32, cap. 6, prefer the Cyzicene
before them), and these we have in like manner of divers quantities, and
no less variety also of our mussels and cockles. We have in like sort no
small store of great whelks, scallops, and periwinkles, and each of them
brought far into the land from the sea coast in their several seasons. And
albeit our oysters are generally forborne in the four hot months of the
year (that is to say, May, June, July, and August) which are void of the
letter R, yet in some places they be continually eaten, where they are
kept in pits, as I have known by experience. And thus much of our sea
fish, as a man in manner utterly unacquainted with their diversity of
kinds, yet so much have I yielded to do, hoping hereafter to say somewhat
more, and more orderly of them, if it shall please God that I may live and
have leisure once again to peruse this treatise and so make up a perfect
piece of work of that which, as you now see, is very slenderly attempted
and begun.

CHAPTER XVIII.

OF QUARRIES OF STONE FOR BUILDING.

[1577, Book II., Chapter 11; 1587, Book II., Chapter 18.]

Quarries with us are pits or mines, out of which we dig our stone to build
withal, and of these as we have great plenty in England so are they of
divers sorts, and those very profitable for sundry necessary uses. In
times past the use of stone was in manner dedicated to the building of
churches, religious houses, princely palaces, bishops' manors, and holds
only; but now that scrupulous observation is altogether infringed, and
building with stone so commonly taken up that amongst noblemen and
gentlemen the timber frames are supposed to be not much better than paper
work, of little continuance, and least continuance of all. It far passeth
my cunning to set down how many sorts of stone for building are to be
found in England, but much further to call each of them by their proper
names. Howbeit, such is the curiosity of our countrymen, that
notwithstanding Almighty God hath so blessed our realm in most plentiful
manner with such and so many quarries apt and meet for piles of longest
continuance, yet we as loathsome of this abundance, or not liking of the
plenty, do commonly leave these natural gifts to mould and cinder in the
ground, and take up an artificial brick, in burning whereof a great part
of the wood of this land is daily consumed and spent, to the no small
decay of that commodity, and hindrance of the poor that oft perish