520 The American Naturalist. [June, 
and most celebrated formations in the world, and are recog- 
nized as stratified aqueous deposits by every geologist. 
Unless the foregoing syllogism is right and all geologists: 
wrong, then Dr. Fuchs’ gopher is left to burrow and build its 
nest of dry hay in one or two hundred fathoms of Miocene 
water. 
The White River tertiary is an extensive deposit covering 
parts of Nebraska, Dakota and Wyoming. The depth of the 
deposit was originally, and still is, nearly 1,000 feet in thick-. 
ness, and the time required for its deposition is estimated at 
25,000 to 30,000 years. It is so plainly stratified that in- 
experienced students, members of my geological excursions to. 
these regions, could make out thestrata and follow them with 
certainty at sight. They could recognize the Titanotherium 
beds, lower, middle, and upper, and follow them about as they 
would follow the lower, middle and upper boards of an 
ordinary fence. So with the Oreodon beds, Metamynodon. 
sandrock, Protoceras and others. All is stratification there,. 
and that too so strikingly and conspicuously that no one can 
overlook or mistake it. The Loess, or Bluff Deposits, at the- 
best are but obscurely stratified. They occur in southern 
Nebraska, Iowa, northern Kansas, and Missouri, 200 or 300: 
miles south of the region under discussion. 
No wind could ever have formed the perfectly stratified and. 
minutely laminated deposits of the Bad Land region. It can 
be formed by the assorting power of water and by that only. 
It is, of course, true that modern winds are functional in pro- 
ducing certain local surface configurations, but primarily the. 
deposit was aqueous throughout. 
He says—“ It is not clear what the author writes concerning: 
the structure of the body of Daemonelix. According to him 
the same seems to be filled with fine tubes, which wind about. 
each other and give the body a spongy structure, a circum- 
stance which the author advances, and seizes upon as impor- 
tant proof of the organic structure of the bodies. 
“Tt is difficult to discuss the subject without having seen the 
specimen. Typical Loess is also filled with fine tubes which 
