CHAPTER XI. Conclusion

CONCLUSION

I may begin this closing chapter by mentioning some other specimens which I have discovered, or which my sons have, for, thank God, I have raised up a race of fossil hunters. My second son, Charles M. Sternberg, has in his person recently fulfilled a dream of forty years of my own, by discovering the most complete skeleton known of Professor Marsh’s great toothed-bird, Hesperornis regalis, the Royal Bird of the West. Unfortunately the skull is missing, otherwise the nearly complete skeleton is present, and strange to say in normal position, showing that Dr. F. A. Lucas is right in his restoration of the Martin specimen as mounted in the National Museum, i. e., as a loon, a diver instead of a wader, as had been supposed. Our specimen, however, shows a much longer neck than he had imagined. Strange indeed was this long-necked diver with its tarsus at right angles with the body and its powerful web-footed feet. The body was narrow, a little over four inches wide, with a backbone like the keel of a boat. The head was ten inches long and armed with sharp teeth. By keeping the body horizontal it could explore a column of water six feet high and wide, for any unfortunate fish within the zone of its activity. I would name this great loon the Snake-Bird of the Niobrara Group. This specimen I longed to find for so many years, but was glad to give the credit to my son. It is to be mounted in the American Museum, and I picture it as it left my laboratories (Fig. 41).

A word also about that great flying machine of the Cretaceous, the flying lizard Pteranodon. The skeleton and a very fine skull, which my son found on Hackberry Creek in 1906, is now mounted in the British Museum, where my warm friend Dr. A. Smith Woodward assures me “my specimens are greatly admired.”

Especially have I been fortunate in the Kansas Chalk where my son, George Fryer, has charge as I write these lines of my twentieth expedition to those beds, and where he has discovered, and safely collected and shipped to my laboratory, a great plate of the beautiful stemless Crinoid Uintacrinus socialis. I sent one section to Professor M. Boule, of the National Natural History Museum of France, at Paris. Hundreds of these rare animals are represented in this slab (Fig. 42).

FIG. 41.—SKELETON OF Hesperornis regalis, THE GIANT TOOTHED-BIRD OF THE KANSAS CRETACEOUS.

Discovered by Charles M. Sternberg. In American Museum of Natural History. ]

FIG. 42.—SLAB OF FOSSIL CRINOIDS, Unitacrinus socialis, CONTAINING 160 CALYCES, COVERING FOUR BY SEVEN FEET. ]

Before these pages go to press, and a year after I began work on them, I am pleased to be able to tell my readers of two noble specimens of the Pleistocene Age I have just secured from the plains of Kansas, that great treasure house of the animals of the past. One is a majestic Bison, whose head towering above that of his fellows supported a pair of horn cores measuring six feet from tip to tip. Along the curve the distance is eight feet. The length of the head is two feet, the distance between the horns sixteen inches, and from the center of the orbits, one foot. These splendid horn cores were uncovered through a fortunate chance. It seems that the Missouri Pacific Railway, wishing to shorten the creek in the vicinity of Hoxie, Sheridan County, Kansas, cut a new right-of-way for it across a bend. Their excavation came within two feet of the bones buried below, thirty-five feet from the surface of the earth; a friendly freshet washed them out, and they were discovered by Mr. Frank Lee and Harley Henderson, of Hoxie, Kansas, June 15, 1902. I was so fortunate as to secure them in June, 1908. I have filled them with white shellac, and they are now in condition to be preserved always, a specimen of the grand old bison of the Pleistocene time. Now their burial places are three thousand feet nearer the stars than the day they were buried there, as then the climate was semi-tropical and the land they roamed over near sea level. The largest pair of horn cores of a similar bison are preserved in the Cincinnati Natural History Museum. I copy from one of their records: “The most conspicuous figure on Plate IX, with immense horn cores, is of the long extinct broad-fronted bison. This specimen, by far the finest of its kind in existence, is the greatest prize in the Cincinnati Museum. It was found in 1869 on Brush Creek, Brown County, Ohio, and through the efforts of Dr. O. D. Norton it was acquired by the Museum in 1875.” It gives me great pleasure to show my readers a photograph of the Kansas form that measures along the curve of the horn cores a foot and a half more than the famous Ohio specimen. (Fig. 43.)

The great Columbian Elephant, whose jaw I illustrate and have still in my possession, represents one of the largest, or the largest, of its kind ever discovered. It was found near the town of Ness City, in Ness County, Kansas. This giant lived at the same time the great Bison existed. The last molars have pushed out the worn premolars and the other two molars, and occupy the entire jaw, having a grinding surface of 5 × 9 inches. The lower parts of the teeth flare out like a fan, and measure twenty inches along the top of the roots. The greatest circumference of the jaws is 26½ inches, and the length 32 inches. Unfortunately, the articulations are worn away, likely by rolling in some river bed. I secured this noble representative of American Elephants in June, 1908 (Fig. 44).

