440 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO I76O. 



a crown a ton at the pit. The. smaller coal is separated from the clay by a screen, 

 or grated shovel ; the larger, which rises sometimes in pieces of above a hundred 

 weight, is piled up by hand. There is hardly any other use made of it at pre- 

 sent but to bake the earthen ware of a manufacture erected at South Bovey, and 

 for burning lime-stone. 



The fire made by this coal is more or less strong and lasting according to its 

 different veins : those which lie nearest to the clay, having a greater mixture of 

 earth, burn heavily, leaving a large quantity of brownish ashes ; that which they 

 call the wood coal is said to make as strong a fire as oaken billets, especially if 

 it be set on edge, so that the fire, as it ascends, may insinuate itself between, 

 and separate the laminae. But that of the stone coal is accounted most strong 

 and durable, being apparently more solid and heavy, and probably also more 

 strongly impregnated with bitumen. 



When this coal is put into the fire, it crackles and separates into laminae, as 

 the cannel coal does into irregular pieces, burns for some time with a heavy 

 flame, becomes red hot, and gradually consumes to light white ashes. Though 

 the transverse crevices made in it by the fire give it the external appearance of a 

 wooden brand, yet if quenched when red hot, the unconsumed part does not look 

 like charcoal, but seems to be almost as smooth and solid as when first put into 

 the fire. 



Notwithstanding the resemblance which this fossil bears to wood, especially 

 when viewed in detached pieces, yet the following observations on its situation, 

 its form and properties will prove it to be not of a vegetable but of a mineral 

 origin. In the first place, there does not seem to be any imaginable cause in 

 nature which could bring together such a mass of fossil wood as is found in 

 this, and other strata of the like kind in different parts of Europe. It extends 

 here to the depth of 70 feet: in that near Munden they have sunk 50 feet, 

 without coming to the bottom. Fossil trees, though frequently found single, 

 or in small numbers, are generally discovered in morasses and soft ground, where 

 they have either buried themselves by their own weight, or been overwhelmed by 

 some accidental cause : but the Bovey strata are found in a dry soil, intermixed 

 with clay and sand, and by their regular course and continuance, carry the most 

 undoubted marks of never having been disturbed since their original formation. 

 Fossil trees likewise preserve their form and size, their length and roundness, 

 their branches and roots, their fibrous texture and strength, and are either found 

 entire, or in such large pieces, that there is no room to doubt of their nature, 

 since the very species of wood is frequently distinguishable in them; whereas the 

 Bovey coal comes out only in flat pieces, of a few feet long, like the splinters of 

 large masts; and on them are discovered no signs of roots, branches, or bark, 

 no round pieces, or concentric circles, which distinguish the annual growth of 



