VOL. XXII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 637 



nyms of various authors added to the Malabar names by Mr. Petiver. The 

 animals enumerated belong to the tribes of insects and conchylia. 



The Strange Bones, and i/ie Isthmus between Dover and Calais further consi- 

 dered. By Dr. IVallis. N° 276, p. 1030. 



Mr. John Luffkin in the Trans. N° 274, informs us of several bones of an 

 extraordinary size, found lately in a gravel-pit not far from Harwich in Essex, 

 much like those found at Chartham in Kent, at a great depth under ground, 

 which he thinks rather to have been those of an elephant, than of a hippopo- 

 tamus, or other marine animal. But whichever ft is, the circumstance will 

 equally prove those valleys to have been much deeper in former times than now. 



I observe, that the river in Essex, and that in Kent, near which the bones 

 were found, are both of them named the Stoure ; which, whether it be a cor- 

 ruption of the Latin aestuarium, as Mr. Somner conjectures, or of the British 

 ys-dwr, that is, the water, I will not dispute. And that the bones being found 

 in both places much at the same depth, viz. about 1 6 o-- 17 feet, they may 

 probably have been ^lodged in both places much about the same time ; and that 

 perhaps when the Emperor Claudius brought his elephants into Kent and Essex, 

 as Mr. Luffkin intimates out of Dion Cassius. 



I observe also, that those petrified bones, in both places, were found in gra- 

 velly soils, as are those petrified shells, and bodies of fish, in gravel pits and 

 stones quarries near Oxford. How far the steams, fumes, or fluors of the earth, 

 which contribute to the formation of stone or gravel, might conduce to the 

 petrifying of these bones, shells, or other bodies, I leave to the consideration 

 of inquisitive naturalists. And whether the impregnation of such steams might 

 not swell such petrified bodies to a larger proportion than they had before. 

 Like as we observe wood, and other like materials, to swell in a moist air, by 

 the distension of their pores, on the intromission of moist particles. For I 

 take all petrifactions to be made either by incrustation or intromission of stony 

 particles. And I well remember, that many years since, at Moldash in Kent, 

 not far from Feversham, on some high and very stony grounds, which some- 

 times used to be pasture and sometimes ploughed land, I have observed several 

 oyster-shells petrified, or partly so, much larger than the ordinary proportion of 

 oysters in those parts, and very weighty ; which oyster-shells might have been 

 purposely thrown there long before, as being reputed a good manure for land ; 

 and might have been there impregnated with like halitus and effluvia, as are the 

 numerous stones on those lands. 



But, to return, I do not see why we may not think the Stoure in Essex and 