FIG. 43.—SKULL AND HORNS OF GIANT BISON FROM HOXIE, KANSAS.

Spread of horn cores six feet, one inch; length along curve, eight feet. ]

FIG. 44.—JAW OF COLUMBIAN MAMMOTH, Elephas columbi.

Discovered in Ness County, Kansas. ]

How rich are the strata that compose the earth’s crust only a fossil hunter can fully realize. Take, for instance, western Kansas, where the soil beneath our feet is one vast cemetery. I know of a ravine in Logan County which cuts through four great formations. The lower levels, of reddish and blue chalk, are filled with the remains of swimming lizards, with the wonderful Pteranodonts, the most perfect flying machines ever known, with the toothed bird Hesperornis, the royal bird of the West, and the fish-bird Ichthyornis, with fish-like biconcave vertebræ, with fishes small and great (one form over sixteen feet long), and huge sea-tortoises. Above are the black shales of the Fort Pierre Cretaceous, thousands of feet of which are exposed in the bad lands of the upper Missouri. In this formation the dinosaurs reign supreme. Still higher are the mortar beds of the Loup Fork Tertiary, where the dominant type changes from reptiles to mammals. Here, in western Kansas, are found great numbers of the short-limbed rhinoceros, the large land-turtle, Testudo orthopygia, several inferior tusked mastodons, the saber-toothed tiger, the three-toed horse, and a deer only about eighteen inches high. Higher still, where the grass roots shoot down to feed on the bones, are the Columbian mammoth, the one-toed horse, like our species of to-day, a camel like our South American llama, and a bison far larger than the present species.

The living bison has become almost extinct itself, through the agency of man. And in the layer of soil which covers all these formations, an old arrowhead and the crumbling bones of a modern buffalo give an object lesson in the manner in which these relics of the earlier world have been preserved. So races of animals, as of men, reach their highest state of development, retrograde, and give place to other races, which, living in the same regions, obey the same laws of progress.

My readers will be pleased, I am sure, to know that just before these pages go to press I am permitted to tell the story of our last great hunt in Converse County, Wyoming, during July, August, and September, 1908, for the largest skull of any known vertebrate, the great three-horned dinosaur, Triceratops (Fig. 45). Only thirteen good specimens are known to American museums, 7 of which are in Yale University Museum, and were collected, I believe, by J. B. Hatcher. From his field notes Mr. Hatcher has made a map of this region with crosses to indicate the localities in which skulls have been found, and 30 are so indicated, but I soon learned that he noted broken and poor material, as well as the more perfect. With my three sons I entered the region with enthusiasm on the hunt for one of these skulls for the British Museum of Natural History.

FIG. 45.—THREE-HORNED DINOSAUR, Triceratops sp.

Restoration by Osborn and Knight. (From painting in American Museum of Natural History.) ]

FIG. 46.—DUCK-BILLED DINOSAUR, Trachodon mirabilis.

Restoration by Osborn and Knight. (From painting in American Museum of Natural History.) ]

I was not employed by that institution, but the agreement was, in case I secured a good specimen, it was to go to them. I must acknowledge I felt rather dubious when Dr. Osborn of the American Museum wrote me that he had had parties in these beds four years, searching without success for a specimen. For weeks and weeks we four examined every bit of exposed rock in vain. The rock consisted of clay and sandstone, the latter both massive and cross-bedded. Scattered through the great deposits of sandstone were peculiar-shaped masses of very hard flinty rock, with the same physical characteristics but with superior hardness. These added strange forms to the land sculptury. Almost every form the mind can imagine is found here, from colonies of giant mushrooms, to human faces so startling as to secure instant attention from the observer. (Figs. 38 and 39.)

A general view of the country from an elevated butte shows many cone-like mounds, resembling table mountains or even haystacks in the hazy distance! As the rocks, and even the flint-like material, readily disintegrate, the creeks that run east into the Cheyenne River soon radiate like the rays of a fan and deeply scar the narrow divides into rather deep canyons and narrow ravines. Perhaps a thousand feet of these fresh-water beds, are laid down in a basin surrounded, on all sides, by the marine, Fort Pierre, and Fox Hills Cretaceous.

Buck Creek on the south, Cheyenne River on north and east, and a line through the mouth of Lightning Creek would roughly give the area of the Laramie Beds we explored. They cover about a thousand square miles. Here in a country given up entirely to cattle and sheep ranges with but little of the country fenced, meeting no one but now and then a lonely sheep herder, my tribe of fossil hunters entered with bounding hope that we might find some of these famous dinosaurs.

