Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 19.djvu/120

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110
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

at Constantinople there are bureaus established by France, Austria, Russia, England, and Germany, who occupy themselves with the international postal service, in which Turkey takes no part. At Berne the Ottoman delegate protested against this state of things, declaring that his Government wished to enter definitely into its rights, and that, besides, it was ready to do all that was necessary to carry out the requirements of the international postal service. The response to this was a demurrer, on the ground that the protest was a matter of which the conference could not take cognizance, and one that should be regulated between Turkey and the different states interested.

The general principle of the treaty is thus stated in its opening article: "The countries between which the present treaty is concluded will form, under the designation of General Postal Union, one single postal territory for the reciprocal exchange of correspondences between their postal departments."

SKETCH OF EDWARD D. COPE.

THOUGH still a young man, having just entered on his prime, Professor Cope is widely known for his enthusiasm and industry in scientific pursuits. Already he has accomplished an amount of original work in his chosen field of investigation that would do credit to an ordinary lifetime, and that justly entitles him to the place he now holds among the foremost of American biologists.

Edward Drinker Cope was born in the city of Philadelphia, in 1840. He is of English and French descent, and his ancestry on both sides is represented by names once prominent in the histories of their respective countries. As a boy he was particularly interested in scientific studies, and also showed an early aptitude in the use of language, which has since developed into that remarkable power of lucid and fluent expression, even on the most abstruse of topics, for which he is now distinguished. He began to write on his favorite subjects when only sixteen; but, as he was then occupied with what others had done, and presumably had nothing new to say, his writing attracted little if any public attention before he was twenty-five. After eighteen he studied with a private tutor; subsequently graduated from the University of Pennsylvania; studied comparative anatomy in the Academy of Sciences of Philadelphia, in the Smithsonian Institution in 1859, and in Europe in 1863-'64; and became Professor of Natural Science in Haverford College in 1866. The most important part of his scientific work is comprised in his paleontological studies, and the papers he has prepared concerning them. He began his explorations in field geology in the Cretaceous green-sand of New Jer-