156 



r-i -icr found in great plenty on a mountain near Giinserode, in the 

 neighbourhood of Frankenhausen ; which mountain obtains its name 

 from St. Boniface, the tutelar saint of the Thuringians. The West- 

 phalians have also called them Hiinuthrcenens; the vulgar having consi- 

 dered them as the petrified tears of giants. Those which have ac* 

 quired a deg/ee of thickness beyond some others, have been named 

 Lapides caseiformes, from their cheese-like shape ; or Muhlsteines, from 

 their supposed resemblance to a mill-stone in miniature : and those 

 whose length rather exceeds their width, have been termed Mo- 

 dioli lapidei, from their bearing in miniature the shape of a bushel 

 measure. When their sides were tumid or convex, they were, from 

 their cask shape, called Caditce, Volvolce doliatce, and Volvolce ut riculatce : 

 and from their surface bearing a resemblance to a wheel, they have 

 been termed Rotulce lapidea. 



In some parts of England they are called Fairy-stones; and in others, 

 St. Cuthbert's beads, owing to their central foramen allowing them to 

 be strung like the beads of a rosary ; but the general term by which 

 they are known by the admirers of fossils, is that of Trochites. When 

 conjoined together by their flat surfaces, in a columnar form, the se- 

 ries is termed Entrochus. 



Agricola* speaks oftrochita, lapides judaicce, and similar stones being 

 found in the fissures of the spotted, and of the whitish ash-coloured 

 marble. Because, he says, this kind of marble being wetted, the 

 water filtres, so that such stones are formed, by that which separates 

 from it. But because marble is for the most part hard, and but little 

 is separated from it by the water, these stones, therefore, are but 

 small, and are frequently forced out of these fissures by the force of 

 the water -f. 



Not only the names and the descriptions, but this opinion, of Agri- 

 cola, respecting the formation of these fossils, were long adopted by 



* De Natura Fossilum, p. 256. f De Ortu et Causis Subterr. Lib. IV. p. 513. 



