sarcophagus. 
G17 
of bone and fat of the same hue. With some little trouble, at length 
the entire body of a hog was extricated, reduced to the colour and 
substance of an Egyptian mummy ; the flesh was six inches thick, 
and the hair upon it very long and elastic. On proceeding in the 
work, a considerable number of hogs, of various sizes, were found in 
different positions ; in some places two or three together, in others 
singly ; the bodies, when exposed to the air, still retained their con- 
sistency; the stratum continued for twelve feet, after which the pond, 
being sufficiently deep, was filled with water. The ground was never 
known to have been broken up before; the family which preceded the 
then present possessor had a journal of all remarkable events which 
had occurred in the parish during three centuries, but there was no 
entry in it which could lead to a solution of the phenomenon. 
Mr. Polwhele, who obtained a specimen, mentions, in his History 
of Devon, that the bed in which the fossils lay was of stiff clay. He 
describes the piece in his possession to be very light, somewhat spongy, 
mottled like mottled^soap, and evidently of a sebaceous nature. On a 
slight chemical analysis, it was mostly soluble in spirits of wine while 
hot, but separated into white flakes in cooling. In this it resembles 
spermaceti. On being boiled in a fixed-alkaline lixivium, it was easily 
convertible into soap. 
Sarcophagus. 
In the natural history of the ancients, this was a stone much used 
among ihe Greeks in their sepulchres ; it is recorded to have always 
perfectly consumed the flesh of human bodies buried in it, in forty 
days. For this property it was much famed, and all the ancient 
naturalists mention it. There was another very singular quality also 
in it, that is, its turning into stone any thing thatw'as put into vessels 
made of it. This is recorded only by Mutianus and Theophrastus^ 
except that Pliny had copied it from these authors, and some of the 
later v/riters from him. The account Mutianus gives of it is, that 
it converted into stone the shoes of persons buried in it, and the uten- 
sils which were customary in some places to bury with the dead. The 
utensils this author mentions, are such as must have been made of 
different materials, and hence it appears that its petrifying quality 
extended to substances of very different kinds. Whether it really 
possessed this last quality, has been much doubted. Its taking the 
place of substances of very different kinds and textures, is no real 
objection ; the account has probably some truth in it. Petrifactions 
in those early days might not be distinguished from incrustations of 
sparry and stony matter on the surfaces of bodies only, as we find, 
even to this day, the incrustations of spar or mosses, &c. in springs, 
are still called by many persons, petrified moss, &c. Incrustations 
like these might easily be formed on substances enclosM in vessels 
made of this stone, by water passing through its pores, dislodging 
from its common mass, and carrying with it, particles of such spar as 
it contained ; and afterwards falling in repeated drops: on whatever 
lay in its way, it might again deposit them on such substances in form 
of incrustations. Thus things made of different matter, which hap- 
4 I 
