Fortune, Robert

author and botanist; born in Berwickshire, England, 1813, educated at a village school; employed in the botanical gardens of the Scotch capital and of Chiswick; director of the botanical garden at Chelsea; collector of plants for the Botanical Society of London in Northern China; was sent by the East India Company to China, to investigate the tea plant and in 1859 collected for the U. S. Government, the seeds of the tea shrub and other plants. Author of Three Years Wanderings in Northern China; Two Visits to the Tea Countries of China, Yeddo and Peking, . Died April 16, 1880. Fortu'ny, Y CARBO MARIANO, painter; born at Reus, Catalonia, Spain, June 11, 1838; studied with Palan, Claudio Lorenzalez, and at the Barcelona Academy. Most of his life was spent in Rome. His pictures are sought for by collectors, many of his principal works are owned in the U. S. They include Camels at Rest; Arab Fantasia ; Court Jester, . Died Nov. 21, 1874 . Forty Hours. In the R. C. church, a period of devotion lasting forty hours, in honor of the Ble ed Sacrament. For'ty-nin'er, n . One of the pioneer gold-seekers who went to California in 1849. Fo il, n. By extension, a person of antiquated notions, or a thing entirely out of date. Fos's il Foot'prints, n. pl . Impre ions of the feet of extinct animals made in mud which has become hardened into stone. The most interesting examples of these are those in the slaty rocks of the Connecticut valley, first observed in 1800, and thoroughly studied and described by Edward Hitch cock in 1836. These were at first supposed to have been made by birds, but are now ascribed to the peculiar three-toed reptiles known as Dinosaurs, which existed in the Mesozoic period in great variety of form and size. In addition to these there have been found the foot-prints of marsupials, birds, batrachians, chelonians, ., and impre ions made by fish, insects, and other animal forms. Footprints have been found in other localities, with numerous other impre ions made by animals, such as worm trails and burrows, crustacean tracks, fish and amphibian trails, . Fo ilized Trees. Collections of fo ilized tree trunks are found in various parts of the earth, as near Cairo, Egypt, in Nubia, Silesia, and the island of Antigua, West Indies. Other collections exist in Chili, New Zealand and Aby in i a, while the U. S. po e es some of the most interesting examples of petrified forests on the earth. In the Bad Lands of the Little Mi ouri you sands of such petrified trees are found scattered over the surface, having been washed out from the sandstones and shales of the Laramie formation. A remarkable group of such trees, some of them 12 feet in diameter, exists in Napa county, California; and in Yellow stone Park has been found a fo ilized forest, in which the trees still stand erect, being sur. rounded by volcanic debris. On the banks of the Little Colorado, in Arizona, are found fo ilized tree-trunks of various sizes, some of them 6 feet in diameter, which are perfectly preserved, though none of them occupy their original positions. In regard to the method of fo ilization of the woody structure, it may be said that the wood in many cases has been replaced by white silica, which shows the structure of the wood in pers fection. In other instances the wood has been converted into solid jasper, of the color of red sealing-wax, or has been changed into opal or agate, or filled with chalcedony or crystallized quartz, with beautiful variegation of colors. As hot water di olves silica much more readily than cold, it is probable that thermal springs have had much to do with wood fo ilization, the heated waters making their way through the wood, carrying off the organic material, and depositing silica in its place. The U. S. regions of fo ilized wood have been localities of active volcanic phenomena, and thermal springs, rich in di olved silica, still exist there and still display their petrifying powers. The geology of the island of Antigua leads to the same conclusion. A forest of buried trees exists in the southern Ohio drift deposits, whose wood is not mineralized; while at the Cascades of the Columbia a similar buried forest has been silicified, the latter region having been at one time actively volcanic.