A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins, Volume I (of 2)

761

[One of the most remarkable pearls of which we have any authentic account, was bought by Tavernier at Catifa in Arabia, a fishery famous in the days of Pliny, for the enormous sum of £110,000. It is pear-shaped, regular, and without blemish. It is rather more than half an inch in diameter at the largest part, and from two to three inches in length. – Waterston’s Encyclopædia of Commerce.]

762

Philostrat. in Vita Apollon. lib. iii. cap. 57, edit. Olearii, p. 139. Conrade Gesner, in his Hist. Nat. lib. iv. p. 634, gives a more correct translation of the passage.

763

Tsetzes Variorum, lib. ii. segm. 373.

764

See Dr. Joh. Mayer’s Bemerkungen, in the fourth part of Abhandlungen einer Privatgesellschaft in Böhmen, p. 165.

765

Abhand. der Schwed. Akadem. der Wissenschaften, vol. xxxiv. p. 89. The author of the paper alluded to had a mussel with such artificial pearls, which had been brought from China. It was a Mytilus cygneus, the swan-mussel, or great horse-mussel. Mention is made also in Histoire de l’Académie des Sciences de Paris, année 1769, of a stone covered with a pearly substance which was found in a mussel.

766

A kind of cockles.

767

J. C. Fabricius Briefe aus London, Dessau, 1784, 8vo, p. 104.

768

See Schlözer’s Briefwechsel, number 40, p. 251.

769

Dr. Stœver, in his Life of Linnæus, vol. i. p. 360, says that the manuscript containing this secret was in the possession of Dr. J. E. Smith, at London. – Trans.

770

In his Letters, p. 104.

771

This pretty plant, named after the father of botany, grows in Northumberland and some woods in Scotland, also in Switzerland, Siberia, and Canada, but particularly in Norway and Sweden, in shady places amidst the thick woods. The flowers, which appear in May, June and July, are shaped like a bell, rose-coloured without, yellowish in the inside, and somewhat hairy. They have a pleasant smell, especially in the evening. In Tronheim and the neighbouring parts they are drunk as tea for medicinal purposes.

772

Pearl. An excrescence on the inside of a shell when the outer side has been perforated.

773

See Chemnitz’s theory of the origin of pearls, in the Beschäftigungen der Berlin. Naturforsch. Gesellschaft, i. p. 348.

774

The animal part is rendered evident on distillation by the evolution of an ammoniacal odour and a somewhat inflammable oil; and on solution in muriatic acid the animal substance is left behind.

775

Abhand. der Schwed. Akad. iv. p. 245, and xxi. p. 142.

776

Fabricius, in his Letters, p. 105, mentions such an experiment, which was however continued only for a year.

777

Exercitatio Anatom. de Cochleis. Lond. 1694, p. 183.

778

This manner of preparing margaritini may be seen in my Anleitung zur Technologie, p. 307.

779

Massarii in Plinii Nat. Hist. lib. ix. Castigationes. Bas. 1537, 4to, cap. 35.

780

Mercati Metallotheca, p. 211.

781

These silver-coloured particles were examined by Reaumur, who gave a description of them in Histoire de l’Académie, année 1716, p. 229. [In the scales of fishes, the optical effect is produced in the same manner as in the real pearl, the grooves of the latter being represented by the inequalities formed by the margins of the concentric laminæ of which the scales are composed.]

782

The artist no doubt had in view eastern pearls.

783

Girasol. This word, which is wanting in most dictionaries, signifies opal, and sometimes that stone called cat’s-eye, Silex catophthalmus, pseudopalus, &c. Couleur de girasol is applied to semitransparent milk-white porcelain.

