WMmi
SfiSs
m 93 f : m ' ■■ MBi?
.
s ' . ■
.
. ■. ' ■ A. ■
/ .v
m
r J
)
TRANSACTIONS
50&. 73
. W 1 WcS
OF THE
WISCONSIN ACADEMY
OF
SCIENCES, ARTS AND LETTERS
MADISON, WISCONSIN
1952
TRANSACTIONS
OF THE
WISCONSIN ACADEMY
OF
SCIENCES, ARTS AND LETTERS
VOL. XLI
naturae species ratioque
MADISON, WISCONSIN
1952
The publication date of Volume 41 is
July 25, 1952
OFFICERS OF THE WISCONSIN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES,
ARTS AND LETTERS
President
E. L. Bolender, Wisconsin State College , Superior
Vice Presidents
In Science: Alfred M. Fuller, Milwaukee Public Museum
In Arts: Roger C. Kirchhoff, Madison
In Letters: Lester W. J. Seifert, University of Wisconsin
Secretary-Treasurer
Robert J. Dicke, University of Wisconsin
Librarian
Halvor 0. Teisberg, University of Wisconsin
Council
The President
The Vice-Presidents
The Secretary-Treasurer
The Librarian
Charles E. Allen, past president
Paul W. Boutwell, past president
A. W. Schorger, past president
H. A. Schuette, past president
L. E. Noland, past president
Otto L. Kowalke, past president
Robt. K. Richardson, past president
W. C. McKern, past president
Committee on Publications
The President
The Secretary-Treasurer
Robert Irrmann, Beloit College
Committee on Library
The Librarian
W. H. Barber, Ripon College
E. S. McDonough, Marquette University
W. E. Rogers, Lawrence College
R-M. S. Heffner, University of Wisconsin
Committee on Membership
The Secretary-Treasurer
Arthur D. Hasler, University of Wisconsin
Lucia R. Briggs, Milwaukee-D owner College
Robert Esser, Racine Extension Center
Representative on the Council of the American Association
for the Advancement of Science
L. E. Noland, University of Wisconsin
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
A Beloit Episode in the Life of Carl Schurz. Robert K. Richardson . . 5
Locations of Drumlins in the Town of Liberty Grove, Door County,
Wisconsin. 0. L. Kowalke . 15
Parasites of Northwest Wisconsin Fishes III. The 1946 Survey. Jacob
H. Fischthal . . 17
Admiral Russell and the Mediterranean Campaign of 1694-1695.
Robert H. Irrmann . 59
The Distribution of Soils and Slopes on the Major Terraces of Southern
Richland County, Wisconsin. F. D. Hole, F. F. Peterson, and
G. H. Robinson . 73
The Chemical Society of Beloit College, 1863-66. Paul W. Boutwell. . 83
Stephen Pearl Lathrop, a Pioneer Chemist in Wisconsin. Paul W.
Boutwell . 95
Notes on Wisconsin Parasitic Fungi. XVII. H. C. Greene . 117
The Membracidae of Wisconsin. Clifford J. Dennis . 129
Seasonal Fluctuations in the Numbers of Coccidia Oocysts and Parasite
Eggs in the Soil of Pheasant Shelter Pens. Harry G. Guilford
and C. A. Herrick . . 153
Preliminary List of Harvestmen of Wisconsin with a Key to Genera.
Lorna R. Levi and Herbert W. Levi . 163
Some Effects of Thiourocil in the German Brown Trout. Eldon D.
Warner . 169
The Biological Effect of Copper Sulphate Treatment on Lake Ecology.
Kenneth M. Mackenthun and Harold L. Cooley . 177
The Religious Convictions of the Abbe Prevost. Berenice Cooper . 189
The Birth and Development of Ground- Water Hydrology — A Historical
Summary. James E. Hackett . . . . . 201
The Seasonal Incidence of Blowflies at Madison, Wisconsin (Diptera-
Calliphoridae). Robert J. Dicke and John P. Eastwood . . . 207
The Greek Translation of Augustus’ Res Gestae. Donald B. King. . . . 219
Preliminary Sedimentary Analysis of the Pleistocene Sediments on the
Bottom of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin. Syl Ludington, Jr . 229
-I , ■ .
'
,
'
.
.
.
.
A BELOIT EPISODE IN THE LIFE OF CARL SCHURZ
Robert K. Richardson
In the late winter of 1858 the Archaean Society of Beloit
College — a student organization lasting well into the twentieth
century, though later called the Archaean Union — was casting
about for a speaker for its commencement exercises. On Thurs¬
day evening, February 4, the last meeting of the presidency of
Daniel Densmore, ’58, it was voted, on “suggestion” of John H.
Edwards of the same class, “that the Chair appoint a committee
from the Senior class to procure a public speaker for next com¬
mencement.” Not unnaturally it was Edwards himself, just pre¬
viously elected to be Densmore’s successor as president, who was
appointed chairman of the committee in question. On May 26,
soon after the expiry of Mr. Edwards’ own term of office, his
committee “reported Mr. Carl Schurtz ( sic) as the orator on that
occasion.”1 Mr. Edwards, who was to live until 1919, in an article
in the College Round Table, January 31, 1908, stated that the
selection of Mr. Schurz had been at the instance of “political
friends.”2
Schurz delivered his speech, in the Congregational “Old Stone
Church,” on Tuesday evening, July 13, 1858. Now forgotten,
whereas Lincoln’s Hanchett’s Hall address is still spoken of,
Schurz’s oration was perhaps as important a pronouncement as
was ever uttered in the city of Beloit. The account of the speech
in the Beloit Journal of July 153 was enthusiastic but, in the
nature of the case, could hardly be other than inadequate.
On Tuesday evening, the Hon. Carl Schurz addressed the
Archaean Society at the Congregational Church, which was
crowded to its utmost capacity.
The exercises were introduced by prayer from the Rev.
Mr. Love, of Milwaukee, after which the Hon. Carl Schurz
1 Records of the Archaean Society, Feb. 4, 1858; May 26, 1858. Cf. Sept. 30, 1857
and May 19, 1858. The committee whose names appear in the brochure of the speech
as printed consisted of Horatio Pratt and J. H. Edwards, the former being- Mr.
Edwards’ successor in the presidency of the Society.
2 Fifty Years Ago. Pp. 161-164.
3 P. 2, col. 1. i Cf. The Congregational Herald, Editorial Correspondence, Thurs¬
day, July (22), 1858: “On the evening- preceding- the commencement, Hon. Carl
Schurz, of Watertown, late Republican candidate for the lieutenant governorship,
delivered an oration before the Literary Society. His subject was the ‘American
Idea,’ and a most noble discourse he gave, marked by true scholarship, and em¬
bodying- principles of the soundest wisdom, and morality. Such men as he are a
most valuable contribution from the Old World, to our American Society and
civilization.’’ The correspondence, from which the above is an excerpt, is signed “E.”
5
6 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
delivered one of the most able and eloquent addresses to
which we have ever listened. His subject was, “America and
Americanism,” which he discussed in the broadest and most
comprehensive sense. For profound, vigorous thought, sound
argument and terse logic, we have seldom heard this effort
equalled. For us to attempt anything like a synopsis of this
address would be futile. It should have been heard or be read
to be appreciated.
Fortunately, as explained by Mr. Edwards in his 1908 article,
the political friends who had suggested Schurz to the Society
were willing to defray the cost of printing the address. In a
brief, polite note of the day following the speech, the Archaean’s
committee solicited publication, and in his reply of the 24th Mr.
Schurz acceded.4 The phrasing of the consent may be presumed
to indicate the way things stood in the writer’s mind at the
moment.
. . . The narrow space of a single Address did not permit
me to offer you more than a desultory sketch of a multitude
of topics, each of which is so comprehensive and so deserv¬
ing of elaborate exposition. I intended, therefore, to remodel
the whole, and to complete my remarks upon several
branches of the subject before offering the manuscript for
publication. But as your letter and those of other esteemed
friends led me to believe that the Address is desired to be
published as it was delivered, I send it to you in its original
form. If it should succeed in kindling and nourishing in
some of its readers a clear consciousness of the great mis¬
sion of this country, I shall deem myself amply rewarded.
The Beloit speech as printed is a forty-page brochure [B. E.
Hale and Company, Beloit, 1858] , bearing, both on its cover and
first page, the title: An Address, Delivered Before the Archaean
Society of Beloit College, at Its Anniversary, July 13, 1858. By
Carl Schurz. As heading of the Address, on page 5, is the single
word Americanism.
The importance of the oration thus preserved is that it was
the unwitting rehearsal of Schurz’s far more important address
in Faneuil Hall, of April 18, 1859, entitled True Americanism.
The late Superintendent Schafer, in his Carl Schurz, Militant
Liberal, enumerates six speeches of Schurz between October 16,
1857 and January 4, 1860, inclusive, “whose delivery and publi¬
cation were largely responsible for the reputation Schurz enjoyed
at the opening of the Lincoln campaign.”5 Of these the Boston
4 Speech as published, p. 3.
5 Carl Schurz, Militant Liberal, Wisconsin Biography Series, vol. I, 1930, 118, 124,
126. For date October 16, see 107.
1952]
Richardson — Carl Schurz
7
speech of April 18 stands fifth in the series. Schafer deems it
“probably the most eloquent and impassioned of all his early
utterances,” and explains that
It was widely copied by the newspapers, it affected the
campaign against anti-foreignism, ... it opened the way
for Schurz as a lecturer in Massachusetts, New Hampshire,
New York. In a word it made him a marked man in
Yankeedom.
The immediate object of the Faneuil Hall address, as is clear
from letters addressed by Schurz to Edward L. Pierce of March
26 and May 12, 1859, was to help deter Massachusetts voters
from accepting a Know-Nothing amendment to their state con¬
stitution, presented for their approval by the legislature, and
providing “that, before gaining the right to vote in Massachu¬
setts, foreign-born persons must not only have become citizens
of the United States, which required five years residence in the
country, but in addition must have lived in the state two years
after becoming citizens.” “Wise Republican leaders,” continues
Dr. Schafer, “deplored that action because to again frighten the
foreigners of the country with the bogey of Know-Nothingism
would mean the certain defeat of the party in 1860. Some of the
young men of Boston, headed by Edward L. Pierce, a friend of
Charles Sumner, considering the ways of over-coming the anti-
foreign influences, decided to invite Carl Schurz to Boston for
an address.”6
Schurz’s own sense of the significance of the legislative pro¬
posal in Massachusetts is clearly expounded in his letter to
Pierce of March 26, 1859. 7
. . . The foreign-born Republicans were drawn to that
party by the irresistable force of principle and nothing else.
No wing of the party has worked more faithfully and dis¬
interestedly. They did not aspire to position and preferment ;
but the only thing desired was to see the principles they
loved faithfully carried out in practice. The friends of free¬
dom could always count upon them as their truest confed¬
erates. They joined the Republican party in spite of the cry
of Know-Nothingism, placing their trust in the power of
principle over the souls of men and in the good faith of their
political friends. Their labors did not remain unrewarded.
Republicanism spread among the German population of the
Northern States with astonishing rapidity, and even in the
6 Op. cit., 123-124. For the letters to Edward L. Pierce of March 26 and May 12,
1859, see Speeches, ' Correspondence and Political Papers of Carl Schurz, Selected
and Edited by Frederic Bancroft on Behalf of the Carl Schurz Memorial Committee,
vol. I, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1913, 41 f£. ; 75 ff.
7 Speeches, Correspondence, etc,, I, 42-44.
8 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
South the Germans stood everywhere in the vanguard of the
movement.
To no class of our population could the action of the Mas¬
sachusetts legislature be more mortifying than to them. . . .
Do not think, sir, that the effect of the action of your legis¬
lature will be confined to the limits of your State. . . .
It cannot be expected that the foreign-born Republicans,
after this, should place implicit confidence in a party that
has given evidence of inconsistency and bad faith, and that
they should work with equal enthusiasm as before; and I
must confess, although I am no less devoted to the anti¬
slavery cause than any other man in this country, I can not
blame them for it. . . . In most of the States west of the
Alleghany Mountains, the Germans hold the balance of
power between the parties. The Republican party would
never have been able to carry a single one of these States
without their co-operation. A change of a few thousand
votes in Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, Michigan and
even Ohio might throw those states into the hands of the
pro-slavery party. ... If the just indignation called forth
by the action of your legislature be not allayed by a contrary
vote of the people, and if the intention (at present gaining
ground among the Germans) to leave the Republican ranks
en masse and to vote for independent candidates be carried
out, the Republicans may lose three or four Western States
in 1860, when the change of one may decide the result of the
Presidential campaign. And then the State of Massachusetts,
that bulwark of anti-slavery principles, would be respon¬
sible for the defeat of the anti-slavery cause, and that, too,
at a time when, without this, success would have been almost
certain.
The Faneuil Hall speech, therefore, not only established Schurz
as a national figure, but, despite the subsequent action of the
Massachusetts voters in supporting the unfortunate amendment,8
was significant in strengthening Schurz’s hold on the wavering
German vote and, we may believe, in guiding the Republican
party to that plank in its platform which, in effect, disowned the
Know-Nothing behavior of the Bay Stated
The Beloit address, unmentioned by Mr. Schafer, came be¬
tween the first and second speeches of his list, and was, of
course, spoken without foresight of Massachusetts conditions.
8 Schafer, op. cit., 126. Note Schurz’s rueful letter to Pierce of May 12, 1859:
“Well, ‘the deed is done’ ; now we have to look out for the consequences. The effect
on the Republican party in the Western States will be very serious. ... You have
no idea how the whole thing1 will embarrass me, unless proper measures are taken
to put the responsibility for the measure where it belongs.
“There is in my opinion but one way to set the Republican party right before
the people : it is to organize a straight Republican party in Massachusetts, and
now is the time to do it.” Speeches, Con'espondence, etc., I, 75-76.
0 Schafer, op. cit., 132.
1952]
Richardson — Carl Schurz
9
Were this fact not apparent from the dates, it would be amply
substantiated by the content of the speech itself and from the
note of permission to print sent by Schurz to the Archaean
Society. None the less, the speech at Beloit was to furnish the
pattern for the Faneuil Hall oration : it was ready to hand when
the emergency arose.
The Boston address10 is much shorter than the Beloit one,
about 8,300 words as against about 13,000, and gains immeasur¬
ably in unity and force from the compression. The exordia and
perorations of the two naturally differ. At Beloit the orator opens,
appropriately to an academic occasion, with an explanation of
his omission of references to Egypt, Athens and Rome, and
states his intention to speak of America “as the great repre¬
sentative of the spirit” of the current age : at Boston, contrari¬
wise, he wins his audience’s attention by happy allusions to the
State House cupola, to Bunker Hill, to the renowned Tea Party,
and to “this grand old hall, which so often resounded with the
noblest appeals that ever thrilled American hearts.” Despite a
fine concluding sentence (still needed in American life) — “Above
all, nourish within yourself the sacred fire of that national ambi¬
tion, which teaches you that to be a true American means noth¬
ing but to be a true Man ” — the Beloit peroration, unclearly de¬
limited, is rather commonplace. The Faneuil Hall peroration,
though lacking the magnificent phrase just quoted, is as a whole
more stirring, though, at the same time, its thought is identical
with the end of the speech at Beloit.
[The inscription on the banner of Western Republicanism
from the Alleghany Mountains to the Rockies is] “Liberty
and rights, common to all as the air of Heaven — Liberty and
equal rights, one and inseparable !”
With this banner we stand before the world. In this sign
— in this sign alone, and no other— there is victory. And
thus, sir, we mean to realize the great cosmopolitan idea,
upon which the existence of the American nation rests.
Thus we mean to fulfill the great mission of true American¬
ism — thus we mean to answer the anxious question of down¬
trodden humanity — “Has man the faculty to be free and to
govern himself?” The answer is a triumphant “Aye,” thun¬
dering into the ears of the despots of the old world that “a
man is a man for all that”; proclaiming to the oppressed
that they are held in subjection on false pretences; cheering
the hearts of the despondent friends of man with consola¬
tion and renewed confidence.
This is true Americanism, clasping mankind to its great
heart. Under its banner we march ; let the world follow.
10 In Speeches , Correspondence, etc., I, 48-72.
10 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
But exordium and peroration aside, the two addresses are
essentially identical, always in purport and to a considerable
degree in wording. A quarter of the Beloit speech perhaps, not
counting material content later deleted in Boston, bears striking
verbal resemblance to its great derivative. Parallel columns may
furnish lively illustration. Much more might be adduced. Schurz
begins by picturing from his very early recollections the depar¬
ture from his native Rhenish village of a group of emigrants
starting for America.
Beloit 11
It is one of the earliest recol¬
lections of my boyhood, that
one summer night our whole
village was astir in conse¬
quence of an uncommon occur¬
rence. I say our village, for I
was born in a small hamlet not
far from that beautiful spot
where the Rhine rolls his green
waters out of the wonderful
gate of the Seven Mountains
and meanders with majestic
tranquility through one of the
most glorious valleys of the
world. That night our neigh¬
bors were pressing around a
few wagons, covered with linen
sheets and loaded with house¬
hold utensils and boxes and
trunks, to their utmost capac¬
ity. One of our neighboring
families was moving far away
across a great water, and it
was said that they would never
again return. And I saw silent
tears trickling down weather¬
beaten cheeks, and the hands
of rough peasants firmly press¬
ing each other, and some of the
men and women hardly able to
speak when they nodded to one
another a last farewell. At last,
the train got into motion ; they
gave three cheers for America,
and then, in the first gray
Boston 12
It is one of the earliest recol¬
lections of my boyhood, that
one summer night our whole
village was stirred by an un¬
common occurrence. I say our
village, for I was born not far
from that beautiful spot where
the Rhine rolls his green waters
out of the wonderful gate
of the Seven Mountains, and
then meanders with majestic
tranquillity through one of the
most glorious valleys of the
world. That night our neigh¬
bors were pressing around a
few wagons covered with linen
sheets and loaded with house¬
hold utensils and boxes and
trunks to their utmost capac¬
ity. One of our neighboring
families was moving far away
across a great water, and it
was said that they would never
again return. And I saw silent
tears trickling down weather¬
beaten cheeks, and the hands
of rough peasants firmly press¬
ing each other, and some of the
men and women hardly able to
speak when they nodded to one
another a last farewell. At last
the train started into motion,
they gave three cheers for
America, and then in the first
gray dawn of the morning I
u Brochure, 6-7.
^Speeches, > Correspondence , etc., I, 49-51.
1952]
Richardson — Carl Schurz
11
dawn of the morning I saw
them wending their way over
the hill until they disappeared
in the shadow of the forest.
And I heard many a man say,
how happy he would be if he
was able to go with them to
that great and free, new coun¬
try. That was the first time I
heard of America, and my
childish imagination took pos¬
session of a land covered,
partly with majestic trees,
partly with flowery prairies,
immeasurable to the eye, and
intersected with large rivers
and broad lakes — a land where
everybody could do what he
thought best, and where no¬
body was poor because every¬
body was free. And later, when
I was old enough to read, and
descriptions of this country,
and books on American history
fell into my hands, the off¬
spring of my imagination ac¬
quired the colors of reality,
and I began to exercise my
brain with the thought, what
man might be and become
when left perfectly free to him¬
self. And still later, when
ripening into manhood, I
looked up from my school
books into the stir and bustle
of the world, and the trumpet-
tones of struggling humanity
struck my ear and thrilled my
heart, and I saw my nation
shake their chains in order to
burst them, and I heard a
gigantic, universal shout for
Liberty rising up to the skies;
and, at last, after having
struggled manfully and
drenched the earth of Father-
land with the blood of thou¬
sands of noble beings, I saw
that nation crushed down
saw them wending their way
over the hill until they disap¬
peared in the shadow of the
forest. And I heard many a
man say, how happy he would
be if he could go with them to
that great and free country,
where a man could be himself.
That was the first time that
I heard of America, and my
childish imagination took pos¬
session of a land covered partly
with majestic trees, partly
with flowery prairies, immeas¬
urable to the eye, and inter¬
sected with large rivers and
broad lakes — a land where
everybody could do what he
thought best, and where no¬
body need be poor, because
everybody was free.
And later, when I was old
enough to read, and descrip¬
tions of this country and books
on American history fell into
my hands, the offspring of my
imagination acquired the colors
of reality, and I began to exer¬
cise my brain with the thought
of what man might be and be¬
come when left perfectly free
to himself. And still later,
when ripening into manhood, I
looked up from my school¬
books into the stir and bustle
of the world, and the trumpet-
tones of struggling humanity
struck my ear and thrilled my
heart, and I saw my nation
shake her chains in order to
burst them, and I heard a
gigantic, universal shout for
Liberty rising up to the skies;
and at last, after having
struggled manfully and
drenched the earth of Father-
land with the blood of thou¬
sands of noble beings, I saw
that nation crushed down
12 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
again, not only by overwhelm¬
ing armies, but by the dead
weight of customs and institu¬
tions, and notions, and preju¬
dices, which past centuries had
heaped upon her shoulders, and
which a moment of enthusiasm,
however sublime, could not de¬
stroy — then I consoled an
almost despondent heart with
the idea of a youthful people,
and of original institutions,
clearing the way for an un¬
trammeled development of the
ideal nature of man. Then I
turned my eyes instinctively
across the Atlantic Ocean, and
America, and Americanism, as
I fancied it, became to me the
last depository of the hopes of
all true friends of Humanity.
I say all this, not as though
I indulged in the presumptuous
delusion, that my personal feel¬
ings and experience could be of
any interest to you, but in or¬
der to show you what America
is to the thousands of thinking
men in the old world, who, dis¬
appointed in their fondest
hopes, and depressed by the
saddest experience, cling with
their last remnant of confi¬
dence in human nature to the
last spot on earth, where man
is free to follow the road to
attainable perfection, and
where, unbiased by the disas¬
trous influence of traditional
notions, customs and institu¬
tions, he acts on his own
responsibility.
again, not only by overwhelm¬
ing armies, but by the dead
weight of customs and institu¬
tions and notions and preju¬
dices which past centuries had
heaped upon them, and which
a moment of enthusiasm, how¬
ever sublime, could not de¬
stroy ; then I consoled an
almost despondent heart with
the idea of a youthful people
and of original institutions
clearing the way for an un¬
trammeled development of the
ideal nature of man. Then I
turned my eyes instinctively
across the Atlantic Ocean, and
America and Americanism, as
I fancied them, appeared to me
as the last depositories of the
hopes of all true friends of
humanity.
I say all this, not as though
I indulged in the presumptuous
delusion that my personal feel¬
ings and experience would be
of any interest to you, but
in order to show you what
America is to the thousands of
thinking men in the old world,
who, disappointed in their
fondest hopes and depressed by
the saddest experience, cling
with their last remnant of con¬
fidence in human nature, to the
last spot on earth where man
is free to follow the road to
attainable perfection, and
where, unbiased by the disas¬
trous influence of traditional
notions, customs and institu¬
tions, he acts on his own
responsibility.
When Rev. Dr. Edwards wrote in 1908 that the Beloit address
was really “the stepping-stone to [Schurz’s] public career” he
was obviously forgetting a large block of Wisconsin history: but
when he stated that the speech was “repeated soon after in
Boston,” he hit close to the truth. The saying, attributed to
1952]
13
Richardson — Carl Schurz
Oliver Cromwell, that “No one goes so far as the man who
doesn’t know where he is going,”13 was holding true of Carl
Schurz on that July Tuesday evening of 1858: Beloit was on
Schurz’s road to Boston and Boston was to be the portal of
Schurz’s national reputation and, perhaps, of Lincoln’s election.
An important speech, that Beloit address !
Not until September 29, 1858, did the Treasurer’s Book of the
Archaean Society of Beloit College exhibit the entry: “Sept 29
To Carl Schurz for lecture. 15. 00.”14 We trust that the boys had
explained to their speaker, back in July, that he must await his
pay over the long vacation. Yet in reality his peculium was
national repute and a striking part in the preservation of the
Union and the overthrow of American slavery.15
13 A. V. Dicey, Lectures on the Relation Between Law and Public Opinion in
England , 2nd ed., 1920 reprint, London, 1920, ft. 231.
u Treasurer’s Book of the Archaean Society of Beloit College. Money for the pay¬
ment for publication of Mr. Schurz’s speech seems not to have passed through the
Treasurer’s hands : at least there is no such item in the accounts.
Dr. Edwards notes that in conversation years later, Schurz told him that he
remembered the Beloit affair “well and pleasantly.” Schurz does not mention it in
his Reminiscences and apparently set little store by it.
15 For notice of Schurz’s participation with others in a huge Republican rally at
Beloit, July 13, 1860, with delegates present from Janesville, Rockford, Freeport,
and Green and Walworth counties, at which, with others, Schurz spoke afternoon
and evening, see Beloit Journal and Courier (weekly), July 19, 1860, p. 2, cols. 1
and 2.
It is well known that Carl Schurz acquired his remarkable facility in English,
in part, by constantly noting down and absorbing into his own instinctive speech
what he considered notable phrases or idioms, wherever found. The peroration of
the Boston address furnishes what look like two examples.
1. “Liberty and equal rights, one and inseparable.” \Cf. the close of Webster’s
Reply to Hayne : “Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable !”
2. “ ‘A man is a man for all that.’ ” From Burns.
“In this sign — in this sign alone, and no other — there is victory” comes doubtless
straight from the Latin In hoc signo vinces.
LOCATIONS OF DRUMLINS IN THE TOWN OF LIBERTY
GROVE, DOOR COUNTY, WISCONSIN
0. L. Kowalke
The drumlins in the Town of Liberty Grove attracted the
author’s interest when he made the survey of the Highest Aban¬
doned Beach Ridges in Northern Door County. {Trans. Wis.
Acad, of Sc. Arts & Letters, Vol. 38, p. 293.) Door County is in
eastern Wisconsin and embraces most of the peninsula that lies
between the waters of Green Bay and of Lake Michigan. The
Town of Liberty Grove, a political unit, lies at the north end of
the Door County peninsula ; it extends about 12 miles from south
to north ; its average width, east to west, between Lake Michigan
and Green Bay is about 5.2 miles ; and it is located within survey
Towns 31, 32, and 33 North of the Wisconsin-Illinois boundary
and Ranges 28 and 29 East of the 4th Principal Meridian.
The land facing Green Bay, in general, rises abruptly from the
shore line and in several places it rises vertically for over 100
feet. That fact is shown on the accompanying map by the con¬
tour line for 650 feet above sea level, the waters of Green Bay
and Lake Michigan being at 578 feet. Note also along State High¬
way 42 the regions in Range 28 East whose elevations are, re¬
spectively, 755 feet on the west line of Sec. 7, T31N ; 730 feet at
the S.W. corner of Sec. 28, T32N ; 736 feet, in Sec. 15 and 16,
T32N ; and a high of 800 feet in Sec. 22, T32N. From those high
areas the land slopes fairly gradually toward the south-east to
Lake Michigan.
Practically all the land on which the drumlins are located is
now or has been cultivated ; all the original forest cover is gone.
The drumlins, on that account, have undoubtedly been eroded
away considerably.
As shown on the map, the drumlins lie in two groups. One
group lies south of the village of Ellison Bay and northeasterly
from Sister Bay ; and the other lies south of the village of Sister
Bay.
Those drumlins lying south of Ellison Bay and north-easterly
from Sister Bay may also be divided. Those lying in Secs. 26, 27,
and 28 constitute one group and those lying in Secs. 33, 34, and
35 constitute the other group, both groups being in T32N, R28E.
The group in Secs. 26, 27, and 28 lies in fields that have been
cultivated from time to time. These drumlins are low, none being
15
16 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
over 10 feet high above the surrounding surfaces, and the slopes
to the crests are not steep.
The group in Secs. 33, 34, and 35 also lies in cultivated fields
and some units are in cherry orchards. The drumlins in this
group are, in general, much higher than those of the preceding
group. The elevations of three of the drumlins are noted on the
map as 732 feet, 736 feet, and 740 feet, respectively, above sea
level. The elevation at a highway intersection at the center of
Sec. 35 is 690 feet. Thus the three drumlins have crests 40 to 50
feet above the surrounding ground.
The soil in Sections 26 and 27 is classified as Miami gravelly
loam. (Wis. Geol. & Nat. Hist. Sur. Bui. No. 52-D, Soil Series No.
10.) It appears then that the drumlins in this area have been
eroded considerably and that perhaps they are older than those
in Sections 34 and 35. The soil in Sections 34 and 35 is classified
as Miami fine sandy loam and it may have been washed from the
higher ground in Sections 26 and 27.
That group of drumlins lying south of Sister Bay in Sections
7, 16, 17, and 20 differs from the preceding groups in that the
individual drumlins are, in general, smaller and they are not
over 10 feet high. Most of them are covered with a second-
growth forest.
The drumlin lying in the northwest corner of Section 20, near
the intersection of Highways 57 and Q, is conspicuous because
on its crest now stand a church with its parsonage and a private
dwelling. Furthermore, a part of the drumlin was cut away when
Highway 57 was graded.
It is debatable whether the low ridge shown as a drumlin in
Section 7 should be called a drumlin, because it is so near the
contour of 646 feet, the level of post-glacial Lake Algonquin.
On the other hand, the soil in it is a mixture of sand, loam,
gravel and boulders.
Drumlins may have been deposited elsewhere in the Town of
Liberty Grove, but if they were in regions outside the contour of
650 feet, they would have been destroyed and washed away by
waves in the post-glacial Lake Algonquin.
PARASITES OF NORTHWEST WISCONSIN FISHES
III. THE 1946 SURVEY1
Jacob H. Fischthal2
Abstract
In a survey of fish parasites during 1946 from 47 lakes and
streams in northwest Wisconsin, 1,547 fishes representing 46
different species and subspecies were examined and 1,394 or 90.1
per cent were infected with at least one species of parasite. The
number of fish infected with each parasite from each water as
well as the intensity of infection is presented in tabular form for
each species of fish examined. A check list of parasites and the
number of different species of fishes infected with each is also
given. The larval parasites occurred most frequently and in more
species of fishes than did the other developmental stage. The
yellow grub, Clinostomum marginatum, was found in 10 species
of fishes; the black spot parasites, Neascus spp., in 30 species;
the gill flukes (Gyrodactyloidea) in 19 species; and the bass tape¬
worm, Proteocephalus ambloplitis, in 11 species.
Introduction
The present paper covering the year 1946 is the third and final
in a series of annual reports on a parasite survey of northwest
Wisconsin fishes, and is in continuation of the desire for more
knowledge of the distribution, incidence and intensity of para¬
sitism in fishes from the many lakes and streams of Wisconsin
as originally set forth. The first two reports in this series by
Fischthal (1947 and 1950) record the parasite survey data for
1944 and 1945 respectively. Part IV (Summary and Limnological
Relationships) will conclude this study and will appear at a later
date.
The 1946 survey was started February 19 and was terminated
December 9. During this period fishes were examined from 47
different lakes and streams as shown in Table 1. These fishes
were collected for the most part by the use of fyke nets in lakes
and an electric shocking device in streams. Other means used for
collecting fishes were a gill net, a common-sense minnow seine
1 Contribution from the Fish Management Division, Wisconsin Conservation
Department.
2 Department of Biological Sciences, Harpur College, State University of New
York, Endicott, New York.
17
18 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
and a dip net. Some of the fishes were examined fresh within a
few days after capture; however, the majority were frozen and
stored in a frozen-food locker until needed.
A total of 1,547 fishes, representing 46 different species and
subspecies, were examined for parasites and 1,394 or 90.1 per
cent were infected with at least one species of parasite (data
summarized in Table 2). Three hundred and seventeen or 20.9
per cent of the 1,547 fishes examined were from streams and 249
or 78.5 per cent of these 317 fishes were parasitized. The remain¬
ing 1,230 or 79.1 per cent of the 1,547 fishes examined were from
lakes and flowages and 1,145 or 93.1 per cent of these 1,230 fishes
were infected. Bangham (1946) in a survey of northern Wiscon¬
sin fishes during 1943, covering mainly the northeastern section
of the state, found 93.2 per cent of 1,330 fishes infected with
parasites. Approximately 8.7 per cent of these 1,330 fishes exam¬
ined were from streams. The fishes from streams showed an 80.2
per cent infection, while the remainder from lakes and flowages
were 94.4 per cent infected. Fischthal (1947) encountered para¬
sites in 96.4 per cent of 2,059 fishes surveyed from northwest
Wisconsin during 1944. Of these 2,059 fishes examined, 32.5 per
cent were from streams. The fishes from streams were 92.7 per
cent parasitized, while the remainder from lakes and flowages
were 98.2 per cent infected. Fischthal (1950) recovered para¬
sites from 87.2 per cent of 926 fishes from northwest Wisconsin
during 1945. Approximately 60.5 per cent of the 926 fishes exam¬
ined were from streams. The fishes from streams were 80.1 per
cent infected, while the remainder from lakes and flowages were
98.1 per cent infected.
If the figures for the 1944 and 1945 surveys, respectively, by
Fischthal (1947, 1950) are combined with those in this report
for 1946, all three surveys covering northwest Wisconsin, it is
seen that 4,532 fishes were examined over a three-year period
and that 4,186 or 92.4 per cent were infected. Of these 4,532
fishes examined, 34.4 per cent were from streams. The fishes
from streams were 85.3 per cent parasitized, while the remainder
from lakes and flowages were 96.1 per cent infected. The 92.4
per cent total infection for the three years of surveys is rela¬
tively high in comparison with surveys conducted elsewhere.
Freshwater fishes from southern Florida studied by Bangham
(1940) showed 88 per cent of 1,380 fishes parasitized. Bangham
(1941) found 84.3 per cent of 560 fishes from Algonquin Park
(Ontario) lakes infected. In a further study of the Algonquin
Park region Bangham and Venard (1946) showed 75.8 per cent
of 676 fishes to harbor at least one species of parasite. Hunter
(1941) found parasites in 72.5 per cent of 598 Connecticut fishes
Lakes and Streams Surveyed for Parasites
1952]
Fischthal — Fish Parasites , III .
