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quantity in which it was found, and its extreme utility, seemed to 

 give some countenance to this opinion. Some have supposed it to 

 have originated in the deposition of a bituminous mud by the waters 

 of the sea, which, they imagined, must, in very remote periods, have 

 inundated all those parts, in which peat is so plentifully found. The 

 strong resemblance which this matter frequently bears to the re- 

 mains of trees and other vegetables, induced others to attribute its 

 formation to the overwhelming of vast forests, by inundations of the 

 sea ; they accounting for the depth at which it is found, as well as 

 for its superincumbent strata, from the quantity of earthy matter 

 which so violent a rush of waters must carry with it, and deposit on 

 those tracts on which it rested. Others have conceived, that it 

 must have proceeded from the forests which were prostrated at the 

 time of the deluge recorded by Moses ; and that it derived its in- 

 flammability from some peculiar change, which they underwent at 

 that period. 



Schoockius was decidedly of opinion, that peat was entirely of 

 mineral origin, and says, that the straws, twigs, and a thousand 

 other things, which appear to be blended accidentally with it, 

 have been formed thore by nature: and adds, if any one demand 

 how these things came in the deep recesses of the earth, I will tell 

 him, in the first place, that they may be generated there, in the man- 

 ner spoken of by Pliny ; and secondly, that the bituminous filaments 

 possess the power, by their various dispositions, of assuming these 

 forms. Thus he also accounts for the formation of the substances 

 resembling trees, branches, and pieces of roots, which are frequently 

 found among the peat. These, he supposes, have grown there, in 

 the same manner as other fossil substances. A confirmation of this 

 opinion he derived, from the circumstance of several of the trunks 

 possessing, not a round, but an oval shape ; a form which, he ob- 

 serves, ordinary trees never assume. He at the same time, acknow- 

 ledges, that the resemblance which the fossil trees bear to real pines 



