4 PHILOSOPHICAI, TKANSACTIONS. [annO 1683-4. 



On some formed Stones of Fossil* found at Hunton in Kent. By Griff'. Hatley, 



M.D. N° 155, p. 463. 



At Hunton, 5 miles from this place, and a quarter of a mile from the 

 river Medway, after the coping of a piece of ground was taken off, which was a 

 clay about 3 feet deep, we came to a very good blue marl, which was 3^ feet 

 deeper, then there appeared a hard floor or pavement, composed of shells, or 

 shell-like stones, crouded closely together ; the interstices of which were filled 

 up with the same marl. This layer, which runs as the veins of flints do in 

 chalky earth, was about an inch deep, and several yards over, on which we 

 could walk as on a beach. Under this layer we came to marl again ; I think 

 about a foot deep. This ground has a pond on one side of it, which probably 

 was sometime a marl pit, and it is almost surrounded with springs. I cannot 

 on inquiry find that in the memory of any man thereabouts, any floods from the 

 river have reached so far as this place. 



These stones, for I take them to be lapides sui generis, are of that sort which 

 is called conchites ; and resemble sea-fish of the testaceous kind. Most of them 

 are turbinated, or wreathed, the rest are of the bivalvular sort; but I have not 

 found any of them with valves closed together, but single. The size of the 

 turbinated is from a vetch, to a hasel-nut; they are all filled with a terra lapidosa, 

 like the marl, and are of that colour, till they are washed and rubbed, and 

 then they appear of the colour of bezoar, and of the same polish. After they 

 have been boiled in water, they are whitish, and leave a chalkiness on the 

 fingers, which when it is rubbed off, gives a view of very fine black striae, thick 

 set on the outside. These wreathed stones are all perfectly formed, and alike 

 in figure, only some have their sides a little depressed: upon a few of them there 

 adhered a little portion of a glittering mineral like iron. I put some of them 

 into vinegar, where they made a strong and boiling effervescence. 



The bivalvular are most of them no larger than a kidney bean, some less ; a 

 few as broad as the largest sort of beans, but the valve much thinner than any 

 of that kind which had been the exuviae of an animal ; the gibbous part of the 

 valve is smooth, and of the same colour with that of the turbinated. In a few 

 there are some oblong lineations, bent circularly to the commissureof the valve: 

 I have a piece of such a one by me consisting of several lamellae, which has 

 this further observable in it, that the gibbous part is of a most beautiful black 

 shining colour, and the inner part of a shining pearl-coloured substance. 



Of this bivalvular sort many of them seem to be in fieri, not as to their shape, 

 hut as to their hardness and thickness, there being in some only the prima 



* Petrifactions. 



