
1891.] The Hat Creek Bad Lands. 967 
succumbed to the frosts and present the collector naught but 
disarticulated plates. The scarcity of turtle skulls is noticeable ; 
our party collected only a lower jaw, while we found two turtle 
eggs, one in perfect condition. In one place the turtles presented 
an interesting phenomenon. They had resisted erosion better than 
the underlying stone, and as a result in a small area there were 
about a dozen turtles, each supported on a slender post about two 
feet above the surrounding surface, while there were as many more 
which had tumbled down and left the standard to disintegrate. 
We had not sufficient time to carefully hunt for fossils and to 
take only the best, so we did but little digging. It is a tedious 
process to get a fossil out from its bed. The necessary apparatus~ 
consists of a picking hammer, a quantity of tough manilla paper, 
paste, and patience. When a fossil is found imbedded in the 
rock, the exposed portions are covered with paper pasted on, and 
then the paste is allowed to dry. Now more is uncovered with 
the pick; paper is pasted on again, and so on until the whole is 
separated from the rock. Excavated in this way the bones are kept 
in just the relations in which they were found, while the paper 
protects them from injury in transit. Instead we followed- along 
the gullies searching for the fossils which had been weathered 
out, and when a portion was found we followed up the wall above 
it hunting for the rest of the animal. The result of this method 
of collecting was that we got quantities of fragments ; but we also 
found considerable that was more complete, some of it valuable. 
Most abundant of all the mammalian remains were the Oreodons 
gracilis and major. These were small animals about the size of 
a good-sized dog, unlike anything which now exists. Their line 
is extinct. In some of their features they resembled the pigs, and 
in others they were more like the ruminants. 
Prof. Cope has recently shown their position in the conspectus 
of the vertebrates which he has published in this journal. He 
also published a synopsis of the Oreodontide in the Proceedings 
of the American Philosophical Society for 1884, while Prof. 
Scott, of Princeton, has a valuable and beautifully illustrated 
paper on them in the Morphologisches Jahrbuch, of later date. 
Other forms which occur more or less abundantly in these beds 
hardly agree with the fauna of Nebraska to-day. There are 
Am. Nat.—November.—a. 




