Chapter 30

[267]Gerard, p. 680,—Mentha viridis, L. It perhaps soon became naturalized. “In moist ground” (1785).—Cutler, l. c.[268]Perhaps only an inference of the author’s, from the southern origin of these three shrubs. Lavender also belongs naturally to a warmer climate.[269]Gerard, p. 1109,—Santolina Chamæ Cyparissus, L.[270]Gerard, p. 856,—Glechoma hederacea, L.; once of great medicinal repute: which accounts for our author’s finding it, as it should seem, among garden-herbs. It has become naturalized and very familiar in New England. Cutler finds it wild in 1785. Mr. Bentham refers it toNepeta, but substitutes a new specific name for that given by Linnæus, which is based on the ancient names, and has at least the right of priority.[271]“Gilliflowers thrive exceedingly there, and are very large. The collibuy, or humming-bird, is much pleased with them.”—Josselyn’s Voyages, p. 188.[272]Elecampane (Gerard, p. 793),—Inula Helenium, L. “Roadsides” (1785),—Cutler, l. c.; and now extensively naturalized in New England.[273]Gerard, p. 1272,—Rosa rubiginosa, L.; andR. micrantha, Sm. Since naturalized, especially in Eastern New England, and not uncommon on roadsides and in pastures. First indicated as a member of our Flora by Bigelow in 1824.—Fl. Bost., in loc.“Eglantine, or sweet-bryer, is best sowen with juniper-berries,—two or three to one eglantine-berry, put into a hole made with a stick. The next year, separate and remove them to your banks. In three years’ time, they will make a hedge as high as a man; which you may keep thick and handsome with cutting.”—Josselyn’s Voyages, p. 188. And what next goes before seems to show that the author picked up this information here; which is not uninteresting.[274]See p. 86.[275]Brier-rose, or hep-tree (Gerard, p. 1270); “also calledRosa canina, which is a plant so common and well knowne, that it were to small purpose to use many words in the description thereof: for even children with great delight eat the berries thereof, when they be ripe,—make chaines and other prettie gewgawes of the fruit; cookes and gentlewomen make tarts, and such like dishes, for pleasure thereof,” &c. (Gerard,l. c.).Rosa canina, L., was once the collective name of what are now understood as many distinct species; but that which still retains the name of dog-rose is reckoned the finest of native English roses. This familiar plant may well have been reared with tender interest in some New-England gardens of Josselyn’s day; but it did not make a new home here, like the eglantine. Cutler gives the name of dog-rose to the Carolina rose,—R. Carolina, L.,—which it has not kept; and he also makes it equivalent to the officinalR. canina. Our Flora will possibly one day include one or two other garden-roses. A damask rose is well established and spreading rapidly in mowing-land of the writer’s, and elsewhere on roadsides of this country; and that general favorite, the cinnamon-rose, which is now naturalized in England, may yet become wild with us.[276]Great celandine (Gerard, p. 1069), as the west-country name of kenning-wort—that is, sight-wort—makes manifest; the juice being once thought to be “good to sharpen the sight,”—Chelidonium majus, L. Small celandine (Ranunculus Ficaria, L.) was quite another thing. The former had got to be “common by fences and amongst rubbish” in 1785 (Cutler,l. c.), and is now naturalized in Eastern New England.[277]Gerard, p. 650,—Tanacetum vulgare, L. In “pastures” (1785).—Cutler, l. c.Now widely naturalized in New England.[278]See p. 57, note. “The ancient New-England standing dish” was doubtless far better than Gerard’s fried pompions (p. 921), and has more than held its own.[279]“For such commodities as lie under ground, I cannot, out of mine own experience or knowledge, say much; having taken no great notice of such things: but it is certainly reported that there is iron-stone; and the Indians informed us that they can lead us to the mountains of black-lead; and have shown us lead-ore, if our small judgment in such things does not deceive us; and though nobody dare confidently conclude, yet dare they not utterly deny, but that the Spaniard’s-bliss may lie hid in the barren mountains. Such as have coasted the country affirm that they know where to fetch sea-coal, if wood were scarce. There is plenty of stone, both rough and smooth, useful for many things; with quarries of slate, out of which they get coverings for houses; with good clay, whereof they make tiles and bricks and pavements for their necessary uses. For the country it is well watered as any land under the sun; every family, or every two families, having a spring of sweet water betwixt them; which is far different from the waters of England, being not so sharp, but of a fatter substance, and of a more jetty colour.... Those that drink it be as healthful, fresh, and lusty as they that drink beer.”