378 NATURAL SCIENCE. June, 



least. To the very end he was absorbed in the fascinating problems 

 which he began to study forty years ago. 



To alhide to his own special researches, those, namely, in the 

 structure, classification, and evolution of the vertebrated animals, 

 perhaps the most significant feature to note is the importance Cope 

 ascribed to the characters of the skeleton. In view of the researches 

 of Oken, Cuvier, Owen, Huxley, and others, it cannot be said that 

 the study of the skeleton had been neglected before Cope began his 

 work. It is, nevertheless, true that he was the first to emphasise the 

 importance of certain osteological characters in many groups where 

 their significance had been overlooked ; and he was more successful 

 in determining the natural affinities of certain forms, even in defining 

 some great groups, than any of his predecessors, who had been misled 

 by mere external resemblances. So long ago as 1865, for example, 

 he arrived at the broad classification of the frogs, which everyone now 

 admits to be truly natural, by a detailed examination of the skeleton 

 in the various genera. A little later, he similarly laid the foundation 

 of the now generally-accepted classification of the lizards ; still later, 

 he proposed the only really natural arrangement of the Chelonia, by 

 reference to the characters of the neck-vertebras. His arrangement 

 of the bony fishes, also, first sketched roughly in 1871, was a great 

 advance on any scheme previously published, owing to the acumen 

 with which he employed the osteological characters of the group. In 

 this work he was immensely aided by the unique collection of skeletons 

 prepared by Professor Josef Hyrtl of Vienna, which he purchased at 

 an early stage in his scientific career. 



During the first decade of his original researches. Cope confined 

 his attention almost entirely to the existing Vertebrata. It was only 

 later, when he began exploration, partly on his own account, partly 

 under the auspices of the United States Government, that he made a 

 special study of extinct types. Between 1859 and 1864 he wrote on 

 recent Batrachia and Reptilia ; and in the latter year he published his 

 first ichthyological paper, on a blind siluroid. In 1865, he seems to 

 have described a fossil vertebrate for the first time, the Labyrinthodont 

 AmpJiibavius gvandiceps from the Coal Measures. In the same and the 

 following year he paid much attention to the existing Cetacea. Then 

 came the first of his long series of papers on extinct reptiles (on the 

 Dinosaurian genus Lcrlaps, 1866). His work on extinct Vertebrata for 

 the United States Geological Survey was not confined merely to the 

 numerous small papers he published, but was also issued in a more 

 handsome form in two illustrated quarto volumes, the first on " The 

 Vertebrata of the Cretaceous Formations of the West" (1875), the 

 second on "The Vertebrata of the Tertiary Formations of the West" 

 (1884). The latter, though an especially bulky tome, is described as 

 " Book I," and was, unfortunately, never followed by the succeeding 

 "Book," which Cope duly prepared but never had published, owing to 

 political changes which led to his exclusion from the public service. 



