710 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. V. No. 123. 



suggestive results ; for the most abstruse 

 problems he had ever at hand a wide range 

 of answers. Thus the curious fish-like 

 Bothriolepis he compared to an armored as- 

 cidian, basing this surprising view upon a 

 remarkable similarity in the arrangement 

 of plates, arguing that it was reasonable to 

 expect in the early horizon of Bothriolepis 

 that the back-boned creature should be built 

 on the plan of the ascidian tadpole. His final 

 opinions and additions to the taxonomy and 

 phyogeny of the fishes are inserted in the 

 syllabus of his university lectures (1897). 



AMPHIBIANS. 



" There never has been a naturalist," 

 writes Dr. Baur, " who has published so 

 many papers upon the taxonomy, morphol- 

 ogy and paleontology of the Amphibia and 

 Keptilia as Professor Cope." The first of a 

 series of more than forty papers upon the 

 former group is the one ' On the Primary 

 Divisions of the Salamandridse, with de- 

 scriptions of two new species,' alluded to in 

 his letter above, and presented at the age 

 of 19 (April, 1859). It exhibited the pre- 

 cocious taxonomic instinct which soon after- 

 wards prompted him to attack and rear- 

 range the major divisions of the Amphibia. 

 Eapidly following this first essay by others 

 upon the Anura, in 1865 and 1866 he out- 

 lined the larger Ecaudate or Anurous divi- 

 sions: I. Aglossa; II. Bufoniformia ; III. 

 Arcifera; IV. Eaniformia. At the age of 25 

 he described his first extinct Amphibian, 

 Amphibamus, from the Carboniferous of Ohio, 

 and at 28 he published his first large quarto 

 memoir, ' Synopsis of the Extinct Batrachia, 

 Eeptilia and Aves of North America.'* 

 This contained, in addition to the above, 

 the recent urodelous divisions, Trachysto- 

 mata, Gymnophidia, Proteida, but of chief 

 importance, to include the Permian and 

 Triassic forms of the world, he proposed 

 the great extinct order Stegoeephali, which 



* Trans. Amer. Phil. Soc, read 1868, pub. 1869. 

 See also Proc. Phil. Acad. Nat. Sci., 1868, p. 211. 



has since been universally adopted. As a 

 supplement to this memoir appeared in 

 1874 his ' Catalogue of the Air-Breathing 

 Vertebrata from the Coal Measures of Ohio,' 

 including results also published in the pale- 

 ontology of the Geological Survey of OhiO' 

 of the same year. His researches and collec- 

 tions in the typical coal measures and Per- 

 mian extended to Iowa and Illinois, lead- 

 ing to the determination of Criootus, which 

 in 1880* he made the type of the suborder 

 Emholomeri, or Stegocephalia with double 

 vertebral rings. In 1877 he received the 

 first remains of Eryops and Trimerorachis, 

 from the supposed Triassic, but actually 

 Permian beds of Texas, animals which in 

 1882 he made the type of the Rachitomi, 

 a second suborder of Stegocephalia. This 

 accession of material, as we have seen, 

 ranks with that of the Puerco among the 

 chief events of Cope's scientific career, for 

 the Permian of Texas yielded to him not 

 only these remarkable Batrachians with 

 complex vertebrse, but also the great prim- 

 itive representatives of the Reptilia. The 

 suborders Rachitomi and Embolomeri have 

 been grouped as Temnospondyli in con- 

 trast with the specialized Labyrinthodontia 

 and simpler Microsauria of Europe, chiefly 

 made known through the labors of Fritsch, 

 Credner, Gaudry and Miall. Cope's brief 

 memoir of 1881 upon the ' Batrachia of the 

 Permian Period of North America ' summed 

 up his previous contributions, but he an- 

 ticipated that the more exhaustive mono- 

 graphic treatment of the rich amphibian 

 and reptilian fauna of this period, exclu- 

 sively collected and described by him, would 

 constitute a volume of the Hayden Survey 

 memoirs and give him an opportunity of 

 rounding up his prolonged studies. 



In the meantime his investigations upon 

 the living Batrachia extended to Central 

 and South American species, as well as to 

 very original observations upon the laws of 



* American Naturalist, p. 610. 



