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of vegetable origin, may be accounted for, in the opinion of Dr. 
Milles, from the nature of its principles, and their disposition, when 
united, to assume certain forms. 
It must not be omitted to remark, that the strata of Bovey accord 
very much with those of Munden and Altendorf ; the stratum of 
wood, both in Germany and England, being accompanied with clays, 
boles, and sand. At Bovey, there also are beds of very fine pipe- 
clay, of which great quantities used to be sent to Liverpool. 
The fossil wood of Iceland, described by Wormius*, appears to 
be also of this kind. The surturhrand or sortehrande, according 
to his account, being a laminated substance, generally black, but 
sometimes only of a dark brown colour. When first dug out of 
the earth, it is capable of being bent like a twig ; but it is brittle, 
when dry. It consists of oblique fibres, frequently interrupted by 
knots, like the roots of a great tree, which are full of crevices. This 
stratum is found, he says, some yards under the earth, in a moun- 
tain so high and perpendicular, that those only who have been ac- 
customed to climb such precipices, can venture to dig for it. There 
is no appearance, that trees ever grew where this fossil is found; 
Wormius, however, concludes them to be roots of trees turned 
black, by a subterraneous vitriolic juice. 
Horrebow, in his history of Icelandf , describes the sortehrande, 
or black-brand, as an extraordinary sort of wood, very hard, heavy, 
and black, like ebony ; which is found deep in the ground, in broad, 
thin, and pretty large pannels, or leaves ; fit for a moderate sized 
table. It is, he says, generally wavy and undulated ; and found in 
the rocks or great stones, wedged, as it were, close in. 
But the most satisfactory account we have had of the fossil wood 
of Iceland, is given by Dr. Uno Von Troil, from the observations 
* Mus. Wormian, lib. ii. cap. 16. 
f The Natural History of Iceland, by Horrebow, p. 33. 
