Steenur. 



162 NATURAL HISTORY of NORWAY, 



general, where I likewife confidered the difruptions or breaks of 

 mountains. When a part of a rocky mountain, being undermined 

 and detached, falls from its vaft height, and in its fall happens 

 to ftrike on a hard ground, and is broke into fome hundreds of 

 fmaller pieces, this colle&ive body of fragments is called ftenur, 

 and the innumerable points and angles of thofe broken ftones 

 render the roads extremely troublefom, tho' fometimes they are 

 obferved to lie in fuch fymetry, that their former cohefion may 

 be judged from their concave and convex fides. In the parifh of 

 Houg, three Norway-miles from Bergen, about twenty years ago, 

 a very furprifing accident happened to a man, who walking under 

 a mountain, was on a fudden entirely covered with the fall of 

 fuch a congeries of large ftones, which formed a kind of vault 

 around him. Here he remained unhurt for feveral weeks; his 

 friends, who by his outcries had found the place of his confine- 

 ment, knew not how to extricate him, the ftones being immove- 

 ably large. They reached him meat, and drink, for fome time 

 by means of a pole, thro' the crevices, but at laft, the ftones fell 

 in and crufhed him. 



SECT. It 



Marble of Marble, which in moll countries is fo fcarce, and bought up at 

 fcverai kmds. ^ g Tt2it a p T ' lc ^ j s f oimc l nere i n feveral places, and in fuch quan- 

 tities, that if all Europe were to be fupplied from hence the quar- 

 ries would not be exhaufted , for feveral ridges of mountains con- 

 lift almoft wholly, or, however, chiefly of marble, upon breaking 

 the lapidious incruftation, which is a porous fubftance, and about 

 an ell or two deep, as a tegument to the more precious marble, 

 in comparifon with which, it appears to have a kind of foam or 

 froth, interfperfed with fmall orbicular cavities, as the furface of 

 melted wax, or the like after its induration. I have elfewhere 

 confirmed the opinion of the liquefaction of the rocks, as built on 

 other unexceptionable grounds, exclufive of thefe incruftations. 

 Had the inquifitive Mr. Tournefort reflected better on this truth, 

 and the confequences which may be drawn from it, he would not 

 have been under a neceility of afTenting to the ftrange pofition of 

 the vegitation of marble, to account for fome moots and excref- 

 cences of marble found in a cave on the ifland of Antiparos, 

 2 fome 



