36 TREES AND TREE-PLANTING. 
Nevada and California. That in California has happily 
been preserved, but the ancient trees of Nevada have 
long since disappeared. There are, however, still to be 
seen many petrifactions of these ancient giants, which 
tell us what these forests once were, long before the land- 
ing of Columbus on our shores. 
In the bottom of the main shaft of the Virginia City 
Coal Company, Eldorado Cafion, Lyon County, Nevada, 
was encountered the trunk of a tree four feet in diame- 
ter, a lone relic of an ancient and extinct forest. Where 
cut through by the shaft, this old tree was found to be 
perfectly carbonized—turned into coal; outside the old 
log was completely crusted over with iron pyrites, many 
of which were so bright that the crystals shone like dia- 
monds. These pyrites also extend into the body of the 
log, filling what were apparently once cracks of wind- 
shakes, and even forming clusters about what was once 
the heart of the tree. This relic of an old time lay far 
below the two veins of coal. The finding of this old 
trunk is evidence that the country ages and ages ago 
was covered by a forest of large trees; though the na- 
tive timber growth, when the country was first visited 
by the whites, and as far back as the traditions of the 
Indians extend, was but a scrubby species of nut-pine. 
A few miles from the shaft in which this carbonized 
tree was found, are to be seén on the surface the petri- 
fied remains of many large trees. In the early days of 
Washoe, before the prospector had broken them up for 
specimens, pieces of tree-trunks two and three feet in di- 
ameter, and twenty or thirty feet in length, were to be 
seen lying upon the surface of the ground. 
