Conclusion 277 



dividual, which is complete excepting the hind feet, 

 tail and left tibia and fibula, but that the reptile often 

 stood erect, supporting his ponderous weight while 

 feeding on the leaves of the forest. But when it 

 walked it used its front limbs as well. A remark- 

 able character are the countless rods of solid bone 

 that lay along the backbone in the flesh, and appear 

 like ossified tendons similar to those in the leg of a 

 turkey. Hundreds of ossified rods appeared, row 

 after row, shaped like Indian beads, as thick as a 

 lead pencil in the center and beveled off to a small 

 round point. It has occurred to me that these were 

 for defense; that when a great Tyrannosaurus rex 

 leaped on his back, his powerful claws found no 

 lodgment in the flesh on account of these bony rods 

 that could not be penetrated. Thus our dinosaur 

 would shake off his enemy. 



How wonderful are the works of an Almighty 

 hand! The life that now is, how small a fraction 

 of the life that has been ! Miles of strata, mountain 

 high, are but the stony sepulchers of the life of the 

 past. 



How rapidly has the field expanded which I 

 entered as a pioneer some forty years ago ! In 1867 

 I knew only five paleontologists Agassiz, Lesque- 

 reux, Marsh, Cope, and Leidy, with but few fol- 

 lowers; while to-day, Harvard, Princeton, the 



