Fig. 29.—Fossil-bearing Cliffs. (After Merriam.)
Mascall Formation.
Fig. 30.—Fossil-bearing Cliffs. (After Merriam.)
Clarno Formation.
Fig. 31.—Skull of Great Sabre-toothed Tiger, Pogonodon platycopis.
Discovered in John Day River, 1879, by Leander Davis. (After Coke.)
By whatever method it was secured, it represented a feat of the greatest possible bravery, and Cope did only justice to Leander Davis in publishing his understanding of the manner in which it was done. That description is attached to the skull to-day, and thousands have read of Davis’ heroic act in securing it for science. Professor Cope says that he cut niches and climbed to the top of the spire. My remembrance, however, is that he threw a rope around the spire and let it settle down to where he thought the rock would be strong enough to support his weight. He then climbed up hand over hand to the loop, stood erect, picked up the skull, and without putting any pressure on the rock, got back to his rope and down to safety below. He then secured the rope by jerking off the top of the pinnacle.
It matters little how he got the skull, but I am ready to testify that it was the bravest undertaking I ever saw accomplished in the John Day beds; and as long as science lasts, this noble specimen of one of the largest tigers that ever lived should be associated with the name of Leander Davis. I am glad that the great dike across the Cove is named after him also.
What is it that urges a man to risk his life in these precipitous fossil beds? I can answer only for myself, but with me there were two motives, the desire to add to human knowledge, which has been the great motive of my life, and the hunting instinct, which is deeply planted in my heart. Not the desire to destroy life, but to see it. The man whose love for wild animals is most deeply developed is not he who ruthlessly takes their lives, but he who follows them with the camera, studies them with loving sympathy, and pictures them in their various haunts. It is thus that I love creatures of other ages, and that I want to become acquainted with them in their natural environments. They are never dead to me; my imagination breathes life into “the valley of dry bones,” and not only do the living forms of the animals stand before me, but the countries which they inhabited rise for me through the mists of the ages.
The mind fills with awe as it journeys back to those far-distant lands. Stop, reader, and think! In this John Day region, ten thousand feet, or nearly two miles, of sedimentary and volcanic rock lie above the Niobrara Group of the Cretaceous, from which I dug last summer the beautiful skull of a Kansas mosasaur, Platecarpus coryphæus, which lies before me now, its glistening teeth as perfect as in the days when they dripped with the blood of its victims. How many ages were those ten thousand feet in building? How long has it taken the running water, with its tools of sand and gravel, to carve out the Grande Coulée and the river valley, and expose all the various formations, with their records of the life of the past? And yet all this has taken place since my mosasaur, which seems to watch me as I write, fought its last battle and sank to rest beneath the waves of the Cretaceous sea.