1 your interpofition, I am confident will do a great deal. It will be very illiberal indeed, if such a communication were refused. My Lord Stormont (by whose attention I have been much honoured) would not decline to give his aid, were that neceffary. But if your court resembles that of Spain, I am afraid every proposal from an ambaffador is received with some degree of jealousy. Your own private application will, I apprehend, be more effectual. As it is probable a second edition may go to press early in the winter, it will add to the favour, if you can foon inform me concerning the success of your negociation. As this is fomething in the style of the Corps Diplomatique, allow me to recommend one of its members to you. Mr. FulJarton, the new secretary to the embaffy, is a particular friend of mine. He is a young man of fuch qualities both of head and heart, that I am fure you will esteem and love him. Please remember me to him. I have the honour to be, with great respect, Your obliged humble Servant, Sir William Jones to Mr. Gibbon. I HAVE more than once fought, without having been so fortunate as to obtain, a proper opportunity of thanking you very fincerely for the elegant compliment which you pay me, in a work abounding in elegance of all kinds. My Seven Arabian Poets will fee the light before next winter, and be proud to wait on you in their English dress. Their wild pro ductions will, I flatter myself, be thought interesting, and not venerable merely on account of their antiquity. In the mean while, let me request you to honour me with accepting a copy of a Law Tract, which is not yet published: the subject is so generally important, that I make no apology for fending you a professional work. You must pardon my inveterate hatred of C. Octavianus, bafely furnamed Augustus. I feel myself unable to forgive the death of Cicero, which, if he did not promote, he might have prevented. Befides, even Macænas knew the cruelty of his disposition, and ventured to reproach him with it. In short, I have not Christian charity for him. With regard to Afiatic letters, a necessary attention to my profeffion will compel me wholly and eternally to abandon then, unless Lord North (to whom I am already under no small obligation) thould think me worthy to concur in the improved administration of justice in Bengal, and should appoint me to supply the vacancy on the India Bench. Were that appointment to take place this year, I should probably travel for speed, through part of Egypt and Arabia, and should be able, in my way, to procure many eastern tracts of literature and jurisprudence. I might become a good Mahomedan lawyer before I reached Calcutta, and, in my vacations, should find leifure to explain, in my native language, whatever the Arabs, Perfians, and Turks, have written on science, history, and the fine arts. My happiness by no means depends on obtaining this appcint ment, ment, as I am in easy circumstan- Edward Gibbon, Esq. to the Right ces without my profeffion, and have flattering prospects in it; but if the present summer and the ensuing autumn elapse without my receiving any answer, favourable or unfavourable, I shall be forced to confider that filence as a polite refusal, and having given fincere thanks for past favours, thall entirely drop all thoughts of Asia, and, "deep as ever plummet founded, shall drown my Perfian books." If my politics have given offence, it would be manly in minifters to tell me so. I shall never be personally hoftile to them, nor enlift under party banners of any colour; but I will never refign my opinions for interest, though I would cheerfully abandon them on conviction. My reason, such as it is, can only be controuled by better reason, to which I am ever open. As to my freedom of thought, speech, and action, I shall ever say what Charles XII. wrote under the map of Riga, "Dieu me l'a donnée; le diable ne me l'otera pas." But the fair answer to this objection is, that my system is purely speculative, and has no relation to my feat on the bench in India, where I should hardly think of instructing the Gentoos in the maxims of the Athenians. I believe I should not have troubled you with this letter, if I did not fear that your attend ance in Parliament might deprive me of the pleafure of meeting you at the club next Tuesday; and I shall go to Oxford a few days after. At all times, and in all places, I shall ever be, with undissembled regard, dear Sir, your much obliged and faithful servant, W. JONES. Honourable Lord Sheffield. Lausanne, Nov. 14, 1783. LAST Tuesday, November 11, after plaguing and vexing yourself all the morning, about some business of your fertile creation, you went to the House of Commons, and passed the afternoon, the evening, and perhaps the night, without fleep or food, stifled in a close room by the heated respiration of fix hundred politicians, inflamed by party and paffion, and tired of the repetition of dull nonfenfe, which, in that illuftrious affembly, so far outweighs the proportion of reason and eloquence. On the same day, after a studious morning, a friendly dinner, and a cheerful afsembly of both sexes, I retired to rest at eleven o'clock, fatisfied with the past day, and certain that the next would afford me the return of the same quiet and rational enjoyments. Which has the better bargain. Dr. Adam Smith to Mr. Gibbon: MY DEAR FRIEND, I HAVE ten thousand apologies to make, for not having long ago returned you my best thanks for the very agreeable present you made me of the three last volumes of your history. I cannot express to you the pleasure it gives me to find, that by the universal affent of every man of taste and learning, whom I either know or correspond with, it sets you at the very head of the whole literary tribe at pre sent existing in Europe. I ever am, my dear friend, most affec tionately yours, ADAM SMITH. NATURAL NATURAL HISTORY. Some Particulars in the Anatomy of a Whale. By Mr. John abernetby. From the Philosophical Iranfactions, Part 1. THERE are some particulars in the anatomy of the whale, which, I believe, have either entirely efcaped, or have not been as yet communicated to the public. The parts which in the whale correfpond in fituation and office with the mesenterie glands of other animals, differ confiderably from those glands in structure. These peculiarities are not only curious in themselves, but are illuftrative of circumftances hitherto efteemed obfcure, in the anatomy and economy of the lymphatic glands in general. I therefore take the liberty of fubmitting the following account of them to the inspection of this learned society. The animal, from which the parts that I am going to describe were taken, was a male, of the genus named by Linnæus balæna. Being defirons of making an anatomical preparation, to thew the diftribution of the mesenteric veisels and lacteals of the whale, I procured for this purpose a broad portion of the mesentery with the annexed inteft ne; and proceeded in the first place to inject the blood vefiel. The mesentery had been cut from the animal as close to the fpine as possible: had a less portion been taken away, the parts which I am about to describe would have been left