38 



Besides the bodies already mentioned, we shall have, occasion- 

 ally, to notice certain FIGURED STONES *, which independent of 

 the interference of any animal or vegetable body, present the re- 

 semblance of some body, not of the mineral kingdom. When this 

 is the result of the fortuitous concurrence of certain marks on the 

 surface, they have been termed lapides picti, and graptolithi ; and 

 when the resemblance depends on the whole external form, they 

 have been named lithoglyphi. 



Should our old friend Wilton complain of this letter being too 

 dry and unentertaining, remind him, that unless our terms are de- 

 fined, there never can be a hope of our obtaining a good under- 

 standing. Promise him, that our pursuits shall yield him a large 

 stock of entertainment, with a full share of the marvellous. Assure 

 him, that he shall hear 



-Of antres vast, and deserts idle, 



Rough quarries, rocks, and hills, whose heads touch heaven. Shakspcare. 



Tell him, that I hope his faith will be comprehensive enough to 

 enable him to receive, with full credit, the accounts delivered by Bap- 

 C tista Fulgosus, Ludovicus Moscardus, and Theodorus Moretus, that 

 a whole ship, with its anchors, broken masts, and forty mariners, 

 with their merchandize, were found, in the year 1460, in a mine 

 fifty fathom deep, in the neighbourhood of Berne, in Switzerland f . 

 Relate to him, that Valchius, in his commentary on the Klein Baur, 

 tells us of a truly curious fossil man, found at Maria Kirch, near 

 Strasburgh, by a miner, who, breaking open the hollow of a rock, 

 was astonished at beholding the figure of an armed man, standing 

 upright, composed of a mass of silver, of five hundred pounds 

 weight. If his interest and astonishment be not hereby sufficiently 



* Lapides figuratiLithomorphi, Wallerii. 



t Musco di Ludov. Moscardo. lib. ii. cap. 3 Theodor. Moreti. tract, de JE&tr. 

 Maris, cap. 21. Baptist. Fulgosi Diet. & Fact. Mem. Collect, lib. i. cap. 6. 



