the American Association for 

 the Advancement of Science 

 and the habits of marsh rabbits 

 for a journal published by the 

 Boston Society of Natural 

 History. He probably also did 

 much of his research for a later 

 treatise, called "On the 

 Classification of Water Birds," 

 at Bogue Banks. 



Not all of Coues' writing 

 was about natural history. In 

 the surgeon general's 1870 

 report on U.S. military posts, 

 Coues also made a few 

 observations about local eating 

 habits. Shrimp "are scarcely 

 eaten," Coues wrote, but "the 

 oyster ... is abundant, cheap, 

 and of excellent quality." He 

 observed that yaupon, one of 

 the most common barrier 

 island shrubs, "furnishes a 

 drink often used by the lower 

 classes as a substitute for tea" 

 and that "venison is sometimes 

 as cheap as beef." He himself 

 seems to have tasted dozens of 

 different species of water 

 birds, shorebirds and seabirds, 

 excepting only "the most 

 abundant water fowl, the 

 fishing duck (Merjus 

 senator), (as) hardly eatable." 



Coues' greatest accomplishment 

 at Fort Macon was his survey of local 

 animal life. Called "Notes on the 

 Natural History of Fort Macon, N.C., 

 and Vicinity," the survey was published 

 in five parts (the last two co-written with 

 his successor at Fort Macon) in the 

 Proceedings of the Academy of Natural 

 Sciences of Philadelphia. It includes an 

 exhaustive listing of reptiles, fish, 

 mammals, marine invertebrates ranging 

 from jellyfish to annelid worms and 

 more than 200 bird species. 



Coues' survey is a unique glimpse 

 into what Bogue Banks was like in the 

 19th century. Only a few families 

 inhabited the 26-mile-long island in 



Elliott Coues Nature Trail takes hikers along scenic views 



... and encourages them to appreciate 

 a wealth of plant and animal life. 



1 869-70 so that Coues was describing an 

 environment scarcely touched by 

 commercial fishing, much less industry 

 or tourism. Not surprisingly, his "Natural 

 History" refers to a landscape much 

 different than exists at Bogue Banks 

 today. Many animals he described, such 

 as lynx and mink, have vanished due to 

 hunting and habitat loss. Whaling was 

 still a part of island life, and "the remains 

 of whales," Coues wrote, were "strawn 

 abundantly along the beach." 



Coues' extraordinary ability to see 

 the smallest details of the natural world 

 also emerges from his "Natural History 

 of Fort Macon." Until I read his descrip- 

 tion of ordinary fiddler crabs, I never 



realized how little I had 

 actually looked at them. 

 Coues, an ornithologist, did 

 not know any more about 

 crustaceans than you or I when 

 he arrived at Fort Macon. He 

 had probably never read a 

 scientific paper about them. 



But Coues studied his 

 surroundings with a passionate 

 curiosity. He observed the 

 crabs, what bird species ate 

 them, what soils they lived in 

 and how they moved. He 

 noticed how deep, at what 

 angle and what time of day 

 they dug their holes. He even 

 compared the dexterity with 

 which they entered their holes 

 left-side first and right-side 

 first. (He determined "that the 

 animals went in either side 

 first with equal facility.") 



I grew up not far from 

 Bogue Banks. Often as a child, 

 and later as an undergraduate 

 at the Duke University Marine 

 Lab, I roamed across its salt 

 marshes just as Coues had a 

 century earlier. I have to 

 confess, though, that I never 

 saw the sea's life as he did. I 

 didn't look closely enough to 

 see the smallest details of a 

 fiddler crab's hole or stay long enough to 

 piece together its place in the island's 

 ecology. 



When I visit Fort Macon State Park 

 today, I consequently see its Elliott 

 Coues Nature Trail (just to the right of 

 the fort's main entrance) as more than a 

 memorial to the great ornithologist and 

 his brilliant snapshot of barrier island 

 ecology a century ago: It is a reminder 

 that we all have the ability to discover the 

 marvelous complexity of the natural 

 world — if only we will look. □ 



David Cecelski is a historian at the 

 University of North Carolina-Chapel 

 Hill's Southern Oral Histoiy Program. 



26 SPRING 1998 



