe had a fingle branch expofed to the external air. Some dwarf apple trees, and rofe bufhes, were likewife fubjected to the fame experiment, which was attended with the following confequences. Within a week after this difpofition, which was made in the middle of January, all the branches in the hot-house began to difclose their buds. In lefs than a fortnight they were furnished with leaves, and towards the end of February they had put forth fhoots of a confiderable length, which prefented the young flowers. In short, the internal branches, as we fhall call them, of the apple tree and the role bushes, exhibited the fame appearances as are ufual in May. At the fame time, the bodies of these trees and fhrubs were expofed to an intense froft, which killed fome of their external branches; fo that there was not the leaft fign of vegetation on the outfide, while the fingle branches on the infide were daily putting forth leaves, fhots, and buds. In the beginning of May, the internal branch of the apple tree in particular bore fruit of the fize of a nutmeg; while on the See Appendix to our 35th volume, 1766, page 5,1, & feq. branches |