Dec. 31, 1910.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
1051 
excursionists there was not the slightest confus¬ 
ion in getting away at Boston or on reaching 
the destination at Jackson, N. H. Every mem¬ 
ber was assigned to a room in the hotel, and 
his trunk was in his room very soon after his 
arrival. The committee of arrangements had 
worked out every detail and system prevailed 
throughout all of the day excursions during the 
week. A bulletin was posted each evening of 
the outing for the following day, and all the 
visitors had to bear in mind was to be on time 
at the start. He found lunch, transportation and 
every necessity provided for. 
What glorious excursions those were. In and 
about the White Mountains, which were encased 
with from three to six feet of snow, and en¬ 
circled with an exhilarating crisp air, which 
put life in every muscle of the human body! 
The first day’s outing of the club was to climb 
a small mountain for the sake of practice, and 
then on Washington’s birthday the party was 
ready for the first ambitious trip, which was 
an excursion to the Crawford Notch. This 
meant a three-mile sleigh ride, starting at 7 a. m., 
and a railroad journey of an hour before reach¬ 
ing the climbing ground, and of course the same 
return journey in the afternoon after the climb 
of Clinton or Avalon, but the trip was well 
worth the effort, for the frost decoration of the 
trees and shrubs was magnificent, and the woods 
possessed the impressive grandeur which is only 
seen in the winter time. The view was cut out 
by a passing cloud. It was also a most unusual 
sight to see some sixty men and women wend 
their way up and down the trail, each equipped 
with shoe and snowshoe, and each robed in the 
fantastic costumes of citified mountaineers. 
When this mountain party returned to the 
hotel, the strenuous life was put aside for the 
social life and each evening there was an enter¬ 
tainment of some sort for which ample talent 
abounded. Even a mock trial was presented 
which was not tedious. 
So the week was spent in'sleighing, snowshoe- 
ing, skiing and tobogganing, and zero weather 
was hailed with delight. The longest trip hap¬ 
pened on one of the coldest days when the 
mercury dropped to 12 degrees below zero be¬ 
fore sunrise, and when the party had to get up 
by the last glare of the moonlight and breakfast 
at the rise of the sun, then have an eight-mile 
sleigh ride to the base of a mountain which led 
to Tuckerman’s Ravine, a part of Mount Wash¬ 
ington. 
This climb, though a hard one, was under¬ 
taken by four large sleigh loads of people—each 
sleigh holding twelve persons—and nearly all 
of the party reached the destination, which was 
a camp at the head of the ravine. Five of the 
men went up within view of what is known as 
the head wall, an altitude of 4,800 feet. Above 
towered Washington, armor-clad in ice and snow, 
and sending down a blast of frigid air that de¬ 
fied further aggression. The five were content 
to do no more and followed the main party down 
the trail to where the sleighs were in waiting 
to convey the climbers back to the hotel. 
This short outline of a New England winter 
excursion is what the Appalachian Mountain 
Club has been doing for the past twenty years. 
It also has excursions during the spring, sum¬ 
mer and fall to the mountain regions of New 
England, and it has established camps and trails 
at desirable mountain outing points. It enjoys 
a membership of 1,400, and is growing more 
popular every year. The wonder is that with 
the example of such a successful mountain club 
in New England that the State of New York, 
with its Highlands, Catskills and Adirondacks, 
has not established a similar organization or a 
good healthy branch of the parent Appalachian 
Society. 
ONE OF THE VIEWS FROM MOUNT PENROSE. 
Photograph by R. B. Hamilton. 
A Dinosaur in New Jersey. 
It is reported from the American Museum 
of Natural History that the bones—apparently 
of a dinosaur 30 or 40 feet long—were recently 
discovered on the banks of the Hudson River, 
near the Palisades, opposite West 155th street. 
The Palisades, which wall in the Hudson 
River on the west for many miles above its 
mouth, consist of trap rock, which came up 
from below the earth’s surface in a molten 
state during what geologists call Triassic 
time, and as it cooled, formed these walls. On 
either side of the dyke are more or less un¬ 
disturbed beds of Triassic age, sandstones, 
shales, and rocks made up o.f clay and fine 
sand, which presumably formed the bottom of 
a wide estuary in those ancient days. Similar 
rocks of the same age are found along the 
shore of Long Island Sound, at Portland, 
Conn., and this estuary in those days extended 
far up the valley of what is now the Connec¬ 
ticut River. The fine substance of which these 
rocks are formed, while admirably adapted for 
receiving and retaining impressions, is so 
porous that it is ill adapted for preserving 
bones. From the brownstone quarries at 
Portland, and from various beds along the 
Connecticut River near Turner’s Fall, very 
many tons of slabs, bearing impressions, 
have been cut out and sent to museums in 
various parts of the country. These slabs show 
marks of feet with three toes, and are com¬ 
monly called “bird tracks.” Most of them are 
believed to have been made not by birds, but 
by dinosaurs; reptiles great and small which 
walked largely on their hindlegs. In the slabs 
there is sometimes seen the impression of a 
dragging tail, and other trails, showing where 
worms or other invertebrates have passed over 
the rock. As said, however, bones are scarce 
in these rocks. 
I11 the great West bones of dinosaurs are 
exceedingly common in what geologists call 
the earlier portion of Mesozoic time, known as 
Triassic and Jurassic. The hard clays and 
sandstones of the Rocky Mountain's preserve 
these bones of dinpsaurs in extremely perfect 
condition, and their skeletons may be seen by 
any one who cares to visit the American 
Museum of Natural History. 
The great and enormously varied group of 
dinosaurs has long been extinct. They were 
of different sizes and different habits. Some 
of them lived either on the land or in the 
water; some were vegetable eaters; others 
fierce carnivorers which preyed on their com¬ 
panions. The huge brontosaurus, portions of 
which are on exhibition at the Peabody 
Museum of Yale University, is supposed to 
have been eighty feet long, and to have 
weighed no one knows how many tons. On 
the other hand, there were dinosaurs which 
