1 1 8 Life of a Fossil Hunter 



During the fifteen years in which I have gone over 

 the chalk exposures again and again, I can remember 

 only three localities of these fossils, the Martin 

 locality, another three miles to the east of it, and a 

 third on Butte Creek near Elkader. The first has 

 yielded the finest specimens among those which were 

 described by Mr. Springer in his magnificent treatise 

 on Uintacrinus, published by the Museum of Com- 

 parative Zoology at Harvard University. 



Last year, however, my son George found two 

 splendid specimens about fifty feet apart, further 

 east than they had been discovered before. The 

 locality is south of Quinter, in the southern part of 

 Gove County, thirty-seven miles east of the Martin 

 locality. These two colonies each contained about 

 forty calices. As usual, they are flattened out on 

 the under side of a calcareous slab about a quarter of 

 an inch thick and beveled off as thin as paper at the 

 margins. One slab was sent to the Senckenberg 

 Museum in Germany, while Mr. Springer secured 

 the other. 



The calyx, or as we have called it, " the head," has 

 ten long arms, some of them about thirty inches 

 long.* 



These beautiful globular animals were stemless, 

 and evidently lived in swarms, as single specimens 



* A restoration of the Uintacrinus is shown in the same il- 

 lustration (Fig. na) in which the Clidastes is represented. 



