jo Life of a Fossil Hunter 



exclaim in surprise, " Why, I thought you were on 

 my right, and here you are on my left ! " 



The pony repeated this trick whenever I became 

 so deeply interested in the Professor's talk as to 

 loosen my hold on the reins. 



On the very top of the Bad Lands were the 

 Judith River beds, now known, through the re- 

 searches of the late Professor J. B. Hatcher, to be- 

 long to the Fort Pierre Group of the Upper Creta- 

 ceous. Here tablelands and level prairies offered 

 plenty of grass for our ponies; so we climbed to 

 these heights, picketed our horses, and went into 

 the gorges in search of fossils. It was necessary 

 to give the loose shale the most careful examina- 

 tion, as only a streak of dust a little different in 

 color from the uniform black around it, indicated 

 where the bones were buried. 



As a result of the loose composition of this friable 

 black shale and the overlying rocks of sandstone, 

 the Missouri has lowered its bed twelve hundred feet 

 below the level of the prairies, and the whole coun- 

 try is cut up by a perfect labyrinth of canyons and 

 lateral ravines into a dreary landscape of utter 

 barrenness. 



At night the view from above of these intricate 

 passages was appalling. The black material of 

 which the rocks are composed did not permit a 

 single ray of light to penetrate the depths below, 



