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and many others, used in Publick Festivities, are described. Eighthly, of some Mechanical Arts, as that of Gold-smiths, Black-smiths, Copper-smiths, Wyre-drawers, in the last whereof he resolves this Problem; a certain weight of Mettal, and the bigness of the hole, through which the Wyre is to be drawn, being given, to finde into what length so much Mettal can be spun out.
Thus you have a view of this whole Volume; to which it may perhaps not be amiss to adde, for a Conclusion, some of those Particulars which are esteemed by the Author to out-shine the rest, and are here and there inter-woven as such. For example, in the First Part.
The use of Pindules, for knowing by their means the state of ones Health, from the different beatings of the Pulse, Pag. 51,
The Chain of Mountains, so drawn over the Earth, that they make, as it were, an Axis, passing from Pole to Pole; and several transverse ductus, so cutting that Axis, as to make, in a manner, an Equator and Tropicks of Mountains: by which concatenation he imagines, That the several parts of the Earth are bound together for more firmness, pag. 69.
A Relation of a strange Diver, by his continual converse in Water, so degenerated from himself, That he was grown more like an Amphibium, then a Man, who, by the command of a Sicilian King, went down to the bottom of Charybdis, and brought a remarkable account of the condition of that place pag. 98.
A Description of the Origins of the Nile, as this Author found it in a certain MS of one of his own Society, called Peter Pais, whom he affirms to have been an Eye-witness, and to have visited the Head of the Emperor of Æthiopia himself Anno 1618. which Manuscript, he saith, was brought to Rome, out of Africa, by their Procurator of India and Æthiopia, pag. 72.
