Coues, Elliott [key], 1842–99, American ornithologist, b. Portsmouth, N.H., grad. Columbian College, later Columbian Univ. and now George Washington Univ. (B.A., 1861; M.D., 1863; Ph.D., 1869). He served as an army surgeon in the Civil War and as naturalist on government surveys and taught (1877–87) at Columbian Univ. He was a founder of the American Society for Psychical Research and a leader in the theosophist movement. He wrote Key to North American Birds (1872), Birds of the Northwest (1847), and Fur-bearing Animals (1877); he edited the journals of Lewis and Clark (1893), Zebulon M. Pike (1895), and Alexander Henry and David Thompson (1897).
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