THE MUSEUM. 
21 • 
snakes—should have been given to the world at the age of nineteen years. His.fond¬ 
ness therefor increasing with advancing years, others followed in succession, many of 
them of the highest importance to science, until our young author began to compel 
recognition, and to assume a position of prominence among the savants of the day. 
Society after society, at home and abroad, soon welcomed him, and to-day his name is 
enrolled in the list of membership of a dozen or more, notably the United States 
National Academy of Science, the Geological and Zoological Societies of London, and 
the Geological Society of France. Though mostly employed at present in scientific labor, 
voluntary and unremunerative, in a pecuniary sense, he, nevertheless, has had time to 
fill many important positions. As geologist and palaeontologist of the U. S. Geological 
and Geographical Survey West of the One-hundredth Meridian, under Capt. G. M. 
Wheeler, and as palaeontologist of the U. S. Geological Survey of the Territories, under 
Dr. F. V. Hayden, he has been of inestimable value to science and the country. 
Respecting the Professor’s scientific work, which has mainly been in the compara¬ 
tive anatomy of living and extinct vertebrate animals, and in the theory and philosophy 
of the doctrine of evolution, much might be said of a commendatory character, as his 
discoveries in anatomy have been usually turned to account in a taxonomic sense, so 
as to be utilized in the study of the laws of succession of extinct animals. His pub¬ 
lications are numerous and varied, embracing, besides some three hundred papers, five 
ponderous quarto volumes, well-laden with descriptions and illustrations of the most 
astounding revelations of the great stone-book of nature; more than one thousand 
species of preexistent vertebrates, representing families and orders previously unknown, 
are described for the first time in these mighty tomes. 
The researches necessary for the production of labors so extensive, as such a mass 
of literature evidences, has called the author thereof into many and diverse regions, 
where the foot of civilized man has hardly dared to penetrate. Western Kansas, 
Southwestern Wyoming, Northeastern Colorado, Northwestern New Mexico, Western 
Texas and the Upper Missouri have been at various times the scenes of his explorations. 
In a country occupied by savage beasts, deadly reptiles and treacherous Indians, and 
exposed to a thousand dangers by hill and flood, he has gleaned the largest and, no 
doubt, the most diversified collection of vertebrate fossils in America, and enriched his 
mind with knowledge that has been a potent influence in the world of thought. 
Were it possible to resurrect the multitudinous forms of back-boned life that once 
peopled our realm, and gather them together into one vast orderly army, the mind 
of man would be lost in utter bewilderment as the mighty array passed in review. 
Gigantic deinosaurs, monstrous sea-serpents, huge, unwieldy mastodons, five-toed 
horses, lions, camels, monkeys, and hosts of others, many of the most composite 
structure, would constitute a panorama of strange figures—denizens of far-off tertiary 
and cretaceous times—that would well-nigh o’erwhelm the beholder. For the little 
that is known of these strange creatures we are largely indebted to the subject of our 
sketch. I shall never forget the interest, the curiosity, the astonishment excited when, 
a few years ago, he introduced to the Philadelphia Academy, then holding its meetings 
