LETTER III 



TO THE SAME 



THE fossil-shells of this district, and sorts of stones, such 

 as have fallen within my observation, must not be passed 

 over in silence. And first I must mention, as a great 

 curiosity, a specimen that was ploughed up in the chalky 

 fields, near the side of the Down, and given to me for the 

 singularity of its appearance, which to an incurious eye, 

 seems like a petrified fish of about four inches long, the 

 cardo passing for an head and mouth. It is in reality 

 a bivalve of the Linncean . Genus of Mytilus, and the 

 species of Crista Galli; 1 called by Lister, Rastellum ; by 

 Rttmphius, Ostreum plicatum minus; by D'Argcnville, Auris 

 Porci, s. Crista Galli; and by those who make collections, 

 cock's comb. Though I applied to several such in 

 London, I never could meet with an entire specimen ; 

 nor could I ever find in books any eng^'tving from a 

 perfect one. In the superb museum at Leicester House 2 



1 The species was identified in subsequent editions of " Selborne " as Ostrea 

 carinata of Lamarck, but my colleague, Mr. R. Bullen Newton, of the Geological 

 Department of the British Museum, has very kindly given me the following note : 

 "This is Ostrsa carinata, Sowerby (nee Lamarck). It should properly be called 

 Ostrea ricordeana d'Orbigny, to which species it has been referred by Coquand. 

 White's specimen is noticed in Sowerby's "Mineral Conchology" (plate 

 3 6 5 ).-[R .B. S.] 



2 This was the celebrated collection of Mr. [afterwards Sir] Ashton Lever, 

 and was known as the Leverian Museum. It contained many specimens described 

 by Latham and the fathers of ornithology in England, and on the dispersal of the 

 collection by auction in 1806 a sale which lasted sixty-five days and contained 

 7879 lots many of the most interesting of its contents were purchased for foreign 

 museums. An account of the Leverian birds still existing in the Imperial Museum 

 at Vienna in 1873 was published by Von Pelzeln in the "Ibis" for that year 

 (pp. 14-54, pi. I.). See also " Diet. National Biography," xxxiii. p. 137 (1893). 

 [R. B. S.] 



9 B 



