38 
Besides the bodies already mentioned, we shall have occasionally, 
to notice certain figured stones*, which independent of the inte- 
ference of any animal or vegetable body, present the resemblance 
of some body, not of the mineral kingdom. When this is the 
result of the fortuitous concurrence of certain marks on the surface, 
they have been termed lapides jticti, and graptolithi; and when 
the resemblance depends on the whole external form, they have 
been named lithoglyphi. 
Should our old friend Wilton complain of this letter being too 
dry and unentertaining, remind him, that unless our terms are 
defined, there never can be a hope of our obtaining a good under- 
standing. Promise him, that our pursuits shall yield him a large 
stock of entertainment, with a full share of the marvellous. Assure 
him, that he shall hear 
Of antres vast, and deserts idle, 
Rough quarries, rocks, and hills, whose heads touch heaven. Shakspeare. 
Tell him, that I hope his faith will be comprehensive enough to 
enable him to receive, with full credit, the accounts delivered by 
Baptista Fulgosus, Lodovicus Moscardus, and Theodorus Moretus, 
that a whole ship, with its anchors, broken masts, and forty mariners, 
with their merchandize, were found, in the year 1460, in a mine 
fifty fathom deep, in the neighbourhood of Berne, in Switzerland 
Relate to him, that Valchius, in his commentary on the Klein Baur, 
tells us of a truly curious fossil man, found at Maria Kirch, near 
Strasburgh, by a miner, who, breaking open the hollow of a rock, 
was astonished at beholding the figure of an armed man, standing 
upright, composed of a mass of silver, of five hundred pounds 
weight. If his interest and astonishment be not hereby sufficiently 
» Lapides Jigurati—Lilhomorphi, y^&Wexn. 
f Musco di Ludov. Moscardo. lib. ii. cap. 3. Theodor. Moreti. tract, de ^str. Maris, 
cap. 21. Baptist. Fulgosi Diet. & Fact. Mem. Collect, lib. i. cap. 6. 
