no one until it is too late, I thought fervently. I heard her step from
the bed. Once I would have hidden my eyes as devoutly as the pagan
blinded himself lest he should see Artemis, on whom it was desecration
to look, but now I hesitated no more to gaze on her than on any other
beautiful hateful thing which I should crush. Her loveliness stirred
neither my senses nor my compassion; both were forever dead, I knew, to
woman. Full in the stream of moonlight she stood, the soft, white folds
of her nightdress enveloping her from the throat to the small feet they
half hid. Her eyes were wide open, she was awake.

She remained for some moments by the window, meditating, apparently. She
talked to herself rapidly and in low undertones. What would I have given
to be able to hear all she thus said! Her expression was one of deep
mental agony, and I began to feel a growing confidence. How can words
express the hideousness of the change of countenance, the indescribable
horror and distress of a creature that is being pressed closer and
closer toward a yawning gulf of blackness from which there is no escape?
How relate the outward signs of an inward terror at which we can but
vaguely guess? Would that I could have penetrated to the depths of that
soul for one instant to realize completely the bitterness of the dregs
it was draining! She advanced to the middle of the room; she stretched
out both arms with a gesture of horror and despair. A long, convulsive
shudder shook her from head to foot. Her eyes filled with the unearthly
fear of one who sees walls closing in on her, of one bound, who sees
flames creeping closer and closer. In one instant I could see her pass
the line dividing mere mental anguish from insanity; the unmistakable
light of madness shone in her glance. With a cry of delight she seized
the little dagger. She was rushing down the corridor like the wind.
Should I follow her? I hesitated a moment. I heard a long, low cry of
mental agony; all the sounds of a house aroused from slumber by some
dreadful calamity.

Had she gone to Hilyard's room, to die on his threshold? It was silent
once more, except for the exclamations from the different bed-chambers,
and the hurrying sounds of footsteps down the corridor. Then I, too,
following the rest of the household, entered the room of death. Amy sat
curled up on the side of the bed, laughing like a pleased child at the
red stream that trickled from Hilyard's breast among the light bed
coverings, and dripped slowly to the floor.

Although I am never gay any more, I am not unhappy, for I am more than
satisfied with the effect of Hilyard's African drug. It is true that it
did not fulfill with accuracy all that he claimed for it; perhaps I gave
an overdose, or too little. If that is the case, he suffered for not
having been more exact. He should have mentioned, in telling his little
story, the amount necessary. However, as I say, I have no reason to find
fault with its results in this case.

In looking over the effects of the deceased for Mrs. Mershon, I
concluded that I should probably meet with no occasion to use the little
glass phial again, and as the drug seemed to be rather uncertain in its
ultimate effect, I decided, after some reflection, to throw it away, and
accordingly I emptied it out of the laboratory window on the flower-bed
beneath. I half expected to see the rose-bushes wither under it, but it
only shone slimily on the leaves for a while, and then was washed off by
a timely shower.

My friends have not tormented me with condolences, for as one of them
wrote me, the grief that had befallen me was beyond the reach of human
consolation. There are few indeed who lose a friend by death, and a
betrothed wife by madness, in one terrible night. My fidelity, it is
said, is most pathetic, to her who is hopelessly lost to me, for though
years have passed by, I am still so devoted to her memory, that no other
woman has claimed a moment of my attention. And my sister who is rather
sentimental in her expressions, declares that the love I had for Amy
drained my nature dry. I think she is possibly right.

AN EVENING WITH CALLENDER.

The room was filled with a blue haze of tobacco smoke, and I had made
all of it, for Callender, it seemed to me, had foresworn most of his old
habits. He used not once to lie back languidly in a lounging-chair,
neither smoking, nor talking, nor drinking punch, when a chum came to
see him. Indeed, after the first effervescence of our meeting, natural
after a separation of four years, had subsided, I found such a different
Tom Callender from the one who had wrung my hand in parting on the deck
of the _Marius_, that I had indulged in sundry speculations, and I
studied him attentively beneath half-closed lids, as I apparently
watched the white rings from my cigar melt into the air.

Where, precisely, was the change? It was hard to say. The long, thin
figure was nerveless in its poses; the slender brown hand that had had
a characteristic vigor, lying listlessly open on the arm of his chair,
no longer looked capable of a tense, muscular grasp of life; the
slightly elongated oval of the face, with its complexion and hair like
the Japanese, was scarcely more hollowed or lined than before, but it
had lost that expression of expectation, which is one of the distinctive
marks of youth in the face. He had been politely attentive to my
experiences in Rio Janeiro, with which I have no doubt I bored him
unutterably, but when I asked about old friends, or social life, he
lapsed into the indifference of the man for whom such things no longer
exist: reminiscence did not interest him. I asked him about the plays
now on at the leading theatres--he had not seen them; about the new
prima donna--he had not heard her. Finally I broke a long silence by
picking up a book from the table at my side. "Worth reading?" I asked,
nibbling at it here and there. (It was a novel, with "Thirty-fifth
thousand" in larger letters than the title on the top of its yellow
cover.) As I spoke, a peculiar name, the name of a character on the leaf
I was just turning, brought suddenly to my mind one of the few women I
had known who bore it.

