158 ROBERT POCOCK. 



and judicious remarks ; but it appeared written prior 

 to the tour, or perhaps no tour at all. 



"Monday, 25th. Young Taylor, the butcher, who 

 had his leg broken about three weeks since, has this 

 day had it cut off by Mr. Park, brother to Mungo 

 Park. 



" Tuesday, 26th. Young Barnard brought me 

 yesterday to see a coleoptera insect, which had eaten 

 through a roll of (twenty- two yards) sarcenet and 

 penetrated into the wood ! I remember going on board 

 an East India ship, Captain Birch, about five years 

 ago, and he showed an insect which had turned into 

 an aurelia, taken out of the mast of a ship ! This 

 Captain Birch had a brother an engineer at Gravesend. 



" This day a gravestone, weighing 6 or 700 hundred- 

 weight was found in the old churchyard field (de- 

 scribed in the ' History of Gravesend/ page 61), with 

 two others of a square form. All of them were Bethers- 

 den marble, and of high antiquity ; for of such stones 

 we find the columns of our ancient ecclesiastical build- 

 ings made, being a turbinated greyish stone, com- 

 posed of small shells, capable of taking a good polish. 

 The heaviest stone, being six feet three inches, was 

 evidently placed there for an ecclesiastic, as on it 

 there was the sign of a cross, and made not exactly 

 square, but narrower at one end and grooved with two 

 deep concaves at the edges. I think it was placed 

 there prior to 1587 as conjectured in ' History of 

 Gravesend/ p. 66. 



" Wednesday, 27th. This morning, about three 

 o'clock, a fire broke out at Mr. Murrell's, Perry Street, 

 in the nursery, which it destroyed ; but the children of 

 Mr. Kobinson, a clerk in the Tower, escaped with 



