Page:Philosophical Transactions - Volume 050, part 1.djvu/48

 bright yellow. It is used by the inhabitants as a gentle corrosive for eating off proud flesh. There is another of a darker colour, and a much harder nature, which is found at the very mouth of the spring, where it bursts out of the rock. There are other sorts taken out of the subterraneous cavities of the spring at the time it was cleaned. In what manner they are formed, is not so easy to determine; unless there were an opportunity of observing in what manner and direction they lie within the spring. They seem to be an alabastrine spar, and are beautifully marked with strait veins of different colours, which may be supposed to have received their tinge from the different colour of the spring-water at the time when this sediment, or rather scum, was formed upon it. They find pieces of this kind most beautifully variegated and some of them large enough, by fineering to make tables: these polish very well, and are not much inferior to jasper in appearance. It is a part of the manufacture of the place, to work this sort of stone into snuff-boxes, cane-heads, and sleeve-buttons.

There is likewise another sort of incrustation different from all these, which was found some years ago, in digging for the foundations of the new parish-church, which is about 300 yards distant from the Brudel spring. They found there the same kind of water; but it did not rise with so great force as in the other spring: and they discovered in the cavities large masses of a stony concretion, which were a sort of pisolithi, most of them in a globular, but some in an oval form, from the smallest size to the bigness of a nutmeg; the former sort lying in masses, the latter generally single and detached: they are perfectly