"By the way, Callender," I said animatedly, striking down the page that
had recalled her with my finger, "What has become of your little
blue-stocking friend? Don't you know--her book was just out when I
sailed,--'On Mount Latmos,'--'On Latmos Top,'--what was it?"

A dark flush burnt its way up to the black, straight hair.

"She is--dead," Callender replied, with a hopeless pause before the
hopeless word.

"Dead!" I echoed, unable to associate the idea of death with the
incarnation of life that I remembered.

Callender did not reply. He rose, with the slight limp so familiar to me
in the past, but which I noticed now as if I had never seen it before,
and went to a desk at the far end of the spacious room. I smoked on
meditatively. It was odd, I thought, that chance had guided me straight
as an arrow, to the cause of the change in my friend. One might have
known, though, that he, the misogynist of our class, would have come to
grief, sooner or later, over a woman. They always end by that.

I heard him unlocking a drawer, turning over some papers, and presently
he limped back to his chair, bringing a heavy envelope. He took from it
a photograph, which he gave to me in silence. Yes, that was she, yet not
the same--oh! not the same--as when I had seen her the few times four
years ago. These solemn eyes were looking into the eyes of death, and
the face, frightfully emaciated, yet so young and brave, sunk in the
rich masses of hair. It was too pitiful.

Callender had taken a package of manuscript from the envelope; the long
supple fingers were busy among the leaves, and he bent his head to see
the numbered pages. At last, having arranged them in order, he leaned
back again in his chair, holding the papers tenderly in his hand. There
was nothing of the _poseur_ in Callender; his childlike simplicity of
manner invested him with a touching dignity even though he owned himself
vanquished, where another man would have faced life more bravely, nor
have held it entirely worthless because of one narrow grave which shut
forever from the light a woman who had never loved him.

"I think you would like to read this," he said at length. "And I would
like to have you. To her, it cannot matter. I wanted to marry her,
toward the end, so I could take care of her.--She was poor, you
know--but she would not consent. She left me this, without any message.
I knew her so well, she thought it would be easier for me to forget
her; but now I shall never forget her."

He gave me the little package of leaves, whose rough edges showed that
they had been hurriedly cut from a binding, and then he fell again into
his old lethargic attitude. I am not an imaginative man, but a faint
odor from the paper brought like a flash to my mind the brilliant,
mutinous face, radiant with color and life, that I had seen last across
a sea of white shoulders and black coats at a reception a few weeks
before I went to South America. The writing was the hurried, illegible
hand of an author. I thought grimly that I had probably chanced upon a
much weakened and Americanized Marie Bashkirtseff, for though I had only
been home a few weeks, it goes without saying that I had read a part at
least of the ill-fated young Russian's dairy. Yet in the presence of the
grief-stricken face, outlined against the dark leather chair-back, I
felt a pang of shame at a thought bordering on levity. There was indeed
one likeness: both were the unexpurgated records of hearts laid
ruthlessly bare; both were instinct with life: in every line one could
feel the warm blood throbbing.

A few of the pages of this journal, which I copy word for word from the
manuscript lying before me, I give the reader. Call the dead writer an
egotist, if you will: wonder at Callender's love for this self-centred
nature; I think she was an artist, and as an artist, her experience is
of value to art.

"_December_--18--.

"I have just torn out some pages written a year or so ago. A diary of
the introspective type is doubtless a pandering to egotism, but I have
always detested that affectation which ignores the fact that each person
is to him or herself the most interesting soul--yes, and body--in the
universe, and now there is nothing of such infinite importance to me as
this. I fear I shall never write again. All thought or plan, in prose
or verse, seems dead in me: broken images and pictures that are wildly
disconnected float through my tired mind. I have driven myself all day.
I have been seated at my desk, with my pen in my hand, looking blankly
at the paper. No words, no words! Just before my first book went to
press, I overworked. I was in a fever; poems, similes, ran through my
excited hours. I could not write fast enough. In that mental debauch I
believe that I squandered the energy of years, and now I can conceive no
more. If I could only sleep, perhaps I could write. Oh! long, long
nights, crowded with the fearful acceleration of trival thoughts crushed
one upon another, crowding so fast. 'My God,' I pray, 'Let me sleep,
only sleep,' and conquered by this abject need, this weariness
unutterable, I am fain to believe that this gift, common to the brute
and slave, is better than anything my mind can gain for me, and there
is nothing so entirely desirable in all the world as a few hours'
oblivion.

