1890.] Scientific News. 391 
declared that the power vested in him as Paleontologist was such that 
it enabled him to apply his appropriation in collecting recent Birds or 
Mammals in South America, or in hiring musicians for his entertain- 
ment while at work, if need be. On another occasion when I rose in 
opposition to this same wrong his reply was so strikingly characteristic 
that it seems worth while to reproduce it from my yo book, to whose 
unerring memory I entrusted all such matters. * * «Qn one 
occasion when I complained to him frankly that it pie wrong to 
employ so many of his force on private work, and that too much of 
that sort of thing was done by him daily, and cited as one of several 
instances the time when so many were engaged for more than a year 
in making a restoration in papier-mache of his (so-called) Dinoceras, 
he said, ‘‘ Now I simply say this to you, I have a contract direct with 
the Government for the restoration of Dinoceras. What do you say 
tothat?’’ There was nothing for a gentleman to say to so straight- 
forward a statement, but I could scarcely believe my senses a mo- 
ment later, when he explained that he had asked me as a favor 
to help him out,—that the time required for the ah of 
these restorations had been so gravely miscalculated t it had 
taken twice as long as they had judged to finish them 
was sick and tired of the whole matter. <‘ Besides it "hed cost 
tremendously, and, every cent comes out of my own pocket.’ Then I 
suggested that heads of departments with ‘‘ contracts direct with the 
Government ” didn’t pay for things out of their own pockets. He 
declared several times that I didn’t understand. ‘‘ You see it is this 
way ; I am going to make the restorations, and the Government assures 
me it will pass a bill to pay for them, so you see it is all right.” The 
strikingly characteristic part of it is that he really hadn’t a contract 
when he said he had. When the investigating committees shall have 
inquired into the exact price the Government has paid for one paper 
model of Dinoceras (and a frail one at that) some interesting figures 
will surely come to light. His zeal to out-rival all others in the 
startling size of his fossils has led him to send out casts of heroic 
stature, and you natives and foreigners who have the great saurian 
femur (‘‘At/antosaurus’’ immanis) “ exceeding eight feet in height,” 
may saw off a two-foot back-log from the same, and then it will stand 
as high as it does in the Yale Museum to-day. And you authors of 
manuals of Geology, written in all sincerity for the honest and reliable 
instruction of the youthful mind, may lop off the same amount of 
plaster from your clean text, Neither was the huge Saurian one 
hundred feet long, nor was its great thigh bone over eight feet in 
