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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



The Ryerson Physical Laboratory - . 



the University of Chicago has enjoyed 

 during the fifteen years since its foun- 

 dation a development unparalleled in 

 the history of education. Its grounds 

 and buildings, its museums and labora- 

 tories, its educational methods and 

 above all the great group of scholars 

 and investigators who make the uni- 

 versity will attract to the approaching 

 meeting men of science from the whole 

 country. 



A STATUE OF JOSEPH LEIDY 



Our cities are more likely to erect 

 monuments in honor of soldiers and 

 statesmen than to commemorate in this 

 way their intellectual leaders. Phila- 

 delphia should therefore be congratu- 

 lated on having placed by its city hall 

 a statue of its great naturalist, Joseph 

 Leidy. Thanks most of all to him, but 

 also to a group of fellow students, 

 Philadelphia maintained for a time 

 during the second half of the last cen- 

 tury a certain preeminence in natural 

 history. We may hope that the dedi- 

 cation of this statue of Professor Leidy 

 on October 30 indicates that the city 

 appreciates the golden age in its his- 

 tory, and will seek to regain its lead- 

 ing position as a center for research in 

 biological science. 



Joseph Leidy was born in Philadel- 

 phia in 1823; he spent his life in that 

 city, and died there in 1891. He grad- 



uated from the medical school of the 

 University of Pennsylvania in 1844, 

 and maintaining his connection with 

 the university as assistant and demon- 

 strator was elected professor of anat- 

 omy in 1853. His connection with the 

 Academy of Natural Sciences was 

 equally long and intimate, and he was 

 also professor at Swarthmore College. 

 His scientific work was closely con- 

 nected with Philadelphia. Most of his 

 six hundred papers were published in 

 the proceedings of the academy and of 

 the Philosophical Society. His paleon- 

 tological papers were based mainly on 

 the collections of the academy, and his 

 work on recent invertebrates on ma- 

 terial collected in and about the city. 

 Leidy published over two hundred 

 papers on the extinct vertebrates of 

 North America, leading in the work in 

 which he was subsequently joined by 

 Cope and Marsh of describing the re- 

 markable fossils of the western plains. 

 As early as 1847 he showed that this 

 continent was the ancestral home of 

 the horse, whose phylogeny is one of 

 the most interesting chapters in the 

 history of evolution, and this paper 

 was followed by others describing the 

 lions, camels, rhinoceros and other 

 mammals and reptiles, which have now 

 no immediate representatives on the 

 continent. Perhaps equally important 

 was Leidy's work on parasites, on 



