The world's work must be done, and only a small part of it can be done in the 

 woods and fields. The merchants may not all turn ploughmen and woodchoppers. Nor 

 is it necessary. What we need to do, and are learning to do, is to go to nature for 

 our rest and health and recreation. — Dallas Lore Skarpe in "The Lav of the Lam/." 



THE GUIDE TO NATURE 



EDUCATION AND RECREATION 



VOL II 



JULY, 1909 



No. 4 



outdooh world 



In the Laramie Beds of Wyoming 



BY CHARLES H. STERNBERG, LAWRENCE, KANSAS 



HE beds of grey or yellow- 

 ish sandstone, massive or 

 cross-bedded with inter- 

 spaces filled with clay, and 

 thin beds of marie, have, 

 scattered through them, 

 concretions, ranging in size 

 from a small marble to 

 eight inches in diameter; also many 

 large flint-like masses of very peculiar 

 shapes, often they are elongate, over 

 a hundred feet long, and only two or 

 three feet thick. They are often in 

 the form of great flattened disks, when 

 the soft sand is worn away by erosion, 

 the pillars capped with these disks re- 

 semble mushrooms. I saw one that 

 resembled the face of a man with skull 

 cap ; another like a laughing baby, 

 and so on in endless array of strange 

 forms. The sculptury of the land 

 masses is different from any region I 

 have explored. These beds were de- 

 posited in the border-land between 

 the Age of Reptiles and Mammals. 



The great dinosaurs whose -ponderous 

 weight once shook the earth, are on 

 the verge of total annihilation, and 

 the dawn of the age of mammals is 

 foreshadowed by the presence of small 

 marsupial-like mammals. 



From what I have written you will 

 expect a rough, cut up land in the 

 Laramie, owing to the fragile nature 

 of the rock, I will venture to say there 

 is no good building stone in the for- 

 mation, for though there is a layer 

 of hard flinty rock that tops some of 

 the tablelands, it falls into flint like 

 flakes that soon disintegrate. The 

 main drainage canals as soon as they 

 leave the flood plains of the principle 

 creeks, or rivers retreat by way of 

 deep gorges, often quite narrow. 

 Many lateral ravines scour out the 

 country into narrow canyons, sepa- 

 rated by ridges, or they may meet one 

 that is encroaching the divide from the 

 other side and a great table land is 

 formed that gradually recedes to the 



Copyright 1909 by The Agassiz Association. Arcadia, Sound Beach. Conn. 



