Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/207

Rh to that of the valley of the Amazon today. Huge palms, fig trees and giant ferns were laced together with a tangle of vines, through which man, had he been on the earth at that time, would surely have found it difficult to pursue or escape from his enemies. And of the latter there would have been many. The country must have fairly swarmed with strange animal life, according to the bones of scores of species of the enormous, half-animal, half-reptile of the Mesozoic Era.

The photograph shows the perfectly preserved leaves and stalks of this swamp growth, which was submerged in the sandy shores of some lagoon. The air having been excluded, the growth was silicified and fossilized. At a glance it resembles the intricate carving in coarse sandstone such as might have been used in some ancient decoration. This formation is placed by geologists as belonging to the Cretaceous Period which is variously estimated to have been from fifteen to twenty millions years ago.

T the famous salt mines of Wieliczka, eight miles southeast of Cracow, Galacia, which was the scene of bloody fighting between the Russians and the Austrians, there recently fell a huge mass of salt weighing some two hundred tons. The great block evidently became detached from the roof of one of the chambers and came crashing to the ground. In its fall it demolished a portion of a passage and broke down heavy timbered barriers. No one was hurt, however.

These salt mines are famous not so much on account of their size and large output r.s for the many wonders they contain. Indeed, they are regarded as one of the show places of Europe. They comprise a sort of underground world, with all kinds of chambers, such as ballrooms, restaurants, theatres, churches, chapels and monuments hewn out of the solid rock salt. In these chambers may be seen wonderful chandeliers carved out of the rock salt. There are sixteen subterranean lakes in the mines, on one of which is a boat. It lies some seven hundred feet below the surface of the earth. The aggregate length of the galleries at present accessible is upwards of sixty-five miles and that of mining railways twenty-two miles. The mines have an annual output of no less than sixty-five thousand tons. They are the property of the Austrian government and have now been worked for upwards of a thousand years.