The Natural History of Wiltshire Part 10

AT Chilmarke is a very great quarrie of freestone, whereof the religious houses of the south part of Wilts.h.i.+re and Dorset were built.

[The walls, b.u.t.tresses, and other substantial parts of Salisbury Cathedral are constructed of the Chilmarke stone. - J. B.]

At Teffont Ewyas is a quarrie of very good white freestone, not long since discovered.

At Compton Ba.s.set is a quarrie of soft white stone betwixt chalke and freestone: it endures fire admirably well, and would be good for reverbatory furnaces: it is much used for ovens and hearth-stones: it is as white as chalke. At my Lord Stowell's house at Aubury is a chimney piece carved of it in figures; but it doth not endure the weather, and therefore it ought not to be exposed to sun and raine.

At Yatton Keynel, in Longdean, is a freestone quarrie, but it doth not endure the weather well.

In Alderton-field is a freestone quarrie, discovered a little before the civill-warres broke forth.

In Bower Chalke field, in the land that belongs to the farme of Broad Chalke, is a quarrie of freestone of a dirty greenish colour, very soft, but endures the weather well. The church and houses there are built with it, and the barne of the farme, w{hi}ch is of great antiquity.

The common stone in Malmesbury hundred and thereabout is oftentimes blewish in the inside, and full of very small c.o.c.kles, as at Easton Piers. These stones are dampish and sweate, and doe emitt a cold and unwholsome dampe, sc. the vitriolate petrified salt in it exerts itselfe.

I know no where in this county that lime is made, unlesse it be made of Chalke stones: whereas between Bath and Bristoll all the stone is lime-stone. If lime were at xs. or xxs. per lib. it would be valued above all other drugges.

At Swindon is a quarrie of stones, excellent for paveing halls, staire-cases, &c; it being pretty white and smooth, and of such a texture as not to be moist or wett in damp weather. It is used at London in Montagu-house, and in Barkeley-house &c. (and at Cornberry, Oxon. JOHN EVELYN). This stone is not inferior to Purbac grubbes, but whiter. It takes a little polish, and is a dry stone. It was discovered but about 1640, yet it lies not above four or five foot deep. It is near the towne, and not above [ten] miles from the river of Thames at Lechlade. [The Wilts and Berks Ca.n.a.l and the Great Western Railway now pa.s.s close to the town of Swindon, and afford great faculties for the conveyance of this stone, which is now in consequence very extensively used.- J. B.]

If Chalk may be numbred among stones, we have great plenty of it. I doe believe that all chalke was once marle; that is, that chalke has undergone subterraneous bakeings, and is become hard: e. g, as wee make tobacco-pipes.

Pebbles. - The millers in our country use to putt a black pebble under the pinne of ye axis of the mill-wheele, to keep the bra.s.se underneath from wearing; and they doe find by experience, that nothing doth weare so long as that. The bakers take a certain pebble, which they putt in the vaulture of their oven, which they call the warning-stone: for when that is white the oven is hot.

In the river Avon at Lac.o.c.k are large round pebbles. I have not seen the like elsewhere. Quaere, if any transparent ones? From Merton, southward to the sea, is pebbly.

There was a time when all pebbles were liquid. Wee find them all ovalish. How should this come to pa.s.se? As for salts, some shoot cubicall, some hexagonall. Why might there not be a time, when these pebbles were making in embryone (in fieri), for such a shooting as falls into an ovalish figure?

Pebbles doe breake according to the length of the greatest diameter: but those wee doe find broken in the earth are broken according to their shortest diameter. I have broken above an hundred of them, to try to have one broken at the shortest diameter, to save the charge and paines of grinding them for molers to grind colours for limming; and they all brake the long way as aforsayd.

Black flints are found in great plenty in the chalkie country. They are a kind of pyrites, and are as regular; 'tis certain they have been "in fluore".

Excellent fire-flints are digged up at Dun's Pit in Groveley, and fitted for gunnes by Mr. Th. Sadler of Steeple Langford.

Anno 1655, I desired Dr. W. Harvey to tell me how flints were generated. He sayd to me that the black of the flint is but a natural vitrification of the chalke: and added that the medicine of the flint is excellent for the stone, and I thinke he said for the greene sicknesse; and that in some flints are found stones in next degree to a diamond. The doctor had his armes and his wife's cutt in such a one, which was bigger than the naile of my middle finger; found at Folkston in Kent, where he told me he was borne.

In the stone-brash country in North Wilts flints are very rare, and those that are found are but little. I once found one, when I was a little boy learning to read, in the west field by Easton Piers, as big as one's fist, and of a kind of liver colour. Such coloured flints are very common in and about Long Lane near Stuston, [Sherston ?-J. B.]

and no where else that I ever heard of.

