In Memoriam: Victor Harrison Cahalane, 1901-1993

Abstract

Victor H. Cahalane, a member of the AOU since 1934 and an Elective Member since 1946, was born at Charlestown, New Hampshire, 17 October 1901, and died at Dormansville, New York, 6 May 1993. He received his B.Sc. in Landscape Gardening at the Massachusetts Agricultural College in 1924 and a Master's in Forestry in 1927 from Yale University, with a thesis entitled Relationships. He began studies of food caching in fox squirrels at the University of Michigan in 1928. He was a mammalogist with the Michigan Department of Conservation for one year, but instead of completing his Ph.D. thesis he became the first director of the Cranbrook Institute of Science, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan for three years, then field biologist with the National Park Service in 1934 and chief biologist in 1939. His study of the birds of the Katmai National Monument in Alaska, published in the Auk (61:351-375, 1944), was followed by elective membership in the AOU. He became assistant director of the New York State Museum in 1955, and held this position until his retirement in 1967. He co-authored Fading Trails, the Story of Endangered American Wildlife (1942), and wrote seven other books, including Meeting the Mammals (1943) and Mammals of North America (1947).