--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Beckwith, Frank collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 31 number: 9 published: 1928-07 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: "Frank Beckwith, “A Graveyard of a Distant Era,” *Improvement Era* 31, no. 9 (July 1928): 758–763." source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera3109unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera3109unse start_page: 758 end_page: 763 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1928-07) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera3109unse publication_year: 1928 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1928, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # A Graveyard of a Distant Era A Graveyard of a Distant Era A Time When Epitaphs Were Written by Animals By Frank Beckwith Look at the photo of an ancient marine animal, compressed in the shale of its own tombstone, and then think of walking into a graveyard in which the epitaphs were written by the animals themselves! Yet, that may be done in Millard county, and a story gleaned of the gray dawn of time, in a distant past before any creature had a backbone. It is a curious autograph album. You recall the method of preserving a flower by placing it between the leaves of a book, then shutting the volume tight to protect the delicate tissue from light and air, and later subjecting it to pres- sure, and that by so doing a dainty flower may be preserved in its original freshness almost indefinitely. Well, just so Mother Nature took a small marine animal, called a Trilobite (the word means "three lobes"), laid him gently in death on a soft sea bottom, in the ooze on the floor, and quickly covered him over with sediment before decomposition could set in, and under that cover was he preserved precisely like the flower be- tween the pages of the book — except that in this case Mother Nature piled tons upon tons of sediment and sea water upon him and his coverlet, and squeezed the mud into enduring rock. Her book was a stone volume with shale leaves! In the most prolific field of fossil trilo- bites I chanced to find, I dug out a few specimens from between thin layers of shale, tightly compressed, the rock an eighth inch thick and of a dove-colored grayish blue. Those were safely ensconced in their coverlets, their long sleep un- broken, beautifully preserved. Weathered out from between the leaves of the stone book, lying free upon the ground, scat- tered here and there, trod on by sheep, and many of them broken by the sharp hoofs, I found so large a number that in four hours of intense work I gathered a five-pound lard pail full. My friend filled four handkerchiefs', which he dumped into his hat, and in all, with that trip and four more during the same sea- son, I must have found more than seven thousand. I was enabled, after giving away numbers to friends, to send the Smithsonian Institution 3,300 specimens, embracing eleven species, one of which is quite rare, and another species found in the House Range only. What the Tombstone Says of John's Life Let us visualize the life of our trilo- bite; let us call him "John." Let us bring him close to us, and reconstruct his environment, with living, "human in- terest" appeal. When John was young he swam more or less freely on the surface of the water. He was then thin and light, not the corpulent, large, heavy person he was later to become, slow-moving, sedate, and a stay-at-home. As a free swimmer he roamed — for scientists find the same species in British Columbia and in New York that are found in Utah, and cousins in China. When the day of gadding was over, John chose a sheltered nook, a little alcove or inlet, where food was good, and wave action at a minimum, and there he "settled down." The trilobite which is pictured at the commencement of this article is named Asaphiscus wheeleri; the first word means "dimly marked;" that is, his wide, flat margin, so evident in the photo, is dimly marked. The second word means that he was named after Wheeler, who con- ducted a survey in this part of Utah many years ago. The other trilobite pic- tured is named Ptychoparia kingi, the first word of which means "folding A GRAVEYARD OF A DISTANT ERA 759 check," and the second, "to the honor of King." The Powell purvey, and later the Wheeler survey, encountered many hun- dreds of trilobites near Wheeler Amphi- theatre; the choice little spot "slept" or was "lost" for several decades until I happened to tumble onto it when hunting for water, tired, discouraged, and having given up hope of finding them. A very lucky circumstance. Both the trilobites I picture lived in Middle Cambrian time, when not a living creature had a backbone. An outer en- casing shell, called a carapace, was the best provision of that time on which to at- tach muscles for the leverage of movement. John had this advantage though on his neighbor creatures — his shell was seg- mented, articulated, so that some of his kind could curl up (some