326 LEADING AMERICAN MEN OF SCIENCE 



the western territories and were under the direction of well-known 

 fossil hunters such as Jacob L. Wortman and Charles H. Sternberg. 



Early in 1877 he gave up his residence in Haddonfield and 

 thereafter his home on Pine Street in Philadelphia was used to 

 store his ever-increasing collections; for notwithstanding financial 

 difficulties that came to him owing to unfortunate investments 

 made from the ample fortune bequeathed to him by his father, 

 he persisted in retaining his collections, refusing even to sell por- 

 tions for which he was offered liberal sums, and at the cost of 

 personal discomfort, held on to them and made his home, for much 

 of the time, in the midst of them, having sold his residential home 

 but keeping his museum. Gill says: "He filled a large house from 

 cellar to topmost story with his collections and resided in an ad- 

 joining one." 



Of this period, Sternberg tells how he had a standing invitation 

 to eat dinner every Sunday with the Professor and his wife and 

 daughter, a lovely child of twelve summers. He says: 



"I shall never forget those Sunday dinners. The food was 

 plain, but daintily cooked, and the Professor's conversation was a 

 feast in itself. He had a wonderful power of putting professional 

 matters from his mind when he left his study, and coming out 

 ready to enter into any kind of merrymaking. He used to sit with 

 sparkling eyes telling story after story, while we laughed at his 

 sallies until we could laugh no more." 



I may add that his work in connection with the exploration of 

 the western territories resulted in the discovery of more than one 

 thousand new species of extinct and as many recent vertebrata. 

 It has been said that this work described in more than four hun- 

 dred separate papers forms "a systematic record of paleontology 

 in the United States." l 



1 Professor Oliver P. Hay is authority for the following statement: "Ac- 

 cording to my examinations of the fossil vertebrates I find that there are 

 something more than 3,200 species described from North America, and of 

 these Cope has given name to 1,115. That is he has named that many 

 species which, with our present knowledge, must be accepted as good. They 

 are distributed as follows: Fishes, 227; Batrachians, 73; Reptiles, 320; Birds, 

 8; Mammals, 487; Total, 1,115." 



