'54 



ARBORICULTURE 



Petritied Forests of America. 



A \ ^ITIllX the arid and semi-arid 

 \ Y belt west of the 99 mericHan, 

 west longitude, arc numerous 

 monuments recording a climatic condi- 

 tion far different from that which now 

 exists. Forests in slone. evidences of a 

 soil and moisture capable of producing 

 growths in vegetation equal to our most 

 favored regions. 



These petrified trees are found in large 

 numbers throughout all that portion of 

 the United States in which at present the 

 rainfall is the least and the vegetation 

 most scant. 



Duplicates of the Secjuoias. equaling 

 them in size. Cedars of mammoth pro- 

 portion akin to those on the higher 

 mountains of Washington, have been 

 found in the Rocky Mountains where no 

 living trees of like character are now 

 known. 



The petrified forests of Arizona are 

 so well known. because of the very beau- 

 tiful ornaments made from the cut sec- 

 tions. Many tons of these trees have 

 been sent to Europe where better facili- 

 ties for cutting and polishing are had. 

 The material reduced to a coarse powder 

 is also used as emery, and corundum for 

 grinding metals. 



I visited the petrified forests of Floris- 

 sant, Teller County, Colorado, in Aug- 

 ust, 1900. They are situated two miles 

 from the station of the Colorado ]\Iid- 

 land Railroad, in a valley a mile or so in 

 diameter which seems at a former period 

 to have been a lake. The petrifactions 

 consist entirely of stumps, there were no 

 logs, and are upon the higher slopes sur- 

 rf)unding the vallev. The character of 

 the wood is well preserved in the stone, 

 the bark, knots and wood are very per- 

 fect, showing the trees to have been some 

 frirm of a Cedar ; they much resemble 

 thuja gigantea of Washington. (In 1884 

 I measured a thuja gigantea near Mount 

 r.aker which was 65 feet in circumfer- 

 ence and was 265 feet in height.) There 

 has been great numbers of these fossil- 

 ized stumps but all save one have been 

 carried away by collectors, only scattered 

 clippings remain where they were broken 



up for removal. I carefully measured 

 the one remaining stump and counted the 

 annual growths. It was at the time 45 

 feet 6 inches girth, but much had 

 been broken off and removed ; origi- 

 nally it was 18 feet diameter and 9 feet 

 high. Five saws are fastened in the 

 stone where vandals endeavored to saw 

 it into sections for removal. There are 

 yYi yearly growths to an inch radius, 

 having required 1,620 years to grow. 

 Young trees showed a more rapid in- 

 crease. Twenty miles southeast of Den- 

 ver is another Cedar stump the same size 

 as this, while 22 miles south of Denver 

 on the Colorado & Southern Railway is 

 a log of mammoth size. This is on 

 Cherry Creek near the old Santa Fe trail. 

 Rev. M. Hamilton, a collector of fossils, 

 first discovered its character in 1866. 

 It was in three sections broken in fall- 

 ing. It has been mostly removed, 

 blasted with dynamite and carried away. 

 My informant, Mr. W. N. Byers, of 

 Denver, describes it as when he first saw 

 it in 1868, being 90 to 93 feet long and 

 from 20 to 22 feet in diameter, partly im- 

 bedded in the earth. 



There are many other wood petrifac- 

 tions in Colorado, at Boulder, about 

 Golden and some in Middle I'ark, which 

 are from 3 to 5 feet in diameter. 



Near Sims, Morton County, N. D., on 

 the Northern Pacific Railway, are quite 

 extensive petrifactions. 



At Fossil Station, Uinta County, 

 Wyoming, on Ham's Fork of Green 

 river, are others. On Yakima river in 

 eastern (arid) Washington and in east- 

 ern (arid) Oregon are large numbers. 



A party of Califoniia prospectors 

 while searching for minerals, reported 

 in i860 an immense petrified tree in a de- 

 file in Northwestern Nevada, not far 

 from the Oregon line. This, according 

 to their report, was larger than the 

 largest Sequoia now living. Numerous 

 other stumps and trees were seen in the 

 same vicinity. This is an extremely arid 

 locality and but seldom visited. 



Neither science nor physics as con- 



