PRACTICAL VALUE OF THE 

 EXCURSION 



Learning that the Union Pacific is to pubHsh some of the 

 results of the recent Fossil Field Expedition, so admirably 

 planned and so successfully carried out by the railroad and 

 Prof. W. C. Knight of the University of Wyoming, I hasten to 

 add my testimony to its benefits. They may be briefly 

 enumerated as follows: 



1 . It enlarged greatly the stock of knowledge of every 

 geologist enlisted, and of that sort best calculated to improve 

 his teaching capacity. It substituted clear typical object 

 lessons for the meager illustrations and halting descriptions of 

 textbooks. Even those familiar with typical examples in the east- 

 em part of our country were greatly impressed with the great 

 advantage of the absence of vegetation and clearness of 

 atmosphere in Wyoming. Views were more comprehensive eind 

 details more distinctly exhibited. This was true particularly 

 of folds, faults, wind work and stream work, stratification and 

 concretions. It afforded opportunities for excellent acquaint- 

 ance with most interesting formations and fossils not accessible 

 in the east. 



The erosion forms, the work of untold ages on the granite 

 axis of the continent; the carboniferous rocks without coal; 

 the glowing red beds; the Jurassic, with its various horizons, 

 including probably the oldest great fresh water lakes, with 

 their huge dinosaurs; the stretches of Cretaceous with its sand- 

 stone ridges and mesas, its gumbo plains and slopes, its chalk 

 cliffs glaring across the waste, its swarms of fossil shells, its 

 gigantic globular concretions, its coal beds with fossil palms 

 and deciduous trees; the Tertiary lake beds, with their mon- 



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