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appearance, and probably, at first at least, couples with the notion : 
of its strangeness some vague idea of its possible utility or money 
value. He therefore invariably picks it up and sequestrates it in 
some way. After many years, finding that there is no demand 
for it, that no one knows any use to which it can be put, he even- 
tually loses interest in it, and it is pushed aside, forgotten, and 
perhaps covered up in some obscure corner. So that in addition 
to the specimens that Mr. Bibbins actually obtained, there remain 
quite a number which are known to exist, but which for the 
present cannot be found. 
Mr. Bibbins always frames his questions with skill, taking care 
not to ask leading ones, realizing that the desire to please is liable 
to color the answer and make it conform to what it is supposed 
he desires to have said. He therefore always takes pains to 1 
duce these people to tell what they know independently of any 
suggestion on his part. 
As an illustration of the accuracy with which such persons 
often observe and remember facts, may be mentioned a case es 
which one of these traditional lost specimens was being inquired 
after from an octogenarian who remembered seeing it some forty 
years before, and when asked if the “holes’’ in the stone — 
“round” he replied, “No, they were sort 0’ three-cornered, 4 
remark which rendered it certain that the object was really 4 a4 
cycad. : 
Wher, in January last, I learned that this collection was being 
made, I immediately commenced making inquiries in regard . 
it. I was much interested in the subject from two points of pein 
first, in the hope of settling the question of the exact geologicé . 
position of these remains; and secondly, in the hope that an OP". 
portunity might be secured of studying this collection in conne™” 
tion with that of a similar one from the Black Hills of South 
Dakota, which had been obtained by the National Museum, and 
upon which I was then engaged. My efforts were met in a liberal | 
spirit, both by President Goucher and Mr. Bibbins, and the g°™ 
eral result has been that the entire collection has been loaned - : 
the National Museum and placed in my hands to be describ” 
and illustrated in a memoir which is now in preparation ‘on the 
Fossil Cycadean Trunks of North America, in which it is ae 
