925. 377 



I. 



Edward Drinker Cope. 



BY the death of Professor Cope of Philadelphia, announced last 

 month, biological science has been deprived of one of the 

 most restless and fertile brains ever devoted to its interests. Con- 

 tinually on the alert, devouring every new zoological paper or memoir 

 with almost feverish excitement, though confining his own personal 

 researches exclusively to the Vertebrata, Cope made many of the 

 boldest and, in some respects, the most successful attempts, which 

 have hitherto been devised, to solve the problems of organic evolution. 

 Though, perhaps, often premature, and sometimes mingled with much 

 error, which a more cautious enquirer would have avoided by waiting 

 for additional evidence, his remarkable speculations — some have even 

 dared to regard them as wild guesses — have had an influence on the 

 progress of modern biological research which it is impossible to 

 estimate. There sometimes proved to be only a small kernel of 

 truth in the new conception as it first appeared ; the original state- 

 ment was often gradually modified in a rapid series of provokingly 

 desultory notes, perhaps mostly evoked by the writings of his fellow- 

 workers, whose interest in the subject he had aroused ; but there was 

 always a spark of suggestiveness which opened up some new line of 

 enquiry, and there was an almost never-failing acumen in dis- 

 tinguishing the important from the unimportant features of a case. 

 When others published a plain statement of facts. Cope would often 

 interpose, usually on the spur of the moment, to add a sparkle of 

 philosophy to the contribution ; and much of his brilliant generaliza- 

 tion appeared in the characteristic reviews in the American Naturalist. 

 His influence in personal intercourse, too, has probably not been 

 equalled since the days of Louis Agassiz. To know him in his 

 museum-house in Pine Street, Philadelphia — to see him at work, to 

 hear him discuss the piles of new literature he happened to be reading 

 — was a source of inspiration which could never fade from the memory 

 of any young biologist who had the privilege of thus coming in 

 contact with him. When financial misfortune overtook him some 

 years ago, before he was called to a Chair in the University of 

 Pennsylvania, he cheerfully adapted himself to the new and, to him, 

 strange conditions, not relinguishing his scientific occupations in the 



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