Charles Barney Cory

Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales (Illustrated Edition) (Dodo Press) Charles Barney Cory Illustrated edition

Charles Barney Cory (1857-1921) was an American ornithologist and golfer. He briefly attended Harvard and the Boston University School of Law but soon left to continue his travelling. In 1883 he was one of the forty-eight ornithologists invited to become Founders of the American Ornithologists' Union. When Cory's collection of 19,000 bird specimens became too large to keep in his house he donated them to The Field Museum in Chicago, and he was given the position of Curator of Ornithology. His collection of 600 ornithological volumes were purchased by Edward E. Ayer in 1894, and in turn donated to the museum. He wrote many books, including: The Birds of Haiti and San Domingo (1885), The Birds of the West Indies (1889), Montezuma's Castle and Other Weird Tales (1899) and The Birds of Illinois and Wisconsin (1909). His last major work was the four-part Catalogue of the Birds of the Americas, which was completed after his death by Carl Edward Hellmayr. He was the first person to describe Cory's Shearwater as a species.