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70 ignorance, and, perhaps to no small extent also, from that vanity which inclines your full-blooded Yankee to believe himself capable of everything, because the word "impossible" is expunged from his vocabulary.

By the death of Elliott Coues last Christmas the history of exploration of the region west of the Mississippi lost a most active and wonderfully proficient worker. After nearly a lifetime spent in prodigious activity in scientific lines he turned his energies to collecting, annotating and editing the original records of explorers and traders of the northwest and southwest. When Doctor Coues first took up the work of editing the narratives of explorers he had attained great eminence as a writer in ornithology. His reputation for thorough scholarship in the whole field of biology was such that he was assigned the subjects of general zoology, comparative anatomy and biology in the preparation of the Century Dictionary. "His scientific writings number about one thousand titles."

He had spent some sixteen years either as a surgeon at different army posts in the west, as far apart as Arizona and North Dakota, or as naturalist connected with different surveys. Thus he brought a unique preparation to the crowning work of his life in history. His'annotations, elucidating points of geography, zoology, and ethnology, are copious and minute to a degree that quite bewilders the average reader. The first fruits of his labors in the field of history were the four volumes of his edition of Lewis and Clark in 1893, Zebulon Pike's Expeditions followed in 1895; Henry and Thompson's Journals in 1897; and Fowler's Journal and Larpenteur's Narratives—distinct works—have appeared since.