—Wood, New-Eng. Prospect, chap. v. “The humour and justness of” this writer’s “account recommend him,” says the editor of 1764, “to every candid mind.” There is certainly no view of New England, as it was at its settlement, that surpasses Wood’s in understanding, and homeborn English truth, not always without beauty. What he says in this place of “quarries of slate” points to a very early discovery. Higginson says, in 1629 (New-Eng. Plantation,l. c., p. 118), “Here is plenty of slates at the Isle of Slate in Masathulets Bay:” and there is a court order of July 2, 1633, granting “to Tho: Lambe, of slate in Slate Ileand, 10 poole towards the water-side, and 5 poole into the land, for three yeares; payeing the yearely rent of ijs. vjd.”—Mass. Col. Rec., vol. i. p. 106. There are other later grants of the same island, which “lies between Bumkin Island and Weymouth River.”—Pemberton, Desc. Bost., Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iii. p. 297. Josselyn, in his Voyages, p. 46, says that tables of slate could be got out (he does not tell us where), “long enough for a dozen men to sit at.” Argillaceous slate is, according to Dr. Hitchcock, “the predominating rock on the outermost of these islands;” and he adds, that “there can be but little doubt that the peninsula of Boston has a foundation” of this rock.—Report on Geol. of Mass., p. 270.[280]“Mr. John Winthrope, jun., is granted yehill at Tantousq, about 60 miles westward, in which the black-leade is; and liberty to purchase some land there of the Indians” (13th November, 1644).—Mass. Col. Rec., vol. ii. p. 82; andSavage, in Winthrop, N. E., vol. ii. p. 213, note. The place mentioned is what is now Sturbridge; which is called “the most important locality” of black-lead in Massachusetts, by Dr. Hitchcock.—Geol., pp. 47, 395.[281]“The mountains and rocky hills are richly furnished with mines of lead, silver, copper, tin, and divers sorts of minerals, branching out even to their summits; where, in small crannies, you may meet with threds of perfect silver: yet have the English no maw to open any of them;” and so forth.—Josselyn’s Voyages, p. 44.[282]Asterias rubens, L.—Gould, Report on Invert., p. 345.[283]See the chapter on Fishes, p. 23, for this and the others here spoken of.[284]“Numerous about the Isle of Sables; i.e., the Sandy Isle.”—Voyages, p. 106. “Mr. Graves” (year 1635) “in the ‘James,’ and Mr. Hodges in the ‘Rebecka,’ set sail for the Isle of Sable for sea-horse, which are there in great number,” &c.—Winthrop’s N. E., by Savage, vol. i. p. 162. And I cite one other mention of this pursuit: “Eastward is the Isle of Sables; whither one John Webb,aliasEvered (an active man), with his company, are gone, with commission from the Bay to get sea-horse teeth and oyle.”—Lechford’s Newes from New England(1642),Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iii. 3d series, p. 100. The Magdalen Islands, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, are the most southern habitat of the animal spoken of by Godman.—Amer. Nat. Hist., vol. i. p. 249.[285]Compare Cutler (Account of Indig. Veg.,l. c., p. 456) and Wood and Bache (Dispens., p. 1369).[286]The author has something to the same effect in his Voyages, p. 124; but Wood’s account of the Indian women (New-England’s Prospect, part ii. chap. xx.) is far better worth reading. Both appreciated, in one way or another, their savage neighbors. Wood has a pleasant touch at the last. “These women,” he says, “resort often to the English houses, wherepares cum paribus congregatæ,—in sex, I mean,—they do somewhat ease their misery by complaining, and seldom part without a relief. If her husband come to seek for his squaw, and begin to bluster, the English woman betakes her to her arms, which are the war-like ladle and the scalding liquors, threatning blistering to the naked runaway, who is soon expelled by such liquid comminations. In a word, to conclude this woman’s history, their love to the English hath deserved no small esteem; ever presenting them something that is either rare or desired,—as strawberries, hurtleberries, rasberries, gooseberries, cherries, plumbs, fish, and other such gifts as their poor treasury yields them” (l. c.). And, if Lechford’s Newes from New England (l. supra c., p. 103) can be trusted, the savages became “much the kinder to their wives by the example of the English.”