and a high south-west wind. The cliffs near Charmouth, in the 
western part of Dorsetshire, presently after this alteration of the 
atmosphere, began to smoke, and soon after they burned, with a 
visible, though subtile flame, for several days successively; and 
continued to smoke, and sometimes to burn, at intervals, till the 
approach of winter; nay, ever since that time, especially after any 
great fall of rain, thunder and lightning, or a high south-west wind 
(which drives the sea with great violence against the cliffs, and beats 
off large pieces of them), the cliffs continue to smoke, and some- 
times to burn with a visible flame, which, during the summer months, 
is frequently observed in the night-time. On examining these cliffs, 
in the year l/SQ, I discovered,” he says, “a great quantity of 
pyrites, not in any regular strata, but interspersed in large masses 
through the earth, and which proved to be martial ; of cornua 
ammonis of different sizes, and other shells, but of the bivalve class, 
which w’ere covered over, and mineralized, as it were, with the py- 
ritical matter; of belemnites, also crusted over with the like sub- 
stance : and the cliffs, for nearly two miles long, and from the surface 
to thirty-five or forty feet deep, even to the rocks at high-water mark, 
were one bed of a dark-coloured loam, strongly charged with bitu- 
men. Moreover, I found also,” he says, “ a dark-coloured substance, 
resembling coal cinder ; some of which being powdered, and washed 
in distilled rain-water, upon filtrating the water, and evaporating it 
to a pellicle, its salts shot into fine crystals, and appeared to be no 
more than a martial vitriol ; one ounce of this cinder -like substance 
yielding one drachm of salt. I gathered up about one hundred 
pounds weight of the different kinds of those pyrites, marcasites, 
&c. which were laid up in a heap, exposed to the air, and every day 
sprinkled with water : the consequence was, that, in about ten days 
time, they grew hot, soon after caught fire, burned for several hours, 
and fell into dust. 
