2i HISTORY OF THE SCIENCE. 



pursued a thriving trade, till some remorseless geologist, 

 who visited the place, not only beheaded the reptiles, but 



showed that they were in rea- 

 lity fossil shells. They are now 

 manufactured at Whitby by 

 filing the extremity of the last 

 whorl into th e shape of a snake' s 

 head, and the accompanying 

 illustration is from a specimen 

 recently procured from that 

 place. 



Another legend, referring in 

 like manner to a familiar fossil 

 object, is also mentioned in the 

 FlG 2 above poem. The fragments of 



the steins ofcrinoidea so com- 

 monly found in the older deposits, being hollow, were fre- 

 quently strung and used as rosaries in the middle ages ; 

 they were called St. Cuthbert's beads, and are thus men- 

 tioned : 



" Nor did St. Cuthbert's daughters fail 

 To vie with them in holy tale 



* * # # 



On a rock by Lindisfarn, 

 St. Cuthbert sits, and toils to frame 

 The sea-born beads that bear his name." 



MARMION, Canto L 



These fossils bore, in Germany, the several names of 

 spangensteine or bead-stones ; roeder-steine or wheel-stones ; 

 Bonifacius-pfennige or St. Boniface's pennies, being found 

 in great numbers on a mountain near Granserode in the 

 neighbourhood of Prankenhausen, which mountain obtains 

 its name from that saint ; while in Westphalia they are 

 called hiinenthranen, from being considered the petrified 

 tears of the giants. They are also variously termed mill- 

 stones, cheesestones, basketstones, caskstones, &c., from 

 their presumed resemblance to those objects. 



The echinites were severally termed ombria, from the 

 Greek word o^pos, signifying the heavy rain in which they 

 were supposed to fall ; brontia, from /Spoi/r?;, the thunder in 