[287]In the author’s Voyages, this chronological table is greatly extended; beginning with “Anno Mundi, 3720,” and ending with A.D. 1674.[288]Set right by the author in Voyages, p. 248.[289]The author, in the “chronological observations” appended to his Voyages, enlarges this, but confounds Conant’s Plantation at Cape Ann, and Endicott’s, as follows: “1628. Mr. John Endicot arrived in New England with some number of people, and set down first by Cape Ann, at a place called afterwards Gloster; but their abiding-place was at Salem, where they built the first town in the Massachusets Patent.... 1629. Three ships arrived at Salem, bringing a great number of passengers from England.... Mr. Endicot chosen Governour.” The next year, Josselyn continues as follows: “1630. The 10th of July, John Winthrop, Esq., and the Assistants, arrived in New England with the patent for the Massachusetts.... John Winthrop, Esq., chosen Governour for the remainder of the year; Mr. Thomas Dudley, Deputy-Governour; Mr. Simon Broadstreet, Secretary.”—Voyages, p. 252. The title of Governor was used anciently, as it still is elsewhere, in a looser sense than has been usual in New England; and derived all the dignity that it had from the character and considerableness of the government. Conant and Endicott were directors or governors of settlements in the Massachusetts Bay before Winthrop’s arrival; but when the Massachusetts Company in London proceeded, on the 20th October, 1629, to carry into effect their resolution to transfer their government to this country,—and chose accordingly Winthrop to be their Governor; Humphrey, their Deputy-Governor; and Endicot and others, Assistants (Young, Chron. of Mass., p. 102),—the record appears sufficient evidence that they had in view something quite different from the fishing plantation which Conant had had charge of at Cape Ann, or the little society (“in all, not much above fifty or sixty persons,” says White’s Relation in Young, Chron., p. 13; which the editor, from Higginson’s narrative, raises to “about a hundred”) “of which Master Endecott was sent out Governour” (White,l. c.) at Naumkeak.[290]That is, Noddle’s Island was already planted on (by Mr. Maverick) when the government was established.—Compare Johnson, cited by Prince, N. E. Chronol., edit. 2, p. 308, note.[291]The date set right in Prince, N. E. Chronol., p. 367.[292]The date corrected in Prince, N. E. Chronol., edit. 2, p. 367.[293]Compare Prince, p. 367, and Mass. Col. Rec., vol. i. p. 128. “The will,” says Dr. Mather, “because it bequeathed a thousand pounds to New England, gave satisfaction unto our Mr. Wilson; though it was otherwise injurious to himself.”—Magnalia, vol. iii. p. 45,cit.Davis,in Morton’s Memorial, p. 334, note.[294]Compare Winthrop, N.E., vol. i. p. 265; Johnson’s Wonder-working Prov. lib. ii. c. 12,cit.Savage; and Morton’s Memorial, by Davis, p. 209, and note, p. 289.[295]Morton’s Memorial, by Davis, p. 244.[296]1664, “December, a great and dreadful comet, or blazing star, appeared in the south-east in New England for the space of three moneths; which was accompanied with many sad effects,—great mildews blasting in the countrey the next summer.”—Josselyn’s Voyages, Chronol. Obs., p. 273; and see p. 245 of the same for a fuller account.—Compare Morton’s Memorial, by Davis, p. 304. As to the blasting and mildew of 1665, see the same, p. 317; and that of 1664, p. 309.[297]See Josselyn’s Voyages, p. 204 and p. 277, where the “hole” is said to have been, not “two,” but “forty, yards square:” and we are farther told that “the like accident fell out at Casco, one and twenty miles from it to the eastward, much about the same time; and fish, in some ponds in the countrey, thrown up dead upon the banks,—supposed likewise to be kill’d with mineral vapours.” Hubbard (Hist. N.E., chap. 75) tells this, partly in the same words with the account in the Voyages, and adds, “All the whole town of Wells are witnesses of the truth of this relation; and many others have seen sundry of these clay pellets, which the inhabitants have shown to their neighbours of other towns.” And compare also the following, at p. 189 of the Voyages: “In 1669, the pond that lyeth between Watertown and Cambridge cast its fish dead upon the shore; forc’t by a mineral vapour, as was conjectured.”

