218 



rounded by five double points or feet, in the figure of crescents, and 

 having on their top the impression of a trochites, or a trochites itself 

 yet adhering. He describes these stones as incrustate, from their being 

 covered with rough polygonal plates, and says, " I can compare the 

 incrustation of these stones to nothing so well, as to the skins of the 

 pi sets triangular is, thus described by Margravius: " Cujus cutis (nam 

 caret squamis) figuris trigonis, tetragonis pentagonis, hexagonisque 

 mire distinguitur et notatur." 



Mr. John Beaumont relates, in the Philosophical Transactions for the 

 year 1676, that the bodies termed radices by Mr. Lister, were to be 

 found in the Mendip Hills, Gloucestershire, and says, " Agricola com- 

 pares these stones to a wheel ; and truly the body well resembles the nave 

 of a cart or coach-wheel, the shape of it being conical towards one 

 end, till you come just to the top, where it is a little flat, with a hole 

 in it ; and it has another hole in the middle of the broad end, oppo- 

 site to this, very fit for an axis to pass through, and the five hollow 

 stirts or feet, issuing sideways, at equal distances from the broad bot- 

 tom, somewhat resembling spokes ; the said stirts standing about 

 half an inch out from the body of the stone, so that it may not very 

 improperly be called Modiolus quinque radiatus ; and at the ends of 

 the stirts, where the hollows should show themselves, there grows, 

 after a very artificial manner, a pretty large seam of the same stone, 

 just over the middle of the hollow, from the upper part of the stirt 

 to the lower part of it, parting the hollow in the middle, and cover- 

 ing about a third part of it, not that this seam enters farther into the 

 hollow than the mouth of it, so that the hollow of each stirt presents 

 itself with two eyes. Hence, it appears, that those stirts or feet were 

 never longer than they are, and that no stone ever grew to them." 



Mr. Lister says, " the feet were like crescents at the end, whereby I 

 find the fore-seams of his stones were broken off, as two of them are 

 in mine. The stone seems wrought all over like the fish mentioned 

 by Mr. Lister, being composed of trigonal, tetragonal, pentagonal, 



