Natural Science News. 



VOL. I ALBION, N. Y., DECEMBER 7, 1895. No. 45 



Natural Science News. 



A Weekly Journal Devoted to 

 Natural History. 



FRANK H. LATTIN, Editor and Publisher, 

 ALBION, N. Y. 



Correspondence and Items of interest to the 

 student of any of the various branches of the 

 Natural Sciences solicited from all. 



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The Petrified Forest of Arizona. 



Rich as is the far west of our 

 country in natural wonders, it 

 possesses nothing more remarkable 

 in its way than the strange freak of 

 nature popularly called "the petri- 

 fied forest," found in Apache coun- 

 to, Arizona. This name is applied 

 to a marvelous deposit of silicified 

 remains of what was once a vast 

 forest, which may now be traced 

 by its fossilized relics over an area 

 of a thousand acres. The prime- 

 eval forest itself, of which these 

 stony remains formed a part, of 

 course, was far more extensive, 

 covering according to one estimate, 

 "hundreds of square miles;" but 

 the causes which acted to cast 

 down, bury and mineralize those 

 which have been well preserved, 

 exerted their influence apparently 

 on only the limited area where 

 they are found. The existence of 

 this extensive deposit of silicified 

 trees in all stages of preservation, 

 from complete trunks a hundred 

 or more feet in length, to innumer- 

 able sections of all sizes, was first 

 made known some twenty years 

 ago by the accidental find of a 

 miner who was prospecting in that 

 region. Since the publication in 

 the scientific journals and popular 

 magazines of accounts of its won- 

 derful character, the deposits have 

 attracted great numbers of visitors, 

 being situated along the line of the 

 Santa Fe railway, from which the 

 tourist may readily make the jour- 

 ney and return to the railway sta- 

 tion on the same day. 



The manner of the occurrence of 

 the silicified deposit is said to be 



absolutely bewildering. Dr. H. 

 C. Hovey, a capable scientific ob- 

 server and most entertaining writ- 

 er, who has written much the best 

 popular account of the deposit, 

 gave the following graphic descrip- 

 tion of the impression the scene 

 made upon him, in a lecture re- 

 cently delivered before the Frank- 

 lin Institute: 



"How shall the Chalcedony 

 Park be described? At first one 

 gets the impression that it is a 

 small affair, of perhaps fifty acres. 

 Then he says that it must be a 

 hundred. And after riding over 

 its amazing ruins for many hours 

 in succession he concludes that the 

 area includes a thousand acres; 

 and finally he hardly questions the 

 bold estimate of C. F. Loomis, 

 that the extensive forest now hard- 

 ened into stone formerly covered 

 'hundreds of square miles,' and ac- 

 cepts without dissent the assertion 

 of G. F. Kunz, that there may 

 here be seen at a glance a million 

 tons of precious stones. A matter 

 of fact visitor might say that the 

 scene reminded him of a vast log- 

 ging camp, where the lumbermen 

 had tossed the huge logs from their 

 sleds at random, and Cthen had 

 gone away, leaving them to be- 

 come rain-soaked and moss-grown. 

 The trees, when standing, were 

 fully 200 feet high, for even now 

 their prostrate trunks measure, 

 when unbroken, from ioo to 150 

 feet. The peculiarity already hint- 

 ed at is that these mighty trunks 

 are as regularly severed into sec- 

 tions as if the work had been done 

 by a cross-cut saw. The lengths 

 vary from disks like cart wheels to 

 logs twenty or thirty feet long or 

 longer. Twigs are found an inch 

 through, and trunks ten feet thick. 

 They lie at every angle, parallel to 

 each other, and at right angles; 

 singly and in great groups; down 

 in gulleys, and perched like can- 

 non on hill-tops. 



' 'And all these myriad of trunks, 

 stumps, logs, branches and tiny 

 twigs are solid stone. And on in- 

 spection they prove to be precious 

 gems of almost every known vari- 

 ety. Those that remain intact 

 have been weathered to a dark 

 red, rich brown or 'a sober black. 

 But time's relentless axe, aided by 

 the geologist's hammer, has made 

 havoc with so many of them that 

 the ground is thickly strewn with 

 their fragments from rocks like 

 bowlders down to chips 'and mi- 



nute splinters, that show their 

 brilliant colors under the fierce 

 Arizona sun with kaleidoscopic ef- 

 fect. At every footfall you tread 

 on gems, some of which might 

 grace a ducal coronet, while the 

 most plain and least attractive 

 would be worthy of an honored 

 place in the finest cabinet. There 

 are no rubies, sapphires nor dia- 

 monds here (as has been incorrect- 

 ly reported), but the amethyst 

 abounds, and the red and yellow 

 jasper, chalcedony of every hue, 

 the topaz, the onyx, the carnelian, 

 and every imaginable variety of 

 agate. No log, nor fragment is 

 limited to a single kind of gem. 

 Many are massive mosaics of all 

 the kinds named above. The ma- 

 terial breaks pretty easily into cub- 

 ical forms, but it is extremely hard, 

 and takes a brilliant and durable 

 polish. 



"Under a magnifying glass the 

 cellular structure is plainly visible, 

 and experts state that the ancient 

 forest was made up of trees anal- 

 ogous to our pines and cedars. 

 The region is decidedly volcanic, 

 lava beds and extinct craters being 

 in sight in every direction. Some 

 catastrophe doubtless felled the 

 'forest primeval,' which was subse- 

 quently buried in volcanic action. 

 Floods of hot silicious waters were 

 poured over the ashes, possibly 

 from geysers. The pure silica, as 

 Mr. Kunz suggests, would form 

 the limpid quartz, while the rich 

 colors of red, brown, yellow and 

 purple would be due to iron and 

 maganese held in solution. I 

 found one block of wood that had 

 changed to solid iron. 



"Spurring my horse from the 

 valley to the summit of the mesa, 

 mainly formed of light gray sand- 

 stone, I followed a trail to its fur- 

 ther side, where it is cut by a small 

 canon about fifty feet deep. And 

 here is the.Agrte Bridge, the most 

 wonderful object of its kind in ex- 

 istence. This unique bridge is 

 simply a huge trunk spanning the 

 canon where it is sixty feet wide. 

 The trunk itself is a hundred feet 

 long, and tapers down from a 

 thickness of five feet to diameter 

 of three feet. Its entire mass is 

 made up of agates, jaspers and 

 other precious materials. At a 

 point two-thirds of the way across 

 it is fractured, whether naturally 

 or by violence I could not deter- 

 mine. At the bottom of the canon 

 is a pool resorted to by the cattle 



