236 Life of a Fossil Hunter 



gether, and numbering them No. i, spine i, package 

 I, etc. ; so that when the whole collection came to be 

 put together, the sections could be mended separately 

 first and then joined to one another. 



The broken condition in which I found the skele- 

 ton prevented me from realizing then how complete 

 and valuable it was; but as I look now at the fine 

 photograph of the mounted specimen, the only 

 mounted specimen of the Naosanrns in the world 

 (Fig. 32), I can see that this expedition was indeed 

 a success, in spite of the discouragement which I 

 went through at the time. 



After the discovery of the Naosaurus, I was 

 obliged to spend weeks of work without results, 

 growing more and more disheartened because I my- 

 self was fully persuaded that the search was useless. 

 Professor Cope was convinced that there was a 

 fossil-bearing stratum between the Permian and 

 Triassic, which would yield an entirely new fauna, 

 and he had reasoned out that this ideal bed must be 

 located northwest of the productive bed already 

 known, in the very region, in fact, which I had gone 

 over with such care for the Museum of Comparative 

 Zoology of Harvard in 1882, and found barren. I, 

 therefore, protested as strongly as I could against 

 making the trip ; but he insisted, and his more power- 

 ful will won the day. So I was forced to spend a 

 month of extremely trying labor at the head of 



