Page:Philosophical Transactions - Volume 003.djvu/77

 cover with salt a year, and the salt under all vicissitudes of weather never give much, or spoil the salted Tortoise.

2. The way of drinking Brandy with Water, as Sir Christopher Mings observ'd, was this. First to take a mouth-full of Brandy, and whilst it was yet hot in your mouth and unswallow'd, to drink the Water and so wash it down; it being his and a common observation at Sea, that it was ever wholesome to drink it so, then either mix: with the Water, or after it, For, said he, if you drink the Water first, it gives instantly such an impression of coldness to your Stomach and Lungs, as that it is too late to correct it by the succeeding Brandy. Which reason I could not but allow of; for in those parts the passages or porofities of the Body are so pervious, that what you drink, though cold, instantly dischargeth it self in sweat, or checks your constant and necessary Diaphoresis, before you can get the subsequent Brandy down. And in Man there is so exact a Machine, that a much less thing disorders him there, then here. And if a little Brandy should be mixt with a draught of water, it would not be effacacious; the coldness of the water being more powerful in bodies so tender (as we are there if hot) to hurt them, then so little brandy to correct it. But the other way washes the brandy down first, and as that goes, it fortifies nature everywhere to receive and distribute the subsequent cold liquor.

3. About the Colour of the Sea, l have this to add, That as we went, and passed from a Green Sea to an Azure, in the way when it was dark colour'd (which we formerly have spoken of,) the top of each wave, as it was cast up before the Sun, shew'd it self to be Azure, the rest of the wave being dark-colour'd, approaching to black. And the like I observ'd coming home; for, though the Sea in its dark-colour resembled exactly what we saw before, as we went out; yet did the tops of the wave break and appear to be green, long before the great Waves or body of the Sea became green. I observ'd, that the Sea, which was Azure, and transparent in Sun-shiny dayes, was black and dark colour'd, and much less transparent, when the Sun did not shine. But in the Green Sea there happens not the like Difference.

4. As to those Plants, whose roots I said were stony, it may be Rh