Coues
| Elliott Coues | |
|---|---|
Elliott Coues
|
|
| Born |
September 9, 1842 Portsmouth, New Hampshire |
| Died | December 25, 1899 (aged 57) Baltimore, Maryland |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Ornithology |
| Alma mater | Columbian University |
Elliott Coues (/ˈkaʊz/; September 9, 1842 – December 25, 1899) was an American army surgeon, historian, ornithologist and author.
Elliott Ladd Coues was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire to Samuel Elliott Coues and Charlotte Haven Ladd Coues. He graduated at Columbian University, (now, George Washington University) Washington, D.C., 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. He was a founding member of the American Ornithologists' Union in 1883. His work was instrumental in establishing the currently accepted standards of trinomial nomenclature - the taxonomic classification of subspecies - 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:
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