TN MEMORIAM: ELLIOTT COUES. xxxvii 



of army life prevented him from acceptinij; this position ; but after he retired from 

 tlie service of the United States he accepted the chair of anatomy at the National 

 INIedical College in the medical department of Columbian University, Washington, 

 where he lectured acceptably for ten years. lie was also one of the contributors 

 to the Century Dictionary, and had editorial charge of (leneral Zoology, Biolog}', 

 and Comparative Anatomy, and furnished some forty thousand words to tliis mon- 

 umental work as his share of the enterprise ; devoting to it the greater part of his 

 labor for seven years. Another immense undertaking to which he devoted some 

 years of painstaking work was a "Bibliography of Ornithology," certain instal- 

 ments of which alone have been published, the greater portion still remaining in 

 manuscript, lie also began a " History of North American Mammals," but 

 though considerable progress with it was accomplished nothing was ever published. 



From 18G1 to 1881 he completed three hundred works and papers, the major 

 portion devoted to ornithology; and although he always kept up his interest in 

 that science and was more or less an active contributor to it all his life, his later 

 years were more particularly devoted to historical research. The titles to his 

 scientific writings of all kinds, minor papers, reviews, and special works, number 

 nearly one thousand, and he was the author or joint author of thirty-seven sepa- 

 rate volumes. The work by which he will probably be best known and remem- 

 bered, and which has had above all others the most important influence on orni- 

 thology in our own land, is his " Ke\' to North American Birds," a work tiiat in its 

 conception and the masterly manner in which it is carried out in all its details 

 stands as one of the best if not the best bird book ever written. His knowledge of 

 North American mammals was as extensive and intimate as was that of our birds, 

 and the " Fur Bearing Animals," published in 1877, as well as the Monographs on 

 the Muridie, Zapodidie, Saccomyida^, Haplodontia, and Geomyid}« in the " North 

 American Rodentia," also issued in 1877, bear ample witness to this fact. It is 

 impossible, however, in a comparatively brief address to enumerate the titles of 

 his works, and to this audience tliey would seem like twice-told tales, for with the 

 more important you are thorouglily familiar, and the minor ones are being con- 

 stantly met with and referred to by you in the pursuit of your investigations. 



We know what he has done in Natural Sciences, and although he rests from his 

 labors, and the eloquent tongue is silent and the still more eloquent pen lies 

 motionless, never more to perpetuate the virile thoughts that struggled for expres- 

 sion in the active mind, yet his works remain and speak with no uncertain tones 

 for him. I would, however, pass from the consideration of him as an author and 

 facile writer, and present him to you as the man, as he really was, for although 

 many persons were acquainted with Cones few I believe really knew him. It is 

 now nearly forty years ago, when on a visit to Professor Baird in Washington, 

 one evening, in company with my old friend Dr. Gill, I first met Elliott Cones. 

 He was then in his teens, a student of medicine, frank, simple, honest, and confid- 

 ing, with a boy's generous impulses, and the glorious enthusiasm of the ornitholo- 

 gist manifest in speech and action. The friendship then formed continued without 

 a break or a hasty word ever having been exchanged with tongue or pen throughout 

 all the intervening years. And yet we thought very differently on many subjects; 



