236 Miscellaneous. 



On the Petrified Forest of JRadoieenz near Adershaeh, and iqwn the 

 Process 0/ Petrifaction. By Professor Goppert. 



In the vicinity of the district of Adersbach, so remarkable for its 

 wonderfully shaped sandstone formations, there is yet another n<i- 

 tnral curiosity, which, although less striking to the eye, merits no 

 less consideration in a scientific point of view, namely a magnificent 

 deposit of petrified trees, si'ch as has never yet heen observed, at 

 least in the coal-measures'^ , either in Europe or in any other part 

 of the earth. From Rohnow, a small tov,'n in Bohemia, on the 

 western boundary of the county of Glatz, four and a half English miles 

 from Cudowa, an elevated ridge, consisting of carbonaceous sand- 

 stone, striking in a westerly direction as far as Slatina, rises above 

 the villages of "Wiistkosteletz, Mystrey, Gipka, and. Kliwitz ; it 

 is regarded as the overlying sandstone of the subjacent carboniferous 

 rocks, and rises to its greatest elevation at the Oberberg of Slatina, 

 a point aiFording a beautiful panoramic \iew. In this chain of 

 hills, eleven miles and a half in length, and on an average two miles 

 and a quarter in breadth, which is, for the most part, covered with 

 forest, numerous petrified trunks occur, partly on the high ridges, 

 partly in and on the numerous springs and rivulets which issue from 

 these, and also on the borders of woods, roads, and fields, but espe- 

 cially in the environs of Radowenz, a village situated about two 

 leagues from Adersbach, and united with the latter point by a 

 pretty good road ; also near the Branden, and on the Oberberg of 

 Slatina, where there are points from which at least 20,000 to 

 30,000 hundredweights of petrified wood, may be surveyed at one 

 glance, and Avhence all the museums of the world might be fur- 

 nished with splendid specimens, such as they hardly possess at 

 present. M. Benedict SchroU, a merchant and manufacturer in the 

 neighbouring town of Braunau, who is engaged in the careful study of 

 the very interesting palseoutological conditions of the surrounding 

 district, and has furnished me with much new information, especially 

 with regard to the Permian formation, first informed me of this 

 phfenomeuon, which I visited twice in the course of last summer in 

 company with him and Drs. Beinert and Gebauer, but without 

 exhausting it, as petrified trunks are not wanting in the district of 

 Schadowitz lying to the south. The trunks themselves, which are 

 almost always deprived of their bark, are from one to four feet in 

 thickness, and from two to six feet long ; round or roundish oval, 

 often in longitudinal fragments as if split in two ; all the specimens 

 having horizontal, nearly even-fractured surfaces, but alwayswith sharp 

 angles, without traces of having been rolled about ; of tlie brownish- 

 grey colour of chalcedony, and a texture like hornstone ; sometimes 

 hollow in the middle, like trees of our present world, of which the 

 summits have withered ; also spirally twisted at an angle of three to 



[* The tree-bearing sandstone described in this paper has been regarded 

 by some geologists as being more probably a member of the Permian than 

 of the Carboniferous series, and to be tlic representative of the tree-bearing 

 Roth-hegendes of Chemnitz and Kyfhaiiser. — Ed,] 



