109 



in the interior passages, which had been dug in the mass of fossil 

 wood, in the former mountain : possessing, like it, the brightness 

 and hardness of jet. In proportion, also, as the fossil wood lay near 

 to its superincumbent stratum of fossil coal, it was evidently the 

 more impregnated with bitumen ; possessing a darker colour and 

 a greater degree of compactness. That which was at a greater 

 distance from the vein of coal, being situated still lower, differing not 

 much in its colour, and general qualities and appearance, from com- 

 mon decayed wood. It is a circumstance worthy of particular 

 attention, that the stratum of stone, at its inferior surface, was so 

 exactly adapted to the upper surface of the stratum of coal, as to 

 give the idea, of a fluid matter having been poured over the sub- 

 jacent hard and coherent stratum. In the same manner, also, did 

 the lower surface of the fossil coal apply to the superior surface of 

 the fossil wood. 



In the same volume of the Philosophical Transactions * which con- 

 tains Professor H oilman's more abridged account of this fossil wood, 

 is also a paper by the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Milles, entitled " Remarks 

 on the Bovey Coal." Dr. Milles observes, that the fossil wood de- 

 scribed by Professor Hollman corresponded in many particulars 

 with some strata, discovered about fifteen years before, in Devon- 

 shire, and which he was satisfied were not of vegetable origin : and 

 concluded therefore, that the substance described by Professor Holl- 

 man. likewise, was not wood. The account of this fossil, the Bovey 

 Coal, as given by Dr. Milles, is highly interesting, and is therefore 

 here given in his own words. 



" It is found on a common surrounded with hills, called Bovey 

 Heathfield, in the parish of South Bovey, thirteen mile south-west 

 of Exeter, and three miles west of Chudleigh. The uppermost of 

 these strata rises within a foot of the surface, under a sharp white 

 sand, intermixed with an ash-coloured clay, and underlies to the 

 south about twenty inches in a fathom. 



*Philos, Trans, vol. li. part 2, p. 534. 



