Popular Science Monthly 



179 



ilar to that of the valley of the Amazon 

 today. Huge palms, fig trees and giant 

 ferns were laced together with a tangle 

 of vines,, through which man, had he 

 been on the earth at that time, would 

 surely have found it difficult to pursue 

 or escape from his enemies. And of the 

 latter there would have been many. The 

 country must have fairly swarmed with 

 strange animal life, according to the 

 bones of scores of species of the enor- 

 mous, half-animal, half-reptile of the 

 Mesozoic Era. 



The photograph shows the perfectly 

 preserved leaves and stalks of this 

 swamp growth, which was submerged in 

 the sandy shores of some lagoon. The 

 air having been excluded, the growth 

 was silicified and fossilized. At a glance 

 it resembles the intricate carving in 

 coarse sandstone such as might have 

 been used in some ancient decoration. 

 This formation is placed by geologists as 

 belonging to the Cretaceous Period 

 which is variously estimated to have 

 been from fifteen to twenty millions 

 years ago. 



A Piece of Salt that Weighs Two 

 Hundred Tons 



AT the famous salt mines of 

 Wieliczka, eight miles southeast 

 of Cracow, Galacia, which was the 

 scene of bloody fighting between the 

 Russians and the Austrians, there re- 

 cently fell a huge mass of salt weigh- 

 ing some two hundred tons. The 

 great block evidently became detached 

 from the roof of one of the chambers 

 and came crashing to the ground. In 

 its fall it demolished a portion of a 



Perfectly formed leaves and twigs fossilized 

 in the course of twenty million years 



A two hundred ton rock of salt which 



recently fell into the working chamber of 



the greatest salt mine in Austria 



passage and broke down heavy timbered 

 barriers. No one was hurt, however. 



These salt mines are famous not so 

 much on account of their size and 

 large output r.s for the many wonders 

 they contain. Indeed, they are re- 

 garded as one of the show places of 

 Europe. They comprise a sort of 

 underground world, w^ith all kinds of 

 chambers, such as ballrooms, restau- 

 rants, theatres, churches, chapels and 

 monuments hewn out of the solid rock 

 salt. In these chambers may be seen 

 wonderful chandeliers carved out of 

 the rock salt. There are sixteen sub- 

 terranean lakes in the mines, on one 

 of which is a boat. It lies some seven 

 hundred feet below the surface of the 

 earth. The aggregate length of the gal- 

 leries at ])resent accessible is ujnvards of 

 sixty-five miles and that of mining rail- 

 ways twenty-two miles. The mines 

 have an annual output of no less than 

 sixty-five thousand tons. They are the 

 property of the Austrian government 

 and have now been worked for upwards 

 of a thousand vears. 



