116 



with their bark, and here and there adorned with their leaves. The 

 wood was inflammable, making a strong fire, and serving instead of 

 fossil coals. 



Dr. Plott in his History of Oxfordshire, relates, that the scarcity 

 of firing, in some parts of that county, has induced the people to 

 burn a sort of black substance, of a grain somewhat like rotten 

 wood, half burnt ; partaking also of a mineral nature, and therefore 

 called by authors metallophyton, or lignum fossile. Put into water, 

 it will not swim ; and into fire, it consumes but slowly, and sends 

 forth very unpleasant fumes. A vein of it, at Ducklington, looked 

 like wood ; yet broken, shewed a smooth and shining superficies, 

 not unlike to stone pitch ; and put into the fire has not near so ill a 

 smell. The doctor, who fully believed in the frolics of the stone- 

 forming archeaeus, says, as to the substance of lignum fossile, it is 

 thought to be a cretaceous earth, turned to what it is by subterra- 

 neous heats ; for that it was never formerly wood, notwithstanding 

 its specious and outward likeness, is plain from its never being 

 found with roots or boughs, or any other signs of wood *. 



Dr. Morton, who likewise did not believe in the subterranean 

 change and preservation of organized matter, describes two or three 

 species of this metallophy ton -J- , one of which, he says, is of a dark 

 colour, and has a grainy for in one direction (which is usually ac- 

 cording to the length of the pieces) it cleaves or parts pretty readily 

 into plates and splinters ; the other way it snaps into shorter pieces, 

 and will not cleave at all. There is another sort, which does not so 

 readily part into the flakes. None of these are found in any large 

 masses. They are all, more or less, of a glossy black, and have a 

 density or smoothness within, like that of bitumen, or jet. In that 

 also they resemble, as he remarks, the true bitumen, or pisasphal- 

 ton. They are not so firm and hard as the common coal, and are 



* The Natural History of Oxfordshire, by Dr. Plott, p. 65. 



t The Natural History of Northamptonshire, by Dr. Morton, p. 121. 



