5i PHILOSOPHICAL TKANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1744. 



self the only one who had observed it ; but, some time after, looking into Der- 

 hain's Physico-Theology, he found it mentioned, as if Dr. Highmore had seen 

 and communicated it to Mr. Ray. 



A Catalogue oj the Fifty Plants from Chelsea Garden, presented to the Royal 

 Society by the Company of Apothecaries, for tlie Yecr ITA'l, &c. By Joseph 

 Miller, Apothecary. N° 474, p. I89. 



[This is the 21st presentation of this kind, completing the number of 1050 dif- 

 ferent plants.] 



On the Manuring of Land with Fossil Shells. By the Rev. Roger Pickering of 

 Hoxton, F.R.S. N°474, p. 191. 



At Woodbridge in Suffolk, in a farmer's ground, there are some pits, in 

 depth equal to the usual height of houses, consisting of several strata of shells, 

 from the bottom to within about Q feet of the surface, where the natural soil of 

 gravel and sand begins. The mass of shells here collected is prodigious; the 

 sorts various; but the buccinum vulgare, or whilk, prevails the most. The 

 depth to which these shells reach is not yet dug down to. Woodbridge is seated 

 7 miles n. e. from Ipswich; and is about the same distance from Orford on the 

 sea coast, which bears from it due east. How such a mass of shells should get 

 there at such a distance from the sea, when history has not informed us of any 

 remarkable inundation in those parts, or that such a tract of land was ever re- 

 covered from the sea, appears difficult to determine, by any other than the Mo- 

 saic hypothesis of a universal deluge. Indeed the river Deben, which rises at 

 Debenham some miles ofT, runs by Woodbridge, within half a mile of these pits, 

 in its course to the German ocean, where it empties itself: but such a collection 

 of shells can hardly be supposed to have been thrown up by it, and a surface of 

 earth to the depth of 9 feet, settled over it, without allowing a space of time 

 for such a circumstance, almost equal to the interval between us and the deluge. 



The farmer of the ground has, it seems, laid the foundation of an ample for- 

 tune from them. He contented himself in the old beaten track of the farmers, 

 till a happy accident forced him on a bold improvement. He used to mend his 

 cartways, when broken up by harvest-work, with these shells ; in which business 

 his cart one day broke down, and threw the shells out of the cart-track into the 

 cultivated part of the field. This spot produced so remarkable a crop next year, 

 that he put some loads on a particular piece, kept the secret to himself, and 

 waited for the event. This trial answering expectation, he directly took a lease 

 of a large quantity of poor land, at about 5 shillings the acre ; and having ma- 

 nured it heartily with these shells, in about 3 years it turned to so good an ac- 

 count, that he had 15 shillings the ^cre proffered to take the lease out of his 

 hands. 



