FOSSIL FLORA. 755 



Carpites pedunculatus u. sp. 



PL CIIL fig. ■''. 



Fruit round, apparently 4 or 5 celled; pet^eel sliort, thick. 



This fragmentary fruit is hardly worthy of description, for it may be 

 so deformed by pressure that it can not be recognized again. 



Among the described fruits (>f this heterogeneous class C. vihiirni Lx.,' 

 from Black Buttes, Wyoming, is perhaps closest, l;)ut prol)al)ly the resem- 

 blance is only su|)erficial. 



Habitat: Yellowstone River, one-half mile below the mouth of Elk 

 Creek, top of bluff (with Ulmus fruits); collected l)y F. H, Knowlton, 

 August, 1888. 



FOSSIL FORESTS. 



The fossil forests of the Yellowstone National Park are, beyond 

 question, the most remarkaljle of their kind that have thus far been dis- 

 covered in any part of the world. Isolated pieces or stumps of fossil wood 

 are of common occurrence, being found in almost all (juarters of the globe, 

 from near the point farthest north tliat was reached b}' the Greely Ai-ctic 

 Expedition to southern South America ; from Si)itzbergen and Nova Zembla 

 to South Africa and Australia, and geological!}' from the Devonian to beds 

 in process of formation at the present day. In many localities there are 

 aggregations of logs and stumps that are worth)- to be digniiied by the 

 name of fossil forests; as, for example, in Chalcedony Park, near Holbrook, 

 Arizona; near Calistoga, California, and in the vicinity of Cairo, Egypt. 

 But in all of these places, so far as known, all or most of the trunks are 

 prostrated and lie scattered about in the greatest confusion. In some cases 

 there is evidence that the logs were transported b}- currents l^efore being fos- 

 silized. The fossil forests of the Yellowstone National Park and vicinity, on 

 the other hand, are not only more extensive in area, Init the trees are almost 

 all standing upright in the exact positions in which they grew originally. 

 Many of these trunks, standing on the slopes and steeper hillsides, rise to a 

 height of 20 or 30 feet, and are covered with lichens and blackened and 

 discolored by frost and rain. At a short distance it is hard to distinguish 

 them from the near-l)y living relatives. The following account by Prof 



'Tert. FL, p. 305, PI. LX, fijr. 26. 



