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wood, in the former mountain : possessing, like it, the brightness 
and hardness of jet. In proportion, also, as the fossil wood lay near 
to its superincumbent stratum of fossil coal, it was evidently the more 
impregnated with bitumen ; possessing a darker colour and a greater 
degree of compactness. That which was at a greater distance from 
the vein of coal, being situated still lower, differing not much in its 
colour, and general qualities and appearance, from common decayed 
wood. It is a circumstance worthy of particular attention, that the 
stratum of stone, at its inferior surface, was so exactly adapted to the 
upper surface of the stratum of coal, as to give the idea of a fluid 
matter having been poured over the subjacent hard and coherent 
.stratum. In the same manner, also, did the lower surface of the 
fossil coal apply to the superior surface of the fossil wood. 
In the same volume of the Philosophical Transactions* which con- 
tains Professor Hollman’s more abridged account of this fossil wood, 
is also a paper by the Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Milles, entitled “ Remarks 
on the Bovey Coal” Dr. Milles observes, that the fossil wood de- 
scribed by Professor Hollman corresponded in many particulars 
with some strata, discovered about fifteen years before, in Devon- 
shire, and which he was satisfied were not of vegetable origin : and 
concluded, therefore, that the substance described by" Professor 
Hollman, likewise, was not wood. The account of this fossil, the 
Bovey Coal, as given by Dr. Milles, is highly interesting, and is 
therefore here given in his own words. 
“ It is found on a common surrounded with hills, called Bovey 
Heathfield, in the parish of South Bovey, thirteen miles south-west 
of Exeter, and three miles west of Chudleigh. The uppermost of 
these strata rises within a foot of the surface, under a sharp white 
sand, intermixed with an ash-coloured clay, and underlies to the 
south about twenty inches in a fathom. 
* Philos. Transact, vol. H. part 2, p. 534. 
