400 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 17 IQ. 



is reasonable to suppose, that on the retiring of the waters of the deluge from 

 the superficies of this country, into the eastern seas, these heavy bodies were 

 intercepted by this cliff, vvhich has retained such vast quantities of them ever 

 since : while those that fell on common mold are mostly rotten, and now lost. 



Sir Isaac Newton's doctrine of the attraction of the particles of matter, ac- 

 cording to the quantity of its solidity, proximity, and surface, especially that it 

 is infinitely greater in the point of contact, on which depends its cohesion and 

 all the varieties of physical action, will easily direct us to a notion of petrifac- 

 tion. We learn how a proper degree of heat or cold, moisture, motion, rest 

 and time, promote thisprinciple, from the common experiments of crystalliza- 

 tion and freezing even before the fire, and in many chemical mixtures. Whence 

 we may know how stone grows in quarries gradually, not by any fancied vegeta- 

 tion, though there is something like it in corals, but generally by apposition of 

 parts, as is perceived in the floors of subterraneous grots and caverns. So that 

 we have no reason to doubt, but what was clay, sand, or earth, 3000 years 

 ago, may now be stone or marble, according as the above-mentioned causes 

 occur. This will convince us that the now barren and rocky plains of the 

 countries of Syria, India, and Arabia, are owing to natural causes, because the 

 same is observable of the famous countries of Greece and Africa, warm regions, 

 and so renowned for fertility in ancient authors. So that there may be some possi- 

 bility in the opinion of those who think that in many ages the whole face of 

 the globe may become one great rock. Dr. Plot, in his Natural History of 

 Oxfordshire, gives an account of a tumulus, now a perfect mount of stone : 

 and on St. Vincent's Rock, near Bristol, are fortifications now become solid 

 cliffs. About 6 years since, I was shown many human bones taken from whole 

 skeletons, with British beads, chains, iron rings, brass bits of bridles, and the 

 like, which were dug up in a quarry at Blankney in Lincolnshire ; which pro- 

 bably was plain mold when these old bodies of the Britons were interred ; and 

 since then I saw many human bones and armour, with Roman coins, fibulae, &c. 

 found in a stone pit in the park at Hunstanton in Norfolk, which were supposed 

 to have been buried in the earth after a battle. Whence we may judge it a 

 vulgar error, in the ruins of old castles and walls to admire the tenacity of the 

 mortar, and to praise our ancestors for an art which we suppose now lost ; when 

 doubtless the strength of the cement is owing to length of time : and in future 

 ages the same judgment may be formed of our modern buildings. 



From all these instances, I infer the ancient state of these cliffs, where this 

 skeleton was found, and shells are daily found, intimately mixed in the sub- 

 stance of the stone, to have formerly been of a softer consistence, capable of 

 admitting them into its bowels, and immuring them as part of itself; and that 



