story of a Monster Fish 15 



dons, a hog-like creature that once lived in great 

 herds, I found myself fifty skulls, and the boys 

 a hundred more. 



A large number of these specimens were pur- 

 chased by the Survey and are preserved in the 

 Musum at Ottawa. The Miocene (Oligocene) 

 beds are extensively exposed. Sculptured by 

 wind and sand, rain and frost, into great square 

 towered buttes, or oblong ones topped with a 

 thick rock that weathers into jmrpendicular es- 

 carpments 20 feet or more in height, making 

 very pleasing scenery. Below the hard stratum, 

 are several hundred feet of greyish marl, some 

 beds with more clay than others, which weath- 

 ered into small chunks of clay, that covered the 

 rocks, or others again disintegrated into dust. 

 Other strata contained considerable fine sand, 

 greenish in color. The lowest rocks of all, a 

 purplish marl, rested unconformably upon the 

 chalk of the Niobrara Cretaceous, filled with the 

 typical Ostrea congesta, an oyster shell no bigger 

 than a cent piece. Some of the canyons cut 

 deeply into the chalk, put me in mind of those 

 in the Kansas chalk with which I was so familiar. 



