PHILADELPHIA-STONES, a name which some authors have given to what is otherwise called Christian bones, found in the walls of that city. It is a vulgar error that these walls are built of bones; and the tradition of the country is, that when the Turks took the place, they fortified it for themselves, and built their walls of
Philadel- of the bones of the Christians whom they had killed
phia. there. Dr Smyth, in one of his epistles, mentions
Philadel- this wall as an instance of Turkish barbarity. This idle
phus. opinion has gained credit merely from a loose and
porous stone of the sparry kind, found in an old aque-
duct, which is still in the wall. Sir Paul Rycourt
brought home pieces of these stones, which even he
supposed to have been bones, but they proved on ex-
amination to be various bodies, chiefly vegetable, in-
crusted over and preserved in a spar of the nature of
that which forms incrustations in Knareborough
spring, and other places with us. These bodies are
often cemented together in considerable numbers by
this matter, and their true shape lost in the congeries,
till a diligent and judicious eye traces them regularly.