402 PROCEEDINGS OF MONTREAL MEETING. 
ontological work was done with material collected by others in regions 
which he had never been able to visit. In those days the art of collect- 
ing fossil vertebrates was in its infancy and consisted chiefly in picking 
up the bones which had been weathered out of the matrix and lay loose 
upon the surface of the ground. Fossils from very different geological 
horizons were thus sometimes mingled together, and the faunal lists 
drawn up from such heterogeneous material led to some very erroneous 
inferences. Cope escaped this danger by examining the formations him- 
self and by collecting much of his material with his own hands. This 
statement is not meant to imply that he gathered his enormous collec- 
tions alone and unassisted, which would have been physically impossi- 
ble, but that he had himself collected in almost all the formations which 
he describes, and that he had made himself personally familiar with the 
stratigraphy of nearly every one of these horizons. 
Valuable as it was and still is, we see that Cope’s geological work was 
rather of the nature of an introduction to his paleontological investiga- 
tions. Hence many important geological observations are scattered 
through his paleontological papers, and it would require long and ardu- 
ous labor to collect them all. 
In a brief and hurried sketch like the present only the broader out- 
lines of our subject can be indicated and only a few of the most salient 
points emphasized. To do it full justice would not only require far more 
time than I have been able to devote to it, but would exhaust the patience 
of the most long-suffering hearers. To appreciate the epoch-making 
character of these investigations we should remember that when Cope 
first undertook his labors the haziest ideas were entertained regarding 
the position and succession of the numerous and extensive fresh-water 
formations which characterize the western part of the country. It would 
be making an exaggerated claim to say that he had brought order out of 
this chaos, but it is hardly too much to say that he more than any other 
single individual contributed to this great result. Such was his power 
of insight that he was occasionally too far ahead of his contemporaries, 
and only of late have certain of his views received their just meed of 
appreciation, and in some instances we are coming back to the opinions 
which he first promulgated, but which were ignored or rejected. 
The most convenient way of surveying Cope’s work in geology will be 
to take it up in the order of geological chronology, though in a more de- 
tailed account it would perhaps be preferable to follow the order in 
which the work was done, as that would serve to display the gradual 
development and change in his opinions. 
As Cope’s principal investigations lay in the domain of vertebrate 
paleontology, he has comparatively little to say concerning the Paleozoic 
