Bud and Dick found time to stroll, occasionally, over to the camp of the scientist, for there was much to interest them there, and they wanted to be on hand when the "great discovery," as Professor Wright referred to it, should be made. "Do you know," remarked Bud, as he and his chum were riding over to the scene of excavating operations one day, "there's something quite satisfying in going over among so much scientific knowledge." "Particularly when we don't have to absorb any of it ourselves, under compulsion," remarked Dick with a chuckle. "It's like visiting a school and watching the other fellows boning away." "Yes," agreed Bud. "We don't have to open a book nor learn a lot of names as long as your arm. I wonder why they gave such long names to these prehistoric monsters, anyhow?" "Give it up," spoke Dick shortly. "There must be a reason." "I reckon there is, but why in the name of Tunket couldn't they call 'em something shorter? Wouldn't it sound funny if we had to call a horse a Brontosaurus?" "I'd teach mine to come without calling if it had a name like that!" chuckled Dick. "But say, Bud, while we're over there--in the camp I mean," and he pointed to it among the distant hills, "don't mention Nort's name." "No, dad said not to, but I don't understand it at all." "Neither do I, but the least said the better. And if anyone over there--especially Del Pinzo--asks for Nort, we're not to even admit he isn't with us. Sort of say he'll be along presently." "I savey!" The boys reached the scene of the digging operations which were quite extensive, Professor Wright being liberally supplied with money from some learned society that was interested in securing for the college the largest possible collection of fossil bones of long extinct monsters. The boys knew some of the workers, and more than a few of the young college men--some of the professors--who had been brought to the place by Mr. Wright. And it was while Bud and Dick were again talking over how foolish it seemed (to them) to use such long names in speaking of the long-dead monsters that Professor Wright heard them. He did not happen to be busy at that particular moment, and he was a man who never neglected an opportunity of imparting knowledge. He would do this not always with discrimination, for Bud used to tell with a laugh how once he overheard Professor Wright talking most learnedly to an ignorant Greaser who had merely stopped to inspect a pile of bones. "He was getting off the longest string of jaw-breaking Greek and Latin terms," said Bud, telling the story, "spouting away how many millions of years ago the Dinosaurs trod the earth, what they lived on, how they fought among themselves, and he was dwelling particularly on how a change of conditions wiped all these birds off the earth." "Meaning, by birds, the Dinosaurs and the like?" asked Dick. "Sure." "And how did the Greaser respond to it all?" Dick wanted to know.