h. The barrel, which
was about five feet long, was of brass; but the handle by which it was
traversed was about three feet in length, and the swivel and pivot on
which it turned were of iron. Around these latter were formed
incrustations of sand converted into a kind of stone, of exceedingly
strong texture and firmness; whereas round the barrel of the gun, except
where it was near adjoining to the iron, there were no such
incrustations, the greater part of it being clean, and in good
condition, just as if it had still continued in use. In the incrusting
stone, adhering to it on the outside, were a number of shells and
corallines, "just as they are often found in a fossil state." These
were all so strongly attached, that it required as much force to
separate them from the matrix "as to break a fragment off any hard
rock."[1091]

In the year 1745, continues the same writer, the Fox man-of-war was
stranded on the coast of East Lothian, and went to pieces. About
thirty-three years afterwards a violent storm laid bare a part of the
wreck, and threw up near the place several masses, "consisting of iron,
ropes, and balls," covered over with ochreous sand, concreted and
hardened into a kind of stone. The substance of the rope was very little
altered. The consolidated sand retained perfect impressions of parts of
an iron ring, "just as impressions of extraneous fossil bodies are found
in various kinds of strata."[1092]

After a storm in the year 1824, which occasioned a considerable shifting
of the sands near St. Andrew's, in Scotland, a gun-barrel of ancient
construction was found, which is conjectured to have belonged to one of
the wrecked vessels of the Spanish Armada. It is now in the museum of
the Antiquarian Society of Scotland, and is incrusted over by a thin
coating of sand, the grains of which are cemented by brown ferruginous
matter. Attached to this coating are fragments of various shells, as of
the common cardium, mya, &c.

Many other examples are recorded of iron instruments taken up from the
bed of the sea near the British coast, incased by a thick coating of
conglomerate, consisting of pebbles and sand, cemented by oxide of iron.

Dr. Davy describes a bronze helmet, of the antique Grecian form, taken
up in 1825, from a shallow part of the sea, between the citadel of Corfu
and the village of Castrades. Both the interior and exterior of the
helmet were partially incrusted with shells, and a deposit of carbonate