WHAT THE CRETACEOUS SEAS BROUGHT FORTH
One has some strange day dreams often, at least I have. My only
daughter died some years ago; though in imagination she is often with
me, I thought once I had gone to sleep. When I woke next morning I
realized that time had turned backward. I found myself beside the
boundless sea, and it was not the sea I had looked on but yesterday,
I was sitting under a limestone escarpment, with a beach before me of
fine sand. The waves rolling outside of a bar that had been deposited
by a river, whose mouth I could see on the eastern side of the steep
bluff under which I sat. “Thank God,” I cried, “You have taken me back
to the old Cretaceous Ocean.” I had explored her elevated and denuded
bed for twenty seasons in the Short Grass country of Western Kansas;
collecting her rich fauna of reptiles and fishes. To know that I was to
be permitted to actually see the animals themselves, in their natural
environments. To explore her shore lines. Her sheltered bays. To see
her fleets of plesiosaurs come sailing in after an ocean cruise; her
great mosasaurs, and bony fishes. How glorious, but where is Maud.
The thought came to me like a flash. Life had seemed so much more
enjoyable with her beside me. With her appreciative ear, to listen for
what my mind conceived, and my lips uttered, she never contradicted
me when I uttered an opinion. No! she realized that I, with my vast
store of experience might well be her teacher, and she enjoyed the
story of my life so much that her eager face, and flashing eyes,
were a stimulus to my mind, awakening old experiences and memories
long forgotten. Although she had been with me for a short time, she
had become necessary to me. I knew how much I would miss her in the
adventures that lay before me. While these thoughts were passing, I
was delighted to hear her gentle voice call out “Papa, here I am.”
And looking up I saw her leaning out of the mouth of a cave a short
distance above me. I cried out with pleasure and rushing to the beach
picked up the dry trunk of a small pine, with stumps of branches on
either side. I carried it to the bluff and leaning against it, made a
convenient ladder for Maud to descend on which she rapidly did, and
stood beside me. Of course our chief talk was about this miraculous
event in our lives and we wondered what was in store for us. We
thrilled with delight when we realized how lovely the country was.
The climate temperature. We smelled the delicious odor of magnolia
blooms, for a beautiful forest skirted the hills and plains before us
to the east, and north and south, while to the west, as far as the eye
could reach a great ocean, whose western shore line must have been
thousands of miles toward the setting sun. Taking her arm we walked
down to the beach. In the zone between high and low tide, unlimited
oysters, no larger than silver half dollars lay strewn around. While
plowing through the sand, were _Inoceramus_ shells that measured four
feet high, and five feet long, leaving a great trail behind. The shore
line was strewn with many of these huge shells. We mentioned the many
uses they could be put to, for our convenience. Thin and transparent
they would do for windows in the house, I planned to build. They would
take the place of shingles, and even doors. We enjoyed a feast of raw
oysters with the sea water for seasoning. We then went to work hauling
up from the piles of driftwood, trunks of small trees near the cave.
Which Maud told me would make her a nice room as it was high and dry
with a floor of white sand. By building four walls with the logs,
leaving spaces for windows and doors, we succeeded after many days of
labor in having a room twelve by fourteen feet. Then we put on a roof,
of the large shells, hung our doors and windows, filled the spaces
between the logs with clay, and moss, built a fire place and chimney.
The effect of the light passing through the shells was very beautiful
indeed. Our original ladder led to Maud’s Cave, through a trap door.
I gathered the fragrant boughs of pine trees for the beds. We cared
little for furniture, pictures and ornaments. How insignificant man’s
costliest works compared to the works of the great Creator, His air,
and water, His glorious sea forest and plain, the starry firmament on
high, given us so freely. How rich we were, though possessing only the
clothes on our backs, and the few tools I had in my collecting bag.
