72 Kansas Academy of Science. 



general stock of everything needed by the first pioneers of that part 

 of the state were sold. Parts of Decatur and Rawlins counties were 

 explored, and here were discovered the rhinoceros, three-toed horse, 

 and other animals of the Upper Miocene. One thing frequently 

 noted here was the conglomerate of gravel or fine sand bound 

 lightly together with the chalk that had been washed into whiting 

 by the streams that flowed over the Niobrara group of the Creta- 

 ceous rocks that lie immediately underneath. Where masses of this 

 material have disintegrated at the foot of some cliff, the resemblance 

 to old, weather-beaten mortar is so great as to attract instant atten- 

 tion. It is pleasant to know that the geologists of Kansas now call 

 these "mortar beds." The resemblance in many instances was real, 

 as the early settlers plastered the inside walls of their sod houses by 

 simply mixing water with it, and laying it on with an ordinary 

 trowel. 



The great land turtle discovered on the Sappa was named 

 Testudo {Xerohates) orthopygia by Cope. Here was also found 

 the short-limbed rhinoceros, called at that time Aphelops fossiger 

 Cope, the generic name meaning without horns, as they were absent 

 in the female skull Cope described. As the late Dr. J. B, Hatcher 

 found them on the male, he changed the generic name to Teleoceras. 

 In 1882, while in the employ of the museum of comparative zoology 

 of Harvard, the writer discovered the famous locality at Long 

 Island, Phillips county. In 1884 he was employed to explore this 

 deposit for Professor Marsh, of the United States Geological Survey, 

 and, with the assistance of J. B. Hatcher, who was at that time an 

 enthusiastic student from Yale, and who made the first collection 

 of his life there, they collected about ten tons of the bones of rhi- 

 noceros, representing many individuals. Professor Marsh leased 

 this quarry, and at once it took the name of the Marsh quarry. A 

 narrow ravine cuts through the center of the deposit. The bones 

 lie scattered along either side of the ravine for a quarter of a mile, 

 often in pockets, or pot holes, in the hard sandstone layer. There 

 are two of these layers, about fourteen feet apart. The interspace 

 is filled with beds of fine molding sand, with some whiting, formed 

 by the wash of the underlying chalk, which when these beds were 

 laid down formed the land surface. There are also beds of sand 

 that have been washed clean by some old current in the flood- 

 plain of an ancient river, for the exposed section shows all the 

 different deposits of a river valley. Above the washed sand is a 

 stratum of sand and clay, showing that the muddy backwater had 

 deposited in a quiet place its load. This layer, on exposure, cracks 



