has
been made into a hospital, the tomb of Masolus that is preserved today
at Halicarnassos. In Italy there are brick walls at Arezzo and Bevagna.
So much concerning stones made by the hand of man.
I
return to stones formed by nature. There is a petrifying juice found
both outside the earth mixed with water and hidden within the earth
that turns all things it touches or surrounds into stone. I will
mention first the roots, trunk, branches, bark, foliage, flowers and
fruit of trees that are turned to stone in fountains and rivers as I
have mentioned in Book II of De Natura Eorum Quae Effluunt Ex Terra. In
Elboganun, near a town that is named for the gliding of the hawk, large
fig trees with the bark intact are found in the ground turned into
stone with golden pyrite deposited in the cracks. Also near Krakow,
Bohemia (a citadel built by Karl the Fourth behind Rakovicius on the
road to Swanberg) trees with branches intact are dug up near a river
and these have been used by the peasants of Colembrach to make angular
whetstones that they have presented to King Ferdinand of Bohemia and
his friends. In Misena near the fortified city of Rubenstien, four
miles from Chemnitz, in a certain reservoir we see the trunks of many
trees that have been changed to stone. Petrified oak wood has been
found in an aluminous earth at Hildesheim. In this same district near
the citadel of Marienberg there is a hill abounding in petrified tree
trunks, the ends of which sometimes project from the hill. These tree
trunks are very long and may be found in heaps. There is a black earth
in the center of each tree. The trees resemble the marble from
Hildesheim that I have mentioned before in that they give off an odor
of burnt horn when struck with a piece of iron or another stone. The
two stones are of the same material. Actually nature produces certain
stones that resemble trees and these must be carefully examined for
bark, heart, etc. If these are missing it is evident that they are not
petrified trees but only natural stones which resemble them. The trees
of Hildesheim are of this origin. We have no way of knowing if the
tree trunk that Jovianus Pontanus found on Cape Pausilypus, when a part
of the mountain broke away during a storm, was a petrified tree or
not. It is not stated whether this was a stone that looked like wood or
a piece of petrified wood. The petrified wood found in the aluminous
earth of Hildesheim contains mineral ebony. Small quantities of this
mineral occur in a similar fashion in hollows in certain other stones.
Theophrastus also knew of this occurrence of ebenum in rocks. The wood containing the ebenum mentioned
above is black and without branches or fruit. When polished it has a
luster similar to horn, solid and light and with an appearance similar
to jet but it is completely different. This ebenum is unaffected by fire while jet burns readily and is completely consumed. Branching ebenum of this type from Venice was once given me by a friend who thought it to be the black coral called antipathes by
the Greeks. Pausanias, following a certain Cyprian physician, has
written that it represents a root that grew within the earth with
neither foliage nor fruit and for that reason is very difficult to find,