A few matches and some strings of sinew I had cut in another age, I
also found a file in the lowest corner of my collecting bag, and from
fragments of bone made some fish-hooks, we had built a chimney and in
the open fireplace Maud heated water in a deep sea shell while I caught
a string of nice fishes, which she broiled for supper or fried for
breakfast. I also found the tracks of a turtle, whose bones and skull I
discovered in the chalk of Kansas. Professor Cope named it _Torycheles
latiremus_. Suspecting that she had hidden some eggs in the dry sand,
I dug around in it with my hands and found a hat full of her soft
shelled eggs. With the fish we had many most delightful repasts, and we
talked of the time when we hoped to explore this new region, the Early
Cretaceous. Study its rich fauna and flora. After building our cabin,
as we were very tired after a strenuous day, Maud kissed me good night
and retired to her room in the cave, while I lay down in the corner of
the house. At the first streak of day a fire was builded, and breakfast
started. I had made a pail of a deep shell shaped like a woman’s hood,
and called later by Conrad _Haploscapha grandes_, the first great
hood. I had bored a hole through either edge, and with an aralia vine
for a handle, I carried it to a nearby hill; where a lovely spring of
pure water gushed out, and returned with it brimful of the life saving
liquid. We used thin shells, we had found on the beach, for plates and
made our knives and forks and spoons of wood. At breakfast Maud asked
me if I knew where we were. “Yes, dear,” I replied, “we are in Western
Kansas. These limestone bluffs are composed of jointed limestone. Some
day a gorge will be cut through them by the Smoky Hill River ninety
feet deep, and a mile long, and it will be in Trego County just below
the mouth of Hackberry Creek. Get your hat and we will see!” “I am
ready, papa,” she cried, so with collecting bag over my shoulder, and
pick in hand, we walked rapidly along the hard sandy shore line. We
soon rounded the point, and as I suspected the shore swung off into a
vast amphitheatre-like cove. We could just see the distant headland,
far to the north. While the land and sea curved in toward the east and
back to the north, forming a great land locked bay.
[Illustration: FIG. 44.--Badlands near Steveville. Notice Cross
Bedding. Page 61, 69.]
[Illustration: FIG. 45.--Quarry with skeleton of _Corythosaurus_ lost
at sea, 1916. Page 160.]
“O see papa!” Maud cried, “what is that lying on the water just off
shore? It looks like a huge log half submerged.” “No dear. I believe it
is a _Tylosaur_ or great ram-nosed lizard, the monarch of this ocean.
See! he raises a conical head above the water, that terminates in a
long bony ram. His head is five feet long. See his four powerful
paddles begin to move! his eel-like tail is longer than head and trunk
combined. Watch its graceful and rapid undulations.” “My,” cried Maud,
“it is larger than the storied sea serpents of sailors and seaside
resorts. It must be fifty feet long.” “Fully that,” I answered. “I
wonder what has started him off in such a hurry?” “What does that
streak of foam mean yonder?” asked my companion. “It is another saurian
coming to battle, dear,” I answered. The scene was indeed exciting.
We clapped our hands and shouted encouragement to our saurian as he
lashed the water, and beat it into a foam, that floated behind in a
long curling wake. Or patches were caught up by the passing breeze
and wafted away as lightly as the bubbles children love to blow. We
had ascended the point as we rounded it, and so are high enough to
watch the battle royal. As they come together like colliding express
trains, our reptile plunges his bony ram into the quivering flesh
of his opponent, piercing heart and lungs. Withdrawing his ram, he
lingers near while the dying mosasaur reddens the salty brine with his
life-blood. A few convulsive struggles, and he lies a helpless mass on
the surface, while his victor hies away to other conquests. “I never
knew these _Tylosaurs_ grew to such huge dimensions,” said Maud, “You
know the one in the American Museum is only about thirty feet long, and
that was considered large for the species.” “Yes, I know,” I replied.
