CORRESPONDENCE OF RAY. 153 



as we see the thing done, it is vain to dispute against it 

 from the unhkelihood of the doing it. But yet we may 

 give the same account of the original of this bed of shells, 

 perhaps one hundred feet above the level of the surface of 

 the sea, as we have elsewhere given of that bed of sand 

 and cockle-shells found in sinking a well at Amsterdam, 

 at perchance near one hundred feet deep below the pre- 

 sent bottom of the sea ; to wit, that both the one and the 

 other were of old time the bottom of the sea, and after- 

 wards covered by several coats, or floors of earth, brought 

 down from the mountains in land-floods ; the several 

 beds or floors to be seen in such broken mountains being 

 the several settlings of particular floods. 



2. Some other bodies, besides shells, commonly 

 esteemed stones, there are found in the earth, resembhng 

 the teeth and other bones of fishes, which are so mani- 

 festly the very things they are thought only to resemble, 

 that it seems to me great weakness in any man to deny 

 it. Such are the GlossopetrcB dug up in Malta in such 

 quantities, that you may buy them by measm'e and not 

 by tale ; and also the vertebres of thornbacks, or other 

 cartilaginous fishes there found, and sold for stones 

 astiong the Glossopetrcs, which have no greater dissimili- 

 tudb to the teeth of a living shark, or the vertebres of a 

 quick thornback, than lying so long in the earth, as they 

 must needs have done, will necessarily induce. Now in 

 this same isle of Malta we found also many shell-like 

 stones, which why we should not esteem to have been 

 originally the shells of fishes I see no reason ; for if in 

 one and the same place we find many teeth and bones of 

 fishes entire and unpetrified, and likewise stones exactly 

 imitating the shells of other fishes, a great presumption 

 to me it is that these were originally the things whose 

 shape only they now seem to bear. Neither are these 

 Glossopetrce found only in Malta, but also in many places 

 of Germany, far remote from the sea, in a hill near Aken, 

 in so great plenty that Goropius makes it an argument they 

 could not be the teeth of sharks. " In colle illo," saith he, 



