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ship of war. They treated him very harshly; however, he was so far for tunate as to remain with them only for a few days. A New-England schooner heaving in sight, they put him on board of her, throwing after him his trunks, which contained his books, clothes, &c. He arrived soon after at New York, where he was hospitably received by his countrymen and all the lovers of science. There he continued for many months, occasionally making excursions into the Jersies and Pennsylvania, for the purpose of botanizing; he there found many plants formerly unnoticed by either Kalm or Clayton ; of these he sent home several dried specimens to Sir Joseph Banks.

The writer of this memoir has to mention, that there has been a chasm in his correspondence with Mr Masson since the spring of 1799; he was then at Montreal, preparing to join the N. W. traders on their journey through the interior parts of America. If his manuscripts are preserved from that period to the time of his last illaess, they must be a most va luable acquisition to natural history.

Mr Masson was of an athletic form, somewhat above the middle size, of an open, mild, and engaging countenance; his manners were plain, gentle, modest, and unassuming: he was a safe and an agreeable companion, and a most steady and affectionate friend. It is much to be regretted that no proper provision was made for this worthy man, that he might have en. joyed, ere he had "shuffled off this mortal coil," that ease and comfort to which his years, his toils, and his merits, were so well entitled.

NATIONAL DEBT.

THE
HE following account shows
what has been redeemed of the

National Debt, the Land Tax, and
Imperial Loan, to the 1st Nov. 1806.
Redeemed by annual mil-

lion, &c.

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L. 61,668,168

Ditto by L.1 per cent.

per annum on Loans, 52,156,420 Ditto by Land Tax, 22,645,280 Ditto by L1 per cent. per annum on Imperial Loan,

Total,

719,016

L.137,188,884

The Sum to be expended in the ensu ing quarter is L.2,267,171..0..7

CELESTIAL PHENOMENA for January 1807.

Thursday, January 1st.

THE planet VENUS is at present

situated in longitude 9o..11°.-5′, and latitude 40 minutes South. She comes to the meridian almost at the same time as the Sun.

Wednesday, January 7th.

The longitude of JUPITER is at present 9..190..9', and his latitude 13 minutes South.

Saturday, January 10th.

The planet MERCURY will arrive at his greatest elongation from the Sun. He comes to the meridian about 15 minutes after 10 o'clock in the morning, and may therefore be seen in the morning before sun-rise. His declination is at that time 21°.. 49 South, and consequently his amplitude will be nearly the same as that of the Sun.

Sunday, January 11th.

The planet JUPITER will be in conjunction with the Sun, at 3 minutes after one o'clock in the morning.

Tues

Tuesday, January 13th. SATURN is situated in 7..9°..23', of longitude, and 2°..23′ of North latitude. His declination is 12°..22' South, and he souths about 45 minutes after 6 o'clock in the morning.

Sunday, January 18th. About 18 minutes after 6 o'clock in the evening the Moon will be in conjunction with Arietis, and will very nearly eclipse. As the Moon is only in the beginning of her second quarter, this conjunction will be easily seen with a common telescope.

Tuesday, January 20th.

The SUN will enter the sign Aquarius at 18 minutes after 9 o'clock in the evening, and his longitude will be exactly 10 signs.

Wednesday, January 21st.

The GEORDIUM SIDUS will be in quadrature with the Sun, at 27 minutes after 3 o'clock in the morning. His longitude will then be 75..0°..16', and his latitude 33 minutes North.His declination is 11°..3 South, and he comes to the meridian about 30 minutes after 5 o'clock in the morning.

Friday, January 23d.

The planet MERCURY will be stationary in longitude 9.11.10.

Friday, January 30th.

The planet SATURN will be in quadrature with the Sun, at 47 minutes after 9 o'clock in the evening.

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of a factitious minium, a vivid red with a cast of yellow. When gently heated with the blow-pipe, it assumes a darker colour, but on cooling resumes its original red. With a stronger heat it melts to litharge. On the charcoal it is reduced to lead. Mr Smithson conjectures that this native minium is produced by the decay of agalina, which he supposes to be itself a secondary production from the metallization of white carbonate of lead by hepatic gas.

It appears from Mr Davy's experiments on the chemical effects of electricity, that electricity does not generate fixed alkali, as supposed by Pacchiani, but only evolves it.

3

A new portable blowpipe for chemical experiments has been invented by Dr W. H. WOLLASTON. A de. scription and drawing of it may be seen in Nicholson's Journal, No. 63, p. 284.

