562 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. IX. No. 225. 



past, and whose remains lie entombed in 

 the rocks, mute but unimpeachable wit- 

 nesses of the story of their becoming and 

 development. It was generally agreed 

 and fully admitted by the foremost think- 

 ers of this critical period that these re- 

 mains not only once formed parts of living 

 animals, but that they furnish safe guides 

 for the determination of the deposits in 

 which they are found, in the general time 

 scale of the earth's historj^. 



Fossils representing the higher forms 

 were not unknown in Europe at the time 

 this discussion arose, but the specimens 

 from which they were known were in gen- 

 eral so fragmentary and lacking in con- 

 secutiveness as to furnish little evidence 

 for or agairftt the pretensions of the Dar- 

 winian hypothesis. To such an extent was 

 this true that Darwin was compelled to add 

 a chapter in his great work on the Origin 

 of Species, on what he was pleased to call 

 the ' Imperfections of the Geological Rec- 

 ord.' 



It was at this juncture or shortly after- 

 ward that the famous American trio ap- 

 peared upon the scene, and the tremendous 

 weight of their testimony' derived from the 

 unrivaled record of the fossil deposits of 

 Western America has served to take the 

 whole question practically out of the realm 

 of discussion and reduce it to the plane of a 

 demonstrated fact. It has been very truly 

 said that if we regard the truth of Evolu- 

 tion from Mr. Darwin's especial point of 

 view, viz. : that of living plants and ani- 

 mals, we shall conclude that it is a pos- 

 sibility ; if we look at it from the stand- 

 point of embryologj' our judgment must be 

 that it is a probability, but if we examine 

 it from the evidence of paleontology it is 

 no longer a possibilitj' or a probability, 

 but a living truth. 



Such, in brief, is the basis of the claims to 

 distinction which the works of these men 

 offer. The share which Leidy took in the 



performance of this great work has already 

 been told ; the second chapter, devoted to 

 the brilliant discoveries of Cope, has like- 

 wise been written, and it remains now to 

 speak of the work of the man whose scien- 

 tific labors form the subject of the present 

 sketch. 



Othniel Charles Marsh was by nature a 

 student and early gave evidence of what his 

 future career was to be by a love for nature 

 and natural objects. As a boy he collected 

 birds, insects, minerals and fossils. He was 

 born in Lockport, N". Y., October 29, 1831, 

 and in 1852 went to Phillips Andover 

 Academy, where he graduated with honors. 

 He afterwards entered Yale, from which 

 institution he graduated in 1860. While 

 in college he became deeply interested in 

 geology, paleontology and mineralogy, and 

 spent two additional j-ears after his gradua- 

 tion in the Sheffield Scientific School at 

 Yale and three years in Germany in pur- 

 suit of these branches. In 1866 a profes- 

 sorship of vertebrate paleontology was 

 established in Yale and he was called to 

 fill it. Between this and the time of his 

 graduation he had published a number of 

 important papers on ' Minerals and Fos- 

 sils,' many of which appeared in the Ameri- 

 can Journal of Science. In 1868 he began 

 his investigations of the Western fossil de- 

 posits, and this he was all the better able to 

 do on account of the inheritance of a con- 

 siderable fortune from his uncle, George 

 Peabody, the banker. It was largely 

 through his influence that this latter gentle- 

 man was induced to make the munificent 

 gifts to the University which led to the 

 establishment of the Peabody Museum at 

 Yale. 



The record of his discoveries from the 

 time of his appointment to the professor- 

 ship is one of almost continual triumph in 

 the bringing to light of new and strange 

 forms of life that had inhabited the west- 

 ern hemisphere in the distant past. Pre- 



