22$ Dr. schwedtawer’s Account 
and more pounds. The piece, which the Dutch Eaft India 
Company bought from the King of Tydor, weighed 182 
pounds. An American fiiherman from Antigua found fome 
years ago, about 52 leagues fouth-eaft from the Windward 
Iflands, a piece of ambergrife in a whale, which weighed about 
130 pounds, and fold for five hundred pounds fferling. 
We are told by all writers on ambergrife, that fometimes 
claws and beaks of birds, feathers of birds, parts of vegetables, 
fhells, fifh, and bones of fifh, are found in the middle of it, 
or /arioufly mixed with it ; but of a very large quantity of 
pieces which I have feen, and which I have carefully exa- 
mined, I have found none that contained any fuch thing, 
though I do not deny, that fuch lubflances may fometimes 
be found in it ; but the circumffance which to me feems to be 
the mod: remarkable, is, that in all the pieces of ambergrife of 
any confiderable dze, whether found on the fea, or in the 
whale, which I have feen, I have condantly found a confidera- 
ble quantity of black fpots, which, after the mod: careful exa- 
mination, appear to be the beaks of ti e Sepia Gctopodia. 
Tliefe beaks feem to be the fubdances which have hitherto been 
always mi da ken for claw T s or beaks of birds, or for fhells. 
Having collected a pretty large quantity of them, I beg leave 
to prefent to the Royal Society fome fpecimens, in which the 
whole lrrudhire of thefe beaks is extremely well preferved. 
They are accompanied by a beak which Sir Joseph banes per- 
mitted me to take from a cuttle fifh in his collection, fo that 
any gentleman, who will be at the pains to compare them toge- 
ther, will be enabled to convince himfelf of the truth of what 
I have advanced. 
The prefence of thefe beaks in ambergrife proves evidently, 
that all ambergrife containing them is in its origin, or muff 
have 
