THE STONE FOREST OF FLORISSANT. 



483 



ingly "bald" spot. Over it are scattered white and yellow chips, 

 and, for anything that the eye can itself distinguish, these could 

 easily be the chips left in the path of work of a recently passing 

 woodsman. The deception is absolute, and it belongs to the 

 stump as well. The knots and gnarls and annular rings are 

 perfectly preserved ; the bark stands in prominent relief both by 

 ruggedness and color, and all this not in wood, but in the monu- 

 mental substance of stone. The precise manner in which the sub- 

 stitution of silica for wood was effected can not now be learned, 

 but, in a general way, we know it to have been brought about as 

 the result of a slow infiltration into the tree trunks of heated 

 waters containing silica in solution. 



The remains are fairly numerous, but what strikes one with 

 special astonishment is the giant size which some of them attain. 

 Diameters of six, seven, and eight feet are by no means uncom- 

 mon, and we meas- 

 ured three speci- 

 mens which spanned 

 ten feet or more. In 

 most instances the 

 stumps hardly rise 

 above the surface, 

 coming up flush 

 with it ; therefore, 

 without excavation, 

 it is impossible to 

 say at what height 

 above the roots the 

 measurements were 

 taken. In what 

 might be termed the 

 "king of the forest" 

 the tree represent- 

 ed in the accompany- 

 ing illustrations a 

 definite basis for 

 measurement is pre- 

 sented, inasmuch as 

 the tree has been 

 laid bare to its roots. 

 The stump stands 

 about fifteen feet 



high, and at that distance above the roots it measures forty- five 

 feet in girth a colossus that would hardly be shamed by its more 

 gigantic brethren of the existing redwood forests of California. 

 This, so far as I have been able to ascertain, is the facile princeps 



The Giant Stump. About fifteen feet elevation. 



