478 IHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [anNO 1779. 



IP~. Of a Petrefaction found on the Coast of East Lothian. By Edivard King, 



Esq., F.H.S. p. 35. 



In the year 1745 the Fox man of war was unfortunately stranded on the coast 

 of East Lothian in Scotland, where she went to piecc-s ; and the wreck, remained 

 about 33 years under water ; but this last year a \ iolent storm from the north- 

 east laid a part of her bare, and several masses, consisting of iron, ropes, and 

 balls, were found on the sands near the place, covered over with a very hard 

 ochry substance, of the colour of iron, which adhered so strongly, that it re- 

 quired great force to detach it from the fragments of the wreck. And, on 

 examination, this substance appeared to be sand, concreted and hardened into a 

 kind of stone. The specimen now laid before the society had been taken out of 

 the sea, from the same spot, some time before, and is a consolidated mass that 

 had undergone the same change. It contains a piece of rope that was adjoining 

 to some iron ring, and probably had been tied to it. The substance of the rope 

 is very little altered ; but the sand is so concreted round it, as to be as hard as 

 rock, and it retains very perfectly impressions of parts of the ring, just in the 

 same manner as impressions of extraneous fossil bodies are often found in various 

 kinds of strata. 



Now, considering these circumstances, we may fairly conclude, in the first 

 place, that there is, on the coasts of this island, a continual progressive indu- 

 ration of masses of sand and other matter at the bottom of the ocean, somewhat 

 in the same manner as there is at the bottom of the Adriatic sea, according to 

 the account given by Dr. Donati, in the Phil. Trans, vol. 49, p. 588, or 

 Abridg. vol. 10, p. 705. And, in the next place, it seems that iron, and the 

 solutions of iron, contribute very much to hasten and promote the jjrogress of 

 the concretion and induration of stone, whenever they meet and are united with 

 those cementing crystalline particles, which there is reason to believe are the 

 more immediate cause of the consolidation of all stones and marbles whatever, 

 and which very much abound in sea water. 



Hence it may be inferred, that wherever there is any induration and petrefac- 

 tion of matter, from any causes whatever, it is greatly hastened in its progress, 

 and the consolidation is rendered much more com])lete and firm, by being near 

 any mass of iron, and still more so by the admixture of any solution of that 

 metal. This appears, in some degree, from the present specimen ; where, near 

 to the ring, and in the portion of the fragment that has the largest impression 

 of it, the concreted sand-stone is of a firmer texture, and there is a larger 

 cohering mass formed about that part of the rope, than about those parts that 

 are farther removed from the ring. The same conclusion also may be draw n 

 from a very remarkable piece of antiquity, which was discovered about 3 years 

 since on the coast of Kent. Some fishet men, swciping for anchors in the (iull 



