GEOLOGICAL PAPERS. 91 



head appeared in the American Naturalist in 1877. The whole is 

 enclosed in quotation marks, and was a copy of a letter I wrote to 

 Prof. E. D. Cope from a locality I named Fossil lake, in the desert of 

 eastern Oregon — a name it still retains. I was sent there by the pro- 

 fessor in August of that year. My letter of instructions advised me 

 to look for human implements mingled with the extinct animal re- 

 mains I was sent in search of ; to write at once if I found any, their 

 manner of occurrence, etc. 



As one part of the story of the Pliocene man was told in the 

 article, and as I was really the author of it, though ray name does not 

 appear, I have often felt it my duty to tell the end also, which, in this 

 instance at least, proved to my mind that I was entirely mistaken in 

 regard to man being contemporary with the Pliocene animals, birds 

 and rejitiles that I found so abundant at Fossil lake. I was young, 

 and anxious to be able to say that I was the first collector to find 

 traces of man so far back in the world's history, associated with the 

 extinct horse, llama, elephant, etc. But I was also conscientious, and 

 wrote the professor of the discovery I made later, which I am about 

 to relate. 



When I arrived one evening at the famous lake, after traveling 

 across half the continent to find it, you can imagine I was too anxious 

 to look for specimens to think of anything else ; and when my guide, 

 Mr. Duncan, of Silver Lake, Ore., pointed out the shores of a small 

 alkaline lake that we had reached, after a journey of twenty-eight 

 miles through a trackless desert of sage-brush and sand-hills (from 

 Button's ranch, on the California road), and said, "There is the bone- 

 yard," I requested him and my assistant, George Loosely, of Fort 

 Klamath, Ore., to pitch the camp and get supper, seizing my collect- 

 ing bag I rushed to the grounds. I found the lake occupied an area 

 of about three acres ; its margin was covered with loose sand, and be- 

 low were the clay strata of the Equus Beds of the Pliocene. 



The lake had anciently covered a much larger area, and was gradu- 

 ally drying up. To the northeast. I believe, were large piles of sand 

 that were constantly being drifted away by the action of the prevail- 

 ing winds. Scattered through the loose sand and on the clay bed 

 were great numbers of teeth and bones of horses, llamas, etc., as 

 well as bones of birds and reptiles, lying loose on the surface — a veri- 

 table bone-yard indeed. I was down at once on the ground, ijicking 

 up bones and teeth and putting them in piles. No two bones seemed 

 to belong together. The skulls and arches had been crushed beneath 

 the feet of animals, probably cattle and deer that had come to drink. 

 What pleased me most was the fact that scattered among these re- 

 mains were arrow- and spear-heads of polished obsidian. Not a bone 



