34 GEOLOGICAL MEMOIRS. 



plants mentioned above, wliicli had been digested for two and a balf 

 years without the addition of sulphate of iron, whereas those in B 

 only showed a slight tinging of brown. 



I am far from beheying, as I have often formerly stated, that the 

 plants of the ancient world, either before or after they were entombed 

 in the strata, were exposed to a fluid of so high a temperature, but 

 only mean that the method I employed, which I would recommend 

 to chemists for analysis, especially for geognostic or geological pur- 

 poses, served to hasten the process of the formation of coal, and 

 specially to compensate for the time, which we, with our transient 

 existence, cannot use in our laboratories. To obtain a more perfect 

 product, it only seemed necessary to combine with this method of 

 experimenting the action of pressure, which would undoubtedly have 

 a veiy great influence, but which it is very diflicult to accomplish. 



In the mean time a very intelligible ^dew may be thus obtained of 

 the formation of many fossil resins, which, almost universally origi- 

 nating from Coniferee, owe their diverse chemical properties, in a great 

 measure at least, to the peculiar circumstances in which they have 

 undergone the process of fossilization, as I have formerly shown, par- 

 ticularly in regard to the mellite which is included in this class of 

 bodies. When I exposed resin of the Pinus Abies, L., for three 

 months to the action of warm water under the above conditions, it no 

 longer smelt of turpentine, but had a peculiar and not unpleasant, 

 balsamic odour, though still soluble in alcohol. Venice resin, how- 

 ever, lost this property, at least in part, after being digested in the 

 manner mentioned from the 1st of May 1846 to the 1st of May 

 1847, or for one year, and thus approximated more to amber, which, 

 as is well known, is almost wholly insoluble in alcohol. These ex- 

 periments are continued. It is thus not altogether improbable that 

 by suitable modifications of these experiments we may succeed in 

 producing, artificially, many of those resins which properly belong 

 not to the mineral, but the vegetable kingdom, such as retinasphalt, 

 amber, and even melhte. [J. N.] 



On the Water contained in Basaltic Rocks. 

 By Professor J. F. Hausmann. 



"Water is occasionally found in druses or amygdaloidal carities of 

 rocks, especially in basalts and basaltic amygdaloids. Stucke examined 

 the water from the basalt of Unkel, on the Rhine, and found m it a 

 small proportion of silica, alumina and magnesia*. The vesicular 

 cavities of some basaltic amygdaloids are not uncommonly filled with 

 water, as I have often observed among other localities in the amyg- 

 daloids of the Ochsenberg near Dransfeld. It has been imagined 

 that this water originated from the formation of the rock, but I have 

 no doubt that it is drawn by capillary attraction into minute fissures 

 from the exterior, and thus penetrates mto the amygdaloidal cavities. 



[J. N.] 



* Chem. Untersuch. einiger niederrhein. Fossil. 1793, s. 119. 



