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Of animal and vegetable substances burfd in the earth.

i. Of vegetable bodies.

These are principally of three kinds. I. Trees or parts of them. 2. Herbaceous plants,

and 3. Corals.

Os trees, or parts of them bury’d in the earth.

HE S E are, according to the time they have been in the earth, and the matter theyhave lain among, more or less alter’d from their original state, some of them ha-ving suffer’d very little change, and others being so highly impregnated with crystalline,sparry, pyritical or other extraneous matter, as to appear mere masses of stone, or lumpsof the matter of the common Pyrites, of the dimensions and more or less of the inter-nal figure of the vegetable bodies, into the pores of which they have made their way.The fossil wood which we find may be ranged into these kinds. 1. The less altered.2. The pyritical, and 3. The petrified.

Of those parts of trees less altered from their original state, the greatest store is foundin digging to small depths in bogs, and among what is called peat, or turss earth, a sub-stance us’d in many parts of the kingdom for fuel; in digging this, usually very near thesurface, they find immense quantities of various vegetable matter buried ; in some places,whole trees scarce at all alter’d, except in colour ; the oaks in particular being usuallyturn’d to a jetty, black ; the firs are in this state as inflammable as ever, and are oftenfound containing between the bark and wood a plain rosin. Morton also mentions awhole small maple he found in a stratum of clay at a considerable depth • and I haveoften met with pieces of wood very little alter’d from their original state in strata ofloam among gravel, and even in the solid beds of stone, particularly at the great quarryat Mr. Allen’s near Bath, some hard parts of an elm of more than four foot, whichwas still soft enough to be easily pierced with the point of a knife.

Besides the whole trees or considerable parts of them, there are continually found inthe peat earth in vast abundance, the fruits and catkins of other trees; these are inter-rnix’d among the roots of sedge, &c. and are scarce at all alter’d in their texture, themost common of these are hazel nuts, and near Whitlesea, a town in the isle of Ely, Iremember to have seen vast abundance of the twigs and leaves of the white poplar, smallbranches of hazel, with the sceletons of the leaves and catkins in prodigious abundance; alittle lower down there was a vast quantity of half dissolved and ihatter’d wood, with itscracks filled with a black bituminous substance; and among this the workmen told methey found sometimes the stones of plumbs or some such fruit, but these very rarely ; inplaces where the fir and pine kinds are buried, the smaller twigs and the Cones or fruit

are