Tost his beamed frontlet to the sky.

quince:

Long residence in lime districts had furnished the experience, that phosphatic calculi are not even as common as among the horses and ponies of coal-mines; and, further, that both phosphatic calculi, and more generally mixed or the dustball kind, are very prevalent in those pits, and even districts above ground, where no lime-water whatever can be obtained.

Many of these petrifactions had been the ossified parts of birds, that are at present (as far as is known) extinct in these islands, whose probable tameness, or want of volitary powers, caused them to be early extirpated by a people, driven by both hunger and superstition (either reason is quite sufficient in its way) to rid themselves of their presence.