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 CHAPTER 10

COMPARATIVE COGNITION

1. The field of comparative cognition is concerned with comparing the cognitive abilities of
a. people of different ages
b. people with different educational backgrounds
c. different species of animals, including humans
d. individuals with different developmental disabilities
Page(s): 225 Type: factual
Answer: c

2. Another name for short-term memory is

a. working memory c. abstract memory
b. reference memory d. concrete memory
Page(s): 226 Type: factual
Answer: a

3. Performance on a delayed-matching-to-sample task can be affected by

a. the duration of the delay between sample and comparison stimuli
b. the species of the subject
c. the stimuli presented on previous trials
d. all of the above
Page(s): 227-228 Type: factual
Answer: d

4. If learning of new information makes it more difficult to remember older information, this is
a. proactive interference c. prospective coding
b. retroactive interference d. retrospective coding
Page(s): 228 Type: factual
Answer: b

5. Keeping track of what responses or tasks you need to make next is an example
a. proactive interference c. prospective coding
b. retroactive interference d. retrospective coding
Page(s): 228 Type: factual
Answer: c

6. In a radial-arm maze, rats typically

a. move from one arm to the next in an orderly sequence
b. have no clear order to their choices of arms, yet seldom revisit the same arm twice
c. have no clear order to their choices of arms, and make many repeat visits to the same arms
d. tend to return to the arms where they first received food
Page(s): 229-230 Type: conceptual
Answer: b

7. Research has suggested that rats in a radial-arm maze tend to use

a. prospective coding
b. retrospective coding
c. both a and b
d. neither a nor b
Page(s): 230 Type: factual
Answer: c

46
8. Which of the following provides evidence for maintenance rehearsal in animals?
a. research on discrimination reversals
b. research on directed forgetting
c. research on the speed of acquisition in classical conditioning
d. all of the above
Page(s): 231 Type: conceptual
Answer: b

9. According to Wagner's theory of rehearsal in animals, a surprising post-trial episode can diminish the
conditioning from a CS-US pairing because
a. surprising events attract a good deal of attention
b. short-term memory has limited capacity
c. both rehearsal and attention make use of short-term memory
d. all of the above
Page(s): 231-232 Type: conceptual
Answer: d

10. Suppose a rabbit receives a series of classical conditioning trials, and after a trial, something surprising
happens. The conditioning will probably be slowest if the surprising event occurs
a. 3 seconds after each conditioning trial
b. 10 seconds after each conditioning trial
c. 90 seconds after each conditioning trial
d. after some conditioning trials but not others
Page(s): 231-232 Type: applied
Answer: a

11. Research with pigeons has shown that they can learn a list of slides, treating some as positive and some as
negative
a. as long as the list includes no more than seven slides
b. with up to about 20 slides
c. with up to about 100 slides
d. with more than 1000 slides
Page(s): 233 Type: factual
Answer: d

12. Clark's nutcrackers can hide several thousand seeds in different caches and retrieve them much later. To
accomplish this feat, the birds appear to use
a. memory for specific visual landmarks
b. their sense of smell
c. the appearance of the soil above a cache
d. random trial and error
Page(s): 233-234 Type: factual
Answer: a

13. According to Weber's law, which of the following temporal discriminations would be the most difficult for an
animal to learn?
a. a 20-second tone versus a 40-second tone
b. a 5-second tone versus a 7-second tone
c. a 1-second tone versus a 2-second tone
d. a 20-second tone versus a 40-second light
Page(s): 236 Type: applied
Answer: b

47
14. The context-shift effect in memory is the finding that recall can be better if
a. the context is free from distractions
b. you switch to a new context when trying to remember something
c. the context during recall is the same as when the learning took place
d. none of the above
Page(s): 234 Type: factual
Answer: c

15. The peak procedure has been used to demonstrate an animal's ability
a. to discriminate between two stimuli of different durations
b. to discriminate between two different numbers of objects
c. to time the duration of an interval that sometimes ends with a reinforcer
d. all of the above
Page(s): 236 Type: conceptual
Answer: c

16. After learning to discriminate between two and four sounds, rats
a. need no additional training to discriminate between two and four light pulses
b. need only a moderate amount of training to discriminate between two and four light pulses
c. have great difficulty learning to discriminate between two and four light pulses
d. can perform this task with no mistakes
Page(s): 237 Type: factual
Answer: a

17. The impressive counting skills of the parrot Alex included the ability to
a. count objects he had never seen before
b. count up to six objects
c. say both the number of objects and their name
d. all of the above
Page(s): 238-239 Type: factual
Answer: d

18. Suppose a pigeon must peck five response keys in the correct order to receive reinforcement. Which of the
following orders of stimuli would probably be the easiest for a pigeon to learn?
a. blue, red, green, yellow, orange
b. blue, red, green, triangle, circle
c. blue, triangle, red, circle, green
d. triangle, circle, diamond, square, line
Page(s): 241 Type: applied
Answer: d

19. Studies on chunking by animals have found evidence that at least some species can
a. learn a list faster if the experiment provides them with items that are grouped into chunks
b. develop their own chunks and use them to perform better
c. use chunks to teach the younger individuals in their group
d. all of the above
Page(s): 2431-242 Type: factual
Answer: d

