242 A. LIVERSIDGE. 



it is composed of an impalpable dust, but on carefully 

 flattening it out under a spatula and on rubbing it between 

 the finger and thumb a few coarser gritty particles can be 

 felt. To separate the finer material from the coarser 

 particles, a portion of the dust was placed in a tall conical 

 precipitating glass, and subjected to the action of a stream 

 of water carried down by means of a glass tube to the 

 narrow bottom of the glass. The residue left in the glass 

 was found to be made up of grains of quartzose sand and 

 white particles, the latter dissolving readily in dilute acids 

 with effervescence; some of these were grains of amorphous 

 calcium carbonate, but a few of the larger were readily 

 recognised under the microscope as fragments of shells, 

 but whether of fresh water or marine mollusca could 

 not be decided, as they are much abraded ; in addition 

 there are some rather larger soft black particles which 

 readily flatten out under the spatula to an unctuous black 

 mass ; when ignited on platinum foil these black particles 

 slowly burn away with but slight incandescence, like char- 

 coal; but emit a strong empyreumatic odour and leave a 

 bulky white ash, some of them when crushed and examined 

 under the microscope present a cellular structure very 

 similar to that of wood, but rather obscure ; others, how- 

 ever, are devoid of all recognisable structure. 



The more or less complete obliteration of the original 

 structure is due to the fact that the wood has undergone 

 considerable change, either by natural decay or by the 

 effects of fire. The woody matter does not, however, 

 present the appearance of ordinary charcoal such as might 

 have been recently derived from house or bush fires ; it has 

 evidently been long subjected to the action of water, and 

 it is highly probable that some of it is not charcoal but 

 simply fragments of water logged woody matter, black 

 from decay, common in rivers and fresh water lakes and 