“But I also know of one huge skeleton belonging to the University of
Kansas at Lawrence, that measures fifty feet in length. His enormous
head is five feet long, the same size evidently as this one. Who knows
but that 5,000,000 years from now his skeleton may be exhumed from the
chalk of Kansas and exhibited at the Museum of the University!” “I
remember the mosasaurs, papa, you described in ‘The Life of a Fossil
Hunter.’ After the _Tylosaurus_ came the flat paddles _Platecarpus_,
with its blunt ram or rostrum at the end of the nose; then _Clidastes_,
a lithe creature and more elegantly built than the other two.” “Yes,
dear, I have been fortunate in the discovery of complete skeletons of
these fine swimmers. I sent a very beautiful skeleton of a _Tylosaur_
to the Senckenberg Museum at Frankfurt-on-the-Main. (Fig. 5). Skeletons
of _Platecarpus_ to Tübingen University, as well as a _Tylosaurus_. And
one to The Museum of Toronto University, Canada, and another to the
Victoria Memorial Museum at Ottawa, Canada. A beautiful _Clidastes_ to
Vassar College, New York, a fine head and trunk to Carnegie Museum,
at Pittsburgh, Pa. The Mosasaurs, you know, all have short necks and
long tails. The jaws are armed with recurved teeth and a set on either
side in the roof of the mouth near the gullet enable them to hold their
prey, so they could not escape if they opened their mouths. They had
an aid to swallowing their food, by means of a ball and socket hinge
in the center of the lower jaws, just behind the tooth-bearing bones.
This enabled them to expand the lower jaws and shortening them so as to
force the food down the throat.”
“See Papa,” said Maud, “The rising tide has floated the dead saurian
towards the shore.” We walked to the beach and our united efforts
enabled us to pull him in. He was a magnificent example of the sea
life of his day. I doubt if ever a swimmer excelled this one in
speed. The four powerful paddles and lithe form, and the long tail
in constant vibration, enabled him to cut the water like the prow of
a racing yacht. His entire body was covered with small scales like
those of a diamond rattler, arranged in beautiful colored designs, and
highly polished. The scales sparkling in iridescent splendor. “How
well poised the head,” said Maud. “How large the eyes, protected by
sclerotic plates of bone now glazed in death.” “Wonderfully beautiful,”
I answered, “So God creates His creatures, His plants, His crystals.
Man’s feeble efforts to imitate nature how crude and clumsy.”
“I think Maud it would be a good plan to cut off strips of the skin
for ropes and sails, and many other useful things. I will make you a
hammock of a wide strip.” “Very well,” she answered, “Let us go to
work.” While busily engaged, we were covered with moving shadows and
looking up saw enormous _Pteranodonts_ those glorious flying reptiles,
hovering over head. With broad expanded wing, some twenty feet from tip
to tip, they swooped downward, or rested in graceful attitudes in mid
air. Their great eyes scanned the ocean before us for fishes, and when
one was discovered dropped like a shot into the bay rapidly reappearing
with a fish between their toothless beaks. One after another broke the
mirror like surface of the deep, and always came to the surface with
a fish. Their unerring sight had discovered. No eagle ever dropped
quicker on his frightened quarry than these lizards. The scene before
us was exciting indeed.
After finishing our labor and stretching the skin of our _Mosasaur_ on
the sand to dry we continued our stroll along the sand. In a deep hole,
we admired a whole colony of the most beautiful swimming crinoids, or
sea lilies we had ever seen. They were stemless and floated with the
currents of Mosaurian Bay, as I had named the sheet of water on the new
map I had made. Their bodies, about the shape of half an egg, with an
opening in the center, and ten arms radiating from the margin. These
arms were three feet long, with feathered edges. Over the mouth too,
were smaller arms used to comb off into the mouth the tiny animal life
of the sea, that was strained through, and caught in the meshes of the
feathered arms. My boys found hundreds of these crinoids in the chalk
on Beaver Creek, Kansas, called _Uintacrinus socialis_. We enriched
many Museums with them.
