1897.] A Chapter in the History of Science. 835 
at school. He was especially fond of map drawing and of 
geographical studies.” 
While a school boy he relieved his studies of the classics 
and the regular course in which boys of his age were drilled 
by excursions into the fields and woods. Reptile life espe- 
pecially interested him, and he sought salamanders, snakes 
and tortoises under rocks, stones, fallen trees and layers of 
leaves, as well as in the ponds and streams of his vicinage. 
The trophies of his excursions were identified from descriptions 
in the works in which they were treated, as well as by compar- 
ison with identified specimens in the museum of the Academy. 
He early and almost without guidance learned to use the 
library and collection of the Academy, although he did not 
become a member until he came of age in 1861. 
Cope’s first contribution to the Proceedings of the Academy 
appeared in the part covering April, and was “On the Pri- 
mary Divisions of the Salamandride, with Descriptions of the - 
New Species.” In this maiden paper he instituted important 
modifications of the systems previously adopted in the United 
States. He soon afterwards catalogued the serpents preserved 
in the museum of the Academy of Natural Sciences and like- 
wise improved upon the systems previously in vogue. He con- 
tinued with various papers, describing new species and giving 
synopses of brief monographs of sundry genera of lizards and 
anurous amphibians. 
For five years his publication was confined almost exclu- 
sively to the reptiles and amphibians. (The continuity was 
only interrupted once in 1862, when he described a new shrew 
caught by himself in New Hampshire. y Not until 1864 did 
he begin to extend his field. In that year he described various 
fishes and a supposed new whale, and gave his first contribu- 
tion to paleontology in the description of the stegosaurian am- 
Phibian called Amphibamus grandiceps. But although his at- 
tention had become thus divided, he never lost his interest in 
* Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila., 1859, pp. RRS 
* An unentitled communication u 
published in the Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences ay - 1862 
= (Proc. 1861, p. 522-524); It is not included in the list of Cope’s papers in the 
~ tatalogue by the Royal Society 
Boh in P 