Here is the border land between the Age of Reptiles and of Mammals, where mammals first appear as small marsupials. We secured several teeth of these early mammals. Day after day hoping against hope we struggled bravely on. Every night the boys gave answer to my anxious inquiry, What have you found? Nothing. Often we ran out of palatable food, as we were 65 miles from our base, and did not always realize how our appetites would be sharpened by our miles of tramping over the rough hills and ravines. One day in August, Levi and I started in our one-horse buggy to a camp we had made near the cedar hills on Schneider Creek. As we passed a small exposure which I had not gone over, I left him to drive and went over the beds of reddish shale, the remnant of an old peat-bog. I found the end of a horn core of Triceratops, and further excavation showed I had stumbled upon the burial place of one of these rare dinosaurs. How thankful we were that after so much useless labor we had at last secured the great object of our hunt. It will prove a beautiful skull when prepared and mounted under the direction of Dr. Smith Woodward, Keeper of Geology in the British Museum, where so many of my discoveries have gone.

Unfortunately the skull was somewhat broken up, and one horn core is missing. But one side of the face with the large horn core, the back of the head, and the great posterior crest, seems entire, as well as large pieces of the other side of the face, and a fine specimen will be made of it. The total length of the skull is 6 feet 6 inches. The horn core over the eye is 2 feet 4 inches high; while the circumference in the middle is 2 feet 8 inches, and it is 15 inches in diameter at the base.

This was a fully matured animal. As the bony ossicles of the head armature are co-ossified with the margin and remain as undulations more or less sharply defined, I am inclined to believe that they are ornaments. They might assist a little in defense but not offense.

In the mean time my oldest son, George, told me of a region he had explored a half-mile from our camp near the head of a ravine. Here we had found a natural cistern full of rain-water, protected from the sun and cattle by a couple of great concretion-like masses of rock that covered it. Over the divide where I had found the great skull, between Boggy and the breaks of Schneider near its mouth in Cheyenne River, George took Levi and myself. The evening before, I took the skull in to Lusk for shipment. George pointed out a locality in which he had found a bone-bed, where we later secured many teeth of reptiles and fishes, scales of ganoid fishes, bones of small dinosaurs and crocodiles and the beautifully sculptured shells of turtles, Trionyx, etc. As there was still a tract of a few hundred yards to be explored the two boys started to go over it, while I went to the bone-bed. They soon joined me with the information that they had found some bones sticking out of a high escarpment of sandstone. George had found part of the specimen in one place and Levi another part soon afterwards. I requested George to carefully uncover the floor on which the bones lay.

While we were taking in our skull, George and Levi ran nearly out of provisions, and the last day of our absence lived on boiled potatoes. But in spite of this they had removed a mass of sandstone 12 feet wide, 15 feet deep, and 10 feet high.

Shall I ever experience such joy as when I stood in the quarry for the first time, and beheld lying in state the most complete skeleton of an extinct animal I have ever seen, after forty years of experience as a collector! The crowning specimen of my life work!

A great duck-billed dinosaur, a relative of Trachodon mirabilis, lay on its back with front limbs stretched out as if imploring aid, while the hind limbs in a convulsive effort were drawn up and folded against the walls of the abdomen. The head lay under the right shoulder. One theory might be that he had fallen on his back into a morass, and either broken his neck or had been unable to withdraw his head from under his body, and had choked to death or drowned. If this was so the antiseptic character of the peat-bog had preserved the flesh until, through decay, the contents of the viscera had been replaced with sand. It lay there with expanded ribs as in life, wrapped in the impressions of the skin whose beautiful patterns of octagonal plates marked the fine sandstone above the bones. George had cut away the rock, leaving enough to give the impression that even the flesh was replaced by sandstone, giving an exact picture of him, as he breathed his last some five million of years ago.

A more probable explanation, judging from the shape of the skin outline which covers the abdomen and is sunken into the body cavity at least a foot, is that the great creature died in the water. The gases forming in the body floated the carcass, which was then carried by currents to the final burial place. When the gases escaped, the skin collapsed and occupied their place; the carcass sank head first and feet upward, the former dragging under the shoulder as the body came to rest on the mud of the bottom.

