132 PatmMER, In Memoriam: Wells W. Cooke. [ pen 
upper Mississippi Valley. He also examined with much interest 
the historic stone marking the southern corner of the District of’ 
Columbia which he had never happened to see before. The next 
afternoon he attended a concert, and Wednesday morning while 
at a conference in the Biological Survey he complained of feeling 
ill, and excusing himself went home. So quietly did he leave that 
few of his fellow workers in the office realized that he had gone. 
The following Monday he was removed to George Washington 
Hospital and on Thursday morning March 30, 1916, at 1 A. M. he 
died of pneumonia after an illness of only eight days. Funeral 
services were held on Sunday at the First Congregational Church 
and were attended by several hundred friends and acquaintances. 
The exercises at Glenwood Cemetery where the casket was placed 
temporarily in a receiving vault were attended only by representa- 
tives of the American Ornithologists’ Union, the Audubon Society, 
the Biological Survey, and a few friends. It was a cold gray after- 
noon, and as the little circle gathered about the casket and the 
reading of the committal service was begun, a bluebird uttered 
its plaintive note, a flicker called from a neighboring tree, and a 
mockingbird joined in and sang throughout the reading. What 
more appropriate rites for a true lover of birds! A few days later 
he was cremated and his ashes transferred to Ripon, Wis., for burial 
beside the remains of his wife who had died ten years earlier. Here 
amid the scenes of his childhood and early manhood where he first 
began to study birds, another ornithological shrine is now located 
at the last resting place of Wells W. Cooke, “Father of codperative 
study of bird migration in America.” 
