403 
Obituary. 
the 2'5th December, 1899, of Dr. Elliott Coues, in his fifty- 
eighth year. Although born at Portsmouth, New Hamp¬ 
shire, on September 9th, 1842, Coues was educated chiefly 
at Washington, at the Jesuit Seminary now known as Gon- 
zaga College; he graduated at the Columbian University; 
and served as Assistant-Surgeon in the United States Army 
from 1864 to 1873, when he received the special appoint¬ 
ment of surgeon and naturalist to the United States Northern 
Boundary Commission, which surveyed the line of the 49th 
parallel from Lake of the Woods westward to the Rocky 
Mountains. Of the subsequent six years a portion was 
passed in Washington, in the preparation of a report on the 
above Survey ; after which he was sent to Arizona as 
secretary and naturalist of the U.S. Geological and Geo¬ 
graphical Survey of the Territories. Incidentally it may 
now be mentioned that Coues had been elected Professor of 
Zoology and Comparative Anatomy at Norwich University, 
Vermont, in 1869, and this training was of great use to him 
in the preparation of his numerous and important works on 
zoology ; he also held the Chair of Anatomy at the National 
Medical College in Washington from 1877 to 1886. A 
perfect glutton for work, Coues never neglected an oppor¬ 
tunity offered by his service on the coast or on the frontier; 
and after making every allowance for “ devilling ” with regard 
to the references in such books as ‘ The Birds of the North- 
West 3 and the various instalments of ‘The Bibliography of 
Ornithology/ even then his personal work must have been 
prodigious. Every successive edition of his ‘ Key to North- 
American Birds ’ marked epochs in ornithological progress, 
while the mere list of his contributions to science would fill 
at least a couple of our pages. And, be it remarked, all this 
work was solid, and not vamped up to swell the total, as is 
too often the case at the present day. There is no need for 
enumeration of it in ‘ The Ibis/ inasmuch as the share which 
Coues took in the advancement of ornithology is almost as 
well known in Great Britain as in America, and the regret 
felt here for the loss of a man of such genius is nearly equal 
to that which is experienced by his own countrymen. 