“Papa,” said Maud, “let us go into the woods to escape the heat.” It
was beginning to be felt, as the sun has climbed over the trees, and
the heat beats upon the dry sands. We first entered a hard and soft
wood forest, composed largely of Sassafras, Magnolia, Linden, Birch
in endless variety, Cinnamon, Sweet Gum, and many other of the first
trees with heart and bark like our existing forests of the twentieth
century. There was a thick underbrush of wild roses and aralia vines,
with their beautiful three and five lobed dentate leaves. The brooks
were lined with rushes, and ferns and other familiar vegetation. We
could see deeper in the forest the stately Redwood in serried ranks,
as far as the eye could reach; colonnades of God’s first temple. Here
indeed we found the coveted shads. The trunks like Gothic columns
lifted their stately forms two hundred feet on high, with densely
packed crowns of living green, that cut off the direct rays of the sun.
They filtered through like those through stained glass filling the
woods with tinted and mysterious light. “How grand,” I cried, “to live
so close to God and His great heart, Nature’s heart. God is the very
embodiment, everywhere of nature, even ‘the spacious firmament on high,
and all the blue ethereal sky, And spangled heavens a shining frame,
there great original proclaim.’ There, Maud, do you see the damp sand
along the river shore. See how the leaves have fallen in it, some lie
flat, others with stem down, are half buried; all will be covered with
the ocean mud at high tide, there they will remain until pressed by
the masses of rock that will be laid down upon the deposit, it will be
hardened into sandstone, and the leaf impressions will be preserved
for millions of years. Until in the twentieth century, I will dig them
from the solid rock in the central plains of Kansas, and Lesquereux and
Ward, and Knowlton and Wilson, will identify them.”
So we wandered on through mighty aisles in this great temple, where
God loved to walk, though all unseen by our mortal eyes, we felt His
presence near. “O Papa,” cried Maud. “See the ground is strewn with
edible acorns. There were no squirrels last winter to store them away.
And there are some ripe figs among the green ones in yonder tree. If
you will gather the figs, I will fill my apron with acorns and we will
have a new dish for dinner.” “All right,” I replied and soon gathered
a large supply. We carried our treasures home; and while Maud cracked
the acorns between two cobblestones, I secured a strong shell for a
mortar and a rounded stone for a pestle and ground the fruit and nuts
together, which we made into little cakes, they with hard boiled turtle
eggs made a dinner we enjoyed.
I had scraped a shell full of salt from the face of a precipice where
the water of the sea had beaten high against it and on evaporating
left a thick layer of salt behind. And so the day passed, every moment
showing us a new phase of the Creator’s handiwork. We soon decided that
as the sea life here was so luxuriant, we would build a ship to sail
the quiet waters of the Mosasaurian Bay. I succeeded in planning one,
with Maud’s assistance, that promised safety and comfort. I selected
half a dozen straight redwood logs, thirty feet long; burned off the
ends and branches. With the aid of fire dug them out, and stretched
over them the dried skin of mosasaurs. (Many had been killed in their
battles and we had secured their skins). Each compartment was air tight
and very buoyant, I rived out boards from the redwood logs, and lashed
them across the boats for a platform, on which we built cabins fore
and aft, and erected a main mast from which our sails were stretched
from yard arms, manipulated with ropes from the same tough hide that
we geared as sails. Huge rocks we heaved on deck and attached ropes
to them and used them as anchors. We made state rooms, kitchen, and
sitting room, amid ship. After many days of labor, we finished our
craft, and were ready for life on the ocean wave.
We resolved not to venture far from shore and to cast anchor in some
quiet land locked bay at night, Maud was to handle the steering
apparatus, while I cared for the sails, Maud cooked dainty morsels
from land and sea and bayou. We not only got turtle eggs but the
turtles themselves, and a great variety of fishes, mackerel, herring,
etc. While building our ship we had unlimited adventures, because each
morning and evening we walked off into the forest or explored the
sea-shore, or walked along the winding river, or mossy bayou. But as my
attention was occupied in the boat building I could not keep notes of
these adventures. We named our little ship The Swan, not because of the
beauty of the boat, but because it floated as lightly as a swan on the
waters of Mosasaurian Bay.
