104 EGYPT. 
spheroidal shape to the effect of any previous 
attrition in water ; because the masses of mine- 
ralized wood, possessing a degree of hardness 
inferior to the jasper, and being associated with 
it, would also have undergone a similar change. 
Pococke, and, more recently, that intelligent 
traveller Broivne, noticed these appearances in 
the deserts ; the first on the Arabian, and the 
last on the Libyan side of the ]Siile\ Pococke 
seems to have observed the examples he alludes 
to, upon the same spot where we found them, 
or very near to it, for they occurred in the first 
part of his journey from Grand Cairo to Suez^. 
Shaw mentions, also, his having observed 
instances of the same kind, on the isthmus 
between Cairo and Suez; and the fabulous 
accounts of the famous Ras Sem, or petrified 
village in the Cyrendica, are supposed by him to 
have derived their origin from similar phseno- 
mena'. Shaw notices a method by which the 
petrified palm-tree may be distinguished from 
(l) Travels in Africa, from the year 1792 to 1798, by JV. G. Browne. 
(•J) " I observed in the road many stones that looked like petrified 
wood 1 saw one piece that seemed to have been a large 
body of a tree." Descript. of the East, vol. I. /?.I31. Lond. 1743. 
(3) See S/tuiv'i nccount o{ the petri/ied viUaife, or cili/, at Ras Sem, 
in the province of Dosha, in the kingdom of Tripoly. Travels, p. 155. 
Lond, 1757. 
