212 



This is a substance very rarely met with, and therefore very im- 

 perfectly known ; it was first found by some peasants, on the coast 

 of Finland, in the year 1736. Afterwards a similar substance oc- 

 curred in one of the Swedish lakes ; and, lastly, Mr. Herman, a 

 physician at Strasburgh, discovered a similar substance in the 

 water of a fountain of that city. He describes it as being white, 

 having nearly the resemblance of tallow ; feeling greasy, and stain- 

 ing paper, as tallow does. It flames, he observes, with much smoke, 

 and leaves a pretty light coaly matter. It is brittle like tallow, but 

 its specific gravity is considerably less *. 



Not unlike to the substance, thus described by Mr. Kirwan, is 

 that which Mr. Jameson speaks of as having been found in the 

 peat-mosses of Scotland -)-. 



A substance similar to that which is here described I have been 

 shown by Mr. Mawes, of Tavistock-street, in his excellent collec- 

 tion of the bitumens of Derbyshire ; in which place this specimen 

 had been found. 



Humbold, in a letter to Van Mons J, mentions, that he had 

 converted the phallus esculentus into a substance resembling tallow, 

 by means of the sulphuric acid, and had also made soap of it. 

 Hence Mr. Jameson is induced to ask May not the mineral tallow 

 of peat-mosses be a species of fungus, altered by some natural 

 operation similar to what we have here mentioned. 



The close resemblance which seems to subsist between this sub- 

 stance and the adipocire, the want of proof of its vegetable origin, 

 and the rarity of its occurrence, which indeed corresponds with 

 that of animal matter in peat bogs, incline me to imagine that its 

 origin may be attributable to some animal remains, which chance 

 has deposited in these parts, and which, exposed to the action of 

 water, has suffered a change into adipocire. This opinion, I think, 



* Elements of Mineralogy, vol. ii. p. 47. f Mineralogy of the Shetland Isles, p. 156. 

 $ Annales de Chymie, vol. xxii. p. 64. 



