Omaha daily bee., 1899-05-14
NATURES HUGE CORESCREWS
Nebraska s Unique Contribution to the Com
fort and Happiness of Chicago,
WHERE AND WHEN THEY WERE FoUNr
Scientific Doctors Agree TO Dis
agree About Their OriPin-Four
Specimens Placed In the
Columbian Museum.

! Giant corkscrews have just been placed on
exhibition in the geological department OF
the Field museum in Chicago, These speci-
mems represent a puzzling problem in natu-
raj history.
So little are these geological corkscrews
understood, says writer in the Times
/ Herald, that 1t cannot even be determined
! positively as yc! to what kingdom of nature
they belong, whether animal, vegetable or
mineral. Yet they are of common occur-
renee in the region in western Nebraska
! where they are found and usually are OBJ
ietts Of considerable size. In appearance
! they are simply huge earthly corkscrews
! The corkscrews are for the most part with
out a handle, but many have a projecting
! process at the base which suggests half a
/ handle
| over the region in western Nebraska in
which they occur these corkscrews form a
conspicuous feature of the landscape. The
! bare bluffs, buttes ana canyon walls of the
/ region are everywhere marked by these
st'ut spirals rising to heights of ten and
twenty feet. In some places they are so
numerous that as many as thirty have been
counted in a space such as would be oc-
cuped by an ordinary dwelling house. The
cowboys first brought word of the existence
of the splrals and called them by such ex-
pressive names as devils corkscrews,"
stone screws" fossil worms" and twist
| ers."
known to Science Seven Years.
The corkscrews have been known to
science only about seven years, but in this
time no little controversy has arisen as to
| their nature. Prof Il. II. Barbour OF
| the University of Nebraska has been fore
most in the study and description of the
| Corkscrews, and it is to him that most of
our present knowledge of them is due. He
finds that they occur chiefly in a stratum
some seventy yards thick, which extends
over the Pine Ridge table lands in north
| western Nebraska The rock in which they
| occur is a friable sandstone much softer
| than the corkscrews themselves.
| The corkscrews vary greatly in form, in
| size, in the direction of the twist and in
| other characters, but in one feature are al
| ways constant. They are invariably up
| right. AS regards their forms, two prin-
| cipal varieties can be observed; in one the
| spiral coils about a central vertical axis, in
| the other the spiral stands without an axis.
| The spiral, has been said, in some turns
| to the right and in some to the left. The
regularity of the pitch of the screw is eX-
| ceedingly uniform, as is also the diameter.
| Prof Barbour has found several specimens
in which the helix tapers from bottom to
| top with such nicely that it varies not over
a millmeter in each turn of 90 degrees.
| From the base of many extends a trans
| verse process which usually rises at
| angle and is as long the corkscrew itself.
This is called by Prof. Barbour, who be-
| lieves in the vegetable origin of the cork
| screw "the rhi2ome," l. e., the root stock.
1t is usually of the same diameter as the
| corkscrew but often of much greater length.
| One of the Field museum specimens has a
| rhizome ten feet long and Prof Barbour
| traced one for thirty feet Sometimes the
rhizome has been found extending to an
| other screw which descended from its end.
| If the first screw was right-handed the
| second would be left-handed, thus making
| a twin 1t has been suggested that it was in
| this way that the corkscrews multiplied
| Often, too, from the rhizome extend smaller
| processes, which seem like rootlets given off
| from the main root.
When one examines the intimate struc-
| lures of the corkscrews he finds them ap-
parently made up Of innumerable interacing
| fbers, whose interstices are filled by more
or less firmly consolidated sand. These
| fbers are chalky white in color and ap-
parently are the petriied remains of plant
| structure. When ground thin so as to be
transparent under the microscope they show
regular cell structure exactly like that
seen in the pith of plants
Furthermore, when a ross-section is made
of the stem or rhizome of the corkscrew
| there is seen to be a distinct concentric
| arrangement of these fibers Just as there is
of bark, wood and pitch in ordinary plants.
| The arrangement of fibers is not however, as
regular as in wood, for they are scattered
about promiscuously and in bundles of vary
ing size, some as large an ordinary lead
pencil