Conclusion 279 



Professor Henry F. Osborn, who with the assist- 

 ance of Drs. J. L. Wortman, W. D. Matthew, and 

 others, has brought order out of chaos and presented 

 in intelligible shape not only that collection but 

 many others from the fossil fields of the West. 



It is a glorious thought to me that I have lived 

 to see my wildest dreams come true, that I have 

 seen stately halls rise to be graced with many of the 

 animals of the past that lived in countless thousands, 

 and that I have had the pleasure of securing some of 

 the treasures, in the shape of complete skeletons, 

 which now adorn those halls. 



I stood on Columbia Heights that same year of 

 1906, and my heart swelled with pride when I 

 looked down on that teeming metropolis and re- 

 membered that I too was a native of the Empire 

 State. Then I thought of my distant prairie state 

 of Kansas, and gloried in the thought that the best 

 years of my life had been spent in her ancient ocean 

 and lake beds, those old cemeteries of creation. 



That past life, at least a very small fraction of it, 

 I have sought to bring before my readers with pen 

 pictures. We have men among us who can put 

 their conceptions of the ancient inhabitants of land 

 and sea and air on canvas, and among them are Mr. 

 Charles R. Knight, of the American Museum, and 

 Mr. Sidney Prentice, of the Carnegie Museum. 

 Mr. Prentice I knew as a boy, and he has done me 



