EDWARD COPE 79 



shows himself greatly superior to the German trans- 

 formist by the precision of the evidence he adduces 

 in support of his hypothesis, thanks to his thorough 

 knowledge of the comparative anatomy of the lower 

 Vertebrates, and especially to the equipment which 

 he had just acquired by his admirable discoveries 

 into the then almost unexplored lands of Western 

 America. We will endeavour to glean from 

 the immense and very original work of Cope, the 

 principles of the transformist philosophy scattered 

 through his innumerable memoirs, of which the 

 most interesting from this point of view bear the 

 following titles : The Origin of Genera, 1868 ; The 

 Method of Creation of Organic Forms, 1871 ; A Eeview 

 of the Modern Doctrine of Evolution, 1880 ; The 

 Progressive and Regressive Evolution of the Vertebrates, 

 1884; The Origin of the Fittest, 1897; and The 

 Primitive Factors of Organic Evolution, 1896. 



Cope was, very early, a convinced transformist. 

 As early as 1868, at the age of twenty-eight, he 

 wrote an interesting paper on the origin and the 

 variations of genera. By his tendency to attribute 

 a preponderating part in the changes in the struc- 

 ture of beings to the influence of a conscious or 

 unconscious will, and consequently to habit, he 

 draws near to the French School of Lamarck, and 

 deserves to be called the head of Neo-Lamarckism. 



While admitting the views of Darwin, i.e. that the 

 struggle for life and for reproduction is a cause 

 capable of explaining the survival of the fittest and 

 the extinction of the species less well adapted for 

 the maintenance of the equilibrium with regard to 

 the environment, Cope refuses, and not without 



