Editorials 



189 



A Bi-Monthly Magazine 



Devoted to the Study and Protection of Birds 



OFFICIAL ORGAN OF THE AUDUBON SOCIETIES 



Edited by FRANK M. CHAPMAN 



Contributins Editor, MABEL OSGOOD WRIGHT 



Published by D. APPLETON & CO. 



Vol, XVIII Published June 1,1916 No. 3 



SUBSCRIPTION RATES 

 Price in the Unit.'il States, Canai!,-) an<l Mexico, twenty cents 

 a number, one dollar a year, postage paid. 



COPYRir.HTFD. I916. BY FRAKK M. CHAPMAN 



Bird-Lore's Motto: 

 A Bird in the Bush Is Worth Tuo in the Hand 



WELLS W. COOKE 



1858-1916 



In the death of Wells W. Cooke at 

 Washington, March 30, 1916, following an 

 attack of pneumonia, not only his immedi- 

 ate friends and associates, but hundreds 

 who knew him only by correspendence, 

 e.xperienced a deep sense of personal loss. 

 Possibly no professional ornithologist had 

 established closer relations between him- 

 self and amateur observers throughout 

 the country than Professor Cooke. He 

 was the father of the cooperative study 

 of bird-migration in America. As early as 

 1881 we find him organizing local bird- 

 students in the Mississippi Vallej', and the 

 'Ornithologist and Oologist' for a number 

 of years contained reports of the records 

 made by himself and his volunteers. 



It was natural then that when the 

 American Ornithologists' Union was foun- 

 ded in 1884, Cooke should be placed in 

 charge of migration work in the region he 

 had already made his own. It was equally 

 natural that with the growth of the Divi- 

 sion of Economic Ornithology and Mam- 

 malogy (now Biological Survey) of the 

 Department of .Vgriculture, to which the 

 migration and distribution investigations 

 of the Union were entrusted, Cooke should 

 be asked to join the Survey to assist in 

 developing this phase of its work. From 

 that date (June i, 1901) to the day of his 

 death, Cooke was identified with the 



Survey. Never were man and opjjortunity 

 better mated. For the past fifteen years, 

 with undiminished enthusiasm, Cooke has 

 devoted himself to gathering data in 

 regard to the migration and distribution 

 of North American birds. Many men 

 would have been overwhelmed by the 

 mere attempt to catalogue the enormous 

 mass of published and unpublished records 

 which Cooke classified. It is indicative of 

 his unflagging persistence that having 

 developed writer's cramp in his right hand, 

 he trained himself to write with his left, 

 and thereafter changed from one to 

 another as occasion required. 



But Cooke was not a mere accumulator 

 of facts. They were only the bricks with 

 which he erected the edifices which will 

 always stand as monuments to his industry 

 and clear thinking. The second publica- 

 tion of the (now) Biological Survey was 

 his 'Bird Migration in the Mississippi 

 Valley' (1888), and this has been followed 

 by a series of special Bulletins on the 

 migration of various families of North 

 American birds and on the subject of 

 migration, and by publications elsewhere. 



For the past thirteen years practically 

 every number of Bird-Lore has contained 

 a contribution by Professor Cooke. These 

 papers present summarized tables of mi- 

 grations throughout North America of the 

 Warblers, Thrushes, Flycatchers, Vireos, 

 Sparrows, and Kinglets, and contain 

 admittedly the most valuable material 

 published by this magazine. 



Cooke's papers before the American 

 Ornithologists' Union always contained 

 something new, were clearly presented, 

 and in their delivery their author 

 unconsciously revealed that love for his 

 subject which added so greatly to the 

 attractiveness of his personality. 



If anything can reconcile us to the tak- 

 ing away of a man in his prime it is a 

 knowledge of the fact that he has made the 

 best use of the time allotted to him. Cooke 

 cut a straight, clean swathe through the 

 field of life, and with no loss of time or 

 waste of effort garnered as full a harvest 

 as the limit of his years allowed. 



