Letter 3757

[fol. 22] Aprill 22. 1730. Sir I received yours of the 5 Dec. some time ago, butt having no litterary news to communicate unto you I have defferd untill now to give a full answer unto your kind offer of promoting the sale of the Chronologicall Tables, which I have sent over in a box directed to you, which you may recover upon the arrivall of the Harte, by the means of the enclosed Bill of Ladeing, & appoint some Bookseller your freind to sell them out at three shillings every Table that is of three sheets of paper & in all are three hundred, & fifty copies, & the money you may be pleased to pay unto Mr. Pucci secretary of Florence, after having reimbursed your paper charges of freight, & Custom. There are explanations how to understand, & use the Tables, butt t’is requisite to know that one begins after the Oriental manner at the right hand where the place is empty, & every square is a Cicle o f 60 years, the Chinese forming of that number there Centuries, & not of one hundred as the Europeans, whereby there times are much shortened. I have putt also into the Box as a present to the Society, an Armenian, & Latin Dictionary printed in Propaganda fide at Rome, which may be of use, to those that have undertaken the project you sent me, & I hope will be made acceptable by you unto the Illustrious body. The exact mapp of some parts of Barbary sent you by Mr. Shaw will be received by the learned world with great pleasure when published, for there are great mistakes in what has been hitherto spread about. That supposed petrified child which proved to be a marble statue of a child is a great proof that all the stories we have had of the petrefaction of men, & women in severall attitudes, & positions are only statues, & basso rilievo’s belonging to some City buried under the sands of the Country. Concerning petrefaction I must begg your leave to give you an abstract of a letter of a freind of mine from Naples, that is a very curious, & learned gentleman, who sayeth. I have learned a thing lately here, which I learned before in other Countries, butt is surprizing to me here; There is a channel of water near Naples where not only a piece of wood thrown into it, butt the grass it self that groweth at the bottom of it hardens, & becomes stones; He that has the care of keeping clean that Channel has told me the thing, butt could not tell me in how much time it hardens so, butt the grass that he takes away to cleanse the channel every year, he finds sometimes quite hardned into stone, some half [fol. 23] hardned, & half grass. I have a mind to cause many baskets to be sett att the bottom & have them remaine there some time, because it would be curious to see them interwoven of grass, & stone, & who could ever imagine that so petrified, they were once made of rush. When my freind shall acquaint me with the success of the experiment you shall be informed with the results, being an Italian that writes in English. Pray what is your opinion of this dreadfull influence of catharrs, & colds that has circulated all about Europe with no small destruction of mankind, & rages now at Naples, & in Spain: we have heard that some french philosophers have assigned the cause unto an eruption of Mount Hecla in Iceland, & a great earthquake in Norway in November last, which has infected the air, butt I don’t know how to account for it that way, wherefore begg for better information from your profound speculation. Be pleased to forward the enclosed to Dr. Rutty, who I hope will participate unto the Society the small literary news I can furnish at present being with great sincerity, & esteem Your most Obedient, & most humble servant Tho: Dereham P.S. As I was sealing up this, yours of ye 10th March came to my hands, for which I return many thanks, & especially for the parcell sent to Mr. Green, which I hope soon to receive very soon, & the experiments by ye spirits of wine are very surprizing which I long to see in a Transaction.