138 Life of a Fossil Hunter 



straight and dignified and demanded of me what I 

 was doing in that part of the country. 



" Oh," I answered, " I'm looking for rhinoceros 

 bones in the loose sand of the hills here." 



" Well," the old man said, " I am interested in 

 these old bones myself. I don't claim to be a 

 scholar; in fact, I am quite illiterate, but I think 

 when this earth was in a molten state, these old 

 hippopotamuses wallowed around in the mud and 

 got congealed in the rocks." 



The following incident I did not find quite so 

 amusing. One day I discovered turtle shells stick- 

 ing out on either side of a narrow gulch which cut 

 through a large deposit of sand. In digging out 

 those already in sight, I found many more ; collect- 

 ing in all some twenty fine specimens, but all quite 

 small. Following down the gorge, I discovered 

 that it opened out, on Beaver Creek in Rawlins 

 County, into a great amphitheater several acres in 

 extent and almost denuded of vegetation; an ideal 

 place for fossil hunting, as the elements had been 

 digging out and removing the sand for ages. And 

 sure enough, I soon stumbled upon the complete 

 shell and skeleton, four feet in diameter, of a speci- 

 men of Cope's Testudo orthopygia; but it nearly 

 broke my heart to find that while the specimen had 

 weathered out in a perfect condition, some vandal 

 for I shall ever maintain that the wanton destruc- 



