A CHAT WITH PROF. COPE CONTINUED. 341 



others with both valves together, like remnants of a 

 half-finished meal of some titanic race, who- had been 

 frightened from the board, never to return. These 

 shells are not thickened like most of those of past 

 periods, but contained an animal which would have 

 served as a meal for a large party of men. One of 

 them measured twenty-six inches across. 



If the explorer searches the bottoms of the rain- 

 washes and ravines, he will doubtless come upon the 

 fragment of a tooth or jaw, and will generally find 

 a line of such pieces leading to an elevated position 

 on the bank or bluff, where lies the skeleton of some 

 monster of the ancient sea. He may find the verte- 

 bral column running far into the limestone that locks 

 him in his last prison ; or a paddle extended on the 

 slope, as though entreating aid ; or a pair of jaws 

 lined with horrid teeth which grin despair on ene- 

 mies they are helpless to resist. Or he may find a 

 conic mound, on whose apex glisten in the sun the 

 bleached bones of one whose last office has been to 

 preserve from destruction the friendly soil on which 

 he reposed. Sometimes a pile of huge remains will 

 be discovered, which the dissolution of the rock has 

 deposited on the lower level, the force of rain and 

 wash having been insufficent to carry them away. 



But the reader inquires, What the nature of these 

 creatures thus left stranded a thousand miles from 

 either ocean? How came they in the limestones of 

 Kansas, and were they denizens of land or sea? It 

 may be replied that our knowledge of this chapter of 

 ancient history is only about five years old, and has 

 been brought to light by geological explorations set 



