26 
FOSSILIZING PROCESS. 
commences scarcely admits of question ; the 
impress of those contrivances by which life 
in any form is sustained, plainly distinguish 
every particle of matter ever subject to its 
dominion. 
The preservation of botanical character 
is owing to the process of fossilization, 
wdiich has the effect of removing vegetable 
substance, and supplying stony matter in 
its place, so that the latter is an exact cast 
of the former, not only shewing the outer 
form, but each separate vessel, and every 
structural arrangement. It is a cast, not as 
it were moulded at a single heat, but by suc¬ 
cessive minute processes, like the results of 
electrotype. Hence is produced a form, so 
strikingly identical with the living plant in 
material arrangement, that an inspection of 
fossil trees and leaves produces a feeling of 
the marvellous, as though the metamor¬ 
phosis were a phenomenon of life and not 
of death. 
Old Evelyn, in his Sylva, thus relates one 
of the early experiments of the Royal Society, 
the subject of w^hich appears to have been a 
fragment of fossil W'ood. If the steps of 
