30 Life of a Fossil Hunter 



The locality from which I collected these speci- 

 mens I have named the Betulites locality, on account 

 of the abundance of birch leaves of many varieties 

 which have been found there. It was discovered by 

 the late Judge E. P. West, collector for the Univer- 

 sity of Kansas, and Professor Lesquereux honored 

 him by calling one species Betulites westii. He made 

 a wonderful collection of Dakota leaves for the 

 University, many of them new to science. The lo- 

 cality is about a mile in length and tops the highest 

 hills in Ellsworth County. 



I have no record of the thousands of fossil leaves 

 I have collected from the sandstone of central Kan- 

 sas. I have never kept a single specimen for myself, 

 although I love them dearly, and it has often been 

 hard to give them up. But the object of my life has 

 been to advance human knowledge, and that could 

 not be accomplished if I kept my best specimens to 

 gratify myself. They had to go, and they went, 

 often for less than they cost me in labor and ex- 

 pense, into the hands of those who could give 

 authoritative knowledge of them to the world, and 

 preserve them in great museums for the benefit 

 of all. 



One thing I have demanded as my right, in my 

 opinion an inalienable right, although I am sorry to 

 say that there are those who have denied it to me, 

 I demand that my name appear as collector on all 