20. The chimpanzee Washoe, who was taught American Sign Language by the Gardners, failed to
a. use the signs spontaneously, to initiate a conversation
b. learn signs for verbs
c. use a consistent word order, or grammar
d. learn more than about 20 signs
Page(s): 243 Type: factual
Answer: c

48
21. The chimpanzee Sarah, who was taught to use plastic symbols for words by David Premack, failed to
a. use the symbols spontaneously, to initiate a conversation
b. learn symbols for verbs
c. use a consistent word order, or grammar
d. use the symbols to answer questions
Page(s): 243-244 Type: factual
Answer: a

22. In his critique of research on animal language, Terrace argued that

a. chimpanzees rely heavily on simple imitation of their trainers
b. chimpanzees use almost no consistent word order, or grammar
c. both a and b
d. neither a nor b
Page(s): 244 Type: conceptual
Answer: c

23. Studies have shown that chimpanzees can solve problems involving
a. analogies c. both a and b
b. transitive inference d. neither a nor b
Page(s): 247-248 Type: factual
Answer: c

24. Studies have shown that cats and dogs can solve problems involving
a. analogies c. both a and b
b. object permanence d. neither a nor b
Page(s): 247-248 Type: factual
Answer: b

25. If a chimpanzee learns that A is larger than B, and B is larger than C, it may choose A when given a choice
between A and C. This problem is a test of
a. analogical reasoning c. prospective coding
b. transitive inference d. serial pattern learning
Page(s): 247-248 Type: conceptual
Answer: b

26. Which of the following has not been found in any creatures other than humans?
a. the correct use of pronouns and prepositions
b. reference to objects and events not present
c. accurate counting above 12 objects
d. the ability to recognize a repeating serial pattern
Page(s): 238-239 Type: factual
Answer: c

27. Which of the following characteristics of human language has not been found in any other species?
a. the use of abstract symbols
b. productivity
c. grammar
d. none of the above (that is, all of these have been found in other species)
Page(s): 245-246 Type: factual
Answer: d

49
Short Essay Questions

28. Describe one procedure that has been used to measure the duration of short-term memory in animals. What
results have been obtained with this procedure? Pages 226-230.

29. Distinguish between proactive interference and retroactive interference. Explain how both have been
demonstrated in studies of short-term memory in animals. Pages 228-230.

30. Describe some of the major findings that have been obtained with the radial-arm maze. Pages 229-230.

31. Define prospective coding and retrospective coding. Explain why each type of coding can be used (at different
times) in the radial-arm maze. Pages 228-230.

32. Describe the rationale, methods, and results of an experiment designed to examine the role of "rehearsal"
during classical conditioning with animal subjects. Pages 231-232.

33. What is directed forgetting? Explain how this has been demonstrated in experiments with animals.
Page 231.

34. List at least four characteristics of human memory that have been also found in animals. Briefly explain how
these abilities have been demonstrated in animals. Pages 226-235.

35. Discuss two different procedures for studying animals' timing abilities. For each procedure, mention one
important result. Pages 235-237.

36. How have counting abilities been demonstrated in rats? Explain why the counting abilities of the parrot Alex
are more impressive than what has been found so far with rats. Pages 237-239.

37. Describe an experiment on serial pattern learning by animals, and explain what the results showed. Pages 239-
240.

38. Describe two experiments on chunking by animals, and discuss what they tell us about animal memory.
Pages 240-242.

39. Discuss the strengths and weaknesses of the language abilities that have been found in chimpanzees.
Pages 243-246.

40. List at least four characteristics of human language that have been also found in animals. Briefly explain how
these abilities have been demonstrated in animals. Pages 245-246.

41. Describe some studies that demonstrate what animals know about object location and object permanence.
Page 246-247.

42. How have the ability to solve analogies and problems of transitive inference been studied with animals, and
what has been found? Pages 247-248.

43. Describe some examples of animals using or making tools. Pages 248.

44. What is metacognition? What are some findings that suggest that animals are capable of metacognition? Pages
248-249.

50
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THE LIFE OF A FOSSIL HUNTER
 CHAPTER I
EARLY DAYS AND WORK IN THE DAKOTA
GROUP OF THE CRETACEOUS

