12 NATURAL HISTORY 



the workmen sand, or forest, stone. This is generally* of 

 the colour of rusty iron, and might probably be worked as 

 -iron ore ; is very hard and heavy, and of a firm compact 

 texture, and composed of a small roundish crystalline grit, 

 cemented together by a brown, terrene, ferruginous mat- 

 ter ; will not cut without difficulty, nor easily strike fire 

 with steel. Being often found in broad flat pieces, it makes 

 good pavement for paths about houses, never becoming 

 slippery in frost or rain ; is excellent for dry walls ; and is 

 sometimes used in buildings. In many parts of that waste 

 it lies scattered on the surface of the ground ; but is dug 

 on Weaver's Down, a vast hill on the eastern verge of that 

 forest, where the pits are shallow, and the stratum thin. 

 This stone is imperishable. 



From a notion of rendering their work the more elegant, 

 and giving it a finish, masons chip this stone into small 

 fragments about the size of the head of a large nail ; and 

 then stick the pieces into the wet mortar along the joints 

 of their freestone walls : this embellishment carries an odd 

 appearance, and has occasioned strangers sometimes to ask 

 us pleasantly, " whether we fastened our walls together 

 with tenpenny nails ?" 



LETTER Y. 



TO THOMAS PENNANT, ESQUIRE. 



the singularities of this place, the 

 two rocky hollow lanes, the one to Alton, 

 and the other to the forest, deserve our 

 attention. These roads, running through 

 the malm lands, are, by the traffic of ages 

 and the fretting of water, worn down through the first 

 stratum of our freestone, and partly through the second ; 

 so that they look more like water-courses than roads ; and 

 are bedded with naked rag for furlongs together. In many 