19
§
O' w
Q #•
0s
0s O' O O' ~
— < 0s 0s cM 00 < — I Ms
— ^ M" w-n O O'
0s' — 1 ' — 1 —< <M (M >— 1 — < (S \0 ■ — r^NNN-H
sO
00 00 ^ O Ms Ms vO NNt\KKKt\NOOCOOOK\OKt\
c
£
o
W jT
8
>>
5m
<D
>
c u, e c
o 5
X °XX
So £ S'o £
£ w .3 2 w 2
x >^3^3
u h u u ^ u
>-» Vh c
^ o r*
+j » 5c ' y u
X c O r r ^
8 P ! !
_ §
J I
|il I
o S 6 „ £
w D 3 C D
Sunils
>22m2
OC
o ^
Zc
si
^ 'O
sO cm
cm
- O O' ij~v
vr\ ir\ MO O O <M CM
CM CM „CM CM CM „ CM
im . ~ O' - - - O sQ cM O' -
vrvcMvO^CM -<0'tSMtSv0C7'‘AM0'‘AM ^cM cM cM — 'O'
CO CO CM CM CM <M (f) •— • «— I <M *— i CM ■— I CM CO 1 1—1 CO CM CM CO *-M CO CO * CM
„ «C0 CO CO co .CO CO co CO CO CO co .co co .co co .co „ .co co
— < >— > ir\ vrv Ms sO — 'sOOOO'O'XO''/-'— 1 G'T:tl^O'vO’— 1 < • — ■ t-s, Ms
c£oCo£(£c6&cCc£cC&&Q6c£tio£oCcC&QCcCcCcCQCcCc6cC
o
>*
£
cd
CO
- 2 u u a «
5 o <u o fj
§ -rsrrs=i
<s
- <u <u
cd »-, i_
g T> T) ‘3 '3 . T5 «T)XI
q ) <d 5 c c tj ^ ^
R;xxu oU^ ^ o a g ^cgx
X cd cd cd cd cd-2 o^3^wcd3cdcd
OfflCQDJCQWOCLco(^CO<CQCQCQCQ
8
cd
c
a
<D
XI
<u
X
cd
£
cd
w
X
cd
1 <D
bD
!|1§
rJto: ^
cd cd cdJ2 c -
W3,^«0(J
<u
VX
’o 2
v X
O"0
X C
cd o
*> JQh
?
3 CL
X' '
•g _
. . cl<£® 8
U.S — 1
^ -ro <u
cdX o cd o
„ In ^ S c u ^
o o-w g_2 2 §2^
i^egj(£^ sic^a^r^sicBOOJdSj
^ | aSS^ ^
.5Px xxii3 «!
CQUUUUQQ
x TO X cd ,"2 1-2 w2 h2 v £ Cd X .ti X X X o
QUW^O^XS^JJXiJhJJh-)
TABLE 1 — (Continued)
Lakes and Streams Surveyed for Parasites
20
Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
z
o
U H
2 Sc5
o
U
^ o
oo
cO c^\
'rv i\ O' M vD CO vO r^i
>0
vr\
O — < O' cd
t-N vD vr\ \tv. c0 t'x 00
co 9> »-
w CO
o £2
.. 3 O
2t> >r
22^0
22co
c
£
o
■sj
+-> o
8-°
£ £
3 3
oj
>2
8S
£2
2 °
^ 4— T
<U
>
o £
CO 3
gTS
22
vrs irv
co
vO - 00 U-v
co
O vrs .t"s
vO
iHtsr,'-<NiA'-<N^c^NON't^ '-'N'O'a
vO— 'CO—1 CO bv CO — 'COCOcOCOCOCOCOCOr^CO— 1 C0'O<^C0r^r<i
COCO .CO .CO .COCOCO . .CO . „ . . .CO .CO .COCO .COCO
»tnsD— ivrv'-^OO— 1 — ' i/-\ v£> >— 1 — ' — — i — < — * — ■
oCoiiZoCi^QCoCQCoCoCiZQCoCpCoCoCpCocIoCpCoCaCciCoCoCpCnc:
2 z z z" z z" z' z‘ z‘ z z‘ z' z‘ z z z‘ z z‘ z‘ z z‘ z" z z‘ z z‘ z‘
ooooKnnON^' — 1 1 — 00r>0'cMAr\'t,tON' — O' r> >a O'
<D
cC
CO
OQ
2 5
_ a
<S
£J3<£uc£hJ?
CO
£ 2
. : 2 £ 5
mc£ J5q
<u
bD
i >
5 v <u £
i cS £2
, w
U.S>g3
H £ y co2
i §2 -a &
3d
cq <u u~2
2
M cO i— I
2 x
T 2 c o
T3 8 OU
Ife
CO ^
2 -2.J
J8
jg^- : fa 2
<^<u<d‘.2c
(U ?y in C
S° J §0
^ v2 bD^1 $_
^ g-gJSg
.2 o a co Q<
cococo 22
2
co
3
2
2 .
<U (V) <U
0^2
SLs 1
a**
o u w
& $2
1952]
Fischthal — Fish Parasites, III.
21
TABLE 2
Summary of Parasite Survey Data
22 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
examined. In a survey of Lake Erie, Bangham and Hunter
(1939) found 58.3 per cent of 2,156 fishes infected with para¬
sites. Essex and Hunter (1926) obtained parasites from 39 per
cent of 652 fishes from lakes and streams of the central states.
In Table 1, the locations given for streams are those points at
which collections were made. In collecting from lakes, fyke nets
were set in varying aquatic environments in order to obtain as
representative a sample of fishes as possible and under varied
ecological conditions. In Tables 3-22 no mark preceding the
names of the parasites indicates an adult stage; an inverted T
(1) before the parasite denotes the presence of both adult and
immature stages in the same fish; two asterisks (**) preceding
the parasite indicates an immature stage; a single asterisk (*)
preceding the parasite indicates a larval stage ; the superimposed
number one 0) following the number of infected fish or a light
infection in the text data indicates an infection with 1-10 speci¬
mens of that species; the superimposed number two (2) or a
moderate infection denotes an infection with 11-50 specimens;
the superimposed number three (3) or a heavy infection indi¬
cates an infection with 51 or more specimens. The use of sp. or
spp. after a generic name or a broader classification jthan genus
indicates that the specimens could not be identified more com¬
pletely. The notations (1|) and (2) following Long Lake are used
to designate that two different Long lakes in Bayfield county
are being considered; the notation (W) after a third Long lake,
located in Washburn county, is used to differentiate this lake
from the two Long lakes in Bayfield county.
Appreciation is due the Fishery Biology and Fish Propagation
personnel at Spooner, Wisconsin, for their aid in collecting the
fishes used in this survey. Thanks are also due Dr. H. J. Van
Cleave, University of Illinois, for identification of Neoechinor-
hynchus saginatus and rutili in the hosts recorded herein.
Acipenser fulvescens Raf ., Rock sturgeon : One fish was exam¬
ined from the Ladysmith Flowage. It was lightly infected with
Allocreadium sp., Cucullanus sp., Spinitectus carolini, and mod¬
erately with immature Crepidostomum lintoni.
Osmerus mordax (Mitchill), American smelt: All 13 smelt
from Lake Superior were infected. Five were lightly parasitized
with larval Diplostomulum sp. in the lens of the eye, and one
with Neoechinorhynchus sp. Immature Bothriocephalus sp.
occurred lightly in 4, moderately in 1; Cystidicola stigmatura
lightly in 9, moderately in 4 ; Leptorhynchoides thecatus lightly
in 6, moderately in 1.
1952]
Fischthal — Fish Parasites , III.
23
Leucichthys artedi (LeSueur), Cisco or lake herring: Two
from Lower Pine lake were moderately infected with immature
i Proteocephalus sp.
Salmo gairdnerii irideus Gibbons, Coast rainbow trout: Five
(71 per cent) of 7 fish from 2 streams harbored parasites. Larval
glochidia occurred lightly in the 1 McKenzie creek trout, and
immature Alio creadium lohatum was lightly present in 4 of the
6 Osceola creek fish.
Salmo trutta fario Linn., Brown trout: Seven (41 per cent) of
17 fish were parasitized. The 2 Osceola creek fish were negative.
The 4 Hay creek pond fish were all lightly infected with.rSpini-
tectus carolini. Only 3 of the J1 McKenzie creek trout were
lightly infected with immature AUo creadium lohatum.
Salvelinus f. fontinalis (Mitchill), Common brook trout:
Thirty one (82 per cent) of the 38 fish from 3 waters were para¬
sitized. Only 1£ of the 13 fish from Devils creek were infected,
2 lightly with Neoechinorhynchus rutili and 1 with rRhahdochona
cascadilla; 10 were lightly infected, 1 moderately, and 1 heavily
with 1 Crepidostomum farionis. All 12 Duncan creek trout har¬
bored parasites, 1 light infection with Abothrium eras sum,
2 witlrTV. rutili, and 1 with R. cascadilla; 6 lightly and 1 moder¬
ately with larval Neascus sp., Seven of 13 Little Star lake fish
were lightly infected with larval ySpiroxys sp.
Catostomus c. catostomus (Forster), Eastern sturgeon sucker:
The 5 Lake Superior fish were lightly parasitized, 3 with larval
- Diplostomulum sp. in the lens of the eye, 4 with’ Neoechinorhyn¬
chus crassus, and 1 with larval Neoechinorhynchus sp. encysted
in the mesentery.
Bow fin (Table 3)
All 8 bowfin were parasitized. The larva \ Diplostomulum sp.
were recovered from the lens of the eye of a Mud Hen lake fish.
Common white sucker (Table 4)
Seventy-six (85.4 per cent) of the 89 suckers were infected.
The Chippewa river and Knuteson creek suckers were finger-
lings. The larval Diplostomulum sp. occurred in the lens of the
eye. The larval Triaenophorus nodulosus were encysted in the
liver and less frequently in the mesentery. The Myxospordia
occurred in cysts on the gills.
Greater redhorse (Table 5)
All 14 greater redhorse were parasitized. The larval Diplosto¬
mulum sp. occurred in the lens of the eye. The larval ' Triaeno-
24 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
phorus nodulosus was observed in the liver and mesentery. The
- Myxosporidia were seen in cysts on the gills.
Northern creek chub (Table 6)
Thirty-four (91.9 per cent) of the 37 creek chubs were para¬
sitized. The larval Diplostomulum sp. was observed in the lens
of the eye. The immature Contracaecum sp. occurred in the
intestine.
Rhinichthys atratulus meleagris Agassiz, Western blacknose
dace: Fourteen (88 per cent) of the 16 dace were infected. One
of three Osceola creek fish had a light infection with a larval
Trematoda encysted in the mesenteries. The 1 McCann creek fish
was lightly parasitized with \3lyvslY Posthodiplostomum minimum
and Rhabdochona cascadilla, and heavily with larval' Neascus sp.
All 12 Duncan creek fish harbored parasites ; 4 lightly with larval
P. minimum and 1 with"!??, cascadilla, and 2 lightly, 7 moderately
and 3 heavily with larva V Neascus sp.
Rhinichthys c. cataractae (Valenciennes), Great Lakes long-
nose dace: Ten (71 per cent) of 14 dace harbored parasites.
The 1 McKenzie creek fish was negative. Four of the 6 Chippewa
river fish were lightly infected with immature'7 Camallanus oxy-
cephalus. The 1 Devils creek fish had 9 Myxosporidia cysts in
the intestinal wall. ^The 2 Duncan creek dace were infected,
1 lightly with larval Posthodiplostomum minimum and the other
with Rhabdochona cascadilla; one of these was lightly infected
with larval Neascus sp., the other moderately. Only 1 of the 2
Osceola creek fish harbored light infections with Myxosporidia
in 2 cysts on the fins, and larval P. minimum: R. cascadilla
occurred lightly in the 2 Somers creek fish.
Western golden shiner (Table 7)
Northern common shiner (Table 8)
All 13 common shiners were parasitized. The larval Diplosto¬
mulum sp. occurred in the lens of the eye. The Myxosporidia
were in two cysts in the flesh.
Notropis hudsonius selene (Jordan), Northern spottail
shiner: The 2 Lake Superior fish harbored light infections with
larval Diplostomulum sp. in the lens of the eye and larval
Neascus sp., while only 1 had larva VPosthodiplostomum mini¬
mum.
Notropis heterodon (Cope), Blackchin shiner: Fourteen (67
per cent) of the 21 fish were infected. The 3 from Osceola creek
were negative. The 2 Wapogasset creek shiners were parasitized,
1 lightly with larval Diplostomulum sp. in the lens of the eye,
the other moderately. Only 12 of the 16 fish from Sauntry’s
1952]
Fischthal — Fish Parasites, III.
25
Pocket were parasitized, 7 lightly ^with immature Contracaecum
sp. in the liver, and 5 with larval Posthodiplostomum minimum;
^ Myxosporidia, occurring in cysts in the mesenteries, were lightly
present in 5, moderately in 1.
Notropis h. heterolepis Eig. and Eig., Northern blacknose
shiner: Eighteen (86 per cent) of the 21 fish were parasitized.
The 3 Horse lake fish were negative. The 3 Wapogasset creek
shiners were lightly infected with larval 'Diplostomulum sp. in
the lens of the eye. All 15 Sauntry’s Pocket fish were infected,
7 lightly with immature" Contracaecum sp. in the liver, 10 with
Gyrodactyloidea, and 9 with larval ''Posthodiplostomum mini¬
mum; 3 lightly and 2 moderately with Trichodina sp. on the gills.
Pimephales p. promelas Raf., Northern fathead minnow: The
2 Long lake (2) fish were lightly infected with larval Neascus sp.
Hyborhynchus notatus (Raf.), Bluntnose minnow: All 13 fish
from 2 waters were infected. The 3 Osceola creek minnows bore
light infections of larval '"Posthodiplostomum minimum. The 10
Wapogasset creek fish were all infected, 1 lightly with larval
^ Neascus sp. and 2 with larval P. minimum; 9 were lightly and
1 moderately parasitized with larval Diplostomulum sp. in the
lens of the eye.
Campostoma anomalum pullum (Agassiz), Central stoneroller:
One fish examined from the Chippewa river was parasite free.
Ameiurus m. melas (Raf.), Northern black bullhead: The 1
Chippewa Flowage fish was lightly infected with^ Gyrodac¬
tyloidea.
Northern brown bullhead (Table 9)
Thirty-two (72.7 per cent) of the 44 brown bullheads were
infected. The Knuteson creek fish was a fingerling. The imma¬
ture C out r a c a e c u m sp. occurred in the intestine, while the larval
stage was observed in the mesenteries. The larval Diplostomulum
sp. was recovered from the lens of the eye. The larval ' Pomphor -
hynchus bulb o colli,'1 Proteocephalus sp., and Spiroxys sp. were
taken from the mesenteries.
Northern yelloiv bullhead (Table 10)
All 22 yellow bullheads harbored at least one species of para¬
site. The immature1 Contracaecum sp. was recovered from the
intestine. The larva? Diplostomulum sp. occurred in the lens of
the eye. The Myxosporidia were observed in cysts on the gills.
Pilodictis olivaris (Raf.j), Shovelhead catfish: All 6 from 2
waters were infected. Of the 2 Big Falls Flowage fish, 1 was
lightly parasitized with ^ Alio glossidium corti, and 1 moderately
with immature and adult Corallobothrium giganteum. Of the 4
26 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
Ladysmith Flowage fish, 1 was lightly infected with Camallanus
oxycephalus, and 1 with' Crepidostomum cornutum; both imma¬
ture and adult C. giganteum occurred lightly in 2, moderately in
1, while immature only occurred lightly in 1.
Umbra limi (Kirtland), Western mudminnow: Five (63 per
cent) of the 8 fish from 5 waters were infected. Phyllodistomum
brevicecum occurred lightly in the 1 Devils creek fish. Only 1 of
the 3 Duncan creek fish harbored Bunoderina eucaliae lightly.
One of the 2 Little Bear creek fish was lightly infected with
larval Contracaecum sp. in the mesenteries. Larval Tetraco tyle
sp. occurred lightly in the mesenteries in the 1 McCann creek
fish. The L McKenzie creek mudminnow was lightly parasitized
with larvatC lino stomum marginatum.
Northern pike (Table 11)
\
All 40 northern pike were parasitized. Fischthal (1947) exam¬
ined four pike from Little Long lake in 1944, recording similar
parasites as shown in Table 11 with the exception of the larval
Clinostomum marginatum which he did not find. In addition to
the parasites found in common he observed )\Lacroderoides flavus.
Great Lakes muskellunge (Table 12)
All seven muskellunge were parasitized. The Myxosporidia
occurred on the gills of fish from the Chippewa and Ladysmith
Flowages and on the roof of the mouth of the Lower Clam lake
fish. The adult Philometra sp., taken from the body cavity of the
Lower Clam lake muskellunge, measured 18.3 inches in length.
Fischthal (1950) found smaller specimens of the same species
of Philometra in Teal lake, Sawyer county, Wisconsin and men¬
tions having observed Dr. R. V. Bangham recover specimens
about two feet in length from muskellunge taken in northeast
Wisconsin lakes.
Fundulus diaphanus menona Jordan and Copeland, Western
banded killifish: The 4 Wapogasset creek fish were all lightly
parasitized, 1 with larval Diplostomulum sp. in the lens of the
eye, 2 with larval Leptorhynchoides thecatUs, 1 with larval
V Neascus sp., 1 with adult and 4 with larva \l Pomphorhynchus
bulb o colli; and 1 with larval' Posthodiplostomum minimum.
Percopsis omiscomaycus (Walbaum), Troutperch: The 2
Chippewa river fish Were lightly parasitized, 1 witK1 Crepidosto¬
mum isostomuyg,, 2 with larval Diplostomulum sp. in the lens of
the eye, 1 with Gyrodactyloidea, 1 with larval1 Neascus sp., and
1 with larval Triaenophorus stizostedionis in 2 cysts on the liver.
1952]
Fischthal — Fish Parasites, III.
27
Yellow perch (Table 13)
The yellow perch were 93.4 per cent infected (114 out of 122).
The immature* Contracaecum sp. occurred in the liver. The larval
4 Contracaecum sp., vLeptorhynchoides thecatus, andv Spiroxys sp.
were located in the mesenteries. The larval Diplostomulum sp.
(1) occurred in the lens of the eye of Long lake (Washburn
county) and Wapogasset creek perch, whereas Diplostomulum
sp. (2) was taken from the humors. The Myxosporidia were
observed on the gills of perch from Sauntry’s Pocket. The imma¬
ture '"Proteocephalus sp. from Ellison lake did not possess an
apical sucker on its scolex. Trichodina sp. occurred on the gills.
Walleye (Table 14)
/
All 85 walleyes harbored parasites. Bunodera sacculata is
probably accidental in the intestine of Long lake (Washburn
county) walleyes. This trematode seems limited to the perch and
since many perch harboring the parasite were removed from the
stomachs of the walleyes, those v B. sacculata found in the latter
host were probably liberated from the intestine of the digested
perch. The larval ' Contracaecum sp. was encysted in the mesen¬
tery. The 'Myxosporidia were in cysts on the gills. The immature
Proteocephalus sp. from a Siskowitt lake fish did not possess an
apical sucker on its scolex.
Boleosoma nigrum eulepis Hubbs and Greene, Scaly Johnny
darter: The 3 Wapogasset creek fish were all infected, 1 lightly
with immature Dichelyne cotylophora, 1 with larval Diplosto¬
mulum sp. in the lens of the eye, 3 with lawa! Neascus sp. and
1 with ^Pomphorhynchus bulbocolli; 1 had 'Myxosporidia occur¬
ring moderately on the gills.
Central x Scaly Johnny darter hybrid (Table 15)
Twenty-six (78.8 per cent) of the 33 hybrid Johnny darters
were parasitized. The immature Contracaecum sp. occurred in
the liver, while the larval stage was encysted in the mesenteries.
The Myxosporidia was recovered from a cyst in the flesh.
Iowa darter (Table 16)
Twenty -two (95.7 per cent) of the 23 Iowa darters had para¬
sites. The immature ; Contracaecum sp. was removed from the
liver. The larval Diplostomulum sp. was from the lens of the eye.
The larval Leptorhynchoides thecatus, < Pomphorhynchus bulbo¬
colli and’T etracotyle sp. were in the mesenteries. The7 Myxospo¬
ridia also occurred in cysts in the mesenteries.
28 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
Poecilichys flabellaris lineolatus (Agassiz), Striped fantail:
Twelve (60 per cent) of 20 fantails were infected. Two of the 5
from the Chippewa river were lightly parasitized, 1 with imma¬
ture Azygia augusticauda, 1 with larval Contracaecum sp. in the
mesentery, and 1 with larval Neascus sp. The 4 Duncan creek
fish harbored larval' Neascus sp., 8 lightly and 1 moderately. Six
of the IT Little Bear creek fish were infected, 2 lightly with
immature" Contracaecum sp. in the liver, and 4 lightly, 1 moder¬
ately with larval Neascus sp.
Northern smallmouth bass (Table 17)
Largemouth bass (Table 18)
Seventy-five (97.4 per c^nt) of the 77 largemouth bass were
parasitized. The immature Contracaecum sp. was taken from the
intestine, while the larval stage was encysted in the mesenteries.
The larval Diplostomulum sp. was in the lens of the eye. The
larval Leptorhynchoides thecatus and ' Spiroxys sp. occurred in
the mesenteries. ^Trichodina sp. was observed on the gills. The
immsituYeProteocephalus sp. from Dells Pond did not possess an
apical sucker on its scolex.
Lepomis cyanellus Raf., Green sunfish: All 4 from 2 waters
harbored parasites. The 2 Little Bear creek fish were lightly in¬
fected with Gyrodactyloidea. The 2 Simms lake sunfish were
parasitized, 1 lightly with larval Neascus sp., 1 with larval Pro-
teocephalus ambloplitis, and 1 with Spinitectus carolini; also,
1 lightly and 1 moderately with Leptorhynchoides thecatus .
Pumpkinseed (Table 19)
The pumpkinseeds were 98.2 per cent parasitized. The imma¬
ture Contracaecum sp. occurred in the intestine, while the larval
stage was encysted in the mesentery. The larval Leptorhyn¬
choides thecatus, 'Neoechinorhynghus sp., Proteocephalus sp.,
Spiroxys sp., Tetracotyle sp., and Triaenophorus nodulosus were
located in the mesenteries. The Myxosporidia were observed in
cysts on the consus arteriosus.
Common bluegill (Table 20)
Of the 220 bluegills examined, 208 (93.6 per cent) were para¬
sitized. The larval Diplostomulum sp. was observed in. the lens
of the eye. The larval Leptorhynchoides thecatus and Spiroxys
sp. were in the mesenteries. The immature Proteocephalus sp.
did not possess an apical sucker on its scolex.
1952]
Fischthal — Fish Parasites, III.
29
Northern rock bass (Table 21)
Seventy, (97.2 per cent) of the 72 rock bass had parasites.
The larval Pro teocephalus sp. was encysted in the mesentery and
possessed an apical sucker on its scolex.
Black crappie (Table 22)
Approximately 89.5 per cent (205 out of 229) black crappies
were infected with at least one species of parasite.. The larval
ContracaecuTYi sp., Leptorhynchoides thecatus and YSpiroxys sp.
were encysted in the mesenteries. The Myxosporidia on the
crappie from Clear Lake occurred in cysts on the gills, while
those from the other waters parasitized had the cysts on the
intestinal wall.
Cottus b. bairdii Girard, Northern muddler: Eleven (92 per
cent) of the 12 fish from 2 creeks were infected. One of 2 Devils
creek fish harbored a light infection of Rhabdochona cascadilla.
The 10 Duncan creek fish were lightly parasitized, 1 with‘A7ho-
echinorhynchus rutili, 9 with R. cascadilla, and 6 with larval
/ Tetracotyle sp.
Eucalia inconstans (Kirtland), Brook stickleback: Only 8 (38
per cent) of 21 fish were parasitized. The 2 Duncan creek fish
were infectedy2 lightly with immature Bunoderina eucaliae, and
1 with larval Spiroxys sp. The 1 McCann creek fish was lightly
infected with larval iNeascus sp. and larval Proteocephalus sp.
Only 2 of the 14 Osceola creek fish harbored a light infection with
^ B . eucaliae. Three of the 4 Wapogasset creek fish were lightly
parasitized, 2 with larval Leptorhynchoides thecatus, 3 with
larval Pomphorhynchus bulbocolli, and 1 with larval Pro teo¬
cephalus sp.
Pungitius pungitius (Linn.), Ninespine stickleback: All 7
Lake Superior fish were parasitized, 2 lightly and 1 moderately
with immature" Bothriocepha lus sp., 1 lightly with larval Con-
tracaecum sp., 5 with larval Diplostomulum sp. in the lens of
the eye, 1 with larval glochidia, 2 with Leptorhynchoides the¬
catus, 7 with larvai Ligula intestinalis, and 1 with larval Tetra¬
cotyle sp.
30 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
TABLE 3
Amia calva Linn, — Bowfin
Examined 8
Infected 8
Azygia augusticauda .
**Bothriocephalus sp .
**Camallanus oxycephalus . . . .
Con.tr acaecum brachyurum. .
*Diplostomulum sp .
Haplobothrium globuliforme
Leptorhynchoides thecatus. . .
Macroderoides parvus .
Proteocephalus ambloplites. .
1_ Proteocephalus ambloplites .
** Proteocephalus ambloplites. .
Half Moon
L.
Mud Hen
L.
St. Croix
L.
1
1
l1
1 1
l2
l1
3 4
3 4
1 1
1 2
2 1
2 2
1 3
2 1
2 2
1 3
12 12
. I2 2 2
. 1 1
TABLE 4
Catostomas c. commersonnii (Lac.) — Common white sucker
1952]
Fischthal — Fish Parasites, III.
\
32 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
TABLE 5
Moxostoma rubreques Hubbs — Greater redhorse
TABLE 6
Semotilus a. atromaculatus (Mitchill) — Northern creek chub
Rhabdochona cascadilla
1952]
Fischthal — Fish Parasites, III.
S3
TABLE 7
Notemigonus crysoleucas auratus (Raf.) -—Western golden shiner
TABLE 8
Notropis comutus frontalis (Agassiz)— Northern common shiner
TABLE 9
Ameiurus n. nebulosus (Le Sueur) — Northern brown bullhead
34 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
^ssvg 31IH/W
•q NVDI'IHcJ
Id
XnVHQNOJA^
(/ A ) 1 3NO-]
a
wv33 Hmi"]
*3
>IV3g 3TJ.1H
eo
— ' C4
^ ' r<»
c4 • — <
UQ NOSSlflN^
*ad
N33U3 AVH
»-< — • • r^i
O'
vO-
1 NOOJAJ 33VH
31INVUQ
^ UV333
•q vn0vN3H3
r^\
TJ
IjB
fee
5
3
5
’§
o
. - a
a -a c
3
n
g -3 3
| § “a S
S3 o 8 |
£ a. 2 ■§
g§>-£ g
a a d
g 00 W
2 2
2 2
q a
S 3
V. w.
2 2
3 3
•2 -2
-0-0
2 2 .
^Ct,G
2 2 2
3 3^
So P
-C-C ^
o O S
-O -O
.o o^
55
Is
2
,3
s
g .2
CO «o 40
3-*> c
ts5 2
I
o ?V
h: v
">A
N O -3 O O
^<DQCJCJO
_i* * * * *
v* n
o o
CJQ
•2T3 co-st 'ts
1H If
So
qoo3q.
* * \ \
35
*E
05 „
3 Q
-O 03
c-|
o -Q,
.§ 8
f*S
g O
Qsi
* *
X V*
<?
2
a -s
w 49 a 5
*>5 OJ OO Q
55 3 feb
-g.3 § §
-a-a-e 5
H) <u u u
0 *?•§:§
O VJ
_ *> -o c
00“
8 ._
8 S-Ss
0,0, O' Co
V
1952]
Fischthal—Fish Parasites , III .
35
TABLE 10
Ameiurus n. natalis (Le Sueur) —Northern yellow bullhead
36 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
\
TABLE 11
Esox lucius Linn. — Northern pike
1952]
Fischthal — Fish Parasites , III.
37
TABLE 12
Esox m. masquinongy Mitchill — Great Lakes muskellunge
38
Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
TABLE 13
Perea flavescens (Mitchill) — Yellow perch
1952]
Fischthal — Fish Parasites, III.
39
TABLE 13 — (Continued)
Perea flavescens (Mitchill) — Yellow perch
40 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
TABLE 14
Stizostedion v. vitreum (Mitchill) — Walleye
1952]
Fischthal — Fish Parasites , 111.
41
TABLE 14— (Continued)
Stizostedion v. vitreum (Mitchill) — Walleye
42 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
TABLE 15
Boleosoma n. nigrum x B. n. eulepis — Central x Scaly Johnny
DARTER HYBRID
TABLE 16
Poecilichthys exilis (Girard) — Iowa darter
1952]
Fischthal — Fish Parasites, III.
43
TABLE 17
Micropterus d. dolomieu Lac. — Northern smallmouth bass
—
44 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
TABLE 18
Micropterus salmoides (Lac.) — Largemouth Bass
1952]
Fischthal — Fish Parasites, III.
45
TABLE 18 — (Continued)
Micropters salmoides (Lac.) — Largemouth Bass
46 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
TABLE 19
Lepomis gibbosus (Linn.) — Pumpkinseed
1952]
Fischthal — Fish Parasites, III.
47
TABLE 19 — (Continued)
Lepomis gibbosus (Linn.) — Pumpkin seed
TABLE 20
Lepomis m. macrochirus Raf. — Common bluegill
48
/
Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
/
TABLE 20 — (Continued)
Lepomis m. macro chirus Raf. — Common bluegill
1952]
Fischthal — Fish Parasites, III.
TABLE 20 — (Continued)
Lepomis m. macrochirus Raf. — Common bluegill
50
Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
TABLE 20 — (Continued)
Lepomis m. macrochirus Raf. — Common bluegill
1952]
Fischthal — Fish Parasites, III.
51
TABLE 21
Ambloplites r. rupestris (Raf.) — Northern rock bass
52 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
TABLE 21 — ( Continued )
Ambloplites r. rupestris (Raf.) — Northern rock bass
1952]
Fischthal — Fish Parasites , III.
53
-1
ssvg
vO
co
<y
T3
O
T) co
:t3
o
J2 >» -3
*£S
8
ou
S*. <*5
Is
"?^;§
ll
^ c g
I Is
-as
O C co
^ o o
t'5
-P J5
CO
S q/p
« -Q, CO «oq 0
Co Co Co Co <3
3 3 3 3 O >»
-3 «3 -S -3 cj <3.0
C3 3 « Q ^ ^
-P-P-P-P 2 2
<a » hi o o
u u o u <a i»
O O O O
3 S S ^ C C
2 2 S S p/p.
* * * *
TABLE 22
Pomoxis nigro-maculatus (Le Sueur) — Black crappie
54 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
"l J HlIWSAQVq
"J 3SUOH
ad
MH3U3 AVJ-J
1 NOOJAI 31VJ-J
oo
•q 3AINVUQ
QJ a'lIHDUIVJ
(S ^ V\ r-H
iH vH <M
•q Nosmg
O'
\Q
•ad stisq
•q UV3T3
Tq VMSddU-Q
*q vnbVN3H3
iq S33VJ Dig
O' O'
WVQ U3AV3g
c<j r^i tx
O' V"\
O
cO cn
a
»c
1
3
C
<3
. ats
dw s
sp
III
O O
CJCJOQ
<s
<u
T>
O
%
1 1
[Jj
>>
o
II
a a
o u
•S-S
II
III
u u -r
c c &
ppa,
CO
•a -a >,
332
*
V\v -
<<>
8
a c
j w •»:
-e A,*?e
o O
p» «0 <*>
II?
•h o
o.§
8 §.5
o -Cl
<Q^<o
TABLE 22 — (Continued)
Pomoxis nigro-maculatus (Le Sueur) — Black crappie
1952]
Fischthal — Fish Parasites, III.
55
to 2
3 .3
*0 O
O Q
Sp
§1
^ O
S g
a q
OO
—1
Co
3
"8
•Q,
8
8
3
C
-2
"a
s
d
s
.3
*3 .
£ 03
•2^
QO
* *
T>
2
4-S
O
03
TJ
O
u
>>
o
CO
3
a
CJ
Jj
I
Id
C 5r
£3
a 8
•O, ?
33
*
56 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
CHECK LIST OF PARASITES
Trematoda
No. spp.
Parasite fish infected
Allocreadium ictaluri Pearse, 1924 . 1
Allocreadium lobatum Wallin, 1909 . 5
Allocreadium sp . 1
Alloglossidium corti (Lamont, 1921) . 3
Alloglossidium geminus (Mueller, 1930) . 1
Azygia augusticauda (Stafford, 1904) . 7
Bucephalopsis pusilla (Stafford, 1904) . 1
Bunodera sacculata Van Cleave and Mueller, 1932 . 2
Bunoderina eucaliae Miller, 1938 . 2
Caecincola parvulus Marshall and Gilbert, 1905 . 2
Clinostomum marginatum (Rudolphi, 1819) . 10
Crepidostomum cooperi Hopkins, 1931 . 6
Crepidostomum cornutum Osborn, 1903 . 6
Crepidostomum farionis (Mueller, 1788) . 1
Crepidostomum isostomum Hopkins, 1931 . 2
Crepidostomum lintoni (Pratt in Linton, 1901) . 1
Crepidostomum sp . 1
Cryptogonimus chyli Osborn, 1903 . 1
Diplostomulum scheuringi Hughes, 1929 . 10
Diplostomulum spp . 21
Gyrodactyloidea . 19
Macroderoides flavus Van Cleave and Mueller, 1932 . 1
Macroderoides parvus (Hunter, 1932) . . 1
Neascus spp . 30
Phyllodistomum brevicecum Steen, 1938 . 1
Phyllodistomum etheostomae Fischthal, 1942 . 1
Phyllodistomum lysteri Miller, 1940 . 1
Phyllodistomum sp . 1
Phyllodistomum staff ordi Pearse, 1924 . 2
Plagiocirrus primus Van Cleave and Mueller, 1932 . 1
Posthodiplostomum minimum (Mac Callum, 1921) .....' . 13
Rhipidocotyle papillosum (Woodhead, 1929) . 1
Sanguinicola occidentals Van Cleave and Mueller, 1932 . 1
Tetracotyle spp . 6
Trematoda — larval . 1
Triganodistomum attenuatum Mueller and Van Cleave, 1932. . . 2
Cestoda
Abothrium crassum (Bloch, 1779) . 1
Bothriocephalus claviceps (Goeze, 1782) . 2
Bothriocephalus cuspidatus Cooper, 1917 . . 4
Bothriocephalus formosus Mueller and Van Cleave, 1932 . 1
Bothriocephalus sp . 3
Caryophyllaeidae . 1
Corallobothrium fimbriatum Essex, 1927 . 1
Corallobothrium giganteum Essex, 1927 . . 1
Glaridacris catostomi Cooper, 1920 . 2
Glaridacris confusus Hunter, 1929 . 2
Haplobothrium globuliforme Cooper, 1914 . 1
Ligula intestinalis (Linnaeus, 1758) . . 2
Pliovitellaria wisconsinensis Fischthal, 1951 . 2
Proteocephalus ambloplitis (Leidy, 1887) . 11
Proteocephalus fiuviatilis Bangham, 1925 . 2
Proteocephalus pearsei La Rue, 1919 . 5
1952] Fischthal — Fish Parasites, III. 57
No. spp.