do not remember when I first began collecting fossils,

but I have always loved nature.
Fifteen years of my early life were spent in Otsego
County, New York, at dear old Hartwick Seminary,
where my father, the Rev. Dr. Levi Sternberg, was
principal for fourteen years, and my grandfather, Dr. George B.
Miller, a much-loved, devout man, professor of theology for thirty-
five. The lovely valley of the Susquehanna, in which it stands, lies five
miles below Cooperstown, the birthplace of the Walter Scott of
America, James Fenimore Cooper, and my boyhood was spent
among scenes which he has made famous. Often my companions and
I have gone picnicking on Otsego Lake, shouting to call up the echo,
and spreading our tablecloth on shore beneath the very tree from
which the catamount was once about to spring upon terrified
Elizabeth Temple.
My greatest pleasure in those early days and best, was to live with a
darling cousin in the woods. There among the majestic trees,—
maples, hickories, pines, and hemlocks,—we used to build sylvan
retreats, weaving willow twigs in and out among the poles which I
cut for supports; and there, to those great trees, I delivered my boy
orations. We delighted also to visit and explore Moss Pond, a body of
water on top of the hills across the river, surrounded entirely by
sponge moss. We could “teeter” across the moss to a log that gave us
support, and catch blind bullheads, or eat our lunch in the cool,
dense hemlock woods that surrounded the water, where the heavy
branches, intertwined like mighty arms, shut away the light, so that
even at midday the sun could barely pierce their shadows.
How I loved flowers! I carried to my mother the first crocus bloom
that showed its head above the melting snow, the trailing arbutus,
and the tender foliage of the wintergreen. Later in the season I
gathered for her the yellow cowslip and fragrant water-lily; and when
autumn frosts had tinged the leaves with crimson and gold I filled
her arms with a glorious wealth of color.
Even in those early days I used to cut out shells from the limestone
strata of the region with whatever tools were at hand, but they were
admired chiefly as examples of the wonderful power of running
water to carve rocks into the semblance of shells. Or if one of the
more observant remarked that these shells looked very much as if
they had been alive once, the only theory that would account for their
presence and yet sustain the belief that the world was only six
thousand years old, was that the Almighty, who created the rocks,
could easily, at the same time, have created the ancient plants and
animals as fossils, just as they were found.
I remember a rich find I made in the garret of an uncle in Ames, New
York,—a cradle filled with fossil shells and crystals of quartz. They
had been collected by my uncle’s brother, who, fortunately, as my
uncle said, had died early, before bringing disgrace upon the family
by wasting his time wandering over the hills and gathering stones.
All the large specimens he had collected had been thrown away, and
the smaller ones in the old cradle had long been forgotten. I was
welcome to all my uncle’s buggy could carry when he took me home,
and I can never forget the joy of going over that material again and
again, selecting the specimens that appealed most to my sense of the
beautiful and the wonderful. I labeled them all “From Uncle James,”
and it greatly astonished a dear aunt of mine, to whom I gave them
some years later when we moved West, to find in the collection a lot
of baculites, labeled “Worms from Uncle James.”
When I was ten years old, I met with an accident from which I have
never completely recovered. I remember the wild chase I was making
after an older boy, over the hay-mows and piles of shocked grain in
my father’s barn. On the floor below, an old-fashioned thresher, one
of the first of its kind, was making an ear-splitting noise, while
outside the two horses, hitched to an inclined plane, climbed
incessantly, but never reached the top.
The boy climbed a shock of oats on the scaffold in the peak of the
barn, and “Charley-boy,” as my mother called me, following him,
slipped through a hole in the top of the ladder which had been
covered by the settling oats, and fell twenty feet to the floor below.
The older boy climbed swiftly down and carried me home insensible
to my mother.
Our family physician thought that only a sprain was the result, and
bandaged the injured limb; but, as a matter of fact, the fibula of the
left leg had been dislocated, so that there was much suffering and a
little crippled boy going about among the hills on crutches.
The leg never grew quite strong again, and some years later gave me
a good deal of trouble. In 1872 I was in charge of a ranch in Kansas,
and during November of that year a great sleet storm covered the
whole central part of the state. In order to water my cattle, which
were scattered over a range of several thousand acres on Elm Creek, I
was obliged to follow around small bands of them to their
accustomed watering-places and cut the ice for them. The water that
splashed over my clothing froze solid, and the result was that
inflammatory rheumatism settled in the lame leg. I sat in a leathern
chair all winter close to a boxwood stove, tended by my dear mother,
who never left me day or night.
When the inflammation subsided, the knee joint had become
ankylosed, and in order to avoid going on crutches all my life, I lay in
the hospital at Fort Riley for three months, all alone in a great ward,
and had the limb straightened by a special machine. So skilfully did
the army surgeon do this work that I threw away crutches and cane,
and, although the leg has always been stiff, I have since walked
thousands of miles among the fossiliferous beds in the desolate fields
of the West.
In 1865, when I was fifteen years old, my father accepted the
principalship of the Iowa Lutheran College at Albion, Marshall
County, and the broken hill country of my boyhood days was
replaced by the plains and water courses of the Middle West.
Two years later my twin brother and I emigrated to an older
brother’s ranch in Ellsworth County, Kansas, two and a half miles
south of Fort Harker, now known as Kanopolis. This post was at that
time the terminus of the Kansas Division of the Union Pacific, and
almost daily train-load after train-load of prairie schooners, drawn
by oxen, burros, or mules, pulled out from it over the old Butterfield
and Santa Fé trails, the one leading up the Smoky Hill, the other
through the valley of the Arkansas to Denver and the Southwest.
In spring great herds of buffalo followed the tender grass northward,
returning to the South in the fall; and one bright day my brother and
I started out on our first buffalo hunt. Driving a team of Indian
ponies hitched to a light spring wagon, we soon left the few
settlements behind, and reached the level prairie to the southwest,
near old Fort Zaro, a deserted one-company post on the Santa Fé
Trail. At this time it had been appropriated by a cattleman who had a
