OZ MR HARDY ON BOWLING. 



ments with wliicli tliey have been fabricated. They appear to have been 

 manufactured near the place of their discovery, by means of a hammer, 

 a chisel, or a knife. They are formed out of the greywacke, so preva- 

 lent in the district. In one instance the material is a hard variety of 

 basalt, not unfrequent in the state of boulders, distinguished by a pitted 

 or variolar aspect, which it assumes from the disintegrating action of the 

 weather on the olivine and augite disseminated through the firmer tex- 

 ture of its basis.* 



To assign the purposes to which these balls might have been put by 

 the rural forefathers of the place was at first sufficiently puzzling, as no 

 recollection could be elicited of objects in any respects resembling them 

 having occurred any where in the neighbourhood. However, from 

 having witnessed in the north of England, the country sport of bowling, 

 I was led to conjecture that these balls might have been subservient to 

 a somewhat similar design. Some of the balls commonly used in this 

 game being procured and compared with those discovered in Berwick- 

 shire, were, with the exception of a small difference of size in favour of 

 the former,t found exactly to correspond not only in appearance, but 

 likewise in the mode of their formation. These balls in the vicinity of 

 Newcastle consist of a very hard stone got from ballast, apparently 

 greenstone, and are exceedingly globular, although modelled by only a 

 hammer or a chisel, and finished by a large file or risp. The stone is 

 held in the hollow of the hand, and is gradually rounded by the appli- 

 cation of the one or other of these instruments until it becomes — 



" teres atque rotundus, 

 Externi ne quid valeat per laeve morari."| 



Sometimes the whole operation will be performed with an old file. Se- 

 veral of the Berwickshire balls yet bear the traces of a knife upon their 

 surface. The establishment of identity appeared complete. A fossil shell 

 could not better develope the history of the deposite of which it formed 

 an inherent portion, than did those balls afford indications respecting 

 one of the almost forgotten recreations of the people of Berwickshire. 

 Upon further inquiry, I learned that bowling was a pastime that had 



* Such a stone about a century and a half ago, would have been regarded as an ex- 

 cellent remedy for the small-pox. " Quidam," says Sir Robert Sibbald, treating of 

 a stone characterized by similar scars and depressions, " ad Variolarum affectum eum 

 commendant de collo suspensum !" Scotia lUustrata, Pars II. B. 4, p. 49, Edin. 1684. 



t In 1843, a ball was found in the same locality 9^ inches in circumference, and 

 fully equal in size to those used near Newcastle. 

 + Horat. Sat II. 7. 00. 



