Rensselaer Union, Volume 7, Number 3, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 October 1874 — Ancient Trees in Nevada. [ARTICLE]

Ancient Trees in Nevada.

In the bottom of the main shaft of the Virginia City Coal Company, El Dorado Canon, Lyon County, has been encountered the trunk of a tree four feet in diameter, a lone relic of an ancient and extinct forest. Where cut through by the shaft this old tree is found to be perfectly carbonized —turned into coal. Outside, the log is completely crusted over w’itii iron pyrites, many of which are so bright that the crystals shine like diamonds. These pyrites also extend into the body of the log, filling what were apparently once cracks or windshakes, and even forming clusters about what was once the heart of the tree. This relic of an old-time forest lies far below the two vein's of coal the company are about to open. The finding of this old trunk is'evidence that the country was at one time, ages and ages ago, covered by a forest of large trees; though the native timber grdwtli,*wheh the country was first visited by the whites, and as far back as the traditions of the Indians extend, wuis but scrubby species of nutpine. A few miles from the shaft in which this carbonized tree was found are to be seen on the surface the petrified remains of many large trees. In the early days of Washoe, before the prospectors had broken them up for specimens, pieces of tree-trunks two or three feet in diameter and twenty or thirty feet in length were to be seen lying upon the surface of the ground. However, these trees, and even the one found in the bottom of the shaft of the coalruns, may have come from the foot hills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains —may have drifted out when seas of water everywhere covered our present valleys. Thb water lines visible on the hills show that the whole country was filled with -lakes,and the petrified trees lying here and there on the surface of the ground probably floated out on the waters of the extinct lakes, and finally sunk to the bottom in the places where they are now found. — Virginia City (ATec.) Enterprise. The best and most wholesome way of using ripe toniatoes is to slice them and | let them lie' and drain awhile; pour oft ' the juice and put on a , little vinegar, hardly enough to cover ahem; then sprinkle on white sugar and let them stand a few minutes before eating. —“ So far, so good,” as the boy said when he finished the first pot o£ his mother's Jam.