xv MARTIN LISTER AND EDWARD LHUYD 211 



The seafaring friends of Fothergill brought him 

 corals from the Southern Ocean, and as they were well 

 rewarded, more and yet more of these wonderful structures 

 reached his house, until his collection was thought to be 

 the foremost in Europe. It is said that Ellis used its 

 stores when he worked out the problem of the animal 

 formation of corals, and delineated his well-known 

 system. Fothergill gave generously of his specimens 

 to others ; in sending corals to Dr. Demainbray he tells 

 him how to clean and mount them. " Some are re- 

 served," he adds, " for Dr. Hunter's museum when it is 

 ready to receive them. At present they may lie where 

 they are, as safely as amidst a thousand hobgoblins, 

 nightly searching for their scattered remains." * 



Fothergill had a wonderful table of pietm dura work, 

 panel-shaped with curved sides. Upon a bed of block 

 slate are set oval sections of flints, connected by flint 

 bands, so as to form a square reticulated pattern, the 

 interstices being filled with pudding stone. A border 

 is formed by squares of marble of different colours : at 

 the sides the squares are bisected by a zigzag band of 

 pale yellowish marble streaked with quartz : at the top 

 and bottom the squares are set diagonally. The polish, 

 especially of the flinty centre panel, is of a very high 

 degree, so as to give translucency to the stones, in all 

 their soft and varied colouring. 2 



If he discovered little of the secrets hidden in stones, 

 Fothergill worked to much purpose in the science of 



1 MS. Letter, Fothergill to W. Hunter, about 1769, Hunter-Baillie MSS. 

 Ellis writes to Linnaeus in 1766 of a fine specimen of the Isis Hippuris, sent 

 by Fothergill, with the natural fleshy covering full of holes, whence the eight- 

 rayed polype-like suckers had protruded. (? Pentacrinus Caput Medusa.) 

 Corresp. Linn. ii. 526. See also Foth., Works, iii. p. liii. 



2 The marble table, in excellent preservation, is now in the possession of 

 John Hodgkin, F.L.S., having come through the hands of Alice Chorley, John 

 Eliot, John Hodgkin (sen.) and John Eliot Hodgkin, F.S.A. Fothergill 

 purchased of Da Costa in 1762 for 4 : 145. " a marble table from Bohemia " : 

 this may be the same, but the price seems small. MS. Add. Brit. Mus. His 

 table must have been well known to his friends. Lettsom in one of his letters 

 to Cuming pleasantly describes an odd dream, in which he visited Elysium, 

 and saw Fothergill with one hand grasping that of George Fox and with the 

 other Mr. Penn's, whilst " on a table of inlaid marble " before them lay a 

 scroll of " Regulations for promoting Pennsylvanian happiness, with directions 

 for the education of the youth." Mem. Lettsom, i. Corresp. 47. 