One lovely morning in early June when life was the richest, and the
forest had attained perfection; we hoisted our great square sail,
and loosened our rudder bands, and put to sea. With a gentle breeze
stirring, and with only a gentle ripple on the bosom of the deep; with
no rocky breakers in shore, the motion on board was delightful. “Look
Papa,” cried Maud, as a great fish, fifteen feet long, dashed by in
pursuit of a school of mackerel, that were struggling to get into water
to escape his murderous jaws. He was armed with long conical teeth,
those in front where the face with its short muzzle looked like a bull
dog, the horrid fangs were four inches long; in the center of the head
was a triangular crest, that cut the waves like the dorsal spine of a
shark. He beat the water into spray, in his eager pursuit of his prey;
and many a fish fell a victim to his appetite. His skull was two feet
long, with powerful lower jaw, his great pectoral fins were over three
feet long. The rays had sharp outer edges. He could set and use them as
a sword to gash his enemies, the great white sharks. His forked tail,
with span of over four feet, would cause an awful blow when used as a
weapon; large glistening scales, covered the entire body. Maud called
my attention to the fact that our huge fish had finished breakfast,
and was swimming back into the deep water of the bay, quite leisurely,
so graceful in motion a living five horse power motor boat. “You
remember,” she said, “the skeleton you sent of this fish to the British
Museum.” “O yes,” I replied, “Mr. Pycraft wrote a description of it for
the Illustrated London News, March 1, 1913.” (Fig. 4).
“My son George found and collected this fine specimen, I prepared it.”
“You must be as pleased to see the boys make such noted discoveries,”
she said. “O yes, because it encourages them to keep at work, in this
life work of mine. As a boy I loved nature, I was a hunter too and
used to kill buffalo and antelope. But after close association with
the most famous Naturalist America has produced, Prof. E. D. Cope of
Philadelphia, who often told me that though we must destroy our enemies
and protect our friends, as a matter of self protection, yet wanton
destruction of life was a crime. The more I thought of this suggestion
the more I came to fully believe it. God loves the creatures He has
created and will surely punish man for needless destruction of the
beautiful birds and fur bearing animals, so they can decorate their own
persons, wearing the borrowed plumage, and silky furs of his creatures.
I long ago gave up killing wild animals, and for years could say with
Goldsmith, ‘No herds that roam the valley wide to slaughter I condemn,
Moved by the power that pities me, I learn to pity them.’ However as I
like meat I am obliged to qualify the stanza by saying, as is reported
Goldsmith’s wife had said, ‘No herd that roves the valley wide to
slaughter I condemn. The butcher kills the meat for me, I buy the meat
of him.’ In other words I let my sons do the hunting. My great pleasure
as you know dear girl, is to dig with pick and shovel from the rock,
the animals of the past, to clean and prepare the crumbling bones, and
by the power of the imagination breathe into them new life. And has not
God shown us His appreciation of this love we both possess by bringing
us back here among His creatures of another day.”
[Illustration: FIG. 46.--Charlie letting down his Plated Dinosaur by
gravity. Page 96.]
[Illustration: FIG. 47.--Hauling out fossil log. Page 170.]
“O! Papa!” cried Maud. “See the water is cut by the spines of great
sharks twenty-five feet long. See some are so near the ship in this
transparent water that we can see them perfectly.” “There,” I answered,
“is a _Portheus_ they seem to be in pursuit of. That big shark passes
immediately under the _Portheus_. He turns on his back, and his huge
mouth opens, look at the many rows of wicked looking teeth. How
they gleam in the light, they are sharp as razors.” “See how many
different forms of teeth in different parts of the mouth.” “Yes dear I
remember that in the mouth of one I sent to Munich in 1882, from the
Kansas Chalk Dr. Eastman found twenty-five synonyms, or species that
had been described from loose teeth. Watch, there are several other big
sharks coming to the assistance of the one who is after the _Portheus_.
