EDWARD DRINKER COPE 315 



in the little town. In spite of the popular excitement against these 

 prisoners of war Caleb Cope offered them an asylum in his home 

 and protected them against the vengeance of a mob which attacked 

 his residence. He is said to have been a member of the Society 

 of Friends and an opponent of the war against England. His son, 

 Thomas Pirn Cope, began a commerical career in Philadelphia 

 in 1786, and four years later he established himself in the business 

 of importing. His success was very great and soon warranted 

 him in purchasing his own vessels. This venture likewise proved 

 successful, and in 1821 he inaugurated the first line of packets 

 that ran between Philadelphia and Liverpool, which then con- 

 tinued until about the beginning of the Civil War. His sons, 

 Henry and Alfred, succeeded to the business, and in time the firm 

 assumed the name of Cope Brothers. 



Edward Drinker Cope was the eldest son of Alfred Cope and 

 his wife, Hannah Edge. He was born in Philadelphia on July 28, 

 1840, while his father was yet active in business, but as the child 

 grew to boyhood the family removed to Germantown and there 

 the father, who was a man of cultivated literary taste, freed from 

 the active interests of his commercial pursuits, lived in ease and 

 devoted himself largely to the bringing up of his son. 



At a very early age the boy manifested an active and intelligent 

 interest in nature; when only about seven years old during a sea 

 voyage to Boston with his father he is said to have kept a journal 

 which he filled with drawings of " jelly fish, grampuses and other 

 natural objects seen by the way." When eight and a half years 

 old he made his first visit to the Museum of the Academy of Natu- 

 ral Sciences of his native city; this visit was "on the 2ist of the 

 zoth mo. 1848" as entered in his journal. He brought away care- 

 ful drawings, measurements and descriptions of several larger 

 birds, as well as of the skeleton of an ichthyosaurus. His drawing 

 of the fossil reptile bears the explanatory legend in Quaker style: 

 "two of the sclerotic plates: look at the eye, thee will see these in 

 it." At the age of ten he was taken upon a voyage to the West 

 Indies. 



His contemporary and lifelong friend, Dr. Theodore Gill, in 



