190 



the extent to which this operation has proceeded. Should the tex- 

 ture of the wood have been loosened by previous decay, it will, in 

 its bituminous state, when dry, be found to be in a loose shattery 

 state; the fibres being hardly discoverable, owing to their having 

 concreted into irregular fasciculi. The appearance which such 

 pieces exhibit may be conceived from the specimen delineated in 

 Plate 1. Fig 1. 



But, on the contrary, if the wood had endured little or no pre- 

 vious decay ; nor has suffered any loss of substance, from the agita- 

 tion of the water in which it has laid, and has undergone the same 

 degree of bituminization which peat in general has suffered, it will, 

 when dried, not only possess its pristine form, but almost its ori- 

 ginal degree of hardness. Slips of this bituminized wood will 

 flame, when lighted, like matches made from the fir or pine tree ; 

 which circumstance has occasioned some confusion, some having 

 asserted that the trees from which these slips have been taken must, 

 of necessity, have been of the resiniferous kind, from their possess- 

 ing so great a degree of inflammability after ages of immersion 

 in water. This phenomenon, however, is more easily accounted 

 for, by considering that this substance no longer possesses any of 

 the original compound constituents (materiauximmediats) 9 of which 

 turpentine is one, but that the inflammability depends entirely, on 

 the wood being now converted into a bituminous matter; which 

 circumstance is evinced by the particular odour, and other peculiar 

 circumstances, which accompany the combustion of this substance. 



Bituminous wood, sometimes possessing a considerable degree of 

 closeness of texture, has been very advantageously employed for 

 many of the purposes to which ordinary timber is generally appro- 

 priated. From its adoption for such purposes an observation has 

 been made, which deserves, in this place, particular notice. The 

 experience of the workmen has led them to observe, that this spe- 

 cies of fossil wood resists the action of water much longer than 