small herd grazing in the vicinity.
When within a few miles of this post, we saw a large herd of buffalo
lying down a mile away. It was no easy matter to crawl toward them
over the plain, pushing myself along without raising my body above
the short grass, but after strenuous efforts I got within shooting
distance without disturbing them, and was resting for a shot, when
the rancher rode through the herd and sent them all off at a lope.
Much angered and almost tempted to turn my gun on the man, I
returned to the wagon, and we drove on across country that had been
cropped as if by a great herd of sheep by the thousands of buffalo
that had passed that way on their journey south.
Anxious to find picketing-ground and water, we reached the
Arkansas River, where in a swale covered with grass and willows
were paths cut by the buffalo. I lay down in one of these, and
bringing my gun to my shoulder, was just drawing bead, when a large
animal rushed across my line of vision at right angles to the trail. I
pulled the trigger, and down went the brown mass in a heap on the
ground.
Swinging my gun above my head, I rushed forward shouting, “I’ve
killed a buffalo!”—to find that I had shot a Texas cow. Terrified at the
thought of its owner’s anger, we rushed back to the wagon, and,
whipping up the ponies, sped away as if the furies were after us. But
cooler second thoughts led us to the conclusion that the cow had
come north with the buffalo, and was as much our prey as the buffalo
themselves.
Just before sunset we reached a part of the country through which
the buffalo had not passed, where a rich carpet of grass, covering all
the plain, offered plenty of food for our tired ponies. Here we were
delighted to find, standing in a ravine, an old bull buffalo, which had
been driven out of the herd to die. Concealing ourselves behind the
carcass of a cow, we opened fire upon him from our Spencer
carbines, and continued to riddle his poor old body with leaden slugs
until his struggles ceased. Even then, when he had lain down to rise
no more, we crawled up behind him and threw stones at him, to
make sure that he was dead. We found his flesh too tough for food;
but it was an exciting event to us two boys to kill this massive beast,
in earlier days perhaps the leader of the herd.
In this connection I might tell of a chase I had several years later,
while living on a ranch in eastern Ellsworth County. I saw a huge
buffalo bull come loping along from the hills, headed for a section of
land that was inclosed by a wire fence. On the other side of this
section there was a piece of timber-land, and fearing that if he got
into the dense timber I should lose him, I rode after him at the top of
my speed.
When his lowered head struck the wire fence it flew up like a spring
gate and immediately closed down behind him. In order to follow, I
had either to cut the wire or go out of my way to a gate half a mile to
the south. I decided on the latter course, and applied quirt and spur
to my horse, but upon reaching the gate, discovered my escaping
quarry already halfway across the section. I got just near enough to
put a bullet into his rump as he passed through the fence on the
other side, and disappeared in the dense woods beyond.
In my excitement I shouted to my pony, and, dismounting and
standing on the wire to hold it down, yelled at him to come across.
But a sudden fit of obstinacy had seized him, and he would not come.
I had to let the fence up while I thrashed him, and then as soon as I
got it under my feet again, he pulled back as before. We repeated this
performance until I was exhausted and gave up the struggle.
But upon casting a look of despair in the direction of the vanished
buffalo, I was both astonished and ashamed to see him standing
under an elm tree not ten feet away, covered up all except his eyes by
a great wild grapevine, and gazing in mute astonishment at the
struggle between Nimrod and his pony. I have always regretted that I
took advantage of the confidence he placed in me, for as soon as I
could control my jumping nerves, I shot the noble beast behind the
shoulder, and he fell.
I saw my last herd of buffalo in Scott County, Kansas, in 1877.
Antelope, however, continued to be abundant as late as 1884, and
only two years ago I saw a couple of them among some cattle near
Monument Rocks, in Gove County.
In camp, during those early days, we were rarely out of antelope
meat, and even now my mouth waters at the thought of the delicious
tenderloin, soaked first in salt water to season it and remove the
blood, then covered with cracker dust, and fried in a skillet of boiling
lard. In those days a hind quarter could be hung up under the wagon
in the hottest part of summer, and not spoil. The wind hermetically
sealed it, and there were no blow-flies then. The early settlers of a
new country bring with them, and protect, their enemies, and
destroy their friends, the skunks, badgers, wildcats, and coyotes, as
well as hawks, eagles, and snakes, because they kill a chicken or two
as a change from their usual diet of prairie dogs and rabbits.
In those pioneer days the Kiowas, Cheyennes, Arapahoes, and other
Indian tribes made constant inroads upon the venturesome settler
who, following the advice of Horace Greeley, had come West to grow
up with the country.
I remember when old Santante, a chief of the Kiowas, came to the
post in a government ambulance, which he had captured on one of
his raids. In time of peace, the Indians belong to the Interior
Department of the government, so that all the officer in command at
the fort could do was to extend the old chief the courtesy of the army
and care of himself and team. Once, at the old stone sutler’s store, I
heard him remark, after he had filled himself well with whisky, “All
the property on the Smoky Hill is mine. I want it, and then I want
hair.”
He got both the following year.
In July, 1867, owing to the fear of an Indian outrage, General A. J.
Smith gave us at the ranch a guard of ten colored soldiers under a
colored sergeant, and all the settlers gathered in the stockade, a
structure about twenty feet long and fourteen wide, built by setting a
row of cottonwood logs in a trench and roofing them over with split
logs, brush, and earth. During the height of the excitement, the
women and children slept on one side of the building in a long bed
on the floor, and the men on the other side.
The night of the third of July was so sultry that I concluded to sleep
outside on a hay-covered shed. At the first streak of dawn I was
awakened by the report of a Winchester, and, springing up, heard the
sergeant call to his men, who were scattered in rifle pits around the
building, to fall in line.
As soon as he had them lined up, he ordered them to fire across the
river in the direction of some cottonwoods, to which a band of
Indians had retreated. The whites came forward with guns in their
hands and offered to join in the fight, but the sergeant commanded:
“Let the citizens keep in the rear.” This, indeed, they were very
