SAMUEL WENDELL WILLISTON 679 
Congregational church what he believed to have been the first 
public lecture in favor of evolution given west of the Mississippi 
River. 
Quite by accident Williston accepted an invitation from a 
fellow-student to accompany him to northwestern Kansas (Smoky 
Hill Valley), where Professor Mudge, already famous through his 
discovery in 1872 of the specimen of [chthyornis, was collecting. 
He writes: 
We left on the fifth [July, 1874]. Jt was this accidental and thoughtless 
decision that led to my life’s devotion to paleontology. Had I not gone with him, 
in all probability I would today have been a practitioner of medicine some- 
where in Kansas. We joined Mudge about the fourteenth and started almost 
immediately south. In a few days I found a good specimen of pterodactyl 
and became an enthusiastic lover of the sport of collecting fossils—for sport 
it seemed to me. I had planned that autumn to go East, if I could borrow a 
couple of hundred dollars, to attend a medical college. And so I returned to 
Manhattan by rail in September but did not succeed in getting the necessary 
funds. Mudge thereupon asked me to return, which I did about the first of 
October, and remained until we returned in November... . . For my season’s 
work Mudge paid me $25, which bought me a suit of clothes and other things 
badly needed. My total cash income this year was not more than $50. It 
was the hardest year of my life. My board I worked for in part, in part I had 
it paid for by my parents, but I did not have a second whole shirt, and when 
I gave my address I had to borrow clothes to wear, for my clothes were ragged 
and patched. 
Times now began to improve. Professor Marsh and Professor Cope, as is 
well known, were rivals and very jealous of each other. They had been 
quarreling with each other for two or three years, with mutual criminations 
and recriminations. Because of the discoveries Marsh was making in the 
Cretaceous of Kansas, Cope grew eager to participate in them but could find 
no one to undertake these collections, for Marsh was afraid to have too many 
learn about the region for fear that Cope would seduce some of the assistants 
by the offer of higher pay. He therefore instructed Mudge to retain his assist- 
ants of the previous summer. Brous and I were engaged for the following 
season at $35 a month and our expenses. We accepted the offer gladly and 
started for the field overland in early March, meeting Mudge at Ellis on the 
railroad. We stipulated that I should quit in September to allow medical 
lecturess ci ye 
We collected chiefly along the Smoky Hill Valley that season, as far west 
as Fort Wallace, and got many valuable specimens. ... . By Marsh’s direc- 
tions each had signed his name to the specimens he had collected. Perhaps 
that was the reason he invited me in February to come to New Haven. I 
