LIFE AND WORKS OF COPE. 



successively dissipated, and the order Fledospondyli, modi- 

 fied by the addition to it of his Qlanencheli, stands out as 

 one of the most important of his system." 



All fishes having an eel-like form, continues Professor 

 Gill — that is, with a long, snake-like aspect and without 

 ventral fins — had long been supposed to be nearly related 

 to each other and, if not forming one family (as the older 

 authors believed), to constitute at least a natural series of 

 families. Cope, however, demonstrated that there were 

 great diversities in internal structure among fishes charac- 

 terized by an external eel-like form. For example, the 

 electric eel and the Sternopygids are not at all related to 

 the typical eels, but really belong to the same great group 

 as the carp, dace, and roach. Although Cope was not the 

 first to recognize this absence of relationship to the eels, he 

 has the unquestioned merit of having first recognized to 

 what others the Sternopygids were to be approximated. 

 Moreover, he segregated the true eels into four ordinal 

 groups, two of which (Ichthyocephali and Holostomi) are now 

 generally combined in the order Symbranchia, while the 

 other two are recognized as suborders of the Linnsean order 

 Apodes — an order that is Linnsean, however, only in name 

 and in type. 



Professor Gill closes with the following critique : 



" I cannot consider his removal of the ' subclass Dipnoi ' to a posi- 

 tion between the Holocephali and his Elasmohranchii {Plagiostomi,) 

 or his combination of his old subclass Orossopterygia with his sub- 

 class Adinopteri as improvements. But the subdivision of the 

 Crossoptergyia into Rhipidopterygia and Orossopterygia (or what 

 may be rather called Eucrossopterygia) and the new orders (or sub- 

 orders) which he established appear to express morphological details 

 as near as can be done with present material ; at least his views, 

 with slight modifications, have been accepted by the best informed 

 living student of the extinct forms — I mean, of course, A. Smith 

 Woodward of the British Museum." 



