a kind of wood brought from the East Indies. There are three kinds of it; white, yellow, and red.—The white comes in billets about the thickness of a man's leg, of a pale whitish colour. It has been recommended for its medical virtues; but from its total want of smell or taste, nothing in this way can be expected.—The yellow kind has a pleasant smell, and a bitterish aromatic taste accompanied with an agreeable pungency. This wood, according to Dr Lewis, though unnoticed in the present practice, might undoubtedly be applied to many valuable medical purposes. Distilled with water, it yields a fragrant essential oil, which thickens in the cold into the consistence of a balsam. Digested in pure spirit, it imparts a rich yellow tincture; which being committed to distillation, the spirit arises without bringing over anything considerable of the flavour of the saunders. The residuum contains the virtues of six times its weight of the wood. Hoffman looks upon the extract as a medicine of similar virtues to ambergrise, and recommends it as an excellent restorative in great debilities.—The red kind is brought from the East Indies in large billets, of a compact texture, a dull red, almost blackish colour on the outside, and a deep bright red within. This wood has no manifest smell, and little or no taste; nevertheless it has been recommended as a mild astringent, and corroborant of the nervous system; qualities which belong only to the yellow sort. It is principally employed as a colouring drug; and communicates a deep red to rectified spirit, but scarce to any oil excepting that of lavender.—It is easily distinguished from Brazil-wood, because the latter readily communicates its colour to water, which saunders will not.

SAUERSON (Dr Nicholas), an illustrious professor of mathematics in the university of Cambridge, and a fellow of the royal society, was born at Thurston in Yorkshire in 1682. When he was twelve months old, he lost not only his eye-sight, but his very eye-balls, by the small-pox; so that he could retain no more ideas of vision than if he had been born blind. His father, who was in the excise, instructed him in numbers; for which he discovered to uncommon capacity, that with no more learning than he gained at a private academy, and his own industry, assisted by a mere reader, it was resolved to send him to Cambridge not as a scholar but as a master. He accordingly went thither in 1707, and his fame in a short time filled the university. The Principia Mathematica, Optics, and Arithmetica Universalis, of Sir Isaac Newton, were the foundations of his lectures, and afforded him a noble field for the display of his genius; and great numbers came to hear a blind man give lectures on optics, discourse on the nature of light and colours, explain the theory of vision, the effect of glasses