Expedition to Oregon Desert 159 



and on the clay bed were great numbers of the 

 bones and teeth of reptiles, birds, and mammals, 

 indiscriminately mingled. I had come upon a bone- 

 yard indeed. 



I was down on the sand at once, picking up bones 

 and teeth and putting them in piles. No two bones 

 seemed to belong together, and the skulls and arches 

 had been crushed beneath the feet of animals, prob- 

 ably cattle and deer, which had come down to drink 

 at the lake. What pleased me, however, was the 

 fact that scattered among these remains of an earlier 

 day, were arrow-heads and spear-points of polished 

 obsidian, or volcanic glass. I was too much excited 

 then to notice that I did not find a single bone or 

 tooth in its original position in the clay matrix, but 

 that all were loose, detached, and scattered, and that 

 the implements were lying about in the same way. 



As Mr. Duncan was to return to the post-office at 

 Silver Lake the next morning, I gathered a cigar- 

 boxful of loose teeth, arrowheads, and spear-points, 

 and packed them to send off to Professor Cope. 

 And that night, by a sage-brush fire, I wrote the 

 letter which he saw fit to publish in the American 

 Naturalist, a magazine of which he was the editor, 

 under a title of his own, " Pliocene Man," and 

 signed " E. D. Cope." 



For weeks I sifted through my fingers the fine 

 sand of that lake shore, picking out bone after bone. 



