SECT. II. 
Flints. 
Io6 natural history 
or Chian marble of the ancients ; although any black hard marble 
will indeed anfwer the purpofes of a touch-ftone. 
N". 7. Tafpers are to be found among our pebbles, more e.peci 
ally of the black and yellow kind ; but of the green jafper I have 
yet feen none found in this county. 
tr has been generally held by Naturalifts that we have no flints 
natfvein Cornwall, bit this is a miftake Betwixt the towns of 
Penzance and Marazicn there is a beach of pebbles two mile, and 
three Quarters long, among which many hundred flints may be 
picked'hp every day ; and left it fhould be uM that^thefe 
flints may poffibly be foreign, and brought m balla , J | ’ 
muft obferve, that in the low-lands or the parilh of Ludgvan, lea 
a mulket-lhot from the laid beach, in a place called the or as, 
there is a ftratum of clay about three feet under the gras : the clay 
is about four feet deep. In this clay, immerfed from one to four 
fht deep, (fometimes deeper) flints are diicovered m great numbers, 
their fize from the bignefs of a man’s lift to that of a bean, then 
coat nearly of the colour of the clay, (as in chalk we find then ’ 
teriour infeded with the chalk-bed in which they lie) and th 
inward part died with the fame colour more than half way ; the 
other part, near the middle, a common, corneous, brown flint. In 
the fame bed of clay, I find fea-pebbles of opake white quartz 
and fome fhingle; fufficient and evident veftiges of *e jniverfal 
deluae I find alfo many final! blue killas ftones, with all leir 
andes on ; an equal evidence, that as the advancing waters of the 
deluge introduced the productions of the fea, fo the departing wa- 
ters of the fame cataftrophe frequently depofited ftones and frag- 
ments of ftones from the hills : both ftiew, that th tflratum remains 
as it was left by the flood, and are confequently teftimomes that the 
flints found in it muft be native, and the growth of Cornwalh 
The flints of this bed of clay are brown within, but on the beach 
we have a remarkable variety, and one now before me of an opake 
white, is of as fine texture, and as high a polilh, as any Carnenon 
I have ever feen. 
sect. hi. Pebbles found on the fea-fhore are generally of the fame flattifli 
Shape and oval fhape. This fliape is therefore attributed (and for the mo t- 
part not unjuftly) to the agitation of the fea, which, 
their caufe ro ip n p. them to and fro, againft the rocks and againlt one anodic , 
enquired into wears &i ff ^ angkS) and neceffa rily re duces them to their globular 
figure : but what exercifes the attention of the curious, is, that 
pebbles are oftentimes lound in clay and gravel-pits many rrues 
from the fea, and yet of the fame orbicular fiiape as-thofe on hie 