Parasite fish infected
Proteocephalus pinguis La Rue, 1911 . . 2
Proteocephalus spp . 9
Proteocephalus stizostethi Hunter and Bangham, 1933 . 5
Triaenophorus nodulosus (Pallas, 1781) . 4
Triaenophorus stizostedionis Miller, 1945 . 2
Nematoda
Camallanus oxycephalus Ward and Magath, 1917 . 14
Capillaria catenata Van Cleave and Mueller, 1932 . 3
Contracaecum brachyurum (Ward and Magath, 1917) ........ 4
Contracaecum spp . 17
Cucullanus sp . 1
Cystidicola stigmatura (Leidy, 1886) . . 1
Dichelyne cotylophora (Ward and Magath, 1917) . 4
Dichelyne robusta (Van Cleave and Mueller, 1932) . 2
Hepaticola bakeri Mueller and Van Cleave, 1932 . 1
Philometra sp . 1
Rhabdochona cascadilla Wigdor, 1918 . 7
Rhabdochona sp . 1
Spinitectus carolini Holl, 1928 . 11
Spinitectus gracilis Ward and Magath, 1917 . 11
Spiroxys sp . 10
Acanthocephala
Leptorhynchoides thecatus (Linton, 1891) . 20
N eoechinorhynchus crassus Van Cleave, 1919 . 4
N eoechinorhynchus cylindratus (Van Cleave, 1913) . 7
N eoechinorhynchus rutili (Mueller, 1780) . 3
N eoechinorhynchus saginatus Van Cleave and Bangham, 1949 1
N eoechinorhynchus sp . 2
N eoechinorhynchus tenellus (Van Cleave, 1913) . 2
Pomphorhynchus bulbocolli Linkins, 1919 . 11
Protozoa
Myxosporidia . 14
Trichodina sp . 3
Copepoda
Achtheres micropteri Wright, 1882 . 2
Argulus versicolor Wilson, 1902 . 1
Ergasilus caeruleus Wilson, 1911 . 5
Ergasilus sp . 1
Mollusca
Glochidia . 14
Hirudinea
Illinobdella moorei Meyer, 1940 . 1
Illinobdella sp . 3
Virus
Lymphocystis . 1
58 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
Literature Cited
Bangham, R. V. 1940. Parasites of fresh-water fish of southern Florida.
Proc. Fla. Acad. Sc. 5 : 289-307.
- 1941. Parasites of fish of Algonquin Park lakes. Tr. Am. Fish. Soc.
70: 161-171.
- 1946. Parasites of northern Wisconsin fish. Tr. Wis. Acad. Sc., Arts
& Let. 36: 291-325. 1944.
Bangham, R. V. and Hunter, G. W., III. 1939. Studies on fish parasites of
Lake Erie. Distribution studies. Zoologica 24: 385-448.
Bangham, R. V. and Venard, C. E. 1946. Parasites of fish of Algonquin
Park lakes. II. Distribution studies. Publ. Ontario Fish. Res. Lab. No.
65: 33-46.
Essex, H. E. and Hunter, G. W., III. 1926. A biological survey of fish para¬
sites from the Central States. Tr. Ill. Acad. Sc. 19: 151-181.
Fischthal, J. H. 1947. Parasites of northwest Wisconsin fishes. I. The 1944
survey. Tr. Wis. Acad. Sc., Arts & Let. 37 : 157-220. 1945.
- 1950. Parasites of northwest Wisconsin fishes. II. The 1945 survey.
Tr. Wis. Acad. Sc., Arts & Let. 40, Pt. I: 87-113.
Hunter, G. W., III. 1941. Studies on the parasites of fresh-water fishes of
Connecticut. In “A fishery survey of important Connecticut lakes.”
Bull. Conn. Geol. & Nat. Hist. Surv. No. 63: 228-288.
ADMIRAL RUSSELL AND THE MEDITERRANEAN
CAMPAIGN OF 1694-1695*
Robert H. Irrmann
Associate Professor of History, Beloit College
It is related that in the reign of Charles II, an act of Parlia¬
ment was prefaced with the comforting observation that upon
the Navy, “under the good providence of God, the wealth, safety,
and strength of the kingdom chiefly depend.” In the 1690’s,
William III and the Protestant Succession were to witness the
truth of this on at least three dramatic occasions : the defeat of
the French invasion fleet at La Hogue in 1692; the frustration
of the attempted Jacobite-French invasion of England in 1696;
and the remarkable eighteen-month sojourn of the Royal Navy
in the Mediterranean in 1694-1695. The hand at the helm for
England in each of the aforementioned instances was that of
Edward Russell, Admiral of the Fleet. In this inspeximus, not
to the grand sweep of the Pepysian or Williamite navies shall
we turn, but rather to the fleet under Russell's command.
The “abdication” of James II in 1688 brought in the Protestant
Succession of William of Orange and Mary. French gold, troops
and ships were put at James’ disposal time and again in the ^O’s,
to enable James to attempt the recovery of his throne. The
attempt to capture Ireland, the “backdoor” to England, was
frustrated at the Battle of Boyne Water on July 1, 1690. Two
years later Edward Russell broke for the moment the power of
France upon the sea at the running battle of Barfleur and La
Hogue of May, 1692. Indecision and contradictory schemes kept
the English Admiralty from pursuing their gains to complete
and ultimate victory in the Channel and along the Atlantic coast,
and England failed to reap the fullest benefits from her initial
successes at sea.
Rivalry in naval administration had confounded operations in
the summer of 1692; rivalry drove Russell from office, and he
relinquished command of the fleet to the triumvirate of Admirals
Killigrew, Delaval and Shovel in January of 1693. This is not
what some had thought would happen, but “Admiral Russell has
declined going to sea next summer if he must receive orders
* The material of this paper is a brief condensation of a general study (unpub¬
lished) of the campaign and career of Admiral Russell in the Mediterranean in the
years 1694-1695. The author’s intention here has been to sketch in general terms
the progress of that expedition, and briefly note the results, rather than to trace
in great detail the week by week development of that campaign.
59
60 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
through Lord Nottingham's hands (Secretary of State, and
Russell's deadly Parliamentary and administrative rival) ."x King
William felt, at the moment, more need of Nottingham’s services
than of Russell's ; since they could not work together, one had to
be sacrificed. Russell was out of office in 1693.1 2 The work of the
Navy continued, nonetheless, for the War of the League of Augs¬
burg, or, for England, the War for the Protestant Succession,
against Louis XIV went on. The campaign at sea in 1693 was
projected for annoyance of the enemy and protection of English
trade. It did neither effectively. Misfortune dogged the heels of
the naval command. Seamen were so scarce that it was May
before the fleet was put out.3 In June the Smyrna Convoy under
Admiral Rooke was set upon by a superior French force, and
over one hundred merchantmen were lost at Lagos Bay.4
The disaster lay not so much with Rooke or with the Admir¬
alty's faulty information, as with confusion of orders and gen¬
eral misdirection of available information.5 The conduct of
affairs at sea in 1693 showed that this joint-admiral-commission
had not been a very workable arrangement, and public displeas¬
ure was soon to fall upon the Tory ministry. In the spring of
1694 the Whigs were to be put into office. As Nottingham put it:
. . . the king finding his affairs abroad improsperous, the
French victorious, and a necessity of increasing his army
and consequently of raising greater sums of money from the
nation . . . unaccustomed to such heavy burdens and un-
1N. Luttrell, A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs from September 1678
to April 1712 (6 volumes, Oxford, 1867), III (January 23, 1692), p. 18; John
Evelyn, Diary, edited by H. B. Wheatley (London, 1906), III, 107; Rapin de
Thoyras, The History of England . . . Translated into English with additional
notes (and a continuation to the accession of George II) by N. Tindal (5 volumes,
London, 1743-7), III, 236-7 ; W. A. Aiken, The Conduct of the Earl of Nottingham
(New Haven, 1941), p, 116. See also, i Correspondence of the family of Hatton . . .
1601-1704, edited by E. M. Thompson (2 volumes, Camden Society, 1878), II, 188.
2 K. Feiling, History of the Tory Party, 1640-1714 (Oxford, 1924), p. 295. John
Ehrman, in his recent article on “William III and the Emergence of a Mediter¬
ranean Naval Policy, 1692-4” states that the major result of the Barfleur campaign
was to secure the dismissal of Russell as commander-in-chief of the fleet and
Nottingham as Secretary of State in charge of naval affairs, but he has not clearly
indicated the chronology of the events. Almost a year intervened between the dis¬
missal of Russell and the subsequent dismissal of Nottingham. The Cambridge
Historical Journal (Cambridge, 1949), IX, #3, p. 269.
3J. Burchett, A Complete History of the Most Remarkable Transactions at Sea
. . . (to 1712) (London, 1720), p. 480; T. Lediard, The Naval History of England
. . . to the Conclusion of 1734 (2 volumes, London, 1735), II, 673; London Gazette,
No. 2856. Killigrew and Delaval were put on the Admiralty Board, and given
command of the Channel fleet.
4 C. de la Ronciere, Histoire de la Marine Frangaise, VI (Paris, 1932), pp. 139-
146; L. Guerin, Histoire Maritime de France (2 volumes, Paris, 1844), II, 78;
letter from Captain Littleton, of the Smyrna-F actor, quoted by Tindal, Continua¬
tion, III, 242-4, and note #1, pp. 243-4; Burchett, op. cit., pp. 484-8; Nottingham’s
Conduct, pp. 116, 117-20. Ehrman notes the monetary loss as amounting to
£1,000,000. Cambridge Historical Journal, IX, #3, p. 277.
5 House of Lords Manuscripts, 1693-5 (Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1900),
I, 176-7; Tindal, Continuation , III, 248-9, and note #2, and p. 249, note #1.
1952]
Irrmann — Admiral Russell
61
easy under them, and the Whigs promising to extricate him
out of all his difficulties if he would put his affairs into their
hands, he yielded to their importunity.6
In November of 1693 Russell was made Admiral of the Fleet.
Nottingham relinquished the seals of the Secretary of State on
November 6, and the Earl of Shrewsbury assumed the vacant
office. Russell was appointed First Lord of the Admiralty on
April 26, 1694.7 William observed that at the moment the cabi¬
net was “composed better than formerly and (o^) persons who
could at least draw together in . . . business.”8
The essence of the quarrel between Russell and Nottingham
hinged on the failure of the triumvirate in command of the fleet
in 1693, for Russell had washed his hands of the whole affair by
refusing the command after the campaign ended in 1692, and
Nottingham had acquiesced in the appointment of Killigrew,
Delaval and Shovel.9 With the failure of the triumvirate, Russell
alone remained as the most capable man to command in the com¬
ing season. But the bitterness produced by the aftermath of the
Barfleur campaign remained, and either Nottingham had to go
out, and permit Russell to take up the command, or an inferior
had to be sought. At this juncture, naval policy seemed of greater
importance to the King, and William dismissed Nottingham.10
Naval action had meanwhile continued desultorily against the
French. Admiral Benbow had worked little damage in the
Channel, and Francis Wheler had achieved scant success in the
West Indies. The latter commander arrived in England in mid-
October of 1693, in time to carry out an assignment consequent
upon the French victory over the Smyrna fleet. Following their
triumph of June, 1693, at Lagos Bay, Admirals Tourville and
d’Estrees retired to Toulon, with the largest French fleet ever
seen in the Mediterranean: ninety-three ships of the line, and
6 Nottingham’s Conduct , p. 134.
7 R. Lodge, The History of England , from the Restoration to the death of William
III (1660-1702) (London, 1910), The Political History of England series. Volume
VIII, pp. 384-7 ; Sir Edward Harley to Abigail Harley, November 7, 169 3, Portland
Manuscripts (Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1894-1907), p. 547 ; Tindal, Con¬
tinuation, III, 252-3; Nottingham’s Conduct, p. 123; Feiling, op. cit., p. 296. Not¬
tingham was dismissed from office on Monday, November 6, 1693, but Shrewsbury
did not take office until March, 1694. The warrant for Shrewsbury’s Dukedom was
drawn on April 25, 1694. Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1694-5, p. 116.
These will hereinafter be referred to as CSPD.
8 CSPD, 169^-5, p. 192. See also Ehrman, Cambridge Historical Journal, IX, #3,
p. 282.
9 Nottingham’s Conduct, pp. 130-31.
10 Ibid., p. 123. As Ehrman remarks in his “William III and the Emergence of a
Mediterranean Naval Policy, 1692-4”, neither Secretary of State was officially
responsible for naval affairs, but Nottingham had in effect been managing them
since 1689. His removal from their unofficial charge was effected by transferring
them to his recently appointed colleague and enemy, Sir John Trenchard. Cam¬
bridge Historical Journal, IX, #3, p. 269, note #3.
62 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
sixty lower rates.11 Wheler was assigned to the Straits, and left
England in late November. After convoying the returning Span¬
ish Plate Fleet safely to port, he attempted to pass the Straits of
Gibraltar and enter the Mediterranean. A violent storm sank six
English ships on February 18-19, 1694, and Wheler perished,
along with five other officers. In all, some eight hundred and
twenty-four men were lost.12 France was momentarily supreme
in the Mediterranean ; Spain, England’s ally, was severely threat¬
ened, and to ensure her continuance in the war against Louis
XIV, William had to make a new move. His decision involved
the services of Edward Russell, and resulted in the inauguration
of a new feature of English naval policy.
The momentary massing of French naval strength in the
harbor of Toulon in the late summer of 1693 had loomed as a
threat to British policy. That William III had no fully formu¬
lated concept of future Mediterranean policy at the inception of
the naval campaign of 1694 seems well substantiated by the
facts. Wheler’s expedition to the Mediterranean, in conjunction
with a Dutch squadron, “was clearly little more than a develop¬
ment of the Cromwellian idea of commerce protection with a
powerful cruising squadron. ”13As Admiral of the Fleet, Edward
Russell was to direct the main design, which was concerned with
activities in the Narrow Sea, and not initially in the Straits.
Russell was put to the task of preventing a concentration of the
French fleet at Toulon, for d’Estrees and Tourville’s original
union having been broken, William was anxious to prevent a
second occurrence of the same threat. The main fleet under
Russell was to surprise and capture Brest before Tourville could
get to sea. Then the tables seemed to turn, for it appeared that
the Toulon fleet was making for Brest. Wheler was at once
ordered to come out of the Mediterranean and wait at Cadiz till
the Spanish fleet was ready for sea, or till reinforcements came
from England. These orders were soon countermanded, for news
of French activity became so alarming that Wheler was ordered
home. Before these last orders ever reached him, he had set out
to pass the Straits and gain the Mediterranean, and lost his life,
and a fair portion of his squadron.14
Mediterranean policy had not evolved in its full significance in
late March of 1694 ; this is evident in the orders then given to
Russell. Directed to assume command of ninety-three ships, of
11 De la Ronciere, op. cit., VI, 147-8; Chevalier, Histoire Marine Frangaise,
J'usqu’au traite de paix de 1768, quoted by Corbett, England in the Mediterranean
(2 volumes, London, 1904), II, 425.
12 W. L. Clowes (editor), The Royal Navy. A History (London, 1897), II, 362 ;
Burchett, op. cit., pp. 490-4. Burchett places the number lost at 852 in all.
53 Corbett, op. cit., II, 427
™Ibid., II, 427-8.
1952]
Irrmann — Admiral Russell
63
which forty-six were ships of the line, the Admiral was to “pro¬
ceed with the Dutch fleet to the westwards, and do his best to
harass the enemy without expecting further orders, and to pro¬
tect the trade passing in and out of the Channel.”15 Then news
of Wheler’s disaster put a completely different complexion upon
affairs ! The English squadron in the Straits was forced to return
to Cadiz and refit, with no hope of protecting English trade, or
preventing the passage of the Brest or Rochefort squadrons
through the Straits en route to join at Toulon.16 The concurrent
information that d’Estrees and Tourville had left Paris for their
respective commands at Toulon and Brest, and that Marshal de
Noailles was about to take the field in Catalonia, made the situa¬
tion grave indeed.17 To replace Wheler, Edward Russell was
detailed for service in the Mediterranean.18
Sir Julian Corbett saw the turning point of Williamite naval
policy in the Mediterranean campaign of 1694-1695. Though the
victory at La Hogue had given William III command of the sea,
it was used in the same old way: coastal raids, attacks on
France’s channel ports, crippling of privateer activities, “and
confusing the strategy of the French armies by diversions.”19
This is true of the campaign of June to August, 1692, and even
more true of the fiasco of ’93. Corbett dramatized his thesis :
. . . political and financial difficulties had kept the King so
late in England (in 1694) that he found himself deprived of
the initiative in Flanders, and his main hope for the year
was now centered on what the fleet could do in the Mediter¬
ranean. On that he boldly resolved to stake his all, and so
with the high resolution that marks the great captains from
the small, he penned his memorable order.20
In a very broad sense Corbett is justified in his enthusiasm,
for Russell’s campaign marked the advent of the future perma¬
nent English Mediterranean fleet. Russell’s sojourn there was a
transient instance of that phenomenon; many years were to
15 House of Lords Manuscripts, 1693-5 (Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1900),
I, 463.
16 Corbett, op. cit., II, 429.
17 Ibid., II, 429 ; CSPD, 1694-5, p. 118.
18 The resolution was laid before the Committee of the Privy Council on April 10,
1694, and agreed to on April 19th. The Instructions were issued on April 24, 1694.
Trenchard’s notes, quoted by Corbett, op. cit., II, 430, footnote.
19 Corbett, op. cit., II, 422.
20 Ibid., II, 433; P. Colomb, Naval Warfare (London, 1899), p. 130, merely ob¬
serves that England went into the Mediterranean to hamper French military activ¬
ity against Spain. De la Ronciere sees nothing “spectacular” in this move, nor does
Clowes. Callender fails to mention the move ; Mahan says of it : “the five remaining
years of the War of the League of Augsburg (after 1692), in which all Europe
was in arms against France, are marked by no great sea battles, nor any single
maritime event of the first importance.” The Influence of Sea Power upon History,
1660-1783, p. 191.
64 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
elapse before the stationing of the Mediterranean fleet became
continuous. In the immediate order for Russell’s proceeding
against the French fleet, I doubt if William had anything more
in mind than striking a decisive blow. The Instructions to Russell
indicate nothing more. They point out that as the disposal of the
French fleet for the summer was not as yet known, Russell was
to follow one of three courses: 1) to attempt to burn or destroy
the French fleet if found at Brest or Belle Isle ; 2) to search for
it if news were received that the fleet had put to sea, but not to
pass south of the latitude of Cape Finisterre; 3) “in case he has
trustworthy information that” the fleet “or any part of it has
gone to the Mediterranean, or south of Finisterre, to follow and
attack it.”21
Placing the burden of decision upon the commander was well
illustrated in these orders (as it was to be throughout Russell’s
entire command in this campaign) for the Admiral was not to
await further orders, but to proceed as he deemed most proper.22
Time and again the burden of decision was to be put upon
Admiral Russell ; both Admiralty and Privy Council shunned the
assumption of responsibility, with the possibility of Parliamen¬
tary chastisement.
Limitations of space prevent me from detailing the course of
the Mediterranean expedition of these years. It must suffice to
sketch in the broadest strokes the course, and effects, of this
campaign, the first such elongated campaign in British naval
annals. In early May of 1694 Russell and a portion of his fleet
got under sail, but there was still confusion and division of
opinion as to the proper course of action: an attack on Brest,
or immediate dispatch to the Mediterranean? “I am afraid”
Russell wrote, that “these two designs, Brest and the Straits,
will hinder one another, and may make neither effectual.”23 He
saw the danger in the Mediterranean, and hesitated to waste
time, effort and material on the Brest diversion.
21 Instructions to Russell, April 24, 1694, House of Lords Manuscripts , 1693-5,
I, 459 ; CSPD, 1691,-5, p. 112.
22 Russell was to report from time to time to Shrewsbury, Secretary of State for
the Northern Department, to Sir John Trenchard, who had been sole Secretary
following Nottingham’s dismissal until Shrewsbury’s appointment on March 2, 1694,
and to the Admiralty. House of Lords Manuscripts, 1693-5, I, 459; CSPD, 1691,-5,
p. 112. For the influence of the Secretaries of State in various naval affairs, see
M. Thomson, The Secretaries of State, 1681—1782 (Oxford, 1932), pp. 77-82, 86-89.
See also footnote #10, supra.
23 W. Coxe, Private and Original Correspondence of Charles Talbot, Duke of
Shrewsbury . . . (London, 1821), p. 192; cf. Shrewsbury’s reply, May 5/15, 1694,
ibid., p. 193. See also Privy Council Minutes of May 9 and 14, 1694. Buccleuch
Manuscripts (Historical Manuscripts Commission, 1903), II, 65-6. Shrewsbury’s
opinion of the two operations, as expressed to the Council on May 9, was the same
as Russell’s : “nothing of the Brest preparation should delay the sending the
squadron into the Mediterranean, that being, in my opinion, the service that desires
preference.” Ibid., II, 65-6.
1952]
Irrmann — Admiral Russell
65
By mid-May King William himself was at last convinced of
the prime importance of dominance in the Mediterranean,24 and
he turned to hastening Russell's departure for those waters.25
The effect was almost instantaneous! Russell ordered Admiral
Berkeley to proceed to Brest, and in conjunction with General
Talmash to do whatever could be done by land and sea. The Med¬
iterranean voyage was about to begin.26 On May 29, Russell wrote
that “the wind is now fair, and we are going."27 On June 6th, the
squadrons for Brest and the Mediterranean parted company, and
Russell proceeded to the Straits with some misgivings. It seemed
that the year was too far advanced for effective action, the
24 William III to Shrewsbury, May 14, 1694, Coxe, op. cit., p. 32; Shrewsbury to
Russell, May 23, 1694, Buccleuch Manuscripts, II, 69-70 ; see also Coxe, same to
same, same date, p. 194. For the date of the sailing- of the French fleet, see
Trenchard to Russell, May 17, 1694, CSPD, 1694-5, p. 137.
John Ehrman’s ‘William III and the Emergence of a Mediterranean Naval
Policy, 1692-4” is an attempt to show that King- William held to a conscious
Mediterranean policy for England from Barfleur down to Russell’s undertaking the
expedition in 1694. “On the very morrow of Barfleur, in his first letter to Notting¬
ham after the news had reached the King, Blathwayt wrote that His Majesty
wished the inner Council to consider the possibility of sending a squadron to the
Mediterranean.” (Add. Mss. 37991, f. 87) In August of 1692 “Blathwayt wrote the
King was anxious a squadron be sent to the Mediterranean, and requested ‘that
ships for the purpose be found by any means.’ ” (Add. Mss. 37991, f. 140 — August
14th) As Ehrman further notes, “exactly what William had in mind for the Medi¬
terranean in the late summer of 1692 cannot be said for certain. He revealed his
preoccupation with interests other than trade only when trade had failed him, and
then he gave no clue to his real intentions. We must infer these largely from his
attitude a few months later, when the situation was still much the same but when
he himself was more explicit. Undoubtedly one reason for his plan lay in the diplo¬
matic pressure which he hoped to exert upon the Turks, for he referred to this
again in 1693;” (Add. Mss. 37992, f. 33) “but it is probable that he also had in
mind its effect upon the Spanish Court, which he knew by experience responded
to a show of naval force.” (S.P. For. 94/73, Stanhope to Nottingham 17 January
and 7 March, 1691) Ehrman’s conclusion that the Mediterranean policy goes back
as far as the days following Barfleur is highly speculative : “. . . if interrupted
concentration on one objective is the mark of a policy, then William’s conscious
Mediterranean policy may be said to date from that time (May, 1692).” Cambridge
Historical Journal, IX, #3, pp. 273-4.
25 Coxe, op. cit., p. 39. It was popularly believed for a time that Shovel might be
sent to the Mediterranean. Derwentwater’s informant gave the definite news of
Russell’s going thither on June 5, 1694. CSPD, 1695, Addenda (newsletter), pp.
260-1. See also Shrewsbury to Russell, May 26, 1694, Coxe, op. cit., pp. 196-7.
26 CSPD, 1694-5, p. 157; Buccleuch Manuscripts, II, 75; House of Lords Manu¬
scripts, 1693-5, I, 484-5 ; Burchett, op. cit., pp. 496-7 ; Present State of Europe
(London), June, July, 1694, pp. 204-7, 236-7 ; C. Sevin, Marquis de Quincy, Histoire
militaire du regne de Louis le Grand (Paris, 1726), III, 77.
27 Russell to Trenchard, May 26, 1694, Buccleuch Manuscripts, II, 73. Macaulay
relates that Russell persisted in claiming ignorance of his destination until he was
ready to weigh anchor, and that even Marlborough failed to get the news of the
Brest-Mediterranean expedition from him, but got it from other sources, and re¬
tailed his information to France. Thus, according to Macaulay, and those who
accept his analysis, and the authenticity of the Camaret Bay letter, the French
were well prepared for the Brest attack which proved so costly for the English.
For the most modern interpretation of the incident, and complete exoneration of
Marlborough from any complicity in the disaster, see W. Churchill, Marlborough,
His Life and Times (New York, 1933), II, chapters VII and VIII. Churchill’s argu¬
ments against Macaulay’s allegations are logical and convincing. See also Buttrell,
op. cit.. Ill, 327-8 ; and Shrewsbury to Bathwayt, June 13, 1694, Buccleuch Manu¬
scripts, II, 81.
66 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
French too well prepared to meet the English designs.28 Remark¬
ing that he was not a very desponding man, Russell nevertheless
confessed to be a little out of hope.29
By July 1, the combined Anglo-Dutch fleet stood off Cape
Spartel, near the Atlantic entrance to the Straits of Gibraltar.
At this juncture word came that the French fleet of seventy sail
stood between Alfacques and Barcelona.30 The imminent danger
to Spain had been foreseen by Russell. In coming into the Medi¬
terranean, his aim had been to protect momentarily the Spanish
ports between Gibraltar and Barcelona, and eventually to inca¬
pacitate or completely destroy the French fleet so that Spain
would be menaced no longer.31 Much ground had been lost in
putting Russell’s aims into execution, for in May of 1694 Marshal
de Noailles had pushed into Catalonia with the French army,
supported by Admiral Tourville’s fleet off the Catalan coast. On
the 17th de Noailles defeated the Spanish army at the Ter River,
and the way into Catalonia opened before the French. The Cata¬
lan fortresses fell in quick succession. Only the fortress of Ostal-
ric remained between de Noailles and Barcelona, and Tourville
was sailing to that latter place to aid in the siege.32 News of
Russell’s entrance into the Mediterranean induced de Noailles
not to proceed to the siege of Barcelona.33 Tourville was soon to
flee to safer harbor before that advance of the English fleet. By
mid- July he had fled to the safety of the Isle of Hieres, and pos¬
sibly prepared to withdraw to Malta in fear of the English.34
28 The design on Brest was frustrated by the French, and Talmash killed ; the
losses for England were very heavy, and seemingly unnecessary. Quincy, op. cit.,
Ill, 77-81.
^Russell to Trenchard, June 6, 1694, CSPD, 1694-5, p. 165. Of. same to same,
May 29, 1694, Buccleuch Manuscripts, II, 73-4.
80 J. Ehrman : “On July 1, the main allied fleet, with sixty-three men-of-war
excluding auxiliaries, entered the Straits for the first time in English naval his¬
tory .” Cambridge Historical Journal, IX, #3, p. 285. (Italics mine.)
Russell to Trenchard, July 1, 1694, Coxe, op. cit., pp. 197-8 ; without the nine
Spanish vessels, Russell’s combined fleet numbered sixty-three ships of the line.
See also Burchett, op. cit., p. 505, and Sourches, Memoirs du Marquis de Sourches
sur le regne de Louis XIV (Paris, 1885), IV, 349.
81 Russell to Trenchard, CSPD, 1694-5, p. 239. Quincy’s reflections on the cam¬
paign of ’94 bear out these conclusions. Op. cit., Ill, 97-8.
82 B. von Ranke, A History of England principally in the Seventeenth Century
(Oxford, 1875), V, 82. Ranke pointed out that “Spain now clearly saw what the
(United) Netherlands had long seen; namely, that the great monarchy could no
longer defend itself without foreign help. It was of incalculable importance to Spain
to be in alliance with the maritime powers.” Ibid., V, 82. Of. Quincy, op. cit.. Ill,
55—6. For his success, Louis XIV made de Noailles Vice-roy of Catalonia, which
dignity he assumed on July 9, 1694. Ibid., Ill, 66. See also Memoires de Noailles
(Paris, 1777), I, 256-7, 265-8 ; Present State of Europe, May-August, 1694, pp. 165,
198-9, 225-9, 264-5.
83 Sourches, op. cit., entry for June 29, 1694, IV, 349.
84 The French had promptly retired upon news of the approach of the English —
fearful, yet not knowing where the English and Dutch were. Russell to Trenchard,
July 13, 1694, CSPD, 1694-5, p. 224. See also Blathwayt to Shrewsbury, July 9/10,
1694, Buccleuch Manuscripts, II, 96 ; Present State of Europe, August 1694, pp.
271-2 ; Sourches, op. cit., IV, 366.
1952]
Irrmann — Admiral Russell
67
It is clear that Admiral Russell deeply regretted his inability
to meet the French in battle. Even were he to stand before Bar¬
celona, this action would be of little lasting value. The Spaniards,
Russell opined, were so weak that the moment the English re¬
tired, the French would reappear and take Barcelona, whence
they might overrun Catalonia at their pleasure.
After gaining Barcelona, the English fleet would offer to join
in any attempt against the French that the Spaniards would
propose, and then would prepare to return to England. In
Admiral Russell’s opinion, the only service the Anglo-Dutch
fleet had rendered England in the present campaign was the
establishment of a reputation, “which is very great at this
time.”35 By July 29 Russell anchored off Barcelona, his fleet in
good condition; but the French, he regretted to report, were at
Toulon.36
It was obvious that the French fleet would continue its refusal
to engage until it enjoyed an advantage. In disgust the Admiral
announced his intention to remain on the Spanish coast ten days
more at the most, and then start homeward.37 He was in decid¬
edly low spirits over the results of his Mediterranean expedition.
In eager expectation he had prepared for the voyage, only to be
diverted at the outset by the proposal to make an attempt on
Brest. Interpreting his orders in accordance with his own con¬
cept of the relative importance of the two objectives, Russell had
gone directly to the Mediterranean and put the execution of the
Brest diversion upon other shoulders. Seemingly the Mediter¬
ranean expedition was to meet with little more success than had
the Brest assault.
The Admiral wrote to Shrewsbury from Barcelona in early
August his conviction that the French would not appear and
fight, and confessed he thought Toulon too well guarded to risk
the fleet in that harbor.38 Realizing the fickleness of the public
temper, he confided to the Duke that he fully expected to be
blamed for not fighting the French, whether they would offer
battle or not. “I long to be rid of this troublesome affair. I have
35 Russell to Trenchard, July 25, 1694, CSPD, 1691,-5, p. 239.
36 J. K. Laughton (editor), Memoirs relating to the Lord Torrington (Camden
Society, 1889), p. 68; Sourches, op. cit., IV, 354; Quincy, op. cit.. Ill, 86; Luttrell,
op. cit., Ill, 361.
37 Russell to Trenchard, August 3/13, 1694, CSPD, 1691,-5, p. 252. Russell felt his
position in the Mediterranean to be precarious. “With only four weeks to go before
his big ships should be taken into harbour, he was over 1600 miles from home and
with a hard passage ahead of him. A shift of wind to the West for a week and
he was caught inside the Mediterranean with no major base and with the Atlantic
and the autumn between himself and Portsmouth.” Ehrman in Cambridge His¬
torical Journal, IX, #3, p. 286.
88 This is the same view that he had tendered Trenchard. Russell was correct in
his observations, if Sourches, among many others, can be taken as authoritative
in his remarks upon the French success in fortifying Toulon. Op. cit., IV, 357.
68 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
neither head, body, nor temper to undergo all I do. Pray . . .
that I may have the good fortune to see you at Christmas.”3*
But such was not to be the Admiral's good fortune. At Malaga
in early September of 1694, Edward Russell met with one of the
greatest surprises of his life: he was ordered to remain in the
Mediterranean area during the winter, and to establish quarters
at Cadiz.40 This move on King William’s part is considered by
Corbett to be the masterstroke of late seventeenth-century Eng¬
lish naval policy. So important does Corbett deem this establish¬
ment of a semi-permanent Mediterranean fleet that he indulges
in fulsome praise of William Ill’s action :
So the momentous step was taken to adorn William’s
memory with one of its finest ornaments. It was he and he
alone whose act it was, and his should be the undying credit.
For the honour of his ungenerous ministers, it must be said
that, when he had once assumed the responsibility, they did
all they could to support him.41
Though, as Corbett says, “it was he and he alone whose act it
was,” Burchett speaks of a similar proposal: “at this time (late
summer of 1694) a noble Lord (Earl of Gallway) proposed the
fleet’s wintering in the Mediterranean . . .”42 In extenuation of
Corbett, many may have had the idea; William III did put it
into execution! Suffice it to say that by September 7th Russell
had acknowledged the royal orders, and had written of his com¬
pliance to Shrewsbury, detailing the shortcomings and defects of
the fleet, sneering at the King, who “fancies the defects of a ship
are as easily repaired as mending a bridle or stirrup leather,”
and outlining his further plans for the aid of Spain.43
By October the fleet was at Cadiz, its designated winter base.44
Russell set to work to make the port as suitable a winter station
89 Russell to Shrewsbury, August 3/13, 1694, Coxe, op. cit., p. 199.
40 Draft (with the Queen’s signature) of instructions for Edward Russell, Esq.,
Admiral of the fleet, August 14, 1694, CSPD, 169^-5, p. 264.
41 Corbett, op. cit., II, 444. See also Blathwayt to Trenchard, July 27/August 6,
1694 : “His Majesty has now declared his Pleasure concerneing Admiral Russell’s
return home and commands me to lett you know that he is Inclined that the Fleet
should remain in the Mediterranean as long as may consist with its safety, and
that upon Admiral Russell’s coming away, he leave as considerable a squadron as
may be convenient in those parts.” Add. Mss. 37992, f. 58, quoted by Ehrman,
Cambridge Historical Journal, IX, #3, p. 286.
^Burchett, op. cit., p. 507. As Ehrman points out, however, William Ill’s policy
had been more foresighted : “From his vantage point at the head of an alliance,
with his varied sources of information of which he alone knew the sum, and with
his European interests which separated him from all his English ministers and of
which he alone had always been acknowledged to be the judge, William looked at
the Mediterranean with a different eye from that of the authorities at home. To
him, it was now the point at which allied sea power impinged upon allied strategy.”
Cambridge Historical Journal, IX, #3, p. 275.
^Russell to Shrewsbury, September 7, 1694, Coxe, op. cit., pp. 202-4.
