86 THE KIMMERIDQE COAL MONET. 



the square cavity which received the chuck. The ■'clod seems 

 to have been turned upon a square arbor, but owing to the suck- 

 ing of the tool, the piece of work has spun round upon the square 

 axis, and so formed an irregular circular hole. The third is a 

 specimen, (pi. ix. fig. 1,) totally different from any of those pre- 

 viously desciibed; it is conical in shape, ^ three inches and a 

 quarter in height, three inches in diameter at its base, and one 

 inch and a half at its apex. In it is a hole of an inch and a 

 quarter in depth, square at its end, and irregularly circular at 

 its commencement, as if it had fitted upon a chuck with a square 

 head and a round shoulder. The greater part of its exterior sur- 

 face is finely chiselled. Towards its apex are several irregular 

 mouldings highly polished. It is worthy of remark, that the 

 apex is certainly oval: this however may have arisen from the 

 unequal shrinking of the material. 



I will now, before I proceed further, notice and make some 

 remarks upon the opinions which have been published respecting 

 these relics. It will appear evident that these writers knew very 

 little of the subject. Hutchins merely mentions their most com- 

 mon form, and the locality near Smedmore, at which they were 

 found in his time. The best known work upon the subject is 

 that of Mr. Miles, who visited the shores of Worbarrow and 

 Kimmeridge bays, in 1826. His researches, however, were 

 very limited, his discoveries were not satisfactorily carried out, 

 and his suggestions are not supported by any evidence. He 

 commences with a detail of his researches at Worbarrow, 

 upon the side of the cliff about the centre of the bay, 

 where he found "the soil for about two feet deep, to be composed 

 of a rich black mould, intermixed with some animal remains, 

 occasional specimens of coal money, , a few marine shells, and 

 several fragments of pottery of a peculiar, but of no decisive 

 chai*acter, together with large rounded water-worn stones." 

 But he afterwards dug up a piece of Samian ware: and he records 

 a story reported to him, that some labourers had discovered a 

 skeleton at the same spot, " lying between two ranges of flat 

 stones, set perpendicularly so as to support other flat ones, 

 which formed a cover," with the skull resting upon an urn, 

 containing Coal Money. He then proceeds to Kimmeridge where 

 the results of his researches bear much the same character. He 

 states its occurrence there to be under the same circumstances as 



