“In the parish of Great Badminton, in a field called Twelve Acres, the husbandmen doe often times plough up and find iron bulletts, as big as pistoll bulletts; sometimes almost as big as muskett bulletts”. Dr. Childrey’s Britannia Baconica, p. 80. [“Britannia Baconica, or the Natural Rarities of England, Scotland, and Wales, historically related, according to the precepts of Lord Bacon”. By Joshua Childrey, D.D. 1661. 8°.] These bulletts are Dr. Th. Willises aperitive pills; sc. he putts a barre of iron into the smith’s forge, and gives it a sparkling heat; then thrusts it against a roll of brimstone, and the barre will melt down into these bulletts; of which he made his aperitive pills. In this region is a great deale of iron, and the Bath waters give sufficient evidence that there is store of sulphur; so that heretofore when the earthquakes were hereabouts, store of such bulletts must necessarily be made and vomited up. [Dr. Willis was one of the most eminent physicians of his age, and author of numerous Latin works on medical subjects. The above extract is a curious illustration of the state of professional knowledge at the time.—J. B.] Copperas.—Thunder-stones, as the vulgar call them, are a pyrites; their fibres doe all tend to the centre. They are found at Broad Chalke frequently, and particularly in the earth pitts belonging to the parsonage shares, below Bury Hill, next Knighton hedge; but wee are too fare from a navigable river to make profit by them; but at the Isle of Wight they are gathered from the chalkie rocks, and carried by boates to Deptford, to make copperas; where they doe first expose them to the aire and raine, which makes them slake, and fall to pieces from the centre, and shoot out a pale blewish salt; and then they boile the salt with pieces of old rusty iron. In the chalkie rocks at Lavington is umber, which painters have used, and Dr. Chr. Meret hath inserted it in his Pinax. [“Pinax Rerum Naturalium Britannicarum, continens Vegetabilia, Animalia, et Fossilia in hac Insula reperta”. By Christopher Merret, M.D., 1666, 12mo.] In the parish of Steeple Ashton, at West Ashton, in the grounds of Mr. Tho. Beech, is found plenty of a very ponderous marchasite, of which Prince Rupert made tryall, but without effect. It flieth away in sulphur, and the fumes are extreme unwholsom: it is full of (as it were) brasse, and strikes fire very well. It is mundick, or mock-oare. The Earle of Pembroke hath a way to analyse it: not by fire, but by corroding waters. Anno Domini, 1685, in Chilmark, was found by digging of a well a blewish oare, with brasse-like veines in it; it runnes two foot thick. I had this oare tryed, and it flew away in sulphur, like that of Steeple Ashton.