ioned "printing-out paper." This system enabled me to do a very large 

 amount of work. 



My rooms were desperately cold, too much so for photographic 

 work, and so I had a lire of quebracho wood in a little stove of about 

 the diameter of an ordinary stovepipe; it was astonishing to see how 

 efficiently that little contraption made entirely comfortable my large 

 and lofty room, which was some eighteen feet high. After finishing 

 the day's photography, I spent the remainder of the evening in the 

 study of Spanish. One of my first tasks was to prepare a bibliography 

 of all the books and papers in English, German, Spanish and French 

 that had been published on the geology and palaeontology of Pata- 

 gonia, and, more especially, those dealing with the fossils of the Santa 

 Cruz formation. Much the most numerous and important of these pub- 

 lications were in Spanish and by the generous assistance of Pyne, to 

 whom I wrote, I acquired for the Hbrary a valuable series of the more 

 costly works. 



The only medium of communication that I had with Ameghino was 

 bad French, which he spoke very fluently, but pronounced as though 

 it were Spanish. Gradually, however, we reached a basis of mutual un- 

 derstanding, and could communicate with each other readily. Every 

 afternoon, at half-past four or five, he would appear with a tray for 

 making tea; I could not bear to dull his enthusiasm by telling him how 

 greatly I disliked that beverage and solemnly imbibed two large cups. 

 During the tea-drinking we discussed the problems of palaeontology 

 and squabbled with the most perfect amiability, for we never agreed 

 about anything and yet we never lost our tempers and always kept the 

 discussion on a purely objective plane. 



Ameghino had a theory, so passionately held that it amounted to an 

 obsession, that all the various groups of mammals, including Man, 

 had originated in Argentina and spread from there, an utterly incon- 

 ceivable hypothesis. I went to La Plata decidedly prejudiced against him, 

 but a brief acquaintance removed that prejudice entirely. Not only did 

 his heroic devotion compel respect, but I came to value his work as 

 I had not done before. Nearly all of the known Santa Cruz fauna had 

 been named and described by him and our great collections added but 

 few forms that had not been named before. The immense value of the 

 work done by Hatcher and Peterson consisted in their skill as collectors, 

 in obtaining skeletons of many creatures that had previously been 

 known only from scattered bones, or even from fragments. The object 

 of my journey to Argentina was to learn how our fossils should be 