quite tightly, others less so) to protect their soft vitals from attack by enemies. He had two sets of legs; one set sturdy, strong, fitted with claws on the ends, the leg member in six segments, as is the case with present-day crustaceans. And he had another set of legs, with a fringe of tiny tubes hanging down from them, which tubes pres-ented a great surface to the water, just exactly as radiator tubes present much surface to the cooling air. John's tubes were not given to him to lose heat to the air, but to extract oxygen from water. Thus he got that life-sustaining gas. The scientific name for these tubes is "setae," tiny, hollow, hair-like tubes, so very fine that they look like a suspended fringe of delicate silk hanging from his legs. They served as gills. Think of gills on legs! — but that was long ago. Now we see a fish "breathe" the water through his gills, opening and closing them, as he passes gulp after gulp over those tiny, blood- raw, breathing organs of his. But John was not so finely constructed. Photos by Frank Becktvith Left: The epitapth of the Trilobite's own body on his tombstone. Technical name. "Bathyuriscus," one of eleven different species found in Millard county. Right: A diagramatic hand drawing of Ptychoparia kingi Meek, he of the folded cheek. Note well the eyes, and the segments of his middle, which add a new pair at each moulting in some species. These trilobites are found abundantly in Millard county. 760 IMPROVEMENT ERA John had eyes. Both the animals I show in the illustrations could see. But close relatives of John burrowed into the mud. and were blind. I found dozens of these latter, spider-like, many-legged bugs, heads concealed in the bottom, their tail parts only above the mud; and about them are many of the debris of con- temporaneous life — brachiopod shells, things which look like worms- (annelids, they are called,) and parts of other kinds of trilobites — all this rich confusion of life lay on the slab of limestone, a veri- table quarry for the student. In John's younger days, like certain crabs or lobsters, he took to solitude, rubbed against anything hard, and lo! he began to pry off him, by twistings and squirmings and rubbings, his upper coat, or carapace, and stepped out, a brand-new, shiny, brilliant creature, a glory to behold! His new raiment was of thin, spotless chiton, which from the wear of the next year was to lose the luster of freshness, when it in turn would be discarded for a new top coat. In other words, John "moulted." In s-ome species of trilobites, each time the shell was moulted, he added a new pair of thoracic segments, taken from the tail; the tail grew shorter and the thorax longer. He became large of girth and portly. "Quite tall — around," as my tailor says. John's Signature As John became big and heavy, his sturdy legs became more vigorous, neces- sarily stronger to carry that greater bulk; and when those many legs shoved his big person along in the soft mud and ooze, the act of walking under those difficulties caused his legs to "dig in," making a deep track or trail, as accurate as a signature. That written signature has been found abundantly, frozen into stone. They are oftimes called "crusiana," and the Smithsonian Institution pictures many of them. The late Charles D. Walcott men- tions having found them in a canyon only four miles from where I worked. It is certainly unique to me that John's signature, written by his many legs, is a readable record of his time and day pre- served all these years. Was ever signature so odd.1' John was an animal like the coyote. a scavenger. His was the task of clean- ing up the sea bottoms. He lived largely on flesh, flesh of his own kind, or any flesh which fell to the sea bottom, pro- vided only that such flesh be soft, for John was "a gummer;" he had no teeth. The inner sections of his main legs worked the food toward his mouth, shredding it in the act of working it forward, for that part of bis legs was like the flail on a binder; rakes with spines on them, which moved the shredded fibers forward under him to his mouth. The last three pair of these flail-like rakes were shorter, and had sharper teeth-spines set in them, finer and closer together, to shred the food quite minutely, so that it could enter his small mouth. Scientific Interest in the Trilobite The trilobite is the most popular small fossil. He is very, very important, for it is thought that from his family tree sprang the eurypterid, which was the sea scorpion. A succeeding geologic age pro- vided abundant verdure on the land, and behold! this relative of John's was created an air breather, and the wonders of all further complex creation began. One of the closest living relatives' to John is the present-day Horseshoe Crab; another a shrimp-like creature, called an Apus; and the tiny little "Brine Shrimp" of Great Salt Lake is thought to be in the same line of descent. John was one of the first highly or- ganized creatures of which we have abundant evidence in fossils. There is more