LIGNITE is a fossil wood, somewhat car bonized, but displaying its wooden texture. In structure it is intermediate between peat and coal, and comprises jet, moor coal, bovey coal, brown coal, and basaltic coal. It occurs in Sumbulpur, Talchere, Rajmahal, Chittagong, amongst the hills up the Kurufuli river in Assam, and, underlying the clay, in the recent strata all along the sea coast from Cutch to Singapore. On the banks of a small tributary of the Tenasserim, in about 10 degrees of latitude north of Tavoy, trunks of trees changed to lignite may be seen in the stiff clay, and near them the trunks of other trees completely silicified, and turned to stone. There is a great variety in this wood coal, both in its appearance and chemical analysis. Dr. Morton described specimens' of lignite collected by the commander of the surveying vessel on the coast below Am herst. Mr. O'Riley, near tho headwaters of the
Ataran river, found two separate lines of lignite in a coarse sandstone conglomerate, with shale and a semi-indurated blue clay containing lime stone pebbles. This lignite is highly pyritous, its decomposition affording a copious deposit of sulphate of iron which covers the exposed surface with a dirty-coloured efflorescence. Some of the specimens taken from the deposit retain their original characteristics, do not fracture, and may be sawn through in sections across the grain, the same as wood imperfectly carbonized. Other deposits of wood less charged than the foregoing are found in the banks of the rivers Dahgyaine rind Gyaine, some 20 to 30 miles to the N.E. of Moulmein, covered with the same blue clay, but none possess any useful quality as a combustible inaterial.—Dr. illation.