I take pleasure in showing my readers a splendid skull (Fig. [34]) after Broili, both the palatine and superior exposures of one peculiar species of these salamanders, to which Cope gave the name Diplocaulus magnicornis. The eyes are far down on the face, but with a broad expanse of sculptured bone behind, terminating in two long “horns,” fourteen inches across from tip to tip, which are merely the greatly prolonged corners of the back of the skull. There are three rows of minute teeth in the roof of the mouth, and a couple of occipital condyles. The vertebræ have a double row of spines down each side of the median line, and the body is long and slender with weak limbs. The head was the largest part of the creature. This species was the most common of all those which I discovered in the Permian beds. Professor Cope used to call the specimens “mud heads,” as they were almost always covered with a thin coating of silicified mud, which was very difficult to remove. In fact, nearly all the bones in this region were enclosed in a hard red matrix.
Fig. 34.—Fossil skull of Giant Salamander, Diplocaulus magnicornis.
Collected by Charles Sternberg in 1901. (After Broili.)
Fig. 35.—Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn.
In the spring of 1897, I was again working in the Texas Permian for Professor Cope. He was deeply interested in the ancient fauna of the region, and I was sending him all the finer specimens by express, as I had during the last two years. On the fifteenth of April, I was camping on Indian Creek, having just completed a long and trying journey of about a hundred miles, around the Little Wichita and back to the main river at Indian Creek. During the trip we had encountered a terrible windstorm, which had threatened to carry away our tent, but we had weathered the gale and camped in the timber. I had gone to bed, but was roused from my cot by the arrival of a livery-man, who had been hunting for me all the day before. He handed me a message from Mrs. Cope, announcing the death of her husband on the twelfth of April.
I had lost friends before, and had known what it was to bury my own dead, even my firstborn son, but I had never sorrowed more deeply than I did now over the news that in the very prime of life, in the noonday of his glorious intellectual achievements, as he was bending all his energies to the study and description of the wonderful fauna of the Texas Permian, the greatest naturalist in America had passed away with his work undone. Death is terrible always, but it seems especially so when it strikes down men in the highest rank of intelligence, who are adding every day to the world’s knowledge.
I was Cope’s assistant in the field for eight seasons, and while we did not always agree, I consider the work which I did for him my most valuable service to science. It has often been my good fortune to supply him with some important link in the line of descent of vertebrate life,—such as, for instance, the famous batrachian genera Dissorophus and Otocœlus, reptiles with a carapace, indicating the line of descent of turtles from batrachians, or the camel from the John Day beds, with the metacarpals and metatarsals distinct,—and to furnish him with a large number of other forms which, with the material secured by his other collectors, helped him to acquire what Dr. Osborn has so truthfully called “a masterly knowledge of each type.”
It is largely due to his efforts that the great science of paleontology, which, within my remembrance, had but few votaries, is now considered one of the most interesting studies of modern times. Well did he prophesy, “After us there will be more demand for our wares”; how well one can fully realize only when one remembers that the great American Museum (whose department of paleontology under the able management of Dr. Henry F. Osborn (Fig. [35]) is now one of the glories of science), that the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburg and the Field Columbian in Chicago and the Museums of Yale and Harvard and Princeton, besides many others both here and in Europe have been largely built up since he wrote those words. One thing is certain—as long as science lasts, and men love to study the animals of the present and of the past, Cope’s name and work will be remembered and revered.
I am glad to be able to show a good photograph of this lamented naturalist (Fig. [15]). Peace be to his ashes!