The action of bodies upon light has been very successfully employed by M. BIOT, for analysing transparent substances, and particularly gas. es. If two substances of known refraction and proportions be mixed, and regard be had to the density of the mixture, total refraction may be calculated; and, on the contrary, when the refraction of a mixture of which the elements are known, is ascertained, their proportion may also be had. M. BIOT found that oxygen refracts the least, and hydrogen the most, at equal densities; and that atmospheric air gave exactly by expe riment, the refraction, which, according to calculation, ought to be produced by a mixture of 210 parts of oxygen with 787 of azote, and 31 of carbonic acid.

A planetary epocha, discovered by a German 50 years ago, has lately been made public. In the space of 280,000 years, the six planets retuin to the same point of the hea vens. The number of revolutions

found

found by the German Astronomer, for each of the planets have been reduced into seconds by La Lande, and are as follow:

No. of Rev. No. of Seconds. Mercury, 1162577 8886135098921 455122 8835595689448

Venus,

Earth,

Mars,

Jupiter,

Saturn,

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Professor PLOUST has discovered

280000 8835940680000 that the nitrate of soda is an economical article for fire-works, in the following proportions: five parts of the nitrate, one of charcoal, and one of sulphur, afford a powder which gives a flame of a reddish yellow, of considerable beauty; and the mix. ture, burned in a metallic tube, will last three times as long as the same charge of common powder.

148878 8835946519500 23616 8835946544448 9516 8835946558608 These numbers differ so little from each other, that the deviation from the same precise number of seconds in each sum of revolutions, is not greater than the uncertainty in the known duration of these revolu

tions.

A curious piece of sculpture has been found in the suburb of Roule. It is a head sculptured upon a piece of flint, of the same kind as that of which gun flints are made, and is a bout 3 inches and 4 lines from the extremity of the chin, to the summit of the cranium. Its head-dress resembles that which was worn by the Greeks and Romans. The flint of which it is formed has been covered, wherever it was not broken or rubbed, with a coating of fine white, of a thickness scarcely perceptible. This coating was attached by none of the acids, and it united the harshness of chaldedony, the vitreous consistence of an enamel sufficiently translucid to admit of the different grey or blue shades of the flint being seen thro' it.

Professor KLAPROTH has taken great pains to investigate the com. ponent parts of native cinnabar; and he finds, as results of his experiments, that Japan cinnabar, exclusive of its foreign parts, contains Mercury Sulphur

84.50

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14.75

99.26

The same chemist has examined the birds' nests of the East, and finds them to consist merely of a single cartilage, uniform in its texture. He boiled one in water, which became soft, but was not separated in its parts, and lost only four hundredths of its weight..

Messrs VAUQUELIN and ROBIQUET, have discovered a new vegeta ble principle in Asparagus, which is chrystallizable like the salts; but is neither acid nor neutral, and of which the solution in water is not affected by any of the re-agents usual ly employed to ascertain the presence and nature of the salts dissolved in water. They have also discovered another principle, which seems to resemble manna.

M. LEBRUN has invented a method of coating the inside of trumpets with a lac, which unites to smoothness tenuity, without any injury to the sound of the instrument. By this means he prevents the deleterious consequences arising from the oxides of copper being collected in the insides of trumpets, and thus inhaled into the lungs.

Last

Last advice of CHARLES I. to his Son ments and consciences with the King's

CHARLES. II.

(This interesting M.S. was found in removving some family papers in the Register Office. It seems impossible to discover who the person is, that here addresses Charles II.)

IT

May it please your Majesty,

T being my greatest honour and happines to have served your royall father of blessed memory, from his comeing to York in 42, to the end of the warr, as a souldier and servant to his Majesty, and being at London when his Majesty was trait erously and treacherously carried from Holmeby to Newmarket, the Duke of Richmond sent me to the King with letters pertinent to his Majesty's affairs at that time, from which time, until his Majesty was forced from Hampton court, he commanded my stay, and gave me many imployments in his publick affairs, as they then stood perplext with the proposals of the army and propositions of the howses; to reconcile which, the King in his great wisdom found a personal treaty to be not only the best, but sole expedient, and to promote that was the cheife imployment his Majesty gave me for many weeks, direct ing me both as to persons * and things as his affairs required.