What a dream came to me this Autumn! The doctor had given me an opiate.
At first it had no effect. I tossed as restlessly as before on my hard
bed, sighing vainly for the sleep that refused to come. The noises in
the street vexed me. The light from an opposite window disturbed my
tired eyes. At last, I slept. Oh! the glow, the radiance unspeakable of
that dream! I was in a long, low room. A fire leaped on the hearth, as
though it bore a charmed life. Upon the floor was laid a crimson carpet.
There were great piles of crimson mattresses and cushions about the
room, the ceiling was covered with a canopy of red silk, drawn to a
centre, whence depended a lantern, filling the room with a soft rosy
twilight. The mantel was a bank of blood-red roses, and they also
bloomed and died a fragant death in great bowls set here and there about
the floor. And in the centre of this glowing, amorous room was a great
couch of red cushions, and I saw myself there, in the scented warmth,
one elbow plunged in the cushions, with a certain expectation in my
face. It was very quiet. Far down an echoing, distant corridor I heard
footsteps, and I smiled and pushed the roses about with my foot, for I
was waiting, and I knew that soft foot-fall drawing nearer, nearer. My
heart filled the silence with its beating. I looked about the room. Was
it ready? Yes, all was ready. The very flowers were waiting to be
crushed by his careless feet. The fire had died to a steady ardent glow.
How close the steps were drawing! A moment more--

I opened my eyes suddenly. I heard a door shut loudly, the sounds of
boots and clothing flung hurriedly down came through the thin partition,
and I knew that the lodger in the next room had tramped heavily up the
stairs, and was hastening to throw his clumsy body on the bed.

Elsie was breathing softly by my side, and my incredulous, disappointed
eyes saw only the reflection on the ceiling, like two great tears of
light, and I slept no more until the morning.

I read this, and it sounds coherent. Perhaps I have been needlessly
alarmed, perhaps the fear that is so terrible that I have not written it
lest it seems to grow real, is only a foolish fear. I must write, I must
make myself a name. To bring him that, in lieu of dower, would be
something; but poor, unknown, and of an obscure birth.--Will I not have
earned a short lease of happiness, if I achieve fame for his sake?

I will barter all for one week,--no, one day--of happiness. I do not
wish to grow old, to outlive my illusions. Only a short respite from
cares and sorrow, a brief time of flowers, and music, and love, and
laughter, and ecstatic tears, and intense emotion. I can so well
understand the slave in the glorious "_Un nuit de Cléopatre_," who
resolved a life-time into twelve hours, and having no more left to
desire, drank death as calmly as it were a draught of wine.

_January_, 9, 18--.

"Elsie, my poor little sister, is ill. Only a childish ailment, but I
have not written for three days, and she has lain, feeble and languid,
in my arms, and I have told her stories. We have moved again, and here,
thank God! the furniture, and the carpets and the paper do not swear at
each other so violently. I say, thank God! with due reverence. I am
truly and devoutly grateful for the release from that sense of unrest
caused by the twisted red and green arabesques on the floor. Here all is
sombre. The walls are a dull shade, the carpet neutral, the furniture
the faded brocatelle dedicate to boarding-houses; but it is not so bad.
The golden light lies along the floor, and is reflected on my 'Birth of
Venus' on the wall. Above my desk is a small shelf of my best-loved
books,--loved now; perhaps I shall destroy them next year, having
absorbed all their nutriment, even as now, 'I burn all I used to
worship. I worship all I used to burn.' Under the bookrack is a copy of
Severn's last sketch of Keats, the vanquished, dying head of the slain
poet, more brutally killed than the world counts. The eyes are closed
and sunken; the mouth, once so prone to kiss, droops pitifully at the
corners; the beautiful temples are hollow. Underneath I have written the
words of de Vigny, the words as true as death, if as bitter: 'Hope is
the greatest of all our follies.' I need no other curb to my mad dreams
than this.

