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similar to those of a pigeon while feeding her young. The neck 
shortens and swells; the feathers are ruffled and the wings 
slightly open and shut, two or three times. 
So far as my observations of the Ceryle alcyon extend, Mr. 
Darwin’s remarks will not apply to that kingfisher. 
Cuas. C. ABBOTT 
Trenton, New Jersey, Jan. 14 
A PETRIFIED FOREST IN THE LIBYAN 
DESERT 
el the western horizon of the Libyan Desert, as 
viewed from the summit of the Great Pyramid of 
Ghizeh, a conical hill stands in solitary grandeur, far re- 
moved from the route of desert travellers. This has long 
been supposed to be the ruins of a pyramid, yet nowhere 
is it recorded to have been visited by any but the Bedouin 
tribes who pass within a few miles of it, on the old cara- 
van route tothe Faioom. It is enumerated by Lepsius as 
one of the Pyramids of Egypt, and in a recent work on 
the Great Pyramid* it is called Dr. Leider’s Pyramid, 
“until a better name be found for it,” merely from its 
having been pointed out to the author by the late Dr. 
Leider of Cairo, who, however, had never visited it. 
The following narrative of a visit to the eminence by 
Mr. Waynman Dixon, engineer, and Dr. Grant of Cairo, 
and of their discovery of a very remarkable petrified 
forest near its base, whose gigantic trees lie scattered 
about the desert in profusion, has been communicated to 
us by the former gentleman :— 
Leaving the pyramids behind and lighted by the clear 
silvery moonlight, we set out into the desert by the cara- 
van route to the Faioom, leading up a solitary valley, in 
the rocks of which are-cut ancient Egyptian tanks and 
mummy-pits. Presently we turn off from the regular 
track and take our way into the unfrequented desert, 
steering straight westward for the distant pyramidal hill. 
The sand of the desert is here hard and compact, and 
travelling easy, indeed, with the exception of one or two 
places where the sand is soft and heavy, a wheeled 
carriage might drive all the way, and to most travellers 
would be much preferable to camel or even donkey 
riding. 
After many hours hard riding, we at last reach the top 
of a slight eminence, and across the wide valley in front 
of us is the place of our destination. 
These long valleys, or “wadys,” have much of interest 
about them; throughout may be seen the dry water- 
courses where the rare rain-showers carry down the sand 
into the bed, and leave all the little hills and eminences 
covered with flints as big as potatoes and with surfaces so 
brightly polished as to give the desert a silvery look by 
moonlight, or by day to cause the appearance of rippled 
water where they reflect the sunlight. The zoology and 
botany, too, of the desert are very interesting. There are 
numbers of the little “ jerboa,” a species of rat, with long 
hind legs and long tail with a tuft of hairat its end, which 
hops about like a kangaroo. Nowand then may be seen 
a gazelle or two scampering off at the unusual sight of a 
caravan. A few small birds get a precarious existence, 
and in the sky an eagle or vulture sometimes wings its 
way. The insects are few, and the herbage is extremely 
scant, and itis a marvel what the animals live on. There 
are here and there in the water-courses small tufts of 
camel-thorn—a little shrub not unlike a whin, another 
with a coral-like growth, and now and then a handful of a 
tough wiry sort of grass, but what these again subsist on 
it is hard to say, for there is not a shower more than once 
or twice a year, and for nine months there is no dew while 
the heat of the sand at midday in summer is over 100 
degrees, 
Arrived at our destination before daybreak, we dis- 
* “Life and Work at the Great Pyramid,” by Prof, Piazzi Smyth, F.R.S. 
NATURE 
363 
mount from our camels, and while the Bedouins are un- 
loading the baggage, we hasten as fast as our legs, stiff 
with camel riding, will permit, up the heaps of sand and 
flints to the summit of the so-called Pyramid, to find on 
attaining-it that it is but the conical end of a prism- 
shaped hill, stretching westward, and standing boldly out 
of the desert plain. 
Near the top the rock crops out, and appears to be a 
species of friable sandstone fretted by the weather into 
curious shapes ; but the actual summit is covered with 
flints and sand, and, what strikes one as being very 
strange, many fragments of petrified wood. 
- Taking a general survey from this quoin of vantage, we 
choose the best spot to the north of the hill to pitch our 
camp, exposed to the slight north wind which blows in- 
cessantly here, and descending its steep sides, at the 
bottom are surprised to find near the chosen spot three 
large stone trees lying prostrate on the sand. The largest 
is 51 ft. in length and 3 ft. 6 in. in diameter at its widest 
end, and 2 ft. at its smallest ; they are branching exoge- 
nous trees, apparently a species of pine, and the one 
before us has the fork of a large branch very complete. 
Wandering on up the wady to the north of the hill, 
named by us “ Kém el Khashob”—the hill of wood—we 
find the whole desert littered with fragments of petrified 
wood, from twigs the size of one’s finger to pieces of large 
branches or trunks of trees ;.and on the flank of the hill 
to the north are hundreds of immense trees, lying half 
buried in the sand, some 7o ft. long, and in many in- 
stances with part of the bark still attached. All of them 
are exogenous trees—no single instance of a palm could 
we discover—and from the absence of roots it may be pre- 
sumed have been drifted here by the sea. The stratum is 
apparently sandstone, overlying the limestone of the Nile 
valley; there are also here and there patches of a dark cho- 
colate-coloured friable mineral with specks of green which 
looked like copper, but proved on subsequent analysis to 
be carbonate of iron; beds of what the Arabs call 
“ Gyps” or gypsum, and nodules of an intensely hard black 
granulated looking stone—not unlike emery stone. The 
whole geological character suggesting the—possibly delu- 
sive—suspicion of the existence of coal under the surface. 
Having carefully surveyed this neighbourhood we again 
climbed the ‘ Kém el Khashob,” taking instruments to 
measure its height and determine its position ; the former 
of which we found to be 752 ft. above the Nile level at 
Cairo, 602 ft. above the north-east socket of the Great 
Pyramid, and consequently about 140 ft. higher than its 
sumysnit. 
Having secured one or two sketches of the hill, and the 
sun being now near setting, we “fold up our tents like the 
Arabs and silently steal away.” Mounting our camels 
again, and taking a slightly different route on our return, 
we pass some ancient solitary well-tombs away in the 
desert, but without mark or hieroglyphic inscription on 
them. All the way we notice fragments of petrified wood, 
and near to the pyramids extensive beds of oyster shells. 
This forest may almost be said to be a continuation— 
doubtless going much farther westward than we pene- 
trated—of the well-known petrified forest in the Abbasieh 
Desert to the east of Cairo, which extends a long way in 
the direction of Suez, but is inferior both in extent and in 
the size and perfectness of the trees to that of the newly- 
discovered forest. The formation of the land here would 
lead to the supposition that it has been the ancient coast 
line, and that the trees drifted to where they are now feund, 
and were then left in the briny waters of an evaporating 
sea or salt lake ; and as the fibre of the wood decayed 
slowly away, the ace of each cell has been filled up by 
the crystallising silica held in solution in the water. 
Since the discovery of this forest it has been visited by 
many Europeans in Cairo, and English travellers, 
and to geologists especially it is well worthy of a 
visit. It may easily be reached from the Great Pyramid 
