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.