115 
he made during a voyage to that Island, with Sir Joseph Banks, Dr. 
Solander, and Dr. Lind, in the year 1^72. 
The surturbrand, he says, is evidently wood, not quite petrified, 
but indurated; which drops asunder as soon as it comes into the 
air, but keeps well in water, and never rots ; it gives a bright, 
though weak flame, and a great deal of heat, and yields a sourish, 
though not unwholesome smell. 
The smiths prefer it to sea-coal, because it does not so soon waste 
the iron. The Icelanders make a powder of it, which they make 
use of to preserve their clothes from moths : they likewise apply it 
externally against the cholic. Tlie doctor says, I have seen tea- 
cups, plates, &c. in Copenhagen, made of surturbrand, which takes 
a fine polish. It is found in many parts of Iceland, generally in 
the mountains, in horizontal beds ; sometimes more than one bed 
is to be met with, as in the mountain of Lack, in Bardestrand, 
where four strata of surturbrand are found, alternately with different 
kinds of stone. 
He brought a large piece of it with him to Sweden, in which 
there were evident marks of branches, with the circles of the annual 
growth of the wood*. 
The same sort of fossil wood is described by Wormius as found in 
the island of Faro. It does not, he says, readily take fire, but has a 
splendour like jet. It is found in the crevices of the rocks, and is 
taken out in lamin®, or splinters, of three or four inches thick. 
Scheuchzer mentions a stratum of fossil wood, which he saw near 
Thun, in Switzerland, which was laying under several strata of flints, 
clay, and ash-coloured marl. Of this wood, he says, some parts, 
on exposure to the air, grew hard, and others broke to pieces. He 
noticed also, that the trunks and branches of this fossil wood were 
not round, but compressed ; yet, in some places, clothed with their 
* Letters on Iceland, by Dr. Uno Von Troll, D. D. p. 42. 