Quite different indeed is this grand example of extinct life from the one restored and of which an ideal picture is given in this book (Fig. 46). In the first place, in the specimen we discovered the ribs are expanded, the great chest cavity measuring 18 inches deep, 24 inches long, and 30 inches wide. I have no doubt but that with lungs expanded to their full capacity, he often swam across streams of water in the tropical jungle in which he lived and died. Further, the front limbs are not mere arms, that never touched the ground, but were used in locomotion, as there are toes with hoof-bones, not so large as those of the hind feet but with the same pattern, and a divergent thumb, that had a round bone for its ungual. Consequently the animal could use the front feet as clumsy hands to hold down the limb of a tree from which he was cropping the tender foliage, or banners of moss. There were three powerful hoofs on each hind foot.

I do not question, in the presence of this individual, which is complete excepting the hind feet, tail and left tibia and fibula, but that the reptile often stood erect, supporting his ponderous weight while feeding on the leaves of the forest. But when it walked it used its front limbs as well. A remarkable character are the countless rods of solid bone that lay along the backbone in the flesh, and appear like ossified tendons similar to those in the leg of a turkey. Hundreds of ossified rods appeared, row after row, shaped like Indian beads, as thick as a lead pencil in the center and beveled off to a small round point. It has occurred to me that these were for defense; that when a great Tyrannosaurus rex leaped on his back, his powerful claws found no lodgment in the flesh on account of these bony rods that could not be penetrated. Thus our dinosaur would shake off his enemy.

* * * * *

How wonderful are the works of an Almighty hand! The life that now is, how small a fraction of the life that has been! Miles of strata, mountain high, are but the stony sepulchers of the life of the past.

How rapidly has the field expanded which I entered as a pioneer some forty years ago! In 1867 I knew only five paleontologists—Agassiz, Lesquereux, Marsh, Cope, and Leidy, with but few followers; while to-day, Harvard, Princeton, the American, the Carnegie, the Field, and the National Museums have all built up great collections of the animals and plants of the past, and the number of publications on fossil animals has reached an enormous total.

I had the pleasure of attending the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that met in the American Museum in New York at the mid-winter session in 1906. Professor Osborn introduced me to his splendid Head Preparator, Mr. Hermann, who has mounted the skeletons of the great Brontosaurus, Allosaurus, and so many other examples of extinct animals. Mr. Hermann was requested by the Professor to devote all his spare time to showing me anything the exhibition and storerooms contained, prepared or unprepared, and to do all in his power to make my visit pleasant. I certainly felt at home in that paradise of ancient animals, many of which I had collected for science on my own explorations. The magnificent halls in which they are exhibited are a wonderful tribute paid by the wealth and intelligence of the citizen of Greater New York to science. How admirable that Mr. Jesup should use his private fortune as the means to take from the obscurity of the private dwelling of the late Professor Cope his great collection, to which I was a contributor for eight years; and he has placed it under Professor Henry F. Osborn, who with the assistance of Drs. J. L. Wortman, W. D. Matthew, and others, has brought order out of chaos and presented in intelligible shape not only that collection but many others from the fossil fields of the West.

It is a glorious thought to me that I have lived to see my wildest dreams come true, that I have seen stately halls rise to be graced with many of the animals of the past that lived in countless thousands, and that I have had the pleasure of securing some of the treasures, in the shape of complete skeletons, which now adorn those halls.

I stood on Columbia Heights that same year of 1906, and my heart swelled with pride when I looked down on that teeming metropolis and remembered that I too was a native of the Empire State. Then I thought of my distant prairie state of Kansas, and gloried in the thought that the best years of my life had been spent in her ancient ocean and lake beds, those old cemeteries of creation.

That past life, at least a very small fraction of it, I have sought to bring before my readers with pen pictures. We have men among us who can put their conceptions of the ancient inhabitants of land and sea and air on canvas, and among them are Mr. Charles R. Knight, of the American Museum, and Mr. Sidney Prentice, of the Carnegie Museum. Mr. Prentice I knew as a boy, and he has done me the honor to assure me that my words of counsel have done something at least toward assisting him to make the choice of following the work not only of an artist in a paleontological museum, but in portraying with pencil and brush the ideal pictures of the early denizens of earth as in life. His success is shown in his restorations of Clidastes. The results of Mr. Knight’s restorations of many of the extinct animals brighten my pages, thanks to my friend Professor Henry F. Osborn, so if I have failed in my pen pictures to take my readers into the misty past, these brilliant restorations will certainly have the desired effect.

I cannot hope in this short space to have given more than a passing glance at the life of a fossil hunter. It has been one of joy to me; I should not like to have missed making the discoveries I have made, and I would willingly undergo the same hardships to accomplish the same results. And if my story does anything to interest people in fossils, I shall feel that I have not written in vain.