"It has been cold, so cold to-day. I left Elsie asleep, and went to the
office of the ---- Magazine with an article I wrote a month or so ago.
The truth is, Elsie should have a doctor, and I have no money to pay
him. I was almost sure Mr. ---- would take this. He was out, and I
waited a long time in vain, and finally walked back in the wind and
blowing dust, chilled to the heart. I wished to write in the afternoon,
but I was so beaten with the weather that I threw myself on the bed by
Elsie to try to collect my thoughts. It was no use. I found my eyes and
mind wandering vaguely about the room. I was staring at the paper frieze
of garlanded roses, and the ugly, dingy paper below it of a hideous
lilac. What fiend ever suggested to my landlady the combination of
crimson roses and purplish paper? How I hate my environments! Poverty
and sybaritism go as ill together as roses and purple paper, but I have
always been too much given up to the gratification of the eyes and of
the senses. How well I remember in my first girlhood, how I used to fill
bowls with roses, lilacs and heliotrope, in the country June, and
putting beneath my cheek a little pillow, whose crimson silk gave me
delight, shut my eyes in my rough, unfinished little room, and the vales
of Persia and the scented glades of the tropics were mine to wander
through. Yes, a dreamer's Paradise, for I was only sixteen then, and
untroubled by any thoughts of Love; yet sometimes Its shadow would enter
and vaguely perplex me, a strange shape, waiting always beyond, in the
midst of my glowing gardens, and I sighed with a prescient pain. How
have I known Love since those days? As yet it has brought me but two
things--Sorrow and Expectation. In that fragmentary love-time that was
mine, I well remember one evening after he left me, that I threw myself
on the floor, and kissing the place where his dear foot had been set, I
prayed, still prostrate, the prayer I have so often prayed since. I
begged of God to let me barter for seven perfect days of love, all the
years that He had, perhaps, allotted to me. But my hot lips plead in
vain against the dusty floor, and it was to be that instead; he was to
leave me while love was still incomplete. But I know we shall meet
again, and I wait. He loved me, and does not that make waiting easy?

"My book _must_, it _shall_ succeed. It shall wipe out the stain on my
birth, it shall be enough to the world that I am what I am. To-night I
shall write half the night. No, there is Elsie. To-morrow, then, all
day. I shall not move from the desk. Oh! I have pierced my heart, to
write with its blood. It is an ink that ought to survive through the
centuries. Yet if it achieve my purpose for me, I care not if it is
forgotten in ten years.

"_February_ 12, 18--.

"I have seen him to-day, the only man I have ever loved. He loves me no
more. It is ended. What did _I_ say? I do not remember. I knew it all,
the moment he entered the room. When he went, I said: 'We shall never
meet again, I think. Kiss me on the lips once, as in the old days.'

"He looked down at me curiously. He hesitated a moment--then he bent and
kissed my mouth. The room whirled about me. Strange sounds were in my
ears; for one moment he loved me again. I threw myself in a chair, and
buried my face in my hands. I cried out to God in my desperate misery.
It was over, and he was gone--he who begged once for a kiss, as a slave
might beg for bread!

"And now in all this world are but two good things left me, my Art and
little Elsie. Oh! my book, I clung to it in that bitter moment, as the
work which should save my reason to live for the child."

"_February_ 18, 18--

"I have written continuously. I drugged myself with writing as if it
were chloral, against the stabs of memory that assaulted me. There will
be chapters I shall never read, those that I wrote as I sat by my desk
the day after the 12th, the cold, gray light pouring in on me, sometimes
holding my pen suspended while I was having a mortal struggle with my
will, forcing back thoughts, driving my mind to work as though it were
a brute. I conquered through the day. My work did not suffer; as I read
it over I saw that I had never written better, in spite of certain pains
that almost stopped my heart. But at night! ah! if I had had a room to
myself, would I have given myself one moment of rest that night? Would I
not have written on until I slept from fatigue?

"But that could not be. Elsie moved restlessly; the light disturbed her.
For a moment I almost hated her plaintive little voice, God forgive me!
and then I undressed and slipped into bed, and so quietly I lay beside
her, that she thought I slept. I breathed evenly and lightly--I ought to
be able to countefeit sleep by this, I have done it times enough.

"Well, it is of no avail to re-live that night. I thought there was no
hope left in me, but I have been cheating myself, it seems, for it
fought hard, every inch of the ground, for survival that night, though
now I am sure it will never lift its head again.

"And now, as I said, there is nothing left in all earth for me but my
sister and my Art. "_Poëte, prends ton luth_."

"_May_ 10, 18--.

"My book is a success, that is, the world calls it a success; but in all
the years to come he will never love me again, therefore to me it is a
failure, having failed of its purpose, its reason for being. What does
he care for the fame it has brought me, since he no longer loves me?

"Had it only come a year ago!

"I went to see Mrs. ---- to-day, and I started to hear his voice in the
hall, as I sat waiting in the dim drawing-room. He was just going out,
having been upstairs, Mrs. ---- said, to look at the children's fernery;
and I, as I heard that voice, I could have gone out and thrown myself at
his feet across the threshold, those cadences so stole into my heart and
head, bringing the old madness back. I had one of the sharp attacks of
pain at the heart, and Mrs ---- sent me home in the carriage. Elsie is
in the country, well and strong. I am so glad. These illnesses frighten
her sorely. I am perhaps growing thin and weak, but I cannot die, alas!
Let the beauty go. I no longer care to preserve it.