^Russell to Shrewsbury, Alicante, September 21, and Cadiz, October 8, 1694,
Coxe, op. cit., pp. 204, 205 ; S. Martin-Leake, Life of Captain Stephen Martin (Navy
Records Society, 1895), p. 23, claims October 7th as the date of Russell’s arrival
1952]
Irrmann — Admiral Russell
69
as possible, and to refit the Anglo-Dutch fleet for future action
in the Mediterranean, always touching his observations of his
work with characteristic pessimism : “if it be possible to serve at
sea eighteen months,” he wrote Shrewsbury, “I may hope to see
you again ; if not, my cares about my house and garden will be
at an end.”45 And while Russell stood at Cadiz, the French win¬
tered at Toulon,46 and thus affairs rested through the winter.
William III, it is clear, had every intention of keeping Russell
at his post during 1695, and wanted from Russell the exact date
when the Anglo-Dutch fleet would be ready to put to sea, for he
had certain concrete proposals in mind: English trade in the
Mediterranean must be protected; the Catalonian coast in par¬
ticular, and Spain in general, must be defended ;47 the fleet should
be ready, if possible, to join in action with the Duke of Savoy
and Lord Galway in a descent upon Provence. Bombardment of
Toulon was also to be given serious consideration, for if the
bomb-vessels could get close enough, they might wreak terrible
havoc in view of the extraordinarily large concentration of ships
there. The same consideration was to be given for an attack on
Marseilles. William furthermore wanted Russell to consider the
possibility of bombarding the towns themselves if the French
fleet moved out before the English fleet could effect a counter
move, or if the harbor itself should prove too well defended.
“At such a time as this,” wrote Shrewsbury to Russell, “when
there appears to be a prospect of doing something to weaken
France in their naval power, which is so immediately the interest
and security of England, his Majesty is earnestly concerned that
such an opportunity be not lost, which in an age may not offer
itself again.”48
at Cadiz. See also Burchett, op. cit., p. 513 ; Shrewsbury to Blathwayt, September
25, 1694, Buccleuch Manuscripts, II, 140. William refused as well to consider an
alternative port for the fleet, Shrewsbury informed the Spanish ambassador, and
insisted that the fleet winter at Cadis. See also Sourches, op. cit., November 22,
1694, IV, 402.
45 Russell to Shrewsbury, October 21, 1694, Coxe, op. cit., pp. 209—10. Russell
had written to Trenchard in a similar vein in early September : “I am at present
under a doubt with myself whether it is not better to die.” CSPD, 1691,-5, p. 293.
46 Russell to Trenchard, October 29, 1694, Buccleuch Manuscripts, II, 154;
Memoires de Noailles, I, 307.
47 These were stressed in Council meetings in May of 1695. Cf. Privy Council
minutes, May 4, 1695, Buccleuch Manuscripts, II, 182-4.
48 Shrewsbury to Russell, December 4, 1694, Buccleuch Manuscripts, II, 162. That
the Ministry hesitated to commit itself to a hard and fast policy regarding- Rus¬
sell’s remaining in the Mediterranean over the winter is evident in its recommenda¬
tion to William: “. . . if the King be inclined to have Mr. Russell remain in the
Straights his Orders should not be to (sic) positive, but that he may have liberty
to return, if upon notice of what supplyes he may expect from England, or upon
other consideration of the state of the fleet under his command ; he shall judge it
not practicable to refit it at Cadiz in due time.” National Maritime Museum, Bib¬
liotheca Phillippica I, f. 212, quoted by Ehrman, Cambridge Historical Journal,
IX, #3, p. 286. As usual, the ministry shifted the burden of decision to the King,
and ultimately it was Russell who had to make the decision as to the proper course
of action.
70 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
With the advent of spring, Russell stood ready to put to sea,49
and with the arrival of suitable supplies and reinforcements
from England, set out.50 Though hampered by adverse weather,
by May 10th Russell and the fleet were out of Cadiz Bay, heading
for Barcelona.51 Joining with the Dutch fleet,52 the Admiral went
in search of the French, then went to aid in the siege of Pala-
mos,53 finally moving off to stand in at Toulon and observe the
preparations of the French fleet. The weather proved so unpre¬
dictable, however, that Admiral Russell was forced to withdraw
from the coast; his appearance had given the French a great
scare, nonetheless, for they had not expected him again on the
coast of Provence.54 Unable to find out for certain what the
French intended to do, Russell surmised that their aim was to
make a run for the Straits. As for Spain, Russell despaired of
their soldiery: “nothing but a high mountain or an unfordable
river is security sufficient for such miserable creatures, with
officers at the head of them who are no soldiers.,,5S “. . . now I
shall leave them to God and themselves; and if Providence does
not protect them, against all their own endeavours, Spain must
be a prey to any that will demand it.”56 From Toulon the fleet
withdrew to Altea Bay, and there received news of Rooke’s suc¬
ceeding to the command of the Mediterranean fleet.57 Now
49 Burchett, op. cit., pp. 517—8.
50 Russell to Shrewsbury, April 12, 1695, Buccleuch Manuscripts, II, 180; Present
State of Europe, May, 1694, p. 175 ; Quincy, op. cit., Ill, 179.
51 Russell to Shrewsbury, Britannia, in Cadiz Bay, May 2, 1695, Coxe, op. cit.,
p. 229 ; Newsletter to Derwentwater, June 1, 1695, London, CSPD, 1695, Addenda,
p. 339. Derwentwater’s informant merely knew that Russell had quit Cadiz Bay by
May 8th ; he knew not where he had gone. C/. Present State of Europe, June, 1695,
p. 206. The Privy Council and the King were most interested in the protection of
the trade, the coast of Spain, and particularly in keeping Barcelona from the hands
of the French. Privy Council Minutes, May 4, 1695, Buccleuch Manuscripts, II,
182, 183.
62 Torrington’s Memoirs, pp. 72-3 ; Quincy, op. cit., Ill, 180. On May 21, Russell
and the fleet were at Cape de Rose. Galway to Shrewsbury, June 3, 1695, Buccleuch
Manuscripts, II, 187. Galway was in camp before Casal. See also, Russell to
Shrewsbury, Britannia, 6 leagues south of the Isles of Hieres, June 14, 1695, Coxe,
op. cit., pp. 231-2.
53 Quincy, op. cit.. Ill, 176-8. Quincy sets the figure at 3000 men for the English
troops.
54 Sourches, op. cit., V, 50, 52, 54-5; Present State of Europe, September, 1695,
p. 335.
05 Russell to Shrewsbury, August 16, 1695, Coxe, op. cit., pp. 238-42.
60 Russell to Shrewsbury, Britannia, in Altea Bay, September 4, 1695, Coxe, op.
cit., p. 244; Quincy, op. cit., Ill, “Quoique celles (Anglo-Dutch in 1694-5) qu’il fit
fussent asses considerables pour allarmer le Roy d’Espagne ey ses peuples, alles
ne purent 1’amener au but que e France s’etoit propose, qui etoit de faire la paix.”
Page 98.
67 Shrewsbury wrote to tell Russell the news of Rooke’s appointment: “The truth
of the matter is, to oblige you to stay longer, would have been a barbarity to you,
and your not staying is a cruelty to the public.” July 30, 1695, Coxe, op. cit., pp.
233-4. See also, Lord Capel to Mr. Vernon, August 15, 1695, CSPD, 1695, p. 45.
Shrewsbury had expressed his belief to Russell as early as May that Rooke would
be the Admiral’s successor: May 21, 1695, Buccleuch Manuscripts, II, 186. See also
Sourches, op. cit., V, 21-2.
1952]
Irrmann — Admiral Russell
71
Edward Russell's sojourn was nearing its end, and his work was
nearly finished. Care for the weakened fleet was of paramount
interest to Russell; he left what ships he could for Rooke, and
beat up the Atlantic coast with the remainder of the Anglo-
Dutch fleet. Making the passage from Cadiz in twenty-two days
of fine weather, Edward Russell was at Portsmouth on Novem¬
ber 4th, and two days later he struck his flag at Dover and went
ashore.58
The Admiral was home at last, and he could cast his glance
back over eighteen months of activity in the planning and execu¬
tion of the Mediterranean expedition. He had failed to destroy
the French fleet, but he had kept it bottled up at Toulon and
Marseilles. He had failed to bombard or destroy in part the
towns or harbors at either of those two ports, but he had suc¬
ceeded in keeping the French from capturing Barcelona, and had
limited them to their gains in Catalonia secured prior to his
arrival. He had failed to concert a land and sea action with Lord
Galway, not because he was unwilling to co-operate, but because
the Duke of Savoy either could or would offer no assistance.
He had managed to keep the fleet ready for sea duty, and this in
spite of poverty-stricken facilities at Cadiz, and long-delayed
supplies from England. Intent on searching for the French, he
had been obliged to aid in the siege of Palamos, transport troops
from Italy to Barcelona, and attempt to force action and decision
from lazy, shiftless, indecisive and disinterested Spaniards, many
of whom were more in the interests of France than of Spain.
If the whole campaign seems in general scope frustrated, it
appears, upon detailed analysis, about as successful as it could
have been in view of the odds against the Admiral.
There were other concrete gains that cannot be overlooked.
Most important was the new prestige that England had gained
in the eyes of the Mediterranean and Italian city states, and in
the eyes of the maritime powers. France’s fleet had not been
beaten, but it had been immobilized and prevented from aiding
her land forces to put Catalonia out of the war. The preponder¬
ance which France held in the Mediterranean immediately after
the destruction of the Smyrna Convoy in 1693 had amounted to
nothing when the English fleet had come into the Mediterranean ;
Spain had been kept intact and at least temporarily on the side
of the Allies : all this by one Anglo-Dutch fleet. The respect that
William’s government had gained among the previously recalci¬
trant Italian city states was phenomenal. All in all, Edward
58 Luttrell, op. cit.. Ill, 546, 547, 548; CSPD, 1695 , Addenda, pp. 350, 353; Tor-
rington’s Memoirs, p. 77 ; Martin-Leake, Life of Captain Stephen Martin, p. 24.
72 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
Russell had served well in his appointed task. Under his com¬
mand and at his discretion, the policy that was to prove one of
the bulwarks of later Empire had been inaugurated. The repu¬
tation of England was much greater for Russell’s having so¬
journed in the Mediterranean sea, and King William was under
obligation to thank his enterprising but querulous Admiral for
his valuable services, nautical, diplomatic and military.
THE DISTRIBUTION OF SOILS AND SLOPES ON THE
MAJOR TERRACES OF SOUTHERN RICHLAND
COUNTY, WISCONSIN
F. D. Hole, F. F. Peterson, and G. H. Robinson1
In the course of the soil survey of Richland County,2 Wisconsin
(1947-48), the authors collected information about the soils,
slopes, and elevations on stream terraces as a contribution to¬
ward an understanding of the genesis of the terraces and of the
soils.
The Terraces of Southern Richland County
Uber (1916), MacClintock (1922), and Thwaites (1928) have
described the Wisconsin and pre- Wisconsin terraces of this part
of the Driftless Area. A correlation is made of the work of these
men in Table 1.
The authors have separated the terraces on the basis of: a)
elevations taken at many points on each terrace (Peterson,
1950) ; b) graphic projections of terrace surfaces down the trib¬
utaries to meet the terraces in the main Wisconsin River valley;
c) terrace escarpments observed in the field and by stereoscopic
inspection of aerial photographs of the area. No distinct escarp¬
ments were found between terraces numbered 4, 5, and 6.
Heights of terraces above the present streams were found to be
neither constant nor reliable for correlation. Grades average
about one and a half feet per mile in the Wisconsin River valley
and two to three times this in the lower Pine River valley.
These terraces occupy an area of approximately 40 square
miles in southern Richland County, of which area terrace 1
occupies 36%, terraces 2 and 3, 20% each; terrace 4, 7% ; ter¬
race 5, 17% ; and terrace 6, 0.1%. One fifth of the soils3 were
classified as prairie soils (developed under prairie vegetation),
and the remainder as timbered soils (developed under native
forest) . The natural drainage conditions of the soils were deter¬
mined according to the catena concept (Bushnell, 1944) and 58%
1 Assistant Professor of Soils, Assistant in Soils (1948-49) at the Univ. of Wise.,
and Soil Scientist, Div. Soil Survey, Bur. Plant Indust., Soils, & Agr. Eng., respec¬
tively.
2 The soil survey of Richland Co., Wis. was made by the Div. of Soils, Wise.
Geol. & Nat. Hist. Survey, the U.S.D.A., and the Soils Dept., College of Agriculture,
Madison.
3 For descriptions of the soil series mentioned in this paper, see the Provisional
Wisconsin Soil Key by G. H. Robinson, available at the Soils Dept., College of
Agric.
73
74 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
of the soils by area were found to be well drained, 27% exces¬
sively drained, and 14% moderately to poorly drained. The pro¬
portion of imperfectly drained soils increases as one goes up the
tributary valleys. This percentage changes from zero near the
Wisconsin River to about 17% at six to ten miles up the tribu-
TABLE 1
Differentiation of Terraces in Southern Richland County, Wisconsin
* Includes sand dunes.
tary valleys. Slopes were mapped according to the classification
used by the Soil Conservation Service in Wisconsin.4 Of the total
area of the terraces, half has A slopes; 28%, B slopes; 10%, C
slopes; and 2% D, E, and F slopes. The remaining areas have
complex slopes (dune topography), half with grades of less than
12% and half with steeper slopes.
4 A slopes, 0-2% ; B slopes, 2-6% ; C slopes, 6-10% ; D slopes, 10-15% ; E slopes,
15-20% ; F slopes, 20-30% ; G slopes, 30% +.
Figure 1. MAP OF STREAM TERRACES
AND RELATED AREAS, RICHLAND COUNTY, WIS.
FI GORE 2.
OF SOII. AND SLOPE SATA FOR TERRACES IN SOUTHERN RICHLAND COUNT!
76
Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
* Danes present
1952]
Hole, et al. — Soils of Richland Co.
77
Figure 1 is a sketch map of the areas in question and Figure 2
presents a summary of the soil and slope data for the individual
terraces.
Low-Lying Smooth Areas of Upland Soils
Relatively smooth areas of upland soils which lie adjacent to
the terraces were found at three places in southern Richland
County: between Eagle Corners and Balmoral, northeast of
Gotham, and just south of the Pine River in southern Richland
Township. At the first location, the low-lying upland with
Fayette and Downs silt loams stands at 130 to 200 feet above
terrace number 6, or 290-360 feet above the Wisconsin River.
Near Gotham, Nor den loams occupy an area of smooth upland
lying 75 to 115 feet above the Pine River, and 40 to 80 feet
above adjacent terrace number 2. In southern Richland Town¬
ship, Fayette and Downs silt loams occupy a sloping rock shelf
which rises from the level of terrace number 1 to that of terrace
number 6. Silty upland soils occupy 70% of these areas, and
loams, the remainder. Drainage is good but not excessive.
Seventy-three percent of the slopes by area are C slopes, 16%
are D slopes, 9% B slopes, and 2%, E and F slopes. These upland
areas probably represent ancient rock benches cut by streams.
Areas of Loamy Fine Sand Related to the Terraces of the
Pine River and Willow Creek
In the vicinities of Richland Center, Aubrey, and Sextonville,
areas of loamy fine sand occupy the southern valley slopes of
tributaries which flow west into the Pine River and Willow
Creek. The adjacent terraces are dominantly loam in texture, and
merge into the loamy fine sand slopes, which rise at grades of
3% to 28% and which reach as high as 70 feet above the terrace.
It seems reasonable to suppose that these loamy fine sands are
Chelsea soils, developed from an aeolian deposit derived from the
near-by terraces, although resemblance of the soil profile to that
of the Plainfield soils has led some surveyors to regard the gently
sloping areas as terrace remnants.
Preliminary Estimates of the Ages of the Silty Soils on
the Terraces and Adjacent Uplands
A loess deposit two to four feet in depth was made over this
area5 long enough ago for the development to take place on the
6 See map of Areas Having- Aeolian Silt and Sand Deposits in Wisconsin, Div. of
Soils, Wis. Geol. and Nat. Hist. Survey, 1950.
78 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
uplands of deep, acid soil profiles with distinct textural B
horizons.
The Rockbridge silt loam6 on terrace number 6 is a shallow
soil with at least part of the B horizon developed in the silt. The
shallowness of this soil may indicate that the original loess de¬
posit was thin on the slopes of these high terrace remnants, or
that geologic erosion has been active there.
Studies by Robinson (1950) in adjacent Grant County, Wis¬
consin, indicate that the Fayette soil, developed from deep loess
on uplands, and leached to a depth of about 7 feet, is about 20,000
years old. The corresponding soil on the terraces is the Bertrand
silt loam, which has a slightly more developed B horizon than
does the Fayette soil. No data on depth of leaching in the Ber¬
trand soils is obtainable, however, because the silt deposits from
which they developed are relatively shallow and are entirely
leached. The presence of a textural B horizon is not a reliable
index of age, as is the extent of carbonate removal. Fifty-three
percent of the Bertrand soil areas in southern Richland County
are found on terrace number 5. The soil survey showed that
Bertrand soil also occurs on all the lower terraces. Of the total
« Peterson gives the following section from a road cut in the NW % NW % Sec. 2,
T. 9 N., R. 1 E. :
20"— Solum of Rockbridge silt loam developed in loess.
16" — Sandy clay loam and small cherty gravel.
13" — Red clay.
24" — Blue clay.
+ — Cherty gravel bedded with sandy clay loam.
1952]
Hole, et al. — Soils of Richland Co.
79
area of Bertrand soil on the terraces, 2% is on terrace 4, 17%
on terrace 3, 23% on terrace 2, and 4% on the first terrace.
Robinson estimated the age of the Medary soil, which devel¬
oped from a shallow silt cap over red calcareous, lacustrine clay,
to be about 8,000 years. This would fix the age of the soil on
terrace number 2. The limited information on probable ages of
soils of the area may be summarized as follows :
Upland soils developed from loess . 20,000 years old
Soils developed from silty deposits on ter¬
races 3, 4, 5, 6 . 8,000 to 20,000 years old
Soils on terrace 2 . . . 8,000 years old
Soils on terrace 1 . . less than 8,000 years old
The terraces proper must be older than their silty soils which
developed from loess.
The Textural Pattern of the Soils of the Terraces
and Related Areas
A map (Figure 3) showing the distribution of sandy soils and
silty soils reveals that the sandy areas lie a) adjacent to the Wis¬
consin River, and b) on the east side of tributaries entering
from the north. This suggests that there was a) active stream
cutting which removed considerable portions of the older ter¬
races, after which sandy terrace number 1 was constructed, fol¬
lowed by b) a period of erosion which was dominantly aeolian.
It seems probable that wind removed silty material from the
higher terraces in those areas lying close to the Wisconsin River.
Wind action could account for the presence of sandy deposits in
small west-flowing tributaries to the Pine River and Willow
Creek. The sandy first terrace could very well have been the
source area for the sand. Deposits of silt on the first terrace on
the west sides of the large tributary valleys could have been
made by wind and colluvial wash, which moved soil material
down from the adjacent uplands. The presence of a textural B
horizon in silt loams both on the steep valley slopes and on the
first terrace indicates however, that this movement took place
at least centuries ago.
Related Problems
Several related problems need attention :
1. It is possible that analyses would reveal differences between
the B horizons of silty soils on the various terraces. In 1948,
soil surveyors in Grant County distinguished between a nor¬
mal soil on the high terraces and a “poorly developed” phase
of the same soil on the lower terrace.
80 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
2. A series of auger borings to a depth of 5 to 25 feet would pro¬
vide needed information on the materials in the terraces.
3. A detailed topographic map would help in the correlation of
the terraces.
4. A study of the mineralogy of red clays of the Medary (terrace
No. 2) and Rockbridge (terrace No. 6) soils, of the Dubuque
soil on the upland, and of the deposits on the floor of Eagle
Cave in Eagle Township would be useful.
5. An explanation is needed for the high pH of the sandy de¬
posits in the west-flowing tributaries to the Pine River and
Willow Creek. Mineralogical analyses of these sands, of the
sands of the first terrace and of the sandstone strata of the
surrounding hills might prove valuable.
DIAGRAM OF STREAM TERRACES, RICHWOOD TOWNSHIP
RICHLAND COUNTY, WISCONSIN
Summary
The soil survey of stream terraces (see Figure 4), three low-
lying smooth areas of upland, and of deposits of sand in small
tributaries in the southern half of Richland County, Wisconsin,
reveals complex soil and slope patterns. Detailed correlation of
the terraces by means of elevations, projections, and escarpments
can be only approximate for some of the terrace remnants.
Determination of age of the soils can at present be attempted
only for those with calcareous parent materials.
A few relations are apparent, however. The lower terraces are
more level and more sandy than the higher ones. The silty soils
of all the terraces appear for the most part to be developed from
loess, although some effects of creep colluvial and alluvial wash
are apparent. A major deposit of loess was made in the area
about 20,000 years ago. Some wind erosion (by west winds) and
redeposition of sand and of loess have taken place since then,
over a period of approximately 12,000 years.
1952]
Hole, et al. — Soils of Richland Co.
81
References Cited
Bushnell, T. M. 1944. The Story of Indiana Soils, Purdue Univ., A g. Expt.
Sta., Lafayette, Ind., Special Circular.
MacClintock, P. 1922. The Pleistocene History of the Lower Wisconsin
River, Jour. Geol. Vol. 30, 673-689.
Peterson, F. F. 1950. The Major Terrace Levels and Terrace Soils of Rich¬
land County, Wis., Term Paper, unpublished, Dept, of Soils, University
of Wisconsin.
Robinson, G. H. 1949. Provisional Wisconsin Soil Key, Dept, of Soils, Uni¬
versity of Wisconsin.
- 1950. Soil Carbonate and Clay Contents as Criteria of Rate and
Stage of Soil Genesis; Ph.D. Thesis, unpublished, University of Wis¬
consin.
Thwaites, F. T. 1928. Pre-Wisconsin Terraces of the Driftless Area of
Wisconsin. Bui. G.S.A. Vol. 39, 621-642.
Uber, H. A. 1916. The Terraces of the Wisconsin River between Prairie du
Sac and Prairie du Chien, Ph.B. Thesis, unpublished, University of
Wisconsin.
Henry B. Nason
THE CHEMICAL SOCIETY OF BELOIT COLLEGE
1863-66
Paul W. Boutwell
On December 14, 1863, The Chemical Society of Beloit College
was organized. The secretary’s book is still in existence, and for
many years it was in the hands of Dr. G. L. Collie, Professor
Emeritus of Anthropology of Beloit College. Several years ago
he turned the old minutes over to the Chamberlin Science Club
for preservation. From this original source, and from the files
of the Beloit College Monthly , it is possible to gain an insight
into the nature of this early society.
According to Dr. Edgar F. Smith (6) the first chemical society
in the world was the Chemical Society of Philadelphia, founded
by James Woodhouse in 1792. This society lived for about seven¬
teen years, and was succeeded in 1811 by the Columbian Chem¬
ical Society. ( 1 ) Some years ago this claim was contested by Dr.
James Kendall of the University of Edinburgh. (5) He brings to
light evidence of a rather convincing nature that this was not
the case. In a paper in the Journal of Chemical Education he
says, “Among the correspondence of Joseph Black, Sir William
Ramsey discovered a piece of paper of which only the date, 1785,
was in Black’s handwriting entitled, ‘List of the Members of the
Chemical Society’.” On investigation by James Kendall the mem¬
bership was from Black’s own class in chemistry at Edinburgh.
“It displaces the Chemical Society of Philadelphia as the first
chemical society in the world,” says Kendall, who then points out
that “the University of Pennsylvania was founded (1765) under
strong Edinburgh auspices. John Morgan who first taught chem¬
istry there, and Benjamin Rush who succeeded him in 1769 as
the first full-time professor of chemistry in America, were both
students of Joseph Black in Edinburgh, and when James Wood-
house founded the Chemical Society of Philadelphia in 1792, he
may quite plausibly be pictured as following consciously and
deliberately in the footsteps of Joseph Black.” (5)
At the time of the founding of the Chemical Society at Beloit
College there were similar societies at Union and Columbia Col¬
leges. (3) The Beloit Society was closely patterned after that at
Union College. How many such early chemical societies existed
in the colleges we do not know. It was not until 1876 that the
American Chemical Society was founded. Previous to this time
a number of local societies existed in several of the cities. There
83
84 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
seems to be no doubt that this organization at Beloit College
represents one of the very early college chemical societies.
For over a century chemistry has been taught at Beloit Col¬
lege. During the early years of its history the College was par¬
ticularly fortunate in the calibre and training of the men who
guided the teaching of science. In 1849 Dr. Stephen Pearl Lath-
rop came to Beloit from Middlebury College as the first professor
of chemistry and natural science, later to become the first pro¬
fessor of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin. He was fol¬
lowed at Beloit, after a short interim, by Dr. Henry B. Nason
who filled the same chair from 1858 to 1866. Professor Nason
was an Amherst graduate, as were the next three professors of
chemistry who succeeded him. They were Elijah P. Harris,
James H. Eaton and Erastus Gilbert Smith. Their combined
services, except for a few brief intervals, cover sixty-three years
in the life of the College. “All received their doctor’s degree at
the University of Goettingen, Germany, under the immediate
supervision of the distinguished chemist and teacher, Geheim-
rath Professor Fr. Woehler.” (4) Professor Nason was the first
of this group. Fresh from his training in Germany he brought
with him tremendous energy and enthusiasm for his work. He
divided his time between Beloit and the Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute at Troy, N. Y., to which institution he went perma¬
nently in 1866, and served there until his death in 1895. He had
a distinguished career as an author and teacher, and was in 1890
made president of the American Chemical Society.
Professor Nason was warmly received by the students at
Beloit. The popularity and effectiveness of his work is attested
by the references found in the Beloit College Monthly of that
time. (2) That field trips are not a recent invention is shown by
the account of a trip to the mines at Galena and Mineral Point
in 1861 under the direction of Professor Nason. Here one gets a
picture of the life and thought of the time. The editor goes on to
remark, after describing the trip, “Modern Science and discov¬
eries, if they have given the world much, have also deprived it
of much. Knowing the ‘whys and wherefores’ may satisfy curi¬
osity, but at the same time, it blunts the keenness of pleasure.
It takes away that exquisite thrill of enjoyment which nothing
but a sense of mystery can give.” There must have been quite a
group of followers of Professor Nason who were led on by a
desire to know more of the “whys and wherefores,” and who
found their thrill of enjoyment in looking into the mysteries of
science. For in the Beloit College Monthly of December, 1868, we
find that “The Chemical Society of Beloit College, founded De¬
cember 18, 1863, (The minutes of the Society give the date of
1952]
Boutwell — Beloit Chemical Society
85
December 14.) was organized for the purpose of increasing the
interest in the department of Chemistry and Natural Science,
the formation of a Cabinet of Natural History, chemical prepa¬
rations and products, and a library of Standard Scientific Works
and the leading journals relating to these subjects.” The list of
officers then follows with Professor Nason as president. The ref¬
erence goes on to say, “The Society has already quite a library
and also a cabinet of Natural History connected with it. During
the next term there will be lectures weekly before the Society by
its members.” Further on it is stated, “During the last month,
we have been favored with lectures by Professors Nason and
Blaisdell. The first gave a very interesting account of his travels
in Europe.”
In the section of the Monthly for February, 1864, entitled
“Collegiana,” the popularity of Nason as a lecturer is again indi¬
cated: “Professor Nason’s lectures before the Chemical Society,
to judge from the crowd of citizens and citeyennes [sic] that
attend them, are a decided success. We think that his exertions
for the College are worthy of all praise. The Chemical Society is
the fruit of his unaided efforts. Three years ago, assisted by the
musical talent of the College and the town, he represented the
catanta of the Haymakers for two nights, and thus cleared one-
hundred and twenty-five dollars for the purpose of purchasing
an organ for the College choir. . . . Professor Nason would de¬
serve the thanks of all interested in the College for the exertions
he has made for his own department, until we have now one of
the best sets of chemical apparatus in the country; and these
and many other additional services only increase our debt to
him.”
An earlier number of the Monthly (Feb. 1863) describes the
new apparatus of the College. “By recent purchase in Europe,
many valuable instruments have been added to the Philosophical
as well as the Chemical Cabinet. Now the main points of nearly
all the branches (of Philosophy) can be successfully illustrated.
Hydrostatics, Pneumatics, Electricity, and Optics are well sup¬
plied, while Mechanics, Acoustics, and Magnetism have each a
few fine pieces. Among the most valuable articles are a powerful
Microscope, a newly invented instrument called the Spectroscope,
for spectrum analysis, and a very large Oersted’s apparatus for
liquefying gases and condensing liquids. Without going into
tedious detail, it embraces, among other things, a Gasometer,
Balance and Weights, Parabolic Reflectors, and Optical and
Electrical instruments.
“The Spectroscope, manufactured by Meyerstein at Gottingen,
is a fine specimen of workmanship, and is most carefully ad-
86 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
justed. It may be remarked, that with a similar instrument, the
new elements Caesium and Rubidium were discovered by Pro¬
fessors Bunsen and Kirchhoff. This piece of apparatus is not
possessed by any other college in the United States unless intro¬
duced within a few months.” Then there follows a description
of the use of the apparatus in the demonstration of the liquefy¬
ing of sulfur dioxide before the chemistry class. The account of
the new equipment then continues: “All the glassware for the
laboratory was made at Prague, Bohemia, expressly for the Col¬
lege, of a superior article and of the latest and best forms.
Numerous diagrams illustrating Geology and Chemical opera¬
tions have also been added to the Cabinet, making in all a valu¬
able collection. In this country these additions could probably
have not been purchased for fifteen hundred dollars.”
The improvements that had been made in the laboratory and
other general facilities were then mentioned, and the account
closes with the following : “For chemical purposes, a furnace has
been built and furnished with glass compartments in which to
operate with gases, without being subjected to their poisonous
and offensive odors.
“These purchases were made by Professor Nason during his
absence in Europe. Of the Philosophical department Professor
Kelsey has charge.”
In the Monthly for November, 1862 we find the following:
“We are glad to announce the return of Professor Nason from
his tour through Europe. The Seniors in particular, and the Col¬
lege in general, will be benefited by the increased facilities which
the department now possesses for the study of the Natural Sci¬
ences.” The Chemistry Department still has many rare old pieces
of equipment, and the library books and journals, many in
German and French, dating back to the time of Professor Nason
or before. Some of the very pieces which he brought with him
from his travels in Europe may still be preserved, but we have
no certain way of identifying them.
In the “Collegiana” section of the Monthly for November,
1864, appears the following note: “The Chemical Society is in
full blast. Many new names have been added to the roll this term ;
and through the exertions of Professor Nason, it has become a
fixed institution. Although in the recitation room, the subjects
discussed would seem borous [s^'c] , yet here they seem necessary
to counterbalance the inclination for a general good time. The
Society acknowledges the receipt of the photograph of the Chem¬
ical Society of Union College. The boys are about to return the
compliment. Arrangements are being made to secure a lecture
for the Society at Commencement. On Nov. 11th., the Society
1952]
Boutwell — Beloit Chemical Society
87
room was illuminated with light carburetted hydrogen. Contri¬
butions are continually being added to the chemical cabinet.
Corresponding members and friends of the Society are requested
to contribute whatever may be of interest. Essays are read at
every regular meeting. On Nov. 17th J. L. Taylor read an essay
before the Society upon ‘Man and the Post Pliocene Period.’ At
the last meeting, T. C. Chamberlin presented one upon ‘Paper,
its History and Manufacture.’ ”
The Society did not depend upon its own members for all its
programs. In the February number of the Monthly for 1865 we
find the following : “Dr. Gilman, of Rockford, lectured before the
Chemical Society on the evening of January 17, on ‘Coral Forma¬
tions.’ An opportunity was thus offered to the students of dis¬
playing a hfteen-cent liberality for the sake of female society,
which was so far improved that the Society netted a sum far
beyond the expectations of the most enthusiastic ‘Curator.’ On
Friday, Feb. 3rd., Professor Nason delivered a very interesting
lecture before the Chemical Society — Subject, ‘The Sun.’ On Fri¬
day, the 17th inst., a lecture was delivered before the same soci¬
ety by Professor Carr* of Madison — Subject, ‘The Atmosphere.’ ”
Then followed the note: “Professor Nason has left us for the
summer term and has gone to Troy, N. Y. We all regret his
departure and will welcome his return.” Later, in October of
1865, we find the note : “We regret to state that Professor Nason
has been prevented by sickness from resuming his teaching here
as yet this term. Those of us who have Greek twice a day look
anxiously for his appearing.” In the November number of that
year we find that “Professor Nason has recovered so far as to
resume his duties here. . . . The boys are swaggering about,
rejoicing in the barbarous names of Chemistry, Geology & c.”
It is surprising that the Chemical Society could carry on at all
during these Civil War years. Only an occasional reference to
the war is found in the Beloit College Monthly for this period.
The following item from the Monthly for November, 1863, shows
again that Professor Nason’s interest extended beyond the limits
of his own field: “Through the active exertions of Professor
Nason, the spirit is beginning to move. Cartridge boxes, bayonet
sheathes and belts have arrived for use of the ‘cadets,’ and are
now in the care of Capt. Sheratt. May the muskets come soon —
not by draft but otherwise.” It is interesting to note that at this
time following the close of the Civil War, the enrollment of the
College was but 75 men.
* Ezra S. Carr, M.D., followed Professor Stephen Pearl Lathrop as the second
professor of chemistry and natural science at the University of Wisconsin.
88 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
The success of the Chemical Society is again noted in the
December number of the Monthly for 1865 where we find that
“The Chemical Society under the supervision and active influ¬
ence of Professor Nason, promises to be both interesting and
successful. It has now a large number of members.” The officers
are then listed with Professor Nason again as President, and
Peter Hendrickson as Chemical Editor of the Monthly, and with
T. C. Chamberlin on the Executive Committee.* In the same ref¬
erence we find that Professor Nason’s interests are not limited
to his own field: “By his own activity and influence, also aided
by the liberal subscription of the students, especially from the
higher classes, Professor Nason has been able to procure the
much needed organ for the Chapel. We learn that it has arrived
today, and we anticipate to see many assert their claims to mem¬
bership of the choir this evening. We trust the new organ will
prove a powerful center of attraction to the musical members
of our college community.”
The high esteem in which Professor Nason was held is again
shown in the note from the February, 1866, Monthly: “Professor
Nason is about to return to his duties in the Institute at Troy,
N. Y. His departure is regretted and so are the preliminary
examinations.” Finally, in the number for October, 1866: “We
regret that Professor Nason has resigned his position as Pro¬
fessor of Chemistry and Natural Science. He will be succeeded
by Professor Harris of Toronto University, who is expected to
commence his duties at the beginning of next term.” The Pro¬
fessor Harris referred to has been mentioned before. He left
Beloit after two years to become head of the Chemistry Depart¬
ment at Amherst, his Alma Mater, where he remained for thirty-
nine years, and where he was the instructor of Professor E. G.
Smith, who occupied the Chair of Chemistry at Beloit College
for forty years.
