Work in the Dakota Group 25 



haps, than any other thing to fix my determination 

 that, come what might, I would be a fossil hunter 

 and add my quota to human knowledge. The letter 

 here reproduced has been as a lodestar to lead me 

 on past all discouragements in the path which as a 

 boy of seventeen I set out to follow. May it shed 

 light upon the life of some other struggler! 



In 1897, not having the means to go into the 

 vertebrate fields of western Kansas, I spent three 

 months in the Dakota Group, although I knew that 

 I had already supplied most of the museums of the 

 ,vorld with examples of its flora, and that there was 

 little interest in or demand for the leaves. 



I secured over three thousand leaves, however, 

 and paid first-class freight on them to my home at 

 Lawrence. Then I hauled them out to my little 

 twenty-acre farm, four miles southeast of town, and 

 pitched my 9x9 wall-tent for a workshop, flooring 

 it and putting up a stove. There I worked from 

 November to May, standing on my feet on an 

 average of fourteen hours a day, with my face to 

 the opening of the tent for light, and my back to 

 the stove. At night I worked over a coal-oil lamp. 



With a chisel-edged hammer weighing two 

 ounces, I trimmed off the rough stone from the 

 margin of the nodules, as illustrated in the woodcuts 

 by Christian Weber of New York (Fig. 5, c, d, 

 e, and /), a labor of love on his part, for which I 



