Februaky i, 19 IG] 



SCIENCE 



159 



ISTature would have man isolated, but he 

 triumphs over her with billets of steel and 

 threads of copper. He swings a hammer and 

 an engine is made that makes him neighbor 

 to the world. He whispers to a wire which 

 shouts the spoken word into space. 



Nature would have a limit to the soil's sup- 

 porting strength, but man robs the air of its 

 nitrogen and the rocks of their phosphorus and 

 potash to revivify the unwilling earth. 



IvTatm-e would have man the victim of insidi- 

 ous enemies that stop or clog the human ma- 

 chine, biit man distills from the buried carbons 

 agents that stay destruction for a time, and 

 now man has found a mineral which gives 

 promise of opening the way into a new world 

 of mysterious restoration. 



This is a glorious battle in which you are 

 fighting — the geologist who reads the hiero- 

 glyphs that nature has written, the miner who 

 is the Columbus of the world underground, the 

 engineer, the chemist, and the inventor who 

 out of curiosity plus courage, plus imagination 

 fashion the swords of a trivunphing civiliza- 

 tion. Indeed it is hardly too much to say that 

 the extent of man's domain and his tenure of 

 the earth rest with you. 



F. K. Lane 



Depaktment of the Interioe 



DANIEL GIRAUD ELLIOT 



In the death of Daniel Giraud Elliot, which 

 occurred on December 22 last, after a short 

 illness from pneumonia, science has lost a dis- 

 tinguished ornithologist and mammalogist. 

 Dr. Elliot was born in New York City, March 

 7, 1835, and had therefore nearly completed 

 his eighty-iirst year. He prepared to enter 

 Columbia College in the class of 1852, but 

 delicate health prevented his taking a college 

 course and led him to seek for several years 

 a mild winter climate, during which he visited 

 southern Europe, Egypt, Palestine, Turkey, 

 the West Indies and Brazil. In 1906 he was 

 honored by Columbia University with the degree 

 of Sc.D. Erom an early age his interest in 

 natural history was intense, and in its pursuit 

 he traveled widely and spent many years in 

 Europe, chiefly in Paris and London. For 



some years before his death he was the dean 

 of American zoologists, exceeding in age his 

 lifelong friend. Dr. Theodore N. Gill, by two 

 years. His primary interest for many years 

 was ornithological, and he was the author of 

 many folio monographs of birds, expensively 

 illustrated with handcolored plates; during 

 the last twenty years he devoted his time to 

 the study of mammals, which became almost 

 exclusively the subject of his researches. 



In his early days he formed a notable col- 

 lection of North American birds — the best 

 private collection then extant — which later 

 was secured by the American Museum of Nat- 

 ural History, forming its first collection of 

 birds and the nucleus of its present magnifi- 

 cent collection. At this time (in the later 

 sixties) George N. Lawrence, a much older man 

 than Elliot, was the only working ornitholo- 

 gist in New York, while John Cassin, of Phil- 

 adelphia, and Professor S. F. Baird, of Wash- 

 ington, were the only other prominent orni- 

 thologists in America. 



Dr. Elliot's first publication of note was his 

 " A Monograph of the Tetraonidas, or Family 

 of the Grouse" (New York, 1864-1865), a 

 work in imperial folio with 27 handcolored 

 plates. This was followed two years later by 

 " A Monograph of the Pittidse, or Family of 

 the Ant Thrushes" (New York, 1867), also in 

 folio with 31 colored plates. Soon after ap- 

 peared his " The New and Heretofore Unfig- 

 ured Species of the Birds of North America " 

 (New York, 1866-1869), in two imperial folio 

 volumes with 72 colored plates. These were 

 soon succeeded by "A Monograph of the 

 Phasianidse, or Family of Pheasants " (New 

 York, 1872), also in two folio volumes with 48 

 colored plates. These works, mainly illustrated 

 from his own drawings, were all brought out 

 in America and their preparation marks the 

 period prior to his long sojourn abroad, begin- 

 ning in 1869, where similar magnificent works 

 were prepared and published in London. 

 These are : " A Monograph of the ParadiseidsB, 

 or Birds of Paradise" (folio, London, 1873, 

 with 37 colored plates) ; " A Monograph of the 

 Bucerotidffi, or Hornbills " (folio, London, 

 1876-1882, with 59 colored plates) ; " A Mono- 



