358 [Proc. B. N. F. C, 



Turning to his third lecture on metamorphoses, he describes 

 a specimen on which he had a Latin inscription cut — " This 

 wonderful saxo-ligneous mass is extremely hard on the outside, 

 emitting fire, on collision with steel, in great plenty. Yet has 

 it wood, which is very soft, internally. . . . The weight of 

 the specimen, before a small fragment was separated, was seven 

 hundred pounds, being weighed at the public crane in a market 

 town. . . . The true external colour is white, like that of 

 a firm kind of chalk ; but the matter which affords this colour 

 is very thin, not exceeding that of an English silver penny, and 

 capable of being altered by rain, for when it is wet the stone in 

 some parts appears of a blue colour. It was found about two 

 miles from the lake, on the side of the River Camlin (Crumlin 

 River), above the surface of the water, which at the time was 

 very low." Specimen No. 2 — " A mass of wood and stone con 

 tinuous, is as much as two able men can lift in a frame, whose 

 joints are strengthened with iron. . . It being the reverse of 

 the former specimen — wood on the outside and stone within — 

 it was necessary to frame it, that it might be fixed in so steady 

 a manner as not to loose by friction the tender part of its 

 substance which lay on the outside." Specimen No. 7 — " This 

 stone is nearly twenty inches long and five broad ; one side is 

 ground to a flat surface, is a firm black stone, and gives a knife 

 a good edge ; the other side is wood, and may be cut by that 

 knife in several places without spoiling the edge. N.B. — There 

 was a great quantity of wood which was broken off in the 

 polishing." And so on I might quote from his descriptions of 

 two hundred and seventy-one specimens. The point I wish 

 you specially to note in those I have quoted is, that they are 

 part wood and part stone. 



Lecture IV. is devoted to a history of the phenomena of Lough 

 Neagh, and in it he describes the two sorts of wood to which 

 his enquiry relates. I may give them to you. *'I. — Those 

 which appear to the eye to be now wood, although they are 

 really stone, and are generally white in colour, porous, and 

 comparatively lighter than other stones, cleaving easily length- 



