which could not be effected by a flood only. When I asked him how this earth could have been repeopled if ever it had undergone the same fate it was threatened with hereafter by the comet of 1680, he answered, that required the power of a Creator. He said he took all the planets to be composed of the same matter with this earth, viz. earth, water, stones, &c., but variously concocted. I asked him why he would not publish his conjectures as conjectures, and instanced that Kepler had communicated his; and though he had not gone near so far as Kepler, yet Kepler’s guesses were so just and happy that they had been proved and demonstrated by him. His answer was, ‘I do not deal in conjectures.’ But upon my talking to him about the four observations that had been made of the comet of 1680, at 574 years’ distance, and asking him the particular times, he opened his _Principia_, which laid on the table, and showed me there the particular periods, viz. 1st, the Julium Sidus, in the time of Justinian, in 1106, in 1680. And I, observing that he said there of that comet, ‘incidet in corpus solis,’ and in the next paragraph adds, ‘stellæ fixæ refici possunt,’ told him I thought he owned there what we had been talking about, viz. that the comet would drop into the sun, and that fixed stars were recruited and replenished by comets when they dropped into them; and, consequently, that the sun would be recruited too; and asked him why he would not own as freely what he thought of the sun as well as what he thought of the fixed stars. He said, ‘that concerned us more;’ and, laughing, added, ‘that he had said enough for people to know his meaning.’” The preceding paper, with the title prefixed to it, was first published by Mr. Turnor in his _Collections, &c._ p. 172. It was found among the Portsmouth manuscripts, in the handwriting of Mr. Conduit. THE END. FOOTNOTES [1] The Marquis La Place.—See _Systême du Monde_, p. 336. [2] Sir Isaac Newton told Mr. Conduit, that he had often heard his mother say that when he was born he was so little that they might have put him into a quart mug. [3] In Leicestershire, and about three miles south-east of Woolsthorpe. [4] “I remember once,” says Dr. Stukely, “when I was deputy to Dr. Hailey, secretary at the Royal Society, Sir Isaac talked of these kind of instruments. That he observed the chief inconvenience in them was, that the hole through which the water is transmitted being necessarily very small, was subject to be furred up by impurities in the water, as those made with sand will wear bigger, which at length causes an inequality in time.”—Stukely’s Letter to Dr. Mead.—Turnor’s _Collections_, p. 177. [5] Mr. Clark informed Dr. Stukely that the walls of the room in which Sir Isaac lodged were covered with charcoal drawings of birds, beasts, men, ships, and mathematical figures, all of which were very well designed.