When I requested Professor William K. Gregory of Columbia University to be the final reader of the manuscript of this book, “The Life of a Fossil Hunter,” shall I ever forget his kind words? “I hope you will not feel that you are under any personal obligations whatever, because this slight service is simply laid upon me by the necessities of the case, i. e., by the fact that your whole life and work have placed all paleontologists under lasting obligations to you.” Surely “my cup runneth over; I have a goodly heritage.” Greater than their obligations to me, are mine to the men of science who have described, published, but, above all, have prepared and exhibited the noble monuments of creative genius which I have been so fortunate as to discover and make known to the civilized world. My own body will crumble in dust, my soul return to God who gave it, but the works of His hands, those animals of other days, will give joy and pleasure “to generations yet unborn.”

FINIS

INDEX

Adocus, 77

Amphibian, Long-horned, 253

Anderson, A. E., 58

Anseres, Fossil, 160

Aphelops megalodus, 123

Archælurus debilis, 189

Aspidophyllum trilobatum, 19

Bad Lands, Expedition to, 61–98

Bailey, Dr., 260

Baird, Letter from Spencer F., 20

Basin, John Day, 173, 190

Batrachians, Fossil, 161

Beds, Laramie, 272

Benton, Fort, 79, 97, 98

Betulites westii, 30

Bison, Giant Fossil, 267, 268

Blackbird, Fossil, 161

Bourne, W. O., 58

Broili, Dr. F., 112, 234, 253, 254, 255, 258

Bromfield, Corporal, 226, 227

Brontosaurus, 78

Brouse, A. W., 101, 121, 141

Button, Mr. Lee, 157, 168, 169

Camel, Fossil, 187, 188, 242

Carboniferous, Upper, 135

Cardicephalus sternbergi, 255

Chalk, Expedition to Kansas, 32–60 Further Work in Kansas, 99–119

Clidastes, 53, 135, 280 tortor, 44 velox, 51, 53 westi, 135

College, Vassar, 53

Condon, Prof., 160, 161

Coots, Fossil, 161

Cope, Prof. E. D., Characteristics of, 45, 69, 74, 75, 83, 84, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 95, 239, 242, 243 Expedition to Bad Lands with, 61–89 Horned Dinosaurs Discovered by, 87 Letter from, 33, 142 News of Death of, 241 Speech Given by, 45 Memory and Imagination of, 75, 76 Wit of, 98, 99

Cormorants, Fossil, 160

Coulée, Grand, 175, 204

County, Converse, 270 Gove, 34, 118 Logan, 35, 38, 50, 54, 57, 60

Coyote, 211

Creek, Beaver, 138 Bushy, 234 Butte, 50 Chapman, 101 Coffee, 245, 246, 252 Cottonwood, 273 Deer, 126 Dog, 68, 77, 79, 81, 88 Gray, 250, 253 Hackberry 34, 35, 38, 107, 135, 266 Hay, 60 Indian, 241 Pine, 170 Pony, 261 Prairie Dog, 126, 127 Sappa, 120, 121, 140

