SKETCH OF PROFESSOR 0. C. MARSH. 615 



plans. He has followed his uncle's example in princely gifts to science, 

 and, thus far, likewise, we may add, in remaining a bachelor. 



Prof. Marsh is a firm believer in evolution, and enjoys the personal 

 acquaintance and friendship of Darwin, Huxley, Wallace, Spencer, and 

 other prominent advocates of this doctrine. He is at present in Eng- 

 land with his scientific friends, but will return in time for the St. Louis 

 meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Science. 



Aside from his scientific reputation, Prof. Marsh became well known 

 to the general public, a short time since, through his contest with 

 Secretary Delano and the Interior Department. It will be remembered 

 that while Prof. Marsh was on his perilous expedition to the " Bad- 

 Lands," near the Black Hills, in the winter of 1874, he was twice driven 

 back by the Sioux Indians, who supposed him to be in search of gold 

 rather than bones. In endeavoring to propitiate the savages, he held 

 various councils with Red Cloud and the other principal chiefs, and at 

 last gained permission to proceed with his party only by promising 

 Red Cloud to take his complaints and samples of his rations to the 

 Great Father at Washington. The fulfillment of this promise, together 

 with an exposure of the frauds which he had seen practised upon the 

 Indians, 1 led to a sharp fight with Secretary Delano and the Indian 

 ring. Secretary Delano began by calling the professor " a 3Ir. Marsh,'''' 

 and ended by retiring to private life and political death in Ohio. The 

 scalps of several lesser officials and contractors were taken by the pro- 

 fessor in the same fight, and subsequent events have more than sub- 

 stantiated all of the charges he made. This is perhaps the only in- 

 stance in which a private citizen has successfully fought a department 

 of the Government in his efforts to expose wrong-doing. Red Cloud 

 has since sent the professor an elegant pipe and tobacco-pouch, as a 

 token of his gratitude, and with them the complimentary message that 

 " the Bone-hunting Chief," as he calls the professor, " was the only 

 white man he had seen who kept his promises." 



Prof. Marsh's scientific publications, which began while he was a 

 student, number more than one hundred, and are mostly papers in 

 scientific journals. One of the most important of these publications is 

 his address as Vice-President of the American Association for the Ad- 

 vancement of Science, delivered in August, 1877, at Nashville, Tennes- 

 see, and published in The Popular Science Monthly for March and 

 April, 1878. He is now engaged in the preparation of a series of 

 monographs, with full illustrations, of his discoveries, which will be 

 published under Government aiispices. The first volume, upon the 

 " Odontornithes, or Birds with Teeth," illustrated with forty quarto 

 plates, is now in press, and will soon be published. 



Among the more noteworthy of Prof. Marsh's scientific papers are 

 the following : 



1 A statement of affairs at the Red Cloud Agency, made to the President of the United 

 States, Yale College, July, 18*75. 