784

Coques de perles are flat on one side, and are used for ornaments, one side of which only is seen. By Pliny they are called physemata. Artificial pearls of this kind have, for some time past, been employed in making ear-rings. Our toymen, after the French, give these pearls the name of perles coques; but the following account of Pouget in Traité des Pierres Précieuses, Paris 1762, i. p. 20, makes me dubious respecting them. “La coque de perle,” says he, “is not formed in a pearl-shell like the pearl; it is procured from a kind of snail found only in the East Indies. There are several species of them. The shell of this animal is sawn in two, and one coque only can be obtained from each. The coques are very small, and one is obliged to fill them with tears of mastic to give them a body, before they can be employed. This beautiful snail is found generally in the sea, and sometimes on the shore.” May not Pouget here mean that kind of snail which others call burgeau, the shells of which are, in commerce, known by the French under the name of burgaudines? Should that be the case, the animal meant would be the Nautilus Pompilius, as may be concluded from Histoire des Antilles, par Du Tertre, ii. p. 239. For the author says, “C’est de leur coque que les ouvriers en nacre tirent cette belle nacre qu’ils appellent la burgaudine, plus estimée que la nacre de perle.” Irregular pearls are called baroques, or Scotch pearls, because abundance of such were once found at Perth in Scotland. Some years ago artificial pearls of an unnatural size, called Scotch pearls, were for a little time in fashion.

785

A complete account of the art of making glass pearls is contained in a book, which I have however not seen, entitled, L’Art d’imiter les perles fines, par M. Varenne de Beost. An extract from it may be found in Dictionnaire des Arts et Métiers, par M. Joubert, iii. p. 370. See also the articles perle and able in the Encyclopédie, i. p. 29; xii. p. 382.

786

Traité Générale des Pesches, par. ii. p. 403, tab. 23, fig. 1 et 2.

787

Ichthyologia, Hamb. 1624, 4to, p. 12, tab. 1, fig. 2, albula.

788

In the Almanach de Strasburg for 1780, p. 76, among the commodities sold there were, Des écailles d’ablettes dont on tire l’essence d’orient employée pour les fausses perles.

789

Déscription Hist. et Topogr. du Duché de Bourgogne, par M. Courtépée, tom. iv. A Dijon, 1779, 8vo, p. 534.

790

Pouget. 4to, i. p. 19.

791

I reckon the post among police regulations, to which its object originally belonged, as well as that of the coining of money; though in the course of time it has been made a productive source of revenue, by which it has been rendered burdensome to the public, while its utility has been lessened.

792

Origin. lib. xv. cap. 16.

793

Strabo, lib. xvi. p. 1071. Diodor. Sic. lib. ii. cap. 13. Polyæni Stratagem. lib. viii. cap. 26.

794

Valerius Max. lib. iii. cap. 7. Plutarch. Reipublicæ Gerendæ Præcepta, p. 811.

795

1 Kings, chap. vii. ver. 12.

796

Antiquit. lib. xx. cap. 9.

797

Pesachim, fol. 71. Metzia, fol. 26.

798

Bergier, Hist. des Grands Chemins Rom. liv. i. chap. viii.

799

Statius, Sylv. ii. 2, v. 12.

800

Lib. xli. cap. 27.

801

Lib. xxix. cap. 37.

802

Lib. x. cap. 23. Equally inapplicable are the passages lib. xxxviii. cap. 28, and lib. x. cap. 47.

803

Æl. Lamprid. Vita Heliogab. cap. 24.

804

Ovid. Fastor. lib. v. ver. 293. See also Marc. Varro, lib. iv. de L. L. Festus, p. 310. An examination of the question whether the ædiles or censors had the inspection of the streets may be found in Ducker’s notes on Liv. lib. x. cap. 32 (edit. Drakenborchii).

805

Cardonne Histoire de l’Afrique et de l’Espagne sous les Arabes, 3 vols. 12mo, Par. 1765. Translated into German, with notes, by Dr. Murr. Nurnb. 1768, i. p. 187.

806

Rod. Ximenez, archiep. Toletani, Historia Arabum, cap. xxvi. p. 23. Printed at the end of Erpenius’ Historia Saracenica, 4to. Lugd. 1625.

807

Rigordus De Gestis Phil. Augusti, in Duchesne Hist. Script. Franc. Par. 1649, fol. p. 16.

808

Gulielmi Armorici Hist. de Vita Phil. Augusti, in Duchesne, p. 73. Alberici Monachi Trium Fontium Chronicon, ed. a G. G. Leibnitio, Lips. 1698, 4to, p. 367.

809

Felibien, Hist. de Paris, i. p. 104.

810

A proof of this may be seen in De la Mare, iv. p. 197, who gives the best account respecting the regulations made to keep in repair the pavement of the streets of Paris. The later regulations are given by Perrot in Dictionnaire de Voierie, Paris, 1782, 4to, p. 315.