No further references to the Chemical Society have been
found. With the departure of Professor Nason the Society ceased
to carry on without its guiding spirit. Its life was but three
years, but in that time it left its mark on the College. Its accom¬
plishments will always remain as a memorial to its scholarly
founder.
A more intimate picture of the Society can be obtained from
the original Secretary’s book referred to before. (3) On page 2
of this book in the handwriting of the first Secretary, Mr. A. 0.
Wright, appears the following: “A meeting of the Senior and
Junior Classes of Beloit College was called in the cabinet by Pro-
* The Chamberlin Science Club, organized in 1920 by the late President, Melvin
A. Brannon, was named in his honor.
1952]
Boutw ell— -Beloit Chemical Society
89
fessor Nason to consider the expediency of forming a Chemical
Society, similar to those now existing in Union and Columbia
Colleges and many universities of Europe. The meeting was
organized by appointing Professor Nason Chairman, and A. 0.
Wright Secretary pro tem. On motion of A. M. May it was re¬
solved that we do now organize ourselves into such a society.
On motion of A. 0. Wright that a committee of three be
appointed to draft a constitution and by-laws for the society,
of which the President should be chairman, the chair appointed
as the other two members of the committee A. 0. Wright and
S. M. Allen. On motion of A. M. May the society provisionally
adopted the first article of the constitution of the society at
Union College, with reference to the officers and their duties.
On motion of A. 0. Wright the society then proceeded to the
election of officers.” These consisted of a president, vice-presi¬
dent, secretary, treasurer, librarian, chemical editor, a pruden¬
tial committee of three, and three curators. There were eighteen
charter members including Professor Nason who served as pres¬
ident throughout the life of the Society. On December 18, 1863,
the Society met at the call of President Nason and elected thir¬
teen corresponding members, most of whom were former stu¬
dents or graduates of the College, a considerable number of
whom were in the Union armies. The secretary was instructed
“to inform the corresponding members of their election and
solicit their assistance in building up and promoting the interests
of the Society.” Among the active and corresponding members
will be found the names of a number who later rose to distinc¬
tion in their various fields of endeavor.
On the following day, December 19th, the Society met in Pro¬
fessor Nason’s room and adopted the new constitution and by¬
laws. It was even suggested that the Society procure a charter
from the legislature. President Nason “requested the members
to look up and report any matters of scientific interest and pre¬
sent them to the Society at each meeting.” At the suggestion of
the President it was “resolved that the members by turns present
essays to the Society at each regular meeting of next term. The
members then proceeded to draw lots for the order of the eve¬
nings on which essays should be read . . . .” It was also “re¬
solved that a fine of fifty cents be imposed on any member failing
to furnish his essay at the time appointed without satisfactory
excuse.” At the next meeting of the Society on January 15, 1864,
it was necessary to elect a new vice-president to replace the first
incumbent who had resigned due to his enlistment in the army.
Professor Nason was requested to deliver a course of lectures
before the Society, and “to subscribe for such scientific period-
90 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
icals as he saw fit, and the state of the treasury warrant. . . .
Various items of scientific interest were presented, among them
the discovery of a new element, Indium, by means of the spectro¬
scope.”
At the next meeting on January 23, 1864, the first paper read
before the Society was delivered by the secretary, A. 0. Wright,
on “A Biographical Sketch of Paracelsus.” In February of that
year Professor Nason delivered his course of lectures on “The
Air We Breathe”; “The Water We Drink”; “The Coal We
Burn”; “The Soil We Cultivate”; and finally, “The Forces of
Nature.” These lectures, according to the minutes, were received
with great interest and enthusiasm by the members, and un¬
doubtedly, by visitors as well, for in one place the minutes refer
to the crowded house which greeted Professor Nason. The lec¬
ture on coal was accompanied by an essay on petroleum by one
of the members. The lecture on the soil was “listened to with
very marked attention, as it covered much ground now debated
in agricultural journals on the methods of restoring fertility to
soils that have lost it.”
With the completion of Professor Nason’s lectures the pro¬
gram of the Society came to an end for the term. It began again
after Professor Nason’s return from Troy, N. Y., with the first
meeting of the winter term held on Nov. 19, 1864. Several new
members were elected from the junior class, including T. C.
Chamberlin. New officers were elected and lots were drawn for
the order of speakers for the program. “It is an interesting fact,”
the minutes read, “that the room is lighted this evening with
that Chemical light known as C2H4.” (The formula C2H4 must
have then referred to acetylene, and was written on the basis of
the atomic weight of carbon as 6 rather than 12.) Several refer¬
ences in the minutes show that both the lighting and the heating
in their place of meeting was often a problem to the Society.
In one instance, it is recorded, Professor Nason donated lamps
for the Society to use. At the next meeting on Nov. 18, 1864, it
was decided to meet every two weeks instead of every week, and
to have two essays each meeting instead of one. The program for
the evening was in charge of Mr. J. S. Taylor, who read an essay
on “Man and the Post-Pleiocene Epoch.” “An interesting experi¬
ment was presented by Professor Nason, who also announced as
the result of recent research, that the metals Erbium and Ter¬
bium have been proven the same as Yttrium ; also the discovery
of a new element, Wasium.” It was also agreed that the President
procure a lecturer for Commencement.
The next meeting on Dec. 2, 1864, was the last meeting of the
term. The question of a picture of the Society was referred to
1952]
Boutwell — Beloit Chemical Society
91
the Prudential Committee for arrangements. As the next meet¬
ing would be the annual meeting of the Society several amend¬
ments to the constitution and by-laws were proposed for consid¬
eration at that meeting. Professor Nason appointed a committee
to arrange for the printing of the constitution and by-laws after
the revision was completed. Mr. T. C. Chamberlin then read an
essay on the “Manufacture of Paper” which was “duly appreci¬
ated by the Society. Mr. Chamberlin having presented to the
Society specimens of the paper in different stages of its forma¬
tion, a vote of thanks was moved. Professor Nason announced
the Death of Prof. Silliman, Sr., of Yale College, and gave an
interesting sketch of his life.” At the annual meeting which fol¬
lowed on December 16th the President made a brief report on
the condition of the Society. The photograph of the Society was
deferred to next term. The Secretary was requested to subscribe
for the Scientific American, Silliman' s Journal, and the Franklin
Philosophical Magazine . The Committee on Constitution and By-
Laws reported and certain changes were agreed upon, and the
Secretary was instructed to see that 200 copies were printed.
No copy of this constitution has been found — only a page show¬
ing the list of corresponding and active members. There was
found in the Secretary’s book a copy of the Constitution and By-
Laws of the Chemical Society of Union College which served as
a guide for the Beloit College Chemical Society. At Union College
an initiation fee of $1.00 was charged, and a regular term tax of
$1.00. What the corresponding fees were at Beloit is not re¬
corded, but the Treasurer must have had fairly substantial funds
in order to provide for the purchase of books and journals. It is
of interest to compare the “several departments of chemistry”
as listed in the Union Constitution and By-Laws with the present
classification as listed in Chemical Abstracts. We do find con¬
siderable resemblance. The list is as follows: “1. Equivalents.
2. Qualitative Analysis. 3. Quantitative Analysis. 4. Non-metallic
Elements. 5. Metallurgy. 6. Organic Chemistry. 7. Vegetable
Chemistry. 8. Animal Chemistry. 9. Technical Chemistry.
10. Chemical History.”
In addition to the program provided by its own members the
Society sponsored outside lecturers from time to time. A charge
of twenty-five cents was made for general admission, and fifteen
cents for students at the lecture by Dr. Gillman of Rockford. On
this lecture the President reported a net profit of $1.50. While
arrangements were being made for a lecture by Professor Carr
of Madison, the “President presented a request from the Beloit
Lecture Association that we allow Prof. Carr to lecture before
them instead of before the Society, — offering to take him off our
92 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
hands. On motion request was not complied with.” (Minutes of
Jan. 28, 1865.) Professor Nason delivered a special lecture on
“The Sun” in the Chapel on the third of February, but “the in¬
clemency of the weather debarred many from the privilege of
attending. Consequently audience was quite small.” Arrange¬
ments were completed for Professor Carr’s lecture on Feb. 19th,
when the “Chemical Society assembled in the Chapel and lis¬
tened to an able and interesting lecture from Professor Carr of
Madison University on 'Atmosphere in its Relation to Animal
and Vegetable Life’.”
One should note the importance attached at this time to the
relation of chemistry to agriculture. This topic was earlier given
great stress by Professor Lathrop. It was probably because of
this interest in the applications of chemistry to plant and animal
industry that the call came to Professor Lathrop to take up the
work at the University of Wisconsin.
The absence of Professor Nason for about six months of every
year while on duty at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute inter¬
fered with the continuity of the program of the Chemical Soci¬
ety. Each year the Society adjourned its meetings in February
or early March until November of the next school year when
Professor Nason returned to the campus. At the first meeting of
the new term on Nov. 3, 1863, Professor Nason raised the ques¬
tion of the expediency of continuing the meetings of the Society.
It was voted, however, to continue. Roll was taken at every meet¬
ing and fines were imposed for unexcused absences. At one meet¬
ing it was voted that no excuses be granted members who wished
to postpone the reading of their essay on the appointed date. At
this same meeting it was voted that “the college bell ringer be
procured to light and warm the room and that the bell be rung
15 minutes.” Among the topics considered by the Society in their
programs were : “Sir Humphrey Davy” ; “Glass, Its History and
Manufacture” ; “The False and the True” ; “Lead Ore and the
Minerals Found With It” ; “The Progress of Science and Its Re¬
lation to the Progress of the Times.” At one of the meetings they
were even then discussing the price of coal “which costs but
$1.08 to mine.” “Questions were raised about the new sense of
weight.” Professor Nason made mention of the arsenic eaters of
Stysia, in Austria, and said that “a man had been found who
daily ate four grains of arsenic.” From time to time additions
to the cabinet were announced, such as the valuable collection of
geological specimens donated by the late Rev. Mr. Renard. It is
highly probable that a number of the specimens now on display
in the cases in the chemistry department date back to these early
collections sponsored by Professors Lathrop and Nason, continu-
1952]
Boutwell — Beloit Chemical Society
93
ing through until the time of Professor E. G. Smith; and that
the antique cherry cases now housing some of these collections
are the very ones that housed the Cabinet referred to in these
minutes. From time to time the librarian reported on the con¬
dition of the Library. At the meeting of Dec. 1, 1865, the Secre¬
tary was instructed to renew subscriptions for Silliman’s Journal
of Science, Scientific American, and Fowles ’ Phrenological Jour¬
nal. Thus at an early day foundations were being laid for a valu¬
able collection of the journals. Today the Library possesses
broken files of other journals started many years ago but later
discontinued. These undoubtedly reflect the changing interests of
the teaching staff as well as the changing fortunes of the College.
If these various journals could all have been continued an almost
invaluable addition would have been made to the rich collection
of old volumes in the present Science Library.
The last regular meeting of the Chemical Society was held in
the Philosophy Room on Jan. 12, 1866, with Professor Nason
presiding, and with H. D. Porter as Secretary. Decision as to the
time for taking the picture of the Society was postponed for
another meeting, probably never to occur. Mr. A. L. Norton
whose excuse for postponement of his essay was earlier refused
and then later granted “read an essay.” This was the only case
when the subject was not recorded in the minutes. “Professor
Nason made an impromptu magnesium light and proposed to
experiment with it. The mode of construction of magnesium
lamps was explained, and experiments made both with the wire
and ribbon magnesium. The light produced was most brilliant,
so much so that the shadows of a flame of a candle was [sic]
produced. The experiments were very interesting. The composi¬
tion of ‘Pharoah’s Serpents’ was given as ‘sulpho-cyanide of
Mercury.’ Experiments were shown of these curious formations
much to the delight of the members.” The minutes of the Society
end with the following :
“College Chapel, Jan. 26th, 1866.
“Special Meeting of the Chemical Society was called to ad¬
journ the meeting from that evening.
“Society adjourned.
“Porter, Sect . Prof. Nason, Pres.”
This was the last meeting of the Chemical Society of Beloit
College.
94 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
Bibliography
1. Bates, Ralph S., Scientific Societies in the United States. John Wiley &
Sons, New York, 1945.
2. Beloit College Monthly, Volumes 8-13, 1862-1866.
3. The Chemical Society of Beloit College, Secretary’s Book.
4. Eaton, Edward Dwight, Historical Sketches of Beloit College. A. S.
Barnes and Co., New York, 1928.
5. Kendall, James, The First Chemical Society in the World. Journal of
Chemical Education, 12, 565-66 (1935).
6. Smith, Edgar F., Chemistry in America. D. Appleton & Co., New York,
1914.
STEPHEN PEARL LATHROP
A PIONEER CHEMIST IN WISCONSIN
Paul W. Boutwell
It is not until one begins to search for information concerning
the life and work of some early pioneer that we find how hope¬
lessly lost or hidden are all but the most meagre details. Such at
first seemed to be the case concerning Dr. Stephen Pearl Lathrop,
the first professor of chemistry and natural science at Beloit
College and later at the University of Wisconsin. However, some
years ago through the kindness of his daughter, the former Mrs.
William H. Wheeler of Beloit, I have been furnished with much
valuable material, including the original manuscripts of a num¬
ber of Professor Lathrop’s lectures and addresses. I am also in¬
debted to both Mr. and Mrs. Wheeler for relating to me before
their death a number of reminiscences concerning the life of Dr.
Lathrop. Professor H. A. Schuette of the Chemistry Department
of the University of Wisconsin also kindly placed at my disposal
material which he had collected on the life of Professor Lathrop.
He published portions of this material some years ago in the
Bulletin of the Chicago Section of the American Chemical Soci¬
ety in his series on the early days in the chemistry department
at Wisconsin. (6) Dr. R. K. Richardson, Professor Emeritus of
History at Beloit College, Historian of Beloit College, and for¬
merly Secretary of the Faculty also made available to me the
early minutes of the Faculty and official correspondence relating
to Professor Lathrop.
I shall pass over briefly the early life of Professor Lathrop
and stress in greater detail his contributions to the educational
and agricultural life of the pioneer state.
Stephen Pearl Lathrop was born on a farm in Shelburne, Ver¬
mont, September 20, 1816. In spite of financial difficulties he
worked his way through Middlebury College, graduating in 1839
and later receiving his master’s degree from this institution. He
first intended to enter the ministry but due to “a weakness of the
lungs” he abandoned this purpose. He taught school for two
years and then, in 1841, due to the interest which he had devel¬
oped in science, turned his attention to the study of medicine.
He received his M. D. degree in 1843 from the Medical College
of Vermont at Woodstock. He successfully carried on the prac¬
tice of medicine in Middlebury but his interest in science caused
95
96 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
him to turn to teaching when a temporary vacancy occurred in
the science department of Middlebury College due to the absence
of the science professor in work on the State Geological Survey.
Beginning in 1845 Dr. Lathrop also served the State as Assistant
Geologist for several years. In addition to all this he became
principal of the Female Seminary at Middlebury where he wrote
in the circular advertising the school: “The usual rigid intel¬
lectual and moral discipline, which has been found successful
and essential in establishing a high order of scholarship and a
correct deportment will be adhered to, together with the same
liberality in the employment of able and efficient teachers. It is
intended that the Instruction and Education acquired in this in¬
stitution, shall be such as to lead the pupils to think as well as to
act. . . . Perfect punctuality and regularity in all the duties of
the school is the standard. A vigilant attention is paid to the
health, manners, and morals of the young ladies boarding in the
Seminary. A Bathing-room is prepared especially for their use
and the house-regulations require daily exercise in the open air.
The school is opened and closed with proper religious exercises,
and there is morning and evening worship in the family.
“The scholars are charged, per term of 14 weeks, for instruc¬
tion in the common English studies, $3.50 — for the higher Eng¬
lish studies, $5.00. The following charges are extra — for Latin,
$2.00 — French and Drawing, each, $4.00 — lessons on the piano,
$10.00 — use of instrument, $2.00. Board, including Fuel, Lights,
and Washing, $30.00 per term. Board alone, $1.75 per week.
Pupils are required to furnish themselves with Towels, Soap and
Matches.”
It was in 1848 that the Honorable Wm. Slade, ex-governor of
Vermont, wrote to the Reverend Mr. Stephen Peet, the agent of
the Trustees of Beloit College, calling his attention to the quali¬
fications of Dr. Lathrop for the new chair of chemistry and
natural science which was soon to be filled at Beloit College.
“He has devoted much attention to Botany and has a large col¬
lection of plants which he would take with him,” wrote Mr.
Slade. “Also a large and well-arranged mineralogical cabinet.
He is hearing recitations and delivering lectures in the College
(besides his female school).” He was described as a man agree¬
able in manner, and of kind disposition, tall and commanding in
form. He was a member of the Congregational church and super¬
intendent of the Sabbath school in Middlebury. “His piety is
stable, consistent and practical,” continued the ex-governor.
“He would make a very valuable professor in your college and a
useful member of your community.” Likewise in August of 1848,
Dr. Labasse, the President of Middlebury, wrote the Reverend
S. P. Lathrop
1952] Boutwell — Stephen Pearl Lathrop 97
Mr. Peet concerning Dr. Lathrop that “he had been urged to de¬
vote himself to the practice of medicine but his love for teaching
forbids.” The president regarded him as an excellent instructor
and a man of high attainments in natural science. He further
remarked that “Dr. Lathrop is a pretty decided, though not
obnoxious abolitionist. This, I conclude, will not be regarded as
a disqualification in your community.” In August of that same
year we find a letter from Dr. Lathrop to the Reverend Mr. Peet
in which he says : “That I possess all the qualifications which you
desire in a professor, I very much doubt. I feel competent, how¬
ever, to instruct well those who may wish to pursue chemistry &
Natural History. I lay no claim to great scholarship or extended
literary research. There are many things of which I am very
ignorant. I graduated in the fall of 1839, received my master's
degree in course and was made Doctor of Medicine by the faculty
of Vermont Medical College in 1843. Most of my time since then
has been spent in teaching. Chemistry and the branches of Nat¬
ural History are my favorite pursuits. In these I have made some
advancement.” In September, 1848, the faculty of Beloit College
elected Professor Lathrop to the new chair and the call was ex¬
tended to him by the trustees. The minutes of the Beloit faculty
for September 19, 1848, record that “It was resolved that Dr.
Lathrop be requested to spend a portion of the current year in
raising funds and procuring apparatus for his department.” On
the 10th of November in that year, in reply to a letter from the
Reverend Mr. Peet informing him of his appointment to the pro¬
fessorship of chemistry and natural science, Dr. Lathrop wrote :
“The very favorable impression I have received of your enter¬
prise strongly inclines me to a hearty acceptance of the appoint¬
ment though it might not be considered judicious with my
present knowledge of the conditions and prospects of your col¬
lege, to give a decided answer in the affirmative.
“The professorship of chemistry and Natural History in any
college, attended as it necessarily is with considerable expense in
the procuring of proper apparatus and the obtaining and pre¬
serving of cabinets of specimens is very apt to fall under the
censure of Trustees, unless they are truly of correct and liberal
views regarding it. Chemistry and the various branches of Nat¬
ural History, from their intimate connection with the arts and
agriculture are becoming the most important, as well as useful
and popular branches of a finished education. The estimate
placed upon the professorship of chemistry etc. by a board of
trustees is very important, therefore, to be known.” He asks
many questions regarding the college work, the cost of living,
buildings and grounds, size of the town, ranges of the tempera-
98 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
ture, healthfulness of the region, of the state of Christian soci¬
ety, of the moral character of the community and state. “Did my
present connection with the seminary here allow of it,” he con¬
tinues, “I should endeavor to make arrangements for visiting
the several colleges in New England this winter and spending
some time at New Haven or Cambridge in their chemical & agri¬
cultural departments. I may yet be able to accomplish it. Did my
means allow it, I should certainly do so.”
There were many delays before Dr. Lathrop finally accepted
the offer from Beloit. In December of 1848, the Reverend Mr.
Peet wrote that there was uncertainty as to the ability of the
College to carry out the appointment and advising that the
matter be allowed to rest for a time. In March of 1849, Dr. Lath¬
rop again writes to the Reverend Mr. Peet and tells him of his
efforts to become acquainted with Beloit and with the College
and of the favorable word he has received and that “with the
advice of friends have concluded to accept your appointment as
Professor of Chemistry and Natural History in Beloit College.”
He inquires as to the status of reports proposing the establish¬
ment of a State Geological Survey in Wisconsin and also of an
account of the proposed establishment of a university at Madi¬
son. He goes on to say : “A short time ago I received a communi¬
cation from Professor Henry, Secretary of the Smithsonian
Institute at Washington, wishing me to keep a Meteorological
Journal at Beloit & also that further particulars should be sought
with regard to the mounds in the State of Wisconsin.
“I would respectfully suggest the enquiry whether a Meteoro¬
logical Journal might not be immediately commenced at the Col¬
lege (if it is not already) by one of the gentlemen there. It might
be of much service for future reference.
“I suppose your College is entitled to a copy of the ‘Contribu¬
tions to Knowledge’ lately published by the Institute & also to
various Reports &c. They are of much scientific value.”
There follows an exchange of telegrams which show an unex¬
pected need for Dr. Lathrop at Beloit and his uncertainty in
leaving his appointment at Middlebury. A letter to the Reverend
Mr. Peet on the 16th of August, 1849, shows his willingness to
arrange his affairs so as to enable him to come. It was his plan
to leave his family in Middlebury and to operate the seminary
under his name until spring but to hire a teacher to take his
place. He intended to leave for Beloit in the fall but stated that
he would prefer to return before navigation closed and have the
winter to settle up his affairs and to collect apparatus for the
College. In a letter about ten days later he writes that he has
decided to take his family that fall. He asks help in hiring a con-
1952]
Boutwell — Stephen Pearl Lathrop
99
venient house and states : “I have a wife and two little boys, one
of four and the other of two. The health of the younger is not
good. I am in hopes that a change of climate & the journey may
improve him. If they do not he will soon go into a decline. . . .
I find that there are many & strong ties to be severed upon my
leaving this place where I have enjoyed so much in the society
of old and tried friends & in the kind embrace of my Alma
Mater.” He writes of preparing to leave with much uncertainty
as to the wisdom of his choice and as to the reception he may
expect in the West but with trust as to the future. The last letter
in the series was written on the 25th of September and tells of a
serious sickness which had prevented him from leaving for the
West. It was his hope to be in Beloit about October 6th. He men¬
tions his lack of apparatus and expresses the hope that the Col¬
lege will be able to buy “a small chemical apparatus.” He asks
the possibility of borrowing from the Academy at Platteville
where he has read that they have “a good chemical apparatus.”
It was not until after the opening of the fall term in 1849 that
he was able to arrive in Beloit with his family, and then, much
to his disappointment and concern, without the chemical and
philosophical apparatus which he had hoped to bring with him.
No mention is made of how the family traveled to Beloit. The
journey and the change of climate failed to improve the health
of his younger son who died the following March at the age of
three. Tragedy seemed to follow this family. His first wife, Lucy
Gibson Warner, who was born at Andover, Vt., December 15,
1823, and whom he married there on March 20, 1844, died of
consumption in Middlebury on January 30, 1848. He married
Martha Hemenway Clement at Topsham, Maine, on the 9th of
April in 1849. Just over five years later she was left a widow
with three small children. A daughter, Helen Hoyt, was born
May 31, 1855, a short time after the father's death. She died of
heart disease on the same date twenty-six years later. The other
son who came West with the family enlisted in the Union army
while still a student at Beloit College. The family bible contains
only the notation,— -“William P. Lathrop, born January 30, 1845.
Missing during the battle of the Wilderness, May, 1864.” Mrs.
Lathrop died in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, May 30, 1909. She was
survived by a daughter, Mary Bowditch (Mrs. W. H. Wheeler),
who died in Beloit in 1935.
The family took up their residence near the campus. Beloit
then had a population of about 2,000. The railroad had not yet
arrived. The College consisted of one building, Middle College,
and a faculty of five, including the newly appointed president,
Aaron L. Chapin, and Professors Bushnell, Emerson, and Lath-
100 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
rop, and a tutor, a Mr. Carey. There were eight students in the
college, but 50 were enrolled in the preparatory department and
144 in the seminary. The first college catalog with the announce¬
ments for the year 1849-50 states that instruction will be given
in the department of natural science by recitation from the text¬
books accompanied by theoretical and experimental lectures. In
the third term of the junior year Gray’s Botanical Text Book was
taught, and in the first term of the senior year Edward’s Physi¬
ology and Agassiz and Gould’s Zoology. Silliman Jr.’s Chemistry
was taught in the second term of the senior year and Dana’s
Mineralogy and Hitchcock’s Geology in the third term. In addi¬
tion to his work in the natural sciences Professor Lathrop had
charge of the normal department. The facilities for teaching
science were of course meagre. The first catalog states that
arrangements had been made for procuring apparatus illustrat¬
ing the departments of chemistry and natural philosophy to be
ready for use at the beginning of the coming collegiate year.
There was a library of 1,000 volumes. The mineralogical cabinet
had received valuable accessions and illustrated most of the min¬
erals and rocks of the United States. The catalog continues:
“The liberality of different friends had furnished the institution
a beautiful assortment of marine shells which with the collection
of Professor Lathrop, which is deposited in the cabinet, makes
up a conchological cabinet consisting of more than a thousand
specimens. The botanical collection of Professor Lathrop which
is also deposited in the cabinet embraces about 1500 varieties
principally from foreign countries, besides which the collection
of plants indigenous to the North West is considerable and is
rapidly increasing.” Later, the catalog of 1858 makes note of the
fact that collections have been commenced by Professor Lathrop
for the illustration of the ornithology, mammalogy and ichthy¬
ology of this region. It might be added here that in 1852, while
still a member of the faculty, he donated these valuable personal
collections to the College and for which, by vote of the faculty,
he received their sincere thanks.
That Professor Lathrop was a man of many interests is shown
by the breadth and variety of his activities. The first meteoro¬
logical observations in Beloit were made by him during the year
1850. In addition to his duties in the College he continued the
practice of medicine. He had rare common sense and a gift in
the diagnosing of cases. He was said to be skilled as a surgeon
and to have performed difficult operations on the eye. He must
have been a good organizer with a large capacity for work and
with a gift of getting things done. His early interest in agricul¬
ture continued in his new home. As a farmer himself, he culti-
1952]
Boutwell — Stephen Pearl Lathrop
101
vated a small tract on the outskirts of Beloit where he put into
practice his own teachings in the field of scientific agriculture.
He was noted for the raising of purebred poultry and stock. He
was a regular exhibitor and prize-winner in these classes at the
Rock County Fair which, by the way, he was instrumental in
founding. He was active in the support of the State Fair where
he served as a judge of various exhibits. He took an important
part in the affairs of the newly organized Rock County Agricul¬
tural Society and Mechanic's Institute serving as vice-president
in 1853 and as president in 1854. He also served on the commit¬
tee to draft a charter for the Society. ( 1 ) In the proceedings of
the Society for 1852 we find that at the annual meeting held in
Janesville on December 1, 1851, “It was voted that Professor
S. P. Lathrop of Beloit College be requested to read an essay
before the Society at the next quarterly meeting." No record has
been found of this essay, or of his presidential address which
should have been delivered at the Rock County Fair in the fall
of 1854. Perhaps the press of his new duties at the University of
Wisconsin, where he had but recently arrived, or his absence in
the East procuring equipment for his new department prevented
this appearance. He was a member of a number of organizations
including the State Medical Society and the Rock River Medical
Society. Among his papers deposited in the Beloit College
Library will be found his diplomas and his certificate of mem¬
bership in the American Association for the Advancement of
Science, signed by the permanent secretary, Spencer F. Baird,
in the year 1853 when he was elected at the seventh meeting of
the Association held at Cleveland in July of that year. He was
deeply religious by nature and was a member and elder of the
Presbyterian Church of Beloit. He was doubtless drawn to this
group because of its early sympathy with the cause of abolition.
In 1853 we find him contributing a series of six papers on the
Chemistry of Plants to the Wisconsin and Iowa Farmer. (7) In
1854 in the last year of his life he became a joint editor of this
journal. It was undoubtedly due to the wide influence which he
exerted among the farmers of the State that he received a call in
the spring of 1854 to fill the new chair of chemistry and natural
science at the University of Wisconsin. There had been an in¬
sistent demand through the columns of his journal for better
provision on the part of the State for the education of the farm¬
ers, particularly in scientific agriculture. No one better fitted to
the task could be found and no choice more acceptable to the
farmers could be made. As Chancellor John Lathrop of the Uni¬
versity wrote him on the 26th of March in that year: “Your
letter of acceptance of the chair offered you in this institution
102 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
came to hand. ... I am satisfied you will have no cause to
regret your translation to this position from which you will be
better able to command success in the promotion of those valu¬
able scientific objects to which your professional life stands
pledged. . . . Shall expect you here about the 24th of May with
such apparatus, chemical and philosophical, as you can command
and will have occasion to use in your short course of instruction
here this term.
“If our money shall hold out well, I do not despair of obtaining
an additional appropriation in July for furnishing out your
department more largely. . . .
“As you have had experience in creating your department at
Beloit, we trust you will take hold of the same work here bravely.
What you would have it, make it. We say this the more unre¬
servedly because we are acquainted with your disposition to
bring the department into sympathy with the farming interests
of the State, as well as with the arts.”
It was this rare gift of being able to carry his learning to the
people in a language which they could understand and to inspire
their trust and confidence that characterizes Professor Lathrop’s
work, and accounts along with his sound common sense and
sterling integrity for his wide influence and for the high esteem
in which he was held. His career at Madison was short. Before
he had completed his first year at the University he was stricken
with typhoid fever (2) and died on Christmas day, 1854, in his
89th year, at the very beginning of his work when he was just
finding his true field in the service of agriculture in the new
State. That he left an abiding influence on his friends and asso¬
ciates is shown by the testimonials of sympathy and esteem
which poured in to comfort his bereaved family. Among the
resolutions were those from the County and State Medical Soci¬
eties, from the Rock County Agricultural Society and from the
Faculty of the University of Wisconsin. Typical of these testi¬
monials is the resolution adopted by the Rock County Agricul¬
tural Society and presented by the Hon. Josiah F. Willard* in
which he says in part: “We most deeply deplore the loss of one
whose honesty of purpose, gentlemanly deportment, and untiring
zeal in the advancement of this society has so won upon our
affections and entwined himself around our hearts. Resolved,
That we shall ever hold in pleasing remembrance our intercourse
with him and that his name and his memory are deeply en¬
shrined in our hearts. . . .” President Chapin of Beloit College
in his funeral sermon referred to him as a man of great practical
* Father of Frances E. Willard.
1952] Boutwell — Stephen Pearl Lathrop 103
good sense, of sound judgment, earnest, unbending integrity and
simple true-hearted piety. He was plain in manner and address
but had a warm heart and commanded confidence and respect as
a citizen.
We can best understand Professor Lathrop and evaluate his
work and his contribution to his time by reviewing briefly some
of his lectures and editorial work. These lectures* are labori¬
ously written out in longhand. In most cases they are undated.
Some certainly represent his classroom lectures and cover such
topics as the Philosophy of Vision ; Chemistry as Connected with
Medical Philosophy ; Pneumatics ; The Atomic Doctrine ; Animal
Heat; and various others on education and subjects connected
with his teaching. It is hoped that some of these may be edited
at a later date. Others are evidently public addresses for he was
often in demand as a speaker at various gatherings. One of these
is an address delivered at an annual meeting of the Rock River
Medical Society in which he pleads for common sense on the part
of the people in their attitude toward sickness and in their rela¬
tion to the medical profession, and for freedom from supersti¬
tions and the credulity which allows them to be the victim of
quackery and fraud. He holds up high standards for the pro¬
fession before his audience and asks them, “Is it too much to
expect of the stable and well informed in the community that
they will give their countenance to the objects at which we as a
body of medical men aim? While we are struggling together in
various ways to elevate the standard of the medical profession
& to rid our noble and honorable calling of the abuses which
impairs its fame & usefulness, we have a right to demand of
the community a cheerful & active support in these efforts.”
In an undated address entitled “Chemistry” which he deliv¬
ered before the Rock County (?) Teachers’ Institute which “has
been holding its sessions for a few days past in this village”
(place not named) he imparts to his audience some of his ideas
on education, and of the value of science and of chemistry in
particular in the education of the young. Some of his ideas are
quite similar to those being advanced today and are well worth
our consideration. Before taking up his main topic he indulges
in some general remarks regarding education in which he says,
“He who assumes the responsibilities of a teacher should en¬
deavor to obtain liberal and enlightened views of his duty, which
consists not wholly in teaching to spell, read, write and cipher.
This province is more extensive and noble than this. It is his
duty to expand the mind, to moralize the heart, to teach the
* Among the manuscripts and papers belonging to Professor Lathrop which were
kindly furnished by his daughter, Mrs. W. H. Wheeler of Beloit.
104 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
breast to glow with the love of country and to prepare youth for
public as well as private action.
“It is thus that our schools and colleges are to become the safe¬
guards of our commonwealth and nation. . . . The duties of the
instructor, no matter whether he pass by the dignified name of
Professor or by the humble one of teacher are the same. . . .
Let us then, my fellow teachers, cultivate in our breasts enlarged
and just views of the studies to be pursued in our schools and
the plans of instruction to be adopted.
“It becomes us then as teachers to enquire ‘What is the edu¬
cation which we should promote?' . . . Education is the growth
and improvement of the mind. Its great object is immediate or
prospective happiness.
“That then is the best education which insures to the individ¬
ual and to the world the greatest amount of permanent happi¬
ness, and that the best system, which most effectually accom¬
plishes this grand design.
“By happiness is meant, not the effervescence of feeling
which agitates a giddy mind, . . . but an inwoven, deeply-rooted
enjoyment rising from the fountains where reason and philos¬
ophy, nature and art, combine and mingle all their sweets. . . .
In that hard doom which bound man to daily toil for his sub-
sistance on the hostile earth, we behold the tokens of mercy that
by the constitution of his nature, he is able to convert all the
objects around him into sources of pleasure. It is this capacity
to see and enjoy beauties in the works of creation, that we would
cultivate, making all things answer the double purpose of sup¬
plying our wants and administering to our enjoyment.
“It is a fact worthy of the attention of every instructor . . .
that children and youth possess this faculty of seeing the beau¬
ties of creation and of delighting in them developed to a remark¬
able degree. I ought, perhaps, rather to say, that they possess
this faculty intuitively. I might go farther and say that it is
innate with them. For I believe that if they have received any¬
thing intellectually at the hand of God, their Maker, it is the
power of readily seeing and thankfully admiring the beauty of
arrangement and the happy adaptation of means to ends, which
are so manifold and so manifest in Nature around us.
