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Rh remedy, but it must not be administered until the acute symptoms have subsided, else it will often increase them. It is best given in cachets or in three times its own bulk of mucilage of acacia. Various devices are adopted to disguise its odour in the breath. The clinical evidence clearly shows that none of the numerous vegetable rivals to copaiba is equal to it in therapeutic value.

COPAL (Mexican copalli, incense), a hard lustrous resin, varying in hue from an almost colourless transparent mass to a bright yellowish-brown, having a conchoidal fracture, and, when dissolved in alcohol, spirit of turpentine, or any other suitable menstruum, forming one of the most valuable varnishes. Copal is obtained from a variety of sources; the term is not uniformly applied or restricted to the products of any particular region or series of plants, but is vaguely used for resins which, though very similar in their physical properties, differ somewhat in their constitution, and are altogether distinct as to their source. Thus the resin obtained from Trachylobium Hornemannianum is known in commerce as Zanzibar copal, or gum animé. Madagascar copal is the produce of T. verrucosum. From Guibourtia copallifera is obtained Sierra Leone copal, and another variety of the same resin is found in a fossil state on the west coast of Africa, probably the produce of a tree now extinct. From Brazil and other South American countries, again, copal is obtained which is yielded by Trachylobium Martianum, Hymenaea Courbaril, and various other species, while the dammar resins and the piney varnish of India are occasionally classed and spoken of as copal. Of the varieties above enumerated by far the most important from a commercial point of view is the Zanzibar or East African copal, yielded by Trachylobium Hornemannianum. The resin is found in two distinct conditions: (1) raw or recent, called by the inhabitants of the coast sandarusiza miti or chakazi, the latter name being corrupted by Zanzibar traders into “jackass” copal; and (2) ripe or true copal, the sandarusi inti of the natives. The raw copal, which is obtained direct from the trees, or found at their roots or near the surface of the ground, is not regarded by the natives as of much value, and does not enter into European commerce. It is sent to India and China, where it is manufactured into a coarse kind of varnish. The true or fossil copal is found embedded in the earth over a wide belt of the mainland coast of Zanzibar, on tracts where not a single tree is now visible. The copal is not found at a greater depth in the ground than 4 ft., and it is seldom the diggers go deeper than about 3 ft. It occurs in pieces varying from the size of small pebbles up to masses of several ounces in weight, and occasionally lumps weighing 4 or 5 &#8468; have been obtained. After being freed from foreign matter, the resin is submitted to various chemical operations for the purpose of clearing the “goose-skin,” the name given to the peculiar pitted-like surface possessed by fossil copal. The goose-skin was formerly supposed to be caused by the impression of the small stones and sand of the soil into which the soft resin fell in its raw condition; but it appears that the copal when first dug up presents no trace of the goose-skin, the subsequent appearance of which is due to oxidation or inter-molecular change.

 COPALITE, or, also termed “fossil resin” and “Highgate resin,” a naturally occurring organic substance found as irregular pieces of pale-yellow colour in the London clay at Highgate Hill. It has a resinous aromatic odour when freshly broken, volatilizes at a moderate temperature, and burns readily with a yellow, smoky flame, leaving scarcely any ash.

 COPÁN, an ancient ruined city of western Honduras, near the Guatemalan frontier, and on the right bank of the Río Copán, a tributary of the Motagua. For an account of its elaborately sculptured stone buildings, which rank among the most celebrated monuments of Mayan civilization, see : Archaeology. The city is sometimes regarded as identical with the Indian stronghold which, after a heroic resistance, was stormed by the Spaniards, under Hernando de Chaves, in 1530. It has given its name to the department in which it is situated.

