OTHNIEL CHARLES MARSH 293 



Foremost among the successes of these early days was the series 

 of private expeditions originating in 1870, with which Marsh's 

 name is so closely identified. In the spring he made an extensive 

 trip through the southern states, with special investigation of the 

 phosphate beds of South Carolina and the Cretaceous deposits 

 of Alabama, and on his return to New Haven organized the first 

 Yale expedition, the party consisting of twelve students or recent 

 graduates under the leadership of Marsh. This party started in 

 June, and after an absence of five months returned to New Haven 

 ladened with fossil treasures. Military escorts from various posts 

 along the route insured their safety, and explorations in nu- 

 merous Tertiary and Cretaceous deposits in Nebraska, Colorado, 

 Wyoming, Utah, California, and western Kansas resulted in the 

 discovery of over a hundred species of extinct vertebrates new to 

 science fossil horses, peculiar ungulates, carnivores, turtles, ser- 

 pents, fishes, aquatic reptiles, toothed birds, and a single flying 

 dragon, or pterodactyl. 



During the four years that ensued, Marsh annually led other 

 expeditions scarcely less successful than the first, the later parties 

 being made up chiefly of competent assistants, specially fitted for 

 original research. Localities proving most fertile in vertebrate 

 remains were repeatedly visited, and the fossils thus collected 

 soon came to be estimated by tons rather than by hundreds or 

 thousands of specimens. The difficulties under which Marsh 

 labored and the zeal shown in the pursuit of his aim may be 

 inferred from the fact that the regions traversed were wild and 

 sometimes dangerous from hostile Indians. Sometimes there was 

 suffering from lack of food and water the usual difficulties of 

 early western travel. There was then but one transcontinental 

 railroad in the United States, and away from that, travel through 

 a region practically unknown was slow and difficult and involved 

 a great expenditure of time and means. After 1874 no expeditions 

 were undertaken on the previous grand scale. Although under 

 the escort and protection of United States troops, accompanied 

 by Indian and local guides, the heavy expense of these the first 

 private scientific expeditions to the Great West was borne chiefly 



