302 SPARKS FROM A GEOLOGIST'S HAMMEh. 



his traveling-bag for a trip to the Missouri river, and the 

 urgency with which he pressed me to join the excursion. 

 There was an ulterior purpose lurking beneath his drab- 

 colored hat which did not animate the others of the small 

 company, who were intending simply to ride to Omaha 

 and back. Perhaps this was one of those critical junc- 

 tures in human life where to choose "leads on to fortune, 1 ' 

 and to refuse leads, well, nowhere in particular. The 

 fact is, Professor Marsh chose to go, and the present writer 

 refused to go. The results illuminate the aphorism. 



Not long after this the American Journal of Science* 

 contained an announcement of the discovery, by Professor 

 Marsh, of the remains of a diminutive extinct equine en- 

 tirely new to science. Beyond Omaha, Professor Marsh 

 had proceeded over the Union Pacific railroad as far as 

 Antelope Station, where the debris thrown out of a well 

 contained the relics of this remote predecessor of the 

 " prancing steed." It was at Antelope Station, in Ne- 

 braska, four hundred and fifty-one miles west of Omaha, 

 that his destiny was revealed to him. From this happy 

 stroke of good luck he had the tact and sagacity and in- 

 dustry to win the undivided affections of the goddess so 

 generally reputed "fickle"; and a few years later the 

 metropolitan dailies were enriched with voluminous ac- 

 counts of his extensive and important discoveries; and all 

 the world had heard that the ancestral horse had arisen 

 in America, and that an American scientist had traced 

 the pedigree of Hambletonian back to Orohippus of the 

 Rocky Mountains. Professor Huxley had before this in- 



* Amer. Jour. Sci., II, xlvi, 374, Nov. 1868. The discovery announced was 

 Equus parvulus from the "later Tertiary of Nebraska." This was afterward 

 thought to be generically distinct from Equus, and was named Protohippus par- 

 vulus Mh. (Amer. Jour. Sci., Ill, vii, 251, March 1874). 



