Note 1 — Architectural Illustrations.

Footnote 1:

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We thank our correspondent for the above communication on one of the most interesting phenomena of British geology; for, as we hinted in our last, the pleasantest hours of our sojourn at Margate, about three years since, were passed in the watchmaker's museum, nearly opposite the Marine Library, which collection contains many Sheppey fossils, especially a prawn, said to be the only one in England. We remember the proprietor to have been a self-educated man: he had been to the museum at Paris twice or thrice, and spoke in high terms of the courteous reception he met with from M Cuvier; and we are happy to corroborate his representations. With respect to the reptile, or, as we should say, insect, alluded to in the preceding letter, we suppose it to have been a vermicular insect, similar to those inhabiting the cells of corallines, of whose tiny labours, in the formation of coral islands, we quoted a spirited poetical description in No. 279 of the MIRROR. Corallines much resemble fossil or petrified wood; and we recollect to have received from the landlady of an inn at Portsmouth a small branch of fossil wood, which she asserted to be coral, and that upon the authority of scores of her visiters; but the fibres, &c. of the wood were too evident to admit of a dispute.