From south-bay-birds-bounces+south-bay-birds-archive=[[email protected]] Tue Jun 29 19:44:11 2004 Received: from www.plaidworks.com (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by plaidworks.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id i5U2fQsG017839 for <[[email protected]]>; Tue, 29 Jun 2004 19:41:27 -0700 (PDT) Received: from bittern.mail.pas.earthlink.net (bittern.mail.pas.earthlink.net [207.217.120.119]) by plaidworks.com (8.12.9/8.12.9) with ESMTP id i5U2ebQC017802 for <[[email protected]]>; Tue, 29 Jun 2004 19:40:37 -0700 (PDT) Received: from user-vcauk4s.dsl.mindspring.com ([216.175.80.156] helo=pavilion.earthlink.net) by bittern.mail.pas.earthlink.net with esmtp (Exim 3.33 #1) id 1BfV1w-0007X9-00 for [[email protected]]; Tue, 29 Jun 2004 19:41:00 -0700 Message-Id: <[[email protected]]> X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.2.1 Date: Tue, 29 Jun 2004 19:46:46 -0700 To: [[email protected]] From: Bill Bousman <[[email protected]]> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Subject: [SBB] Lost in the Stacks, Part 2 (James Graham Cooper) X-BeenThere: [[email protected]] X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5b1 Precedence: list List-Id: South Bay Birding List-Unsubscribe: , List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Sender: south-bay-birds-bounces+south-bay-birds-archive=[[email protected]] Errors-To: south-bay-birds-bounces+south-bay-birds-archive=[[email protected]] Folks: James G. Cooper was the first of the great western zoologists. It's not too bad to have the Cooper Ornithological Society named in your honor, even if the Cooper's Hawk was named after your father, William. Eugene Coan has written a really nice biography of Cooper {Coan, E. 1982. James Graham Cooper, Pioneer Western Naturalist. Univ. Press Idaho, Moscow, Idaho} and has provided extracts from his letters, journals, and reports. Cooper had a passion for zoology. Although he was a medical doctor (about the only entry to zoology at the time) he didn't care much for the practice. He had his ups and downs, I think to a substantial degree these were the result of his own complex personality, and I've selected two extracts here which show these downs and ups during part of his life when he lived in the Bay area. All he ever really wanted to do was to study zoology. In early 1866 he wrote to Spencer Baird at the Smithsonian Institution. "Yours of January 8th has been a month in my hands, but I have been so busy getting married and making preparations to settle here [Santa Cruz], that I believe I have not answered it. I have about given up the expectation of doing any more field work for the [California Geological S]urvey, and as I saw no other opening now I concluded to take the chance of getting a practice here, which is the pleasantest and most interesting (zoologically) place in California. Then of course I had to get someone to keep house for me though I did not choose in a hurry, having been engaged a year. "We hope to be able to live here comfortably after a while and I expect at last to get my library around me, which I have not been able to do since I came out. . . I wish I had some office or business less engrossing than medical practice and I could do a great deal more for science, but I am even afraid to let people know I collect animals, as many will set me down as a 'bugdoctor' and refuse to employ me, even among very intelligent people, otherwise." Santa Cruz did not work out as there was too much competition and he did not hide his collecting propensities. He later commented that the only people that would come to see him were those who could not afford a real doctor. At an earlier time, he talked of the excitement and beauty of the natural world. Here is a passage in 1863 to his sister Fan when he was exploring out of Mountain View. The Arroyo Quito is what we now call Saratoga Creek and this was just at the start of the lumbering above Saratoga (McCarteysville) so there were still some magnificent trees, although I doubt that any were 300 feet high: "I intend when I get through with my survey work, which I think will occupy me for three to six months this year, to come here and practice medicine until something better turns up. . . But the great attraction to me is the magnificent scenery, the delightful climate, and the variety of animals to be found within a few miles. A rather high ridge separates it [San Mateo, where he had bought some property] from Half Moon Bay, and you find a series of zones, from the tropical one bordering San Francisco Bay, where there are laurels four feet thick flowering in January, mingled with evergreen oaks. Then you go through deciduous oaks, pines, spruces, . . . etc., across to the sea-beach where another vegetation and animal life is met with. "I have been two weeks visiting my old hunting grounds at Mountain View, and hunting along the Coast Range west of there along Arroyo Quito. There I found the most lovely scenery I have yet met with in California or anywhere else, and am only sorry that I could not afford to stay longer. It is not as magnificent as that of Yosemite Valley. . . but the details are more beautiful. I should think--groves of tropical looking _Arbutus_ with orange-like leaves and red berries, mingled with firs eight feet in diameter and 300 high, redwoods like gigantic yew trees, and many beautiful flowers beneath--altogether make it a most charming picture. Birds were swarming, rich in song and plumage." Eventually Cooper settled down in Hayward (Haywards in that era), and although frequently discontented, became the grand old man of western zoology that was honored by the newly formed Cooper Ornithological Club in 1893. He never lost his interest in any part of zoology, but his passion in his later years was malacology or the study of mollusks. Although he probably collected more specimens of Pacific Coast salt water mollusks in the 19th century than anyone else, his real interests were the fresh water mollusks and land snails, which, as he noted, he could easily keep at home and study. The salt water mollusks were too difficult to keep alive. Bill (still lost) _______________________________________________ Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored. south-bay-birds mailing list ([[email protected]]) Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription: http://www.plaidworks.com/mailman/options/south-bay-birds/south-bay-birds-archive%40plaidworks.com This email sent to [[email protected]]