or GLOTTOPETRA, in natural history, a kind of extraneous fossil, somewhat in form of a serpent's tongue; frequently found in the island of Malta and divers other parts. See Plate CC.

The vulgar notion is, that they are the tongues of serpents petrified; and hence their name, which is a compound of γλῶσσα, "tongue," and πέτρα, "stone." Hence also their traditional virtue in curing the bites of serpents. The general opinion of naturalists is, that they are the teeth of fishes, left at land by the waters of the deluge, and since petrified.

The several sizes of the teeth of the same species, and those of the several different species of sharks, afford a vast variety of these fossil substances. Their usual colours are black, bluish, whitish, yellowish, or brown; and in shape they usually approach to a triangular figure. Some of them are simple; others are tricuspidate, having a small point on each side of the large one; many of them are quite straight; but they are frequently found crooked, and bent in all directions; many of them are serrated on their edges, and others have them plain; some are undulated on their edges, and slightly serrated on these undulations. They differ also in size as much as in figure; the larger being four or five inches long, and the smaller less than a quarter of an inch.

They are most usually found with us in the strata of blue clay, though sometimes also in other substances, and are frequent in the clay-pits of Richmond and other places. They are very frequent also in Germany, but nowhere so plentiful as in the island of Malta.

The Germans attribute many virtues to these fossil teeth; they call them cordials, fudorifics, and alexipharmics: and the people of Malta, where they are extremely plentiful, hang them about their children's necks to promote dentition. They may possibly be of as much service this way as an anodyne necklace; and if suspended in such a manner that the child can get them to its mouth, may, by their hardness and smoothness, be of the same use as a piece of coral.