134 



, on a rock, by Lindisfarn 



Saint Cuthbert sits, and toils to frame 

 The sea-born beads* that bear his name. 

 Such tales had Whitby's fishers told, 

 And said they might his shape behold, 



And hear his anvil sound : 

 A deaden' d clang, a huge dim form, 

 Seen but and heard, when gathering storm, 



And night were closing round. 



MARMION, Canto II. v. 13 and 14. 



Among the notions which have been entertained respecting these 

 fossils, none is more curious than the following : " The country people 

 retain a conceit, that the snakes, by their breathing about a hazell 

 wand, doe make a stone ring of blew colour, in which there appeareth 

 the yellow figure of a snake ; and that beasts which are stung, being 

 given to drink of the water wherein this stone has been soked, will there- 

 through recover. There was such a one bestowed on me, and the 

 giver avowed to have seen a part of the stick sticking in it : but Penes 

 author em sit fides*" The Survey of Cornwall, written by Richard Carew, of 

 Antonie, Esq. 



These, and various other idle tales, had long supplied the place of 

 rational conjecture, respecting the original mode of existence of these 

 fossils, until, by the investigations of Lister, Buttner, Scheuchzer, and 

 particularly of Breyn, their real nature was discovered ; and it was fully 

 ascertained, that they were the mineralized remains of a shell, the 

 recent analogue of which was unknown. 



Plancus indeed discovered, in the sand of the Riminian shores, micro- 

 scopic, spiral, multilocular shells, which he considered as minute recent 

 shells of this genus, and which have been considered as such by almost 

 every writer on these subjects, since his discovery. Similar shells have 

 been found in several parts of the world, and even on the shores of this 



* Trochites. 



