STONES. 43 



At Swindon is a quarrie of stones, excellent for paveing halls, staire-cases, &c ; it being pretty 

 white and smooth, and of such a texture as not to be moist or wett in damp weather. It is used at 

 London in Montagu-house, and in Barkeley-house &c. (and at Cornberry, Oxon. JOHN EVELYN). 

 This stone is not inferior to Purbac grubbes, but whiter. It takes a little polish, and is a dry stone. 

 It was discovered but about 1640, yet it lies not above four or five foot deep. It is near the towne, 

 and not above [ten] miles from the river of Thames at Lechlade. [The Wilts and Berks Canal and 

 the Great Western Railway now pass close to the town of Swindon, and afford great facilities for the 

 conveyance of this stone, which is now in consequence very extensively used. J. B.] 



If Chalk may be numbred among stones, we have great plenty of it. I doe believe that all chalke 

 was once marie ; that is, that chalke has undergone subterraneous bakeings, and is become hard : 

 e. g. as wee make tobacco-pipes. 



Pebbles. The millers in our country use to putt a black pebble under the pinne of y e axis of 

 the mill-wheele, to keep the brasse underneath from wearing ; and they doe find by experience, 

 that nothing doth weare so long as that. The bakers take -a certain pebble, which they putt 

 in the vaulture of their oven, which they call the warning-stone : for when that is white the 

 oven is hot. 



In the river Avon at Lacock are large round pebbles. I have not seen the like elsewhere. Quaere, 

 if any transparent ones ? From Merton, southward to the sea, is pebbly. 



There was a time when all pebbles were liquid. Wee find them all ovalisli. How should 

 this come to passe ? As for salts, some shoot cubicall, some hexagonall. Why might there not 

 be a time, when these pebbles were making in embryone (in fieri), for such a shooting as falls into an 

 ovalish figure ? 



Pebbles doe breake according to the length of the greatest diameter : but those wee doe find broken 

 in the earth are broken according to their shortest diameter. I have broken above an hundred of 

 them, to try to have one broken at the shortest diameter, to save the charge and paines of grinding 

 them for molers to grind colours for limming ; and they all brake the long way as aforsayd. 



Black flints are found in great plenty in the chalkie country. They are a kind of pyrites, and are 

 as regular ; 'tis certain they have been in fluore. 



Excellent fire-flints are digged up at Dun's Pit in Groveley, and fitted for gunnes by Mr. TL 

 Sadler of Steeple Langford. 



Anno 1655, I desired Dr. W. Harvey to tell me how flints were generated. He sayd to me that 

 the black of the flint is but a natural vitrification of the chalke : and added that the medicine of the 

 flint is excellent for the stone, and I thinke he said for the greene sicknesse ; and that in some flints 

 are found stones in next degree to a diamond. The doctor had his armes and his wife's cutt in such 

 a one, which was bigger than the naile of my middle finger ; found at Folkston in Kent, where he 

 told me he was borne. 



In the stone-brash country in North Wilts flints are very rare, and those that are found are but 

 little. I once found one, when I was a little boy learning to read, in the west field by Easton Piers, 

 as big as one's fist, and of a kind of liver colour. Such coloured flints are very common in and 

 about Long Lane near Stuston, [Sherston ? J. B.] and no where else that I ever heard of. 



It is reported that at Tydworth a diamond was found in a flint, which the Countess of Marie- 



