Mrs. Coues, in a letter replying to one of mine, says: "His home life and ways would hardly interest the public, they were so simple and quiet, with a wonderful appreciation of any little thing that was done for his comfort. I think the one characteristic that stands out the most prominently was, 'Now, I have finished that piece of writing. I have begun another.'" To finish a work was not an occasion for rest, but to put forth fresh energy for other effort. Francis P. Harper, his publisher, says: "He had a capacity for work that was almost beyond belief, and was always prompt and business-like. He was a firm and trustworthy friend, and an ideal author for a publisher to have business relations with." His printer (in the Osprey office, Washington), adds: "I have had years of experience with various authors and editors, and can truthfully say his genial friendship and appreciation stands out markedly beyond all others." "He never neglected a letter," says Mrs. Coues, "although from a total stranger, asking for assistance. He gave it if he could, most generously, and if unable, gave a courteous answer, and a reason. I myself have counted sixty letters he had written in about six hours—not merely a reply of a few lines. His one great desire in life was a search after truth, and kept his mind receptive to all that could give him a clue."
Doctor Coues spent the summer of 1899 in New Mexico, making researches in his usual energetic fashion—"forgetful of his fifty-seven years" as he wrote me after returning home ill. It was not years, however, that bore so heavily upon him; but the crowding of five years' work into one. This it was that deprived the world of his incomparable services in the very fullness of his intellectual powers.
Doctor Coues was the son of Samuel Elliott Coues and Charlotte Haven Ladd Coues, born at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, September 9, 1842. His literary tastes were inherited from his father, who was a writer on scientific subjects. He was educated at Ganzaga College and Columbia University, Washington, D. C., from which he graduated in 1861. He continued to reside at the capital, and his life was spent in contact with all that was strongest and best in a nation which his talents helped to make conspicuous in the fields of science and literature. His death occurred at Johns Hopkin's Hospital, Baltimore, December 25, 1899. The State of Oregon cannot fail to place his name high among the fathers of her early history.
FRANCES F. VICTOR.
[21] Principal Works: "Key to North American Birds," '72; "Field Ornithology," '74; "Birds of the Northwest," '74; "Fur-Bearing Animals," '77; "Monographs of North America Rodentia (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 Dæmon of Darwin," '84; "Code of Nomenclature and Check List of North American Birds (with Allen, Ridgway, 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, Encyclopædia 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.
[22] See the "American Explorers Series," published by Francis P. Harper, for Coues' work in this line. His last was "On the Trail of a Spanish Pioneer."
[23] I have since learned that Lolo is not an Indian word, but is the Indian pronunciation of the word Lawrence—the letter r not being sounded in the native tongue. A mingling of the French sound of the other letters in the word produces the word as pronounced by the Indians.