 COPARCENARY (co-, with, and parcener, i.e. sharer; from O. Fr. parçonier, Lat. partitio, division), in law, the descent of lands of inheritance from an ancestor to two or more persons possessing an equal title to them. It arises either by common law, as where an ancestor dies intestate, leaving two or more females as his co-heiresses, who then take as coparceners or parceners; or, by particular custom, as in the case of gavelkind lands, which descend to all males in equal degrees, or in default of males, to all the daughters equally. These co-heirs, or parceners, have been so called, says Littleton (§ 241), “because by writ the law will constrain them, that partition shall be made among them.” Coparcenary so far resembles joint tenancy in that there is unity of title, interest and possession, but whereas joint tenants always claim by purchase, parceners claim by descent, and although there is unity of interest there is no entirety, for there is no jus accrescendi or survivorship. Coparcenary may be dissolved (a) by partition; (b) by alienation by one coparcener; (c) by all the estate at last descending to one coparcener, who thenceforth holds in severalty; (d) by a compulsory partition or sale under the Partition Acts.

The term “coparcenary” is not in use in the United States, joint heirship being considered as tenancy in common.

 COPE, EDWARD DRINKER (1840–1897), American palaeontologist, descended from a Wiltshire family who emigrated about 1687, was born in Philadelphia on the 28th of July 1840. At an early age he became interested in natural history, and in 1859 communicated a paper on the Salamandridae to the Academy of Natural Sciences at Philadelphia. He was educated partly in the University of Pennsylvania, and after further study and travel in Europe was in 1865 appointed curator to the Academy of Natural Sciences, a post which he held till 1873. In 1864–67 he was professor of natural science in Haverford College, and in 1889 he was appointed professor of geology and palaeontology in the University of Pennsylvania. To the study of the American fossil vertebrata he gave his special attention. From 1871 to 1877 he carried on explorations in the Cretaceous strata of Kansas, the Tertiary of Wyoming and Colorado; and in course of time he made known at least 600 species and many genera of extinct vertebrata new to science. Among these were some of the oldest known mammalia, obtained in New Mexico. He served on the U.S. Geological Survey in 1874 in New Mexico, in 1875 in Montana, and in 1877 in Oregon and Texas. He was also one of the editors of the American Naturalist. He died in Philadelphia on the 12th of April 1897.

—Reports for U.S. Geological Survey on Eocene Vertebrata of Wyoming (1872); on Vertebrata of Cretaceous Formations of the West (1875); Vertebrata of the Tertiary Formations of the West (1884); The Origin of the Fittest: Essays on Evolution (New York, 1887); The Primary Factors of Organic Evolution (Chicago, 1896). Memoir by Miss Helen D. King, American Geologist, Jan. 1899 (with portrait and bibliography); also memoir by P. Frazer, American Geologist, Aug. 1900 (with portrait).

 COPE, EDWARD MEREDITH (1818–1873), English classical scholar, was born in Birmingham on the 28th of July 1818. He was educated at Ludlow and Shrewsbury schools and Trinity College, Cambridge, of which society he was elected fellow in 1842, having taken his degree in 1841 as senior classic. He was for many years lecturer at Trinity, his favourite subjects being the Greek tragedians, Plato and Aristotle. When the professorship of Greek became vacant, the votes were equally divided between Cope and B. H. Kennedy, and the latter was appointed by the chancellor. It is said that the keenness of Cope’s disappointment was partly responsible for the mental affliction by which he was attacked in 1869, and from which he never recovered. He died on the 5th of August 1873. As his published works show, Cope was a thoroughly sound scholar, with perhaps a tendency to over-minuteness. He was the author of An Introduction to Aristotle’s Rhetoric (1867), a standard work; The Rhetoric of Aristotle, with a commentary, revised and edited by J. E. Sandys (1877); translations of Plato’s Gorgias (2nd ed ., 1884) and Phaedo (revised by H. Jackson, 1875). Mention may also be made of his criticism of Grote’s account of the Sophists, in the Cambridge Journal of Classical Philology, vols. i., ii., iii. (1854–1857).

The chief authority for the facts of Cope’s life is the memoir prefixed to vol. i. of his edition of The Rhetoric of Aristotle.

