4 THE CHEESEWRING. 



I have observed more especially in the works of this 

 kind which have most art, and are most finished ; 

 but in others, which savour less of workmanship, the 

 bottom is not so exactly levelled. 



**The lips do not all point in the same direction, 

 some tending to the south, some to the west, others 

 to the north, others again to the intermediate points 

 of the compass, by which it seems as if the makers 

 had been determined in this particular, not by anv 

 mystical veneration for one region of the heavens 

 more than another, but by the shape and inclination, 

 of the rock, and for the most easy, and convenient 

 outlet. 



"The size of them is as different as their shape, 

 they are formed from six feet to a few inches diameter. 



" Many uses may suggest themselves to the imag- 

 inations of the curious from the description of these 

 new, and hitherto scarce mentioned monuments ; in 

 order therefore to obviate some prepossessions, and 

 prevent the mind from resting so far on groundless 

 suppositions, as may make it more difficult to embrace 

 the truth, I shall first consider (by comparing and 

 recurring to the foregoing properties of these basins) 

 what, in all probability, cannot have been the design 

 of them, and then submit to the reader a conjecture 

 or two relating to the intended use of them, drawn 

 from their shape, structure, number, and situation, 

 and comformable to some universal principles and 

 tenets of the ancients. 



" Some may perhaps imagine that they were de- 

 signed to prepare and dry salt in for human use ; 

 (because, on the sea shore in Cornwall, we find little 

 hollows in the rocks spread with the whitest sea salt) 

 but these basins are found in great plenty many 

 miles distant from the sea. 



" Diodorus Sic. (Lib. iii. cap. i.) informs us, that 

 the men employed about the gold mines in Ethiopia 

 take a piece of the rock, (viz. of the ore broke out of 

 the mine with its pabulum) of such a certain quantity, 

 and pound it in a stone mortar till it be as small as 



