2 Story of a Monster Fish 



build up a great collection of the Dinosaurs of 

 the Red Deer River, Alberta, under the direction 

 of the Geological Survey of Canada. The present 

 year of 1916, with the help of my youngest son 

 Levi, I have been engaged in the same service for 

 the British Museum of Natural History. As my 

 readers will bear witness, in the past, I have seen 

 my choicest treasures for forty years leave my 

 hands forever, to add to the glories of museums 

 1 shall in all probability never see. When the 

 opportunity came, however, so suddenly and un- 

 expectedly — the opportunity of a life time — to 

 crown my last days with a monument that only 

 times ravages or the vandal hand of man can 

 efface, in that growing Dominion of the North 

 that promises to be one of the great countries in 

 the boundless Western Hemisphere, it seemed to 

 me like a call from heaven. Though the ties of a 

 lifetime, nearly, that bound me to many a dear 

 friend at Lawrence, Kansas, must be severed: 

 Though I must leave the protecting folds of my 

 father's flag and mine, and I must live under a 

 flag that has waved a thousand years — under a 

 Monarch, in fact — I, a republican of republicans ! 

 Think of it ! After three years residence in the 

 beautiful city of Ottawa, the capital of all the 

 broad expanse North of the international line, 

 after four seasons of work among buried dino- 

 saurs and three winters spent in the laboratory 

 of the Victoria Memorial Museum of Ottawa, I 

 am free to confess I would not have known so far 



