CHAP. XXXV.] FOSSIL TREES, INDIANA. 273 



out the earth from round one of the buried trees, 

 and exposed a trunk four feet eight inches high, from 

 the bottom of which the roots were seen spreading 

 out as in their natural position. There were two 

 other fossil trees near it, both apparently belonging 

 to the same species of SigiUaria. The bark, con 

 verted into coal, displayed the scars left by the at 

 tachment of the leaves, but no internal structure was 

 preserved in the mud, now forming a cylindrical mass 

 within the bark. The diameter of the three trunks 

 was from 18 inches to 2 feet, and their roots were in 

 terlaced. A great number of others, found in like 

 manner in an erect posture, have been removed in 

 working the same quarry. The fossil plants obtained 

 here, and in other parts of the Indiana coal-field, 

 are singularly like those in other carboniferous 

 strata in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Xova Scotia, and Eu 

 rope. Among them occur species of ferns of the 

 genera Pecapteris and Cyclopteris. and three plants, 

 Neuropteris flexuosa, JY. cordata, and Lepidodendron 

 oboi-atum, all European species, and common to the 

 Alleghanies and Xova Scotia. 



The three large fossil trees above described as 

 newly exposed to view, were standing erect tinder 

 the spreading roots of one living oak, and it is 

 wonderful to reflect on the myriads of ages which 

 have intervened between the period when the ancient 

 plants last saw the light, and the era of this modern 

 forest, the vegetation of which would scarcely afford, 

 except in the case of the ferns, any generic resem 

 blance, yet where the trees are similar in stature, up 

 right attitude, and the general form of their roots. 



