. Railway and locomotive engineering : a practical journal of railway motive power and rolling stock . curious arrange-ment of roots which radiated from thecentral mass of the trunk something likean enormous cart wheel divested of itsrim. The Lepidodendrons were greatplants of the club-moss type which roseupwards of seventy feet in height. I heDadoxylons were allied to the conifersor pine trees. The growth was luxuriousand greedily drank up moisture from thedamp soil in which it stood. There was110 blow of bright color and no lusciousfruit; it was hard, dry and flowerless. lapse of time requir
. Railway and locomotive engineering : a practical journal of railway motive power and rolling stock . curious arrange-ment of roots which radiated from thecentral mass of the trunk something likean enormous cart wheel divested of itsrim. The Lepidodendrons were greatplants of the club-moss type which roseupwards of seventy feet in height. I heDadoxylons were allied to the conifersor pine trees. The growth was luxuriousand greedily drank up moisture from thedamp soil in which it stood. There was110 blow of bright color and no lusciousfruit; it was hard, dry and flowerless. lapse of time required to effect the won-dei ful 1 hat In his work on Gems and PreciousStones of North America/ Dr. G. thus describes the theory of pet-rifaction. He says, Wood buried in soilsoaked with some petrifying material be-comes highly charged with the same andthe cells filled with the infiltrating matti 1,so that when the wood decays, the petri-fying material is left, retaining the struct-ure of the wood. Furthermore, as eachparticle of organic matter passes awayby decay a particle of mineral matter. AGATIZED TREE SPANNING RAVINE. ALONG THE SANTA FE. Hugh Miller, in his notable work, TheTestimony of the Rocks, when speakingof the plants which in the lapse of ageswere transformed into coal, says, In noother age did the world witness such aflora; the youth of the earth was a pe-culiarly green and umbrageous youth, ayouth of dusk and tangled forests of highpines and stately araucarians, of the reed-like calamite, the tall tree fern, the sculp-tured sigillaria and the hirsute lepidoden-dron. Wherever dry land or shallowlake or running stream appeared, a rankand luxuriant herbage cumbered everyfootbreadth of the dank and steamingsoil; and even to distant planets ourearth must have shown through the en-veloping cloud with a green and delicateray. The petrified forests of Arizona, how-ever, did not turn to coal. Owing tochemical action they became masses ofagate, jasper and chalcedony. T
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