343 



specimen, however, which I possess, from the neighbourhood of 

 Wooburn, in Bedfordshire, has it in a considerable degree. 



The petrified wood found ii> the neighbourhood of Lough-Neagh, 

 which has been spoken of in a former part of this volume, is evi- 

 dently wood, which, having suffered bituminization, has afterwards 

 been impregnated with silex, partially or totally, and in various 

 degrees ; and has also, in some instances, become invested by the 

 lapidified surrounding matrix. On examining a handsome specimen 

 of the Lough-Neagh wood, in the British Museum, being of that 

 kind which has been described as possessing the unchanged, conti- 

 nuous with the petrified wood, I was convinced of its being bitu- 

 minized wood, in some parts involved in, and in others adherent 

 to, a coarse, hard, argillaceous matrix. Mr. Barton himself says, 

 " The smell (of the woody part of these stones) is not resinous, yet 

 it is a strong smell, when it is burning in a large quantity; and a 

 faint smell of the same kind, when only the stone is burning; per- 

 haps, he says, this is the scent of bitumen*." The other kinds of 

 Lough-Neagh wood are undoubtedly of the silieious- kind; he says 

 of them, " They cleave like wood ; they contain abundance of fire, 

 as may be proved by using them as flints, and by rubbing them one 

 upon the other, even when they are wet; and they bear the fire 

 surprisingly ; for although they are easily made red hot, yet they 

 neither burn to lime, nor vitrify/' 



In Switzerland, and particularly in the neighbourhood of Bayern^ 

 beautiful specimens of the silicized bituminous wood are found^ 

 bearing a very close resemblance to. the recent wood in colour and 

 figure. In Lithuania a rare kind is found, in. which, though it ma- 

 nifests no disposition to the transparency, which the opaline wood in 

 general shows, it possesses, in some parts, the opaline lustre, and has 

 obviously, from the soft state in which it has existed, had its fibres 



* Lectures in Natural Philosophy, &c. by Richard Barton, B.D. Dublin, 1751, p, 89, &c. 