But Cromwell, that source of malice and mischiefe, crost all his Majesty's wise councils and intentions of good to his people, and by his disimilations and counterfeit pietie, with his quack of weepeing, frustrated all the fair hopes his Majesty had of treaty, notwithstanding the heads of the congregations and many others of note (and at that time in power) concurred with his Majesty to that end, as being satisfied in theire judge

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arguments and reasonings, that there was no other way but a personal treaty, to restore his Majesty and his people to their true, propper, and bounded rights.

But Cromwell broke all, and when he and others of his black gang, by many dark and various ways had fitted their horrid designs to a time fixed upon, to introduce their matchless crueltie and murder, which neither men nor books can equall or paralell; then all, (some very few excepted) of the King's servants and friends was put from the court, amongst whom, may it please your Majesty, I was one, who unfortunately was to take my last leave of his Majesty my most gracious soveraine and master, who was then pleased to think me worthy of his favor, and to give me in charge that which I now must humbly present to your Majesty, as neere as I can, in the King's very woords:

"Sir, You see and know how I am, and have been tormented betwixt the proposals of the Army, and the Presbeterian propositions. The first I am more inclined to, as being in the armies power; and the proposals in some things in agreeing better with my principles, but they change with success, will not keep their woords, and are like sand, of which I can take no holde.

"For the other, they propose to me, but on such hard teermes as neither my conscience as a Christian King, nor my judgement as a reasonable man, and their lawfull souveraigne, can condiscend, or ought to be prest to; yet these, though they would leave me only a title, reserving the power, give me election to conclude or not, and it is something to deal with principled men (though bad) because one knowes what to refuse.

"Therefore from these and many o

ther

ther observations which my experience hath made in government, I charge you to tell my sonn what I shall command you, who is after me your lawfull king, and I hope will enjoy his crown in God's good time; for what may become of me I know not, having no confidence in those subjects, notwithstanding all their glossings to in tend well to that King they put upon such extreams, as the Turk did the Christian, when he bid him renounce his religion.

"Sir, if things go on to the woorst, I trust you and command you to tell my sonn, it is my advice to him, that in matters of religion he doe nothing against his conscience, or the church well settled, nor gratify any faction or party by adheering as head to any one side; for by a seeming policy to gain some, he will in truth loose more but if affairs of that sort run up to a height, bid him from me order things to go, in point of power, that he force what he cannot persuade, and never to trust those men, that, under pretence of religion, stawke into a war against lawful authoritie.

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"In matters of state (tell my it holds alsoe; for when his judgement (as King) is convinced what is right, and soe best, desire him from me not to be drawn from it; and tho' many reasons may, and I doubt not will be given him, not to rest upon his own single judgement, his being a King making him incapable to know truth in some things, but by other mens eyes and eares; yet those reasons signify no more than this, that he be the more carefull how he grounds his judgement and who he believes, Therefore I confine my advice to him, that he govern first justly, then resolutely, it having bin no small occation of these our missiries that some men plaid their games at my hazard, which I would have bin aware of."

Then his Majesty added: "Tho'

right be a thing in itself true, yet, in practice, it is only power that makes it so. Desire him to remember that." And when I was about to kneel to kiss his Majesty's hand, the King staid me and said:

"Pray you Sir be satisfied you leave me resolved not to be persuaded or forced to do any thing against the rights of the church, or the crowne, or to do any thing to the prejudish of my friends; and yet I shall (with that care) goe very lowe for peace and the good of my people". And after I had kissed his Majesty's hand and taken my leave, he called me to him and said:

"I must say something to you as to the Covenant, which I would have my friends to know, many having sent to me of late for my pleasure about it; I could wish (the King said) every man would follow my example. But I shall not direct in these hard times, when bread and scruples of conscience justle one another. I shall think very well of those that take it not, and I shall not take it ill of those that are necessitated to take it."

On the Changes which time has effected on the Face of the Country, in the West HIGHLANDS of SCOTLAND.

(Continued from. p. 743.) SIMILAR phenomena may be

observed at the extremities of the Lochs Fyne, Craignish, Feachan, Moidart, Carron, Nakeal, and almost all those on the coast, and at the mouth of Loch Etive, where an extensive flat of Moss has been formed by the spoils of the mountains brought down by the rivers, and collected by the tides, until the sea receded, and left it uncovered. On the North of this bay a considerable bank of sand, which constituted the old shore, is very visible. It rises by a gradual declivity from the present shore, and is now

under

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