STEVENSON— INTERRELATIONS OF THE FOSSIL FUELS. 87 



separating peat beds, trees singly or grouped, growing from an 

 ancient soil with but small accumulation of offal about the stems. 

 The buried forests of Oregon and Alaska, described by Newberry 

 and Russell, are typical. Medlicott's^-** resume of Ormiston's ob- 

 servations may be noticed in this connection, as they show how a 

 forest, growing in an old soil of vegetation, may be succeeded by a 

 marine deposit, while the stems remain erect. Excavations for a 

 government dock were made on Bombay island off the west coast 

 of India. In a space of about 30 acres, 382 trees and stumps were 

 uncovered, of which 223 were erect. Some of the prostrate stems 

 were without roots but others had been overthrown in place, for 

 the roots were still embedded in the soil. The stumps are rooted 

 in a thin soil of decomposed basalt and are surrounded by a stiff 

 blue clay on which rests black marine mud, 4 to 5 feet thick. 

 Stumps projecting above the clay into the black mud have been 

 drilled by Teredo ; in some cases the holes pass downward through 

 the trunk toward the root and are filled with indurated clay. The 

 trees are Acacia catechu; how far the forest extended is unknown, 

 as no investigation was made beyond the limits of the excavation. 



The opinion, that stems of trees would not endure while a con- 

 siderable thickness of rock accumulates, is based on very serious 

 misapprehension of the facts or on a priori reasoning. The writer 

 has seen slender canes standing erect near the mouth of the Missis- 

 sippi River, though they had been dead long enough to permit 

 deposition of several feet of fine silt around them. Weed^-^ has 

 shown that the Yellowstone Park diatom deposits cover many 

 square miles. A typical marsh is in the Upper Geyser basin, where 

 the waters encroached upon the timber and killed the pines, whose 

 bare gray stems stand upright in the marsh or lie half immersed in 

 the ooze. The diatomaceous earth is sometimes 6 feet thick and the 

 "gaunt poles of the dead pines stand in a white powdery soil, which 

 is evidently a dried portion of the marsh mud." 



120 G. E. Ormiston, cited by H. B. Medlicott, Records Geol. Surv. of 

 India, Vol. XIV., 1881, pp. 320-323. 



121 W. H. Weed, "Diatom Marshes and Diatom Beds of tlie Yellowstone 

 National Park," Bot. Gac, Vol. IX., 1908, pp. 76-83. 



