Elliott Coues (September 9, 1842 – December 25, 1899) was an American ^ b. English is the de facto language of American government and the sole language spoken at home by 80% of Americans age five and older. Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language army surgeon Surgery is a medical specialty that uses operative manual and instrumental techniques on a patient to investigate and/or treat a pathological condition such as disease or injury, to help improve bodily function or appearance, or sometimes for some other reason. An act of performing surgery may be called a surgical procedure, operation, or simply, historian A historian is an individual who studies and writes about history, and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all events in time. If the individual is concerned with events preceding written history, the, ornithologist Ornithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the study of birds. Several aspects of ornithology differ from related disciplines, due partly to the high visibility and the aesthetic appeal of birds. Most marked among these is the extent of studies undertaken by amateurs working within the parameters of strict scientific methodology and author.[1]
Coues (pronounced /ˈkaʊz/) was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire Portsmouth is a city in Rockingham County, New Hampshire in the United States. It is the fourth-largest community in the county, with a population of 20,784 at the 2000 census. A historic seaport and popular summer tourist destination, Portsmouth is served by Portsmouth International Airport at Pease, formerly the Strategic Air Command's Pease Air. He graduated at Columbian University The George Washington University is a private, coeducational, university located in Washington, D.C. The school was chartered on February 9, 1821 as The Columbian College in the District of Columbia by an Act of Congress and since that time has developed into a nonsectarian research institution and the largest university in the nation's capital, (now, George Washington University The George Washington University is a private, coeducational, university located in Washington, D.C. The school was chartered on February 9, 1821 as The Columbian College in the District of Columbia by an Act of Congress and since that time has developed into a nonsectarian research institution and the largest university in the nation's capital) Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C. , formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, the District, or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States, founded on July 16, 1790. The City of Washington was originally a separate municipality within the Territory of Columbia until an act of Congress in 1871 effectively merged the City and the, in 1861, and at the Medical school of that institution in 1863. He served as a medical cadet in Washington in 1862-1863, and in 1864 was appointed assistant-surgeon in the regular army. In 1872 he published his Key to North American Birds, which, revised and rewritten in 1884 and 1901, did much to promote the systematic study of ornithology in America. His work was instrumental in establishing the currently accepted standards of trinomial nomenclature In zoological nomenclature, a trinomen, or trinominal name, refers to the name of a subspecies - the taxonomic classification of subspecies In zoology, the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature accepts only one rank below that of species, namely this rank of subspecies or race. Other groupings, "infrasubspecific entities" (e.g. pet breeds and Transgenic Animals) do not have names regulated by the ICZN. Such forms have no official status, though they may be useful in - in ornithology, and ultimately the whole of zoology. In 1873-1876 Coues was attached as surgeon and naturalist to the United States Northern Boundary Commission, and in 1876-1880 was secretary and naturalist to the United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, the publications of which he edited. He was lecturer on anatomy in the medical school of the Columbian University in 1877-1882, and professor of anatomy there in 1882-1887.
He was a careful bibliographer and in his work on the Birds of the Colorado Valley he included a special section on swallows and attempted to resolve whether they migrated in winter or hibernated under lakes as was believed at the time:
I have never seen anything of the sort, nor have I ever known one who had seen it; consequently, I know nothing of the case but what I have read about it. But I have no means of refuting the evidence, and consequently cannot refuse to recognize its validity. Nor have I aught to urge against it, beyond the degree of incredibility that attaches to highly exceptional and improbable allegations in general, and in particular the difficulty of understanding the alleged abruptness of the transition from activity to torpor. I cannot consider the evidence as inadmissible, and must admit that the alleged facts are as well attested, according to ordinary rules of evidence, as any in ornithology. It is useless as well as unscientific to pooh-pooh the notion. The asserted facts are nearly identical with the known cases of many reptiles and batrachians. They are strikingly like the known cases of many bats. They accord in general with the recognized conditions of hibernation in many mammals. —Birds of the Colorado Valley (1878), Chapter XIV.[2]
He resigned from the army in 1881 to devote himself entirely to scientific research. He was a founder of the American Ornithologists' Union The American Ornithologists' Union is an ornithological organization in the USA. Unlike the National Audubon Society, its members are primarily professional ornithologists rather than amateur birders, and edited its organ, The Auk The Auk is a quarterly journal and the official publication of the American Ornithologists' Union, having been continuously published by that body since 1884. The journal contains articles relating scientific studies of the anatomy, behavior, and distribution of birds. The journal is named for the Great Auk, the symbol of the AOU. It is currently, and several other ornithological periodicals. He died in Baltimore, Maryland Baltimore , is an independent city and the largest city and cultural center of the U.S. state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore City in order to distinguish it from surrounding Baltimore County. Founded in.
