FIG. 6.—SKULL AND FRONT LIMB OF _Clidastes tortor_.
As collected and preserved by Charles Sternberg. (Now mounted in the Carnegie Museum.) ]
(In American Museum of Natural History.) ]
FIG. 8.—SKELETON OF RAM-NOSED TYLOSAUR, _Tylosaurus dyspelor_.
(In the American Museum of Natural History.) ]
And I felt amply repaid for my sufferings when the next winter I laid out the skeleton on the platform of St. George’s Hall, in Philadelphia, where the Professor spoke for an hour to a spellbound audience, unfolding to them the wonders of the creatures that lived when this old world was young. At the close, which came suddenly, as was usually the case in Cope’s speeches, before the people had had time to come back from the misty past, he turned to where I was sitting on a step, and beckoned me to him. When I got within reach, he turned me around to the audience and said: “Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to introduce to you Mr. Sternberg, the man who found this beautiful example of the fauna of the Cretaceous.”
He was much pleased with the hearty applause that greeted me.
This incident illustrates one of the characteristics of Cope which endeared him to all his collectors. He did not think that the money he paid them paid for the dangers and privations they endured, far from their friends and the comforts of civilization. On the contrary, he gave them credit in all his publications for their discoveries of species new to science. And this is the one essential thing to the collector—at least the true collector who values his labor as something that cannot be measured by money. All work done for science has a value above that of money. Lesquereux might have made money if he had remained a watchmaker, and Cope would have won a fortune as a ship-owner if he had entered his father’s office, but both men realized that there is work which offers higher rewards than riches; they gave their lives to science, and they will never be forgotten.
But we are far afield; let us return to the plains and canyons of the Kansas chalk beds.
I recall many trying experiences during that memorable first season. Often we got into barren ground and walked over miles and miles of blistering chalk with nothing to show for our trouble. In one locality the remains might be very abundant, while in another, perhaps just as promising in appearance, thousands of acres would be entirely barren. But we had to go over it all before we could be sure that there was nothing to repay our toil.