LIFE AND WORKS OF COPE. XXVll 



Western territory and began the simultaneous exploration 

 and description of a limited fauna in a somewhat limited 

 region, with the inevitable result of a struggle ior priority 

 and a permanent rupture of friendly intercourse. It is 

 necessary to allude to the fact, because it greatly affected 

 the subsequent history of American paleontology. Fortu- 

 nately, the western fossil area proved to be a vast one, and 

 the remarkable discoveries by Wortman in the Big Horn 

 and Wasatch, beginning in 1878, also by Baldwin in the 

 Puerco of New Mexico, beginning in 1880, and the explora- 

 tions already described of Cummins in the Permian of 

 Texas, afforded Cope a noble field of research quite free 

 from the haste of rivalry. 



As early as 1864 Cope had outlined a classification of 

 the Squamata, taking advantage of characters distinguish- 

 ing the snakes and lizards given by Miiller, also those 

 given by Stannius. Here, as in the fishes. Cope perceived 

 the superior value of the hard parts of the body to the 

 tongue and soft parts, which were then employed by the 

 greater number of anatomists ; as well pointed out by Boul- 

 enger: 



"Whilst engaged in a revision of the Lizard-collection in the 

 British Museum, I have felt the necessity of a thorough systematic 

 rearrangement of the order Lacertilia. The classifications proposed 

 by Dumeril and Bibron and Gray, and now still generally in use, 

 with slight modifications, are, on the whole, as unnatural as can be, 

 and founded, to a great extent, on characters of pholidosis and physi- 

 ognomy. Physiognomy is worth nothing as a guide in the formation of 

 higher groups ; as to the characters afforded by the scales I have con- 

 vinced myself that they are very deceptive, and ought to be taken into 

 consideration in the definition of families only when accompanied by 

 other characters. Like Cope, whose lizard families I regard as the 

 most natural hitherto proposed, I shall lay greater stress on osteo- 

 logical characters and on the structure of the tongue. Special im- 

 portance must also be attached to the presence or absence, and the 

 structure, of dermal ossifications on the head and body, and these 



