PROCEEDINGS OF THE CENTENARY MEETING. xxxiii 



with an entirely new world of life, because he soon learned that he could not base 

 his study of American fossils on the work of the French paleontologists, for the 

 life of our western regions was not known in the Old World, every specimen 

 represented a new species, a new genus, or a new family, and in some cases a 

 new order. 



It proved an unfortunate circumstance for Leidy that paleontology is a science 

 requiring ample expenditure of money, for as years went on he was reluctantly 

 obliged to leave the field to his equally ambitious and more wealthy pupils and 

 followers, Cope and Marsh, whose writings belong to the new, or Darwinian 

 period of the science, while Leidy was essentially pre-Darwinian. The three 

 men, were, however, intimately associated with the Academy; they put the science 

 of vertebrate paleontology as coming from the United States on a new basis, 

 commanding the attention and admiration of the savants of the Old World. 

 This was a great achievement, and its beginnings issued from these halls. 



It is most interesting to contrast the characters of the three men, Joseph 

 Leidy, Edward Drinker Cope, and Othneil Charles Marsh. They were as differ- 

 ent as any three men could possibly be made by nature and nurture. In the 

 admirable speech of your Mayor nothing truer was said than that he had made a 

 discovery at this dinner, namely, that scientists are only mortals, after all. 

 Whereas Leidy was essentially a man of peace, Cope was what might be called 

 a "militant" paleontologist; whereas Leidy 's motto was "Peace at any price," 

 Cope's was "War, whatever it costs." Perhaps there was a scientific Provi- 

 dence in all this, perhaps these antagonistic spirits were necessary to enliven and 

 disseminate interest in this branch of science throughout the country. This 

 subtle combative quality in paleontology seems a strange quality; by a strange 

 inversion, the more ancient, the more difficult to study, the more refractory 

 the fossil, the greater the animation of discussion regarding its relationship and 

 descent. From this subtle ferment there arose the famous rivalry which existed, 

 not between Leidy and either of the others, because it was impossible to quarrel 

 with Leidy, but between the descendant of a Quaker family and the nephew of 

 a great philanthropist. It is certain that when I took up the subject as a young 

 man and first came to the City of Brotherly Love thirty-five years ago, from the 

 quiet shades of Princeton, I always expected to learn of some fresh discussion, 

 some recent combat ; and it was always here in the Academy of Natural Sciences 

 that one could find one of the centers of the convulsive movements. I remember 

 one day coming into this very hall and finding two of the youthful attendants 

 carrying on an animated discussion regarding a dispute that they had overheard 

 at the meeting of the Academy the night before. 



Whereas in Leidy we had a man of the temper of an exact observer, Cope 

 was a man who loved speculation; if Leidy was the natural successor of Cuvier, 

 Cope was the follower of Lamarck, a man of remarkable inventive genius. Leidy 

 covered in his contributions to the Academy the whole world of nature from the 

 Protozoa and Infusoria up to Man, and lived as the last great naturalist of the 



2* JOURN. ACAD. NAT. SCI PHILA., VOL. XV. 



