88 Kansas Academy of Science. 



off in thin sheets. It is also associated with other rock-forming materials, 

 and in this way makes schist or a mica pudding stone. 



Hornhlende, called amphibole by some mineralogists, is not so com- 

 mon in Kansas, and is, as far as I am able to find, found only as an 

 accessory of other rocks. It can be identified by its hardness, its shiny 

 black luster, and its flaky appearance. It has some of the characteristics 

 of mica and is sometimes mistaken for it, but a close examination will 

 show that it is much harder than this substance. Mica can be crumbled 

 with the thumb, but not so with hornblende. In chemical composition it 

 is a silicate of magnesia and is about the same in composition as asbestos, 

 to which it is closely related. Hornblende, like asbestos, is a heat re- 

 sisting material and fire will have no effect on it. 



These, then, quartz, calcite, feldspar, mica, and hornblende, are the 

 great mother classes of rocks most common in our state. There are still 

 others, and some of large importance, found here, but these will suffice 

 for this, our first lesson. If we would give a small amount of time and 

 study to these suggestions and compare specimens of each, it would not 

 be long until we would be able to name and distinguish most of our 

 common rocks. This is a knowledge which any one should be glad and 

 proud to possess. We take great interest in many of the studies of the 

 natural world less interesting than this. And what can be more fas- 

 cinating than an intimate knowledge of the beauty and utility of those 

 massive structures of rocks hidden deep in the bowels of the earth, or 

 here and there exposed to our view, or now and then crystallized and 

 variegated with a beautiful play of colors, as it were, to make us ad- 

 mire them? This is a science that will give pleasure and profit to its 

 student, will take him to the hills and canyons out in the open world, 

 away from the conventions of man and alone with nature. 



Home City, March, 1918. 



Sternberg's Expedition to the Red Deer River, Alberta, 1917. 



Charles H. Sternberu. 



In all my experience as a collector, this has been the most successful 

 expedition of my life in the fossil fields of North America. It has also 

 been one of the most strenuous ones. I received sufficient income the 

 year before from my labors for the British Museum to enable me to 

 employ five men part of the time in the fossil field, and to purchase a 

 team and outfit, so I was independent in regard to transportation. Then 

 the season was ideal for the fossil hunter. We had a severe drouth, 

 little rain falling in the fossil beds. This fact also relieved us from the 

 awful pest of a rainy season, the mosquitoes. I might also say, that 

 another strong incentive to labor was the presence in the Sand creek beds 

 of a competitor, even though he chanced to be my own son, Charles M., 

 who was conducting a party for the Geological Survey of Canada. All 

 these causes, and above all others the energy of my assistants, who gave 

 their unremitted labor from sunrise to sunset, not even taking the time 

 to go fishing during the hours we could work in the field — these causes, 



