[Apri 
120 Parmer, In Memoriam: Wells W. Cooke. 
butions to the literature of this fascinating subject will compare 
favorably with those of any other country and the work of Prof. 
Wells W. Cooke, her foremost student of bird migration, has al- 
ready received recognition at home and abroad. Although it was 
not his privilege to journey to distant lands to observe birds, or 
to spend a half century watching migration at an ornithological 
observatory like Heligoland, nevertheless he was reared in the 
midst of the greatest avian highway of the continent and at an 
early age was attracted by the movements of the winged hosts 
passing north and south in spring and autumn. He not only im- 
proved his opportunities but succeeded in coérdinating the efforts 
of others in collecting data and thus was able to make substantial 
additions to the sum of knowledge in his special field of investiga- 
tion. 
Wells Woodbridge Cooke, son of Rev. Elisha Woodbridge Cook 
and Martha Miranda (Smith) Cook, was born in Haydenville near 
Northampton, Mass., on January 25, 1858.1 Cooke’s father was a 
Congregational minister who had been brought up by his uncle, 
Wells Woodbridge, and after whom he named his son. The family 
included nine children — six girls and three boys; Wells, the fifth 
child and eldest son, received from his parents a heritage of patience, 
persistence and quiet force that contributed much to his success in 
later years. At an early age he was taken to Townsend, northeast 
of Fitchburg, Mass., and later to Hopkinton, N. H., where the 
family lived two years. About 1864 when he was six years old he 
accompanied his parents to Ripon, Wis., where his father had been 
appointed pastor of the church. Here in the lake region of eastern 
Wisconsin, Wells’ boyhood was spent and here he received most 
of his education. He early exhibited an interest in natural history 
and when about twelve years of age he was given his first gun. He 
at once began to collect the common birds of the neighborhood and 
made frequent trips to Green Lake a few miles from Ripon in search 
of specimens. At first he merely mounted the heads and wings on 
boards and it was some time before he learned to prepare specimens 
1 The year 1858 is an important one in the history of ornithology. It marks the close 
of the first century of systematic work, which began with the publication of Linnzus’ 
Systema Nature in 1758, and the dawn of a new era in American ornithology signalized 
by the appearance of Baird’s great work on North American birds. 
