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.
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I shall conclude with the stones called the Grey Wethers; which lye
scattered all over the downes about Marleborough, and incumber 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
Gods, as is described by Hesiod in his {Gk: theogonia}.
They are also (far from the rode) commonly called Sarsdens, or Sarsdon
stones.
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