Vendors on Constitution Avenue on the east side uj the Museum, looknii^ northeast until the Departinetit oj Justu e Building 

 behind. July 1984. 



Washington. It took about twelve hours of cutting with 

 a large wire saw to prepare a slice. In this operation a 

 slurry of water and abrasive is used; the wire simply 

 carries the abrasive across the piece. The wires have to 

 be replaced periodically, but because the iron layers are 

 alternating hard and soft, cutting of the boulder went 

 fairly fast. 



There was some material left over after the necessary 

 slice was taken out, namely a piece of about seven tons. 

 Considerable discussion ensured as to the advantages 

 of using this leftover as an outdoor display, in the gen- 

 eral context of waste not, want not. Someone finally hit 

 on the idea of placing the rock on the south steps. That 

 immediately raised the question of whether the area 

 would hold the weight. 



Almost immediately that raised the next question — 

 what to put on the other side for balance. Eventually 

 this was settled by deciding on two logs of petrified 

 wood. Frances Hueber, a paleobotanist, was dispatched 

 to Arizona to obtain them. Adjacent to the Petrified 



Forest National Monument, there are fossilferous beds 

 exposed on private land that has been a source of pet- 

 rified wood for decades. Hueber measured a number 

 of specimens in the field but finally settled on two al- 

 ready collected from the area. One was donated, and 

 the other was sold to the Museum for fifty cents a 

 pound, the price the previous buyer had paid for it. 

 The city of Holbrook, Arizona, offered its good offices, 

 and a local rigger loaded the specimens at cost, throw- 

 ing in the red carpet that they were wrapped in for the 

 trip to Washington. 



The larger piece of wood took twenty-eight hours of 

 sawing time and used up fourteen wires. It took weeks 

 more to polish the cut surface. The other tree was a 

 bit smaller and took less time to cut. The Museum 

 accessioned these three large specimens, including the 

 rock. After the paperwork was completed and the prep- 

 aration finished, the riggers moved them to the dies to 

 be unveiled. One tree lies on its side, and the other 

 stands again after nearly 200 million years. □ 



Outside the Building 



197 