811

Courtepée Description du Duché de Bourgogne, i. p. 233, and ii. p. 62.

812

Anderson’s Hist. of Commerce, vol. i. p. 483.

813

In the king’s order it was said, that the highway named Holbourn in London was so deep and miry, that many perils and hazards were thereby occasioned as well to the king’s carriages passing that way as to those of his subjects; he therefore ordained two vessels, each of twenty tons burthen, to be employed at his expense, for bringing stones for paving and mending the same. – Anderson’s Hist. of Com. i. p. 244.

814

In this order the streets were described “as very foul, and full of pits and sloughs, very perilous and (noyous) noisome, as well for the king’s subjects on horseback as on foot, and with carriage.” – Anderson, ut supra, p. 370.

815

Anderson, i. p. 491. Northouck’s History of London, 1773, 4to, p. 121. 217. 414. 436.

816

Digest. lib. xliii. tit. 2.

817

Notitia utraque dignitatum, Pancirolli. Lugd. 1608. – Notit. Imperii Occident. cap. 19. This work may be found in Grævii Thes. Antiq. Rom. vol. vii.

818

Digestorum lib. xliii. tit. 12, and lib. ix. tit. 3.

819

Martial, Epig. vii. 61. Juvenal, sat. iii. ver. 247.

820

A full history of the regulations made respecting the cleaning of the streets of Paris may be found in De la Mare, iv. p. 200.

821

De la Mare, iv. p. 202.

822

Ibid. iv. p. 172, 203.

823

De la Mare, p. 205.

824

Ibid. iv. p. 216, 239, 243.

825

This contract is inserted in Perrot, Dictionnaire de Voierie, p. 305. In 1445 six carts were employed at Dijon in cleaning the streets.

826

Histoire de la Ville de Paris, par Sauval, vol. ii. p. 640.

827

De la Mare, iv. p. 253. Perrot, p. 307.

828

Letters from Scotland, 1760, 2 vols. 8vo. [At this period, when the luxury of water-closets was unknown, it was a custom for men to perambulate the streets of Edinburgh, carrying conveniences (pails) suspended from a yoke on their shoulders, enveloped by cloaks sufficiently large to cover both their apparatus and customers, crying, “Wha wants me, for a bawbee?” It has since been used against the Edinburgh people as a joke or satire upon an ancient custom. By way of a set-off, however, it may be observed that at the present day there is a water-closet in almost every house in Edinburgh.]

829

Cook’s First Voyage, 4to, vol. ii. p. 281.

830

Whoever wishes to enter deeper into the history of this family convenience, certainly an object of police, the improvement of which the Academy of Sciences at Paris did not think below its notice, may consult the following work, Mém. de l’Acad. des Sciences, Inscriptions, Belles Lettres, Beaux Arts, etc. nouvellement établie à Troyes en Champagne. A Troyes et Paris 1756. The author, who by this piece of ridicule wished, perhaps, to avenge himself of some academy which did not admit him as a member, has collected from the Greek and Latin writers abundance of dirty passages respecting this question: “Si l’usage de chier en plein air étoit universel chez les anciens peuples.” He proves from a passage of Aristophanes, Ecclesiaz. ver. 1050, that the Greeks had privies in their houses.

831

De la Mare, i. p. 568, and iv. p. 254. “Tous propriétaires de maisons de la ville et fauxbourgs de Paris sont tenus avoir latrines et privez suffisans en leurs maisons.” [They should also have been compelled to make use of them.]

832

De la Mare, ut supra. – Coûtume de Mante, art. 107. – Etampes, art. 87. – Nivernois, chap. x. art. 15. – Bourbonnois, art. 515. – Calais, art. 179. – Tournay, tit. 17, art. 5. – Melun, art. 209.

833

Historische Beyträge die Preussischen und benachbarten Staaten betreffend. Berlin, 1784, 4to, iii. p. 373.

834

Nicholai Beschreibung von Berlin, p. 26. The author quotes, from the order published at Berlin, Nov. 30, 1641, respecting the buildings of the city, section fourth, the following words: “Many citizens have presumed to erect hog-sties in the open streets, and often under the windows of bed-chambers, which the council cannot by any means suffer;” and in the seventeenth section hog-sties are forbidden to be erected in future in the small streets near the milk-market.

