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They began as mutual friends and admirers, even naming fossil species after each other, and spent a pleasant week together in 1868. However, something then went wrong between them—nobody is quite sure what—and by the following year they had developed an enmity that would grow into consuming hatred over the next thirty years. It is probably safe to say that no two people in the natural sciences have ever despised each other more.
他們一開始是朋友和互相崇拜者，甚至互相用對方的名字來命名化石種類，1868年還愉快地在一起工作了一個星期。后來，兩人的關系出了問題——誰也搞不清出了什么問題——到了第二年，他們之間已經成為一種敵對關系；那種關系在隨后的30年里發展為強烈的仇恨。可以有把握地說，自然科學領域里再也找不出另外兩個人比他們更互相鄙視對方的了。
Marsh, the elder of the two by eight years, was a retiring and bookish fellow, with a trim beard and dapper manner, who spent little time in the field and was seldom very good at finding things when he was there. On a visit to the famous dinosaur fields of Como Bluff, Wyoming, he failed to notice the bones that were, in the words of one historian, "lying everywhere like logs."
馬什比對方大8歲。他是個離群索居的書呆子，衣冠楚楚，留著整齊的胡子，極少去野外工作，去了也很不善于發現東西。有一次他去懷俄明州參觀著名的科摩崖恐龍地帶，卻沒有注意到——用一位歷史學家的話來說——恐龍骨頭簡直“像木頭那樣滿地都是”。
But he had the means to buy almost anything he wanted. Although he came from a modest background—his father was a farmer in upstate New York—his uncle was the supremely rich and extraordinarily indulgent financier George Peabody. When Marsh showed an interest in natural history, Peabody had a museum built for him at Yale and provided funds sufficient for Marsh to fill it with almost whatever took his fancy.
但是，他有的是錢，差不多可以想買什么就買什么。雖然他來自一個不大富裕的家庭——他的父親是紐約州北部的一名農場主——但他的叔叔卻是那位富得冒油、極其寬容的金融家喬治·皮博迪。當馬什流露出對自然史感興趣的時候，皮博迪為他在耶魯大學蓋了個博物館，并給了他足夠的資金來裝滿他看得中的差不多任何東西。
