224 



in a solitary and very anomalous circumstance related by Lord 

 Cr.omartie, in the Philosophical Transactions *. By his lordship's 

 account we learn, that in a moss near the town of Eglin in Murray, 

 though there is no water which communicates with the moss, yet 

 for three or four feet of depth in the moss there are little shell-fish, 

 resembling oysters, with living fish in them, in great quantities, 

 though no such fish are found in the adjacent rivers, nor even in 

 the water-pits in the moss, but only in the solid substance of the 

 moss. Dr. Darwin considers this as a curious fact, which not only 

 accounts for the shells which are sometimes found on the surface 

 of coals, and in the clay above them, but also for the thin stratum 

 of shells which sometimes exists over iron ore. 



The presence of light vegetable matters, and of small insects, 

 such as flies, certainly at the first thought, appears to yield in- 

 disputable evidence of the truth of that opinion which supposes 

 amber to have originally been the gum or resin of a tree ; and 

 which, whilst adhering to the tree, had thus caught these substances, 

 which a continued effusion of the same matter had thus involved. 

 But supposing this to have been the case, and that this substance 

 had become buried in the earth, still its bituminous nature remains 

 to be accounted for. It once indeed appeared to me as far from 

 impossible, that the vegetable gums or resins inclosed in the mass 

 of vegetable matters passing into the state of bitumen, might with 

 them be pervaded by the fermentative influence ; and, as actually 

 happens with other vegetable matters, lose little if any of their 

 original form and appearance. But maturer consideration has 

 shown that the opinion of the learned annotator on the works of 

 Pliny is that which best accords with all those phenomena, which 

 appear so contradictory, if regarded in any other point of view. 



The opinion of Mr. Dalechamp, as we have already seen, is, that 



* Philosophical Transactions, N 330. 



