ACADEMY OP SCIENCES] BIOGRAPHY 13 



and energy were devoted to laying the foundation of the great research collections which will 

 forever remain monuments to his power to impress the museum authorities with the need of 

 acquiring specimens for study as well as for exhibition. 



For the first few years of his curatorship he had no assistance and was himself forced to 

 perform the clerical tasks of cataloguing and labeling specimens. But as material accumulated, 

 he was relieved of these duties in order that he might prepare reports on the rapidly growing 

 collections. 



Thus his work became largely that of a systematist and during the succeeding 35 years a 

 constant stream of authoritative papers, at first on birds and mammals but later exclusively 

 on mammals, poured from his pen. This included monographic as well as faunal papers to the 

 number of 165 on mammals and 37 on birds. 



The nomenclatural questions involved in work of this nature had a growing attraction 

 for Doctor Allen, and his genius for unraveling the tangles of synonymy and allied problems 

 soon made him a recognized authority in this thankless field of labor and resulted in his election, 

 in 1910, as a member of the Commission on Zoological Nomenclature of the International 

 Congress of Zoology. 



A regrettably large part of his time was devoted to the preparation of copy for the press and 

 the reading of proofs, and, while the high standard of museum publications, both in matter and 

 appearance, owes much to his expert care and sound judgment, one can not but feel that this 

 editorial supervision might have been secured at less cost to his time. 



The Auk made similar demands upon him, but his rare ability as a discriminating, broadly 

 informed, fair-minded, unprejudiced critic was given opportunity for expression in the often 

 elaborate reviews of current literature which he prepared during the 36 years of his editorship 

 of the Nuttall Bulletin and its successor, The Auk. 



The wide influence exerted by these reviews is convincingly stated in a letter to Henry 

 Fairfield Osborn, president of the American Museum of Natural History, by Dr. Joseph 

 Grinnell, who writes: 



Of all the eastern ornithologists active during the past thirty-five years I believe that Dr. Allen wielded the 

 greatest influence in the field of serious scientific ornithology out here on the Pacific Coast. It was through the 

 columns of "The Auk, " especially in the review department of that journal, that Dr. Allen exercised this influence. 

 I think others of the younger bird students here in the West would agree with me that our conceptions in system- 

 atic zoology and geographical distribution were molded more importantly by reason of Dr. Allen's sane criticisms 

 and comments in his various reviews than through what we read in other articles and in books covering the same 

 ground. I know that this was true in my own case. 



HONORS 



Doctor Allen's retiring disposition made it difficult for him even to appear before his 

 scientific colleagues with justice to himself or to the paper he presented. The recognition, 

 therefore, which his work received was due to its inherent scientific value. 



He was awarded the Humboldt scholarship by the Lawrence Scientific School in 1871, the 

 Walker grand prize by the Boston Society of Natural History in 1903, and the medal of the 

 Linnaean Society of New York City in 1916, and in 1886 he was given an honorary Ph. D. by 

 the University of Indiana. 



He was elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences in 1876, was a founder 

 of the American Ornithologists' Union in 1883, and was annually reelected to its presidency 

 from that date until 1891; he was an honorary fellow of the London Zoological Society (1901), 

 an honorary member of the British Ornithologists' Union (1907), an honorary member of the 

 New York Zoological Society (1897), to mention only the more important of the societies on 

 whose roll his name appears, and always, he wrote, these honors came to him as a "surprise." 



From a bibliography of over 1,400 titles covering the period from August, 1860, to August, 

 1916, which was issued with Doctor Allen's Autobiographical Notes, 4 the more important titles 

 have been selected for republication here. To these there have been added references to all 

 Doctor Allen's scientific publications which have appeared since August, 1916, thus completing 

 his bibliography. 



* Autobiographical Notes and a Bibliography of the Scientific Publications of Joel Asaph Allen. American Museum of Natural History, 1916. 



