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 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.] ___________________________________
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 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. 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.