835

“Frivola hæc fortassis cuipiam et nimis levia esse videantur, sed curiositas nihil recusat.” – Vopiscus in Vita Aureliani, cap. 10.

836

Chronica der Stadt Frankf. von C. A. von Lersner, i. p. 512.

837

[Berlin, strange to say, is very ill circumstanced in respect to these conveniences, even at the present day (1846). In most of the houses, small closets are located on the landings of the stairs, which require to be emptied every other night, to the no great satisfaction of the olfactory nerves. Nor are the streets kept in a very proper state, – large puddles of filth being allowed to collect before the doors even of the best houses, and which, especially in the hot months of summer, diffuse a most horrible stench. Something however must be allowed for the low situation of the town, which renders drainage next to impracticable. Laing, in his Notes of a Traveller, speaking of Berlin as he found it in 1841, says, “It is a fine city, very like the age she represents – very fine and very nasty… The streets are spacious and straight, with broad margins on each side for foot-passengers; and a band of plain flagstones on these margins make them much more walkable than the streets of most continental towns. But these margins are divided from the spacious carriage-way in the middle by open kennels, telling the nose unutterable things. These open kennels are boarded over only at the gateways of the palaces, to let the carriages cross them, and must be particularly convenient to the inhabitants, for they are not at all particularly agreeable. Use reconciles people to nuisances which might be easily removed. A sluggish but considerable river, the Spree, stagnates through the town, and the money laid out in stucco work and outside decoration of the houses, would go far towards covering over their drains, raising the water by engines and sending it in a purifying stream through every street and sewer. If bronze and marble could smell, Blücher and Bülow, Schwerin and Ziethen, and duck-winged angels, and two-headed eagles innumerable, would be found on their pedestals holding their noses instead of grasping their swords. It is a curious illustration of the difference between the civilization of the fine arts and that of the useful arts, in their influences on social well-being, that Berlin as yet has not advanced so far in the enjoyments and comforts of life, in the civilization of the useful arts, as to have water conveyed in pipes into its city and into its houses. Three hundred thousand people have taste enough to be in die-away ecstasies at the singing of Madame Pasta, or the dancing of Taglioni, and have not taste enough to appreciate or feel the want of a supply of water in their kitchens, sculleries, drains, sewers, and water-closets. The civilization of an English village is, after all, more real civilization than that of Paris or Berlin.”]

838

Fragments of such inscriptions have been collected by Mercurialis in his work De Arte Gymnastica, lib. i. cap. 1.

839

Plin. lib. xxix. cap. 1. Strabo, lib. xiv.

840

Plin. lib. xii. cap. 2.

841

Plin. lib. vi. cap. 31.

842

Hist. Anim. lib. x. cap. 40.

843

Plin. lib. xxviii. cap. 4.

844

Plin. lib. xi. cap. 31.

845

Plin. lib. v. cap. 9. This crocodile was still remaining in the author’s time.

846

Lib. xii. cap. 19.

847

Plin. lib. viii. cap. 12. Valer. Max. lib. i. cap. 8. Orosius, lib. iv. cap. 8. Jul. Obsequens de prodigiis, cap. 29. Hujus serpentis maxillæ usque ad Numantinum bellum in publico pependisse dicuntur. May not this animal have been the Boa constrictor?

848

Cicero in Verrem, iv. cap. 46. Valer. Max. lib. i.

849

Scaliger De Subtilit. lib. xv. exercit. 246.

850

Plin. lib. ix. cap. 5, and v. 13. 31. Strabo, lib. xvi.

851

Pausanias, in Arcadicis, cap. 46 and 47.

852

Philostrat. in Vita Apollon. lib. iii. cap. 5. I conjecture that these nuts were cocoa-nuts.

853

Vita Augusti, c. 72.

854

Plin. lib. viii. cap. 16.

855

Plin. lib. xxxi. cap. 9. Isidorus Origin. lib. xvi. cap. 2. Nitre also was employed for the like purpose. Plin. lib. xxxi. cap. 10. Herodot. lib. ii. Sextus Empiricus in Pyrrhon. Hypotypos. cap. 24. The last author ascribes this custom to the Persians in particular.

