DR. ELLIOTT COUES.
The untimely passing of Dr. Elliott Coues, scientist and historian, has deprived the Historical Society of Oregon of the pleasure of making acknowledgments to the living man of its appreciation of the invaluable work he has done, touching the history of the Northwest, and particularly of Oregon, in the latter part of the eighteenth and early part -of the nineteenth centuries. Doctor Coues' personal bias was towards the natural sciences, in which he was distinguished, both as to the quantity and quality of the matter produced, on ornithology, mammalogy, herpetology, comparative anatomy, natural philosophy, psychical research, etc.[1] Incidentally, through his researches in natural history, which led him to explore wilderness regions, he became a historian of more than ordinary value, for he was never satisfied with his work until he had gone to the very bottom of his subject. The books and manuscripts which he edited became original histories in his hands, from his almost incredible industry in bringing to light facts to verify or disprove the author's statements. With all the care of a genealogist he followed a clue leading to the identity
- ↑ Principal Works: "Key to North American Birds," '72; "Field Ornithology," '74; "Birds of the Northwest," '74; "Fur-Bearing Animals," '77; "Monographs of North America Bodentia (with Allen)," '77; "Birds of the Colorado Valley," '78; "Ornithological Bibliography," '78-'80; "New England Bird Life (with Stearns)," '81; "Check List and Dictionary of North American Birds," '82; "Avifauna Columbiana (with Prentiss)," '83; "Biogen, a Speculation on the Origin and Nature of Life," '84; "New Key to North American Birds," '84; "The Daemon of Darwin," '84; "Code of Nomenclature and Check List of North American Birds (with Allen, Bidgway, Brewster, and Henshaw)," '86; "A Woman in the Case," '87; "Neuro-Myology (with Shute)," '87; "Signs of the Times," '88. Also author of several hundred monographs and minor papers in scientific periodicals, and editor or associate editor for some years of the Bulletin of the United States Geological Survey, Bulletin of the Nuttall Ornithological Club, American Naturalist, American Journal of Otology, Encyclopaedia Americana, Standard Natural History, The Auk, The Biogen Series, Die Sphinx (Liepsig), The Century Dictionary of the English Language (in General Biology, Comparative Anatomy and all departments of Zoology), The Travels of Lewis and Clark, &c.
