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fibres are very confused ; the same fibres running straight, oblique, 

 transverse, circular, and indeed in every possible direction, which, 

 he observes, is never the case in vegetable wood. 



Pillingen, who wrote expressly on the fossil wood of Meizlibizen, 

 in Misnia between Ziza and Altenberg, gives the following accu- 

 rate description of it ; he entertaining the same opinion of its mi- 

 neral origin with Schoockius. Whilst digging in a valley, at the foot 

 of a mountain, near Altenberg, which had been deepened by fre- 

 quent strong currents of rain water, flowing from this and the adja- 

 cent mountains ; wonderful, he says, to behold, at a little distance 

 from the surface, they found a substance like decayed wood, capable 

 of being inflamed; bearing marks resembling those which result 

 from an annual increase ; and, in a word, so formed, by nature, that 

 water was not more like to water, nor milk to milk, than this mine- 

 ral wood, thus formed by nature, was to vegetable wood. The fibres 

 of this wood, unlike to vegetable wood, were contorted and twisted 

 in almost every direction, and it was generally found split into slices 

 or chips. It was very light, except when containing pyrites, and 

 its colour was a darkish brown. Whilst burning, it yielded a sul- 

 phurous or bituminous smell, and was thereby resolved into a light 

 white earth, not unlike to amianthus, or plumose alum. White, 

 hard, and exceedingly heavy pyrites, and particles of sulphur, he 

 observes, were found very abundantly in this vein of fossil wood. 



Beneath this layer of wood, the earth was strongly bituminous for 

 nearly seven feet deep, and differed hardly in any thing from the 

 wood itself, except that the fibres, which were distinguishable in 

 the wood, were not here to be discovered of the same length : it was 

 also much more frequently divided by clefts. 



At first, on perceiving that this wood was so light as to swim on 

 wnter; that it inflamed on being ignited; that it bore the marks of 

 the long veins of wood ; and, that it even had knots from which the 

 boughs appeared to have grown ; he concluded it to be real wood, 