856

Dion Cassius, lib. xxxvii. cap. 14. See the Life of Pompey in Plutarch, who adds that the countenance of Mithridates could no longer be distinguished, because the persons who embalmed the body in this manner had forgotten to take out the brain.

857

Eunapius in Ædesio.

858

In Acta sancti Guiberti, cap. 6.

859

Varro De Re Rustica, lib. ii. cap. 4.

860

Phlegon Trallian. De Mirabil. cap. 34, 35, adopts in his account the same expression as that used in the Geoponica, lib. xix. cap. 9, respecting the preservation of the flesh. Pliny however says, lib. vii. cap. 3, “Nos principatu Claudii Cæsaris allatum illi ex Ægypto hippocentaurum in melle vidimus.” Perhaps it was placed in honey after its arrival at Rome, in order that it might be better preserved.

861

See Hieronymi Vita Pauli Eremitæ.

862

Philostorgii Historia Ecclesiastica, 1643, 4to, p. 41.

863

Columnæ Aquatil. et Terrestr. Observat. cap. 15.

864

Plin. lib. xxii. cap. 24.

865

Strabo, lib. xvi.

866

Xenophon, Rer. Græc. lib. v.

867

Diodorus Siculus, lib. xv.

868

Josephi Antiq. Jud. lib. xiv. c. 13. De Bello Jud. lib. i. c. 7.

869

Æliani Var. Hist. lib. xii. cap. 8.

870

Statius, Silv. iii. 2.

871

Curtius, lib. x. cap. 10.

872

Corippus De Laudibus Justini II.

873

Varro, in Nonius, cap. iii. The following words of Lucretius, b. iii. ver. 902, “aut in melle situm suffocari,” allude perhaps to the above circumstance.

874

Columella, xii. 45. Apicii Ars Coquinar. lib. i. cap. 20.

875

Plutarch in the Life of Alexander relates, that among other valuables in the treasury at Susa, that conqueror found 5000 talents of the purple dye, which was perfectly fresh, though nearly two hundred years old, and that its preservation was ascribed to its being covered with honey. This account is well illustrated in Mercurialis Var. Lect. lib. vi. cap. 26.

876

Plin. lib. xxix. cap. 4.

877

Dier. Genial. lib. iii. cap. 8.

878

Herodot. lib. iv. cap. 71.

879

Θάπτουσι δ’ ἐν μέλιτι, κηριῳ περιπλάσαντες. Sepeliunt in melle, cera cadavere oblito. The bodies therefore were first covered with wax, and then deposited in honey.

880

Herodot. lib. i. cap. 140. Cicero, Tusc. Quæst. lib. i. Alexandri ab Alexan. Dier. Genial. lib. iii. cap. 2.

881

Plutarchus in Vita Agesilai. The following passage of Quintilian’s Institut. Orat. lib. vi. cap. 1. 40, is understood by most commentators, as if the author meant to say that a waxen image of the person deceased, made by pouring the wax into a mould of gypsum, was exhibited. “Et prolata novissime, deformitate ipsa (nam ceris cadaver attulerant infusum) præteritam quoque orationis gratiam perdidit.” See Turnebi Adversar. lib. xxix. cap. 13. But in my opinion it appears very probable that the body itself, covered with wax, was carried into the court.

882

Near Damietta are found a kind of mullets, which, after being covered over with wax, are by these means sent throughout all Turkey, and to different parts of Europe. – Pocock’s Travels.

883

Theophilus Raynaudus de incorruptione cadaverum, in vol. xiii. of the works of that learned Jesuit, Lugd. 1665.

884

Beguillet, Déscription du Duché de Bourgogne, i. p. 192.

885

Liber Regalis, in the article De exequiis regalibus.

886

Archæologia, vol. iii. p. 376.

887

Dart’s Westminster, ii. p. 28.

888

In the account of the funeral expenses stands the following article: “To Thomas Graham, apothecary to his majesty, for a fine double cerecloth, with a large quantity of very rich perfumed aromatic powders, &c., for embalming his late majesty’s royal body, 152l.” See Archæologia, ut supra, p. 402.