willing to do when the order was given, “Fire at will!” and the
soldiers began sending leaden balls whizzing through the air in every
conceivable arc, but never in a straight line, toward the enemy, who
were supposed to be lying on the ground.
As soon as it was light my brother and I explored the river and found
a place where seven braves, in their moccasined feet, had run across
a wet sandbar in the direction of the cottonwoods, as the sergeant
had said. Their pony trails could be easily seen in the high, wet grass.
The party in the stockade were not reassured to hear the tramp of a
large body of horsemen, especially as the soldiers had fired away all
their ammunition; but the welcome clank of sabers and jingle of
spurs laid their fears to rest, and soon a couple of troops of cavalry,
with an officer in command, rode up through the gloom.
After the sergeant had been severely reprimanded for wasting his
ammunition, the scout Wild Bill was ordered to explore the country
for Indian signs. But, although the tracks could not have been
plainer, his report was so reassuring that the whole command
returned to the Fort.
Some hours later I spied this famous scout at the sutler’s store, his
chair tilted back against the stone wall, his two ivory-mounted
revolvers dangling at his belt, the target of all eyes among the
garrison loafers. As I came up this gallant called out, “Well,
Sternberg, your boys were pretty well frightened this morning by
some buffalo that came down to water.”
“Buffalo!” I said; “that trail was made by our old cows two weeks
ago.”
Later the general in command told me that they had prepared for a
big hop at the Fort on the night of the fourth, and that Bill did not
report the Indian tracks because he did not want to be sent off on a
long scout just then.
In the unsettled state of the country at this time there were other
dangers to be guarded against beside that of Indians, as I learned to
my cost.
As a boy of seventeen, it was my duty on the ranch to haul milk,
butter, eggs, and vegetables to Fort Harker for sale. I cared for my
pony myself, and in order to get the milk and other food to the Fort
in time for the soldiers’ five-o’clock breakfast, I had to go without my
own. One day I had a number of bills to collect from the officers, but
as I was unusually tired, and the officers were not out of bed when I
called, I put the bills in my inside pocket and started home.
As was my custom, after leaving the garrison I lay down on the
wagon-seat and went to sleep, letting my faithful horse carry me
home of his own accord. I have no recollection of what happened
afterwards, but when I reached the ranch my brothers found me
sitting up in the wagon moaning and swinging my arms, with the
blood flowing from a slung-shot wound in my forehead. I had been
struck down in my sleep and robbed of all the money I had on my
person, as it happened only about five dollars.
Providentially our nearest neighbor, D. B. Long, was a retired
hospital steward, and the post surgeon, Dr. B. F. Fryer, who was sent
for immediately, was just ready to drive to town with his team of fleet
little black ponies. He reached the ranch in an incredibly short time,
and, although respiration had ceased, those two faithful men kept up
artificial respiration for hours. My oldest brother, Dr. Sternberg, for
years Surgeon-General of the Army, was also sent for, and I found
him lying on a mattress by my side when I regained consciousness
two weeks later.
I might tell also of the ruffians who at one time held Ellsworth City in
a grip of iron, and how, until they killed each other off or moved
further west with the railroad, the dead-cart used to pass down the
street every morning to pick up the bodies of those who had been
killed in the saloons the night before, and thrown out on the
pavement to be hauled away.
But, although I should like to recall more of the incidents connected
with the opening up of a new country, time presses, and I must pass
on to an account of my work as a fossil hunter.
I had not been long in this part of the country before I found that the
neighboring hills, topped with red sandstone, contained, in isolated
places, from a few feet to a mile in diameter and scattered through a
wide expanse of country, the impressions of leaves like those of our
existing forests.
The rocks consisted of red, white, and brown sandstone, with
interlaid beds of variously-colored clays; while here and there,
scattered through the formation, were vast concretions of very hard
flint-like sandstone, often standing on softer rocks that had been
weathered away into columns, the whole giving the effect of giant
mushrooms, as seen in the cuts (Figs. 1–3).
This formation, resting unconformably on the upper carboniferous
rocks, belongs to the Dakota Group of the Cretaceous Period. The
sedimentary rocks were laid down during the Cretaceous Period, the
closing period of the “Age of Reptiles,” in a great ocean, whose shore
line enters Kansas at the mouth of Cow Creek on the Arkansas River,
and extending in a northwesterly direction in the vicinity of Beatrice,
Nebraska, touches Iowa, and passes on to Greenland.
I was carried away at this time by the thoughts that had been surging
through the hearts of men since Darwin bade them turn to nature for
the answers to their problems concerning the plants and animals of
this earth.
How often in imagination I have rolled back the years and pictured
central Kansas, now raised two thousand feet above sea level, as a
group of islands scattered about in a semi-tropical sea! There are no
frosts and few insect pests to mar the foliage of the great forests that
grow along its shores, and the ripe leaves fall gently into the sand, to
be covered up by the incoming tide and to form impressions and
counterparts of themselves as perfect as if a Divine hand had
stamped them in yielding wax.
Go back with me, dear reader, and see the treeless plains of to-day
covered with forests. Here rises the stately column of a redwood;
there a magnolia opens its fragrant blossoms; and yonder stands a fig
tree. There is no human hand to gather its luscious fruit, but we can
imagine that the Creator walked among the trees in the cool of the
evening, inhaling the incense wafted to Him as a thank-offering for
their being. All His works magnify Him. The cinnamon sends forth
its perfume beside the sassafras; linden and birch, sweet gum and
persimmon, wild cherry and poplar mingle with each other. The five-
lobed sarsaparilla vine encircles the tree-trunks, and in the shade
grows a pretty fern. Many other beautiful plant forms grace the
landscape, but the glorious picture is only for him who gathers the
remains of these forests, and by the power of his imagination puts
life into them; for it is some five million years, according to the great
Dana of my childhood days, since the trees of this Kansas forest lifted
their mighty trunks to the sun.
 Fig. 1.—Rocks of Laramie Beds on
South Schneider Creek, Converse
County, Wyoming.

