6.33 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. ' [aNNO I7OO. 



build their walls and fences. In which earth are innumerable fragments of the 

 shells of shell-fish of various sorts, of pectinites, echini, conchites, and others, 

 with some bits and pieces of coral. And here are sometimes found whole shell- 

 fish, with their natural shells on, in their natural colours, much bruised and 

 broken, and some squeezed flat by the great weight of earth that yet lies, and 

 that was cast upon them at the deluge. 



The other quarry is in the field on the south side of the town : it is a hard 

 blue stone, which in the antediluvian world was most certainly a pure fine blue 

 clay, in the stones of most of which are innumerable petrified shell-fish of va- 

 rious sorts, but so united to the stone, that it is very difficult to get them out 

 whole, and I have always found that they lie in the superficies of the quarry 

 within a foot of the top, and few or none deeper. In many places of the sur- 

 face of the quarry, (which looks rugged and drifted, as snow does after a storm,) 

 there are many shell-fish, half in the stone and half out, just as we see in rivers 

 aixl ponds that are dry, they will lie half within the mud half without. That 

 part which is within the quarry is entire and whole, but a hard stone, and that 

 part which is without, which the uetrific effluvia did not touch, is consumed 

 and gone, all but a little of the edges, which edges are plain shell, and have all 

 the radii and striae on them that the shells of those sorts of fishes commonly 

 have. 



All these shell-fish have their shells on : some of which are comparatively 

 thin. Sometimes the shells are in their petrifaction so thoroughly united 

 unto and incorporated with the stone, that they are scarcely visible. Others in 

 the same quarry have a thick white shell on them petrified, but not incorporated 

 with the substance of the bed in which they lie. In getting the fish out, all 

 the shell sticks so fast to the rock, that most commonly it is left behind ; but 

 sometimes the shell cleaves in two, one half of the shell on both sides of the 

 fish sticks to it, and the other half to both sides of the bed, but others come 

 out by lying in the air in frosty nights, with the whole natural shell on, and 

 the radii or striae very exact. There are other fish here, that have a black 

 smooth shell, with several striae, but no radii, very like, if not the same with 

 the concha nigra Rondeletii. 



I have also seen in this quarry some shell-fish half open, and filled with the 

 matter of the bed in which they lie, and petrified with it. Others being in 

 heaps together, I have found some of them broken, some bruised, and the 

 edges of one fish thrust into the sides of another, some with the one shell 

 thrust half way over the other, &c. and so petrified in the bed together. Others 

 in the same bed have been so close, that the matter of the bed could not insi- 

 nuate itself into them. Some of these that are thus found, are quite empty, 