interest in him, in his manifold forms, than possibly any other fossil creature in small size. Whole volumes, and large ones at that, have been written about John. His least idiosyncracy has been made the subject of ponderous tome. Thirty-two hundred species of him have been examined, catalogued, and photo- graphs placed on record. A GRAVEYARD OF A DISTANT ERA 761 The reason we find him now, so well preserved, after all these long years, is because his "top coat," or carapace, was made of a nitrogenous substance, called chiton, which is very much like our finger nails. It peculiarly withstands chemical action, and, being so well laid away in our autograph album, there was no mechanical injury to it. He has been found in black, oily rock, where condi- tions were just right for preservation with- out injury, in so excellent a state that facets of his compound eyes in some species have actually been counted, and found to be 28,000 pair! The lowest number of facets is four. John's Record of Millard County John tells us, from the rock he is in, from the sea weed alongside of him, and from the other creatures — clams, marine worms, and various shell fishes — around him, that he lived in somewhat shallow marine waters. This mean3, that the area in Millard county which now has an altitude of 6,700 feet, where his re- mains are found, was once submerged be- neath sea level. From the sea weed along with him (called fucoid), it means that this form of vegetation existed at that time. Tiny shelled creatures, half as large as a dime, existed then, living alongside of John, which continue down to today, in the species of brachiopods, called Lingulella. But John and his descendants became ex- tinct at about the time coal was laid in Price, or a little later. John's record, of course, was written long before lava flowed near Fillmore; long before the great shrinking earth "faulted" along that line which forms the Wasatch Range, just east of Salt Lake City. He preceded that time in Millard county when Delta (if Delta had been there then) would have been under the waves of the big, fresh-water lake which evaporated down to the one now so highly mineral- ized by concentration, and called Great Salt Lake. But whatever occurred (and there were many changes) no violent hand was laid on John's tomb. His sarcophagus was not rifled by the ruthless hand of time, nor shattered by earthquake. Many changes went on; yes, this great uplift occurred more than once; but all "as gently as a mother lays her babe to bed." Mountain ranges were made, and even bore great glaciers which made a lake with water one thousand feet deep over the very spot where now I write this message — but John's everlasting slumbers, in that soft, enfolding, protecting ooze, were not broken until I visited him on a camping trip. The Vista Oh! The glorious vista of geology! — a panorama of untold years; of crea- tion going forward in orderly sequence upon sequence, species following species, and genera succeeding genera; a new and better order of things that are follow- ing things that were at every step. It is the creative process, sorting, choosing, bettering, and at times, discarding that which has served its end. It is God ever- present in his work. The Glory of God is Intelligence! Think what a vast, incomprehensible In- telligence planned this all! It transcends the grasp of humans! Think of the mightiness of that spiritual mind which foresaw all of this that is, even as an architect foresees the finished building before a blue print is even made. As Emerson states, God sees nature as "a transparent law." The Author Present in it All I once knew a very kind, old, silver- haired man of many years, who was the soul of ideality. For a long time I was daily in his company. He was a student of science, and a practicing physician of high medical standing. I learned to love, honor, and venerate that man for his innate worth, and thought of him as a father. (My own father was dead.) Never was there another man, with whom I came in contact, whose conversation was so uplifting, whose whole tone was so worthy, who lived on so high a level, 762 IMPROVEMENT ERA and who so carried one upward to his own high plane, as did he. He was an ardent student of geology and astronomy. At one time we camped out, just he and I alone. Never did sage hold dis- ciple more spell-bound with a flow of wisdom than did he. He had mined deeply in his gathering of knowledge, and had culled with a high spirituality from a vast and extensive study. I was of that impressionable age when it sank in deep- ly, and that imprint has never been ef- faced. No topic left that teacher's hands but was worthily treated. No subject was his unless it was worthy, and, in his choice, he took you upon heights to view it, and, in that rarefied air of his in- tellectuality, tried your fledgling wings. As in all camping trips, one finally comes to know the other most intimately. We really became acquainted on that trip, although he had known me from infancy. Each morning