Fig. 2.—Weathered Rocks and Laramie

Beds near South Schneider Creek.

Fig. 3.—Mushroom-like
concretion known as
Pulpit Rock.
 Elm Creek, Kansas, near
Sternberg’s ranch. (From
Trans. Kan. Acad. Sci.)

At the age of seventeen, therefore, I made up my mind what part I

should play in life, and determined that whatever it might cost me in
privation, danger, and solitude, I would make it my business to
collect facts from the crust of the earth; that thus men might learn
more of “the introduction and succession of life on our earth.”
My father was unable to see the practical side of the work. He told
me that if I had been a rich man’s son, it would doubtless be an
enjoyable way of passing my time, but as I should have to earn a
living, I ought to turn to some other business. I say here, however,
lest I forget it, that, although my struggle for a livelihood has been
hard, often, indeed, bitter, I have always been financially better off as
a collector than when I have wasted, speaking from the point of view
of science, some of the most precious days of my life attempting to
make money by farming or in some other business, so that I might
live at home and avoid the hardships and exposures of camp life.
With collecting-bag over my shoulder and pick in hand, I wandered
over the hills of Ellsworth County. If I chanced upon a locality rich in
fossil leaves, thrilled with a joy that knows no comparison, I walked
on air as I carried my trophies home; while if night overtook me with
an empty bag, I could scarcely drag my weary limbs along.
Among the rich localities that I discovered was one which I called
“Sassafras Hollow,” because of the countless sassafras leaves I
quarried there. It is situated about a mile southeast of the
schoolhouse on Thompson Creek, in the Hudson brothers’
neighborhood, and lies at the head of a narrow ravine in a ledge of
sandstone, with a spring beneath. Here too, the noted paleobotanist,
Dr. Leo Lesquereux, collected fossils in 1872, securing among other
specimens a large, beautiful leaf which he named in my honor
“Protophyllum sternbergii.”
I have a vivid recollection of the discovery of another locality. One
night I dreamed that I was on the river, where the Smoky Hill cuts
into its northern bank, three miles southeast of Fort Harker. A
perpendicular face in the colored clay impinges on the stream, and
just below this cliff is the mouth of a shallow ravine that heads in the
prairie half a mile above.
In my dream, I walked up this ravine and was at once attracted by a
large cone-shaped hill, separated from a knoll to the south by a
lateral ravine. On either slope were many chunks of rock, which the
frost had loosened from the ledges above. The spaces left vacant in
these rocks by the decayed leaves had accumulated moisture, and
this moisture, when it froze, had had enough expansive power to
split the rock apart and display the impressions of the leaves.
Other masses of rock had broken in such a way that the spaces once
filled by the midribs and stems of the leaves admitted grass roots;
and their rootlets, seeking the tiny channels left by the ribs and veins
of the leaves, had, with the power of growing plants, opened the
doors of these prisoners, shut up in the heart of the rock for millions
of years.
I went to the place and found everything just as it had been in my
dream.
Two of the largest leaves known to the Dakota Group were taken
from this place. One, a great three-lobed leaf, the stem passing
through an ear-like projection at its base, Dr. Lesquereux called
Aspidophyllum trilobatum; the other, equally large,—over a foot in
diameter,—and three-lobed too, but indented with large teeth, he
called Sassafras dissectum (Fig. 4).
I believe I am the only fossil hunter who has collected from this
locality. Probably my eyes saw the specimens while I was chasing an
antelope or stray cow and too much occupied with the work in hand
to take note of them consciously, until they were revealed to me by
the dream, the only one in my experience that ever came true. I tell
this story to show how deeply I was interested in these fossils.
My first collection, or rather the cream of it, was sent to Professor
Spencer F. Baird, of the Smithsonian Institution. The following is the
letter which I received from him:
Smithsonian Institution,

Washington, June 8, 1870.

