26 o Life of a Fossil Hunter 



elephant bones, from which I took over two hundred 

 teeth of the Columbian mammoth, some of the 

 larger ones weighing fourteen pounds each. The 

 broken bones were scattered by the ton through the 

 matrix. I had them analyzed by Dr. Bailey, the 

 head of the chemical department of Kansas State 

 University, and he found only ten per cent, of silici- 

 fied matter in them; that is, they were only ten per 

 cent, less rich in phosphate of lime than Armour's 

 ground bone meal. This great elephant lived about 

 the time of the Ohio mastodon, whose bones have 

 been found in such a position as to indicate that they 

 were buried when Niagara Falls were six miles be- 

 low their present site. So if we knew how long it 

 has taken the river to dig six miles of its big ditch, 

 we could tell how long it has taken to impregnate 

 the bones of the mammoths in central Kansas with 

 ten per cent, of silica. How foolish, then, to speak 

 of completely petrified men, when man had proba- 

 bly not made his appearance in America at the time 

 of the mammoths. 



The rocks of the Texas Permian, as I have al- 

 ready mentioned, are of red clay filled with concre- 

 tions of every conceivable form. I remember once 

 rounding a butte and seeing before me hundreds of 

 cocoanuts, some whole and others with the brownish 

 shells broken, showing the white meat within. Ab- 

 sent-mindedly, I sprang from my horse to feast 



