68 NATURAL HISTORY 
this clay, and more fpeckled with purple, fo that you can fcarce break it 
with a hammer ; and I find that the more there is of the purple in any 
fample, the more hard, and lefs ready to diffolve in water. But the mod: 
curious of this fort, which I have feen, was difcovered here in 1755 ; 
it is of a texture fo clofe and fine, that after it is cut or fcraped, it 
remains as fmooth, and of as high a polilh, as the beft porcelain 
does after it is burnt. It has an incruftation of green amianthos 
on the fide of the lode, which in my fpecimen was the twelfth part 
of an inch thick ; and is the moll beautiful fofiil of this kind I 
have feen. This may be the Galactites of the ancients, at leaf! it 
is much of the lame nature. 
N°. VI. A fat mafs of fteatites, its coat or Ikin about half an inch 
thick, of a waxen texture, of a brown-yellow or deep amber 
colour, it’s interiour ftrong purple, interlaced with a paler, more 
cinereous purple, the whole veined with a whitifh fteatites, exactly 
as to the exteriour, like the purple Plymouth marble ; it diftolves 
into a pulp fooner than the foregoing number. 
N°. VII. In the lode (or vein), near the top of the cliff, I find a 
kind of green gritty chalk, which may be compreffed with the grafp 
of the hand, divides in water eafily, and diftolves into a clammy 
pulp. In the more regular and contracted lode below, I find the 
green making a ftony courfe of about an inch wide, its tafte 
brackilh ; immerged in water, it divides into angular granules ; 
it is the moft folid and hardeft of any yet mentioned, whence I con- 
clude that the green fteatites, which is tender, gritty, and pulpy 
above, becomes more compact in the contracted vein below ; its 
parts attracting one another more forcibly where they have not room 
to fpread into a loofe incoherent ftate, confequently the narrower 
the mold, cleft, or vein, the more clofe, hard, and ftony the included 
fubftance becomes ; and if this ftone proves harder ftill underneath, 
as is not unlikely, it will thereby become the more valuable ’. 
N°. VIII. A deeper purple, and more ftony fteatites, from the lame 
cliffs ; but whether from the principal lode, uncertain. It has fo 
much of the nature of ftone, that it does not fwell, nor decom- 
pound in water, as the foregoing numbers. Being fo ftony, I tried 
to get a good colour from it by grinding it in oil ; it was very dif- 
ficult to bruife, but when ground fine was too greafy for painting. 
N°. IX. A blackifh kind of fteatites, the vein about an inch thick, 
it’s exteriour fmooth and glofiy, it’s interiour veined and fpotted 
with N°. V, its texture clofe, corneous, and approaching in the main 
to a dark flint, and as hard as flint it was to grind, but it will 
not give fire with fteel ; being ground down it became of a good 
0 This fort approaches very near to the Moroch- N°. XH. Perhaps it is fotne of the green Ami- 
tus of the ancients. Hill’s Catalogue, page 22, anthos. 
burnt 
