840 : The American Naturalist. [October, 
recognize his weakness as well as his strength. He himself 
has wished this and has asked in the spirit of the Moor: 
Speak of me as I am; nothing extenuate, 
Nor set down aught in malice. 
III. 
The extent of Cope’s contributions to herpetology have been 
referred to. Herpetology was his first love and continued to 
be the favorite branch of science to his life’s end. His impress 
on it was, in some respects at least, greater than on any other 
of the sciences he cultivated, and doubtless the systems he in- 
troduced, with some modifications, will be the most lasting. 
He found herpetology an art; he left it a science: he found it 
a device mainly for the naming of specimens; he left it the 
expression of the coordination of all structural features. The 
reformations he effected in the classification of the anurous 
amphibians and the saurian reptiles were especially notable. 
The anurans had been chiefly differentiated in groups on 
account of the most superficial characters. Such were the 
modes of fixation of the tongue or its absence, the develop- 
ment of disk-like expansions of the tips of the toes or simply 
attenuated toes, and the presence or absence of teeth in a jaw. 
Cope proceeded to investigate the group in an anatomical man- 
ner and reached entirely new conclusions. He found that im- 
portant differences existed in the structure of the sternum, and 
especially in the connection of the lateral halves. In the com- 
mon toads and tree toads of Europe and North America the 
so-called clavicle and coracoid of each side are “ connected by 
a longitudinal arched cartilage which overlaps that of the 
opposite side,” while in the common frogs the clavicles and 
coracoids of both sides are connected by a single median car- 
tilage. The former type is now known as the arciferous and 
the latter as the firmisternal. Although Cope was the first to 
appreciate the significance of those characters, he did not at 
once fully realize their morphological value, the name Arcifera 
having been originally applied by him only to types of that. 
group having teeth. . Ultimately he did so, and his views have 
stood the test of time and the latest critical investigations. 
