714 



SCmNGE. 



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



and Placentalia, and will probably be found 

 among the Monotremata. 



These are the mountain peaks, the points 

 where exploration and discovery were fol- 

 lowed by happy inspiration, in a chain of 

 contributions, which includes his exposi- 

 tion of the faunal succession from the 

 base to the summit of the tertiary. In 

 the Bridger, Cope himself found the lower 

 jaw of Anatomorphus, with its typically 

 human dentition, which, owing to its ex- 

 treme antiquity, occasioned him a greater 

 surprise than any discovery he ever made; 

 he also found the last of the great race of 

 Uintatheres at the top of Washakie Moun- 

 tain. We owe to him alone our knowledge 

 of the scanty Wind River fauna. From 

 the White River Oligocene his materials 

 were poor and his work less satisfactory. 

 From the rich Upper Oligocene, with the 

 assistance of Wortman, he secured fine 

 collections and has especially enriched our 

 knowledge of the Anohitheriidce, Felidce 

 and Canidce. From the Upper Miocene 

 Deep River and Loup Fork beds he has 

 practically contributed all that we know, 

 especially of the Rhinoceroses, Horses, Mas- 

 todons, Camels and other ruminants and 

 carnivora. Of the latter fauna his most 

 complete papers were upon the evolution of 

 the Oreodontid'x. His latest contributions 

 to our knowledge of the fossil mammalia 

 were upon the fauna of the Blanco and 

 Palo-Duro, or Goodnight beds of Texas 

 and the rich cave fauna from Port Kennedy, 

 Pa., brought together by Dr. H. C. Mercer. 

 It was his intention to cover the entire 

 later Tertiary in a second part of the ' Ter- 

 tiary Vertebrata ; ' many of the plates and 

 much of the MSS. of this volume are 

 ready. 



The ' Tertiary Vertebrata,' Vol. III., of 

 the Hayden quartos published in 1883, is his 

 most imposing contribution to paleontol- 

 ogy, including his studies of all the verte- 

 brate fauna of the Tertiary lakes west of the 



Rockies. This work of over a thousand 

 pages and eighty plates is said to have been 

 the despair of the public printer owing to 

 the constant additions made while in press. 

 It extends from the Puerco to a portion of 

 the Lower Miocene fauna. Besides the full 

 description and illustration of the great 

 hoofed orders above alluded to, it contains 

 the fall exposition of the characteristic 

 forms of Creodonta, an order of primitive 

 carnivora which he separated from the 

 Marsupiala in 1875, and in which he placed 

 six families of mammals from different parts 

 of the world. 



Before leaving the mammals it is fitting 

 to speak of his work upon ' kinetogensis,' or 

 the mechanical origin of the hard parts of 

 the body, especially of the teeth, vertebrae 

 and limbs. An invaluable paper by his 

 friend and later colleague, Ryder, put him 

 upon this line of investigation, the results 

 of which he published in a long series of 

 papers culminating in his memoir upon the 

 ' Origin of the Hard Parts of the Mam- 

 malia ' and in his collections of essays in 

 the ' Origin of the Fittest ' and ' Primary 

 Factors of Organic Evolution.' One of his 

 chief motives in these researches was the 

 demonstration, he believed they afforded, 

 of the hereditary transmission of the effects 

 of individual efforts, use and disuse, but 

 even if this motive is subsequently shown 

 to be an illusive one, by our future knowl- 

 edge of the real nature of evolution, these 

 investigations lose little, if any, of their in- 

 trinsic value. First, as in all his work, he 

 brings together an immense array of valu- 

 able facts and observations ; second, he ex- 

 tends the principle of the independent 

 origin of similar structures ; third, he in most 

 cases successfully establishes the actual 

 mechanical adaptive or teleological relations 

 of the parts described ; fourth, he traces the 

 course of phylogenic modification in a num- 

 ber of important organs and thus estab- 

 lishes certain obscure homologies, notably 



