Cope, Edward

DRINKER, a distinguished palæontologist and comparative anatomist, was born in Philadelphia, Pa., July 28, 1840, being the descendant of a family of Friends long eminent for enterprise and philanthrophy. He was educated in private schools, and afterward studied medicine in the University of Pennsylvania, but a native taste for science turning his attention strongly in that direction, he was led to accept the chair of Natural History in Haver ford College. At a later date he became the geologist and paleontologist of the Wheeler U. S. Survey of the West, and subsequently palæontologist of the Hayden Geological Survey of the Territories. In connection with these expeditions he made extensive explorations in the fo il-bearing region of the West, and afterward sent exploring expeditions at his own expense to the Western United States, Honduras, Peru and Brazil. The result of these labors was a very large and unique collection of vertebrate fo ils, by the study of which Prof. C. won an exalted position among the world's scientists, being at the time of his death the foremost palæontologist of America, if not of the world. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and numerous other scientific bodies of Europe and America; was President of the American A ociation of Science during its 1896 se ion; proprietor and editor of the American Naturalist, and Profe or of Geology in the University of Pennsylvania. He was a voluminous writer, earnestly advocating in his works the theory of evolution from the Neo-Lamarckian point of view, and tracing the philogenetic history of several branches of the animal kingdom throughout the Tertiary geological period. Died at Philadelphia, April 12, 1897.