360 Miscellaneous Intelligence. 



its being found in such quantity in the water, being itself an 

 insoluble substanbe, may be accounted for by the presence of car- 

 bonate of soda. 



The solid matter, when filtered, washed, and drained on paper, 

 ivas a brown viscid adhesive substance. Put into caustic potash 

 or carbonate of soda it dissolved in part, leaving a pulverulent 

 substance. When quite dry the substance was a yellow-green 

 powder, which, by heat, gave crystallized carbonate of ammonia, 

 empyreumatic oil, a little water and gas, leaving a black coal 

 of the original form. In this way four parts became 3.34 parts, 

 and then, by exposure to heat and air, became 2.62 of a reddish 

 substance. Hence it contained about -^ its weight of organic mat- 

 ter. The residue contained a few grains of sand with lime, oxide 

 of iron and alumine, in the following proportions, 128,31 ; and 1. 



After putting questions as to the original existence of this 

 substance in the earth, or its being formed by chemical powers, 

 8^c, 8fc.f M. Vauquelin remarks that it is composed of three va- 

 rieties of matter, one blue, coagulated by heat, acids, 8^c. ; the 

 other yellow, dissolving in boiling water, precipitated by alcohol 

 and infusion of galls ; the third not precipitated by heat, acids, or 

 alcohol, but by the astringent principle, these being probably 

 different states of the same original principle. It evidently ap- 

 proaches more in its nature to albumen, than to any other prin- 

 ciple known. — Ann, de Chim. xxviii. 98. 



III. Natural History. 



1, Natural Transference of Rocks and Stones. — Some particular 

 phenomena of moving rocks in Carolina, have lately been noticed 

 in the American Journals, and other publications, of apparently 

 such a singular description as, in the first instance, to fail of ob- 

 taining credence ; but being found to occur in more than one place, 

 have now strongly excited the ingenuity of observers to explain 

 them. Dr. Dwight relates in his travels that, being induced by 

 the credited report of sober men, to examine an instance of this 

 kind, he was taken to a lake, on the shore of which lay a rock 

 which, though now two feet above the water, was declared by a 

 person long resident on the spot, to have been at least two feet 

 below the surface forty years ago, and 15 or 20 rods farther 

 from the causeway on which they were standing. From the trees, 

 stumps and other appearances on the causeway, it was evident the 

 surface of the water and the shore had remained unaltered ; but 

 upon examining the rock which was standing in water scarcely 

 knee deep, a channel was found behind it towards the deeper wa- 

 ter, formed in the earth, about fifteen rods in length, serpentine 

 in its form, and sunk from two to three feet below the common 

 level of the bottom on its borders; in the front of the rock, the 