In addition to ornithology he did valuable work in mammalogy; his book Fur-Bearing Animals (1877) being distinguished by the accuracy and completeness of its description of species, several of which were already becoming rare.
He took an interest in spiritualism and began speculations in theosophy. He felt the inadequacy of formal orthodox science in dealing with the deeper problems of human life and destiny. Convinced by the principles of evolution, he believed that these principles may be capable of being applied in psychic research and he proposed to use it to explain obscure phenomena such as hypnotism, clairvoyance, telepathy and the like. For this he visited Madame Blavatsky Helena Blavatsky , (born as Helena von Hahn (Russian: Елена Петровна Ган, Ukrainian: Олена Петрівна Ган); 12 August [O.S. 31 July] 1831, Yekaterinoslav, Yekaterinoslav, Russian Empire (today Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine) – died 8 May, 1891, London), was a founder of Theosophy and the Theosophical Society in Europe. He then founded the Gnostic Theosophical Society of Washington, and in 1890 he became the president of the Esoteric Theosophical Society of America. Around this time he also exposed Blavatsky and lost his interest in the theosophical movement.[3]
Among the most important of his publications, in several of which he had collaboration, are A Field Ornithology (1874); Birds of the North-west (1874); Monographs on North American Rodentia, with J. A. Allen (1877); Birds of the Colorado Colorado ( /kɒləˈrædoʊ/ or /kɒləˈrɑːdoʊ/ (help·info)) is a state of the United States of America that is located mostly in the Rocky Mountain Range of North America. Colorado can also be considered to be part of the Western States or the Southwestern States of the United States. In infrequent instances eastern Colorado is considered to Valley (1878); A Bibliography of Ornithology (1878–1880, incomplete); New England New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean, Canada and the state of New York, consisting of the states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut Bird Life (1881); A Dictionary and Check List of North American Birds (1882); Biogen, A Speculation on the Origin and Motive of Life (1884); The Daemon of Darwin Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist[I] who showed that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestors, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection. He published his theory with compelling evidence for evolution in his 1859 (1884); Can Matter Think? (1886); and Neuro-Myology (1887). He also contributed numerous articles to the Century Dictionary, wrote for various encyclopaedias, and edited the Journals of Lewis and Clark The Lewis and Clark Expedition was the first overland expedition undertaken by the United States to the Pacific coast and back. The expedition team was headed by Meriwether Lewis and William Clark and assisted by Sacajawea and Toussaint Charbonneau. The expedition's goal was to gain an accurate sense of the resources being exchanged in the (1893), The Travels of Zebulon M. Pike Zebulon Montgomery Pike Jr. was an American soldier and explorer for whom Pikes Peak in Colorado is named. His Pike expedition, often compared to the Lewis and Clark Expedition, mapped much of the southern portion of the Louisiana Purchase (1895) and "the personal narrative of Charles Larpenteur", Forty Years a Fur Trader on the Upper Missouri (1833–1872), published in 1898.
Notes
- ^ "A Great Ornithologist". The Outlook The Outlook was a weekly magazine, published in New York City 64: 98. January 13 1900. http://books.google.com/books?id=l2pyPw_hYuAC&pg=PA98. Retrieved 2009-07-30.
- ^ Allen, JA (1909). "Biographical memoir of Elliott Coues.". National Academy of Sciences: Biographical Memoirs 6: 395–446. http://books.nap.edu/html/biomems/ecoues.pdf.
- ^ Marble, C. C. 1900. The Late Dr. Elliott Coues. Birds and All Nature: February 1900.
References
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition The Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition is a 29-volume reference work that marked the beginning of the Encyclopædia Britannica's transition from a British to an American publication. Some of its articles were written by the best-known scholars of the day. This edition of the encyclopedia is now in the public domain, but the outdated nature, a publication now in the public domain The public domain is an intellectual property designation for the range of content that is not owned or controlled by anyone. These materials are public property, and available for anyone to use freely for any purpose. The public domain can be defined in contrast to several forms of intellectual property; the public domain in contrast to.
External links
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Categories: 1842 births | 1899 deaths | American ornithologists
