CHAPTEE X 



THE EVOLUTION OF THE VERTEBRATES: EDWARD COPE 



Neo-Lamarckism The variation of genera and families Errors of 

 the embryological method Progressive and regressive evolution 

 The law of increase in size The general lines of the evolution 

 of the Vertebrates. 



THE studies of Neumayr were essentially directed 

 to the invertebrate animals. Notwithstanding 

 his vast erudition, which often enabled him to 

 explain his theoretical ideas by examples drawn 

 from the great group of the Vertebrates, the learned 

 Viennese only ventured into that field with greatest 

 circumspection. But the theory of descent had 

 early found, with regard to the higher animals, an 

 ardent, or we might even say an impassioned, 

 champion in the eminent American anatomist 

 and palaeontologist, Edward Cope. Gifted with 

 an eminently philosophical mind, apt to seize and 

 to bring to light the most delicate anatomical re- 

 lations of fossil and living beings, Cope appears to us 

 as a bold spirit, who never draws back before a new 

 or unexpected hypothesis. In point of audacity, 

 sometimes a little too rash, in theoretical concep- 

 tions, the American scholar comes near to the school 

 of Haeckel, with whom he shares the manifest 

 tendency to frequently wander off into the domain 

 of psychology, morals, or metaphysics. But Cope 



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