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splendor of jet. This vein of indurated bitumen was a foot, and 
even more, in thickness. The professor saw, also, some specimens 
of marble, from this mountain, containing small bivalves : and 
obtained, from the same mountain, two marine shells, the one in 
a petrified, and the other in a pyritified state ; as well as a most 
elegant serrated tooth, resembling those of the shark, which mea- 
sured three inches and a half in height. Hence he concludes, that 
this mountain must, at some former period, have been covered by 
the sea. 
The indefatigable Rosinus, who also visite I this mountain, relates, 
that a large quantity of potter’s clay is dug here, and frequently 
with it fragments of wood, with black bitumen, and sometimes 
pyrites. He also describes hard flint stones, containing charcoal; 
and reeds, or at least their impressions, which, with an abundance 
of marine remains, were dug out of the bowels of the earth, in the 
same mountain. 
Professor Hollman also gives us, in the same work, a particular 
description of the circumstances most worthy of notice, which he 
perceived in the examination of a mountain, near Altendorlf, so 
famous for its salt-works, on the borders of Hesse. The height of 
this mountain appears to be about 2500 feet, exceeding that of the 
mountain, just described, in the neighbourhood of Munden, full 
seven hundred feet. His astonishment was here still more excited 
than when contemplating the wonders of the former mountain. 
Under an immense roof, formed by a vast stratum of stone, which 
was from eighty to a hundred and forty yards in thickness, was a 
vein of fossil coal, in most places of upwards of twelve feet in depth, 
which had long been dug to supply fuel for the neighbouring salt- 
works, and of which an incalculable quantity still remained. This 
fossil coal, resting on a bed of bituminous wood, agreed almost in 
every respect with the small vein of bitumen he had observed 
in the interior passages, which had been dug in the mass of fossil 
