Expeditions in the Texas Permian 241 



Professor Cope used to call the specimens " mud 

 heads," as they were almost always covered with a 

 thin coating of silicified mud, which was very dif- 

 ficult to remove. In fact, nearly all the bones in 

 this region were enclosed in a hard red matrix. 



In the spring of 1897, I was again working in the 

 Texas Permian for Professor Cope. He was deeply 

 interested in the ancient fauna of the region, and I 

 was sending him all the finer specimens by express, 

 as I had during the last two years. On the fifteenth 

 of April, I was camping on Indian Creek, having 

 just completed a long and trying journey of about a 

 hundred miles, around the Little Wichita and back 

 to the main river at Indian Creek. During the trip 

 we had encountered a terrible windstorm, which 

 had threatened to carry away our tent, but we had 

 weathered the gale and camped in the timber. I 

 had gone to bed, but was roused from my cot by the 

 arrival of a livery-man, who had been hunting for 

 me all the day before. He handed me a message 

 from Mrs. Cope, announcing the death of her hus- 

 band on the twelfth of April. 



I had lost friends before, and had known what it 

 was to bury my own dead, even my firstborn son, 

 but I had never sorrowed more deeply than I did 

 now over the news that in the very prime of life, in 

 the noonday of his glorious intellectual achieve- 

 ments, as he was bending all his energies to the 



