10 John E. Cooper 



knowledge about the fauna of North Carolina, both vertebrates and inver- 

 tebrates, with especial regard to Herpetology and Entomology, an in- 

 terest very largely inspired and stimulated by Mr. Sherman." 



C.S. Brimley's first publications were a number of ornithological notes 

 on which he appeared as junior author with his older brother, starting 

 with "Notes from middle North Carolina" in the October 1884 issue of 

 Ornithologist and Oologist. From then through 1894 he published another 70 

 brief solo notes, most of them in this same publication (which became 

 defunct in 1893), and a few in the Auk. He became active in herpetology 

 around 1890 and said that he was greatly helped by David Starr Jordan's 

 Manual of Vertebrates, which for a number of years was his "vertebrate 'Bi- 

 ble'." His first non-ornithological publication apparently was the 1895 

 "List of snakes observed at Raleigh, N.C.," in the American Naturalist. 

 During the next few years he published papers on amphibians, fishes, and 

 larval insects, more on reptiles and birds, lists of mammals of Raleigh and 

 of Bertie County, and a 32-page descriptive catalogue of the mammals of 

 the state. He also collaborated with Sherman on many of the insect lists. 



As his notebooks on file in the State Museum archives show, C.S. kept 

 painstaking and meticulous records of all bird movements that occurred 

 in his vicinity. He published several summary papers on this subject, in- 

 cluding the 1917 "Thirty-two years of bird migration at Raleigh, North 

 Carolina," in the Auk. On December 1, 1930 he was awarded a certificate 

 from the Biological Survey, U.S. Department of Agriculture, in recogni- 

 tion of his 46 years of bird migration studies from 1885 to 1930. The 

 earlier records provided much of the migration data for Birds of North 

 Carolina. 



In the course of his studies of the southeastern herpetofauna, C.S. 

 Brimley described several new species and subspecies. The first of these 

 were two salamanders named in 1912 — Plethodon metcalfi, after another 

 pioneer North Carolina scientist and co-worker Z.P. Metcalf, and the 

 subspecies Spelerpes (now Pseudotnton) ruber schencki, for C.A. Schenck, 

 director of the Biltmore Forest School. In 1924 C.S. recognized the en- 

 demic waterdog (an aquatic salamander) of the Neuse and Tar rivers as a 

 distinct subspecies, Necturus maculosus lewisi, naming it for Frank B. Lewis 

 who provided most of his specimens. A South Carolina salamander, 

 Plethodon clemsonae, followed in 1927, and two turtles in 1928 — Pseudemys 

 (now Chrysemys) vioscana from Louisiana, named for the naturalist Percy 

 Viosca, Jr., and the subspecies P. concinna elonae from a pond in Guilford 

 County not far from Elon College. However, only two of his new forms 

 have stood the test of time and further taxonomic studies. Necturus lewisi 

 was elevated to full species status in 1937 by Viosca, and Pseudotnton ruber 

 schencki is still recognized as a valid subspecies by some authorities 



