Philosophical transactions, Vol. L. Part I. For the year 1757. / Giving some account of the present undertakings, studies, and labours, of the ingenious, in many considerable parts of the world.

by Various; Royal Society

Nº. 6. is from Newcastle. Volckman, ibid, part 3. tab. 4. fig. 9. seems to be of this kind.

Nº. 7. The same author, Volckman, figures a somewhat-like impression, ibid. fig. 5.

Only these seven extraordinary impressions I have presumed, my Lord, to treat of at this present time; but I have many more in my cabinet equally curious, some few of which I here exhibit to the Society, without taking any further notice of them: only I shall add, that many extraordinary impressions occur in Woodward's and other collections, and many are iconed in authors, worthy the attention of the curious.

These impressions, my Lord, are not only met with in small pieces; but large evident branches, some feet in length, have been found. I have, in the collieries of Derbyshire, frequently traced branches with (what seemed to me) long narrow leaves proceeding from them, and parts of other vegetables, above a foot's length: but the hardness of the substance they are immersed in renders it impossible to get them out without breaking them to pieces[140].

As these remains of vegetables are very extraordinary, I would recommend to the curious in botany to take notice of them, as an Appendix Plantarum adhuc incognitarum. For my part, I am so very little skilled in botany, that I hardly presume to offer my opinion; which is, that they are impressions and parts of species of the firs and pines, of the tithymals, the cereus's, and other arborescent plants, and of large reeds; for some of the said kind are embellished with ribbed, studded, and reticulated works; e.g. the Hercules' club, or rubi facie senticosa planta Lobelii, described by Dr. Grew, Museum Reg. Soc. p. 221. the cerei, &c.

I further exhibit to the Society some few specimina of iron-stones with cones or iuli imbedded in them. These, my Lord, are from veins of ball iron-stone, in the lands of Lord Gower, at Okenyate, a village on the Roman road of Watling-street; and from the iron-works at Coalbrookdale in Shropshire. The cones are frequently met with in fragments, but rarely so intire, and are never found but in the strata of iron-stone. I have added to these a figured fossile body, much like a cone, found sometimes in our chalk-pits in England, but chiefly in the pits at Cherry-Hinton in Cambridgeshire. Dr. Woodward, Catalogue B. p. 22. specimen b. 72. calls them cones seeming to be of the larix; and imagines they were not come to ripeness or maturity. They certainly have some resemblance to cones, tho' I much doubt them to be so; but they most exactly resemble the roots of the cyperus rotundus vulgaris of botanists.

I shall finish this paper, my Lord, by acquainting your Lordship and the Society, that I firmly believe these bodies to be of the vegetable origin, buried in the strata of the earth at the time of the universal deluge recorded by Moses. It is, I must confess, with regret, that I find there are some, who reject the burial of these bodies at that fatal catastrophe, but substitute partial deluges to account for it. Did those gentlemen consider, or maturely weigh, the many remarkable and strong evidences of an universal deluge, every-where obvious in the bowels of the earth, they certainly would abandon their imaginary system: for, my Lord, it is not only the immense quantities of marine remains, dispersed in all terrestrial strata, which are to be considered (that circumstance alone might give some reasoning to their system of partial deluges), but the following more weighty circumstances are likewise to be added and flung into the scale. 1º. The heavings, displacings, trappings, and breaks of the metallic veins, and the loads of rubble, met with at vast depths, and where no marine remains were ever found; and such heavings, &c. are not rare in metallic or mineral works: of which, to give your Lordship an idea, I have presumed to sketch the following plan of such a phænomenon.

These cross-loads are not unfrequent in the mines on North Downs, near Redruth, in Cornwall. Wheal-Widden copper-work there, in 1750, was about 60 fathoms deep. The load was 20 feet over; and has many cross-loads two or three feet over, which sometimes heave the metallic load from one to five or six fathom. These cross-loads are generally filled with fragments of stone, minerals and other rubble.

2º. If these effects proceed from local deluges, recedings of the sea, gulphs atterrated, &c. we should then indeed find marine remains: but how will that account for the vast quantity of remains of terrestrial vegetables and animals, equally met with, and in like manner as the marine remains, in the bowels of the earth? And, 3º. Were local or partial deluges the cause, we should then find only the animals and plants of the climates or places, where such deluges have happened; whereas in these fossil remains it is quite the contrary: the remains of those plants and animals, we know, are of animals and plants, the inhabitants of the most remote climes from those, where they now lie buried; e.g. the rhinoceros-bones, in the cave called Baumans-hole, in the Hartz Forest in Germany; the strange bones in the Antra Draconum in Hungary; the horns of the moose-deer, and other prodigious horns, and elephants bones, found in England, Ireland, Germany, Sibiria, and even America, &c. of vegetables, parts of the arbor tristis in France; bamboo's, or great Indian reeds, frequent in England; with numbers of other such examples. And of those remains even of the marine shells, yet unknown to us, all appear exotic to the climes where they now lie deposited; e.g. the cliffs at Harwich in Essex abound with a species of buccinum heterostrophum, and other shells, never yet discovered in the adjacent waters. The ammonitæ of so many species, and the innumerable variety of conchæ anomiæ, with which this island abounds, are yet unknown to be inhabitants of our seas, and appear exotic to this climate. Therefore, my Lord, I reasonably conclude partial or local deluges could never have produced such effects. However, unprejudiced to any opinion, if the learned, who favour the system of partial deluges, will either confute these my assertions, or give solid reasons for the facts alleged to be producible by local deluges, atterrations, &c. I will joyfully embrace the truth: but till then, my Lord, I would recommend to those systematical gentlemen, not to pervert that excellent maxim of the great Lord Bacon, and, instead of Non fingendum neque excogitandum, sed inveniendum quid natura faciat, aut ferat, not to corrupt it into fingendum atque excogitandum, non inveniendum quid natura faciat, aut ferat.