The Loup Fork Beds 123 



country have gained nothing by building frame in- 

 stead of sod houses. The early settler's sod house 

 was cool in summer and warm in winter, and those 

 who live in more modern houses in order to keep up 

 with the times will even now speak with regret of 

 the change. 



Not only did I secure a number of specimens of 

 these great turtles, so abundant at this time, but 

 also large quantities of the remains of a rhinoceros. 

 Cope thought it hornless, and named it Aphelops 

 megalodus, but since then Hatcher has found that 

 the male bore a loose horn on the end of the nasal 

 bones. 



I also got specimens of the great inferior tusked 

 mastodon, Trilophodon campester Cope. This re- 

 markably primitive mastodon had a lower jaw that 

 projected beyond the molar teeth for two feet in a 

 straight line, with a socket on either side, containing 

 two powerful tusks that terminated in chisel points. 

 One specimen, which I discovered in 1882 for the 

 Museum of Comparative Zoology in Cambridge, 

 had a jaw four feet long, including the tusks, which 

 extended eighteen inches beyond the end of the jaw. 



A set of jaws was brought me by my son last 

 fall. It belongs to a new form of this gigantic 

 pachyderm, which, during the Loup Fork times, 

 inhabited northwestern Kansas and a vast territory 

 west and northwest as far as the John Day basin 



