As 
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FOSSIL CONIFERZ OF AUSTRALIA. 171 
both states the internal structure may be detected. This 
kind of fossil wood is to be seen in most cabinets, a large 
quantity having been sent to England by emigrants.* These 
fossil trees appear to have been subjected to the same muta- 
tions as those of the Isle of Portland, for they are described 
as standing erect to the height of several feet in a bed of 
arid sand, apparently in the places where they grew ; their 
petrified branches being scattered around them. They so 
entirely preserve their natural appearance, that one of the 
colonists mentions among the extraordinary sights he wit- 
nessed on his first arrival in New Holland, the burning of 
trees into lime to manure the ground. 
A fossil pine forest, on the eastern coast of Australia, in 
the inlet called Lake Macquarrie, is described by the Rev. 
B. Clarke, as occurring at the base of a mountain range, 
composed of conglomerate and sandstone, with subordinate 
beds of lignite; an alluvial plain extends to the water’s 
edge, covering the sandstone cock which is seen in situ 
beneath. Throughout this plain, stumps of fossil trees pro- 
ject from the ground, and present the appearance of a forest 
in which the trees have all been broken off at the same 
level. At the distance of some yards from the shore, a reef 
is formed by vertical rows of the petrified stems, which pro- 
ject out of the water. Many of the fossil stems on the 
strand have the remains of roots extending into the sand- 
stone below the alluvial deposit, and, like those in the Island 
of Portland, are in some instances surrounded by an accu- 
mulation of rock, which forms a mound of a higher level 
than the surface of the stratum. The trunks are, generally, 
three or four feet high, and from two to six feet in diameter. 
The wood is silicified, and veins of chalcedony traverse its 
substance between the concentric rings and medullary rays ; 
in several examples, from 60 to 120 annual circles of growth 
* My late friend, Sir Francis Chantrey, had a magnificent specimen, 
which is now in the British Museum. See Petrifactions, p. 59. 
