LETTER 1 1 1.i 



To the same, 



HE fossil-shells of this district, and sorts of 

 stone, such as have fallen within rny observa- 

 tion, must not be passed over in silence. And 

 first I must mention, as a great curiosity, a 

 specimen that was ploughed up in the chalky 

 fields, near the side of the Down, and given 

 to me for the singularity of its appearance, 

 which, to an incurious eye, seems like a petrified fish of about 

 four inches long, the cardo passing for an head and mouth. 

 It is in reality a bivalve of the Linnaean genus of Mytilus, and 

 the species of Crista Galli; 2 called by Lister, Rastellum; by 



1 This letter on the fossils of Selborne is clearly a later insertion, and is 

 a sufficiently perfunctory performance. ED. 2 White was mistaken in 

 referring this fossil, of which he gives an illustration in the first edition, to 

 the Mytilus crista-galli of Linnaeus. It is in reality Ostrtza carinata, a 

 characteristic mollusk of the Greensand. ED. 



