92 APPENDIX B. 



I have compared it with another bone which is not by 

 mee" (op. cit p. 387). The letter which follows and 

 which was unknown to Wilkin supplies this information. 



[p. 193.] "Sr I cannot sufficiently admire the 

 ingenious industry of Sr Robert Cotton in preserving 

 so many things of rarity and observation nor commend 

 your own enquiries for the satisfaction of such particulars. 

 The petrified bone you sent me, which with divers others 

 was found underground, near Cunnington, seems to be 

 the vertebra, spondyle or rackbone of some large fish, 

 and no terrestrious animal as some upon sight conceived, 

 as either of Camel, rhinoceros, or elephant, for it is not 

 perforated and hollow but solid according to the spine 

 of fishes in whom the spinal marrow runs in a channel 

 above these solid racks, or spondiles. 



"It seems much too big for the largest Dolphins, 

 porpoises, or sword fishes, and too little for a true or 

 grown whale, but may be the bone of some big cetaceous 

 animal, as particularly of that which seamen call a 

 Grampus ; a kind of small whale, whereof some come 

 short, some exceed twenty foot. And not only whales 

 but Grampusses have been taken in this Estuarie or 

 mouth of the fenland rivers. And about twenty years 

 ago four were run ashore near Hunstanton and two had 

 young ones after they came to land. But whether this 

 fish were of the longitude of twenty foot (as is conceived) 

 some doubt may be made for this bone containeth little 

 more than an inch in thickness, and not three inches in 

 breadth so that it might have a greater number thereof 

 than is easily allowable to make out that longitude. For 

 of the whale which was cast upon our coast about six 

 years ago a vertebra or rackbone still preserved, con- 

 taineth a foot in breadth and nine inches in depth, yet 

 the whale with all advantages but sixty-two foot in 

 length, [p. 194.] We are not ready to believe that, 

 wherever such relics of fish or sea animals are found, the 



