CORRESPONDENCE OF RAY. 155 



answer, but by granting that many sorts of shells are 

 wholly lost, or at least out of our seas. Others, as the 

 three last of Dr. Plot, do hitherto puzzle me, and put me 

 to a stand. 



As for what Dr. Plot produces out of Camden and 

 Childrey, in confirmation of his fourth argument, viz. 

 that the Ophiomorphites of Cainesham have some of them 

 heads, I doubt not but it is a mistake, proceeding from 

 their credulity. For Mr. Willughby and myself inquiring 

 diligently there after such stones, the common people 

 affirmed that there were such found : we not satisfied 

 with their assertion, but desirous ourselves to see them, 

 were at last directed to a man's house who was said to 

 have onej"to whom when we came, he showed us the 

 stone, which indeed at the upper extreme had some kind 

 of knob or protuberance of stone, but not at all resem- 

 bling the head of any animal. Such a kind of stone might, 

 perhaps, be shown to Mr. Camden, whose fancy being 

 possessed with the vulgar conceit, he might without any 

 strict view or examination of it, admit it to be what the 

 vulgar would have it. 



That the species of Brontia cannot be the petrified 

 shells of Echini Spatagi, the arguments Dr. Plot alleges 

 out of Aristotle and Rondeletius do not evince; for, 

 though in some seas they may be ireXa'ycoe and airdvioi, 

 yet in others are they plentiful enough. In our own seas 

 at Llandhwyn, in the Isle of Anglesey, we may reason- 

 ably conjecture they are more plentiful than the common 

 Echini anywhere with us, because we found more of their 

 shells cast up there on the shore than of the Echini on 

 any shore about England. And though their bristles or 

 prickles were indeed but small, yet were they not few, or 

 thin set, as Rondeletius saith. 



I thank you for your last letter and the information 

 and advices therein given. As to the particular of figures, 

 I find that others are of a different opinion from you, 

 looking upon an history of plants without figures as a 

 book of geography without maps. A good figure conveys 