“And what is to be deplored by every enlightened teacher is
that our system of instruction tends so much to smother and
utterly stiffle [sic] in the breast of the pupil every latent princi¬
ple of this kind which would, under more favorable circum¬
stances, spring up and impart its vigor and life giving energy to
the other more dormant faculties of the mind. This faculty, not
stiffled [sic], but disciplined by a proper education, imparts to
1952]
Boutwell — Stephen Pearl Lathrop
105
youth its purest and richest pleasures, and gives to middle age
that calmness of mind, evenness of temper, so much to be desired,
and finally, introduces a pleasant green old age, into which the
buoyancy of youth is carried and the intellectual strength of man¬
hood is preserved. It is too much a fault of our present mode of
education that one of its results is to destroy the continuity of
one’s life and cut it up into fragments. . . . Suffice it to say, that in
my opinion, nothing would more effectually and happily remedy
the evil to which I have slightly alluded in these remarks, than
the introduction into our schools of several of the more common
branches of Natural History. The study of Botany, which gives
us a knowledge of the great variety of flowers which adorn the
surface of the earth, and of the forests so useful to man, — The
study of Mineralogy which imparts a knowledge of the different
rocks and metals . . ., — The Study of Geology which gives us a
knowledge of the Earth’s structure, and takes us back in time
ere Adam was, or the morning stars sang together for joy, — The
study of Birds, and Beasts, of Reptiles and Fishes, all the ani¬
mals that have existed and do exist on the earth. It is the peculiar
province of these several branches taught in a familiar, parent¬
like manner, to awaken the minds of children and youth to noble
and just sentiments of virtue, honor and justice.
“They can but enlarge, elevate and purify the intellect. And
what I am permitted on this occasion to say of chemistry, I
would, had I the time and opportunity, say as fully of the several
other branches of Natural History.
“To these branches of study there does not exist the objection
which the question — What is their use? — so often put by many,
implies.
“They are of great importance to all classes of our citizens.
To the farmers, to the mechanic, to the professional man. With¬
out some knowledge of them, the physician is hardly worth the
title of his profession. If the members of the legal profession had
been more familiar with some of these branches, their proceed¬
ings would not have been marked with so many inexcusible
blunders. . . .
“Had the learning of our clergy extended a little more into the
department of Natural History, we should be saved from wit¬
nessing such frequent ill-conceived views of Nature and her laws.
Ecclesiastical ignorance of Nature unfortunately is not confined
to the time of Galileo. . .
After this introduction which I think is of as great interest to
us today as it was to those teachers of a century ago, Professor
Lathrop takes up the subject of his address,— fthe importance of
chemistry as a branch of education in our schools.
106 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
“And first,” he continues, “to the Agriculturist, who derives,
as a general fact, most of his education from our common
schools, — the study of Chemistry is of great importance. It is
true that in the present condition of our prairies, their abundunt
fruitfulness, and the scarce population which occupy but a small
portion of their surface, — a very defective system of culture will
produce food enough, not only for the wants of the inhabitants,
but for the partial supply of other countries also. But when our
population becomes more dense, the same imperfect or sluggish
system will no longer suffice.
“The land must be better tilled, its special qualities and de¬
fects must be studied, and means must be adopted, for extracting
the maximum produce from every portion susceptible of cultiva¬
tion. . . . From data easily obtained, I think the conclusion is
safe, that unless some general improvement takes place in the
agriculture of the country, the demand of the population will
sooner or later completely overtake the productive powers of the
land.
“The experience and the example of other countries, the East¬
ern portion of our own, encourage us to look forward to great
improvements in the art of culture, and, independent of such as
may be purely mechanical principles, theoretical Chemistry
seems to point out the direction in which important advances of
another kind may reasonably be anticipated. . . . The Chinese,
who are the most distinguished for the perfection of their system
of culture, are said to be not only familiar with the relative value
and efficiency of the various manures, but also to understand how
to prepare and apply without loss that which is best-fitted to
stimulate and support each kind of plant.
“How far this is true, we are unable to determine, but it is in
this direction that Chemistry appears likely and promises much
to promote the advances of agriculture.” It remained for Pro¬
fessor F. H. King of the College of Agriculture of the University
of Wisconsin many years later to reveal the truth of this state¬
ment regarding the methods of Chinese agriculture in his well-
known book, Farmers of Forty Centuries. (4)
“The practical farmer of the East,” continues Professor Lath-
rop, “already rejoices in having one ton of bone dust the equiva¬
lent of fourteen tons of farm yard manure. Some of the most
skillful chemists predict that methods will hereafter be discov¬
ered for compressing into a still less bulky form the substances
required by plants, and that we shall live to see extensive manu-
facturies for the preparation of these condensed manures. . . .”
There follows next a discussion of the composition of the soil
and the relation of the plant to it, similar to material which will
1952]
Boutwell — Stephen Pearl Lathrop
107
be considered later in another connection. Here we plainly see
the influence of Liebig’s teachings and of others of his followers
in this country. (5) “The rotation of crops,” says Professor
Lathrop, “is a practical rule, the benefits of which have been
proved by experience: it becomes a true philosophical principle
of action when we discover the causes from which this benefit
springs. Botany has thrown considerable light of an interesting
and important kind upon this practice, but Chemistry has fully
cleared it up and established the principle.
“The art of Agriculture indeed is almost entirely a Chemical
art since nearly all its processes are explained on chemical prin¬
ciples. . . .
“I might also show that the feeding of cattle, and the raising
and management of dairy produce, are not beyond the province
of chemistry, and that the only approach to scientific principles
yet made, even in these branches of husbandry, is derived from
chemical research. . . . How is a large portion of our agricul¬
turists to acquire their knowledge, so essential to their interests,
if Chemistry is not to be made a branch of study in our common
schools, and if, which I hope will not be the case, our school
teachers are unable to teach it?
“I am aware that there are some who will have it that the
cultivation of the soil has no business with Chemical knowledge,
and who maintain that dry rules or the customs of their fathers
are enough to meet their wants. Passing by the moral disrespect
implied in such an opinion, it will be enough to say, that the
farmer is required, for the most part, to supply his own rules
of thrift.
“There is no great fountain of wisdom and beneficience [sic]
in the learned professions, in the other arts, or in the State, from
whence the needed information may flow forth. On the contrary,
the improvement must be made by those who want it, — by those
who are to experience its greatest benefit. And when it is made,
it will often be found not to consist in a few summary processes,
so plain and easy as to secure universal success, but rather in a
scroupulous [sic] attention to petty details, before overlooked,
but which are perceived to be of prime importance to the grand
result.
“But further,— a knowledge of the principles of Chemistry is
important to manufacturers, and the common laborers of all
descriptions, rendering them more skillful in their respective
professions and employments. ... So essential is Chemical
knowledge to the greatest success and profit of a manufacturing
establishment, that many of them employ Chemists for the spe¬
cial purpose of directing this portion of the business, the perfec-
108 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
tion of which, so much depends on Chemical principles. . . . The
operation of brewing fermented liquors is likewise a Chemical
process. It may be thought that it would have been well for the
human family had man remained ignorant of this process. But
this is one of the evil branches of the tree of knowledge which
has not been so faithfully guarded by a two-edged sword. . . .”
There follows the story of the application of chemistry to a
number of phases of our daily life. He frequently shows that he
is a hater of any form of sham. He takes this opportunity to say :
“A quack in the medical profession or in any other, — is one who
pretends to a skill or knowledge which he does not possess, or,
who practices upon principles of which he knows nothing and
cares less.
“We have quack ministers, strange as it may be, and we have
quack lawyers, which is not all strange, and what is the least
strange of all, we have quack doctors. But are there no quacks
among the farmers, — no quacks among our mechanics, — and,
pardon me ladies, — are there no quacks among our housewives
and their daughters?
“We have many good farmers, and many good mechanics and
a greater number of good wives, — all who do well because they
do just as their fathers and mothers did before them and who
are as ignorant of the knowledge of the whys and wherefores of
what they do as they are of a knowledge of Koran or Shaster.
“The custom of our fathers and the rules of the cook-book are
all very well and sometimes produce very happy results, when
the circumstances in the case are the same, but change these,
and all is changed. . . .”
That the speaker was a vigorous exponent of a more thorough
scientific training for the physician and surgeon is shown by the
next portion of this address : “But the large mass of people suffer
vastly more from their own ignorance of the commonest prin¬
ciples of chemistry,” he goes on to say, “than they do from the
ignorance of the physician or the apothecary. I think it may be
affirmed with truth that a great proportion of the physical evils
and accidents to which the human race is liable are the effects
of a culpable ignorance, and might be prevented.” To illustrate
this point, he takes up the question of ventilation in relation to
health, and referring to the frequent deaths from carbon mon¬
oxide poisoning from charcoal fires in closed rooms, he says,
“The jury of inquest held on the following day gives it as
'death from charcoal vapors/ — but the Chemist who reads the
verdict in some paper, translates it to, — 'Death from ignorance
of Chemistry/ For, had the victim, when at district school in
youth, been blessed with the sight of a few experimental illus-
1952]
Boutwell — Stephen Pearl Lathrop
109
trations in Chemistry, he would have as soon have leaped into a
well as have retired to sleep in a close apartment, warmed by an
open furnace of charcoal.”
. . It might not be improper for me, did time allow, to
speak of the manner in which Chemistry should be taught in our
schools. It is frequently considered a difficult and dry study, but
properly taught and illustrated by simple and easily performed
experiments, which the good sense and wisdom of every compe¬
tent teacher would dictate, it readily and certainly becomes one
of the most interesting branches of study . . .
“Doubts have been entertained by some well-meaning persons
as to the use of scientific enquiry. It has been thought needless,
and some have gone so far as to think it even hurtful, filling us
with a vain conceit of human learning, and dangerous to faith,
which ought, they say, to be taken from God’s revealed will only.
Yet if ever a doubt should arise in the mind, as to whether what
purports to be the revealed will of God,-— be really so, — how are
we to answer it? It can only be by the most scrutinizing investi¬
gations, that we can arrive at the certainty, that the Creator and
the Law-giver are the same,-— that certainty once attained, what
doubt can then annoy us? And that certainty is attainable, for
every step in true knowledge brings us nearer to the Fountain
of all Truth. . . . The Chemist has given us some of the best
lessons of the wisdom and benevolence of the Creator. ... It is
in the enlarged views that Science gives that we first learn duly
to appreciate the Diety. Eternity, Infinity, Omnipotence, are
attributes so astounding to human faculties, that we can arrive
at the most moderate appreciation by steps. ‘Jacob’s ladder must
stand upon the earth in order to reach to Heaven.’ What more
worthy employment, then, can man find for the faculties God has
so richly bestowed upon him, than the investigation of those
hidden forces which tell, in so plain a language, of the Mighty
Power which called them into action? Before such knowledge
superstition necessarily fades, like darkness before the sun. We
may safely say, that no Chemist or Astronomer of the present
age, could be an Atheist or Idolater.
“Let us not, then, underestimate the value of Science, for while
it embraces our bodily comforts, it also elevates the mind to a
state of more spiritualized feeling,— teaches us to dispise the
low pleasures of Earth and strain forward toward that higher
need which is alone worthy the aspirations of a human soul, —
and whilst shedding blessings around us in this present world,
gently leads us on to a better.”
We must pass on now to the contributions of Professor Lath¬
rop in the field of agriculture where he exerted his widest influ-
110 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
ence. A few excerpts from the History of Rock County and the
Transactions of the Rock County Agricultural Society and
Mechanic’s Institute of 1856 will give us a background for an
understanding of the agricultural practices and the condition of
the farmers of the State as Professor Lathrop found them when
he arrived in Wisconsin in 1849. Under the heading, “A Gloomy
Time Among the Farmers of Rock County,” compiled probably
by the Secretary of the Agricultural Society, Mr. Guernsey, it
states that: “This (1851) and the succeeding years were the
gloomiest years of our agricultural history. ... At this time
agriculture in our county was in a very depressed state. Most of
our farmers came West to raise wheat, — very little attention
being paid to other crops. . . . The wheat crop, up to 1848, had
been profitable, and as sure as any other, especially hedge-row;
but this year commenced the blight, — rotting while standing in
the field. Wheat during some of these years, was sold as low as
20 cents in Janesville ; and carted to Milwaukee through the mud
sold for 371/2 cents. The price of corn was from 121/2 to 15 cents;
oats (9 cents) so low as to hardly pay the expense of threshing.
“The manner in which our farmers cultivate their land at this
time cannot be better described than by quoting from a commu¬
nication of James E. Burgess, esq. He says: 'A strict regard for
truth compells me to say, that as a general thing it is rather
slovenly. . . . First, they have attempted to cultivate too much
land with very limited means ; next, they have been deluded with
the notion that wheat could be grown successfully for an indefi¬
nite period of time ; that manuring, rotating crops, seeding down
with timothy, clover, and other grasses . . . was altogether un¬
necessary. To surround a quarter section of land with a sod
fence, break and sow it to wheat, harvest the crop and stack it ;
plow the stubble once and sow again with wheat ; thresh the pre¬
vious crop, and haul it to the “Lake,” was considered good farm¬
ing in Rock County’.”
It was in part to improve such conditions as this that the Rock
County Agricultural Society was founded in 1851. In the first
address before the Society at the Rock County Fair in October
of that year, the President, the Honorable Josiah P. Willard,
remarked: “At no time in 50 years have the farmers had greater
need of encouragement, as poor crops and low prices abunduntly
prove.” He made a strong plea for the education of the farmer
and for the dissemination of scientific knowledge. Again in that
same year, in an essay on “The Education of the Farmer” by
the same author, this plea for the broader education of the
farmer is continued. (3) In his presidential address at the annual
fair in Janesville, October 6, 1853, Mr. Willard spoke the first
1952]
Boutwell — Stephen Pearl Lathrep
111
encouraging words noted in these rather pessimistic accounts of
the times. After remarking that “in the midst of abundunce we
were poor, — dwelling in the very sunshine of nature’s richest
smiles, darkness brooded over our future,” he went on to point
out that the needed outlet to the markets of the world had
arrived that year when the “iron horse” made its way across the
prairies of Rock County. This opening of a market had its imme¬
diate effect and depression began to give way to prosperity.
There still remained the same need for the education of the
farmer and for the improvement in the conditions of his life and
in his methods of agriculture.
It was on such scenes as those just decribed that Professor
Lathrop looked as he came to this pioneer country. He sensed the
needs of the people. He had the training and the practical knowl¬
edge needed and the gift for imparting to the people the facts of
science as they applied to their daily life. Knowing his love of
agriculture we can understand why he gave himself so devotedly
to its cause.
In October of 1851 the Wisconsin and Iowa Farmer and North¬
western Cultivator moved its editorial headquarters from Racine
to a more central location in Janesville. The editor, Mark Miller,
must have seen in Professor Lathrop the very man he needed to
aid him in his work. In July of 1853 Professor Lathrop began
contributing to the Farmer with the series of articles on the
chemistry of plants before referred to. In his introduction to this
series he says : “. . . We will endeavor in a short series of articles
on the Chemistry of Plants, to state some facts and make such
suggestions as may be of service to the farmer. ... It is to be
hoped, then, that no one will be frightened with the heading of
our subject, and pass it by because he has not studied chemistry.
Please give us your attention and we will try to do you good.
We have things to say most important to you if you desire to
raise good crops of grass or grain, and at the same time, pre¬
serve the fertility and thereby, the value of your soil. The ques¬
tions, — upon what does a plant live, from whence comes these
materials and what is the effect of plants upon the soil on which
they grow, and the air in which they live,— cannot but be of
great importance to the farmer. These questions we will en¬
deavor to answer in this series of articles and deduce from them
some practical suggestions.” He describes the constituents of
plants which he arranges under the headings of organic and in¬
organic and discusses briefly the properties of each. He takes up
the question of whence the plants obtain these constituents and
shows “how greatly these inorganic constituents differ, not only
in different plants but in even different parts of the same plant
112 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
and also how greatly they vary at different seasons of the year
in quantity and quality. . . . These facts are the bodies of true
principles which should guide every agriculturist in the manage¬
ment of his soils.” (7) The relation of crops to the soil is dis¬
cussed and a comprehensive table "compiled from the most reli¬
able sources within our reach” shows the pounds of each inor¬
ganic constituent carried off from the field for each ton or acre
of crop. He remarks : "It is hoped that this table which has been
prepared with much labor, will be found of much value to the
farmer for reference, and that it may serve to guard him from
robbing his fields of the elements necessary to their fertility. . . .
That he may the more safely guard himself against a course of
constant cropping without proper manuring or returning to the
soil the peculiar ingredients which he removes in his crop, let
him make an estimate of the weight of the several ingredients
that he removes from his fields in his corn, oats, wheat, potatoes
&c, and compare that with the weights of the same materials in
the manure which he puts upon his fields. The table will suggest
the reason of the injurious practice of the continued cultivation
of the same kind of crop upon the same field.” Sound advice fol¬
lows as to the lessons taught from these facts but space does not
permit further discussion here. With but few modifications,
much of their teachings will be found in a modern book on agri¬
cultural chemistry. He concludes this series with the statement :
"The several tables if duly considered, will enable the farmer to
preserve the fertility of his soil at a comparatively less cost, and
to adapt his crops to his fields by a suitable rotation of crops. He
will be induced to return to his fields as much as possible of the
same materials that he has removed by the carrying off of his
crops. In fact all his operations may be carried out more under¬
standing^, and he will feel a deeper and a more enlightened in¬
terest in the management of his farm.” In the fifth paper of this
series he asks the question : "How is this great amount of mate¬
rial, so essential in the formation of plants, to be restored to the
soil?” He points out how "the agriculturist, unless guided by a
proper consideration of natural laws, becomes a disturber of the
balance of nature, though, happily, beyond a certain limit he
cannot go. By constant cropping without manuring or returning
in some form, the elements of crops to the soil, he greatly impov¬
erishes his land, and beggars his successors in the ownership of
the same.” This whole paper would be well worth reading today,
not only for its convincing style but for the truths which it con¬
tains. He truly states, "Our mother earth is a kind old mother,
but of stern integrity. . . . But no where and at no time does
she encourage slothfulness on the part of her sons, or inatten-
1952]
Boutwell — Stephen Pearl Lathrop
118
tion to her requirements.” In answer to his question, he says,
“. . . The art of reclaiming a worn out farm, or maintaining
one in heart, depends, therefore, upon two considerations : First,
a knowledge of the constituents of the crops to be raised —
organic and inorganic. . . . And second, a knowledge of the in¬
gredients of the soil, likewise organic and inorganic. . . . Till by
some means, such as State patronage, or our own wealth, we are
enabled to have an examination or a chemical analysis of our
soils, we shall be oblidged [sic] , of course, to be governed by gen¬
eral principles in the manuring of our land.” As he concludes this
series of papers, the author in characteristic manner says, “. . .
We can but urge upon our farmers the importance of making
themselves familiar with the principles of vegetable physiology,
which includes not only the operations carried on in the plant
itself but in all its relations to the world around it. Nothing
would contribute more to the interest of agriculture and to the
education of the agricultor, enobling both him and his pursuits.”
With the beginning of the next volume of the Wisconsin and
Iowa Farmer for 1854 we find the name of S. P. Lathrop joined
with that of Mark Miller as editor and publisher. In a joint edi¬
torial the high aims of the paper are set forth, and the junior
editor states among his interesting observations that “it will be
the aim of the Farmer to bring the several branches of sciences
to bear upon the processes of agriculture and the breeding of
stock. We shall endeavor to assist the farmer in self-improve¬
ment. . . . Till lately, the farmers have been the hewers of wood
and the drawers of water for every other class. ... To render
the agricultor and the artizan worthy of his own esteem and con¬
fidence and thereby of the regard of all others, will be one aim
of the Wisconsin and Iowa Farmer.”
With this volume appears a new column entitled “Domestic
Economy.” While this column is unsigned there seems to be good
evidence from its style and content that it is from the pen of
Professor Lathrop. Here is packed away much sound advice and
good philosophy. The very spirit of the column seems to reflect
the industry and thrift born of those rigorous years of boyhood
training in the Vermont hills. It begins, “Regarding it of much
importance to the farmer that everything pertaining to his farm
be done in its season, we shall each month, call the attention of
the farmer to 'what avails to be done' and we hope all will read
and give heed.” After the suggestions for January it advises,
“Try to pay off all debts and begin the year with clean hands and
a pure heart, owing no one anything but brotherly love and good
will. Begin this year to keep accounts of expenses and incomes,
with your farm, with your dairy, your hogs and your sheep, and
114 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
with the merchant and the mechanic. Take a few or at least one
of the best agricultural journals, purchase some agricultural
books and study them all thoroughly during these long winter
evenings/’ It advises reading aloud to the family as they work at
their various tasks in the evening. “Then your minds and your
hands will work together profitably. Intelligent farmers are
destined to be thrifty farmers and they are happy farmers.” It
would be interesting to quote from this column from month to
month to show the practical, common sense suggestions which it
contains as in the June number when it says, “. . . and remem¬
ber if it is dry weather, a good hoeing is equal to a small
shower.” And again in the September number: “We hope, too,
that measures will be taken to secure the flouring of all our
wheat in the State. We cannot afford to have anything carried
out of the State that we so much need here for feed and for
manure. Farmers should see to it that their wheat is floured at
home, and that they have the coarse parts returned to them for
feed, etc. It is to be remembered however, that much is lost in
value to the farmer by carrying off all his produce and not feed¬
ing it out upon his farm.” The farmer is urged to support the
various fairs and to endeavor to profit by them and consider
them as opportunities to learn and advance in their profession.
Much of this advice resembles that which we might read today.
“Resist the introduction of poor stock of any kind,” it continues.
“Every farmer should remember that it costs much more to feed
stock and keep them in good condition if they are cold. Let all
animals then, have warm and comfortable quarters.” In the
December number published in the last month of Professor
Lathrop’s life, this column again urges its readers “To see in
time that the young animals are brought into comfortable winter
quarters that they may be kept growing through the whole
winter. Our cattle are not like trees in the vessels of whose tis¬
sues all circulation can cease during cold weather, and yet revive
again in the spring, all uninjured. They are rather house plants
requiring constant care that they may be kept from the winter’s
cold and the night’s frost. The best and the most successful
breaders [sic] of stock are they who take the best care of them.”
This advice to provide comfortable winter quarters for the cattle
was undoubtedly occasioned because of the practice quite preva¬
lent at that time of allowing them to winter on the open prairies.
We could not find a better note with which to bring to a close
the quotations from this column than the following: “We must
not forget to say a word about these long winter evenings, —
charming times for social intercourse and general improvement.
. . . Don’t waste these good times lounging in the stores and
1952]
Boutwell — Stephen Pearl Lathrop
115
taverns, or in foolish past-time and wicked games.” Then with
a good eye to business it concludes : “You had better put money
in your own pocket and do your whole neighborhood a vast
amount of real good, by getting up a large club of subscribers
for the ‘Farmer’.”
The whole journal is packed with valuable information to the
farmer and his household. No phase of his life is neglected. The
need for his education is particularly stressed both editorially
and by the contributors. There is evident a concerted movement
to influence the State Legislature to provide for instruction in
agriculture. A communication to the Wisconsin and Iowa Farmer
from Solomon Lombard of Greenbush, Wisconsin, dated Decem¬
ber 27, 1850, suggests “the establishment of an agricultural pro¬
fessorship in the University already founded by the State.
Arrangements have already been made for the establishment of
professorships of Law and Medicine. Let us have model farms,
too, where young men can learn the art of cultivating the soil
and by which they can render their homes upon the broad
prairies and in the lofty forest, as much the abode of science, as
the city homes of those who practice other professions.” It is no
surprise, then, to read the announcement in the columns of the
Wisconsin and Iowa Farmer for June, 1854, that the junior
editor, who had so soon made an important place for himself in
the agricultural life of the State was severing his connections
with Beloit College and taking up his residence in Madison, and
to find in the September number among the advertisements the
statement: “The first term of the next collegiate year of the
State University will begin on the third Wednesday of Septem¬
ber and a full course of instruction in Agricultural Science will
be rendered during the first two terms by the Professor of Chem¬
istry and Natural History, Dr. S. P. Lathrop, who is now East,
selecting the apparatus needed to the department. We are certain
that we can do the young farmers of Wisconsin no better service
than to enjoin it upon them most heartily to prepare for the
Agricultural profession by attending on the scientific instruction
of the State University. We hope to hear of the entrance of a
large class this coming fall,” Incidentally the tuition was listed
at $4.00 for the term, and private rooms, fuel, etc. at $3.00 for
the term. No additional charges were to be made for contingen¬
cies, In the Editors Table for the August number, 1854, the pro¬
gram for the first commencement of the University is given with
a few brief comments, and again reference is made to the new
course in chemical and philosophical instruction to be given by
Professor Lathrop, with special emphasis to be placed on the
needs of the young farmer and mechanic.
116 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
We cannot refrain from quoting from a reference in this same
number to the Beloit Commencement written most certainly by
Professor Lathrop. “We had the pleasure, in common with many
others, of being present at the exercises of this favorite and
favored institution of the West, on the 12th ult. The exercises
were of a very interesting character. The speaking was better
than usual, with the usual exhibition of an high order of talent
and culture. The exquisites , according to our palate, were, the
Rev. M. Goodwin’s Address of the evening previous ; the saluta¬
tory by Page; the Valedictory by Brewster; and the Master’s
oration by Collie, of the class of ’51. The prospects of the Insti¬
tution, we understand, continue most flattering. Beloit College,
we can ne’er forget thee. Some of our most earnest, sincere, and
affectionate emotions have been exercised for thee; and thou
hast and ever will have, a home in our regards. — May thou never
prove barren, nor become the mother of ignoble offspring.”
It is little wonder that in the obituary appearing in the Beloit
Journal for December 28, 1854, his untimely death was spoken
of as a “public calamity.” His voice was one of the few as well
as among the earliest in this country to spread the new teachings
of science as applied to agriculture and to life. He was among
the forerunners of that influential group who were to extend the
teachings of Liebig far and wide, and who were to lay the foun¬
dations for the development of the modern agricultural research
which we know today. (5) Had Professor Lathrop lived and con¬
tinued through his teaching, speaking, and writing to spread his
message throughout this region, it is hard to predict what far-
reaching influence he might have had, and how much sooner the
people of the State would have understood, accepted, and applied
the knowledge upon which any sound and permanent system of
agriculture must rest.
A Partial Bibliography
1. The Beloit Journal, 1853-54.
2. Brown, William Fiske, Past Made Present, Beloit, Wisconsin, 1910.
3. Guernsey, 0., and Willard, J. F., History of Rock County and the
Transactions of the Rock County Agricultural Society and Mechanic’s
Institute, Janesville, Wisconsin, 1856.
4. King, F. H., Farmers of Forty Centuries, Madison, Wisconsin, 1911.
5. Moulton, F. R., Liebig and After Liebig, The American Association for
the Advancement of Science, Washington, D. C., 1942.
6. Schuette, H. A., Chemical Bulletin, Volume 15, Numbers 8, 9, 10, 1928.
7. Wisconsin and Iowa Farmer and Northwest Cultivator, Volumes 3-7,
1851-55.
NOTES ON WISCONSIN PARASITIC FUNGI. XVII
H. C. Greene
Department of Botany, University of Wisconsin, Madison
The fungi referred to in this series of notes were, unless
stated otherwise, collected during the season of 1951.
Synchytrium aureum Schroet. has been reported as occur¬
ring on several kinds of violets in Wisconsin. Of a specimen on
Viola pallens from near Mazomanie, Dane Co., May 22, 1947,
M. T. Cook informs me that it cannot be S. aureum, but appears
to him to be probably S. globosum Schroet. which occurs on
species of Viola in Europe. J. J. Davis once, in the same locality,
collected a specimen on Viola sp. which he doubtfully assigned
to S. globosum .
Mycosphaerella sp. was noted on dead, brown areas of
fronds of Polypodium virginianum, collected near Klevenville,
Dane Co., July 1. A number of species of Mycosphaerella have
been found on ferns, but this specimen matches none of the
descriptions. The perithecia are only about 50-60//, diam., the
asci 25 x 10//,, with very small ascospores, about 5 x 2/a. Para¬
sitism doubtful, although large portions of the affected fronds
were still green and living.
Mycosphaerella sp., of uncertain parasitism, occurred on
withered, brown leaves of Leptoloma cognatum at Madison,
September 5. Entire plants of this tuft-forming grass were
affected, their stunted condition and poor color contrasting
strongly with nearby healthy individuals. The numerous black
perithecia are from subglobose to definitely flattened in shape,
about 80-115 x 50-75/a. Some of the perithecia are beaked. The
curved-clavate asci are 50-60 x 14-15/a, the hyaline, uniseptate,
subcylindric ascospores 17-20 x 6.5-8/a. Accompanying the peri¬
thecia are occasional pycnidia which contain ellipsoid to sub-
fusoid, hyaline, Macrophoma-type conidia, 17-22 x 4-6/a.
Mycosphaerella sp., parasitizing leaves of a scrub tree of
Pyrus malus, was collected at Madison, August 2. Due to the
large number of early and, all too frequently, inadequate descrip¬
tions of species within this genus, it is often difficult or prac¬
tically impossible to ascertain whether or not one is dealing with
a previously described species, and that is the case with this col¬
lection. The following notes were made: Spots faint roseate-
grayish to cinereous, with narrow, dark, elevated margins on
117
118 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
upper leaf surface — on lower surface, dull whitish to rufescent,
sunken, mostly immarginate, but sometimes with a well-defined,
raised, darker border. Spots usually numerous, well-defined and
conspicous, rounded or variously orbicular, 1.5-5 mm., mostly
2-3 mm., diam. Perithecia amphigenous, but mostly epiphyllous,
scattered or gregarious, black, subglobose, approx. 125-175/a
diam.; asci hyaline, narrow-cylindric to subclavate, 45-65 x
10-13/a; ascospores hyaline, uniseptate, subcylindric to subfu-
soid, 13-16 x 5-6/a.
Gnomonia sp. is in close association with Marssonina quer-
cina (Wint.) Lentz on spots produced on still living leaves of
Quercus (probably Q. rubra) collected at Madison, September 29.
The perithecia have relatively short, thick beaks and are about
115-150/a diam. The asci are narrow-clavate, 30-45 x 6-7/a, the
ascospores hyaline, uniseptate, narrow-fusoid, about 20 x 3/a,
very uniform in shape and size. The long, slender spores do not
match those of any other species described as occurring on Quer¬
cus. It seems to me highly probable that this is the perfect state
of Marssonina quercina.
Leptosphaeria sp., very likely connected with Stagonospora
brachyelytri Greene, occurs intimately associated with the latter
in lesions on living leaves of Brachyelytrum erectum, collected
near Darlington, Lafayette Co., July 30. The black, globose peri¬
thecia are about 175/a diam., the asci 75-85 x 11-13/a, the oliv¬
aceous ascospores 25-35 x 4-4.5/a and 8-septate. A peculiarity of
the ascospores is that the third cell from the base of the spore
(referenced to the base of the ascus) is nearly always nodulose-
enlarged.
Leptosphaeria sp., in a possibly parasitic relationship, was
collected on Bromus inermis at Madison, July 11. The spots are
subelliptic to sublinear, about 2-4 mm. long, cinereous, with dark
brown margins. The perithecia, from one to several per spot,
are black, subglobose, about 150-160/a diam. The asci are clavate,
50-60 x 8-10/a. The dark-olivaceous ascospores are 3-septate,
subfusoid, 17-19 x 4/a.
Chilonectria cucurbitula (Tode) Sacc. has, until recently,
been represented in the University of Wisconsin Herbarium ex¬
clusively by specimens of the perfect stage. However, in October,
in eastern Vilas Co., J. R. Hansbrough collected on dead leaders
of plantation trees of Pinus resinosa a delicate species of Tuber-
cularia which I assume is connected with Chilonectria , although
I have been unable to find anything in the literature to indicate
this is the case. Like the perithecia, the sporodochia are macro-
scopically small, crowded, and bright red. Unlike the perithecia,
the sporodochia appear as appressed-convolute rather than
1952] Greene — Wisconsin’s Parasitic Fungi. XVII 119
globose or collapsed-globose. The delicate, ramose conidiophores
are about 20-25 x 1-1.5/*, the tiny, hyaline, rod-shaped conidia
3 x .7-1/*.
Pucciniastrum pustulatum (Pers.) Diet. I on Abies bal-
samea was reported by Davis in his “Provisional List of the
Parasitic Fungi of Wisconsin”, but before 1951 there was no
Wisconsin specimen at the University of Wisconsin. In August,
I. L. McMahon gathered good material near Sturgeon Bay,
Door Co.
Cintractia subinclusa (Korn) Magn. was reported on Car ex
lupulina from Kenosha Co. on the basis of specimens taken many
years ago near Racine. D. B. 0. Savile has examined some of
this material, including Fungi Columbiani 2615, and states that
the host is Carex lupuliformis instead. Since achene characters
seem to offer the only reasonably reliable means of determina¬
tion, several specimens in the Wisconsin Herbarium were exam¬
ined in the hope of finding some achenes still unmetamorphosed.
In a specimen labeled as having been collected by J. J. Davis in
Kenosha Co., August 14, 1904, such an achene was found and
proved to be that of Carex lupuliformis as described, so Savile
is correct, at least insofar as this specimen is concerned.
Phyllosticta sp., collected July 17 in a nursery at Madison,
and appearing parasitic on leaves of Celtis occidentalis, is plainly
not P. celtidis Ell. & Kell. The orbicular, dark-bordered tan spots
are about 5 mm. diam., one or two per leaf. The thin- walled, sub-
globose pycnidia are approx. 100-175/* diam., the short-cylindric,
hyaline conidia 4-6 x 2. 5-3. 5/*. Similar material was collected
July 30 near Darlington, Lafayette Co.
Asteromella andrewsii Petr, in its ordinary conidial mani¬
festation is common on certain species of gentian in Wisconsin.
Leaves collected in September 1951 have, in addition to pycnidia
bearing the usual globose conidia, other morphologically similar
pycnidia producing rod-shaped hyaline microconidia, about 3-5
x 1.2/*, possibly the precursor of the subsequent Mycosphaerella
stage.
Ascochyta sp. on Desmodium illinoense, collected August 18
near Dekorra, Columbia Co., provides a puzzling problem, for the
lesions on which it is borne are identical with those which I had
assumed to be distinctive and characteristic for Phyllosticta
desmodii Ell. & Ev. which has small conidia, on the order of
3.5-5 x 1.5-2. 5/*. Those of the Ascochyta are about 11-13 x 3/* or
even somewhat wider, and are in the range of Ascochyta pisi
Lib., reported for Wisconsin on a number of other leguminous
hosts. This latter fungus, however, when in good development,
120 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
usually produces rounded, zonate spots, quite different from the
angular, patchy lesions of the collection in question.
Ascochyta sp., on spots which are thin, translucent and
rounded, occurred on leaves of Chrysanthemum halsamita var.
tanacetoides at Madison in July. The pale brown, subglobose
pycnidia are about 125^ diam., and the subhyaline, short-cylin-
dric conidia 5-7 x 3-3.5 ji. This is quite different from another
undetermined Ascochyta on the same host ( Amer. Midi. Nat. 41 :
715. 1949) which was on much better defined spots and had
conidia 8-12 x 2.5-3 jx.
