To set a Clock in[9] a Castle, the[1] water filling the Trenches about it;[2] it[3] shall shew by ebbing and flowing the Hours, Minutes and Seconds, and all the comprehensible motions of the Heavens, and Counterlibation[4] of the Earth, according to _Copernicus_. Footnotes [9] as within a. MS and P. [1] and the. [2] about it shall show the hours, minutes, and seconds by ebbing. [3] which--for it. P. [4] counterlibration. [_An ebbing and flowing Castle-clock._] John Bate, in his “Mysteries of Nature and Art,” 1635, at p. 45, describes--“A water-clock, or a glasse showing the hour of the day,” by three different arrangements. This article is further noticed in commenting on No. 57. 24. How to increase the strength of a Spring to such an height,[5] as to shoot Bumbasses and Bullets of an hundred pound weight a Steeple-height, and a quarter of a mile off and more, Stone-bow-wise, admirable for Fire-works and astonishing of besieged Cities, when without warning given by noise they find themselves so forcibly and dangerously surprised. Footnote [5] degree--for height. P. [_A Strength-increasing Spring._] The technical term BUMBASSES, or probably bombasses, here used, has escaped the attention of all compilers of Archaic Dictionaries. By the context we may presume it was applied to the large stones usually fired from bombards, and differing only from bullets in these last being made of lead or iron. Ancient cannon appear to have consisted of two kinds; a large one for discharging stones, called a _Bombard_, and a lesser one for darts. In 1388, a stone bullet, weighing 195 pounds, is related, according to Meyrick, to have been discharged from a _Bombard_, called the Trevisan. Such stone missiles may have been of the kind called by the Marquis “bumbasses,” and would be perhaps more properly named bombasses. The Stone-bow was the Prodd; probably the Slurbowe was furnished with a barrel through a slit, in which the string slided, when the trigger was pulled. Three kinds are mentioned by Du Cange. See Fosbroke’s Encyclopædia of Antiquities, 8vo. 1840. Bishop Wilkins, treating on Catapultæ in his _Mathematicall Magick_, 1648, observes that their usual form was “after the manner of great bows placed on carriages, and wound up by the strength of several persons;” adding: “These were sometimes framed for the discharging of two or three arrows together.”