Dear Sir,

The earthquakes which have lately taken place at Comrie and its neighbourhood, are certainly very deserving of attention. I shall therefore cheerfully comply with your request, and give you as particular a description as I can of such of them as have been most remarkable. To give a particular account of all the noises or concussions which, during the last half-year, have been heard or felt at Comrie, and within a short distance to the north, east and west of that village, is beyond my power, and would indeed be of little use.

The following improvement on the construction of the thermometer, by which it is fitted to mark the lowest or the highest point to which the fluid has attained in the absence of the observer, is due to John Rutherford, M. D. of Middle Balilish. This gentleman communicated it to me some time ago, and accompanied the description with one of his thermometers. The contrivance is so very simple and ingenious, that it well deserves to be made public. I therefore, by permission of the author, beg leave to lay an account of it before the Royal Society.

As it appeared to me, when I first began, in 1759, to deliver in this University a public course of lectures on Anatomy and Surgery, that the structure of the oblique muscles had not been sufficiently examined, nor even the number of them attended to by authors, and that some of their chief purposes or effects had been ent rely overlooked by them, I endeavoured then, and in every course of lectures since that time, to direct very particularly the attention of students to those subjects.

The mosses of Kincardine and Flanders are situated in that extensive plain or carse which begins at Borrowstounness, on the south side of the Frith of Forth, and a little above Eastern Kincardine, on the north side. It stretches along both sides, first of the Frith, and afterwards of the river Forth, as far as Cardross, about twenty-two miles west of the point where it begins. The breadth of this plain, or carse, at Falkirk, where it is widest,is about seven miles, including what is occupied by the Frith.

Ala suite du voyage d'Italie, j'attendois à Venise une occasion favorable pour entreprendre celui de la Grèce. Le Chevalier Zuliani, nommé Ambassadeur de la République auprès de la Porte Ottomane, alloit incessamment partir pour sa destination; je lui demandai une place sur son vaisseau, et je fus assez heureux pour l'obtenir. Cet Ambassadeur, qui réunit à toutes les qualités d'un habile negociateur, le gout le plus décidé pour les arts et pour les sciences, avoit aussi reçu dans son vaisseau le célèbre Docteur Spallanzani, l'un des plus ingénieux naturalistes de ce siècle, que l'Empereur Joseph II. envoyoit dans le Levant, pour enrichir la science de la nature de découvertes nouvelles.

Words that are precisely equivalent are rarely, if at all, to be met with in any language. Those properly called synonymous, exhibit one leading circumstance in which they all agree, and one or more accessory circumstances in which they differ. When the point of their general coincidence, and the grounds of their particular diversities, are clearly ascertained, it is then in the power of the writer to use them with propriety. By the assistance of the grammarian, he knows which to adopt and which to reject, and can reconcile embellishment with accuracy and precision.

In some other dissertations, I have endeavoured to investigate the original country of the Iones, Dores, Æoles and Achæi or Achivi; and have, I hope, shewed, that none of these tribes were aborigines of Greece. In this paper, I shall trace the origin of the Hellenes, a people who, in process of time, be came so considerable, that all the other septs and petty clan ships of that nation were proud of being called by that venerable name.