Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.17489

    Petrified shell (fossil) found in Wiltshire

    Date
    1690-91
    Creator
    Unknown, Artist
    Object type
    Archive reference number
    Manuscript page number
    p14
    Material
    Dimensions
    height (page): 368mm
    width (page): 232mm
    Subject
    Earth Sciences
       > Palaeontology
          > Fossils
    Content object
    nature
       > fossil
    Description
    Drawing of a petrified shell in the margin of John Aubrey's 'Memoires of Naturall Remarques in the county of Wiltshire, to which are annexed observables of the same kind in the county of Surrey and Flynt-shire'. The preface is dated 6 June 1685, and this is a copy transcribed by B. G. Cramer, Clerk to the Royal Society in 1690-91. Aubrey remarked that he gave a 'quantity' of such petrified shells to the Society 20 years earlier (i.e. c. 1665).
    Transcription
    At Dinton (wiltsh) on the Hills on bothsides the Village are perfect & petrified shells in great abundance, some thing like cockles but neither striated, nor invecked; nor any counter-shell to meet; but plaine and with a long neck, of a reddish gray colour: the inside petrified sand: as in the margent: of which sort, I gave a quantity to the R. Society about 20 yeares Since: the species whereof Mr Hooke sayes is now lost.
    Transcribed by the Making Visible project
    Object history
    By John Aubrey, FRS. This manuscript is a transcript of Aubrey's original manuscript (1685). It was transcribed by B. G. Cramer, Clerk to the Royal Society, at the behest of the Society in 1690-91.
    At page 67 is inserted a map of a navigable passage from Bristol to London, engraved by Thomas Jenner in 1668, with the arms of the borough. Six leaves of additional matter are inserted at page 276, and four more at page 304.
    Related fellows
    John Aubrey (1626 - 1697, British) , Antiquary
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > United Kingdom
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