190 
the extent to which this operation has proceeded. Should the tex- 
ture of the wood have been loosened by previous decay, it will, in 
its bituminous state, when dry, be found to be loose and shattery; 
the fibres being hardly discoverable, owing to their having con- 
creted into irregular fasciculi. The appearance which such pieces 
exhibit may be conceived from the specimen delineated in Plate 1. 
Fig. 1. 
But, on the contrary, if the wood had endured little or no pre- 
vious decay ; nor has sulfered any loss of substance, from the agi- 
tation of the water in which it has laid, and has undergone the same 
degree of bituminization which peat in general has suffered, it will, 
when dried, not only possess its pristine form, but almost its original 
degree of hardness. Slips of this bituminized wood will flame, when 
lighted, like matches made from the fir or pine tree ; which circum- 
stance has occasioned some confusion, some having asserted that the 
trees from which these slips have been taken must, of necessity, have 
been of the resiniferous kind, from their possessing so great a degree 
of inflammability after ages of immersion in water. Tliis phenomenon, 
however, is more easily accounted for, by considering that this sub- 
stance no longer possesses any of the original compound constituents 
(maUriaux immMiats,) of which turpentine is one, but that the in- 
flammability depends entirely on the wood being now converted 
into a bituminous matter; which circumstance is evinced by the 
particular odour, and other peculiar circumstances, which accompany 
the combustion of this substance. 
Bituminous wood, sometimes possessing a considerable degree of 
closeness of texture, has been very advantageously employed for 
many of the purposes to which ordinary timber is generally appro- 
priated. From its adoption for such purposes an observation has 
been made, which deserves, in this place, particular notice. The 
experience of the workmen has led them to observe, that this spe- 
cies of fossil wood resists the action of water much longer than 
