The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 36, July 1932 - April, 1933 Page: 79

Book Reviews and Notices

an important role in the tragedy. All in all, Remember Goliad
has real interest and brings together all the available information,
with many curious facts, concerning the survivors of the most
tragic episode in the struggle for Texas independence.
C. E. CASTANEDA.
The Life and Letters of Edward Drinker Cope, with a Bibliography
of His Writings Classified by Subject. A Study of the
Pioneer and Foundation Periods of Vertebrate Palaeontology
in America. By Henry Fairfield Osborn, Senior Geologist,
U. S. Geological Survey; Honorary Curator, Department of
Vertebrate Palaeontology, American Museum of Natural
History. With the co-operation of Helen Ann Warren [and
others]. (Princeton University Press, Princeton, N. J.
1931. London: Humphrey Milford, Oxford University
Press. Pp. 740. $5.00.)
American biography and the history of natural science are both
distinctly enriched by the publication of this extensive and really
adequate life of one of the country's-and of the world's-greatest
naturalists and natural philosophers. The idiosyncratic quality,
variety, and abundance of the subject's genius is captured and ex-
hibited for the reader with remarkable skill and gratifying success.
The book is the outgrowth of years of knowledge and experience of
general and special studies, and figures against a uniquely suitable
background of familiarity, alike with Cope and with the field-or
fields-of his labors.
A labor of love and extreme care, it reveals the man directly,
largely through his correspondence, also by just characterization and
personal reminiscences. It is a balanced book, well systematized,
picturesquely descriptive, frank and personal, sympathetic yet im-
partial, containing a vast deal of technical information, as a guide
to the student, and many highly readable pages of dramatic narra-
tive and the quotation of brilliant, meaty, or witty sallies by Cope
himself. The preparation has been painstaking, co-operative,
partly a polygenetic compilation, analyzed and synthesized de novo;
and its inclusiveness is, on the whole, all that could be desired.
Even its omission are in good taste, and leave the reader in
want of nothing essential for a proper understanding of Cope and
his work.