256 WARD 



Hills. The University of Wyoming had a cabin erected in the 

 center of the Dinosaur area and only half a mile from the cycad 

 bed. Several days were spent there and I devoted most of my 

 time to a search for cycads and to a thorough investigation of 

 the geological character and position of the strata holding these 

 interesting remains. 



Professor Knight was entirely correct in the above statement 

 in his letter to me that the cycad beds are in the Jurassic fresh 

 water formation. This deposit is nearly 200 feet thick and the 

 cycad bed lies a little below the middle of it. The cycads occur 

 on a ridge of disintegrated sandstone rock, having a grayish 

 color with a reddish-brown tint. It was possible, however, to 

 follow the bed around the northern slope of the hill to the east, 

 where it was distinctly exposed as a ledge about ten feet in 

 thickness of coarse, reddish-brown, crossed-bedded sandstone, 

 with streaks formed by small white calcareous flecks, interbed- 

 ded with the sand ; which, however, are sometimes much larger, 

 giving the rock somewhat the appearance of a conglomerate. 



On the hills to the north of the cabin, across the valley, it 

 crops out in great clearness and is considerably thicker. Every- 

 where it is full of silicified wood, but cycads were only found 

 in the one particular locality described, which has an east and 

 west extension of some 1000 feet and a north and south width 

 near the top of the northern slope of the ridge of about 150 feet. 

 A student, Mr. Charles Gilmore, of the University of Wyoming, 

 who had been for some time at the cabin working out the Dinosaur 

 bones, and who had rediscovered Mr. Reed's cycad locality, 

 had obtained several additional trunks and sent them to 

 Medicine Bow, where, without my knowledge, they were stored 

 at the time we passed through and which, at the present writing, 

 I have not yet seen ; but I understand they are soon to be sent 

 to the National Museum. As soon as we began work in the 

 locality fragments were found and it was soon apparent that 

 many other specimens were buried in the ground only a very 

 short distance from the surface. A careful scanning of the entire 

 area revealed small projections of such as actually reached the 

 surface a,nd they were easily dug out, resulting in the discovery 

 of several good specimens. I spent one forenoon with a mat- 



