Ancient Giants 139 



my arms were clasped, and I ascended with the 

 same ease that a linesman climbs a telegraph 

 pole, driving the sharp steel spikes fastened to 

 Ms boots into the wood. When I got among the 

 lower branches of the huge tree one hundred 

 feet above ground, I crawled down to its juncture 

 with the trunk where I found an airy chamber, 

 its floor covered with dried leaves. Stretching 

 myself at full length upon this fragrant bed, I 

 offered up my evening prayers to my Father in 

 heaven, knowing that I was being guided by His 

 hand. Ah ! had he not led me through the wild- 

 erness for forty years in His cemeteries of Crea- 

 tion, among the countless creatures of His hand. 

 My mind took me back to the many forms, I had 

 recovered, and saved from the destroying agen- 

 cies of time and the vandal hand of man. I re- 

 membered I had eighty-five distinct species of ex- 

 tinct life in Munich Bavaria where the late dis- 

 tinguished Paleontologist Dr. von Zittel had once 

 written me that I "had erected in Munich an im- 

 memorial monument to my name." I thought of 

 the hundreds of species I had discovered that now 

 helped form the great Cope Collection in the 

 American Museum of Natural History, New 

 York, that great storehouse of American fossil 

 vertebraes. I thought too of my collection in 

 the British. Museum, and in the Museums of Ber- 

 lin and Paris. Surely they prove that God has 

 cared for me while I was "about my Father's 

 business." I need not worry I thought, because 



