OF CORNWALL. 281 
fordes, diffolved by the flood, was agitated in fome parts before it 
fettled and finally concreted : I pafs over the fhodes and pebbly 
ftrata of Porthnanvan (as already fet forth, pages 76 and 150), 
though equal evidences oi the deluge. Again : In other countries, 
where their waters are plentifully charged with fufpended fpar (ufu- 
ally termed petrifying waters), the fhells fettling in the fordes which 
the deluge had every where produced, and afterwards deferted, were 
either immured in new forming ftones of lime and marble, or the 
nidus % they formed were filled with fiones or femimetallick concre- 
tions. It could not be fo (at leaft fo frequent) in Cornwall where 
fpar is very rare ; petrifying waters few or none, and the bafe of our 
ftone moftly quartz. There are in other parts fome figured foflils 
in flinty nodules, as echinites, &c. but flints are fo fcarce in Corn- 
wall, that it has been till now doubted whether there are any native 
in the county: there are however fome (lee page 106), but being 
broke I have not as yet found any marine exu'uicB in them. Again . 
In chalky ftrata many of the tendered fhells (fuch as fpines of 
the echinus s, & fc.) are preferved in great quantity, but in Corn- 
wall we have little or no chalk. When we confider therefore the 
mineral impregnation of our waters, and the hard cryftalline bafis 
of our Cornifli ftones, incapable of yielding to the waters of the 
flood, and the fcarcity of fpar and chalk, we Ihall not think it 
ftrange, that fo fmall a diftridf as this county fhould have few extra- 
neous foflils to boaft of. But after all, it is very certain that we have 
fome marine and extraneous productions inclofed in our Cornifh 
ftones, although they did not occur to the learned gentlemen before- 
mentioned during their ftiort vifits to this county. One caft of a 
fhell in mundic, and fome vermicular remains, may be feen Plate 
xv. page 137, Fig. xm and xiv, and Plate xvi. page 141, Fig. 
liv, lv, and lvi. Some plant-like cafts in the fame femi-metal 
may be feen, ibidem, from Fig. xxix to Fig. xxxm. from my own 
collection, and probably many other forts, vegetable as well as tef- 
taceous, may occur to others among our minerals. The moft likely 
places to afford them in ftone to a diligent enquirer, I take to be 
the northern coaft near Lower St. Column and the fhore of Cuthbert, 
Carantoc, and Piran fands, where we have alabafter, ftalaCtites, and 
the fand-ftone, in which laft I find bits of flat : the hart s horn alfo 
(Plate xxvii. Fig. v.) was extracted, in the year 1752, from the 
middle of a rock of this Cornifh free-ftrone, at New-Kaye, in the 
parifti of Lower St. Columb, Cornwall, (fee page 95) which I there- 
fore give in its natural fize as it was taken out, the letter G maiking 
the incifion made by the pick-axe of the ftone-cutter who found it. 
The fcrapings became diffolved in vinegar, which pure hart’s-horn, 
nut into the fame acid, would not do : the horn had loft its natural 
“ ^ C toughnels 
