CORRESPONDENCE OF RAY. 227 



English of those parts could communicate nothing of 

 their language to the Welsh, in regard they have never 

 lived in Wales nor have bordered on them. Moreover, 

 some of these words are in the c Armorican Lexicon/ and 

 the Britons that went to Armorica left this country 

 before the Saxons came in. 



The Pectinites Amphiotis latiuscule sulcatus, and the 

 Echinites rotularis minor angmticlavius, with some others, 

 are commonly found in beds of sand, which lie under the 

 vein of stone at the bottom of the pits, though sometimes 

 I have found the former in the stones by breaking them ; 

 but those usually of a different colour from the sand- 

 shells. ""Whether they were ever the tegumenta of ani- 

 mals or are only primary productions of nature in imita- 

 tion of them, I am constrained to leave in medio, and to 

 confess I find in myself no sufficient ability or confidence 

 to maintain either opinion, though I incline much to the 

 latter. However it be, it seems an extraordinary delightful 

 subject, and worthy the inquiry of the most judicious 

 philosophers. On the one hand, it seems strange if these 

 things are not shells petrified, whence it proceeds that 

 we find such great variety of them so very like shells in 

 shape and magnitude, and some of them in colour, 

 weight, and consistence ; and not only resemblances of 

 sea shells should be found, but also of the bones and teeth 

 of divers sea fish, and that we only find the resemblances 

 of such bodies as are in their own nature of a stone-like 

 substance. On the other hand, it seems as remarkable 

 that we seldom or never find any resemblance of horns, 

 teeth, or bones of land animals, or of birds, which might 

 be apt to petrify, if we respect their consistence; inso- 

 much that I suspect few formed stones are found (at 

 leastwise in England), except in some extraordinary petri- 

 fying earth, but what a skillful naturalist may, and that 

 perhaps deservedly, assimilate to some marine bodies; 

 but yet when we confer them with those bodies they seem 

 most to resemble, they appear generally but as mock- 

 shells and counterfeit teeth, differing from them little less 



