Presentation ok a Reproduction of Diplodocus. 449 



skeleton was set up and this cast made, and I am sure it would interest 

 us if he would be so kind as to tell us something about the discovery." 



Dr. W. J. Holland, the Director of the Carnegie Museum, said : 

 ^^ My Lords, Ladies, and Gentlemen : 



"My good friend, Mr. Carnegie, I fear has attributed to me in his 

 kind remarks, which you have just heard, merit which does not belong 

 to me. I can scarcely lay claim to the discovery of the Diplodocus. 

 The credit of first ascertaining the fact of the existence of such a 

 creature belongs to the late lamented Professor O. C. Marsh and his 

 assistants. Of course I do not pretend to disclaim the fact that the 

 specimen the reproduction of which you see was obtained by myself 

 and those associated with me. But, more than to me, to Mr. Car- 

 negie himself, belongs the credit of the discovery. He has forgotten 

 the laconic message addressed to me on the margin of a newspaper 

 which he sent to me in the fall of 1898, upon which was depicted a 

 sensational picture of a huge dinosaur, which rumor said had been dis- 

 covered in Wyoming. His command, written in lead-pencil, was, 

 ' Dear Chancellor, Buy this for Pittsburgh.' Of course I endeavored 

 to obey him, but I will not weary you by telling you the story of the 

 adventures which led to the discovery of the specimens, of which you 

 see the reproduction. To Mr. Carnegie's intelligent appreciation of 

 paleontological science and to his generosity, far more than to my 

 humble efforts, are to be attributed the discovery, not only of this 

 great animal, but of a multitude of other strange creatures, the re- 

 mains of which we have secured for the Museum of w'hich I have the 

 honor to be the Director. 



" We are told that Napoleon, addressing his troops just before they 

 went into action in the Battle of the Pyramids, said to them : ' French- 

 men, remember that from yonder heights forty centuries are looking 

 down on you.' Dr. Smith Woodward, Sir Archibald Geikie, and Sir 

 Robert Ball, I think, will not charge me with scientific exaggeration if 

 I say that forty thousand centuries are looking down upon us to-day 

 from this expressionless skull. When this saurian lay down and died, 

 nothing in all nature intimated that his bones at some future time 

 would be resurrected by beings such as we are. Mammalian life at 

 that time was in its infancy. Reptiles dominated the globe. 



" The Diplodocus lived in the midst of tropical surroundings. When 

 engaged in digging it up, we found near it the i)etrified stump of a 



