382 



and some others had retained a few frail portions of their woody 

 fibres, the spaces between which were filled up with chalky earth." 

 Mr. Bass, who acted as Surgeon on board the Reliance, and from 

 whose accurate examination the above account is taken, was told, 

 from good authority, that when the trees were in a complete state, 

 the diameter of the dead wood of the stem, that rose immediately 

 from the stony part, was equal to the diameter of that part ; and 

 also that a living leaf was seen upon the upper branches of one of 

 them. Mr. Bass was induced to place these altered vegetable subr 

 stances amongst petrifactions, although, he says, no strict analogy 

 could be discovered between them and the subjects usually met 

 with of this kind : this gentleman acknowledging, at the same time, 

 the great difficulty of accounting for this wonderful change which 

 had taken place in the lower parts of the stems of these trees. 



If this ingenious and intelligent observer found himself incapable 

 of explaining the mode in which this change had been accomplished, 

 it is not to be expected that even the attempt should be made by 

 one not possessing the advantage of examining the substances them- 

 selves, nor of ascertaining their relative situation with the surround- 

 ing substances. 



In the Philosophical Transactions is the description of a pheno- 

 menon which seems to bear some slight resemblance to that which 

 has been just described, and which also is not capable of being 

 explained, by any of those laws on which the various processes of 

 petrifaction appear to depend. It is thus related : 



" In a close of Mr. Purefoy, near his house, called Wadley, a mile 

 from Farringdoji, in Berks, there grows an elm, which hath now lost 

 the top, and is grown hollow, containing near a ton of timber. From 

 the but of the same tree, one of the spreading claws, having been 

 formerly cut off with an axe ; that part of the but, from whence the 

 same was severed, being about If foot above ground, and inward 

 within the trunk of the tree, hath contracted, a petrified crust, about 