he left the bed first, withdrew toward the east a short space in retirement, and there he faced the rising sun; I noted that he prayed. And I saw, too, that from prayer he 'turned to face the four cardinal points-, took in each object to be seen in a survey of all that was around him, and then again faced the rising glory of day. With head bowed and lips moving, he finished. This was repeated daily, out in those wilds, as though to place him in tune with the Infinite for the rest of the day. Seemingly, he set the chronometer of his inner man daily to a standard by that act! With courage in hand, I decided to be present and hear that aspiration of his inner self, for I knew it would be worthy. Next morning I said (I latterly called him "father") : "Teach me your prayer, will you, father?" He hesitated; searched me through and through with a keen, piercing, critical gaze, weighing. Evidently he was con- tent with the boyish idolatry of my hero worship, and thought my motive sincere, for he placed his hand upon my shoulder and said: "My boy, always, every morning, no matter where, or in what company, I face the Splendor of Creation, wherein is the physical embodiment most manifest of the Author of This All, and I say: 'O God! Give me the vision to see, And the understanding to interpret.' I ask it for the day. I begin each day yearning that I might know." "Come. We will chant it in unison," he said, and led me forth. As I said, I was at the impressionable age, and certainly that imprinted its mes- sage deeply. It is many years since. Now- a-days we have "Fathers and Sons' Out- ings," but never was one closer than that, nor one more indelible. The next day at sunrise, I walked a few steps with him toward the east; he halted, — a silence — the wait — the depth of emotion stirred —and then THE SUN! I chanted in unison with him. From that time I came away wishing to be a man, though of boy's years; wishing for continuance of contact with that sage. I venerated my aged companion all the more. Cer- tainly never such another man. Never such another teacher of youth. And was ever youth more favored? What a simple prayer! Yet how all- embracing! Merely to ask for the vision to see, to search, to explore, to delve for knowledge. And then to yearn for the understanding of a correct interpreta- tion. He told me to make it my own; to take it as a guide for life, even as he had done. He told me on that trip that not a change in species occurred, not a mutation in seeming-sudden rise, but that the Author of it All directed, willed and brought into being the urge, which the creature obeyed and thought its own, wil- ful, voluntary act. Next morning 1 chanted the simple devotion in unison for the second time. But why the survey to the cardinal points? Why sweep the horizon with a survey which took in all? Was there yet some- thing I had not gotten, something with- held? For after we had chanted as one, A GRAVEYARD OF A DISTANT ERA 763 "O God! Give me the vision to see, of a spiritual day, illumined from within And the understanding to interpret," as was the day without, he said: I noticed that after he faced the east again "? 9°?! ^ mC ^ Visi°n t0 ^ from the cardinal points, his lips moved. And *f understanding to interpret- as though repeating an afterthought, and r , Thee as Present in al things. I said boldlv t was ^ all-embracing survey „_ , ' ... „ around! For all that he saw, he saw Father, teach me it all. n, „ «.MJM«. :„ :► uod ever present in it. Our eyes met, level, fixed. He * * * * searched penetratingly for motive, worth; j0hn Trilobite, you have not lived in what reception would be accorded to his vain. Nor have you been a lowly in- sacred thoughts? Should he bare his soul 9tructor. To have brought this message to its inmost depths? Did the aspirant back to me, over the span of years, vivid, ask in all sincerity. clear, spoken in your being from a past Apparently he was satisfied, for he said so far distant that it is vague, shadowy, simply, "I will. We'll set the day right gray in the dawn of time, you indeed speak for two." And again facing the orb of with eloquence. I hope there are other day, but just barely risen, marking the youths in my audience who receive vour dawn of a new era to me, the beginning message. Bryce Canyon Nature's hall of sculptured art, Carved with infinite skill And endless patience in the heart Of far-flung Western hills! Unspoiled beauty, majestic, grand, Deep-etched by wind and flood, Within a barren waste of land For ages thus had stood. Graven forms in matchless white, On pedestals of dun, Seem transparent in the light Of newly risen sun. The brown and pink and dun, and, then, The forms in brilliant red, Speak of the race of silent men Who lived, and fought, and bled. The land no longer barren lies; Thy grace can't hidden be. Another race now turns its eyes And eager steps to thee. Peace and rest for the weary soul And strength for the tired feet Of those who pause at thy mighty bowl, Sheer lovliness to meet. Payson. Utah C. A. RUSSELL