94 KANSAS ACADEMY OP SCIENCE. 



THE PERMIAN LIFE OF TEXAS. 



By Charles H. Stebnbebg, Lawrence, Kan. 

 Read before the Academy, at lola, December 31, 1901. 



I CONDUCTED an expedition into the valley of the Big Wichita, 

 Baylor county, Texas, for the Paleontological Museum of Munich,. 

 Bavaria. I began work on the 14th of June, 1901, and continued 

 four months. I was employed by the famous Doctor von Zittel, the 

 early teacher of the deceased Cope and many other noted American 

 paleontologists. It was pleasant to receive these words of praise from 

 such a noble source: "Your collections from Kansas and Texas in 

 the Munich Museum will always be, as I wrote you, an everlasting 

 memorial to the name of Charles Sternberg." I labored this season, 

 assisted by my son George, under trying conditions, the heat often 

 running the mercury up to 113° in the shade, and, when reflected from 

 the brilliantly colored rocks, it was very severe on the eyes. The 

 whole Wichita valley this year is almost a desert. The few cattle, 

 scattered over thousands of acres, are poorer than I have seen them in 

 midwinter during former years. There are no wells or springs in the 

 Red Beds. Spasmodic showers are partly retained in natural or arti- 

 ficial tanks. I had to haul my camp water from six to eighteen miles, 

 as well as hay and grain for my team. By constant effort, under the 

 difficulties that beset me, I was able to add twenty distinct forms to 

 the Permian fauna of the Munich Museum and to science. They will 

 be carefully studied and described. 



No work, I believe, has been done on these remote ancestors of 

 living animals since Cope died, except in Munich, where, in 1899, 

 Doctor Broili, Doctor von Zittel's assistant, wrote a valuable paper on 

 Cope's great salamtrnder, Eryops megacephalus, as the result of his 

 study of the material I collected for them in 1895. Last August, Doc- 

 tor Broili came from Bavaria to visit my camp, and spent two weeks 

 with me in the field, taking x^hotographs and notes of the formation. 

 He was delighted with the results of my work, assuring me that the 

 collection had far greater scientific value than the one I made their 

 museum in 1895. I think quite a number of new species are i3re8ent, 

 as well as many described by Professor Cope. One, his Diplocaulus 

 inagnicornis, was , quite common in certain localities. 



I found in the roots of the grass, and along a slide, ten casts of 

 skulls I thought worth saving, with fragments of many others scat- 

 tered around. Every particle of bone had disappeared. I got several 

 better specimens than the type. The vertebral column and limbs 



