North Carolina Office of Archives and History

Elliott Coues, Naturalist and Frontier Historian by Paul Russell Cutright; Michael J. BrodheadReview by: Marcus B. Simpson, Jr.The North Carolina Historical Review, Vol. 60, No. 4 (October 1983), pp. 522-523Published by: North Carolina Office of Archives and HistoryStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23520739 .

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522 Book Reviews

Joseph LeConte (1823-1901) of Liberty County, Georgia, slave owner, student, and later teacher at Franklin College (University of Georgia), professor at the

College of South Carolina, and a disciple of the great Louis Agassiz, saw his

world shattered by the ravages of the Civil War. At the age of forty-six he left

his beloved South for the newly founded University of California, to begin a dis

tinguished career as teacher and scholar that made him one of America's most

respected men of science. His major works—Sight, the first English language text on physiological optics, which contained much original observation on

binocular vision; Elements of Geology, for twenty-five years a standard text in

the teaching of the geological sciences; and Religion and Science, LeConte's

major effort to reconcile a Neo-Lamarckian form of the theory of evolution with

Christian doctrine—all belong to the California period. In Stephens's thoughtful

presentation the development of LeConte's ideas in each of these areas is

described in simple, clear terms of the type LeConte, himself, favored.

As a subject for biography, LeConte offers a fascination for and challenges to

the historian. He was a generalist in an age of increasing specialization. In his

later life numerous scientific awards came to him, among them election to the

National Academy of Sciences and the presidency of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Yet these awards were, realistically, out of pro portion to his actual scientific achievements. Even in his self-professed spe

cialty of geology his ideas rarely were completely original. His concepts of

mountain formation, for which he is best known, were built upon the theories of James Dana and others. Although a leading proponent of the scientific accept ability of the radically new and controversial theory of evolution, LeConte could not completely break with the conservatism of his past. He never was able to

accept the equality of the races, and his lifelong antisuffragist stance reflected the old mystique about southern womanhood. While expressing these opinions, this gentle man, with a childlike love of nature and zest for teaching, provoked no dissension. He received the devotion of students and friends and the highest respect of his colleagues.

A full consideration of the life and work of Joseph LeConte has long been overdue. Stephens's book is a welcome addition to the historiography of Ameri can science and thought.

North Carolina State University

James A. Mulholland

Elliott Coues, Naturalist and Frontier Historian. By Paul Russell Cutright and Michael J.

Brodhead. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981. Frontispiece, foreword, preface,

illustrations, notes, appendixes, bibliography, index. Pp. xv, 509. $28.50.)

Elliott Coues was among the preeminent leaders of American natural science from the 1870s until his death on the eve of the twentieth century. As with so

many of his colleagues, Coues's early career was shaped under the mentorship of

Spencer F. Baird of the Smithsonian Institution. Through Baird's influence, Coues secured valuable assignments as an army surgeon in remote outposts of

the American West, where he soon established his reputation by describing new

species and writing scientific and popular articles of conspicuous merit. Coues's

THE NORTH CAROLINA HISTORICAL REVIEW

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Book Reviews 523

compulsive drive to excel, enormous capacity for work, and brilliant intellect

helped forge his unusually precocious emergence as a world authority in orni

thology, mammalogy, anatomy, and taxonomy. His best-known scientific work, the Key to North American Birds, remains a watershed in American natural

history, while his extraordinary literary output, which perhaps exceeds 900

titles, contains a wealth of still valuable information.

Growing disaffected with the "mere facts" of science, Coues turned in his

middle years to a preoccupation with the occult, mysticism, and Buddhist

thought. In his final decade, Coues channeled his energy and scientific

knowledge into producing copiously annotated editions of the journals of Lewis

and Clark, Zebulon M. Pike, and a host of other explorers of the American

West. Regardless of the subject under discussion, Coues's writings are con

sistently imbued with the energy, lucid clarity, and sense of irony that seemed

to characterize much of his life.

Coues's association with North Carolina began in 1869, when he arrived at

Fort Macon for a twenty-month stint as post surgeon. Although isolated from

the scientific community on a remote "sand bar," the twenty-six-year-old Coues

produced many brief scientific papers, a five-part series of classic studies on the

natural history of the Outer Banks, and, most important, his Key, a book that

exerted a major influence on American biology. Despite his preoccupation with

writing and the excitement of producing the Key, Coues's North Carolina

sojourn was not an entirely happy one. He desperately wanted an official scien

tific position with one of the emerging natural history institutions in the United

States, but he was unable to secure an available appointment at the American

Museum of Natural History established in 1869. While at Fort Macon, Coues

destroyed the 3,000-page manuscript for his planned book on the zoology of the

Arizona Territory, an impetuous act that shocked his scientific colleagues and

haunted him the rest of his life. In the 1890s Coues returned to North Carolina, where at his mountain retreat near Cranberry he labored over his edition of the

Lewis and Clark journals, the second work for which he remains well known.

Cutright and Brodhead have drawn from their considerable experience as his

torians of American exploration and natural science to produce a finely balanced and thorough biography of Elliott Coues. This work also makes

valuable contributions to the history of American natural sciences during the

latter half of the nineteenth century. Major subject themes include the impact of Darwin's Origin of Species on American thought, the emergence of an inde

pendent scientific community in the United States, the government's changing role in the exploration of the West, the rise of professionalism in American

natural science, and the origin and evolution of several major scientific institu

tions and organizations. Chapter notes provide Coues scholars with a rich mine

for future work, and the bibliography of Coues's published writings is especially

helpful. This will remain the indispensable reference for students of Elliott

Coues; and historians of natural history will find the work an important contri

bution to the field.

Duke University

Marcus B. Simpson, Jr.

VOLUME LX, NUMBER 4, OCTOBER, 1983

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