Stagonospora sp. was collected on Verbena stricta at Madi¬
son, June 28. The fungus is on spots of the type which are
usually associated with so-called Phyllosticta decidua Ell. & Kell.
The leaves are peppered with small, closely ranked, rounded,
very thin translucent areas on which are borne rather large,
thin-walled pycnidia, usually only one per spot. In this, and in
other cases, the translucent spots suggest primary insect damage,
but ordinarily there is none of the debris that so characterist¬
ically accompanies such infestations, so such origin is not cer¬
tain. The parasitism of the fungi which occur on such spots is
surely open to doubt, but since there is also doubt as to their
saprophytism it seems proper to include them in these lists on
a provisional basis.
Cirsium, Artemisia, and Antennaria in Wisconsin are fre¬
quently found bearing, on the wooly undersides of their leaves,
setose perithecial or pycnidial fungi — more often the latter. The
perithecia, so far as observed, are those of Acanthostigma occi¬
dental (Ell. & Ev.) Sacc., and the amerosporous pycnidia some¬
times associated with them, or sometimes alone, have been re¬
garded as a stage of the Acanthostigma. However, in September
1951, on Cirsium muticum, there were setose pycnidia which
contained 2-3-septate phragmospores, 13-23 x 2. 5-3. 5 /*. While
the amerosporous forms would be considered as belonging in the
imperfect genus Pyrenochaeta, there seems to be no place in the
existing classification for fungi with setose pycnidia bearing
phragmospores. The pycnidia on Cirsium muticum are morpho¬
logically identical, although perhaps of slightly greater diameter,
with previously collected amerosporous pycnidia.
Septoria sp. occurred on the blackened tips of leaves of Ziga-
denus elegans on the Scuppernong Prairie near Eagle, Waukesha
Co., June 2. The inconspicuous pycnidia are sooty, globose, about
100/a diam. The spores are hyaline, continuous, granular, mostly
curved, but sometimes straight or slightly flexuous, rather thick
in proportion to length, 10-30 x 2-2.5 /a, ejected in slender cirrhi.
I find no report of Septoria on Zigadenus.
1952] Greene — Wisconsin's Parasitic Fungi. XVII 121
Septoria sp. occurs on, and seemingly is confined to, lesions
of Albugo bliti on leaves of Amaranthus retroflexus , collected at
Madison, August 15. The pycnidia are gregarious, dark brown,
subglobose, 100-125/* diam. The spores are hyaline, slender,
somewhat broader at the base, if septate very indistinctly so,
from flexuous to strongly curved, 35-65 x 1.5 — 1.7/*. There seems
to be no record of any Septoria on Amaranthaceae or on Albu-
ginaceae.
Septoria bacilligera Wint. has been listed as occurring on
Ambrosia trifida in Wisconsin, and a number of specimens so
labeled, including several standard exsiccati, have been placed in
the University of Wisconsin Herbarium. None of these corre¬
sponds with Winter’s description (Jour. Mycol. 1: 122. 1885)
which gives the spores as 9-23 x 3-3.5 /*, and 1-3-septate, and
would thus seem to refer to an organism in the Stagonospora
category. For example, North American Fungi 2645 has spores
20-25 x 1.5/*, Fungi Columbiani 3383 has them 36-42 x 2.5-3 /*
and several Wisconsin specimens are as follows: 16-18 x 1-1.5/*,
30-33 x 2/*, 30-50 x 2/*, 16-27 x 1/*. It is scarcely possible to
reconcile these with Winter’s organism.
Septoria sp. was found on Ambrosia psilostachya from near
Dekorra, Columbia Co., August 18. In extreme spore dimensions,
up to 110 x 3.5/x, this is far removed from Septoria bacilligera
Wint. and from specimens which have been filed under that
name, as will be seen by consulting the preceding note. On
A. psilostachya the rather large black pycnidia are epiphyllous
and clustered on irregular brown spots, the smaller and newer
of which have angular, ashen areas on which the pycnidia occur.
The spores are multi-septate, usually strongly curved, subobtuse
at one end, tapered at the other, with many from 70-80 x 3 /* and,
as noted, up to 110 x 3.5/*. If additional equally well-marked
specimens can be collected on this host, the conclusion that this
is distinct may perhaps be justified. Septoria ambrosicola Speg.
is described as having spores 50-100 x 1.5-2/*, similar to the Wis¬
consin specimen in length, but much narrower.
Cylindrosporium betulae J. J. Davis has not yet been con¬
nected with a perfect stage, but the existence of it is indicated
in a specimen on Betula papyrifera, collected by E. M. Gilbert in
September at Brule, Douglas Co. On the old Cylindrosporium
spots there are scattered large, amphigenous, black, non-rostrate,
depressed, immature perithecia which probably require overwin¬
tering for full development.
Botrytis sp., a large, coarse form with conidiophore branches
torulose, is hypophyllous on large rounded, grayish-brown lesions
on leaves of Sanguinaria canadensis , collected June 27 near Mil-
122 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
ford, Jefferson Co. Like other infections of Botrytis observed
during the cool, wet summers of 1949, 1950 and 1951 this
appears to have been at least weakly parasitic, for the spots
although very large, are sharply defined.
CLADOSPORIUM sp. is present and seemingly parasitic on plants
of Polygala verticillata collected at Madison, October 3, 1951.
In 1950 plants of this species at the same station were found
heavily parasitized by Curvularia lunata (Wakker) Boedijn.
The Cladosporium has conidiophores which are closely tufted,
clear brown, straight to slightly curved, simple or once genicu¬
late, 0-5-septate, approx. 50-100 x 5/*. The conidia are dilute
gray, smooth, continuous or 1-septate, subcylindric or subfusoid,
with prominent spore scars and appearing to have been catenu-
late, 14-20 x 4-5 /*. Accompanying the usual Cladosporium- type
conidia are short, broadly ellipsoid to limoniform conidia, a fea¬
ture which is characteristic of certain other species of Clado¬
sporium.
Cladosporium sp., which may be parasitic, was collected at
Madison, June 20, on large, pale-brown, wedge-shaped areas on
the leaves of Symphoricarpos occidentalis. Within the large spots
the fungus is amphigenous on sharply delimited angular areas
(vein islets). The conidiophores are scattered, or in tufts of not
more than ten. They are almost straight, multiseptate, usually
with several inconspicuous geniculations near the tip, which is
paler than the lower chestnut-brown portion. Phores measured
are from 65-160 x 4. 5-6.5/*. The conidia are 1-septate, dark-
olivaceous, markedly asperate, 13-20 x 4-7/*. There seem to be no
reports of Cladosporium on Symphoricarpos.
Alternaria herculea (Ell. & Mart.) Elliott has been re¬
ported on Brassica nigra in Wisconsin and, if one follows
Weimer (Jour. Agr. Res. 33: 645. 1926) in considering A. her¬
culea as distinct from A. brassicae (Berk.) Sacc., a collection on
Brassica arvensis made at Madison in 1951, with conidia 200/*
or more, must undoubtedly be referred to A. herculea. However,
other specimens are not so well-marked, and I believe the current
tendency of plant pathologists is to consider these species as not
distinct from one another.
Tuberculina (?) sp. occurred on living leaves and stems of
Desmodium illinoense, collected August 20 near Delavan, Wal¬
worth Co. Viewed from above, the green host leaves appear to
bear pulvinate gray-black sporodochia. In section, however, the
layer of fungal tissue is seen to be relatively thin and the sub-
bullate aspect of the lesions appears to be due in large measure
to hypertrophy of the host. The sporodochia, as I nevertheless
1952] Greene — Wisconsin's Parasitic Fungi. XVII 123
interpret them to be, are amphigenous, sordid whitish when
young, later becoming grayish-black with the development of a
compact layer of sooty conidiophores, at least some of which
appear ramose. In outline the sporodochia are rounded, some¬
what angled, or tend to be nervisequous, are often slightly con¬
volute on the leaves, less so on the stems where the lesions are
also more elongate and sometimes confluent. On the leaves the
sporodochia are mostly about 1 mm. or somewhat less in diam.,
usually numerous, scattered to crowded, not on spots. The conidia
are hyaline, ovoid or ellipsoid, 2. 5-3. 5 x 4-6/*, smaller than those
of most species of Tuberculina which have been described. An¬
other collection of a possibly related fungus was made at about
the same time on living leaves and stems of this same host at a
station in Lafayette Co., near Platteville. In the latter case, what
appears to be a less well-marked development of the fungus
described above has been overrun by a coarse, conspicuous spe¬
cies of Cladosporium. The picture is further complicated by the
presence of Ramularia desmodii Cooke, and from the material at
hand it would not be possible to assert there is no connection
between the Ramularia and the presumed Tuberculina , although
in the specimen from Delavan there is no evidence whatsoever
of earlier Ramularia infection.
Additional Hosts
The following hosts have not been previously recorded in these
lists as bearing the fungi mentioned in Wisconsin.
Uncinula circinata Cke. & Peck on Acer spicatum . Door Co.,
Cave Point 4 mi. south of Jacksonport, September 9. Coll. I. L.
McMahon.
Microsphaera diffusa Cke. & Peck on Desmodium bracteo-
sum var. longifolium. Green Co., New Glarus Woods, October 6.
Erysiphe cichoracearum DC. on Aster ericoides. Dane Co.,
Madison, October 9.
Phyllachora vulgata Theiss. & Syd. on Muhlenbergia
glomerata. Door Co., Bailey’s Harbor, September 24, 1932. On a
phanerogamic specimen in the University of Wisconsin Her¬
barium.
Puccinia caricis (Schum.) Schroet. ii, III on Car ex flava var.
fertilis (C. cryptolepis) . Door Co., Fish Creek, October 19, 1920.
Coll, and det. J. J. Davis, who collected a correctly determined
phanerogamic specimen at the same time, but who failed to in¬
clude this Car ex as a Wisconsin host, perhaps because he did not
find uredospores which are, however, present and characteristic,
124 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
although in very small numbers. An earlier report of P. caricis
on Carex flava var. elatior ( C. lepidocarpa according to current
treatment) should probably be deleted, since it appears this plant
does not occur in Wisconsin, so far as now known.
Ceratobasidium anceps (Bres. & Syd.) Jacks, on Cornus
canadensis. Door Co., Sturgeon Bay, July 7. Coll. E. H. Varney.
Phyllosticta fragaricola Desm. & Rob. on Potentilla recta.
Waukesha Co., Kettle Moraine State Forest Ranger Station near
Eagle, July 26. Very similar to earlier material on Potentilla
arguta assigned to this species.
Asteromella andrewsii Petr, on Gentiana saponaria. Green
Co., Exeter, September 19.
Ascochyta compositarum J. J. Davis on ray flowers of Hell -
opsis scabra. Dane Co., Madison, August 8. Referred here with
some doubt. This is the small-spored form which Davis (Trans.
Wis. Acad. Sci. 19(2) : 700. 1919) originally set aside as var.
parva, but later included with the species since he felt there was
an intergrading series. So far as noted, none of the leaves of the
host Heliopsis plants were infected.
Stagonospora convolvuli Dearn. & House on Convolvulus
arvensis. Dane Co., Madison, June 28. Placed under Stagono¬
spora because the pycnidia are perfect above with well-defined
ostioles. That Stagonospora convolvuli and Septogloeum convol¬
vuli Ell. & Ev. are really distinct from one another may be
doubted. They probably represent the extremes of a series.
Septoria agropyrina Lobik on Elymus virginicus. Pepin Co.,
Durand, July 13, 1923. Coll. J. J. Davis, and filed as Septoria sp.
Septoria elymi Ell. & Ev. on Agropyron repens. Dane Co.,
Madison, July 17. Only the name is new. Previous specimens
were placed under Septoria agropyri Ell. & Ev. which Sprague
states is a synonym.
Septoria anemones Desm. on Anemone canadensis. Iowa Co.,
Canyon Park near Dodgeville, July 15. Also found at stations in
Columbia and Sauk Cos.
Selenophoma everhartii (Sacc. & Syd.) Sprague & Johns,
on Hystrix patula. Green Co., New Glarus Woods, August 23,
1949.
Phaeoseptoria festucae var. muhlenbergiae R. Sprague on
Elymus canadensis. Dane Co., Madison, August 12. Associated
with char spot and Phyllachora, so perhaps not parasitic.
Cercospora ribis Earle on Ribes cynosbati. Grant Co. near
Platteville, July 30.
1952] Greene — Wisconsin's Parasitic Fungi. XVII
125
Additional Species
The fungi mentioned have not been previously reported as
occurring in Wisconsin.
Calicium tigillare (B. & Br.) Sacc. on Polystictus per gam-
enus. Waupaca Co., Symco, August 17. Coll. C. F. Pierson.
Neocosmospora vasinfecta (Atk.) E. R. Smith has been iso¬
lated in culture from roots of morbid clover plants from Wis¬
consin sources. Typical perithecia, with mature asci and asco-
spores were developed. Pathogenicity is so far uncertain, but it
will be most interesting if the organism causing wilt of cotton
and okra in the South is proved to produce the same effect on a
leguminous crop in Wisconsin.
Armillaria mellea (Vahl) Quel, on Pinus resinosa. Field and
experimental studies conducted by R. F. Patton of the Univer¬
sity of Wisconsin Department of Plant Pathology on plantation
trees at Wisconsin Rapids and elsewhere show that A. mellea
may act as more than a wound parasite and attacks the host
through the unbroken tissue of the crown. This species has not
been included in these lists before because of considerable doubt
as to its active parasitism.
Phyllosticta dulcamarae Sacc. on Solanum dulcamara.
Door Co., Sturgeon Bay, September 2. Coll. E. H. Varney. The
pycnidia are somewhat larger than the 80-90/a of the description,
but the specimen corresponds closely to Krieger’s Fungi saxonici
1948, issued as Phyllosticta dulcamarae, so is referred to that
species.
Ascochyta veratri Cav. on Zigadenus elegans. Waukesha Co.,
Scuppernong Prairie near Eagle, June 18. On Zigadenus the
fungus occurs on the blackened leaf tips. There is close corre¬
spondence microscopically with Rabat and Bubak’s 262 of their
Fungi imperfecti exsiccati, issued as A. veratri on leaves of
Veratrum lobelianum. A. veratrina Ell. & Ev. has much larger
pycnidia and smaller spores.
Ascochyta viburni (Roun.) Sacc. on Viburnum opulus
(cult.). Dane Co., Madison, October 5. This specimen shows
almost exact correspondence with European collections on the
same host.
Septoria caricina Brun. on Carex sprengelii. Dane Co., Madi¬
son, September 28. Described as with spores 82-35 x 1-1.5/a, a
very narrow range. The Wisconsin specimen has them mostly
30-45 x 1-1.5/a. The pycnidia are minute, not over 65/a diam., and
many smaller.
126 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
Phleospora panici sp. nov.
Pycnidiis hypophyllis, sparsis, late apertis imperfectisque
supra, clausis infra, subglobosis, 85-115/a diam., muris tenuibus,
pallido-brunneis ; conidiophoris hyalinis, brevibus, angustis, 10 x
2/a ca., in ordinibus compactis ; conidiis hyalinis, curvis maxime,
multiseptatis indistinctis, 55-75 x 1.5-2/a.
Pycnidia hypophyllous, scattered, widely open and imperfect
above, but entire below, subglobose in outline, 85-115/a diam.,
wall thin, pale brown; conidiophores hyaline, short, narrow,
about 10 x 2/a, in compact layer over inner, surface of pycnidium ;
conidia hyaline, very strongly curved, indistinctly multiseptate,
55-75 x 1.5-2/a.
On living leaves of Panicum praecocius. Chicago & North¬
western Railroad right-of-way in Lafayette Co., three miles
southeast of Platteville, Wisconsin, U. S. A., August 4, 1951.
Also on Panicum scribnerianum collected June 30, 1942, in sec¬
tion 2, Town of Troy, Walworth Co., Wis. and tentatively re¬
ported at that time (Trans. Wis. Acad. Sci. 35: 116. 1944) as
Septoria sp. indet. Re-examination of the material, however,
shows it to be very similar to the type on P. praecocius, differing
materially only in having some pycnidia of greater diameter, up
to 150/a or slightly more.
Dried pale-flesh-colored, globular masses of spores mark the
position of the flaring pycnidia which are so deeply seated as to
touch on both lower and upper epidermis without, however,
causing any external distortion or discoloration of the leaf.
Associated with the Phleospora, in the case of both host species,
are numerous shining black, depressed, subapplanate bodies,
approx. 175-250/a diam., which appear to be immature perithecia
and which, in the field, were thought to be ascomata of Phylla-
chora puncta. Comparison with authentic material of the latter
species, however, shows that the two are quite different.
Phleospora is considered by some to be an untenable genus,
and the species have been reassigned to Septoria or to Cylindro-
sporium, but it seems to me that, pending final taxonomic place¬
ment of the fungi now thereunder, Phleospora is a useful form
genus which should be retained.
Gloeosporium chamaedaphnis Dearn. on Chamaedaphne
calyculata. Door Co., Sturgeon Bay, September 2. A very clean-
cut species, closely corresponding to the description.
Fusidium parasiticum Westd. on Xylaria oxyacanthae. Dane
Co., Madison, June 1951. Coll, and det. M. P. Backus and E. A.
Stowell.
1952] Greene — Wisconsin's Parasitic Fungi. XVII
127
Cladospormm stipae sp. nov.
In foliis, maculis nullis vel indistinctis ; conidiophoris soli-
tariis, sparsis, ex subhyalinis, decumbentibus, superficialibus
hyphis, claro-brunneis, subacuminatis, subgeniculatis, fere rectis
vel purvis leviter vel flexuis, cicatricibus prope apicibus, 80-135
x 4-6//,, 3-6-septatis ; conidi is continuis plerumque, raro unisep-
tatis, subfusoideis pallido-flavis, levibus, cicatricibus prominenti-
bus, 17-20 x 3.5-5/a.
On leaves, spots none or indistinct; conidiophores solitary,
scattered, arising from subhyaline, decumbent, superficial myce¬
lium, clear brown, subacuminate, subgeniculate, from almost
straight to slightly curved or flexuous, spore scars in cluster near
tip, 80-135 x 4-6/x, 3-6-septate ; conidia mostly continuous, rarely
uniseptate, subfusoid, pale yellowish, smooth with prominent
scar, 17-20 x 3.5-5/a.
On living leaves of Stipa spartea. Madison, Dane County, Wis¬
consin, U. S. A., September 6, 1951.
Very inconspicuous and chiefly detectable by the dull discol¬
oration of sections of the leaves. The fungus is confined to the
inrolling, strongly ribbed side of the leaf. The conidiophore has
a characteristic “foot-cell” in the shape of an inverted T.
Cercospora atro-marginalis Atk. on Solanum nigrum. Dane
Co., Madison, October 15. Det. Chas. Chupp.
Helminthosporium giganteum Heald & Wolf on Panicum
capillare. Dane Co., Mazomanie, August 16. This collection would
seem to provide a decided extension of the hitherto recognized
range, as Sprague states that it is primarily a disease of the
southern states, up to now being found northward only as far as
Maryland and Pennsylvania. He reports H. giganteum on the
closely related Panicum clichotomiflorum, but not on P. capillare.
The very characteristic “eye-spot” lesions seem constant, what¬
ever the host.
Coremium triostei sp. nov.
Maculis sparsis, paucis, parvis, plerumque circulis vel orbicu-
laribus, interdum angulosis, 1-2 mm. diam. ca. ; supra cinereis
vel pallido-brunneis, marginibus angustis, fuscis, infra pallidi-
oribus, depressis ; coremiis gregariis, hypophyllis, hyalinis,
hyphis adpressis vel intertextis laxe, interdum solitariis, erectis
vel suberectis — hyphis solitariis saepe pilis ascendentibus — con¬
tinuis, 2.5-3/a diam., usuque .3 mm. longis ; conidiophoris rudibus,
brevibus, rectis, lateralibus ; conidiis catenulatis, hyalinis,
fusoideis vel subfusoideis, 5-10 x 2.5-3/a.
128 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
Spots scattered, few per leaf, small, mostly round or orbicular,
occasionally angled, approx. 1-2 mm. diam. ; cinereous to pale
brown above with narrow dark borders, paler below and some¬
what sunken ; coremia gregarious, hypophyllous, hyaline, weakly
organized, with the component hyphae loosely appressed or
wound about one another, or occasionally single, erect or sub¬
erect — often ascending the host trichomes when single — continu¬
ous, 2.5-3/* diam., up to .3 mm. long ; conidiophores rudimentary,
short, straight, lateral; conidia catenulate, hyaline, fusoid or
subfusoid, 5-10 x 2.5-3/*.
On living leaves of Triosteum perfoliatum. Grant County, near
Platteville, Wisconsin, U. S. A., July 30, 1951.
A snow-white, very delicate species. As indicated in the
description, the coremia are loosely organized, but the best-
developed are erect, and from their upper portions the conidial
chains diverge in widely spreading fashion. In the same season
another specimen was taken on the same host in the New Glarus
Woods, Green Co. In July 1925 the late J. J. Davis collected a
large specimen of this fungus on Triosteum aurantiacum at
Spring Valley, Pierce Co., but he did nothing further with it and
the collection was recently found in undetermined material left
by him.
THE MEMBRACIDAE OF WISCONSIN
Clifford J. Dennis
Department of Entomology, University of Wisconsin
The Wisconsin species of Membracidae are active and abun¬
dant insects. The majority of species are tree-inhabiting, pre¬
ferring oak. For this reason the Membracids are commonly
called tree-hoppers. Some species, however, prefer herbaceous
growth and shrubs. Most of the oak species have been collected
in the southern two-thirds of the state, but they no doubt range
farther north although probably not as abundantly. The herb
and shrub inhabiting forms have been taken throughout the
state. Seventy-five species have been collected in Wisconsin.
This paper includes keys for the identification of Wisconsin
adult forms and a list of plants and traps which have yielded
tree-hoppers. An effort has been made to construct easily work¬
able keys to both sexes. Prominent characters have been used
whenever possible, and most of these characters are illustrated.
Measurements given are overall. In certain cases genital char¬
acters are necessary for determinations. Genitalia are prepared
by treating the entire abdomen with 10% potassium hydroxide
to remove the soft parts. The abdomen should next be washed
and then stored with a drop of glycerine in a corked 4 x 10 mm.
vial on the pin with the insect. Dissections may be made on a
spot plate under glycerine. The terminology employed for the
male genital parts used in the keys is that used by Funkhouser
(1917). Valvula 2 of the female is the second valvula of Snod¬
grass (1935).
Aside from the exceptions which are given, Funkhouser’s
(1927) catalogue contains all pertinent literature citations.
Most of the records included are the results of the author’s
collections. Additional records were obtained from the collections
of W. S. Marshall (by permission of S. Kramer), W. McNeel Jr.
and R. D. Shenefelt, the Department of Entomology of the Uni¬
versity of Wisconsin and the Milwaukee Public Museum (by per¬
mission of K. Mac Arthur) . A few records for Wisconsin were
found in the writings of Ball (1931), Funkhouser (1927), Van
Duzee (1917) and Caldwell (1949).
The author is grateful for the encouragement and advice of
many people received during the preparation of this paper, espe-
129
130 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
dally to Drs. R. J. Dicke, C. L. Fluke, J. T. Medler and R. D.
Shenefelt of the Department of Entomology of the University of
Wisconsin.
Key1 to subfamilies of Wisconsin Membracidae
1. Scutellum distinct, apex with two spines . Centrotinae
Scutellum concealed by the pronotum . 2
2. Tibiae of first two pairs of legs foliaceous (II, l)2, tibiae of third
pair of legs simple . . . Membracinae
Tibiae of all three pairs of legs simple . Smiliinae
SUBFAMILY MEMBRACINAE (STAL)
Key to Wisconsin species
Clypeus longer than broad, rounded at apex ; pronotum with two yellow
spots behind horn (II, 2) . . . .Enchenopa binotata (Say)
Clypeus not as long as broad, broadly truncate at apex ; pronotum with¬
out yellow spots (II, 3) . Campylenchia latipes (Say)
SUBFAMILY CENTROTINAE (SPINOLA)
A single species of this subfamily is present in the fauna of Wisconsin.
It is Microcentrus caryae (Fitch) (II, 4).
SUBFAMILY SMILIINAE (STAL)
Key to Wisconsin tribes
1. Elytra entirely free and uncovered by pronotum . Ceresini
Most or all of clavus and often part of corium covered by pronotum ... 2
2. Hind wing with terminal cell usually sessile, its base truncated,
rarely with terminal cell an elongate triangle with a short petiole
. Telamonini
Hind wing with terminal cell a petiolate, equal-sided triangle . 3
3. Base of corium with two longitudinal veins contiguous at their bases
. Polyglyptini
Base of corium with three longitudinal veins, usually contiguous at
their bases . Smiliini
TRIBE POLYGLYPTINI GODING
Key to Wisconsin genera
1. Pronotum neither elevated nor rugose; elytra with terminal cell
transverse . Vanduzea
Pronotum elevated and rugose; elytra with terminal cell triangular. . . 2
2. Pronotum strongly elevated and with a deep median notch; aedeagus
with posterior arm having a pair of superior lobes (I, 14) . Entylia
Pronotum slightly elevated and slightly depressed before the middle;
aedeagus with posterior arm having a pair of large lateral teeth
near the apex (I, 15) . Pubilia
1 For the most part, keys in this paper are original, but in some cases those of
Ball (1931), Van Duzee (1908) and Caldwell (1949) were drawn upon.
2 Numbers in parentheses, such as (II, 1), refer to plate and figure numbers
respectively.
1952]
Dennis — Wisconsin Membracidae
131
Genus Entylia Germar
Entylia bactriana Germar (II, 5) is the only Wisconsin representative
of this genus.
Genus Pubilia Stal
The single species of this genus found in Wisconsin is Pubilia concava
(Say) (II, 6).
Genus Vanduzea Goding
Key to Wisconsin species
Females
Larger (5.6-6.1 mm) (II, 7) . arquata (Say)
Smaller (4.2-4.8 mm) (II, 8) . . . triguttata (Burmeister)
Males
Larger (4. 3-4. 9 mm) ; tergite IX with oblique transverse carina not
reaching the middle of posterior margin (I, 17) ; connective rounded
posteriorly (I, 19) . . . arquata (Say)
Smaller (S.6-3.9 mm) ; tergite IX with oblique transverse carina ex¬
tending to below middle of posterior margin (I, 18) ; connective acute
posteriorly (I, 20) . . . triguttata (Burmeister)
TRIBE SMILIINI GODING
Key to Wisconsin genera
1. Corium without cross vein connecting the two inner longitudinal
veins . Smilia
Corium with cross vein connecting the two inner longitudinal veins ... 2
2. Pronotum with dorsum regularly rounded, not at all compressed or
elevated . Ophiderma
Pronotum with dorsum compressed, usually moderately elevated,
may be strongly elevated . 3
3. Connective with a small median protuberance on the incurved ante¬
rior margin (I, 16) ; pronotum moderately inflated before and
behind mid-dorsal foveae . . . Xantholobus
Connective without a median protuberance on the incurved anterior
margin; pronotum very slightly or not ,at all inflated . Cyrtolobus
Genus Cyrtolobus Goding
The species of this genus are very difficult to delimit. They typically are
marked with light oblique vittae, a mid-dorsal spot and an anteapical vitta.
Much gradation exists in shape, coloring and genital morphology between
what are considered to be species.
The genus or subgenus Atymna is considered synonymous with Cyrto¬
lobus in this paper. The character used in the separation of it from Cyrto¬
lobus y the crest of the pronotum highest before the middle, is very difficult
to determine.
Keys to Wisconsin species
Females
1. Pronotum green, without anterior oblique or anteapical vittae . 2
Pronotum not as above . 4
2. Smaller (S.3-5.8 mm) (II, 16) . inermis (Emmons)
Larger (6.5-7.4 mm) . 3
132 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
3. Pronotum concolorous green (II, 17) . querci (Fitch)
Pronotum with dorsal carina broadly creamy white with central
interrupted black line in posterior 2/3 (II, 15) . helena Woodruff
4. Elytra with prominent dark band across the middle (II, 19)
. . . pallidifrontis (Emmons)
Elytra without prominent dark band across the middle . 5
5. Smaller (4.8-5.0 mm) (II, 21) . puritanus Woodruff
Larger (5.9 mm or longer) . . . 6
6. Larger (8.4 mm or longer) ; pronotum abruptly elevated behind
humeral angles (II, 22) . tuherosus (Fairmaire)
Smaller (7.7 mm or shorter) ; pronotum not as above . 7
7. Larger (7.4-7.7 mm) ; pronotum without anterior oblique vitta (II,
9) . arcuatus (Emmons)
Smaller (7.0 mm or shorter) ; pronotum with anterior oblique vitta. . 8
8. Pronotum deep reddish brown with a prominent mid-dorsal spot;
pronotum tapering to the apex which attains, or almost attains,
tip of elytra (II, 11) . fenestratus (Fitch)
Pronotum not as above . 9
9. Pronotum pale yellow green, vittae obsolete, metopidium showing
gradations from no spotting through a dark spot on each side to
being almost entirely dark (II, 18) . maculifrontis (Emmons)
Pronotum not as above . 10
10. Pronotum with anteapical vitta . 11
Pronotum without anteapical vitta . 15
11. Elytra almost wholly reddish-brown (II, 13) . . . .fuscipennis Van Duzee
Elytra not as above . 12
12. Pronotum gray before the anterior oblique vitta, gray to reddish
behind (II, 14) . griseus Van Duzee
Pronotum not as above . 13
13. Pronotum with anterior oblique vitta and anteapical vitta approach¬
ing (often confluent) at margin of pronotum, a prominent
brownish “V” formed between them and mid-dorsal spot (II, 23)
. vau (Say)
Pronotum not as above . 14
14. Pronotum low, ground color before anterior oblique vitta light
testaceous (II, 20) . pulchellus Woodruff
Pronotum highly arched, pale brown, metopidium often with black
mottling, anterior oblique vitta bordered narrowly with reddish
before and by a wider red stripe behind (II, 12)
. fuliginosus (Emmons)
15. Pronotum with prominent reddish-brown supra-humeral bands,
anterior oblique vitta bordered before by a narrow black line and
behind by a brownish-black line arising broadly at the pronotum
margin and narrowing superiorly (II, 10) . discoidalis (Emmons)
Pronotum not as above (II, 12) . fuliginosus (Emmons)
Males
1. Pronotum with bright yellow markings. . . 2
Pronotum without bright yellow markings . 3
2. Pronotum brown to black, rarely chestnut, dorsal carina with a
broad elongate yellow stripe, anteapical vitta yellow (II, 17)
. querci (Fitch)
Pronotum greenish-yellow anteriorly, brown to black posteriorly,
yellow marking similar to above and with an oblique yellow-green
vitta (II, 15) . . . helena Woodruff
1952]
Dennis — Wisconsin Membracidae
133
3. Pronotum with anterior oblique vitta completely obliterated from
basal 1/3 almost to dorsal carina; mid-elytral band often indi¬
cated (II, 19) . pallidifrontis (Emmons)
Not as above . 4
4. Pronotum before anterior oblique vitta pale yellow-green, mottled
with light brown or pale green, metopidium often with a pair of
darker spots or one large spot, anterior oblique vitta frequently
apparently transverse (II, 18). . maculifrontis (Emmons)
Pronotum not as above . 5
5. Elytra almost wholly reddish brown; anteapical vitta not obliter¬
ated in dorsal 2/3 (II, 13) . fuscipennis Van Duzee
Not as above . 6
6. Pronotum abruptly elevated behind humeral angles; longer (7.2 mm
or longer) (II, 22) . . . tuberosus (Fairmaire)
Pronotum not as above; shorter (6.4 mm or shorter) . 7
7. Smaller (4.3 mm or shorter) (II, 21) . puritanus Woodruff
Larger (4.8 mm or longer) . 8
8. Pronotum with mid-dorsal spot and anterior oblique vitta confluent . . 9
Pronotum not as above . 10
9. Pronotum brown to black, border pale from eye to anterior oblique
vitta (II, 10) . . . discoidalis (Emmons)
Pronotum dark testaceous, densely irrorate with black on metopi¬
dium and before anterior oblique vitta (II, 9) . . .arcuatus (Emmons)
10. Pronotum with vittae and mid-dorsal spot rather obsolete (II, 11)
. fenestratus (Fitch)
Pronotum not as above . 11
11. Pronotum brown to black, border pale from eye to anterior oblique
vitta (II, 10) . discoidalis (Emmons)
Pronotum not as above . . . 12
12. Pronotum with prominent brown “V” between anterior oblique vitta
and mid-dorsal spot . . . 13
Pronotum not as above . 15
13. Pronotum moderately elevated anteriorly, anterior oblique and ante-
apical vittae approaching (often confluent) at margin of pro¬
notum, arms of “V” usually of uniform width (II, 23) . vau (Say)
Pronotum not as above. . 14
14. Pronotum before anterior oblique vitta washed with blackish red;
smaller (5. 3-5.6 mm) (II, 20) . . . . pulchellus Woodruff
Pronotum not as above; larger (5.9-6.1 mm) (II, 14) . .griseus Van Duzee
15. Pronotum before anterior oblique vitta concolorous brown to black
(II, 16) . inermis (Emmons)
Pronotum irrorate or mottled before anterior oblique vitta . 16
16. Larger (6. 2-6. 4 mm) (II, 9) ; aedeagus with posterior arm widest
below the middle in posterior aspect (I, 7) . arcuatus (Emmons)
Smaller (5. 1-5.7 mm) (II, 12) ; aedeagus with posterior arm widest
above the middle in posterior aspect (I, 8) . . . .fuliginosus (Emmons)
Genus Ophiderma Fairmaire
The typical pronotal pattern for this genus includes light colored supra-
humeral and anteapical vittae. The pre-elytral hooks equal the elytral basal
hooks of Woodruff (1919). They are not on the elytra but are on the sides
of the thorax just before the bases of the elytra.
