Growth of Forests. 185 



have been cut down as with a knife, leaving a more 

 or less sheer precipice. On the face of this can be 

 counted twenty or thirty distinct forest levels. Thus 

 at the base a forest is visible of trees standing up- 

 right ; the trunks of large size but broken off about 

 ten feet from the ground and completely silicified or 

 turned into stone. The roots, like stone snakes, can 

 be readily traced, while the trees and sections of 

 trunks are so true to life that they might have been 

 buried but yesterday. On top of these trees is seen 

 a stratum of rock, which has given growth to another 

 forest, which attained maturity and died down to 

 form the birthplace of still another. So one after 

 another these forests are piled up to the height of a 

 mile. The reader is familiar with the time entailed 

 in the growth of a forest of to-day, from saplings to 

 trees of the largest size, hence can form some idea of 

 the time which must have elapsed while these forests 

 were dying and growing one upon another. 



Those who have visited England and are familiar 

 with the chalk cliffs of Dover have interesting testi- 

 mony of the duration of time. This vast deposit is 

 simply an ancient ocean bottom almost exactly iden- 

 tical with that being formed in the Atlantic to-day. 

 By some convulsion of nature it has been elevated, 

 and stands as a monument to the vast results attained 

 in nature by the agency of minute organisms through 

 long eras of time. 



When the Atlantic cable was taken up for repair, 

 it was found covered with a mud almost entirely 

 made up of minute shells of rhizopods ; and later 

 investigations into the ocean bottom showed that 



