The Permian of Texas 217 



with small irregular concretions that are piled in 

 heaps at the base of the hills and roll under one's 

 feet, rendering travel difficult. In other strata are 

 deposits of small nodules, held together by silica. 

 These nodules are of various colors, and where held 

 securely and ground down, make beautiful mosaics. 

 Then there are beds of greenish sandstone, laid 

 down in thin layers ; and in these beds, for the first 

 time since I came to Texas, I found the remains of 

 a Permian vertebrate. My notes say : " Although 

 it is not wise to shout before I am out of the woods, 

 yet I feel very much encouraged, and I earnestly 

 hope for the success I have worked for. I have 

 evidently worked too high in the red beds to find 

 fossils." 



On the second day in these beds, I found frag- 

 ments of the great salamander Eryops, and on the 

 twenty-second of February, I found the first speci- 

 men that I had ever seen of the long-spined reptile, 

 Dimetredon. Of this last I got seventy-five pounds 

 of bones and matrix, preserved in iron ore concre- 

 tions. The teeth are long, recurved, and serrated. 

 I knew little then about these most ancient of all the 

 vertebrates that it has been my fortune to collect, 

 but I shall have more to say about them later. The 

 authorities now place the time when these animals 

 lived twelve million years away. Indeed, " God is 

 not slack as some men count slackness, one day is 



