94 Scientific Proceedings, Royal Dublin Society. 



Griffith states, in referring to part of the Bog of Allen in the 

 King's County, that there is a kind of compact or black bog 

 which " has a strong resemblance to pitch or pitch coal, the 

 fracture being conchoidal in every direction, and lustre glistening. 

 This kind of bog contains very rarely any vegetable remains ; 

 where they do occur I have always found them to consist of some 

 of the varieties of rushes which grow in stagnant waters ; from 

 hence we may be led to conclude that black bog was formed, or grew 

 slowly, under water. . . . This supposition is strengthened by 

 the fact that twigs and branches of trees are sometimes found 

 irregularly scattered at the point of juncture of the red and black 

 bogs." The pitch-like substance with conchoidal fracture and 

 glistening lustre which Sir Richard Griffith observed nearly a 

 century ago is probably of the same nature as the substance from 

 Aussee in Styria, brought under notice by Doppler and Schrotter, 

 Inspectors of Mines, and named dopplerite by Haidinger in 1849. l 

 According to Dana 2 the same substance has also been found at 

 Gonten in Appenzell, Switzerland, and at Obbiirg, near Stansstad 

 in Unterwalden, Switzerland. More recently other occurrences 

 have been recorded, notably at Elizabethfehn on the Hunte-Ems 

 Canal, Oldenburg, where T. Schacht 3 found the stem of a pine- 

 tree changed into dopplerite. In this case the specimen was not 

 found in peat, but in the sand underlying a peat bog, one-third to 

 three-quarters of a metre under the surface of the sand. The 

 overlying bog was formerly four metres in depth, but drainage has 

 reduced its depth to about three metres. In describing this specimen 

 Dr. C. Claessen 4 mentions, in addition to some of the localities 

 above referred to, Dachlmoss and Aurich, as places where dopplerite 

 has been found. Dr. H. ImmendorfP mentions the extensive 

 occurrences of dopplerite near Papenburg, Hanover. He also 

 refers to a deposit found during the construction of the Ems- 

 Jahde Canal between Aurich and Upschort(East Friesland), which 

 occurred as a jelly or thick liquid in the sand under the bog, in a 

 layer twenty to forty centimetres thick, and extending to about 

 100 metres. Dopplerite from Pilatus in Switzerland is also 



i Sitz. Ber. Wien, n., p. 287. 



2 Handbook of Mineralogy, 5th ed., 1874, p. 749. 



3 Mitteilungen des Vereins zur Forderung der Moorkultur, 1898, p. 149. 

 * Ibid., p. 199, * Ibid., 1900, p. 227. 



