The Alaska citizen., 1913-06-02
AGATE TREES
 OF ARIZONA


 forests-forests turned 10 stone o Arizona. Six sepcrate forests 0 this description. all lying in the Stat, vcycd and mapped by the Geologica Survey. and I large area containina these marvels of transformation anu preservation has been set aside b, executive order as national park in order to save the petrified tree, from the grasp of commercial greed which can see nothing in such things except the opportunity to put money in somebody's pocket The map of this wonderful region has just been issued at Washington.
 i When the first reports of the OK istence of great tree trunks turned to veritable jewels began to come from explorers of the far West dur ing the latter half of the nineteenth century, many readers refused 10 believe them. They sounded too much like fairy tales Even so great an authority as Professor Barsh couli | hardly find credence for his stort when he told of seeing gigantic tree trunk, twelve feet in diameter. that had been turned 10 stone in tho hot silica-charged waters of a Cali forna spring.
 But now we know that thousands and perhaps millions of trees that drew their last sap through their pores hundreds of thousands of years ago have been preserved by petrifac- ton so perfectly that the most deli cate tissues and cells of the wood and bark retain their form. although their vegetable substance has been replaced by mineral gems.
 In the petrified forests of Arizona the mineral that has replaced the wood is many-colored agate. which is very hard and susceptible of n high polish. In a bright light it glcams with red yellow blue. pur- pie. and a hundred modified tinfs so that the first discoverer on stumb- ling pon these transfigured trees must have cried out in astonishment and delight, believing that riches without limit were within his reach
 If eyer there was an explorer who felt like Aladdin in the cave of gems it must have been he who. for the first time. entered the seemingly en- ehanted ground of the petrified for ests. How could be believe the evi- dence of his eyes when he saw the ground encountered with broken trunks of trees which flashed in the hot sunshine of that arid region with the prismatic reflection of vast heaps of jewels
 Unless he was deeply learned in the secret of chemistry. it must have seemed to him that he was looking upon work of magic, for his com mon sense based upon his ordinary experience of things in this world would tell him that no natural power could turn tree into a huge piece of bijoutere And when, looking closer. he saw the delicate rings Of the wood drawn in contrasted col ors, and sometimes gemmed with mi mic diamonds. turquoses and pearls, as minute and bright as the circlets of jewels on fairy's finger, he must have felt that he had stumbled into a playground of demigods.
 Yet there is nothing mysterious about the matter To a certain ex- tent it is possible to initiate the pet ritation of wood in a laboratory. Only nature does it on grander scale and with a mastery of details which Arizona forests the trees were sub merged, possibly million year. or more. ago, in soil which was sub sequently penetrated by hot waters containing silica in solution. Silica is mineral which is familiar to all in the form of flint Hot water can hold large quantities of it in solution. As the water comes to the surface and cools the silica is deposited in a kind of rock.
 When the siliceous water came in to contact with the buried tree trunks it began to deposit its silica in the place of the decaying wood. For every particle of the latter that was removed a particle of silica was sub stituted So perfectly was this work done that the stone substitute follow ed every minutest curve of the grain of the disappearing wood. Each wooden cell was thus replaced by cell of solid silica, and every line of grain or of growth in the tree trunk was faithfully initiated and repro duced by the mineral deposit.
 But in one respect the imitation was made more beautiful than the original. Owing to the presence of coloring matters the petrified trunks were dyed with the hues of the rain bow. not scattered at random. but