1897.] Editor’s Table. 417 
Cope’s classification of the fishes is the only one that can be used by the 
student of paleontology. Besides this central work Cope published 
numerous papers upon the fresh water fishes of North and South 
America, and, wherever he touched the subject, he left his mark. 
In the Batrachia and the Reptilia his work was of the greatest value. 
His synopsis of the Batrachia, based as it is on the entire structure of 
these animals, will long remain a standard for the American student ; 
but in studying this work one must remember that its foundations were 
laid in its broader features, when the author was but twenty-five years 
of age. His small pamphlet on the osteology of the Lacertilia is a mine 
of structural facts, while his studies of the snakes, structural and sys- 
tematic, cannot be ignored. 
In the Invertebrates, Cope did but little ; but one must not forget his 
studies of cave faunz and his papers on the myriapods. 
There was another side to Professor Cope’s scientifie work, that which 
dealt with theories of evolution. Professor Cope maintained in his 
earliest essays that the principle of Natural Selection, the very basis of 
Darwinism, could not be invoked as a causa vera to account for the 
origin of species and of higher groups. It did not explain the origin of 
variations, but could only act after variations had been produced to 
perpetuate and preserve those most advantageous to the organism. The 
cause of variation must be sought elsewhere, and he rehabilitated for 
this purpose Lamarck’s early principle of the effect of use and disuse of 
parts. In this way he became the founder of the school of Neo- 
Lamarckians, in which his efforts were ably seconded by others, nota- 
bly by Hyatt and Packard. He remained, however, until his death, 
the foremost advocate and exponent of this distinctively American 
school of philosophical biology. 
His work in this line was not experimental, but rested rather on the 
evidence presented by fossil forms. In this way he could bring to his 
support a wealth of facts, accessible to no one else. His mechanical 
explanations were thoroughly and carefully worked out, and his views, 
like those expressed in his able paper on the homologies and origin of 
the types of molar teeth, were so cogently expressed that they made 
numerous converts to his theories, 
This neo-Lamarckian view was first set forth in 1868, and was sup- 
ported by numerous subsidiary theories advanced then and at later 
dates. Among them were the theory of “ acceleration and retardation,” 
the principle of “ exact parallelism” so strikingly exemplified in the 
Anurous Batrachia, “ homologous groups” and “ consciousness in evo- 
lution.” Later he turned to those more difficult evolutionary problems 
29 
