i6irli-lore 



A BI-MONTHLY MAGAZINE 

 DEVOTED TO THE STUDY AND PROTECTION OF BIRDS 



OrriciAL Organ of the Audubon Societies 



Vol. II 



February, 1900 



No. 1 



Elliott Coues 



WITH extreme regret we learn of the death of Dr. Elliott 

 Coues, at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, on 

 Christmas Day, after a grave operation performed De- 

 cember 6, Dr. Coues died in the harness, as a more 

 or less direct result from overwork, after a life of such phenomenal 

 activity in the fields of science and literature that we have space for 

 little more than an outline of his career. 



Elliott Coues was born at Portsmouth, N. H., on September 9, 

 1842. In 1853 his family moved to Washington, D. C, where he 

 was educated at the Jesuit Seminary and Columbian University, 

 graduating from the latter in 1861 as A. B., and in 1863 as M.D. 

 In this year he was appointed assistant surgeon in the United 

 States Army and ordered to Arizona. After ten years' service at 

 various posts he accepted, in 1873, the position of surgeon and nat- 

 uralist of the United States Northern Boundary Survey from the 

 Lake of the Woods to the Rocky mountains. After two years*^ 

 field work he returned to Washington to prepare his report, on the 

 completion of which, in 1876, he was made secretary and naturalist 

 to the United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the 

 Territories, a position he held for the ensuing four years, the 

 period of his greatest scientific activity. In 1877 he was elected to 

 fill the Chair of Anatomy in the National Medical College in Wash- 

 ington, a professorship he held for ten years. 



In 1880 Dr. Coues was ordered to the western frontier, but he 

 had become so deeply engaged in scientific work that he resigned 

 from the army and returned to W^ashington, where he resided for 

 the remainder of his life. 



Doctor Coues' first contribution to ornithology was ' A Monograph 

 of the Tringeae of North America,' a paper of thirty-five pages, pub- 

 lished in the proceedings of the Philadelphia Academy of Sciences for 



