LIFE AND WORKS OF COPE. Vll 



detail is heightened, not chilled, by the necessary 'investigation' — 

 which, in my humble opinion is one of the most useful as well as 

 pleasing exercises of the intellect, in the circle of human study. 

 How many are there who are delighted with a 'fine view,' but who 

 seldom care to think of the mighty and mysterious agency that 

 reared the hills, of the wonderful structure and growth of the 

 forests that crown them, or of the complicated mechanism of the 

 myriads of higher organisms that abound everywhere ; who would 

 see but little interesting in a fungus, and who would shrink with 

 affected horror from a defenseless toad * * * Dr. Leidy is getting 

 up a great work on comparative anatomy which is to be the modern 

 standard. Such a work will be very useful to those who want to go 

 to the bottom of natural history ; it is an interesting study, too, to 

 notice the modification in form — the degradations,f substitutions, 

 etc. , among the internal organs and bones. The structure, forms 

 and positions of teeth, too, are interesting to notice — so invariably 

 are they the index of the economy and the position in nature of the 

 animal. ' ' 



This is the reflection of a lad of nineteen, an age at which 

 some modern educators would have us believe our young 

 men are just ready for the collegiate Freshman class. It is 

 obvious from other portions of the letter that by this time 

 young Cope's career was fully determined in his own mind. 

 During the same year he went to Washington to study 

 and work in the Smithsonian Institution under Spen- 

 cer F. Baird, and it is amusing to observe him in the above 

 letter classing himself with Baird as the only Americans 

 who knew anything of the Batrachia. 



Upon April 19, 1859, he contributed his first paper (al- 

 luded to above) to the Academy " On the primary divisions 

 of the Salamandridse, with a description of two new species." 

 He followed this by a full description, in the same year, of 

 reptiles brought from West Africa by Du Chaillu, naming 

 several new forms ; also by a catalogue of the venomous 

 snakes in the museum. In the succeeding three years he 



fA word used by French writers of the time to express lines of evolutionary 

 descent. 