Cretaceous, Life of the, 54

Crinoid, Stemless, 266

Davis, Leander, 196, 198, 202, 203

Day, Bill, 173, 178

Dayville, 189

Desert, Expedition to the Oregon, 144–169

Diceratherium nanum, 189

Dimetredon, 217, 256

Dinosaur, 77, 273 Duck-billed, 275 Horned, 87, 88 Three-horned, 270

Diplocaulus, 227, 257 copei, 254, 255 magnicornis, 240, 253, 255

Dissorophus, 242

Dolichorhynchus osborni, 111

Duncan, Mr., 154, 156, 158

Eastman, Dr., 114

Elephant, Columbian, 268

Elephas primigenius, 160

Elotherium humerosum, 186, 187

Enhydrocyon stenocephalus, 189

Eryops, 217, 227, 256 megacephalus, 251

Ficus, 23

Flamingo, Fossil, 161

Flora, Tertiary, 172

Fossils, Formation of, 258–260 Method of Excavating, 41, 42, 88, 109, 110, 130

Galyean, Frank, 230, 231, 232

Gar-pike, 253

Gorge, Picture, 173

Grebes, Fossil, 160

Gregory, Prof. William K., 280

Group, Fort Pierre, 70, 135 Loup Fork, 120 Niobrara, 50, 122

Grouse, Fossil, 161

Gulls, Fossil, 160

Hamman, George, 207, 209

Haploscapha grandis, 108

Hatcher, Prof. J. B., 70, 123, 133, 270

Hayden, Dr., 78, 205

Henry, Major, 229

Hermann, Adam, 58, 278

Heron, Fossil, 161

Hesperornis regalis, 265, 266

Hill, Mr. Russell, 101, 141

Hill, Smoky, 109, 113

Holland, Dr. W. J., 115

Hollick, Dr. A., 21, 22, 26

Horse, Three-toed, 126, 188

Howard, General, 191, 196, 197

Hoxie, 267

Huff, Joe, 170, 177

Ichthyornis, 269

Inoceramus, 135

Isaac, J. C., 47, 48, 61, 65, 74, 79, 80, 81, 83, 86, 93, 94, 98

Island, Cow, 79, 87, 89, 91, 98 Long, 132, 134

Klamath, Fort, 142, 146

Knight, Charles R., 279, 280

Knowlton, Dr. F. H., 24

Labidosaurus, 256, 257 hamatus, 253

Lacoe, R. D., 24

Lake, Fossil, 158 Silver, 148, 149, 154

Leaves, Formation of Fossil, 28, 29 Preparation of Fossil, 25, 26

Lesquereux, Dr., 19, 21, 22, 23, 24

Lizard, Fin-backed, 227, 234 Flying, 266

Loosely, George, 148, 152, 158

Loup Fork Beds, Discovery of the, 120–143

Lucas, Dr. F. A., 265

Lynx, Canadian, 211

Lysorophus tricarinatus, 258

Macbride, Letter from Prof. T. K., 27

Mammoth, Columbian, 260 Teeth of Columbian, 134 Skull of Hairy, 160

Marsh, Prof. O. C., 32, 77, 87, 129, 133, 173

Marsupials, 272

Martin, H. T., 112

Mascall, Mr., 178, 179, 190, 191, 193

Mastodon, 123, 125, 127 Jaws of, 124, 125

Matthew, W. D., 279

Menette, Major J. F., 222

Merriam, J. C., 165

Miocene, Upper, 131

Monoclonius, 87 crassus, 87 sphenocerus, 87

Mosasaur, 27, 50, 204

Mountains, Bear Paw, 97 Judith River, 85

Mudge, Prof. B. F., 32

Museum, American, 57, 78, 187, 188, 189, 234, 243, 250, 266, 278, 279 British, 51, 125, 267, 271, 273 Cambridge, 123 Carnegie, 53, 54, 59, 115, 117, 133 French, 266 Harvard, 137 Munich, 112, 234, 244, 262 National, 134, 265 Princeton, 133 Roemer, 51 Senckenberg, 118 Yale, 133

Myledaphus bipartitus, 78

Mylodon, 161

Naosaurus, 227, 234, 235, 236

Ness City, 268

Newberry, Dr. J. S., 21

Oreodon, 177, 189

Osborn, Prof. H. F., 51, 57, 112, 115, 243, 257, 271, 278, 279, 280

Osborn and Lambe, 77, 78

Otocœlus, 242

Overton, Mr., 128, 129

Owl, Fossil, Great Horned, 161

Paratylopus sternbergi, 188

Pariotichus, 257

Peccary, Fossil, 189

Permian, Expeditions in the Texas, 230–243

Phœnicopterus copei, 161

Platecarpus, 46, 51, 52, 53 coryphæus, 50, 204

Pogonodon platycopis, 202

Portheus molossus, 54, 57, 58 Collecting a Specimen of, 55, 56, 57 Description of, 59, 60

Prentice, Sidney, 53, 279

Protophyllum sternbergi, 18

Protostega gigas, 114, 115, 116, 117

Pteranodon, 266

Pythonomorpha, 44

Quarry, The Sternberg, 125, 126, 131 Theory of Presence of Fossil Animals in, 131, 132

Rattlesnake, 210

Raven, Fossil, 161

Rhinoceros, 123, 133, 134 Bones of, 127, 128, 138 Skull of, 189

River, Expedition to the John Day, 170–204 Loup Fork, 120 Soloman, 34, 121 Sprague, 149, 151

Rocks, Monument, 36, 46, 116

Russ, Will, 129

Salamander, Great, 217, 227, 251 Fossil, 240

Sandstone, Concretions of, 15

Sassafras dissectum, 19

Sassafras, Fossil Leaves of, 18

Seymour, 249

Shark, Cretaceous, 113

Shufeldt, Dr., 160, 161, 162

Sill, Fort, 220, 226

Sloth, Fossil, 161

Snow, Prof., 104

Springer, Mr. Frank, 117, 118

Sternberg, Charles H., Adventure on a Cliff, 182–184 Adventure with a Norther, 214 Buffalo Hunting, 6–9 Dangerous Ride, 96 Discovery of the Texas Permian, 230–233 Experience with a Cyclone, 121 Finding a Fossil Lake, 158 Narrow Escape from Death, 72, 73 Setting a Dislocation, 140, 141 Wild Ride through Bad Lands, 89–92 Writing “Pliocene Man,” 159

