[Illustration: Sketch of Dr. Coues.]
The subject of this sketch, whose death occurred on Christmas, 1899,
at Baltimore, Md., was one of the few men who have become famous both
in physical and psychical science. He had long been recognized as one
of the leading naturalists of America, and of late years had acquired
equal distinction as a philosopher.
Early in April last Dr. Coues supplied us with the material for a
sketch of his life, to which we are indebted chiefly for what this
article contains. He was born in Portsmouth, N. H., Sept. 9, 1842, and
was the son of Samuel Elliott Coues and Charlotte Haven Ladd Coues. His
father was the author of several scientific treatises which anticipated
some of the more modern views of physics, astronomy, and geology; so
that young Coues would seem to have inherited his bent of mind towards
study and research. The name is of Norman French origin. Dr. Coues'
father was a friend of Franklin Pierce, and early in the presidency
of the latter received from him an appointment in the United States
patent office, which he held nearly to his death in July, 1867. The
family moved to Washington in 1833 and Dr. Coues had always been a
resident of that city, excepting during the years he served in the West
and South as an army officer or engaged in scientific explorations. As
a boy he was educated under Jesuit influences at the seminary now known
as Gonzaga College. In 1857 he entered a Baptist college, now Columbian
University, where he graduated in 1861 in the academic department, and
in 1863 in the medical department of that institution. To the degrees
of A. B., A. M., Ph. D., and M. D., conferred by this college, his
riper scholarship added titles enough to fill a page from learned
societies all over the world.
His taste for natural history developed early in an enthusiastic
devotion to ornithology, and before he graduated he was sent by the
Smithsonian Institution to collect birds in Labrador. Among his
earliest writings are the account of this trip, and a treatise on
the birds of the District of Columbia, both published in 1861, and
both papers secured public recognition in England as well as in this
country, thus making a beginning of his literary reputation.
While yet a medical student, Dr. Coues was enlisted by Secretary
Stanton as medical cadet, U. S. A., and served a year in one of the
hospitals in Washington. On graduating in medicine in 1863, he was
appointed by Surgeon-General Hammond for a year as acting assistant
surgeon U. S. A. and, on coming of age passed a successful examination
for the medical corps of the army. He received his commission in 1864,
and was immediately ordered to duty in Arizona. His early years of
service in that territory, and afterward in North and South Carolina,
were utilized in investigating the natural history of those regions,
respecting which he published various scientific papers. Though he
wrote some professional articles, during his hospital experience,
Dr. Coues seems never to have been much interested in the practice
of medicine and surgery. After about ten years of ordinary military
service as post surgeon in various places he was, in 1873, appointed
naturalist of the U.S. northern boundary commission, which surveyed
the line along the forty-ninth parallel from the Lake of the Woods to
the Rocky mountains. In 1874 he returned to Washington to prepare the
scientific report of his operations. He edited all the publications of
the United States geological and geographical survey of the territories
from 1876 to 1880 and contributed several volumes to the reports of the
survey, notably his "Birds of the Northwest," "Fur Bearing Animals,"
"Birds of the Colorado Valley," and several installments of a universal
Bibliography of Ornithology. The latter work attracted especial
attention in Europe, and Dr. Coues was signally complimented by an
invitation, signed by Darwin, Huxley, Flower, Newton, Sclater, and
about forty other leading British scientists to take up his residence
in London and identify himself with the British Museum.
Dr. Coues also projected and had well under way a "History of North
American Mammals," which was ordered to be printed by act of Congress
when suddenly, at the very height of his scientific researches and
literary labors, he was ordered by the war department to routine
medical duty on the frontier. He obeyed the order and proceeded to
Arizona, but found it, of course, impossible to resume a life he had
long since outgrown. His indignant protests being of no avail, he
returned to Washington and promptly tendered his resignation from the
army in order to continue his scientific career unhampered by red tape.
As an author he is chiefly known by his numerous works on ornithology,
mammalogy, herpetology, bibliography, lexicography, comparative
anatomy, natural philosophy, and psychical research. He was one of the
authors of the Century Dictionary of the English Language, in seven
years contributing 40,000 words and definitions in general biology,
comparative anatomy, and all branches of zoölogy. During the last few
years he contributed several volumes on western history, in all twelve
volumes, and by study and research was enabled to correct many errors.
In 1877 he received the highest technical honor to be attained by an
American scientist in his election to the Academy of National Science
and was for some years the youngest academician. The same year saw
his election to the chair of anatomy of the National Medical College
in Washington, where he had graduated in '63. He then entered upon a
professorship and lectured upon his favorite branch of the medical
sciences for ten years. He appears to have been the first in Washington
to teach human anatomy upon the broadest basis of morphology and upon
the principle of evolution. Nearly all his life Dr. Coues has been
a collaborator of the Smithsonian Institution of Washington, his
name being most frequently mentioned in that connection. Many of the
numberless specimens of natural history he presented to the United
States government were found new to science and several have been named
in compliment to their discoverer.
At the height of his intellectual activity in physical science the
spiritual side of Dr. Coues' nature was awakened. He became interested
in the phenomena of spiritualism, as well as in the speculations of
theosophy. Belonging distinctively to the materialistic school of
thought and skeptical to the last degree by his whole training and
turn of mind, he nevertheless began to feel the inadequacy of formal
orthodox science to deal with the deeper problems of human life and
destiny.
Convinced of the soundness of the main principles of evolution, as
held by his peers in science, he wondered whether these might not be
equally applicable to psychical research, and hence took up the theory
of evolution at the point where Darwin left it, proposing to use it
in explanation of the obscure phenomena of hypnotism, clairvoyance,
telepathy and the like. He visited Europe to see Mme. Blavatsky,
founded and became president of the Gnostic Theosophical Society of
Washington, and later became the perpetual president of the Esoteric
Theosophical Society of America. In 1890 he published an exposé of the
impostures of Blavatsky, and from that time his interest in the cult
gradually ceased.
Most men can do some things well, but nature is seldom so lavish of
her gifts as to produce a genius who does all things equally well. It
is rare to find a man like Dr. Coues, who was capable of incessant
drudgery in the most prosaic technicalities, yet blessed with the
poetic temperament and ardent imagination, able to array the deepest
problems in a sparkling style which fascinated while it convinced. His
literary labors would have killed most men, but to his grasp of mind
nature had kindly joined a strong, healthy body that proved capable of
any demand upon his physical endurance that his intellectual activity
might make. He was tall, well-formed, classic in features, straight
as an arrow, with the air of the scholar without the student's stoop,
betraying no trace of mental weariness--a man with the tastes of a
sybarite and the soul of a poet; to quote from a leading journal, "the
imagination of a Goethe and the research of a Humboldt."
In conversation he was fascinating, possessing much of the personal
magnetism ascribed to James G. Blaine. It was the pleasure of the
writer to have many interviews and to enjoy a somewhat intimate
correspondence with him almost up to the time of his death.