834 The American Naturalist. [October, 
When eight and a half years old he made his first visit to the 
Museum of the Academy of Natural Sciences of his native 
city ; this visit was on the “21st day of the 10th Month, 1848,” 
as entered in his journal. He brought away careful drawings, 
measurements and descriptions of several larger birds, as well 
as of the skeleton of an Ichthyosaurus. His drawing of the 
fossil reptile bears the explanatory legend in Quaker style: 
“ two of the sclerotic plates look at the eye—thee will see these 
in it.” 
At the age of ten he was taken upon a voyage to the West 
Indies. What were the impressions he derived from that voy- 
age we have not been told. But what has been communicated 
amply justified Professor Osborn in his declaration that “the 
principal impression he gave in boyhood was of incessant 
activity in mind and body, reaching in every direction for 
knowledge, and of great independence in character and ac- 
tion.” His school’ education was mostly carried on in the 
Westtown Academy, a Quaker institution about 23 miles west 
of Philadelphia. One of his instructors was Dr. Joseph 
Thomas, a well known literary worker of Philadelphia and 
future author of a “ Universal Pronouncing Dictionary of 
Biography and Mythology ” (1870), and said to have been an 
“ excellent linguist.” Under his guidance Cope obtained a pass- 
ing knowledge of Latin and Greek. He appears to have had no 
instruction in any biological science and had no regular col- 
legiate training. He did, however, enjoy the advantage of 
“a year’s study (1858-9) of anatomy and clinical instruction 
at the University of Pennsylvania,” in which the illustrious 
Leidy was professor of anatomy. But, in the words of his 
literary executor (Professor H. F. Osborn), “ it is evident that 
he owed far more to paternal guidance in the direct study of 
nature and to his own impulses as a young investigator than 
to the five or six years of formal education which he received 
6 Osborn, in Science, N. s., V, 706. 
‘Mr. Garrett informs me that Cope’s “ education appears to have been received 
at home until 1851; then for two years at the Friends’ Select School in Philadel- 
phia ; from 1853 to 1856 at West Town, and from 1856 to 1859 by private tuition, 
and then again at the Select School in Philadelphia. 