We will hoist the sail and try and keep pace with the battle, that
surges westward, watch the rudder Maud while I loosen the main sail! It
bellied to the strengthening breeze, urging on our ship with increasing
speed until we were again among them. The _Portheus_ now swimming
for life was the foci of the sharks, that were coming to the attack
from all directions. One would dive under the fish, and receive for
his pains a stroke from his powerful tail that would put him out of
commission, another would receive a thrust from the sword-like ray of
the front fin. Undaunted, others hurried up like a pack of wolves on
a wounded deer. Though many were wounded in the fray our hero fish at
last succumbed to numbers, who gashed his body with their lance-like
teeth, and the water was tinged with his life-blood; weaken and
overpowered, he gradually ceased struggling. The sharks gathered to the
feast. One however was so badly wounded by the _Portheus_, that he went
to the oozy bottom with him. I have preserved in the Museum of the
University of Kansas a shark twenty-five feet long, and mingled with
his remains were the bones of a _Portheus_. The evident result of such
a combat as we witnessed on Mosasaurian Bay.”
We lowered our sail, and drifted idly on the swelling tide, that led
towards shore. Maud steered for the mouth of a large river’s mouth, and
succeeded in getting the boat into deep water under a protecting bank,
and we snubbed our ship to some saplings and also cast our anchors over
board, as an additional aid to holding the boat in place. I crossed the
gang plank, I had connected with the shore, and went off into the woods
after berries, for dinner, while Maude cast her fish lines over board,
and lighted a fire, I brought home a couple of quarts of raspberries,
and found Maud had caught and prepared a nice mess of fishes, that were
sizzling over the fire. She soon had a nice meal ready. So the day
passed and we early sought our state rooms, I first however, recited a
poem I wrote on board a C. P. R. Steamboat, enroute from Port McNicoll
to Port Arthur in June, 1914:
A LAKE TRIP
I am riding on the bosom of an inland chain of lakes,
At their glories and their wonders my sluggish soul awakens!
They become the mighty highway of two nations strong and brave,
And the commerce of two peoples are wafted o’er the wave.
On either shore, once planted, (God’s ancient temple grand),
The great primaeval forest densely covered all the land,
Man’s vandal hand has cut it from the face of mother earth,
To a second growth of timber the land has given birth.
And in this Age of Iron, great freighters haul the ore,
Across Superior’s bosom to the smelters calling “more”
Ten thousand tons of coal the freighters carry west,
Where the iron-ore is loaded for its journey to the east.
I am riding on a Steamer of the C. P.’s mighty fleet.
The keel is riding even as the earth beneath one’s feet,
In fact a Floating Palace with all its comforts there.
Its pathways blazed before it for weather rough or fair.
What a glorious prospect now, is opened up to view
The scenes for ever changing each opening vista new,
See! indentures cut in shoreline by rivers’ mouth or bay,
But for the lighted lamps we’d hardly find our way.
At last our boat has entered and rapidly passed through,
The lock of Sault St. Marie, the Frenchmen call the Soo.
Upon the broad Superior our westward course we take
The course the captain chooses, near the center of the lake.
But now a mist is falling that soon becomes a fog.
Our Siren sends her warning o’er many a lengthening rod.
We hear the Fog Horns sounding from near or distant craft,
And just abeam our steamship we hear an answering blast.
We think of Ireland’s Empress as she sank beneath the wave,
Which, until God’s trump, will be some dear one’s grave.
But, God rules on the water, as well as on the land
We’re very full of confidence we’re guided by His hand.
So in our narrow state room, we lay us down to rest
And through the long night watches, we journey towards the west,
And when the morn awakes us, the sun is shining bright.
And head land peaks are glowing with streams of early light.