[267]Gerard, p. 680,—Mentha viridis, L. It perhaps soon became naturalized. “In moist ground” (1785).—Cutler, l. c.

[268]Perhaps only an inference of the author’s, from the southern origin of these three shrubs. Lavender also belongs naturally to a warmer climate.

[269]Gerard, p. 1109,—Santolina Chamæ Cyparissus, L.

[270]Gerard, p. 856,—Glechoma hederacea, L.; once of great medicinal repute: which accounts for our author’s finding it, as it should seem, among garden-herbs. It has become naturalized and very familiar in New England. Cutler finds it wild in 1785. Mr. Bentham refers it toNepeta, but substitutes a new specific name for that given by Linnæus, which is based on the ancient names, and has at least the right of priority.

[271]“Gilliflowers thrive exceedingly there, and are very large. The collibuy, or humming-bird, is much pleased with them.”—Josselyn’s Voyages, p. 188.

[272]Elecampane (Gerard, p. 793),—Inula Helenium, L. “Roadsides” (1785),—Cutler, l. c.; and now extensively naturalized in New England.

[273]Gerard, p. 1272,—Rosa rubiginosa, L.; andR. micrantha, Sm. Since naturalized, especially in Eastern New England, and not uncommon on roadsides and in pastures. First indicated as a member of our Flora by Bigelow in 1824.—Fl. Bost., in loc.“Eglantine, or sweet-bryer, is best sowen with juniper-berries,—two or three to one eglantine-berry, put into a hole made with a stick. The next year, separate and remove them to your banks. In three years’ time, they will make a hedge as high as a man; which you may keep thick and handsome with cutting.”—Josselyn’s Voyages, p. 188. And what next goes before seems to show that the author picked up this information here; which is not uninteresting.

[274]See p. 86.

[275]Brier-rose, or hep-tree (Gerard, p. 1270); “also calledRosa canina, which is a plant so common and well knowne, that it were to small purpose to use many words in the description thereof: for even children with great delight eat the berries thereof, when they be ripe,—make chaines and other prettie gewgawes of the fruit; cookes and gentlewomen make tarts, and such like dishes, for pleasure thereof,” &c. (Gerard,l. c.).Rosa canina, L., was once the collective name of what are now understood as many distinct species; but that which still retains the name of dog-rose is reckoned the finest of native English roses. This familiar plant may well have been reared with tender interest in some New-England gardens of Josselyn’s day; but it did not make a new home here, like the eglantine. Cutler gives the name of dog-rose to the Carolina rose,—R. Carolina, L.,—which it has not kept; and he also makes it equivalent to the officinalR. canina. Our Flora will possibly one day include one or two other garden-roses. A damask rose is well established and spreading rapidly in mowing-land of the writer’s, and elsewhere on roadsides of this country; and that general favorite, the cinnamon-rose, which is now naturalized in England, may yet become wild with us.

[276]Great celandine (Gerard, p. 1069), as the west-country name of kenning-wort—that is, sight-wort—makes manifest; the juice being once thought to be “good to sharpen the sight,”—Chelidonium majus, L. Small celandine (Ranunculus Ficaria, L.) was quite another thing. The former had got to be “common by fences and amongst rubbish” in 1785 (Cutler,l. c.), and is now naturalized in Eastern New England.

[277]Gerard, p. 650,—Tanacetum vulgare, L. In “pastures” (1785).—Cutler, l. c.Now widely naturalized in New England.

[278]See p. 57, note. “The ancient New-England standing dish” was doubtless far better than Gerard’s fried pompions (p. 921), and has more than held its own.

