The Silicificd Wood of Loiii>h Ncuirh. 65 



Harris does not seem to have been convinced of this virlne 

 said to be possessed by the water or soil of the lon^di, and in 

 an ingenious manner tries to set it aside. After enunieratinK 

 the arguments given in support of the belief, he thus reviews 

 them : — 



"To the First We Answer, *It is now a determined point amon^ Natu- 

 ralists, that Stones Vegetate as well as Plants ; it seems not impossible 

 that these may be peculiar Stones, which thouj,di in the manner of their 

 Growth they may resemble Wood, and especially Holly, yet are not 

 from that Resemblance necessarily to be admitted such, any more than 

 those Representations of the Shells of Cockles, Oysters, and Escalops, 

 some forming and some formed, frequently observed in Ume-stone in the 

 Peak of Derbyshire, are to be supposed ever to have been real Shells, or 

 those exact Representations of Branches, of a Lion couchant, of a human 

 Corps laid out; nay of several artificial Things, as Chairs, a Set of Organs, 

 and innumerable other Sportings of Nature in the vegetating Lime- 

 stone, are to be imagined to have ever been the real things they 

 resemble." 



Many other such quaint quotations might be given, but no 

 solid ground of investigation is touched till the publication, in 

 1 75 1, of Dr. Barton's famous lecture to the Royal Society on 

 "The Petrifications, Gems, Crystals, and Sanative Qualities of 

 lyOUgh Neagh." The learned, but very wordy Doctor quotes 

 all that had been previously written on the subject; but his 

 strong point is original research, and the collection of an 

 extraordinary series of specimens which he describes in his 

 work most minutely. The reader wdll kindly excuse my in- 

 flicting upon him a few of the Doctor's paragraphs. 



Turning to his third lecture on metamorphoses, he describes 

 a specimen upon which he had a I^atin inscription cut:— 



"This wonderful saxo-ligneous mass is extremely hard on the outside, 

 emitting fire, on colHsion with steel, in great plenty. Yet has it wood, 

 which is very soft, internally. . . . The weight of the specimen, 

 before a small fragment was separated, was seven hundred pounds, being 

 weighed at the public crane in a market town. 



"Specimen No. 2— A mass of wood and stone continuous is as much 

 as two able men can lift in a frame whose joints are strengthened with 

 iron. . . . It being the reverse of the former specimen— wood on the 

 outside and stone within— it was necessary to frame it, that it might be 

 fixed in so steady a manner as not to loose by friction the tender part of 

 its substance which lay on the outside. Specimen No. 7— This stone is 

 nearly twenty inches long and five broad ; one side is ground to a flat 

 surface, is a firm black stone, and gives a knife a good edge; the other 

 side is wood and may be cut by that knife in several places without 

 spoiHng the edge. N.B.— There was a great quantity of wood whkh was 

 broken off in the polishing." ^ 



