the United States Biological Survey), which position he held in 1905. As surgeon of the steamship Proteus, he sailed from Newfoundland to the Arctic seal fisheries, 1883. In 1891 he was appointed by President Harrison on the Bering Sea Commission and visited Alaska to investigate the condition of the fur seal fishery on the Pribilof Islands. In 1889 he made a biological survey of the San Francisco mountain region and painted desert of Arizona, and he has from time to time made exploring expeditions in the far West. He went to Alaska in 1899, as secretary of the Harriman Alaska expedition.
He has described about five hundred new species of North American mammals, and has written several hundred papers on biologic subjects. He says of his medical career that it might almost be called an accident, as the real endeavor of his life, its definite aim, has been fixed on themes of a biological nature. He is a member of the Republican party. Huxley, Darwin and Wallace have formed his favorite reading. He says that school and its companionships were comparatively trivial in their influence over him. His father, his mother, and Professor Spencer F. Baird have been the personalties most deeply affecting his character.
He is a member of the American Ornithologists' Union; of the National Academy of Sciences; of the American Philosophical Society, and of the Zoological Society of London, England. He is the author of "The Birds of Connecticut" (1877); "Mammals of the Adirondacks" (1882-84); "Results of a Biological Survey of San Francisco Mountain Region and Desert of Little Colorado in Arizona" (1890); "Biological Reconnoissance of Idaho" (1891); "Geographic Distribution of Life in North America" (1892); "Trees, Shrubs, Cactuses and Yuccas of the Death Valley Expedition" (1893); "Laws of Temperature — Control of the Geographic Distribution of Terrestrial Animals and Plants" (1894); "Monographic Revision of the Pocket Gophers" (Geomyrdse) (1895); "Biological Survey of Mount Shasta, California" (1899); and "Life Zones and Crop Zones of the United States" (1898).
He was married October 15, 1886, to Virginia Elizabeth Gosnel. Their two children are living in 1906.