Dear Sir:—We are duly in receipt of your letter of May 28th, announcing the
transmission of the fossil plants collected by your brother and yourself, and shall
look forward with much interest to their arrival. As soon as possible after they
reach us, we shall submit them to competent scientific investigation, and report to
you the result.
Very respectfully yours, etc.,
Spencer F. Baird,
Assistant Secretary in Charge.

There was no money in fossils at that early day, but I prized more
highly than money the promise in the letter that my specimens
would be studied by competent authority, and that I should receive
credit for my discoveries.

Fig. 4.—Fossil leaves of

Sassafras dissectum.

(After Lesquereux.)
 Fig. 5.—a,
Unopened leaf
nodule; b, Nodule
opened to show
fossil leaf; c, d, e,
f, Various forms of
fossil leaves.

The specimens were sent to Dr. John Strong Newberry, professor in

Columbia University and State Geologist of Ohio. He did not find
opportunity at that time to publish the results, but long years
afterwards, in 1898, I received from Dr. Arthur Hollick a copy of
“Later Flora of North America,” a posthumous work of Dr.
Newberry’s. Turning instantly to the magnificent plates, I recognized
some of my early specimens, the first I ever collected that were of
value to science.
Although, owing to the long delay in publication, I lost credit for
them, and the duplicates which I had given to a friend had been used
by Lesquereux to illustrate some new species accredited to that
friend instead of to their rightful discoverer, Dr. Newberry kindly
acknowledged my work on p. 133 of his book, where he says: “The
leaf figured on Plate X and that represented on Plate XI were
included in a collection made by Charles H. Sternberg, and
Lesquereux has done only justice to him by attaching his name to the
finest species contained in the large collection of fossil plants he
made there,” that is, at Sassafras Hollow.
In 1872, just before Lesquereux’s great work, “The Cretaceous Flora,”
appeared, I learned that the famous botanist was a guest of
Lieutenant Benteen, the commander of Fort Harker. Fortunately, I
had retained rough sketches of the first specimens I had sent to the
Smithsonian Institution. So with these I started for the Post, where I
found a reception in progress in honor of the noted guest.
I was introduced to the venerable botanist by his own son, who spoke
to him in French, as he was almost deaf. When I displayed my
sketches, he took me to one side, and in a corner of the room I told
him the story of my discoveries. His eyes shone when he examined
the drawings. “This is a new species,” he said, “and this, and this.
Here is one described and illustrated from poorer material.”
I do not remember how long we talked. I only know that the golden
moments sped by all too rapidly; and from that hour until his death
in 1889 we were in constant correspondence.
After this all my collections were sent to him for description. Over
four hundred species of plants like those of our existing forests along
the Mexican Gulf, some beautiful vines, a few ferns, and even the
fruit of a fig, and a magnolia flower petal, the only petal so far found
in the coarse sandstone of the Dakota Group, have rewarded my
earnest efforts. The fragrance of this lovely flower seems wafted
down to us through the myriads of ages since it bloomed.
Dr. Arthur Hollick, in his paper, “A Fossil Petal and a Fruit from the
Cretaceous (Dakota Group) of Kansas,” in Contributions from the
New York Botanical Garden, No. 31, says, on page 102: “Included in a
collection of fossil-plant remains from the Cretaceous (Dakota
Group) of Kansas, recently obtained by the New York Botanical
Garden from Charles H. Sternberg of Lawrence, Kansas, are two
exceedingly interesting specimens,—one representing a large petal,
the other a fleshy fruit. Petals are exceedingly rare, and I am not
acquainted with any published figure of anything of the kind which
can compare with ours in regard to either size or satisfactory
condition of preservation.”
Of the fig, the Doctor remarks: “The fruit is plainly that of a fig, and,
although some twenty-three species of Ficus have been described
from the Dakota Group, they were based upon leaf impressions. This
fossil has every appearance of many dried herbarium specimens, and
it is evident that it must have possessed considerable consistency in
order to retain its original shape, as it has done to a certain extent,
under the pressure to which it must have been subjected.”
In 1888 I sent over three thousand leaf impressions from the Dakota
sandstone to Dr. Lesquereux, and he selected from them over three
hundred and fifty typical specimens, many of them new, for the
National Museum. Hundreds of others, identified by him, were
afterwards purchased by R. D. Lacoe, of Pittston, Pa., and presented
to the Museum.
So feeble had the great botanist become in these last years of his life,
that friends passed before his failing eyes the trays containing these
great collections.
In my estimation, America can show no life more unselfishly devoted
to science than that of Lesquereux, probably the most scholarly and
conscientious botanist of his day. He once wrote me that he received
a salary of five dollars a day from the U. S. Geological Survey, and out
of this he had to pay his artist. He labored with unfailing enthusiasm
to complete his monumental work, “The Flora of the Dakota Group,”
but by the irony of fate, he never saw his beloved book in print. It
was published by the Government five years after his death, under
the able editorship of Dr. F. H. Knowlton.
He passed away at the age of eighty-three.
“Born in the heart of Switzerland’s mountain grandeur,” he once
said, “my associations have been almost all of a scientific nature. I
have lived with nature,—the rocks, the trees, the flowers. They know
me, I know them. Everything else is dead to me.”
It was my good fortune to be in constant correspondence with
Lesquereux, and his letters, which I need not say I prize highly, have
done more, perhaps, than any other thing to fix my determination
that, come what might, I would be a fossil hunter and add my quota
to human knowledge. The letter here reproduced has been as a
lodestar to lead me on past all discouragements in the path which as
a boy of seventeen I set out to follow. May it shed light upon the life
of some other straggler!
In 1897, not having the means to go into the vertebrate fields of
western Kansas, I spent three months in the Dakota Group, although
I knew that I had already supplied most of the museums of the world
with examples of its flora, and that there was little interest in or
demand for the leaves.
I secured over three thousand leaves, however, and paid first-class
freight on them to my home at Lawrence. Then I hauled them out to
my little twenty-acre farm, four miles southeast of town, and pitched
my 9 × 9 wall-tent for a workshop, flooring it and putting up a stove.
There I worked from November to May, standing on my feet on an
average of fourteen hours a day, with my face to the opening of the
tent for light, and my back to the stove. At night I worked over a coal-
oil lamp.
With a chisel-edged hammer weighing two ounces, I trimmed off the
rough stone from the margin of the nodules, as illustrated in the
woodcuts by Christian Weber of New York (Fig. 5, c, d, e, and f), a
labor of love on his part, for which I am deeply grateful. I smoothed
down the rock with emery-stone also, and with a No. 1 needle pried
away the stone from the petioles, leaving the impression as if it were
the leaf itself standing up in bold relief, thus bringing out all its
beauty. One of my neighbors, after examining the prepared
specimens, remarked, “You must have taken a long time to carve
those things. Why, they look just like leaves!”
When no more loving labor could be bestowed on them without risk
of injuring the specimens, I laid them away in trays, to be numbered
and identified. I knew that some authorities demanded the
specimens in payment for the labor of identification, and as I had to
make a living out of my work, this would never do for me. So after
Lesquereux’s death I undertook the work of identification myself,
although I confess it hurt my conscience, as I had never had the
training of a botanical authority. I was greatly relieved, therefore,
when, after selling two hundred and fifty specimens to the New York
Botanical Gardens, I asked Dr. Arthur Hollick whether my
identifications were correct, to receive the answer that upon a casual
examination he could find no reason to make any changes in my
names. I was certainly much encouraged by such words from this
eminent authority in fossil botany.
To return to my great collection from the Dakota Group, I spent nine
months of incessant labor upon it, and my readers may be surprised
to learn that I was delighted when Professor Macbride, of the
University of Iowa, purchased it for the munificent sum of three
hundred and fifty dollars, the price I put upon it. My delight was
even greater when I received the following letter, which is now and
was then more highly prized than the check which it enclosed.
 State University of Iowa.