Sternberg, Charles M., 263

Sternberg, George, 109–111, 118, 171, 246, 252, 255, 256, 262, 273, 274

Sternberg, Levi, 272, 274

Swan, Fossil, 160

Teleoceras fossiger, 134

Testudo orthopygia, 122, 138, 269

Texas, Expedition to Permian of, 205–229 In the Red Beds of, 244–264

Tiger, Saber-toothed, 137, 202

Tortoise, Sea, 114

Trachodon, 77 mirabilis, 275–277

Triceratops, 270, 273

Trilophodon campester, 123, 124

Trionyx, 77

Turtle, Land, 121 Sea, 77

Tylosaurus, 51 Ram-nosed, 49

Tyrannosaurus rex, 277

Uintacrinus, 118, 119 socialis, 117, 266

University, California, 165 Harvard, 205 Iowa State, 50 Kansas State, 51, 111, 135, 112 Oregon State, 160 Yale, 77

Valley, Sican, 151, 153

Varanosaurus acutirostris, 254

Village, Deserted Indian, 163–165

Von Zittel, Dr. Carl, 113, 244 Letter from, 247, 248

Walla Walla, Fort, 170

Water, Alkali, 41 Desert, 211–213

West, Judge E. P., 30, 135

Whelan, Pat, 214

Whitaker, Governor, 160, 162

Wichita, Big, 209, 212, 227, 230

Williston, Dr. S. W., 49, 50, 53, 111, 112, 113, 144

Woodward, Dr. A. Smith, 266, 273

Wortman, Dr. J. L., 134, 171, 188, 279

Wright, Mr., 140, 218

Zeuglodon, 57

E. RAY LANKESTER’S EXTINCT ANIMALS

By Prof. E. RAY LANKESTER, F.R.S., Keeper of the Natural History Department of the British Museum, Author of “The Advancement of Science” and “A Treatise of Zoölogy.” With numerous illustrations. $1.75 net; by mail, $1.93.

An interesting book by a high authority, based on a course of his successful, popular lectures. His narrative is well unified and developed, and his style so simple that children as well as older folk may enjoy the work. The illustrations are unusually effective.

N. Y. Sun:—A charming book ... showing that the greatest learning can be combined with the utmost simplicity of expression ... a book of intense interest ... the pictures are skilfully arranged to elucidate the text.

N. Y. Globe:—A great deal more lively than it sounds.... Huxley himself could not have talked more instructively in such simple language.

N. Y. Tribune:—Opens up a world of new interest, popular rather than technical.

E. RAY LANKESTER’S THE KINGDOM OF MAN

“Nature’s Insurgent Son”; “The Advance of Science—1881–1906”; “Nature’s Revenges—The Sleeping Sickness.” $1.40 net; by mail, $1.52.

A readable and pictorial survey, brief but nevertheless accurate, of the recent progress in the many branches of science—all leading towards the realization of man’s kingdom—the conquest and control of nature.

H. I. Brock in a three-column notice in the New York Times Saturday Review.—An impressive statement of human progress in knowledge and power by a conservative scientist who believes man soon able to eliminate disease ... exceedingly interesting ... it gathers into a very small compass and presents sharply to the layman an immensely impressive set of facts and ideas.

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⁂ If the reader will send his name and address, the publishers will send, from time to time, information regarding their new books.

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 34 WEST 33d STREET NEW YORK

THE AMERICAN NATURE SERIES

In the hope of doing something toward furnishing a series where the nature-lover can surely find a readable book of high authority, the publishers of the American Science Series have begun the publication of the American Nature Series. It is the intention that in its own way, the new series shall stand on a par with its famous predecessor.

The primary object of the new series is to answer questions which the contemplation of Nature is constantly arousing in the mind of the unscientific intelligent person. But a collateral object will be to give some intelligent notion of the “causes of things.”

While the coöperation of foreign scholars will not be declined, the books will be under the guarantee of American experts, and generally from the American point of view; and where material crowds space, preference will be given to American facts over others of not more than equal interest.

The series will be in six divisions:

I. NATURAL HISTORY

This division will consist of two sections.

=Section A. A large popular Natural History= in several volumes, with the topics treated in due proportion, by authors of unquestioned authority. 8vo. 7½ × 10¼ in.

The books so far publisht in this section are:

=FISHES=, by DAVID STARR JORDAN, President of the Leland Stanford Junior University. $6.00 net; carriage extra.

=AMERICAN INSECTS=, by VERNON L. KELLOGG, Professor in the Leland Stanford Junior University. $5.00 net; carriage extra.