It is reported that at Tydworth a diamond was found in a flint, which the Countess of Marleborough had set in a ring. I have seen small fluores in flints (sparkles in the hollow of flints) like diamonds; but when they are applied to the diamond mill they are so soft that they come to nothing. But, had he that first found out the way of cutting transparent pebbles (which was not long before the late civill warres) kept it a secret, he might have got thousands of pounds by it; for there is no way to distinguish it from a diamond but by the mill.

I shall conclude with the stones called the Grey Wethers; which lye scattered all over the downes about Marleborough, and inc.u.mber the ground for at least seven miles diameter; and in many places they are, as it were, sown so thick, that travellers in the twylight at a distance take them to be flocks of sheep (wethers) from whence they have their name. So that this tract of ground looks as if it had been the scene where the giants had fought with huge stones against the G.o.ds, as is described by Hesiod in his {Gk: theogonia}.

They are also (far from the rode) commonly called Sarsdens, or Sarsdon stones. About two or three miles from Andover is a village called Sersden, i. e. Csars dene, perhaps don: Caesar's dene, Caesar's plains; now Salisbury plaine. (So Salisbury, Caesaris Burgus.) But I have mett with this kind of stones sometimes as far as from Christian Malford in Wilts to Abington; and on the downes about Royston, &c. as far as Huntington, are here and there those Sarsden-stones. They peep above the ground a yard and more high, bigger and lesser. Those that lie in the weather are so hard that no toole can touch them. They take a good polish. As for their colour, some are a kind of dirty red, towards porphyry; some perfect white; some dusky white; some blew, like deep blew marle; some of a kind of olive greenish colour; but generally they are whitish. Many of them are mighty great ones, and particularly those in Overton Wood. Of these kind of stones are framed the two stupendous antiquities of Aubury and Stone-heng. I have heard the minister of Aubury say those huge stones may be broken in what part of them you please without any great trouble. The manner is thus: they make a fire on that line of the stone where they would have it to crack; and, after the stone is well heated, draw over a line with cold water, and immediately give a smart knock with a smyth's sledge, and it will breake like the collets at the gla.s.se-house. [This system of destruction is still adopted on the downs in the neighbourhood of Avebury. Many of the upright stones of the great Celtic Temple in that parish have been thus destroyed in my time.- J. B.]

Sir Christopher Wren sayes they doe pitch (incline) all one way, like arrowes shot. Quaere de hoc, and if so to what part of the heavens they point? Sir Christopher thinks they were cast up by a vulcano.

CHAPTER VII.

OF FORMED STONES.

[AUBREY, and other writers of his time, designated by this term the fossil remains of antediluvian animals and vegetables. This Chapter is very brief in the ma.n.u.script; and the following are the only pa.s.sages adapted for this publication.

The numerous excavations which have been made in the county since Aubrey's time have led to the discovery of a great abundance of organic remains; especially in the northern part of the county, from Swindon to Chippenham and Box. Large collections have been made by Mr.

John Provis and Mr. Lowe, of Chippenham, which it is hoped will be preserved in some public museum, for the advantage of future geologists.-J. B.]

THE stones at Easton-Piers are full of small c.o.c.kles no bigger than silver half-pennies. The stones at Kington St. Michael and Dracot Cerne are also c.o.c.kley, but the c.o.c.kles at Dracot bigger.

c.o.c.kleborough, near Chippenham, hath its denomination from the petrified c.o.c.kles found there in great plenty, and as big as c.o.c.kles.

Sheldon, in the parish of Chippenham, hath its denomination from the petrified sh.e.l.ls in the stones there.

At Dracot Cerne there is belemnites, as also at Tytherington Lucas.

They are like hafts of knives, dimly transparent, having a seame on one side.

West from Highworth, towards Cricklad, are stones as big, or bigger than one's head, that lie common even in the highway, which are petrified sea-mushromes. They looke like honeycombs, but the holes are not hexagons, but round. They are found from Lydiard Tregoze to c.u.mnor in Barks.h.i.+re, in which field I have also seen them. [See page 9.-J.

B.]

At Steeple Ashton are frequently found stones resembling the picture of the unicorne's horn, but not tapering. They are about the bignesse of a cart-rope, and are of a reddish gray colour.

