114 Kansas Academy of Science. 



in Montana in the similar Judith river beds, where, as assistant of 

 Prof. E. D. Cope, we found also the first dinosaur remains in west- 

 ern America, except for a few teeth that Dr. F. V. Hayden found 

 at an earlier day. 



Above the cross-bedded sandstone are beds of red or gray clays 

 topped by a stratum of flint-like structure that readily flakes off 

 and covers the surface with angular fragments. We looked with 

 earnest hope for the great land reptile Triceratops, and were so 

 fortunate as to find a huge skull six feet and six inches long, which 

 I sent to the British Museum. 



From the remarks .already made you will expect a rough and 

 hilly country, and so it is. The main drainage canals open into 

 the flood-plain of creek or river, but as they retreat into the hills 

 they scour the country into deep gorges and lateral ravines. They 

 cut through great masses of the easily disintegrated sandstones and 

 clays, undermining hardened masses, to bridge some chasm or crown 

 a butte or table-land that towers above in silent grandeur, breaking 

 the monotony of this cut-up land, and serve as landmarks to the 

 venturous fossil hunter who, without guide or compass, enters these 

 vast solitudes. The lateral ravines often meet and cut off a table- 

 land, which gradually forms a haystack-like butte which stands up 

 above the surrounding country, isolated or in groups, against the 

 distant horizon. 



This region, covering many square miles, is destitute of human 

 life except for a few sheep and cattle men and our little party of four 

 fossil hunters — the father and his three sons. It occupies a great 

 basin whose outer rim is formed by the rocks of the Fox Hills and 

 Fort Pierre of the Cretaceous. These beds mark the old shore- lines 

 of the lakes and morasses that once occupied the country. The 

 Fox Hills consist of yellow sandstone with great brown concretions 

 filled with shells — amonites, graphites and bivalves, and other forms 

 of marine life. The Fort Pierre consists chiefly of black clays in 

 shaley structure, and contains a rich fauna of Baculites and other 

 shells. I saw Baculites that must have been over three feet long. 



These vast deposits were land when the lakes of the Laramie 

 existed, and the rivers cut out their clays and sandstones to form 

 the thousand or more feet of its strata. A tropical or semitropical 

 climate, the land 5000 feet lower than at present, bayous and lakes 

 lined with dense growths of cat-tails and other swampy vegetation, 

 while the firmer ground supported palmettos and other trees. I 

 see the narrow stream that silently winds among the rushes dis- 

 turbed by the vibrations of a powerful tail, whose undulatory mo- 



