BIOGRAPHICAL 45 



iferous, as shown by microscopic examination of their texture. 

 The species is now extinct and the nearest resembling species now 

 found exists in Asia Minor. 



The geological history of this forest is very easy to read. The 

 trees have fallen down and floated around in some old arm of the 

 sea until the roots and limbs were worn and rounded just as we 

 see like examples on the sandbars of the Mississippi. The trees 

 became heavy and water logged and settled to the sea bottom. 

 They were slowly covered by a deposit of sandstone of forty to 

 fifty feet, or more, in thickness, and under this deposit below the 

 old sea bed they were slowly transformed into chalcedony of such 

 beautiful and varied colors as has been nowhere else equaled. 

 Afterwards the land slowly rose until it became an elevated plain, 

 7,000 feet above the present sea level. 



Erosion by wind and water has done its work and uncovered 

 several thousand acres of this antediluvian plain. The great logs 

 lie, many of them, just as they appeared when they first sank to 

 their present resting place. Along the edge of the rocky bluffs 

 they may be still partly covered with the overlying standstone 

 and partly protruding into the excavated valley. 



In this brief statement and life of Major Lacey, I have 

 touched but briefly on his work as a statesman, interested 

 in the forest, streams, wild animal life of the country. 

 There is a lesson for us in the life and work of this man. 

 He had steadily in mind when he became chairman of the 

 house committee on public lands, the best interest of the 

 whole nation. The repeated failures during his early 

 career in Congress did not prevent him from trying 

 again, and he tried again and again, bringing to fruition 

 his long and faithful services in behalf of the wild game, 

 the forests, the homes of the cliff dwellers, the petrified 

 forests, and monuments of the country. Without this 

 long tenure in office, this work never could have been ac- 

 complished. A Lacey day in our public schools would 

 not be inappropriate, because Major Lacey has done more 

 for the protection of bird life and to stimulate forestry 

 than any other man ever did in our national life. 



