Where are the most famous of the Bad Lands of our Western States? Those of South Dakota are perhaps the strangest. Among other strange things is the fact that some of the hills were set on fire by rain--goodness knows how long ago--and these hills are like gigantic stoves for the cattle, who never fail to collect around them on bleak days. In the article on South Dakota in the Britannica you'll learn all about how the rain started the fire. Then perhaps you will want to look up "spontaneous combustion" and "iron pyrites." Aren't those ancient monsters whose bones they find in the hills comical looking creatures--now that we are several million years safely away from them? The comic artists (of pen and pencil) are always having fun with them. Arthur Guiterman, for instance, in picturing what spring must have been like in those old days: "Go-dum, bally hoosh!" is the note of the Icthyosaurus. "Notorum-dorando!" the blithe Hippocampus replies. "Chin-chin-orizaba-pelote!" rings the jubilant chorus Of sweet Pterodactyls that wing the cerulean skies.[26] [Footnote 26: "The Laughing Muse."] [Illustration: ON A NEW ENGLAND HILL "Great lumps of pudding the giants threw, They tumbled about like rain." ] CHAPTER VII (JULY) They flung them over to Roxbury Hills; They flung them over the plain; And all over Milton and Dorchester too Great lumps from the pudding the giants threw. They tumbled about like rain. --_The Ballad of the Boulders._ THE STONES OF THE FIELD In our rambles during the summer vacation season we are constantly coming across boulders; in the mountains, in the fields and by the sea. In the mountains and near rocky headlands or at the foot of the cliffs we take them for granted; they have evidently fallen from the rock walls above them. But haven't you often wondered how they got out on the prairies far from any rock masses? This chapter tells about that and other curious things in the lives of the great Boulder family. I. Big Chief Boulder Even the Indians who, in those early days, had never gone to school or studied geography, used to wonder how these big stones had travelled to the places where they found them. Once upon a time the Indians in the wilds of Minnesota found an unusually big granite boulder lying among the hills. So what did they do but paint a head with eagle feathers on one end of the stone. Then they put stripes around its body. You see they thought of Mr. Boulder as a big chief in feathered head-dress and painted for war. WONDER THE BEGINNING OF KNOWLEDGE