September, 1902. | 
THE CONDOR 
103 
which finally went alive to England. I 
had many hunts for quadrupeds and 
preserved some up to the size of gray 
and fox squirrels, besides keeping red 
and flying squirrels, a racoon, oppossum, 
and other animals as pets, which at- 
tracted much interest among visitors. I 
had a boy’s mania for hunting, and al- 
tho I could only get small animals and 
birds, I spent many a day in shooting, 
no doubt with impoverishment to phys- 
ical health. I would wade thru snow 
knee-deep for miles with poor results as 
to game, but thought if I ever went 
into a wild country the hunter’s life 
would be my choice. Why man could 
not live happy on the natural products 
of the forests and streams was a pro- 
blem I expected to solve in the future. 
About this time Tanner’s ‘Thirty Years 
Among the Indians of Canada’ showed 
me much of the difficulties in the way 
of such a mode of existence.” 
In this we have a little retrospect in- 
to the early life of Dr. Cooper from his 
own pen. The tendencies thus early 
manifested were fo.stered by his father, 
to whom Dr. Cooper owed his prepara- 
tion for his later work in life, and it 
was at the home of William Cooper that 
such men as Samuel L. Mitchell, M. D., 
Nathaniel Paulding, poet. Dr. John 
Torrey, the botani.st. Prof. Eaton, and 
Lucien Bonaparte were wont to meet. 
It is not difficult to see how these men 
may all have exerted a profound influ- 
ence on the mind of the young natural- 
ist. At the age of twenty-eight. Dr. 
Cooper became a member of the New 
York Lyceum, now the New York 
Academy of Sciences, his father, at the 
age of nineteen, having been one of the 
founders. Dr. Cooper was one of the 
early members of the California Acad- 
emy of Sciences, holding for several 
years the office of vice-president and 
for some years being curqtor of the sec- 
tion of palaeontology, which he had 
given much time to build up. His last 
actual work was the compiling of a Cat- 
alog of California Fossils, issued as Bul- 
letin No. 4 by the California State Min- 
ing Bureau, Sept. 1894, Parts II, III, 
IV and V. 
Dr. Cooper is the last of that circle of 
distinguished naturalists, who had been 
the foremost zoologists and botanists in 
his early days. Such men as Asa Gray, 
Baird, LeConte, Hayden, Meek, George 
Gibbs, Torrey, Warren and Dr. Suckley 
were his colaborers. To the memory of 
Dr. Cooper we can have no better mon- 
ument than the valuable researches 
which he carried on for over forty years 
of his life, consisting of some seventy- 
five papers on the birds, shells, fossils, 
geology, fore.sts and flora of the Pacific 
Coast. 
W. Otto Emerson, 
Haywards, California. 
The Ornithological Writings of Dr. J. G. Cooper. 
BY JOSEPH GRIN NELL. 
I N the present paper I have listed all 
the ornithological writings of the late 
Dr. Cooper known to me. These 
number twenty-six. It will be noted 
that the majority were printed between 
i860 and 1880. While the number of 
Cooper’s titles was not great, his articles 
thus appeared at a time when much 
less was written on birds than now, 
and when much of the subject-matter 
we might now regard as commonplace 
was new information altogether. As 
all but two of his publications pertained 
at least in part to the birds of California 
we of the Cooper Ornithological Club 
owe much to Dr. Cooper as being a 
pioneer in our line of study. Perhaps 
his best known work is his” Ornithology 
of California” which is a desideratum 
of every working bird-student. Aside 
from his signed articles. Cooper fur- 
nished material, in the way of speci- 
