The Mt. Sterling advocate., 1900-11-20
FREAKS OF NATURE.
Many Very Singular Formations Discov
ersd by Biologists and Others.

natural curiosites. Without men
tioning the greatest and best known
of these natural formations, a brief
description of some Of the smaller
but not less interesting ones may be
of interest.
The territory Of Colorado is full Of
wonderful red sandstone rocks. They
are lined and grooved all over with
fine dots and worn into inpumerable
grotesque shapes. As AN eloquent
writer has said: "From the tiny
stone which you can hold in your
hand to the colossal wall hundreds
of feet high, which no man can climb,
there is not an inch which does not
look as if for millions of years it had
been worked by tools Yetno hand,
no tool has been there. Grains of
sand have done it all-grains of sand
blowing and eddying in wind cur
rents. Slowly, steadily, irreparably
the solid rock has been fretted away,
distorted, by things almost too small
to see."
Such, says Charles +. Adams, in
Golden Days, is the origin of the won
derful rock formation of Colorado,
while in other localities the action of
wafer has had much to do with such
formations.
A museum at Oxford contains one
of the strangcst stones ever discov-
cred. 1t is composed Of carbonate of
lime, and was taken from colliery
drain.
When the miners were at work, the
water running through the drain left
a deposit colored black by coal dust,
but when they were not at work the
water ran down clear and left white
deposit. In time these black and
white layers made stone of consider
able thickness, which constitutes
quite a calendar.
Each day Of work has left a black
streak, and Is followed by a white
streak for the night. Wide white
streaks mark the Sundays and other
holidays, from which circumstance
this curious stone is called "the Sun
day stone"
An equally remarkable product OF
nature is described by California
paper as nothing less than a genuine
mineral soap. This stone is parti-
colored, like CASTLE soap, and is found
in an almost inaccessible part of the
coast, in the neighborhood Of slate
stone and sandstone. The peculiar
properties of this stone were discov-
cred by a miner, who noticed when
pieces of the stone fell into the stream,
which was in proximity to the mine,
they soon melted away.
He thereupon set about making ex-
periments, and found that the stone
could be used for all the purposes for
which manufactured soaps are appli-
cable
Among freaks of nature, few are
more wonderful than the rock which
was found on the Carsholton reef
some years ago. and was for a time
placed on exhibition at the mining
registers office at Sandhurst.
This remarkable curiosity was a
piece Of slate rock, scarcely eight
inches square, but upon which ma
ture's hand alone had depicted a
landscape such as would do credit to
the brush of true artist.
The foreground represented al
grass plot, in the center Of which were
two small ponds, out of one of which
the water appeared to flow in smal!
stream toward a patch of rocks. a
little distance beyond the ponds was
a farmhouse, at the rear and sides of
which was seen a row Of tall poplar
trees. Light, stratifed clouds, with
a dash of blue sky, completed the
picture.
The perspective was almost perfect,
and the lights and shadows remark
ably we'll brought out. This was par
ticularly seen in the cluster of rocks,
which were very skillfully drawn.
The explanation given Of the for
nation of this pretty rural Scene was
that on the rock being broken up, il
split in such way as to leave the face
on which the picture is represented
convex. The various shades, tints
and figures were evidently formed by
the action of water containing iron,
which trickled between the seams Of
the rock.
The following curious instance of
what may be called accidental art, u
although not exactly a freak Of ma
ture, so nearly parallels the forego-
-