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172  ANNUAL REGISTER

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majesty permit me to explain it? These words threw him into a passion. I swear, cried he, by the soul of my ancestors, that thy head shall pay for the prisoner, if thou hast suffered him to escape. Both my life and his are at your majesty's disposal: vouchsafe to hear me. Speak, said he. I then related to the prince, in what manner that man had saved my life at Damascus; that, desirous to discharge the obligation I lay under to him, I had offered him his liberty; but that he has refused it, from the fear of exposing me to death. My lord, added I, he is not guilty; a man of such generous sentiments cannot be so. Some base detractors have calumniated him to you; and he is become the unfortunate victim of their hatred and envy. The caliph appeared affected, and having naturally a greatness of soul, could not help admiring the conduct of my friend. I pardon him, said Mamoun, on  thy account: go, carry him this good news, and bring him to me. I threw myself at the prince's feet, kissed them, and made my acknowledgments in the strongest terms my gratitude could suggest: I then conducted my prisoner into the caliph's presence. The monarch ordered him to be clothed with a robe of honour, presented him with ten horses, ten mules, and ten camels, out of his own stables; to all which favours he had a purse of ten thousand sequins for the expences of his journey, and gave him a letter of recommendation to the governor of Damascus."

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Extract from a little Work called Something New.

WITHIN this century, Borello, in his physical history, says, "that fresh-water crawfish may be regenerated by their own powder calcined in a crucible, then boiled in water with a little sand, and left to cool for a few days; when the animalcula will appear swimming merrily in the liquor, and must be then nourished with beef blood till they attain the proper size to stock your ponds with."
 There to procreate, I suppose, in the ordinary, unscientifick manner; which in truth they should do, for me. They have more idle time on their hands. And why should one be at the trouble of making a parcel of little animals, that can do it themselves, to the full as well at least?
 The Sieur Pogorios, and Monsieur de Chambulan, both agree with Signior Borello in the same process, affirming their own experience as vouchers of the fact. But they all of them, indeed join in giving you this philosophic caution, in the chymistry of the matter, that the operations must always be performed during the full of the moon. Which very properly seems to hint at the influence under which these fishmongers had framed their lunar system; otherwise the crab, I should think, would have been a more favourable sign to have ruled the nativity of craw-fish.

 So chymists boast they have a power, 
 From the dead ashes of a flower,
 Some faint resemblance to produce,
 But not the virtue, taste, or juice.
   Swift.
But

For the YEAR 1772.   173

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 But these supernatural adepts scorn to be restrained within the narrow pale of art, but would outrival nature herself, in her most favourite act, by performing a feat beyond her power, letting her into the secret of a method of propagation, which she had never dreamed of—as these philosophers most certainly did—and affording us a demonstrative proof of a resurrection, so as by fire.
 It may possibly be from such a hint as this, that the idea of grinding old women young again first took its rise. And this I am still further encouraged to believe from what the learned Rochos says upon this subject, in his work intitled, The Art of Nature—that the ashes of toads will produce the very same effect as the powder of crabs' eyes; which I think no less than probable, as far as I pretend to be a judge of philosophy.
 Nay, even so late as the year fifty, a French chymist, reasoning I suppose upon that absurd and unnatural principle of Caefalpinus, in his comment on Aristotle, Lucecunque ex femine funt, eadem fieri posse sine femine, affirmed that he had procreated eels from rye-meal, or mutton-broth, stopt close in bottles, hermetically sealed, and shaken quantum sufficit—a good way to compass the perpetual motion.—This person imposed for a considerable time on all the physicians and un-natural philosophers in France, et alibi; and I don't know whether they are undeceived yet or no.
 I forgot whether the pope did not admit a scrag of mutton into his Lenten bill of fare upon this discovery, as containing the essence of fish in its juices, and adhibit it  as a second instance of transubstantiation. This adept attempted to found a proof of the fortuitous concourse of atoms upon this process, by shewing that matter and motion was capable of producing animal life. Ergo, &c.
 But these are puerile works, or mere apprentice essays, to the manly and masterly operations of that great chymist, Julius Camillus, who outdid nature herself; for he made men and women at once, and she can only make boys and girls. Several writers, particularly Amatus Lusitanus, affirm they have seen his phials full of these homunculi, or lilliputian productions, compleat in all their parts; and the great Paracelsus was so physically convinced of the certainty of the art, that in his treatise, De rerum naturâ, he gives you the entire process of performing these mannikins. This is certainly the highest of all philosopher's stones. The former only makes gold, this makes man. The former only prolongs life, this creates it. That there is only one way into the world, but many out of it, was an old saying, in the days of ignorance, it seems—philosophy knows better things, now.
 But this is not all. We can bring the dead to life again. Read the following paragraph, taken from the postscript of the St. James's Chronicle, or British Evening Post, No. 1645, which was translated from the Hague Gazette.
 "Mr. Tunestrick, by origin an Englishman, has just exhibited at Versailles a very singular experiment. He opened the head of a sheep, and a horse, from side to side, by driving a large iron wedge into the skull, by means of a mallet; drew