EDWARD DRINKER COPE 



PALEONTOLOGIST 



1840-1897 

 BY MARCUS BENJAMIN 



IN the history of American science there will be found the names 

 of many who have devoted their lives to the study of natural his- 

 tory. Indeed, according to Goode, Henry Harriot who accom- 

 panied Sir Walter Raleigh on his voyage to Virginia in 1584 and 

 thereafter compiled a Brief and True Report of the New Found 

 Land of Virginia, which is full of interest to the naturalist, was 

 "the first English man of science who crossed the Atlantic." He 

 is described as "a man of wide culture ... a botanist, zoolo- 

 gist, and anthropologist." From his time to the present there 

 have been many who have followed in his footsteps and among 

 them the names of Say, Leidy, Dana, Agassiz, Baird, and New- 

 berry stand out conspicuously in the front rank, like planets among 

 the stars. 



As knowledge grew, men more and more devoted themselves 

 to specialities, and from naturalists there were differentiated those 

 who studied living forms and those who occupied themselves with 

 fossil life, and then zoologists and paleontologists were recognized, 

 and now' with the everlasting growth of knowledge there are 

 ornithologists, ichthyologists, conchologists, lepidopterists, coleop- 

 terists, carcinologists, and many others who devote themselves 

 exclusively to some one of the almost infinite gradations into which 

 natural science has resolved itself. 



The student of history who recalls the era when the great trans- 

 continental surveys were made to locate a favorable possible 

 railway route that should extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific 



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