In the vicaridge garden at Bower Chalke are found petrified oyster sh.e.l.ls; which the learned Mr. Lancelot Morehouse, who lived there some yeares, a.s.sured me: and I am informed since that there are also c.o.c.kle sh.e.l.ls and scalop sh.e.l.ls. Also in the parish of Wotton Ba.s.set are found petrified oyster sh.e.l.ls; and there are also found cornua ammonis of a reddish gray, but not very large. About two or three miles from the Devises are found in a pitt snake-stones (cornua ammonis) no bigger than a sixpence, of a black colour. Mr. John Beaumont, Junr., of Somersets.h.i.+re, a great naturalist, tells me that some-where by Chilmarke lies in the chalke a bed of stones called "echini marini".

He also enformes me that, east of Bitteston, in the estate of Mr.

Montjoy, is a spring,-they call it a holy well,-where five-pointed stones doe bubble up (Astreites) which doe move in vinegar.

At Broad Chalke are sometimes found cornua ammonis of chalke. I doe believe that they might be heretofore in as great abundance hereabout as they are about Caynsham and Burnet in Somersets.h.i.+re; but being soft, the plough teares them in pieces; and the sun and the frost does slake them like lime. They are very common about West Lavington, with which the right honourable James, Earle of Abington, has adorned his grotto's there. There are also some of these stones about Calne.

CHAPTER VIII.

AN HYPOTHESIS OF THE TERRAQUEOUS GLOBE. A DIGRESSION.

[THE seventeenth century was peculiarly an age of scientific research and investigation. The substantial and brilliant discoveries of Newton induced many of his less gifted contemporaries to pursue inquiries into the arcana and profound mysteries of science; but where rational inferences and deductions failed, they too frequently had recourse to mere unsupported theory and conjectural speculation.

The stratification of the crust of our globe, and the division of its surface into land and water, was a fertile theme for conjecture; and many learned and otherwise sagacious writers, a.s.signed imaginary causes for the results which they attempted to explain.

The chapter of Aubrey's work which bears the above t.i.tle is, to some extent, of this nature. It consists chiefly of speculative opinions extracted from other works, with a few conjectures of his own, which, though based upon the clear and judicious views of his friend Robert Hooke, do not, upon the whole, deserve much consideration; although to the curious in the history of Geological science they may appear interesting. Its author had sufficient diffidence as to the merits of this chapter to describe it as "a digression; ad mentem Mr. R. Hook, R.S.S."; and his friend Ray, in a letter already quoted, observes, after commending other portions of the present work, "I find but one thing that may give any just offence; and that is, the Hypothesis of the Terraqueous Globe; wherewith I must confess myself not to be satisfied: but that is but a digression, and aliene from your subject; and so may very well be left out". Ray's work on "Chaos and Creation"

published in 1692, a year after the date of this letter, was a valuable contribution to the geological knowledge of the time. Some notes by Evelyn, on Aubrey's original MS., shew that he was at least equally credulous with the author.

Aubrey concludes that the universal occurrence of "petrified fishes'

sh.e.l.ls gives clear evidence that the earth hath been all covered over with water". He a.s.sumes that the irregularities and changes in the earth's surface were occasioned by earthquakes; and has inserted in his ma.n.u.script, from the London Gazette, accounts of three earthquakes, in different parts of Italy, in the years 1688 and 1690.

A small 4to pamphlet, being "A true relation of the terrible Earthquake which happened at Ragusa, and several other cities in Dalmatia and Albania, the 6th of April 1667", is also inserted in the MS. Aubrey observes: "As the world was torne by earthquakes, as also the vaulture by time foundred and fell in, so the water subsided and the dry land appeared. Then, why might not that change alter the center of gravity of the earth? Before this the pole of the ecliptique perhaps was the pole of the world". And in confirmation of these views he quotes several pa.s.sages from Ovid's Metamorphoses, book i. fab. 7.

8. He also cites the scheme of Father Kircher, of the Society of Jesus, which, in a section of the globe, represents it as "full of cavities, and resembling the inside of a pomegranade", the centre being marked with a blazing fire, or "ignis centralis". "But now", writes Aubrey in 1691, "Mr. Edmund Halley, R.S.S., hath an hypothesis that the earth is hollow, about five hundred miles thick; and that a terella moves within it, which causes the variation of the needle; and in the center a sun". Further on he says, "that the centre of this globe is like the heart that warmes the body, is now the most commonly received opinion". On the subject of subterranean heats and fires the author quotes several pages from Dr. Edward Jorden's "Discourse of Natural Baths and Mineral Waters; wherein the original of fountains, the nature and differences of water, and particularly those of the Bathe, are declared". (4to. 1632.) He also extracts a pa.s.sage from Lemery's "Course of Chymistry", (8vo. 1686,) as the foundation of a theory to explain the heat of the Bath waters.