120 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO lO/S. 



mon about two miles from Castleton in the Peak of Derbyshire, 15 or l6 yards 

 deep in the Old Man, as they call a mine formerly wrought, and now stopped 

 up, covered with earth, that had either fallen or was thrown in. There is no 

 coal-bed hitherto discovered within five or six miles of the place. This fungus 

 does not seem to me to have any constant shape; the pieces that I received are 

 much like peat or turf, both in the sooty colour and inward substance ; only this 

 is more clammy and tough, and does not dry. And some of this fungus sub- 

 stance is very soft, and like jelly. In and about the more solid pieces, are many 

 large lumps of a bituminous substance, which is very inflammable, like rosin. 

 It is light and breaks firm, and shines like good aloes; being also somewhat like 

 it in colour, save that it is darker and purpleish ; yet there is much of it of a 

 dark green colour. We distilled a part of it, which yielded an acidulous limpid 

 water ; then a white liquor, probably from some of the oily parts precipitated ; 

 and in the last place, a copious yellow oil, not unlike that of amber or pitch. 

 Whether this fungus owes its original to a vegetable, or is truly a concrete 

 mineral juice, and a fossil bitumen, I forbear to determine; but the finding of 

 it in an old mine, favours much the opinion of its being a vegetable substance; 

 either the very substance of the props of wood, used in lining and supporting the 

 grooves, are thus altered, or certain funguses grow out of them. That birch, 

 of which there is great plenty, and has been vast woods in all these mountainous 

 parts 6f England, will yield a bitumen, as limpid as the sap which runs from it 

 by tapping, if we now had the skill to extract it: Pliny is very express, 1. i6, 

 c. 18. Bitumen ex Betula Galli excoquunt. And besides it is certain, that much 

 of that wood, if not all, which is dug up in the high moors of Craven, and which 

 the people use there for candles, and call candle-wood, is no other than birch, 

 as it appears from the grain and the bark ; though it exudes a rosin, which 

 makes many pronounce it real fir-wood. Whatever this bitumen is, which 

 this fungus subterraneus yields, it differs much from the asphaltum of the 

 shops. 



There is another mineral juice in these parts of England, resembling cream 

 both in colour and consistence. It was found in great quantities at the bottom 

 of a coal-pit, 49 yards deep. At SherifF-Hales, in Shropshire, in the iron mines, 

 especially that which the country people call the white mine, which yields the 

 best iron-stone. On the breaking of a stone, they commonly meet with a great 

 quantity of a whitish milky liquor, inclosed in its centre; sometimes they find 

 the quantity of a hogshead contained in one cavity. Its taste is sweetish, only 

 it has a vitriolic and iron-like twang. 