"When I reached home, I lay in the twilight for some time on the sofa,
not having strength to get up to my room. There is, there can be, no
possible help or hope in my trouble, no fruition shall follow the
promises Spring time held for me.

"Oh, God! if there be a God! but why do I wish to pray? Have I not
prayed before, and not only no answer was vouchsafed, but no sensation
of a listening Power, a loving Presence, assuaged my pain. Yet, human or
brute, we must make our groans, though futile, when we are in the grasp
of a mortal agony.

"_June_ 20, 18--.

"I have been thankless. I have been faithless. Let me bless God's name,
for He has heard my prayer at last, and he will let me die--very soon.

"It was so cool in the doctor's office this morning. The vines about the
window made lovely shadows on the white curtains and the floor. The
light was soft. His round, ruddy German face was almost pale as he
stammered out technical terms, in reply to my questions.

"'Oh, Mees!' he said, throwing up his fat hands. 'You ask so mooch! Den,
if I frighten you, you faints, you gets worse. No, no, I will not have
it!'

"But at last, reassured by my calmness, he told me, as I leaned on the
back of his high office chair. A month more, or perhaps two. Not very
much pain, he thought. But certain. And I, faithless, have believed the
good God did not listen when I prayed!

"Little Elsie is safe and happy with our aunt. Already she seldom talks
of me. Yet I have had her, my care, my charge, for almost six years.
Children soon forget. There will be a little money for her education,
and Aunt wishes to adopt her. There is nothing that I need grieve to
leave behind.

"If he had still loved me, if it were circumstance that kept our lives
apart, I could send for him then; but to die in arms that held me only
out of compassion--glad to relinquish their burden as soon as might
be--no, I must go without seeing his face again.

"And to-night I can only feel the great gladness that it is to be.
Suppose I knew that there were twenty-five more such years as these!
Suppose it should be a mistake, and I had to live!

I looked from these last written words to the photograph. My eyes were
blurred, but Tom only leaned back, motionless as before, apathetic as
before.

"How long--" I began, tentatively.

"She lived a week after that," Callender replied, in his dry,
emotionless voice.

"And the man?"

"He was my brother," replied Callender. "She never saw him again. He
married Miss Stockweis about a month after."

I thought of Ralph Callender, cold, correct, slightly bored, as I have
always known him, of Miss Stockweis, a dull, purse-proud blonde.

I seized the poor little photograph and raised it reverently to my lips.

"Forgive me, Tom," I said, slightly abashed. (I never could control my
impulses.) "The best thing you can do is to thank God for her death.
Think of a woman like that--"

"Thank you," said Tom wearily. "Yes, I _am_ glad."

And then I grasped the thin brown hand in my own for a moment, and felt
it respond faintly to my clasp.

We sat as quietly as before in the cheerful, smoke-filled room, I
puffing slightly at my Ajar, and Tom's sleepless eyes fixed absently on
the wall; and then presently I went to the window and watched the dull
gray dawn creep over the still sleeping city.

"Well, here's another day," I said with a sigh, turning back to the
room. "I must go, old fellow."

There was no reply. Startled, I bent over the chair, and looked in the
face, scarcely more ivory-white than before. And then I saw that for
Callender there would be no more days.

THE END.


Produced by Chris Curnow, Iris Gehring and the Online

  University of Texas Bulletin
  No. 1821: April 10, 1918

  _Fossil Ice Crystals_

  _An Instance of the Practical Value of "Pure Science"_

  [Illustration: university emblem]

  Bureau of Economic Geology and Technology
  Division of Economic Geology
  J. A. Udden, Director of the Bureau and Head of the Division

  Published by the University six times a month and entered as
  second-class matter at the postoffice at
  AUSTIN, TEXAS

Publications of the University of Texas

  Publications Committee:

  F. W. GRAFF
  J. M. BRYANT
  D. B. CASTEEL
  FREDERIC DUNCALF
  R. H. GRIFFITH
  J. L. HENDERSON
  I. P. HILDEBRAND
  E. J. MATHEWS

The University publishes bulletins six times a month, so numbered that
the first two digits of the number show the year of issue; the last two
the position in the yearly series. (For example, No. 1701 is the first
bulletin of the year 1917.) These comprise the official publications of
the University, publications on humanistic and scientific subjects,
bulletins prepared by the Department of Extension and by the Bureau of
Municipal Research and Reference, and other bulletins of general
educational interest. With the exception of special numbers, any
bulletin will be sent to a citizen of Texas free on request. All
communications about University publications should be addressed to the
Chairman of the Publications Committee, University of Texas, Austin.

