439 



cious pebbles, must often approach to the globular, or oval form 

 of fruits, these accounts should be received with some degree of 

 hesitation. With a similar degree of scepticism should several of 

 the petrified fruits be regarded which have been described by 

 Mylius, Volckman, and others: the necessity o f which caution 

 must be evident, when it is considered, that Scheuchzer has col- 

 lected, in his Herbarium Diluvianum, and Appendix, many sup- 

 posed fossil fruits which certainly have no right to be so consi- 

 dered. 



In the museum of the late John Hunter, Esq. now in the pos- 

 session of the Royal College of Surgeons, is a substance which has 

 been considered as a fossil walnut ; appearing to have been formed 

 from the internal part of the nut only : and in the British Museum 

 is the corresponding part. It bears an exact resemblance in form 

 and colour, to its supposed prototype, except being of a whiter 

 colour, than the inner part of a walnut would be after a few months 

 keeping. From this circumstance chiefly I am led to suspect this 

 rather to be a specimen of human ingenuity, than of a vegetable 

 substance, changed in its nature, by a natural process. 



In the Philosophical Transactions* several of the fossil fruits are 

 figured and described, which have been discovered in the Isle of 

 Sheppey, and which were sent to James Parsons, M. D. by Mr. Jacob, 

 who published, at the end of his Planter Favershamensis, an account 

 of the fossils he had collected there in the course of thirty years. 

 Among these appear to have been a small plum-stone, a cherry- 

 stone, a berry of the Sapindus, or soap-tree of America ; the ex- 

 ternal husk of the fruit of the Sapindus ; a young sand-box, or 

 fruit of the Hura; coffee-berries; an acorn, without its cup: be- 

 sides these he describes others, of the original nature of which he 

 seems to be less confident ; among these are two species of beans ; 

 a compressed pod, resembling the Arachidna, or under-ground pea; 



* Philosoph. Transactions, Vol. L. Parti, p. 39fi. 



