280 Life of a Fossil Hunter T 



the honor to assure me that my words of counsel 

 have done something at least toward assisting him 

 to make the choice of following the work not only 

 of an artist in a paleontological museum, but in 

 portraying with pencil and brush the ideal pictures 

 of the early denizens of earth as in life. His suc- 

 cess is shown in his restorations of Clidastes. The 

 results of Mr. Knight's restorations of many of the 

 extinct animals brighten my pages, thanks to my 

 friend Professor Henry F. Osborn, so if I have 

 failed in my pen pictures to take my readers into 

 the misty past, these brilliant restorations will cer- 

 tainly have the desired effect. 



I cannot hope in this short space to have given 

 more than a passing glance at the life of a fossil 

 hunter. It has been one of joy to me; I should not 

 like to have missed making the discoveries I have 

 made, and I would willingly undergo the same hard- 

 ships to accomplish the same results. And if my 

 story does anything to interest people in fossils, I 

 shall feel that I have not written in vain. 



When I requested Professor William K. Gregory 

 of Columbia University to be the final reader of the 

 manuscript of this book, " The Life of a Fossil 

 Hunter," shall I ever forget his kind words? "I 

 hope you will not feel that you are under any per- 

 sonal obligations whatever, because this slight 

 ^service is simply laid upon me by the necessities of 



