186 Obituary. [Ibis, 



X. — Obituary. 



Joel Asaph Allen. 



We regret to learn ot the death of Dr. J. A. Allen, 

 Dean of the Scientific Staff of the American Museum of 

 Natural History, which occurred at Cornwall on Hudson, 

 New York State, on 29 August, 1921, when he had reached 

 the age of eighty-three years. 



Dr. Allen was born at Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1838. 

 His father, Joel Allen, was a farmer of old New England 

 stock, and his upbringing was rigid and puritanical. He was 

 educated at local schools and had no special advantages, 

 and it was not until he came under the influence of 

 Louis Agassiz in 1862 that his taste and craving for natural 

 history were able to get full vent. He accompanied Agassiz 

 to Brazil in 1865, and in subsequent years he made several 

 exploring and collecting expeditions to the then wild and 

 unknown portions of the western and southern States. 

 In 1872 he became Assistant in Ornithology in the Museum 

 of Comparative Zoology at Cambridge. This position he 

 retained until 1885, when he was appointed Curator of Birds 

 and Mammals in the American Museum of Natural History 

 at New York. Of late years his interests and writings have 

 been almost entirely concerned with Mammals, but his 

 output of ornithological work was very considerable, and 

 the number of ornithological papers recorded in a special 

 volume of autobiography and bibliography published in 

 1917 by the American Museum amounted to 970. 



Among his earlier more important papers is that on the 

 Mammals and winter Birds of eastern Florida (1871), which 

 won him the Humboldt Scholarship and became a classic, 

 and that on the collection of Brazilian birds collected by 

 the H. H. Smith Expedition, 1891-92. 



To Dr. Allen is largely due the accuracy and high standard 

 of literary form shown by the pages of the 'Auk,' of which 

 he was the editor for its first 28 years, from 1883 to 1912, 

 and also of its predecessor the ' Bulletin of the Nuttall 