  University of Texas Bulletin
  No. 1821: April 10, 1918

  _Fossil Ice Crystals_

  _An Instance of the Practical Value of "Pure Science"_

  [Illustration: university emblem]

  Bureau of Economic Geology and Technology
  Division of Economic Geology
  J. A. Udden, Director of the Bureau and Head of the Division

  Published by the University six times a month and entered as
  second-class matter at the postoffice at
  AUSTIN, TEXAS

   The benefits of education and of useful knowledge, generally
   diffused through a community, are essential to the preservation
   of a free government.

                                                   Sam Houston

   Cultivated mind is the guardian genius of democracy.... It is the
   only dictator that freemen acknowledge and the only security that
   freemen desire.

                                                  Mirabeau B. Lamar

FOSSIL ICE CRYSTALS

BY J. A. UDDEN

AN INSTANCE OF THE PRACTICAL VALUE OF "PURE SCIENCE"

The practical value of the service of the geological profession is, with
every year, being more and more appreciated, especially among people who
are developing the mineral resources of our country. Nevertheless, we
still hear men who speak of geologists as theorists that render our
profitable industries but little assistance. It is true that much of the
work that geologists do has but a remote bearing on practical questions.
The fact is that in geology, as in other sciences, one can never know
when a purely scientific observation may turn out to have a practical
application. Paleontologists who study the minutest details of fossils
have been held up as impractical people, even though their science has
more than once proved to be of the greatest practical importance for the
finding of valuable natural deposits. Certainly those who have been most
prominent in the promotion of paleontology as a science have seldom, if
ever, had any economic motive in the pursuit of their work. I think the
same is true of our leading petrographers. I believe that the men who
have advanced the science of geology most, have seldom contributed much
to the practical application of the principles they have discovered.
Much scientific work naturally appears unprofitable or useless to the
uninitiated. I shall here relate a case that suggests how entirely wrong
it may be to regard as of no economic value any geologic fact, however
insignificant it may appear.

In the summer of 1890 I took occasion to make a trip to the Black Hills
in South Dakota in order to profit, as I could, by a few weeks' tramping
in this interesting region. Going one day in a southwest direction from
Minnekahta, to look for fossil cycads, I stumbled on a block of
sandstone with a rather smooth surface on which were some peculiar
markings, such as I had never seen figured or described. The rock was
evidently a block from the Dakota sandstone. Its smooth upper surface,
which represented a bedding plane, was covered with a thin coating of
silt or fine clay which adhered to the block. The markings were in this
clay. They were straight, shallow grooves from one-half to two inches in
length, and from one-sixteenth to one-eighth inch in width. They were
joined into patterns in which some sprang out from the sides of others
and again themselves sent out other branches. Some crossed each other. I
noticed that there was a quite uniform angle of divergence in these
branches, and I was able to make out that this usual angle was about
sixty degrees. I also noted that the grooves narrowed to sharp points.
Somehow, immediately I concluded that the cracks were the result of ice
crystals, and I at once saw the propriety of frozen water having existed
in an age during which deciduous trees began to appear. This was theory.
We have since that time learned to know that cold climates far antedate
the coming of the dicotyledons.

As I had no suitable photographic equipment, I took pains to make
accurate drawings of a part of the pattern as it appeared on the rock.
My original drawing is shown in Plate I. A brief description of these
markings was later furnished in the Scientific American, of February 19,
1895.

It took me some years to find any similar markings again. In the early
spring of 1903 I had occasion to make a visit to Mexico, when I spent a
half day in Ojinaga, which is a little village south of Presidio, in
Texas, on the Mexican side of the river. Some sidewalks in this little
village are built of flags of limestone belonging to the Eagle Ford
formation. To my great delight I found some of these slabs having
precisely the same kind of markings that I had noted on the sandstone in
Dakota. Naturally I attached some importance to the fact that the Eagle
Ford corresponds quite closely in age to that of the Dakota sandstone.
Both were made at about the beginning of the upper Cretaceous age. I
noticed here a considerable variation in the closeness of the patterns
of the markings. Occasionally they were found as separate single lines,
several inches removed from each other; and on other rocks they would
be found crossing in close networks. In the summer of 1904 I again found
my ice markings on a layer of arenaceous limestone in the same formation
in the Big Bend country in Texas. This time I collected some specimens
which were subsequently photographed. One of these photographs is shown
in Plate II. Again in 1906 I noticed the same markings on some thin
sandy flags which occur in the Del Rio clay near the city of Del Rio. In
this case the needle-like crystals were somewhat more slender than those
previously seen, and some were slightly curved and somewhat more
elongated. These of course interested me as showing the occurrence of
freezing temperatures no doubt at a somewhat earlier time than that
pertaining to my previous observations.

