210 THE BATH WATERS. 



US was in the autumn, Providence, securing by that means the 

 revival of the vegetable world." 



A sufficiently curious comment, but still nothing like so curious 

 as the fact that with the nuts to hand and the microscope at their 

 elbow, no one had thought of looking to see what was inside them. 

 On one occasion, in the earlier days of the excavation, a man 

 came up with some of the nuts in his hand, and he (Mr. Morris) 

 had no sooner taken them up than he noticed something gleam 

 through a crack in one of them. This brought the pocket-lens 

 out, and then he saw that there was really something to investi- 

 gate. The contents proved to be various kinds of crystals, which 

 were not only interesting and beautiful, but were in many respects 

 important, as bearing testimony on one or two points in connec- 

 tion with the Bath mineral waters. In some cases the kernel was 

 found to have been converted into solid calcite ; in others it had 

 perished, and the shell or testa of the nut was lined with crystals- 

 In some instances where the nuts had been cracked, water had 

 infiltrated through the cracks. The water which came in poured 

 with it the pulverised, smashed, and crushed atoms of broken 

 crystals, and strewed over the projecting peaks and pinnacles of 

 the carbonate of lime, a perfect shower as if a snowstorm had 

 descended upon the Alps. A curious thing was that in the clefts 

 of these peaks he had found the sporangia and the scale of a fern. 

 Some of the nuts were filled with quartz sand just like that 

 preserved at the Royal Baths, and on searching through this they 

 found curious evidences of organic remains. 



The microscope showed him a spray of Selaginella absolutely 

 to be identified, while close by were a number of the spines of 

 Echini. These must have been washed into the nut through 

 cracks. Projecting from the sides, or lining the testa of the nuts, 

 crystals of strontia were found, being readily recognisable by their 

 blue tinge and their radiating fan-shaped distribution. There was 

 also arragonite. Carbonate of lime, when mixed with a little 

 strontia, would frequently yield arragonite, but the latter was very 

 apt to fall from the surface on which it was formed as it had in the 

 case of one of his best specimens that evening on the way to the 

 Institution. They found in these crystals curious evidences of 

 change of temperature. In many instances a change of tempera- 



