274 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO IJAO. 



have been very plentiful ; and so they must have been all over the country, as 

 the like are to be found in every place wherever the earth is broken open, or a 

 pit is digged. 



About a mile south of a little country town called Kisick, and near 2 furlongs 

 from Hartford-bridge, or 3 miles south-west of Norwich, is a pit, in which the 

 country people dig a particular sort of clay to lay on their sandy lands. Among 

 this clay lie a great many knots, lumps, or nodules, of a bluer kind of earth, 

 not widely differing from that which is found in Harwich clifF; these, when 

 digged up, are soft; but when they have been for some time exposed to the open 

 air, they become almost as hard as flint. In and upon these lumps are the im- 

 pressions of the cornu ammonis, or snake-stones, in a beautiful manner, from 1 

 inch to 5 or 6 in diameter, and several have part of the shells on them, of a 

 yellowish white. Many other shells are found in these lumps; as the pectun- 

 culus, helmet stones, belemnites, common cockle, turbos, &c. but these are 

 most of them very small. 



But still more curious than all the rest are certain lumps of petrified crystal- 

 lized matter, of a very odd form, such as he had never seen or ever read of. 

 They appear to have been originally lumps of blue clay, cracked by some subter- 

 raneous heat, or other unknown cause, into which the water has insinuated, and 

 their contained salts have crystallized in the cracks. When these lumps are 

 taken up and become dry, the clay part falls from out the exterior cells; and 

 then they may be thought grossly to represent a honey-comb. 



On a Polypus at the Heart, and a Scirrhous Tumour of the Uterus. By Peter 

 Templeman, M,D. N" 481, p. 285. 



Ann Hicks was brought to the workhouse of St. Andrew's, Holborn, on Sa- 

 turday, Nov. 15, 1746. Her complaints were, a difficulty of breathing, from 

 a cold she had caught about a fortnight before, with a violent pain and palpita- 

 tion of her heart. The pulse was scarcely perceptible. The surgeon, Mr. Tait, 

 being present. Dr. T. ordered him to open a vein; but to keep his finger on the 

 pulse, and if it did not rise on her losing a little blood, immediately to desist. 

 On losing 1 oz. or 2 of blood, the pulse grew more languid, and he accordingly 

 desisted. Dr. T. then ordered a large blister to be applied to her neck, and gave 

 her oily medicines with the volatile salts. He did not visit at the workhouse 

 again till the Wednesday following, when he found her much easier in her 

 breath, but the pain and palpitation of the heart continuing. As the oily medi- 

 cines had occasioned a violent purging, he ordered her the elixir asthmaticum in 

 cinnamon water. Her pulse was still so little discernible, that though he thought 

 it intermitted, yet he could not be positive. She, however, died on Friday, and 

 her body was opened on Saturday. 



