XXXIV 



PROCEEDINGS OF THE CENTENARY MEETING. 



• 



old type who was able by capacity and training to cover the whole field of nature 

 whereas Cope mastered, in itself a wonderful achievement, the entire d 



of the vertebrates from the fishes up. Marsh, with less breadth and less 

 ability, nevertheless was a comparative anatomist of a high order, an 

 genius for appreciating what might be called the most important thing in science. 

 He always knew where to explore, where to seek the U tisition stages, and he 

 never lost the opportunity to point out at the earliest possible moment the most 

 significant fact to be discovered and disseminated. 



These three men, therefore, approached the subject from the standpoint of 

 three entirely different temperaments and their contributions were of an entirely 

 different character. Leidy was a great describer, Cope was a phenomenal 

 taxonomist, while Marsh was less productive than either but extremely effective 

 in everything he published. Leidy was not a taxonomist or classifier of animals, 

 he was a great naturalist; Cope revolutionized every class of vertebrates which 

 he treated: fishes, amphibians, reptiles, mammals, by his novel arrangement 

 of their systematic characters and his daring innovations in classification. 



I had the pleasure of knowing Leidy slightly and of a long personal acquain- 



tance with Marsh; I knew Cope very intimately, — I was, as your toastmaster 

 said, "one of his boys." He always welcomed Scott and myself to his house; 

 his library and his collections were as open as those of a museum. On one 

 memorable occasion when I visited his house he pulled out a drawer of his black 

 walnut work-table, where he always sat and wrote his papers, and brought out a 

 packet carefully done up in paper and twine, saying, "Osborn, here are some 

 records that you have never seen before." I said, "Well, what are they?" 



He replied, "These are my Marshiana, here is everything relating to the mistakes 

 which that man Marsh has made; and when the time comes, Osborn, I am going 

 to launch this on the world." Well, he did; the bombshell was exploded in due 

 time, and this great mass of information regarding the supposed incapacity of 

 Marsh was spread on the pages of the New York Herald in one of its Sunday issues. 

 The very next Sunday, however, Marsh, who, it appears, had likewise been 

 accumulating a private stock of Copeiana, proved with equal success that Cope's 

 life was one long string of errors from first to last. 



Heredity makes strange bedfellows. It is only by the most extraordinary 

 combination of personal characteristics that we find among scientific men of the 



greatest capacity, such strange mixtures of personal qualities side by side with 

 enius. 



Time, however, softens things and also brings about some strange recombi- 

 nations and associations. Marsh in the course of time passed away, Cope 

 followed him, and Mrs. Cope was good enough to send to the American Museum 

 of Natural History his historic black walnut work-table together with a complete 

 set of his writings I remembered the drawer out of which Cope had pulled his 

 Marshiana. Shortly afterward Director Walcott invited me to succeed 

 Marsh as paleontologist of the United States Geological Survey, and soon 