During all these years my residence was in Illinois, and I was naturally
watching for similar markings in recent mud, resulting from late and
early frosts. I found them in the fall of 1909. At this time some
excavations were being made in the loess in Rock Island, when some rains
fell in the late fall. These rains evidently happened to give the mud
the amount of moisture necessary for such crystals to develop, as the
ground froze. The rains had washed the loess extensively, and I found a
number of places where it lay redistributed, with a fairly smooth
surface. It was evident that the moisture content of the ground,
together with the temperature conditions, determined the size and the
closeness of the frozen patterns. In places the crystals were long and
slender, in others they were short and stout. At some points they were
straight and in others slightly curved. Here and there the patterns were
close enough to resemble the fine lines which we sometimes notice in the
hoarfrost on windowpanes. In other places the crystals occurred in
radiating groups, and elsewhere they would form scattered separate
units. For preserving a record of what I saw, I poured plaster over
several patterns and had these casts photographed, as appears in Plates
VIII, IX, X. Placing these side by side with the photographs of the
patterns I have photographed from the Eagle Ford, it appears to me that
no doubt can be left as to the origin of the markings found in the
fossil state.

Recently I have found that these ice crystal marks are quite common at
one horizon in the Eagle Ford beds of Brewster County, in Texas. There
is also a layer in which they can be usually seen in the vicinity of
Austin, Texas. This lies about twenty-five feet below the Austin Chalk,
near Austin. A like layer occurs about 100 feet below the Austin Chalk
in the Big Bend country. Here I have found the markings in localities
thirty miles apart. They occur at the north point of Mariscal Mountain
and in a number of places near the Fossil Knobs and on the Chisos Mining
Company property at Terlingua.

Unprofitable as observations on such a simple matter as this may seem, I
find that other geologists have given it some attention. Quite recently,
Dr. John M. Clarke[A] has figured slabs showing what has been described
as _Fucoides graphica_, by Hall. The markings figured by Professor
Clarke are undoubtedly of the same kind as those I have found in the
Eagle Ford. They occur in the Upper Devonian in New York. I also find
that the formation of ice crystals in wet mud has been observed in the
clays about Boston by Marbut and Woodworth.[B] Other observations of
similar recent markings are said to have been made by some English
geologists.

To "practical people" it may indeed appear that no more unprofitable or
more idle curiosity could be indulged in, than making observations on
what kind of crystals are formed when water freezes in mud. I must
confess that my own first observations had no motive whatever, except
for the desire to know something new; and I never expected that anything
I could learn about these fossil marks would ever turn out to have any
practical application, at least not in my own work.

But it has turned out differently. For some time, I have been called
upon occasionally to advise with regard to the finding of the ore in one
of our quicksilver mines in West Texas. It is now a well established
fact that the distribution of the ore in this mine, and I believe in the
entire Terlingua district, bears a definite relation to geological
horizons. Successful mining requires search in these horizons. The
cinnabar, as it appears, has accumulated in greatest quantity under
impervious rocks such as shales and marls along planes that separate
these from underlying rocks of more open texture, mostly limestones. The
ore has clearly come from below and has risen through fissure planes,
which in some cases separate large blocks of the Cretaceous formations.
The best ore has been found under the basal part of the Boquillas flags,
and under the Del Rio clay in the upper part of the Georgetown
limestone. The workings must be so arranged in the mine that these
horizons can be entered on both sides of a fault fissure. The problem of
locating the depth of the desirable horizons in the mine in question
would be easy enough, if it were not for the fact that the outcropping
rocks consist of a series of sediments with few characteristic fossils.
Most of the fossils which occur extend through a range of several
hundred feet and the beds themselves are quite uniform in character,
consisting of alternating thin layers of impure limestones and marls. An
attempt was made to correlate the outcropping beds by close examination
of the layers exposed, but the result was not very satisfactory. A close
scrutiny made of each layer on the section resulted, however, in the
finding of two features that enabled me to measure the throw of the
fault under investigation. Interbedded in the Boquillas flags there are
some thin layers of bentonite, which are quite persistent and can be
followed for several miles. By comparing the distances between these
layers and by taking note of their individual thickness, it was possible
to make a correlation that seemed to be correct. But the proof sought
fell just short of being certain. In cases of this kind one always looks
for corroborating facts to check one's conclusions. I found this check
in the discovery of the layer which carries ice crystal markings in
these beds. The layer had a definite relation to the seams of bentonite,
and, with this additional evidence, I was confident there was no
possible chance of a mistake. It enabled me to locate not only the right
horizon but also a horizon in the underlying heavy Comanchean limestone,
which is water-bearing, and which must be avoided to prevent serious
injury to the underground operations. I need not add that the
information obtained was of real practical value in this case.

PLATE I

Plate I. Forms of frost cracks seen on the exposed flat bedding plane of
a block of Dakota sandstone in a ravine a few miles southwest of
Minnekahta, South Dakota. As sketched in the field. Natural size.

