Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 4 (1900).djvu/107

Rh Dr. Coues, who was one of the founders of the American Ornithologists' Union, and at one time its President, became Professor of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy at Norwich University, Vermont, in 1869, and held the chair of Anatomy in the National Medical College from 1877 to 1883. For some months prior to his death he had been in bad health, and on the 6th of December underwent "a serious surgical operation; his death, which took place at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore, resulting from the same. H.E.D.

 

the eminent German student of bird-life, died on Sept. 29th, 1899. By his death both scientific aviculture and ornithology have sustained a severe loss.

Dr. Russ was always careful either personally to describe, or to obtain accurate descriptions of, the young plumage of all birds bred in captivity, from the egg until the change to the adult plumage; he noted the character and number of eggs, the duration of incubation, the age at which the young left the nest, and that at which their adult plumage was attained. Lastly, he carefully noted the colouring and variation in the soft parts in every adult bird which he described.

Russ was the son of an apothecary, and was born on Jan. 14th, 1833; he was therefore only in his sixty-seventh year when he died; yet he lived to complete the last volume of what he himself calls "the principal work" of his life in 1898, and saw it published in 1899.

'Die Fremdländischen Stubenvogel,' in four volumes, with effective (though hardly scientific) chromo-lithographic plates, is well worth the consideration of the most exclusive ornithologists; they may find much therein which will be new to them—facts as to seasonal changes of plumage, which some have hesitated to believe in, are proved by actual experience; several differences in the colouring of soft parts are indicated; with many other details of importance. A.G.B.

 Zool. 4th ser. vol. IV., February. 1900.