A PETRIFIED FOREST.

Northland Age, Volume 3, Issue 21, 2 January 1907, Page 5

A PETRIFIED FOREST.

*n England, especially in the coal' districts, fossil trees are not rare, but we have nothing to compare with the Petrified Forest of Arizona. It is a parched and almost barren expanse, covering several thousand acres, strewn with innumerable petrified logs and trunks of trees. To ’what age they belong is unknown, but their antiquity is wefll testified to by their appearance. Scientists are of opinfon that at some time in the misty past a large forest of stately pines which grew here was prostrated by some unknown force to the ground, and over the trees drifted snow-like layers of sand. Next over the area spread the waters of an inland sea, and all traces of the once green forest were lost. After another long lapse of time the sea vanished, and craters belched forth lava and ashes, to serve as a mantle to the ocean bed.

This outer covering being exposed to the air was acted upon by rain and atmosphere changes, which gradually wore it away, so that after countless centuries the trees once again saw light, but changed into logs of stone. Such is briefly the conjectured history of the Petrified Forest which has recently been set aside as Government Reserve.

In every direction are to be seen pieces of petrified wood, ranging from small 1 chips to blocks and logs eight to nine feet in diameter. They are of all colours—black, red, white, yellow, blue, purple, and lavender — and all as hard as adamant. The mineralegist, analysing fragments of the logs, finds in them chalcedony, topaz, cornelian, onyx, agate, and amethyst. One of the chief sights is the Petrified Bridge, a huge trunk spanning a ravine 50ft. wide, a bridge of agate and jasper overganging the only clump of living trees within the forest’s borders. Each end of the log is embedded in shale and sandstone, leaving 100 ft. of it wholly or partially, exposed. Fearing that the bridge would break in time, the Government has recently had two stone abutments erected under it, making of it a bridge of three spans.