On the Geological Position of the Silicified Wood of the Egyptian and Libyan Deserts, with a Description of the “Petrified Forest” near Cairo

Abstract

The occurrence of silicified wood in many parts of the Egyptian and Libyan deserts has from an early period attracted the attention of travellers. In 1778 Sonnini met with fragments between Honeze and the Natron lakes; and previous to his time petrifactions had been discovered in the bed of the Waterless river (the Bahr bila Maieh), a little to the north of the Natron lakes. Horneman and others, who have subsequently visited this locality, have however referred these fossils to silicified trunks of trees and plants; and Burckhardt, who saw some specimens brought thence in 1812 by M. Boutin, a French officer, states that they resembled precisely those which he saw on the Suez road, and supposed to be petrified date-trees. Similar petrifactions have also been lately discovered in the sands of the great Nubian desert, a little south from Abusambel, by Mr. St. John; and at Haagbarlak, about eight miles west from Ambukol, by Mr. Holroyd. Some of the silicified trunks of Haagbarlak were fifty-one feet in length and twenty inches in diameter, and are referred by Mr. Holroyd to the Doom-palm ( Crucifera Thebaica ).