134 
on a rock, by Lindisfarn 
Saint Cuthbert sits, and toils to frame 
The sea-born beads* that bear his name. 
Such tales had Whitby’s fishers told, 
And said they might his shape behold, 
And hear his anvil sound : 
A deaden’d clang, a huge dim form, 
Seen but and heard, when gathering storm, 
And night were closing round. 
Marmion, Canto II. v. 13 and 14. 
Among the notions which have been entertained respecting these 
fossils, none is more curious than the following : “ The country people 
retain a conceit, that the snakes, by their breathing about a hazell 
wand, doe make a stone ring of blew colour, in which there appeareth 
the yellow figure of a snake ; and that beasts which are stung, being 
given to drink of the water wherein this stone has been soked, will there- 
through recover. There was such a one bestowed on me, and the 
giver avowed to have seen a part of the stick sticking in it : but Penes 
authorum sit Jides.” The Survey of Cornwall, written hy Richard Carew, 
of Antonie, Esq. 
These, and various other idle tales, had long supplied the place of 
rational conjecture, respecting the original mode of existence of these 
fossils, until, by the investigations of Lister, Buttner, Scheuchzer, and 
particularly of Breyn, their real nature was discovered ; and it was fully 
ascertained, that they were the mineralized remains of a shell, the 
recent analogue of which was unknown. 
Plancus indeed discovered, in the sand of the Riminian shores, micro- 
scopic, spiral, multilocular shells, which he considered as minute recent 
shells of this genus, and which have been considered as such by almost 
every writer on these subjects, since his discovery. Similar shells have 
been found in several parts of the world, and even on the shores of this 
* Trochites. 
