Fossil Fish ofScefeld, in the Tyrol 37 



near the abandoned oil-works, the sites of whicli are marked 

 by heaps of the scorified fragments of the rock which have 

 passed through the fire, and in some of which the black and 

 shining scales of fish are still conspicuous. The schistose 

 system appears to form a belt of about five or six hundred 

 feet in thickness, the lower beds of which have been worked 

 out ; and the two furnaces now in activity are thereibre esta- 

 blished in the highest portions of it, and coiisequently at so 

 great an elevation as to be near the limit of vegetation. — Here 

 1 found a Tyrolese and his sons heaping logs of wood upon 

 a blazing pile, whilst the bitumen was exuding from a furnace 

 below : — at the other furnace, the materials being still in pre- 

 paration, I observed the following process. The stone quarried 

 for use is distinguished by the workmen into two qualities: one, 

 which is of black colour and of small specific gravity, af- 

 fords a very viscid petroleum ; the other is a brown slate, and 

 gives off" a thinner liquid*. Small fragments of the black and 

 brown sorts being equally mixed together, are placed in fire- 

 clay crucibles of a conical form, each about three feet in 

 height, which at a few inches apart are luted upon an iron 

 platform with holes, to which are attached pipes to convey the 

 liquKl bitumen into buckets. Large logs of pine are laid upon 

 the crucibles, which are kept together by a loose low wall of 

 stones in the form of a parallelogram. Fire is then applied, 

 in three or four hours the bitumen begins to distil off", and in 

 nine or ten hours it is completely extracted from the stone. 

 The oil is then poured into strong barrels containing about 

 fifty pounds each, and conveyed to Seefeld ; from whence it 

 is sent to considerable distances in the neighbourhood, being 

 used as a medicine, and considered a powerful diaphoretic and 

 specific for rheumatism f. 



To return to the structure of this mountain. — The zone of 

 schist on its western and northern sides is overlaid by and 

 included in dolomite, some thick beds of which even alter- 

 nate with the schist. The bituminous beds are in general 

 very thinly foliated ; — some of them so much so, as to resem- 

 ble laminai of lignite. All are extremely fetid when struck 

 by the hammer, are very much contorted, and their general dip 

 is to the S.S.E. at high'angles, varying from 70° to 80"'. 



A much greater numl)er of perfect impressions of fisii were 

 formerly found, when the lower beds were quarried, than in 



• Some of these pieces are so bituminous, and csjiecially tlic brown sort, 

 that they ilo not leave more than one half their weight of earthy matter, 

 after the melted hituuiinous iiortion has been allowed to run otK 



t It i- called " Stone oil by the Tyrolese, and is sold at Sccfeid for 

 twelve Horiii-- per cwt. 



I he 