We woke next morning much refreshed as the night had been cool. After
breakfast we were ready for the adventures of another day. Drifting
out gently on the broad waters of the bay, we were delighted to see a
school of _Plesiosaurs_ come sailing in from some distant cruise. These
strange sea lizards, with long powerful neck and four paddles, and a
mere stump of a tail. They were on a fishing excursion, as the herring
and mackerel were now coming in to spawn near shore. These monster
saurians swam like a snake bird below the surface, their long necks and
heads darted hither and thither above and below exploring a space of
forty feet in search of fishes. We could see the flash of shining teeth
as a luckless fish was captured. Some of them floated on the surface,
and with swan-like neck and body they moved in graceful circles, or
sped along at a terrific pace picking up their morning meal, from the
countless panic stricken fishes, that vainly sought to escape their
tooth-armed jaws. I told Maud of a complete skeleton that had once been
found by a farmer in the Kansas chalk of Butte Creek, Logan County. “He
started to excavate a place for a stable when he uncovered some huge
vertebrae, and ribs over five feet long. He supposed they were elephant
bones, and as they were broken, he thought they could not be saved, and
so dug up the bones with the chalk. They were dumped into a cow yard
and beaten to powder under their feet, and could never be restored. I
grieved much over the loss to science of that splendid specimen that
has never been duplicated. Dr. S. W. Williston, the oldest living
American Vertebrate Paleontologist, described the few bones I was able
to save from the general wreck. He did me the honor of naming it after
me.” “What a pity,” cried Maud. “It must be terrible for you to learn
of such vandalism.” “Yes, dear,” I replied. “I doubt whether any mortal
suffers more from this kind of vandalism due entirely to ignorance than
I. I remember finding some very large turtles in the Upper Miocene
of Phillips County, Kansas, that had been killed evidently by a sand
storm, as they were all resting on their carapaces, as if traveling in
one direction. I secured over twenty of these land turtles, and among
them was the most perfect and beautiful one I have ever collected,
although Dr. Weiland of Yale University told me that if five of the
most perfect fossil turtles known, were placed together a couple I
sent his museum, would rank 2 and 3. I had occasion to photograph this
splendid specimen, and had laid it on edge on a deal table. I then went
into a carpenter shop for assistance in moving another, too heavy for
me to handle. When we got to the table the man helping me sprang on
it (as he thought he could lift the one we were carrying easier), his
weight was so great, it bent the boards on whose further ends the fine
specimen was resting, and it came to the floor with a crash. It was
broken to pieces so small it could not be saved and restored. So one
of these animals so perfect in all human probability it will never be
duplicated, was destroyed. The loss was terrible for me.” “You have had
some bitter experiences,” said Maud, tears standing in her sympathetic
eyes. “Many indeed, Maud,” I answered. “But while we have been talking
our plesiosaurs have put to sea. Their distant wakes are just visible.”
“See, papa, what a strange looking fish. What is it do you suppose?”
“Maud, that to me is the best armored and most ferocious fish I have
ever known. I used to think the man-eating sharks, off the Florida
coast were the most blood thirsty of the order, but this one is still
worse. Notice the head is prolonged in front into a long round bony
snout, or ram. On account of this I called it a snout fish when I first
discovered their bones in the Kansas chalk. The ram ends, you notice,
in a sharp point eight or ten inches long. Then at the end of the mouth
are four lance-like teeth projecting forward, and outward. The object
was for these to cut the breach his ram had made in the quivering flesh
of a mosasaur wider, so he could force his head into the bleeding
flesh to the eye rims. But his most terrible weapons are his pectoral
fins. See, they are four feet long. Serrated on the cutting or outer
edge, enameled and sharp as a knife. They can be locked, and stand
out straight from the body. A sudden swing would, if he was close to
a mosasaur cut a gash several feet long in its vitals. See these fins
span over eight feet. I pity the fish or reptile that comes his way.”
“Watch, papa!” cried Maud. “There comes a huge shark. He certainly
doesn’t mean to attack such a well-armed fighter, does he?” “I should
not be surprised,” I answered. “I believe a shark of this size, at
least twenty-five feet long, will attack anything that has life.” The
shark made a sudden dive under the snout fish, but before he could turn
the fish set his right sword-like fin and swinging suddenly to the left
made an awful gash into the side of the shark laying open and slashing
his vital organs. Relaxing his efforts he sank into the ooze of the
ocean bed, followed by the snout fish to feast off his carcass. And
so we idly drifted with the currents and study the wondrous fauna of
this strange sea and land. We see Marsh’s loon diving for fishes, and
many other birds not known to science. One day while resting from the
excessive heat in the shade of a redwood Maud was very tired and soon
fell asleep. I, too, leaning against a mossy log, dozed off.