CORKESPONDENCE OF RAY. 181 



Mr. Cole's Letter to Mr. Ray. 



Worthy Sir, — I have for a long time engaged many 

 masters of ships, and others, to bring home Avhatever they 

 can find for me, as also on both the sides o£ Severn, and 

 am of opinion, by what I have this winter found, that no 

 river in Em'ope doth yield more variety, especially sea 

 animals, great and small, and minerals, there being very 

 high land on either side, high and rapid tides, often with 

 violent storms, which have so much gained on the rocks 

 and cliffs, that many fossils and figured stones are cast 

 out and found on the shore, especially where at spring- 

 tides the water ebbs far out. Such I have found this 

 winter, i. e. figured stones, which would put you out of 

 all doubt that there are many varieties of naturally-formed 

 stones, which never were either animals or vegetables, or 

 any parts of them, not only because no such shell-fishes 

 were ever found, so far as appears by any known authors, 

 or the collections that I have seen or heard of (and to 

 suppose any species of creatures to cease cannot consist 

 with the Divine providence, and is contrary to the opinion 

 of all philosophers as well as learned divines) ; but it 

 doth evidently appear by the figures of some of those I 

 have found this winter, that they were never capable of 

 being living creatures ; as among others, to instance in 

 one of those which can be reduced to none but the 

 ophiomorphites, which I found growing between the thin 

 plates of a kind of brittle blue slate in large rocks, some 

 a furlong within full sea-mark, and some where the water 

 comes not at the highest tides, only in great storms where 

 the waves break, and sometimes dash when forced up by 

 the wind. These being broken with a convenient tool, 

 will shiver all into very thin plates, between which I 

 found an abundance of those stones, as brittle as the 

 slate in which they grow, and of the same consistence, 

 yet so thin, that the broadest, being about four inches, 

 are not so thick as a half-crown piece ; some not half an 



