34 HISTORY OF OHIO. 



there no longer, are compelled to live under ground, in the win- 

 ter months, and be obliged to bum whole trees at once to keep 

 the people from freezing. 



Europe, has certainly been growing warmer, not colder, 

 during the last eighteen hundred years, and we have no proof 

 that our climate, in Ohio, has been growing colder, during that 

 period. If these plants have not changed their nature, nor 

 our climate become colder, within the last eighteen centuries, 

 at least; were not these plants floated here, by the ocean 

 from tropical countries, in some remote period of time? The 

 very appearance of these plants, on a first view, answers such 

 a question. Had they been floated here from any great dis- 

 tance, would their leaves, and especially their delicate blos- 

 soms, been uninjured, fresh, expanded fully and entire, as they 

 were when in full bloom? Certainly not. Between the time 

 of their being in full bloom, in life, vigor and beauty, and 

 that aViful moment, in which they were overwhelmed, buried 

 and imbedded, fixed fast and turned to stone, iron and shale, 

 where they now repose, and for unknown ages past have re- 

 posed; scarcely one day could have intervened ; perhaps only 

 a fev,- hours elapsed. 



Wc state facts. And, besides, whole trees, turned into stone 

 with every root, limb, and the trunk; with the earth, where 

 it grew turned up, showing that the tree had been only pros- 

 trated, not removed, otherwise than thrown down by violence; 

 such a tree, a hemlock, still remains, at Chitteningo, New 

 York, unless travelers have carried it away for specimens. 

 That tree grew in exactly such a formation as ours in Ohio, 

 and must be referred to the same period of time with ours, 

 and must have been overwhelmed by the same catastrophe, i 



which overwhelmed, our palms, dates, bamboos, and other tro- I 



pica! plants. Imagination can hardly grasp, the horrors of " 

 that dreadful catastrophe, which scooped out those vast beds 

 of seas, bays and lakes, all around the northern end of our 

 globe, filling the vast space, between the Alleghany and the 

 Rocky Mountains, with the ruins of the northern portion of 

 our planet; — covering our once tropical region, with the ru- 



i 



