832 The American Naturalist. [October, 
+ 
and had well advanced in the execution of some of it. He 
had truly died before his time and had left no peer ; the great- 
est of the long line of American naturalists was prematurely 
snatched from science and from friends. 
My acquaintance with Cope began in 1859. While looking 
through the part of the Proceedings of the Academy of Natu- 
ral Sciences of Philadelphia for the month of April, in which 
my first paper published by the Academy had appeared, I 
found one by E. D. Cope “On the Primary Divisions of the 
Salamandridæ.” It seems that the papers by Cope and myself 
had been passed on by the Committee on Publications on the 
very same day (April 26th), and appeared in print in juxtapo- 
sition. I had not previously heard of the new devotee of sci- 
ence, and read his article with as much interest as my Own. 
A well-equipped man had evidently come upon the field and 
this was the first of the numerous articles that were destined 
to appear in an uninterrupted flow for nearly four decades. 
A few months afterwards I met the author in Philadelphia at 
the Academy. A young man, nineteen years old, about 5 feet 
9 or 10 inches high, with head carried somewhat backwards 
and of rather robust frame, stood before me. He had an alert, 
energetic manner, a pronounced, positive voice, and appeared 
to be well able to take his part in any trouble. His knowl- 
edge was by no means confined to herpetology, but covered a 
wide range of science, and his preliminary education had been 
good. We afterwards met from time to time in Philadelphia 
and Washington, and found we had many sympathies in com- 
mon and some differences. 
In one of our first interviews we had quite an argument on 
the nature of the family group in zoology, resulting from 
criticisms I had made on the extended scope he had given to 
that category in the classification of the Salamanders. Another 
controversy, I remember, had reference to the vertebral theory 
of the skull. In an article on the venomous serpents, pub- 
lished in the Proceedings of the Academy for 1859, he had de- 
fined the group in terms involving the adoption of that theory, 
and I ventured to dissent from its reality. I had myself been 
much impressed with it in former days, and when 16 years old 
