274 



HORSE-SHOES AND HORSE-SHOEING. 



stone pits, on the Blackdown Hills, between Honiton and 

 Cullompton.' 



With some difficulty, I at length discovered the gen- 

 tleman into whose hands this geological specimen had 

 fallen, Mr Matthews, of Bradninch, near Cullompton, 

 Devonshire, and on my applying to him for an inspection 

 of it, he most kindly and promptly sent it to me. 



The resemblance of the impression to the form of a 

 horse-shoe was undoubtedly most striking (fig. 103), and in 



fig- 103 

 size it exactly corresponded to one of the Roman Glouces- 

 ter shoes then in my possession. There were no bulgings, 

 however, on the outer margin ; and yet it was so remark- 

 ably like the shoe, and like the impression it would make 

 on sand or clay, that any one at the first glance, and who 

 was not a geologist, would have had no hesitation in 

 affirming it to be due to that cause. But an examination 

 of the stone effectually demolished such an opinion. It 

 belonged to a kind called in technical language ' chert,' a 



^ 



