A bug eat itself out of a cherry table at Williamstown, Mass. See an account of this phenomenon, by Professor Dewey, in the Lit. and Philos. Repertory.
These phenomena remind us of others of a similar nature and equally certain.
In a trunk of an elm, about the size of a man's body, three or four feet above the root, and precisely in the centre, was found, in 1719, a live toad, of a moderate size, thin, and which occupied but a very small space. As soon as the wood was cut, it came out and slipped away very alertly. No tree could be more sound. No place could be discovered through which it was possible for the animal to have penetrated, which led the recorder of the fact to suppose that the spawn from which it originated must, from some unaccountable accident, have been in the tree from the very moment of its first vegetation. The toad had lived in the tree without air, and, what is still more surprising, had subsisted on the substance of the wood, and had grown in proportion as the tree had grown. This fact was attested by M. Hebert, Ancient Professor of Philosophy at Caen.
In 1731, M. Leigne wrote to the Academy of Sciences at Paris an account of a phenomenon exactly similar to the preceding one, except that the tree was larger, and was an oak instead of an elm, which makes the instance the more surprising. From the size of the oak, M. Leigne judged that the toad must have existed in it without air or any external nourishment, for the space of eighty or a hundred years.
We shall cite a third instance, related in a letter the 5th Feb. 1780, written from the neighborhood of Saint Mexent, of which the following is a copy.
"A few days ago, I ordered an oak tree of a tolerable size to be cut down, and converted into a beam that was wanting for a building I was then constructing. Having separated the head from the trunk, three men were employed in squaring it to the proper size. About four inches were to be cut away on each side. I was present during the transaction. Conceive what was their astonishment when I saw them throw aside their tools, start back from the tree, and fix their eyes on the same point with a kind of amazement and terror. I instantly approached, and looked at that part of the tree which had fixed their attention. My surprise equalled theirs, on seeing a toad, about the size of a large pullet's egg, incrusted, in a manner, in the tree, at the distance of four inches from the diameter and fifteen from the root. It was cut and mangled by the axe, but still moved. I drew it with difficulty from its abode, or rather prison, which it filled so completely that it seemed to have been compressed. I placed it on the grass; it appeared old, thin, languishing, decrepit. We afterwards examined the tree with the nicest care, to discover how it had glided in; but the tree was perfectly whole and sound."—European Magazine.
Bat.—A woodman engaged in splitting timber for rail-posts in the woods close by the lake in Haming (a seat of Mr. Pringle's in Selkirkshire), lately discovered, in the centre of a large wild cherry tree, a living bat, of a bright scarlet color, which he foolishly suffered to escape, from fear, being fully persuaded it was (with the characteristic superstition of the inhabitants of that part of the country) a "being not of this world." The tree presented a small cavity in the centre, where the bat was inclosed, but is perfectly sound and solid on each side.—N. Y. Lit. Journ. and Belles-Lettres Repository, taken from the London Semi-Monthly Magazine.
Skull in Wood.—A tenant of the Rev. J. Cattle, of Warwick, lately presented to him a part of the solid butt of an oak tree, containing within it the skull of some animal (unknown). It was in the part of the tree nine feet above the ground, and was perfectly inclosed in solid timber.—N. Y. Lit. Journ. and Belles-Lettres Repository, from European Magazine.
X.
A Memoir on the Geological Position of a Fossil-Tree in the Series of the Secondary Rocks of the Illinois.
The spirit of inquiry which has been excited in this country in regard to objects of natural history, while it has enlarged the boundaries of our knowledge of existing species, has directed some of its more valuable researches to those organized forms which have perished and become embalmed in the shape of petrifactions, in the body of solid rocks. A petrified tree of this kind has recently been discovered in the secondary[ [250] rocks at the source of the Illinois River. Having recently visited this evidence of former changes in the flora of the West, I embrace the occasion, while my recollections are fresh, to give an account of it.