CHAPTER XVII - GEOLOGY AND MINERALOGY

Summary

“Terrible apprehensions and answerable unto their names, are raised of Fayrie stones, and Elves spurs, found commonly with us in Stone, Chalk and Marl-pits.”

T. Browne, Vulgar Errors, ii. 5.

Although some of the chief men who were interested in mineralogy and geology in the last century got their degrees elsewhere, we find that both at Oxford and at Cambridge the study of stones was not a novelty. Two keepers of the Ashmolean, Ro. Plott (Magd. H.) and E. Llwyd (Jes.) established the credit of Oxford in the 17th century. The latter edited a catalogue of english fossils in the Ashmolean Museum, under the title of Lithophylacii Britannici Iconographia (8vo. Lond. 1699; ed. 2. Oxon. 1760). Llwyd's book has been useful ever since, especially for the figures.

‘A Lapidary or the history of Pretious Stones by T. Nichols sometimes of Jesus-Colledge in Cambridge,’ printed by T. Buck, 4to. Camb. 1652, was founded chiefly upon the Gemmarum Historia of Anselm Boetius de Boot. The classification of stones by sizes tells of diligence and system at Cambridge, if the science was but infantile.