Once upon a time in American ornithology.(Elliot Coues)(Biography)

Elliot Coues was one of the 19th century's most scholarly and productive ornithologists. A lover of nature, an original thinker, and a "readable" scientist, Coues was often found writing at his desk "as if his life depended on it." Born in 1842 in New Hampshire, he graduated from college by the age of 19 and received his M.D. from the National Medical College, Washington, D.C. in 1863. He was commissioned as Assistant Surgeon in the U.S. Army in 1864 and spent the next 17 years in the Army as a medical officer at various posts. An Army Surgeon in name only, Coues was often given free reign to pursue his interest in ornithology, and was allowed to write about birds and collect specimens at will.

Coues' interest in birds began early in life. Shortly after the family moved to Washington, D.C. in 1853, Coues was befriended by Spencer Baird, an ornithologist with the Smithsonian Institution, who became Coues' primary mentor. One of the greatest influences on Coues' professional life was an early (1864) trip with an Army unit to the Southwest, arranged by Spencer Baird. Much of his time during that period was spent at Fort Whipple, Arizona, "a month's journey from anywhere," but an exceptionally eligible spot for collecting birds--many, as it turned out, new to science. Of his Arizona experience, Coues wrote: "... my enthusiasm runs so high that sometimes as I stand alone in the wilderness, thousands of miles from home and friends, hot, tired, dirty, breathless with pursuit, but holding in my hand and gloating over some new and rare bird, I feel a sort of charitable pity for the rest of the poor world, who are not ornithologists and have not the chance of pursuing the science in Arizona."

Much of Coues' professional life was dedicated to taxonomy, with numerous published works including his Key to North American Birds, published in 1872. Under the influence of Darwin's On the Origin of Species (published in 1859), Coues was always trying to answer what constitutes a species. For exam pie, in a letter to J. A. Allen he writes: "... I do not know what a species is in the least, and that no one else is much better off in this respect than I am." Though instrumental in furthering the use of trinomial nomenclature, Coues was, in the end, a "lumper" and not a "splitter."

In his later years, Coues became a scholar of American history, and he was highly skilled as an editor. His travels in 1873-1874 along much of the route of the Lewis and Clark expedition, for example, led to papers comparing his scientific investigations with those of Lewis and Clark as well as appraisals of the technical results of their expedition. In later life, Coues edited "the Biddle edition" the first account, published in 1814 by Nicholas Biddle--of the original journals of Lewis and Clark.

Notably, Coues also ...