[279]“For such commodities as lie under ground, I cannot, out of mine own experience or knowledge, say much; having taken no great notice of such things: but it is certainly reported that there is iron-stone; and the Indians informed us that they can lead us to the mountains of black-lead; and have shown us lead-ore, if our small judgment in such things does not deceive us; and though nobody dare confidently conclude, yet dare they not utterly deny, but that the Spaniard’s-bliss may lie hid in the barren mountains. Such as have coasted the country affirm that they know where to fetch sea-coal, if wood were scarce. There is plenty of stone, both rough and smooth, useful for many things; with quarries of slate, out of which they get coverings for houses; with good clay, whereof they make tiles and bricks and pavements for their necessary uses. For the country it is well watered as any land under the sun; every family, or every two families, having a spring of sweet water betwixt them; which is far different from the waters of England, being not so sharp, but of a fatter substance, and of a more jetty colour.... Those that drink it be as healthful, fresh, and lusty as they that drink beer.”—Wood, New-Eng. Prospect, chap. v. “The humour and justness of” this writer’s “account recommend him,” says the editor of 1764, “to every candid mind.” There is certainly no view of New England, as it was at its settlement, that surpasses Wood’s in understanding, and homeborn English truth, not always without beauty. What he says in this place of “quarries of slate” points to a very early discovery. Higginson says, in 1629 (New-Eng. Plantation,l. c., p. 118), “Here is plenty of slates at the Isle of Slate in Masathulets Bay:” and there is a court order of July 2, 1633, granting “to Tho: Lambe, of slate in Slate Ileand, 10 poole towards the water-side, and 5 poole into the land, for three yeares; payeing the yearely rent of ijs. vjd.”—Mass. Col. Rec., vol. i. p. 106. There are other later grants of the same island, which “lies between Bumkin Island and Weymouth River.”—Pemberton, Desc. Bost., Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iii. p. 297. Josselyn, in his Voyages, p. 46, says that tables of slate could be got out (he does not tell us where), “long enough for a dozen men to sit at.” Argillaceous slate is, according to Dr. Hitchcock, “the predominating rock on the outermost of these islands;” and he adds, that “there can be but little doubt that the peninsula of Boston has a foundation” of this rock.—Report on Geol. of Mass., p. 270.

[280]“Mr. John Winthrope, jun., is granted yehill at Tantousq, about 60 miles westward, in which the black-leade is; and liberty to purchase some land there of the Indians” (13th November, 1644).—Mass. Col. Rec., vol. ii. p. 82; andSavage, in Winthrop, N. E., vol. ii. p. 213, note. The place mentioned is what is now Sturbridge; which is called “the most important locality” of black-lead in Massachusetts, by Dr. Hitchcock.—Geol., pp. 47, 395.

[281]“The mountains and rocky hills are richly furnished with mines of lead, silver, copper, tin, and divers sorts of minerals, branching out even to their summits; where, in small crannies, you may meet with threds of perfect silver: yet have the English no maw to open any of them;” and so forth.—Josselyn’s Voyages, p. 44.

[282]Asterias rubens, L.—Gould, Report on Invert., p. 345.

[283]See the chapter on Fishes, p. 23, for this and the others here spoken of.

[284]“Numerous about the Isle of Sables; i.e., the Sandy Isle.”—Voyages, p. 106. “Mr. Graves” (year 1635) “in the ‘James,’ and Mr. Hodges in the ‘Rebecka,’ set sail for the Isle of Sable for sea-horse, which are there in great number,” &c.—Winthrop’s N. E., by Savage, vol. i. p. 162. And I cite one other mention of this pursuit: “Eastward is the Isle of Sables; whither one John Webb,aliasEvered (an active man), with his company, are gone, with commission from the Bay to get sea-horse teeth and oyle.”—Lechford’s Newes from New England(1642),Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iii. 3d series, p. 100. The Magdalen Islands, in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, are the most southern habitat of the animal spoken of by Godman.—Amer. Nat. Hist., vol. i. p. 249.

[285]Compare Cutler (Account of Indig. Veg.,l. c., p. 456) and Wood and Bache (Dispens., p. 1369).

[286]The author has something to the same effect in his Voyages, p. 124; but Wood’s account of the Indian women (New-England’s Prospect, part ii. chap. xx.) is far better worth reading. Both appreciated, in one way or another, their savage neighbors. Wood has a pleasant touch at the last. “These women,” he says, “resort often to the English houses, wherepares cum paribus congregatæ,—in sex, I mean,—they do somewhat ease their misery by complaining, and seldom part without a relief. If her husband come to seek for his squaw, and begin to bluster, the English woman betakes her to her arms, which are the war-like ladle and the scalding liquors, threatning blistering to the naked runaway, who is soon expelled by such liquid comminations. In a word, to conclude this woman’s history, their love to the English hath deserved no small esteem; ever presenting them something that is either rare or desired,—as strawberries, hurtleberries, rasberries, gooseberries, cherries, plumbs, fish, and other such gifts as their poor treasury yields them” (l. c.). And, if Lechford’s Newes from New England (l. supra c., p. 103) can be trusted, the savages became “much the kinder to their wives by the example of the English.”