with the body, for they are fituated upon the origin of the blood vessels belonging to the intestines; and this, perhaps, is the reason why they have not been ob. ferved before. At When I threw a red-coloured waxen injection into the mesenteric artery, I faw it meandering in the ramifications of that vessel; but at the fametime I observed it collecting in feveral feparate heaps, about the roots of the mesentery's which foon encreased to the fize of eggs. the time, I imagined that the veffels had been ruptured, and that the injection in consequence had become extravasated; but I was confcious that no improper degree of force had been ufed in propelling the injection. I next threw some yellow injection into the vein, when fimilar phænomena occured; the branches of the vein were filled, but at the fame time the maffes of wax near the root of the mesentery were increased by a further effufion of the injection. These lumps had now acquired a spherical form, 1 and fome of them were of the fize ated these last vessels with much of an orange... After the injection had become cold, I cut into the mesentery, in order to remove these balls of wax; when I found that they were con tained in bags, in which I also obferved a flimy and bloody-coloured fluid. On the inner surface of these bags a greater number of small arteries and veins terminated; from the mouths of which the injection had poured into their cavities. There were seven of these bags in that piece of mesentery which I had to examine; but I am not able to determine what number belonged to the animal; for I do not know whether the portion of mesentery that I poffeffed was complete. Having removed the injection from these bags, I observed on the infide of them a foft whitith fubstance, apparently containing a plexus of lacteal veffels. This fubstance entered the bags at that part of them which was nearest to the intestines, and went out at the part next to the spine. I now poured fome quickfilver into those Jacteal, which appeared to lead to this foft fubftance; the quickfilver foon entered the veflels which were contained in it, and thus its nature was afcertained. A number of lacteals having entered one of these bags were obferved to communicate with each other, then again to feparate, and form other veffels, which went out of the bag. It was fome time before the quickfilver paffed through the plexus of veffels contained in the firft bag, but after having pervaded it. it paffed on to a fecond bag, in which was concealed a fimilar plexus of lacteals. The quickfilver perme, greater facility than it did the former, and quickly ran out of the large lacteals which were divided at the origin of the mesentery. Befides those absorbents which passed through the bags in the the manner described, there were great numbers of others, which terminated by open orifices in every part of them. When quickfilver was poured into any of the lacteals, which were found near the fides of the bags, it immediately ran in a stream into their cavities. I introduced about a dozen briftles through as many lacteals, into different parts of two of these bags. These were doubtless few, in comparison to the whole number which terminated in them, but as the mefentery was fat, and the veffels were small, more could not eafily be paffed. I afterwards stuffed two of the bags with horfe-hair, dried them, and preserved them as an anatomical preparation. In this state great numbers of arteries and veins, but chiefly of the former veffels, are feen terminating on their infide, in the fame indistinct manner as the foramina Ibebepi appear when the cavities of the heart are laid open: the briftles alfo render vifible the termination of a certain number of lacteals. I examined the fides of these bags, which were moderately thick and firm; but I did not fee any thing which, from its appearan cular structure. appearance, I could call a muf From the circumstances that have been related, it appears, that in the whale there are two ways by which the chyle can país from the inteftines into the thoracic dact; ong one of these is through those lacteals, which pours the absorbed chyle into bags, in which it receives an addition of animal fluids. The other paffage of the chyle is through those lacteals which form a plexus on the infide of the bags; through these vessels it passes with some difficulty, on account of their communications with each other; and it is conveyed by them to the thoracic duct, in the same state that it was when first imbibed from the intestines, The lacteals, which pour the chyle into the bags are similar to those which terminate in the cells of the mesenteric glands of other animals: there is also an analogy between the diftribution of the lacteals on the inside of these bags, and that which we sometimes observe on the outside of the lymphatic glands in general. In either case, a certain number of the vafa inferentia, as they are termed, com municate with one another, and with other vessels, named vafa efferentia. By this communication, the progress of the fluids contained in these vessels is in some degree checked; which impediment increases the effusion into the cavities of the gland made by the other lacteals: but should these cavities be obstructed, from disease, or other causes, an increased determination of fluids into the communicating absorbents must happen, which would overcome the resistance produced by their mutual inoscultations, and the contents of the vessels would be driven forwards towards the trunk of the system. In the whale, as in other animals, we find that the impediment, occafioned by this communication of lacteals, is greatest in the first glands at which they arrive after having left the intestines. The ready termination of fo many arteries in the mesenteric glands of the whale, makes it appear probable, that there is a copious secretion of the fluids mixed with the absorbed chyle; and, as I have before observed, a flimy blood-coloured fluid was found in them. As the orifices of veins were open, it appears probable that the contents of the bags might pass in some degree into those vessels. The eminent anatomists, Al binus, Meckel, Hewson, and Wrisberg, were of opinion, that the lymphatic glands, were not cellular, but were composed of convoluted absorbing veffels. This notion feems, however, to have been gradually declining. Mr. Cruikshank has of late publicly maintained a contrary opinion; and has shewn, that the cells of these glands have transverse communications with each other; which it is not likely they would have, if they were only the sections of convoluted vessels. Some additional observations have occurred to me, confirming this opinion, and which, as I believe they have not been publicly noticed by others, I beg leave to relate to this society. I have injected the lymphatic glands of the groin and axilla of horses, with wax, and afterwards destroyed the animal fubftance, by immerfing them in muriatic acid. In fome of these glands the wax appeared in very small portions, and irregularly conjoined; which is a convincing proof, that it had acquired this irregular form from having been impelled into numerous minute cells. But in se |