98 S Y L V A BOOK in 



He that shall examine the hardness, and feel the 

 ponderousness of it, sinking in water, &c. will easily 

 take it for a stone ; but he that shall behold its grain, 

 so exquisitely undulated, and varied, together with its 

 colour, manner of hewing, chips, and other most 

 perfect resemblances, will never scruple to pronounce 

 it arrant wood. 



Signior Stelluti (an Italian) has publish'd a whole 

 treatise expresly to describe this great curiosity : And 

 there has been brought to our notice, a certain relation 

 of an elm growing in Bark-shire, near Farringdon, 

 which being cut towards the root, was there plainly 

 petrified ; the like, as I once my self remember to 

 have seen in another tree, which grew quite through 

 a rock near the sepulchre of Agrippina (the mother 

 of that monster Nero) at the Baia by Naples, which 

 appeared to be all stone, and trickling down in drops 

 of water, if I forget not. But, whilst others have 

 philosophiz'd according to their manner upon these 

 extraordinary concretions, see what the most indust- 

 rious and knowing Dr. Hook, Curator of this Royal 

 Society, has with no less reason, but more succinctness, 

 observ'd from a late microscopical examen of another 

 piece of petrify'd wood ; the description and ingenuity 

 whereof cannot but gratifie the curious, who will by 

 this instance, not only be instructed how to make 

 enquiries upon the like occasions ; but see also with 

 what accurateness the Society constantly proceeds in all 

 their indagations, and experiments ; and with what 

 candour they relate, and communicate them. 



21. It resembled wood, in that 



c First, all the parts of the petrify'd substance 

 c seem'd not at all dislocated or alter'd from their 

 c natural position whiles they were wood ; but the 