[287]In the author’s Voyages, this chronological table is greatly extended; beginning with “Anno Mundi, 3720,” and ending with A.D. 1674.

[288]Set right by the author in Voyages, p. 248.

[289]The author, in the “chronological observations” appended to his Voyages, enlarges this, but confounds Conant’s Plantation at Cape Ann, and Endicott’s, as follows: “1628. Mr. John Endicot arrived in New England with some number of people, and set down first by Cape Ann, at a place called afterwards Gloster; but their abiding-place was at Salem, where they built the first town in the Massachusets Patent.... 1629. Three ships arrived at Salem, bringing a great number of passengers from England.... Mr. Endicot chosen Governour.” The next year, Josselyn continues as follows: “1630. The 10th of July, John Winthrop, Esq., and the Assistants, arrived in New England with the patent for the Massachusetts.... John Winthrop, Esq., chosen Governour for the remainder of the year; Mr. Thomas Dudley, Deputy-Governour; Mr. Simon Broadstreet, Secretary.”—Voyages, p. 252. The title of Governor was used anciently, as it still is elsewhere, in a looser sense than has been usual in New England; and derived all the dignity that it had from the character and considerableness of the government. Conant and Endicott were directors or governors of settlements in the Massachusetts Bay before Winthrop’s arrival; but when the Massachusetts Company in London proceeded, on the 20th October, 1629, to carry into effect their resolution to transfer their government to this country,—and chose accordingly Winthrop to be their Governor; Humphrey, their Deputy-Governor; and Endicot and others, Assistants (Young, Chron. of Mass., p. 102),—the record appears sufficient evidence that they had in view something quite different from the fishing plantation which Conant had had charge of at Cape Ann, or the little society (“in all, not much above fifty or sixty persons,” says White’s Relation in Young, Chron., p. 13; which the editor, from Higginson’s narrative, raises to “about a hundred”) “of which Master Endecott was sent out Governour” (White,l. c.) at Naumkeak.

[290]That is, Noddle’s Island was already planted on (by Mr. Maverick) when the government was established.—Compare Johnson, cited by Prince, N. E. Chronol., edit. 2, p. 308, note.

[291]The date set right in Prince, N. E. Chronol., p. 367.

[292]The date corrected in Prince, N. E. Chronol., edit. 2, p. 367.

[293]Compare Prince, p. 367, and Mass. Col. Rec., vol. i. p. 128. “The will,” says Dr. Mather, “because it bequeathed a thousand pounds to New England, gave satisfaction unto our Mr. Wilson; though it was otherwise injurious to himself.”—Magnalia, vol. iii. p. 45,cit.Davis,in Morton’s Memorial, p. 334, note.

[294]Compare Winthrop, N.E., vol. i. p. 265; Johnson’s Wonder-working Prov. lib. ii. c. 12,cit.Savage; and Morton’s Memorial, by Davis, p. 209, and note, p. 289.

[295]Morton’s Memorial, by Davis, p. 244.

[296]1664, “December, a great and dreadful comet, or blazing star, appeared in the south-east in New England for the space of three moneths; which was accompanied with many sad effects,—great mildews blasting in the countrey the next summer.”—Josselyn’s Voyages, Chronol. Obs., p. 273; and see p. 245 of the same for a fuller account.—Compare Morton’s Memorial, by Davis, p. 304. As to the blasting and mildew of 1665, see the same, p. 317; and that of 1664, p. 309.

[297]See Josselyn’s Voyages, p. 204 and p. 277, where the “hole” is said to have been, not “two,” but “forty, yards square:” and we are farther told that “the like accident fell out at Casco, one and twenty miles from it to the eastward, much about the same time; and fish, in some ponds in the countrey, thrown up dead upon the banks,—supposed likewise to be kill’d with mineral vapours.” Hubbard (Hist. N.E., chap. 75) tells this, partly in the same words with the account in the Voyages, and adds, “All the whole town of Wells are witnesses of the truth of this relation; and many others have seen sundry of these clay pellets, which the inhabitants have shown to their neighbours of other towns.” And compare also the following, at p. 189 of the Voyages: “In 1669, the pond that lyeth between Watertown and Cambridge cast its fish dead upon the shore; forc’t by a mineral vapour, as was conjectured.”

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