MARSH, OTHWIEL CHARLES, b. Lockport, N. Y., 1831; educated at Phillips acad emy, Andover, Mass., and at Yale college, where he graduated in 1860; and then took a two years' course of study in the Sheffield scientific school. He was then engaged in the• same line of study at the German universities of Heidelberg, Breslau, and Berlin. Ort his return to this country he was, in 1866, appointed professor of paleontology at Yale, and still holds this position as well as the curatorship of the geological and kindred sci entific collections. He is also one of the trusteeiof the fund of $150,000 given by the late George Peabody to the college "to found and maintain a museum of natural history, and especially in the departments of zoology, geology, and mineralogy," and was inost actively concerned in the planning and erection of the massive and fire-proof Peabody museum, which is to form but one wing of the completed building when the funds for building and maintenance have sufficiently accumulated. From 1868 to the present time lie has been constantly engaged in the discovery and classification of fossils of extinct animals of the Rocky mountain region, leading many expeditions in person, and directing the operations of others. In these explorations his parties have penetrated into the wild est solitudes under considerable personal hardships and clangers, and have obtained e.xtensive collections of irnmense scientific value, including fossil animals hitherto unknown, to the number of several hundred. Among the new orders discovered are the
dinocerakt, a six-horned animal of the eocene period ; the pterodactyls, or flying lizards; the icldyornithes, ft cretaceous bird furnished with teeth; and a great variety of bats, monkeys, and marsupials. In many papers published at intervals up to the present time (1881) he has described these and many other species, and is constantly- adding to the colleetion by discovery and purchase. :Within a few years the description by prof. Marsh of certain fossil bones found by him and, though belonging to the equine race, differing from the modern horse in several particulars,. and markedly in the construction of the foot and number of toes, has added to the evidences of the doctrine of natural selection • and of the evolution of species, exhibiting, as is claimed, the gradual divergence by a species from the primary form, and the result therefrom of what have hitherto been regarded as• orders of entirely distinct creation. Prof. Huxley has repeatedly claimed that these dis coveries of Marsh completely supply the proof alldged to be wanting by the opponents of the doctrine of the " survival of the fittest." Prof. Marsh has written many articles on scientific subjects which have appeared in almost all the scientific journals. He is a fellow of the royal geographical society and a member of many other associations at home and abroad.