His Letter bears date April 22. 1672. from Pomphret

About this time twelve month (saith the Doctor) the one Thomas Capidge, a butcher of Pomphret, killed an Ox for the shambles, in which nothing was observed, preternatural, till the Bladder being blown by his servant, there was some thing observed sticking to the inside with a duskish froth. Keeping the Bladder half-blown, the butchers Son, who first discoverd it, knocked with his hand on the side and the bottom of the bladder, to make it settle to the neck, and by shaking and squeezing it got out the froth, and about two hundred little globular stones of several sizes, the biggest being about this (O) circumference; others like pin-heads or mustard-seed. He (10) rubb’d the slimy froth from them, and they appear’d of a duskish yellow colour and smooth. Some he broak, and the rest he kept in a paper; which when dry, they were like Seed-pearl, but more smooth, and of a perfect gold-colour, and so ever after continued, as you see them. Viewed in a Microscope, they appeared very polished, and without any rugosities: The Figure in most was sphæerical; in some a little cotnpressed; the colour like burnisht gold. I broke one or two of them with some difficulty, and I found by the Microscope, that it was only a thin shell that was so orient and bright, the inner side of which shell was like unpolish’t gold; The inmost substance was like brown Sugar-candy to the naked eye, but not so transparent: The taste was not discernable. In Spirit of Vitriol they shrunk much and wasted, but continued their colour, (possibly by reason of the outward skin, which, it seems, in these was as difficult to dissolve as in true pearls:) Likewise Aqua fortis would corrode and dissolve them tumultuously.

Thus far the Doctor. I do not question (so concludes Mr. Lister,) but he hath store of these guilt stones in his cabinet, for, as I remember, he was so choice of them, that the parcel he sent me to view, was order’d to be returned again: at least, none of them remained with me.

I am Yours, York March 12 167¾