[Illustration: PLATE I]

PLATE II

Plate II. Photographs of fossil imprints of ice crystals on flags of the
Eagle Ford. The upper rock shown in the Plate is from the south side of
Cuesta Blanca in Brewster County, Texas, and shows casts of crystals
which represent fillings of sandy mud projecting slightly down into an
underlying bed of more argillaceous material. The lower part of the
figure shows a similarly marked flag from the same formation at a point
about five miles north of the old Boquillas postoffice near Tornillo
Creek, east of the Chisos Mountains, in Texas. Here are seen the
original grooves made by the ice on a layer of muddy material later
buried. Slightly reduced.

[Illustration: PLATE II]

PLATE III

Plate III. Photograph of fossil casts of a close tangle of ice crystals
seen in a stony calcareous layer in the Eagle Ford shale in Walnut
Creek, about eight miles north of Austin, Texas. This tangle is closer
than any of the recent ice crystal marks figured here, but equally
closely grown crystals have been seen by the writer on frozen mud in
Illinois. Natural size. Compare with Plate VIII.

[Illustration: PLATE III]

PLATE IV

Plate IV. Photograph of fossil casts of ice crystals seen on some stony
flags in the upper part of the Eagle Ford at Fossil Knobs, about two
miles northwest of the Chisos Mine in Brewster County, Texas. These may
be characterized as relatively short and scattered. This shows ridges
projecting into the grooves formed by ice crystals on the surface of a
muddy layer originally underlying the layer photographed. Slightly
reduced.

[Illustration: PLATE IV]

PLATE V

Plate V. Photograph of fossil casts of ice crystals seen on the under
side of flaggy layer of calcareous sandy rock in the upper part of the
Eagle Ford at Fossil Knobs, about two miles northwest from the Chisos
Mining Company's property, Brewster County, Texas. It will be seen that
some of the crystals are gently curved. Similar curving crystals are
also seen in the figures showing recent growths at Rock Island,
Illinois. Compare with Plate IX. Slightly reduced.

[Illustration: PLATE V]

PLATE VI

Plate VI. Photograph of a thin flag of sandy limestone from the Eagle
Ford at Fossil Knobs in Brewster County, showing molds left by ice
crystals.

[Illustration: PLATE VI]

PLATE VII

Plate VII. Photographs of three fragments of flags showing casts of ice
crystals on the under side. All observations made on crystals of this
kind indicate local differences in the forms of ice crystals presumably
due to differences in the rate of freezing, in the texture of the mud
and probably in variations in water content of the mud. Some crystals in
the locality from which these specimens came, show pinnate secondary
growths. Specimens shown here are from near the upper part of the Eagle
Ford at a point about two miles north from the Chisos Mining Company's
property. Brewster County, Texas. Slightly reduced.

[Illustration: PLATE VII]

PLATE VIII

Plate VIII. Photograph of a cast made by pouring plaster over a surface
of mud in which ice crystals had recently formed, in Rock Island,
Illinois, after the ice in the crystals had been removed by slow natural
sublimation into the atmosphere, leaving open cracks in the mud. The
comb-like ridges on the plaster cast have the form of the ice crystals.
Compare with Plate III.

[Illustration: PLATE VIII]

PLATE IX

Plate IX. Photograph of a cast made by pouring plaster over a surface of
mud in which ice crystals had formed, in Rock Island, Illinois, soon
after the ice in the crystals had been removed by slow natural
sublimation into the atmosphere, leaving open cracks in the mud. In the
locality where this cast was made, the crystals were relatively slender,
distant, and some gently curved, like those seen in Plate V. Slightly
reduced.

[Illustration: PLATE IX]

PLATE X

Plate X. Photograph of a cast made by pouring plaster over a surface of
mud in which ice crystals had recently formed, in Rock Island, Ill., and
where they had later been removed by natural sublimations into the
atmosphere, leaving open cracks in the mud. It will be seen that the
crystal growth in this case involves an x-like or radiating pattern
formed of relatively very slender forms that almost everywhere are very
gently curved somewhat reminding of the slender thread-like crystals
sometimes seen in frost on windows. I have not yet seen any similar
fossil crystal growths as slender as these. Slightly reduced.

[Illustration: PLATE X]

FOOTNOTES:

[A] Strand and undertow markings, etc., New York State Museum, _Bulletin
No. 196, April 1, 1917_, pp. 199-210; pl. 20-23.

[B] Brick clays of Rhode Island, Massachusetts; Marbut and Woodworth,
_U.S. Geol. Survey, 17th Ann. Rep., Pt. 1_, p. 992.

Transcriber's Notes:

Passages in italics are indicated by _underscore_.

Printer's inconsistencies in spelling and punctuation have been
retained.

End of Project Gutenberg's Fossil Ice Crystals, by Johan August Udden