102 



ten wood : on which, if oil be poured, it burns ; but when the oil is 

 burnt away, the burning of the stone ceases, as if it were in itself 

 not liable to such accidents*. 



.-The description which Galen gives of certain black stones, 

 brought by him, out of Coelosyria, seems to accord very exactly with 

 the Bovey.Coal,or surturbrand. He describes them as being broad 

 like a board, and on being put into the fire, burning with a slender 

 flame. They were generated, he says, in the hills on the east side 

 of the Dead Sea, where the bitumen is produced, and the smell of 

 the stone was like bitumen f. 



Agricola mentions several places in which bituminous wood has 

 been found, but is most particular in 'his account of that which is 

 found in a celebrated mountain in Misena, not far from the city of 

 Zuicca, where, he says, after digging about a step deep through 

 common earth, they find an extensive vein of soft coal, about three 

 steps and a half deep, and then cutting through a tolerably thick 

 stone, they again arrive at coals, but these are hard, and have ob- 

 tained the name of pitch coal, from their blackness and brightness. 

 Under this vein they find a bituminous metallic earth, beneath 

 which are scattered aluminous pyrites, coal, &c. J 



Valerius Cordus relates , that light, dry wood, black like coal, 

 is dug out of the mountains of Marienbergen, at the depth of forty 

 orgyia. 



Schoockius describes the fossil wood of Meizlibizen, as being of 

 the same kind as that of which we are here treating of. He says, 

 speaking of it under the conviction of its being intirely of mineral 



origin, that it is exceedingly like to vegetable wood ; but, that the 



i 



* Theophrastus, History of Stones, translated by Sir John Hill, p. 67. 

 t De Simplicium Medicamentorum Facultat. lib. ix. 

 $ De Natura Fossilum, Basil. MDLVIII. lib. vii.-p. 325, 



Valerii Cordi Observationes quaedam Rerum naturalium variarum, & primum Fos- 

 silium in Germania. MDLXI. p. 217. 



