The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1892-04-03


glass, while every fiber of the beautiful
and softly tinted wood seems frozen
into a lasting picture by the patient
hand of time.
You can get one of these slabs for
from $40 to $500. l bought one of the
latter to hold the door open in my new
and costly villa at Buck Shoals, N. G..
Some of these slabs are two feet across,
and none of them seems to represent
any kind of tree existing at the present
lime. They afford, therefore, wonder
full field for the active mind to stroll
about in. Perhaps over this beautiful
slab, while yet it was in the heart Of
q sapling, some belated pterodactyl
sprawled on his way to his damp home.
Possibly the icthyosaurus crawled out
of hole in this tree on grounding day.
Who can tell what has happened IN
She early history of this petriied forest2
Nobody can. Away back yonder in the
misty past, long before the climate got
20 that the hired girl could bear her
lsand in it, while yet the hot mud boiled
with the mighty heat of a new laid
world and the air was filed with dis
agreeable odors, and the evening and
'she morning indicated that workmen on
the foundation of the earth had blown
cut the gas at night, and the angels
went about over the face of the earth
flying high and holding their noses, this
tree was sprouting.
Those, fellow citizens, were times
when the country was new. Those were
lays when the hot mist from the seeth-
pg earth came back at once as warm
rain, only to be Immediately utilized as
mist again; when mammoth forests, like
gigantic asparagus beds, sprang forth
in a few months and overshadowed the
silent and shiny home of the ssurian
monster.
1t was under those circumstances, we
are told by old settlers whose memory
is vet good, that these early forests
grew. Then Nature, with long, rainy
day on her hands, one time decided that
she would try preserving a forest for
future use. Thus we have here, sur
rounded by electric lights and high
livers in society, along with the tele-
phone and artificial ice, a slab of wood
whose bark has been abraded here
ind there where the icthyosaurus has
scratched his warty back against it in
the mellow millions of years that left
no other history.
Becoming somewhat excited over this
great thought, bought another beauh-
full $3.50 specimen TO pound steak on.
We may not always have steak at our
house, but we propose to have some
thing TO pound it on whenever we do
have steak
The railroad agent at Billings. A. T.,
near where this petrifed forest is situ-
ated, gets thirteen to seventeen letters
per week from people who want speci-
mems of this petrified wood. Here is
one:
Station Agent. Billings, A. T.:
DEAR STR-May | ask you to write me re-
Earding Natural Curiosity" the petriied for
est OF ArizoRa7 Is it a fact. and how large an
area does it cover | would be pleased 10 have
you send by express some specimens of red
moss agate, amethyst snd smoky topaz.
would love TO visit this place If the article in
St. Nicholas is true. Yours truly,
4. ~. CLARE
This name is not the correct one, but
D little conceit of my own. The agent
has many of these letters. and wishes
me TO put piece in the paper begging
- public not to write TO him any more
regarding this matter, as it is breaking
aim down. He SAYS that elderly maiden
ladies. who brought the war to a speedy
close by making pfune pie for the SOL
diers. now write to him for agates, for
getting that he & getting forty dollars
Der month from the railroad, not spe-
ciaIly for the purpose of gathering moss
agates or petrified trees for others.
Sometimes he is not sure that the
freight will be paid or ne would be more
prompt 20 send things. Sometimes an
unknown man who cannot spell. to say
nothing of paying the freight, orders a
quart OF Indian aTrowhe6as and 1000
feet Of petrihed lumber IA build a house
of. This bothers the agent, who is also
telegraph operator, line repairer. ticket
and baggage agent and the head OF a
family. He wishes to notify the public
= this means that hereafter 1t VIII be
impossible for him to supply petTifed
sills for those who are building IN Ohio.
especially as the petri6ed forest is owned
by other parties, who threaten TO prose
cute people who girdls the trees or cut
the timber without paying stnmpage.