132 In the Milk River Country 



tropods, and a multitude of mussels plowed 

 through the muddy sand. 



We had so much rain that we were not only 

 delayed, but feared we would never be able to 

 pull our load of baggage out on the prairie. The 

 road we used to get into the valley, made by 

 farmers, was impassible when wet. I became 

 very much discouraged, as there is no harder 

 work for a fossil hunter than to walk day after 

 day over barren ground. Professor Cope once 

 sent me in on a hypothetical fossil hunt. He had 

 decided in his own mind in Philadelphia, that 

 above the Permian beds of Texas there was a new 

 horizon that would yield new extinct animals, he 

 wanted to be the fortunate discoverer of the new 

 fauna. I had, however, explored this region years 

 before, for the Museum of Comparative Zoology 

 at Cambridge, Massachusetts, and I knew it was 

 barren. Owing, how r ever, to his insistance, I 

 yielded my judgment to his, to my cost, and spent 

 a month of useless effort, heart breaking indeed. 

 That was the last time he ever attempted to give 

 me instructions from Philadelphia when I was 

 in the field. 



On the 25th of June, after exploring the Milk 

 river country, and finding it barren, we camped 

 on our way back to the rich Red Deer River beds 

 at a point fifteen miles south of Medicine Hat. 

 We had just pitched out tent when a violent wind 

 storm as bad as the winds of Kansas, struck us, 

 accompanied with rain. We escaped serious- 



