BACON FOSSIL. 
GIG 
rally strikes us with surprise. For though, among miqeral bodies, 
we find flexible substances of the stony kind, such as mica, mountain, 
leather, and amianthus, these minerals owe their flexibility either to 
their thinness, or to the fibrous structure of their parts. Therefore, 
w'hen a stone of any considerable thickness is said to have flexibi- 
lity, we are led to think that there is something very extraordinary, 
and we wish to know upon what depends that quality, nowise proper 
to a stone. Such, however, is the stone from Brasil, of which the 
Baron de Dietrich read a description in the Royal Academy of 
Sciences, in Jan. 1784. There is a specimen of a stone which cor- 
responds with that description, inserted in the Journal de Physique 
for 1784, at present in the museum of Mr. Weix, which belonged to 
the late Lord Gardenstone. The length of the stone, which I have 
examined, is tivelve inches, the breadth about five, and the thickness 
half an inch. When this stone is supported by the two ends in a 
horizontal position, the middle part bends, by its own w'eight, more 
than a quarter of an inch from the straight line. This species of 
flexibility may certainly be made a proper object of scientific inves- 
tigation.” 
The doctor adds, “ that the stone has a certain flexibility, to w'hich 
neither the terms ductile nor elastic will properly apply. The flexi- 
bility of this stone is so easy, compared with the rigidity of its 
substance, and its elasticity so small compared with its flexibility, 
that there must be in this body some mechanical structure, by which 
this unnatural degree of flexibility is produced, i. e. a flexibility, 
which is not inherent in the general substance of the body. Now, 
the substance of this stone being chiefly quartz, the most rigid and 
inflexible of all materials, and the stone at the same time bending 
in such an easy manner, there is reason to conclude that this arises 
from no principle of flexibility in the general substance of the stone, 
but from some species of articulation in the structure of it, or among 
its constituent parts, which, while it preserves the component particles 
in one entire mass, suffers the parts to move a certain space in relation 
to each other.” 
Dr. Hutton then gives an account of different examinations he made 
by the microscope, by splitting and by the blow-pipe : from which he 
concludes, “ that the particles of quartz, which have little cohesion, 
are bound together by thin plates of transparent mica; and these 
connecting plates being flexible, this allows a certain motion of the 
rigid particles among themselves, without the fracture or general 
separation of the stone.” 
Bacon Fossil. 
This name is given to a remarkable fossil substance discovered on 
a rising ground belonging to Chapel-farm, in the parish of Cnuwys 
Monchard, near Tiverton in Devonshire. The estate formerly be- 
longed to a monastery of Augustine friars which was built upon it. 
In sinking a pond, when the workmen had got to a depth of ten feet 
from the surface, they stuck upon a spongy substance, which appeared 
to be a very thick cuticle of a brown colour ; they soon found pieces 