Botany.

Iowa City, Iowa, May 1, 1898.

Dear Mr. Sternberg:

The boxes are all safely here. We have at present no place for the display of the
specimens, but have opened the first three cases and are delighted with the beauty
of the material. I hope next year to have a case for fossil plants, when I shall
certainly make a display of these beautiful leaves, and quote you as collector. I
should think the National Museum would give you employment all the time.
I trust you may have a pleasant and profitable summer, and if in future I can in any
way serve you, kindly advise me.
Very truly yours,
Thomas K. Macbride.

This small sum enabled me to go with my son George into the chalk
of Kansas, where we discovered the splendid specimen of a
mosasaur, now in the museum of Iowa University. But for the timely
assistance given me when I most needed help, it is doubtful whether
Iowa would have secured this treasure. My months of patient labor
on the leaves had convinced the authorities that my work on the
mosasaur would be faithfully done.
Before closing this account of my work in the Dakota Group, I should
like to say a few words about the manner in which the nodules are
formed around leaf impressions, a subject of which I have made a
careful study during years of exploration. The illustrations (Fig. 5, a
and b) show the nodules before they are opened, and the open
specimens before they have been trimmed, as in the other cuts.
The mother rock, or matrix, as it is called, from which these
concretions come, is quite soft and easily disintegrates into yellowish
sand under the influences of the weather. Through this yellowish
sandstone are scattered countless leaf impressions and their
counterparts, but on account of the softness of the matrix it is
impossible to work out any leaves from the inside of the rock masses,
and we should lose them altogether were it not for the following
natural process:
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