98 ANIMALS OF THE PAST 



rock or lying amongst the shale, and, above all, the 

 ability to work a deposit to advantage after it has been 

 found. The collector of living animals hies to regions 

 where there is plenty for bird and beast to eat and drink, 

 but the collector of extinct animals cares little for what 

 is on the surface of the earth ; his great desire is to see 

 as much as possible of what may lie beneath. So the 

 prospector in search of fossils betakes himself to some 

 region where the ceaseless warfare waged by water 

 against the dry land has seamed the face of the earth 

 with countless gullies and canyons, or carved it into 

 slopes and bluffs in which the edges of the bone-bearing 

 strata are exposed to view, and along these he skirts, 

 ever on the look-out for some projecting bit of bone. 

 The country is an almost shadeless desert, burning hot 

 by day, uncomfortably cool at night. Water is scarce, 

 and when it can be found, often has little to commend it 

 save wetness ; but the collector is buoyed up through all 

 this with the hope that he may discover some creature 

 new to science that shall not only be bigger and uglier 

 and stranger than any heretofore found, but shall be 

 the long-sought form needed for the solution of some 

 difficult problem in the history of the past. 



Now collecting is a lottery, differing from most lot- 

 teries, however, in that while some of the returns may be 

 pretty small, there are few absolute blanks and some re- 

 markably large prizes, and every collector hopes that it 

 may fall to his lot to win one of these, and is willing to 

 work long and arduously for the chance of obtaining it. 



It may give some idea of the chances to say that some 

 years ago Dr. Wortman spent almost an entire season 

 in the field without success, and then, at the eleventh 

 hour, found the now famous skeleton of Phenacodus, or 

 that a party from Princeton actually camped within 

 100 yards of a rich deposit of rare fossils and yet failed 

 to discover it. 



