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 Canal and the Great
Western Railway now pass 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.]
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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.
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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 brasse 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 Lacock 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 passe? As for salts, some shoot
cubicall, some hexagonall.
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