Arranged for are:

=SEEDLESS PLANTS=, by GEORGE T. MOORE, Head of Department of Botany, Marine Biological Laboratory, assisted by other specialists.

=WILD MAMMALS OF NORTH AMERICA=, by C. HART MERRIAM, Chief of the United States Biological Survey.

=BIRDS OF THE WORLD.= A popular account by FRANK H. KNOWLTON, M.S., Ph.D., Member American Ornithologists Union, President Biological Society of Washington, etc., etc. with Chapter on Anatomy of Birds by FREDERIC A. LUCAS, Chief Curator Brooklyn Museum of Arts and Sciences, and edited by ROBERT RIDGWAY, Curator of Birds, U. S. National Museum.

=REPTILES AND BATRACHIANS=, by LEONHARD STEINEGER, Curator of Reptiles, U. S. National Museum.

=Section B. A Shorter Natural History=, mainly by the Authors of Section A, preserving its popular character, its proportional treatment, and its authority so far as that can be preserved without its fullness. Size not yet determined.

II. CLASSIFICATION OF NATURE

=1. Library Series=, very full descriptions. 8vo. 7½ × 10¼ in.

Already publisht:

=NORTH AMERICAN TREES=, by N. L. BRITTON, Director of the New York Botanical Garden. $7.00 net; carriage extra.

=FERNS=, by CAMPBELL E. WATERS, of Johns Hopkins University 8vo, pp. xi + 362. $3.00 net; by mail, $3.30.

=2. Pocket Series, Identification Books=—“How to Know,” brief and in portable shape.

III. FUNCTIONS OF NATURE

These books will treat of the relation of facts to causes and effects—of heredity and the relations of organism to environment. 8vo. 6⅝ × 8⅞ in.

Already publisht:

=THE BIRD: ITS FORM AND FUNCTION=, by C. W. BEEBE, Curator of Birds in the New York Zoological Park. 8vo, 496 pp. $3.50 net; by mail, $3.80.

Arranged for:

=THE INSECT: ITS FORM AND FUNCTION=, by VERNON L. KELLOGG, Professor in the Leland Stanford Junior University.

=THE FISH: ITS FORM AND FUNCTION=, by H. M. SMITH, of the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries.

IV. WORKING WITH NATURE

How to propagate, develop, care for and depict the plants and animals. The volumes in this group cover such a range of subjects that it is impracticable to make them of uniform size.

Already publisht:

=NATURE AND HEALTH=, by EDWARD CURTIS, Professor Emeritus in the College of Physicians and Surgeons. 12mo. $1.95 net; by mail, $1.37.

=THE FRESHWATER AQUARIUM AND ITS INHABITANTS.= A Guide for the Amateur Aquarist, by OTTO EGGELING and FREDERICK EHRENBERG. Large 12mo. $9.00 net; by mail, $2.19.

=THE LIFE OF A FOSSIL HUNTER=, by CHARLES H. STERNBERG.

Arranged for:

=PHOTOGRAPHING NATURE=, by E. R. SANBORN, Photographer of the New York Zoological Park.

=THE SHELLFISH INDUSTRIES=, by JAMES L. KELLOGG, Professor in Williams College.

=CHEMISTRY OF DAILY LIFE=, by HENRY P. TALBOT, Professor of Chemistry in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

=DOMESTIC ANIMALS=, by WILLIAM H. BREWER, Professor Emeritus in Yale University.

=THE CARE OF TREES IN LAWN, STREET AND PARK=, by B. E. FERNOW, Professor of Forestry, University of Toronto.

V. DIVERSIONS FROM NATURE

This division will include a wide range of writings not rigidly systematic or formal, but written only by authorities of standing. Large 12mo. 5¼ × 8⅛ in.

Already publisht:

=INSECT STORIES=, by VERNON L. KELLOGG. $1.50 net; by mail, $1.69

=FISH STORIES=, by CHARLES F. HOLDER and DAVID STARR JORDAN.

Arranged for:

=HORSE TALK=, by WILLIAM H. BREWER.

=BIRD NOTES=, by C. W. BEEBE.

VI. THE PHILOSOPHY OF NATURE

A Series of volumes by President JORDAN, of Stanford University, and Professors BROOKS of Johns Hopkins, LULL of Yale, THOMSON of Aberdeen, PASIBRAM of Austria, ZUR STRASSEN of Germany, and others. Edited by Professor KELLOGG of Leland Stanford, 12mo. 5⅛ × 7½ in.

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HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY, NEW YORK

January, ’09.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected typographical errors. 2. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed. 3. Enclosed italics font in underscores.