134 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
Keys to Wisconsin species
Females
1. Color bright green . 2
Color gray, brown or black with lighter markings . . 3
2. Larger (7.3-8.0 mm) ; pronotum usually marked with reddish poste¬
riorly (II, 27) ; pre-elytral hook broad and blunt (I, 22) . .flava Goding
Smaller (6.2-7.0 mm) ; pronotum not marked with reddish (II, 26) ;
pre-elytral hook more slender, upturned apically (I, 21)
. evelyna Woodruff
3. Eytra with dark band across the middle . 4
Elytra without dark band across the middle . 6
4. Larger (7.4-8.8 mm) (III, 4) . salamandra Fairmaire
Smaller (5.7-6.2 mm) . 5
5. Pronotum gray, without reddish shades (II, 25) ; length 6.0-6.2 mm
. grisea Woodruff
Pronotum testaceous to reddish brown (II, 24) ; length 5.7-6.1 mm
. definita Woodruff
6. Larger (7.4-8.8 mm) ; more robust; pronotum moderately hairy
(III, 4) . salamandra Fairmaire
Smaller (6.3-6.9 mm) ; more slender; pronotum densely hairy (III, 3)
. pubescens (Emmons)
Males
1. Pronotum light brown, anterior half usually mottled with yellow
green, vittae and longitudinal dorsal stripe usually present on
dorsal carina white to yellow (III, 1) . evelyna Woodruff
Pronotum not as above . c . . 2
2. Elytra with dark band across the middle . 3
Elytra without dark band across the middle . 4
3. Smaller (5.0-5. 5 mm) ; more slender; pronotum light reddish brown
to dark brown to black, pattern well defined or obscured, scantily
haired (II, 24) . definita Woodruff
Larger (5. 5-6.0 mm) ; more robust; pronotum dark brown to black,
pattern usually distinct, moderately hairy (II, 25) . . . .grisea Woodruff
4. Pronotum reddish brown to black, vittae usually bright yellow, may
be paler (III, 2) ; length 6.2-7.2 mm . . . flava Goding
Pronotum not as above . 5
5. Smaller (5. 5-6.0 mm) ; pronotum dark brown to black with vittae
distinct, moderately hairy (II, 25) . grisea Woodruff
Larger (6.0-7. 5 mm) ; pronotum not as above . 6
6. Smaller (6. 0-6. 5 mm) ; more slender; pronotum densely hairy, vittae
distinct (III, 3) . pubescens (Emmons)
Larger (6.8-7. 5 mm) ; more robust; pronotum moderately hairy,
vittae varying from distinct to almost obscured (III, 4)
. salamandra Fairmaire
Genus Smilia Germar
Smilia camelus (Fabricius) (III, 5) is the only species of this genus
known to occur in Wisconsin.
Genus Xantholobus Van Duzee
The species considered in this paper to be in this genus have the pro¬
notum with inflations before and behind the mid-dorsal foveae. This con¬
dition is often difficult to determine, and some gradation exists between it
1952]
Dennis — Wisconsin Membracidae
135
and the type of pronotum found in Cyrtolobus without distinct swellings.
By pronotal characters the females are more easily placed in this genus
than are the males. The occurrence of a small median protuberance on the
incurved anterior margin of the connective serves as an additional char¬
acter for the assignment of males to this genus.
X. intermedius (Emmons) has been assigned to this genus by the author
(Dennis, 1951).
Keys to Wisconsin species
Females
1. Pronotum strongly elevated behind the humeral angles, markings
distinct (III, 8) . muticus (Fabricius)
Pronotum not as above . . . . 2
2. Larger (7.0-7.5 mm) ; pronotum light to dark brown with lateral
narrow yellow border, especially prominent on anterior part (III,
7) . lateralis Van Duzee
Smaller (5.9-6.4 mm) ; pronotum not as above (III, 6)
. intermedius ( Emmons )
Males
1. Pronotum dark fuscous to black with lateral narrow yellow border
(HI,7) . . lateralis Van Duzee
Pronotum not as above . 2
2. Larger (6.8-7.1 mm) (III, 8) . muticus (Fabricius)
Smaller (5.9 mm) (III, 6) . intermedius (Emmons)
TRIBE TELAMONINI GODING
While using the key the insect should be viewed from the side. The
arrangement of Ball (1931) is followed.
Key to Wisconsin genera
1. Pronotum with dorsal horn or crest . 2
Pronotum without dorsal horn or crest. Either low and rounded or
high, compressed foliaceous . . . 6
2. Pronotum with horn on anterior part situated above or in front of
the humeral angles . 3
Pronotum with a crest, most of which is situated behind the humeral
angles . . 4
3. Pronotum with horn extending anteriorly . Thelia
Pronotum with horn erect, compressed . Glossonotus
4. Pronotum with crest quadrangular, slightly sinuate or rounded
above, variable, but not definitely stepped, pyramidal or lobed
. Telamona
Pronotum with crest neither quadrangular nor slightly sinuate nor
rounded above but definitely stepped, pyramidal, or lobed . 5
5. Pronotum with crest having dorsum definitely stepped, anterior lobe
high and rounded, posterior lobe lower and quadrangular
. . . . . Heliria and Telamona concava Fitch
Pronotum with crest pyramidal; posteriorly may be sinuate, with a
slight step on the posterior slope, or with sinuation or step want¬
ing . Palonica
6. Pronotum low and rounding in frontal aspect; species not green
. Carynota
Pronotum high, compressed and foliaceous; species green . Archasia
136 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
Genus Archasia Stal
Key to Wisconsin species
Pronotum of both sexes with dorsal crest overhanging in front, very
high and foliaceous; bright green in life (III, 10) . . .galeata (Fabricius)
Pronotum of both sexes with dorsal crest not overhanging in front,
lower; green with a slight smoky cast in life (III, 9) . belfragei Stal
Genus Carynota Fitch
Key to Wisconsin species
Pronotum rich reddish-brown with creamy markings (III, 11)
. marmorata (Say)
Pronotum greenish-gray with an oblique black band just behind the
middle (III, 12) . mera (Say)
-
Genus Glossonotus Butler
Key to Wisconsin Species
1. Pronotum with horn constricted near base in lateral aspect . 2
Pronotum with horn broadest at base . 3
2. Pronotum marked with a definite but variable rich brown and cream
pattern (III, 14) . crataegi (Fitch)
Pronotum obscurely marked, color dull gray-brown (III, 13)
. . acuminatus ( Fabricius )
3. Pronotum with horn much higher than wide, tapering; metopidium
hairy; a pale median narrow stripe down posterior face of horn
and dorsal carina to apex (III, 15) . turriculatus (Emmons)
Pronotum with horn nearly as wide as high; metopidium not hairy;
a wide, pale, median stripe down posterior face of horn and dorsal
carina to apex (III, 16) . univittatus (Harris)
Genus Heliria Stal
Key to Wisconsin species
1. Pronotum with anterior lobe not foliaceous and only slightly higher
than the posterior lobe (III, 20) . molaris (Butler)
Pronotum with anterior lobe foliaceous or much higher than pos¬
terior lobe . 2
2. Pronotum pale tawny, shading to gray-brown (III, 19)
. cristata ( Fairmaire )
Pronotum rich dark brown (III, 21) . scalaris (Fairmaire)
Genus Palonica Ball
Ball, Rev. Tribe Tel. N. A.: 34-37, 1931.
Key to Wisconsin species
Pronotum with crest acutely pyramidal, yellowish, creamy or gray-
brown with dark brown markings (III, 18) . pyramidata (Uhler)
Pronotum with crest broadly obtusely pyramidal, dark (III, 17)
. tremulata (Ball)
1952]
Dennis — Wisconsin Membracidae
137
Genus Telamona Fitch
Key to Wisconsin species
1. Pronotum of female wholly bright green (III, 24) ; pronotum of
male yellow, with entire front of pronotum brown, an oblique
dark brown band from top of posterior margin of crest to margin
of pronotum, apex brown (III, 24) . . . . . . unicolor Fitch
Pronotum not as above . . . 2
2. Pronotum with crest very large, usually quadrangular, may over¬
hang the metopidium . 3
Pronotum with crest smaller, usually rounding, if somewhat quad¬
rangular placed well back on pronotum . . 7
3. Pronotum with crest vertical in front, 2/3 the length of the pro¬
notum, uniform, pale testaceous, a creamy stripe on posterior
face of crest (III, 22) . extrema Ball
Pronotum not as above, crest shorter . 4
4. Species small (7-8 mm) ; pattern various (III, 27) _ _ tristis Fitch
Species larger (9-11 mm) . 5
5. Pronotum with crest definitely back of metopidium, usually strongly
sinuate, pattern definite, crest dark brown (IV, 5, 6) . .concava Fitch
Pronotum with crest almost over the metopidium . 6
6. Pronotum dirty yellow-green, a definite black mark or pair of
marks on margin of pronotum just behind the posterior margin
of crest; black often extends from spots across the veins of the
elytra (III, 23) ; valvula 2 with tip entire . maculata Van Duzee
Pronotum with tawny cast, no black spots as above (III, 26) ; val¬
vula 2 with tip coarsely serrate (I, 23) . ampelopsidis (Harris)
7. Pronotum with crest almost three times as wide as high or very
low, long and rounding from the metopidium with a definite angle . . 8
Pronotum at most twice as wide as high . 9
8. Pronotum with posterior angle of crest prominent in female, in
male obsolete or rounded; dirty yellow with a greenish cast (III,
25) . reclivata Fitch
Pronotum with crest very low, posterior angle obsolete or rounding;
pale, mottled with brown or black (IV, 7) . westcotti Goding
9. Species smaller (female less than 9.8 mm, male less than 8.3 mm) ;
pronotum red, maculate with white or with pattern very distinct
and bright colored . 10
Species larger (female 10 mm or larger, male 8.8 mm or larger) ;
pronotum not as above . 11
10. Pronotum with crest, inflated before and behind a median depressed
area, red brown maculate with white . compacta Ball
Pronotum not as above (IV, 1) . . . decorata Ball
11. Pronotum of female pale green or brown, male often dusky, both
sexes with a coppery sheen, irrorate with white (IV, 3)
. monticola (Fabricius)
Pronotum pale dirty yellow or greenish, markings dark . 12
12. Larger (length female 10.5-12.0 mm; male 10.0-10.5 mm) (IV, 4A)
. . . spreta Goding3
Smaller (length female 9.5-11.3 mm; male 9.3-10.0 mm) (IV, 2)
. tiliae Ball
The variety agrandata Ball is illustrated (IV, 4B) but not considered distinct.
138 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
Genus Thelia Amyot and Serville
Key to Wisconsin species
Pronotum of male very dark brown with a large yellow patch behind
humeral angles, female gray; horn usually slightly curved upward
(IV, 8) . bimaculata (Fabricius)
Pronotum uniformly mahogany-brown ; horn usually straight, its dorsal
margin almost continuous with the line of the dorsum (IV, 9)
. uhleri (Stal)
TRIBE CERESINI GODING
The assignment of Wisconsin species to genera has been made, with
modifications, according to the revision of Caldwell (1949).
Key to Wisconsin genera
1. Base of corium with three longitudinal veins beginning near the
base; pronotum not much elevated in front . 2
Base of corium with two longitudinal veins contiguous at their bases ;
pronotum much elevated in front . 3
2. Elytra with five apical cells, veins usually dark . Acutalis
Elytra with four apical cells, veins usually very indistinct. . . .Micrutalis
3. Styles broad, flat, apices obtuse (I, 4) ; aedeagus in lateral aspect
with tip of posterior arm bilobed, the anterior lobe acuminate
apically, the posterior lobe shorter and blunt (I, 11); pronotum
very hairy . Spissistilus
Styles acuminate apically in lateral or dorsal aspect or S-shaped
with truncate apices in dorsal aspect only ; aedeagus with posterior
arm simple; pronotum moderately or scantily haired . 4
4. Styles acuminate apically in lateral or dorsal aspect . Stictocephala
Styles S-shaped with truncate apices in dorsal aspect only (I, 5)
. Tortistilus
Genus Acutalis Fairmaire
Acutalis tartarea (Say) (IV, 10) is the only representative of this genus
found in Wisconsin.
Genus Micrutalis Fowler
This genus is represented in Wisconsin by Micrutalis calva (Say) (IV, 11).
Genus Spissistilus Caldwell
The single species of this genus found in Wisconsin is Spissistilus
borealis Fairmaire (IV, 12). This species has been assigned to this genus
by the author (Dennis, 1951).
Genus Stictocephala Stal
S. cons tans (Walker) has been placed in this genus by the author (Dennis,
1951).
Key to Wisconsin species
1. Species brown with light transverse bands . 2
Species green without transverse bands . 3
2. Larger (females 9.8-10.5 mm, males 8.4-9.0 mm) ; pronotum very
hairy with two dark, rarely paler, brown transverse bands; elytra
clouded (IV, 17) ; style with tip entire (I, 2) . diceros (Say)
1952]
Dennis — Wisconsin Membracidae
139
Smaller (females 8. 4-9. 2 mm, males 7.5-8.2 mm) ; pronotum scantily
hairy, with sides ferruginous without definite dark bands as
above; elytra hyaline or slightly clouded (IV, 16); style with tip
serrate in ventro-lateral aspect (I, 3) . albescens (Van Duzee)
3. Venter black; pronotum of male often strongly marked with black
(IV, 18) . basalis (Walker)
Venter without black markings; pronotum of male not strongly
marked with black . . . 4
4. Suprahumeral angles not developed into horns (IV, 15) . .lutea (Walker)
Suprahumeral angles developed into horns . . . 5
5. Femora dorsally, coxae and often pectoral pieces marked with black;
suprahumeral horns very short (IV, 19)
. brevitylus dolichotylus Caldwell
Femora, coxae and pectoral pieces not marked with black, supra¬
humeral horns longer . 6
6. Larger (females 9-11 mm, males 8.0-9. 1 mm) . . 7
Smaller (females 7.3-8.3 mm, males 7.2-7.4 mm) . 8
7. Pronotum with metopidium concave (IV, 14) ; style with inner tip
serrate in dorsal aspect (I, 1) ; valvula 2 with a single large tooth
somewhat removed from the finely serrate tip (I, 24) . .taurina (Fitch)
Pronotum with metopidium convex or straight (IV, 13) ; style with
tip entire; valvula 2 with two (sometimes apparently only one)
large teeth and a coarsely serrate tip (I, 27) . bubalus (Fabricius)
8. Pronotum with metopidium and dorsal carina strongly red-brown,
horns strongly recurved (IV, 20) ; lateral valves with teeth sud¬
denly convergent and narrowed in apical % (I, 6) ; valvula 2
strongly narrowed before the finely serrate tip . . taurinaf ormis Caldwell
Pronotum with metopidium and dorsal carina usually, but not
strongly, marked with red; genitalia not as above . 9
9. More robust (IV, 21) ; aedeagus with anterior face of posterior arm
having lateral membranes extending *4 the distance to apex (I,
10) ; valvula 2 with tip entire and bluntly rounded (I, 26)
. constans (Walker)
More slender (IV, 22) ; aedeagus with anterior face of posterior arm
having lateral membranes basal (I, 9) ; valvula 2 with tip finely
serrate (I, 25) . . . palmeri (Van Duzee)
Genus Tortistilus Caldwell
The author (Dennis, 1951) has placed Tortistilus curvata (Caldwell) in
this genus.
Key to Wisconsin species
Suprahumeral angles with minute horns (IV, 24) ; aedeagus with ante¬
rior face of posterior arm bearing a small hood-like sub-apical
process and with the usual lateral membrane below this (I, 12) ;
valvula 2 with a single large tooth near the entire tip (I, 28)
. curvata (Caldwell)
Suprahumeral angles not produced into horns (IV, 23) ; aedeagus with¬
out the small hood-like sub-apical process (I, 13) ; valvula 2 with a
single large tooth somewhat removed from the coarsely serrate tip
(I, 29) . . . inermis (Fabricius)
140 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
Literature Cited
1. Ball, E. D. 1931. A monographic revision of the treehoppers of the tribe
Telamonini of North America. Ent. Americana (n.s.) 12:1-69.
2. Caldwell, J. S. 1949. A generic revision of the treehoppers of the tribe
Ceresini in America north of Mexico, based on a study of the male
genitalia. Proc. U. S. National Mus. 98 (3234) :491-521.
3. Dennis, Clifford J. 1951. A list of the Wisconsin species of Membra¬
cidae. Can. Ent. 83(7) : 183-184.
4. Funkhouser, W. D. 1917. Biology of the Membracidae of the Cayuga
Lake basin. Mem. Cornell University Agr. Exp. Sta. 2:177-445.
5. - . 1927. Membracidae. General catalogue of the Hemiptera. Fasc.
1 : 1-581.
6. Snodgrass, R. E. 1935. Principles of insect morphology. McGraw-Hill
Book Company, Inc.
7. Van Duzee, E. P. 1908. Studies in North American Membracidae. Bull.
Buffalo Soc. Nat. Sci. 0:29-127.
8. - . 1917. Catalogue of the Hemiptera of America north of Mexico
excepting the Aphididae, Coccidae and Aleurodidae. Techn. Bull. Cali¬
fornia Agr. Exp. Sta. Ent. 2:i-xiv, 1-902.
9. Woodruff, L. B. 1919. A review of our local species of the Membracid
genus Ophiderma Fairm. (Hemip.-Homop.). Jour. New York Ent. Soc.
27: 249-260.
Species — Host and Collection Data
Campylenchia latipes
Goldenrod, sweet clover, wild sunflower, alfalfa, alsike clover, Amer¬
ican elm, black oak, giant ragweed, hazel, low, wet pasture vegetation,
nettle, oak underbrush, red clover, roadside weeds, small ragweed,
strawberry, swamp vegetation, white oak and unidentified weeds.
Enchenopa binotata
American elm, black locust, black oak, bur oak, butternut, forest floor,
hard maple, hazel, linden, red oak, roadside weeds, shagbark hickory,
smooth sumac and sweet clover.
Microcentrus caryae
Oak underbrush, “pin oak,” shagbark hickory and white oak.
Entylia bactriana
Giant ragweed, goldenrod, bull thistle, bur oak, forest floor, prickly
ash, red oak and shagbark hickory.
Pubilia concava
Giant ragweed, wild sunflower, black oak, bull thistle, bur oak, com¬
pass plant, forest floor, goldenrod, “grass,” nettle, roadside weeds,
sweet clover, and white oak.
Vanduzea arquata
Black locust, black oak and bur oak.
Vanduzea triguttata
Unknown for Wisconsin.
Cyrtolobus arcuatus
Black oak, bur oak and white oak.
1952]
Dennis — Wisconsin Membracidae
141
Cyrtolobus discoidalis
Black oak, bur oak, red oak, white oak, “grass,” shagbark hickory, and
Sporobolus sp. Males also — light trap and tanglefoot boards.
Cyrtolobus fenestratus
Black oak and bur oak.
Cyrtolobus fuliginosus
Black oak, bur oak, northern pin oak, red oak, white oak, black locust,
forest floor, “glass,” hazel and shagbark hickory. Males also — light
trap.
Cyrtolobus fuscipennis
Black oak, bur oak, red oak, white oak, black locust, forest floor and
shagbark hickory.
Cyrtolobus griseus
Black oak, bur oak, red oak, white oak, apple and forest floor.
Cyrtolobus helena
Bur oak, bitternut hickory, black oak, chinquapan oak, swamp white
oak and white oak. Males also — light trap.
Cyrtolobus inermis
Black oak, bur oak, red oak and white oak.
Cyrtolobus maculifrontis
Black oak, bur oak, red oak, swamp white oak, white oak, forest floor,
haw and Sporobolus sp.
Cyrtolobus pallidifrontis
Black oak, bur oak, red oak, white oak, forest floor and shagbark
hickory. Female also — fermenting bait.
Cyrtolobus pulchellus
Black oak, bur oak, forest floor, northern pin oak, red oak and white
oak.
Cyrtolobus puritanus
Northern pin oak and red oak.
Cyrtolobus querci
White oak, bur oak, black oak and shagbark hickory.
Cyrtolobus tuberosus
Bur oak and white oak.
Cyrtolobus vau
Black oak, bur oak, white oak, black cherry, forest floor, prickly ash,
red oak and shagbark hickory. Males also — light trap; females also —
fermenting bait traps.
Ophiderma definita
Black oak, bur oak, red oak, white oak, forest floor and Sporobolus sp.
Ophiderma evelyna
Black oak, bur oak, northern pin oak, red oak, white oak, forest floor,
haw and shagbark hickory. Males also — light trap.
Ophiderma flava
Black oak, red oak, white oak and forest floor.
Ophiderma grisea
Black oak, bur oak, red oak, white oak, forest floor, gray dogwood and
tanglefoot boards. Males also — light trap.
142 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters
Plate I
Genital structures and pre-elytral hooks used in keys. All are drawn to
same scale except 21 and 22 which show shapes only.
Figures 1-5 male style
1. Stictocephala taurina, right dorsal
2. Stictocephala dicer os , right, dorsal
3. Stictocephala albescens, left, ventro-lateral
4. Spissistilus borealis, left, lateral
5. Tortistilus inermis, right dorsal
6. Stictocephala taurinaformis, tooth of lateral valve
Figures 7-15 male aedeagus
7. Cyrtolobus arcuatus, posterior arm, posterior aspect
8. Cyrtolobus fuliginosus, posterior arm, posterior aspect
9. Stictocephala palmeri, lateral
10. Stictocephala constans, lateral
11. Spissistilus borealis, lateral
12. Tortistilus curvata, lateral
13. Tortistilus inermis, lateral
14. Entylia bactriana, A lateral, B posterior arm, posterior aspect
15. Pubilia concava, A lateral, B posterior arm, posterior aspect
16. Xantholobus sp., connective
17. Vanduzea arquata, tergite IX, A oblique transverse carina
18. Venduzea triguttata, tergite IX
19. Vanduzea arquata, connective
20. Vanduzea triguttata, connective
21. Ophiderma evelyna, pre-elytral hook
22. Ophiderma flava, pre-elytral hook
Figures 23-29 tip of valvula 2 of female ovipositor, lateral aspect
23. Telamona ampelopsidis
24. Stictocephala taurina
25. Stictocephala palmeri
26. Stictocephala constans
27. Stictocephala bubalus
28. Tortistilus curvata
29. Tortistilus inermis
[Vol. 41
27
28
29
144 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters
Plate II
Leg, heads, wings and pronotums
All are drawn to the same scale except 1, 2 and 3 which differ as follows :
1, six times; 2a and 3a, three times; and 2b and 3b half the scale of the
others.
Figure
1. Membracinae, tibia of middle leg
2. Enchenopa binotata, A head, B pronotum
3. Campylenchia latipes, A head, B pronotum
4. Microcentrus caryae, A pronotum and wings, B variation of
pronotum
Figures 5-27 pronotums
5. Entylia bactriana
6. Pubilia concava
7. Vanduzea arquata
8. Vanduzea triguttata
9. Cyrtolobus arcuatus
10. Cyrtolobus discoidalis
11. Cyrtolobus fenestratus
12. Cyrtolobus fuliginosus
13. Cyrtolobus fuscipennis
14. Cyrtolobus griseus
15. Cyrtolobus Helena
16. Cyrtolobus inermis
17. Cyrtolobus querci
18. Cyrtolobus maculifrontis
19. Cyrtolobus pallidifrontis
20. Cyrtolobus pulchellus
21. Cyrtolobus puritanus
22. Cyrtolobus tuberosus
23. Cyrtolobus vau
24. Ophiderma definita
25. Ophiderma grisea
26. Ophiderma evelyna
27. Ophiderma flava
27
146 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
Plate III
Pronotums
Figures 1-4, 6-8 are drawn to the same scale; figures 5, 9-29 are drawn
at half this scale.
Figure
1. Ophiderma evelyna
2. Ophiderma flava
3. Ophiderma pubescens
4. Ophiderma salamandra
5. Smilia camelus
6. Xantholobus intermedins
7. Xantholobus lateralis
8. Xantholobus muticus
9. Archasia belfragei
10. Archasia galeata
11. Carynota marmorata
12. Carynota mera
13. Glossonotus acuminatus
14. Glossonotus crataegi
15. Glossonotus turriculatus
16. Glossonotus univittatus
17. Palonica tremulata
18. Palonica pyramidata
19. Heliria cristata
20. Heliria molaris
21. Heliria scalaris
22. Telamona extrema
23. Telamona maculata, A lateral aspect B dorsal aspect, of anterior
part of pronotum. H humeral angle
24. Telamona unicolor
25. Telamona reclivata
26. Telamona ampelopsidis, A lateral aspect B dorsal aspect, of ante¬
rior part of pronotum
27. Telamona tristis
26
27
148
Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
Plate IV
Pronotums
Figures 1-10 are drawn to the same scale; 11 to twice, 12 to three times
and 13-25 to one and one-half times this scale.
Figure
1. Telamona decor ata
2. Telamona tiliae
3. Telamona monticola
4. Telamona spreta, A typical form, B variety agrandata
5. Telamona concava , more extreme form
6. Telamona concava , more typical form
7. Telamona westcotti
8. Thelia bimaculata
9. Thelia uhleri
10. Acutalis tartar ea
11. Micrutalis calva
12. Spissistilus borealis
13. Stictocephala bubalus
14. Stictocephala taurina
15. Stictocephala lutea
16. Stictocephala albescens , A dorsal, B lateral aspects
17. Stictocephala diceros, A dorsal, B lateral aspects
18. Stictocephala basalis
19. Stictocephala brevity lus dolichotylus
20. Stictocephala taurinaformis
21. Stictocephala constans
22. Stictocephala palmeri
23. Tortistilus inermis, A dorsal, B frontal aspects
24. Tortistilus curvata, A dorsal, B frontal aspects
1952]
Dennis — Wisconsin Membr&cidae
149
24 e
150 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
Ophiderma pubescens
Black oak, bur oak, white oak and tanglefoot boards. Males also — light
trap.
Ophiderma salamandra
Bur oak, red oak, black oak, white oak, forest floor, “grass,” shagbark
hickory and smooth sumac. Males also — at light and light traps.
Smilia camelus
Black oak, bur oak, red oak and tanglefoot boards. Both sexes at light.
Xantholobus intermedius
Black oak, bur oak, red oak, white oak and forest floor.
Xantholobus lateralis
Bur oak and white oak.
Xantholobus muticus
Black oak, bur oak, white oak and roadside weeds.
Archasia belfragei
Apple, black oak, bur oak, goldenrod, plum, red oak, wild grape and
white pine.
Archasia galeata
Northern pin oak and black oak.
Carynota marmorata
Hazel and Betula sanbergi Britton.
Carynota mera
Shagbark hickory and bitternut hickory.
Glossonotus acuminatus
Red oak, white oak and tanglefoot boards.
Glossonotus crataegi
Haw.
Glossonotus turriculatus
Bur oak, forest floor and tanglefoot boards.
Glossonotus univittatus
Northern pin oak and forest floor.
Heliria cristata
Bur oak.
Heliria molaris
Bur oak and white oak.
Heliria sccdaris
Haw.
Palonica pyramidata
Black willow.
Palonica tremulata
Quaking aspen. Male also — light trap.
Telamona ampelopsidis
Woodbine (Virginia creeper).
Telamona compacta
Black oak.
Telamona concava
Unknown for Wisconsin.
1952]
Dennis — Wisconsin Membracidae
151
Telamona decorata
Black locust, black oak, bur oak, forest floor, hard maple, northern pin
oak, red maple, red oak, shagbark hickory, white oak and tanglefoot
boards. Male also — fermenting bait trap.
Telamona extrema
Black oak.
Telamona maculata
Bur oak.
Telamona monticola
Black oak, bur oak, forest floor, haw, northern pin oak, shagbark
hickory, white oak and tanglefoot boards. Male also — fermenting bait
trap.
Telamona reclivata
Bur oak, black oak and white oak.
Telamona spreta
Black oak, bur oak, red oak and white oak.
Telamona tiliae
Black oak, bur oak, green ash, hackberry, haw, linden, red oak, white
oak, and tanglefoot boards.
Telamona tristis
Hazel, bur oak, forest floor, shagbark hickory and ironwood.
Telamona unicolor
Butternut, bur oak, forest floor and shagbark hickory.
Telamona westcotti
American elm, bur oak, forest floor, linden and white oak.
Thelia bimaculata
Black locust.
Thelia uhleri
Black cherry and wild plum.
Acutalis tar tar ea
Goldenrod, giant ragweed and wild sunflower.
Micrutalis calva
Swamp vegetation.
Spissistilus borealis
Sweet clover, apple, blackberry, black cherry, black locust, black ash,
forest floor, giant ragweed, goldenrod, goosefoot, haw, hazel, nettle,
prickly ash, raspberry, small ragweed and white oak.
Stictocephala albescens
Hazel, American elm, choke cherry, forest floor, goldenrod, prickly ash,
raspberry, red oak and northern pin oak.
Stictocephala basalis
Forest floor, goldenrod, hazel, “mixed brush,” red clover and swamp
vegetation.
Stictocephala brevitylus dolichotylus
Black locust, “composite” and hazel.
152 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
Stictocephala bubalus
Sweet clover, apple, American elm, alfalfa, bean, bittersweet, black¬
berry, black locust, black walnut, bur oak, cherry, giant ragweed,
goldenrod, haw, hazel, nettle, Polygonum sp., small ragweed, swamp
vegetation, wild plum and wild sunflower.
Stictocephala constans
American elm, black cherry, black walnut, bur oak, forest floor, golden-
rod, haw, hazel, linden, raspberry, red maple, red oak, sweet clover,
weeds and white oak.
Stictocephala diceros
Blackberry, nettle, raspberry, American elm, bull thistle, dogbane,
forest floor, giant ragweed, goldenrod, hazel, swamp vegetation, sweet
clover, wild hemp and wild sunflower.
Stictocephala lutea
Black oak, bur oak, shagbark hickory, Sporobolus sp., sweet clover,
white oak, and wild sunflower.
Stictocephala palmeri
Forest floor, hazel, red maple and white oak.
Stictocephala taurina
Alfalfa, apple, blackberry, black cherry, black locust, black raspberry,
bur oak, dahlia, giant ragweed, goldenrod, goosefoot, hazel, linden,
nettle, prickly ash, raspberry, red maple, shagbark hickory, small rag¬
weed, sweet clover, wild grape, wild plum and wild sunflower. Males
also — fermenting bait traps.
Stictocephala taurinaf ormis
Bur oak, forest floor, linden, red oak and underbrush.
Tortistilus curvata
Unknown for Wisconsin.
Tortisilus inermis
Sweet clover, alfalfa, apple, giant ragweed, hazel, ladino clover, red
clover, small ragweed, strawberry and wild sunflower.
SEASONAL FLUCTUATIONS IN THE NUMBERS OF
COCCIDIA OOCYSTS AND PARASITE EGGS IN
THE SOIL OF PHEASANT SHELTER PENS**
Harry G. Guilford* * and C. A. Herrick
Departments of Zoology and Veterinary Science ,
University of Wisconsin
For many years the Conservation Department has maintained
a large flock of breeding pheasants at the State Game and Fur
Farm, Poynette, Wisconsin, in order to supply young and mature
stock pheasants for the state. The ever-increasing demand for
birds made it necessary to breed and raise the young pheasants
on the same ground year after year. Soon after the start of the
pheasant-raising program, the parasite problem became so im¬
portant that the Conservation Department and the University
of Wisconsin co-operated to get more information on the factors
that had favored the increase and importance of the parasites.
The results reported here were obtained during 1947 and 1948.
Materials and Methods
Day-old pheasants were placed in brooder houses which were
attached to shelter pens and these in turn to rearing pens.
Approximately thirty such units were placed on each side of
driveways to facilitate caring for the birds. Each unit was sup¬
plied with electricity and many with running water. One hun¬
dred fifty day-old pheasants were placed in each brooder house
at the beginning of the season. At the age of one week these
birds were given access to an adjoining shelter pen where they
remained for a period of five weeks during which time they had
access to both the house and shelter pen. Following this period
they were also given access to a large run where they remained
for six or seven weeks longer and where grass and weeds were
abundant.
The shelter pens were square and had an area of 144 square
feet. The soil within them was of a sandy nature and was par¬
tially shaded by a half roof over the pen. As soon as the pheas¬
ants were given access to this pen, they were fed and watered
** This work was supported by the Wisconsin State Conservation Department
and by the Research Committee of the Graduate School from funds supplied by the
Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.
* Now at : Wisconsin Extension, Green Bay, Wisconsin.
153
154 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
there for the remainder of the season. Feeders and water foun¬
tains were placed in the center of the pens on screen frames
which allowed any spilled feed and water to fall beneath them
and out of reach of the pheasants. Early in the season there was
a low growth of weeds but the soil became almost bare within
two weeks after the young pheasants had access to it. The
pheasants were cared for in the same manner as is described in
detail in the Wisconsin Conservation Department Bulletin,
Pheasant Raising.
The same ten shelter pens were used for experimentation in
1947 and 1948. They previously had been used for pheasant
brooding for over ten years. The pheasant chicks were placed in
these shelter pens on June 28 in 1947, and June 1 in 1948.
Every week soil specimens were taken approximately two feet
from each corner of each shelter pen. A cork borer, 200 mm. in
diameter, and marked so that the soil was removed to a depth
of 15 mm., was used to remove soil specimens. The four speci¬
mens from each pen were placed in a numbered jar and within
a short time, taken to the laboratory where they were mixed with
water and small amount of detergent (“Tide” or “Breeze”) . They
then were allowed to stand overnight. Specimens were treated
in this manner so that the soil particles would separate and the
unharmed parasite eggs and oocysts would be free from the soil.
With commercial detergents there was no precipitation, and the
line debris did not clump when placed in calcium chloride which
was used in later steps of the procedure.
After the specimens had been allowed to stand for 12 to 18
hours, each specimen was shaken up, poured into a small 24-inch
mesh sieve through which it was stirred and strained via a
funnel, into a graduate with a diameter of 2.5 cms. The soil
remaining in the sieve was washed with a line spray of water
until the graduate was filled to within one inch of the top or
with approximately 110 cc. of water and soil. Only small stones
and feed particles were left in the sieve after this spraying. The
mixture in the graduate was permitted to settle about 30 minutes
until all of the heavier material was at the bottom of the grad¬
uate.
A glass tube, 6 mm. in diameter, with both ends open was
slowly pushed to the bottom of the graduate, and then with the
finger placed over the upper end, the tube was withdrawn re¬
moving a column of strata within it. This sample was then placed
in a test tube and centrifuged at 1000 rpm until all of the soil
was sedimented. The water from this was decanted and approxi¬
mately one half of one cubic centimeter of soil was left in the
bottom of the tube.
1952] Guilford & Herrick — Coccidia of Pheasants 155
Saturated calcium chloride with a specific gravity of 1.42 was
added until the test tube was filled to within approximately one
fourth of an inch from the rim. The sedimented soil was freed
from the bottom and mixed with the calcium chloride by invert¬
ing the tube with the thumb over its mouth. This was then cen¬
trifuged at 600 rpm for 1 to 2 minutes during which time the
parasite eggs and oocysts were floated to the surface free of
debris.
A thin layer of petrolatum was spread around the rim of the
test tube and calcium chloride was then added from below the
surface of the solution in the tube by a fine glass pipette. This
brought a meniscus with the eggs and oocysts above the edge of
the test tube ; it was prevented from running over the side of the
tube by the thin layer of petrolatum.
A glass cover slip was held between the forefinger and the
thumb and was slipped across the mouth of the test tube ; then
the meniscus was on the upper side of the cover slip. The menis¬
cus was then drained into a depression slide, the under side of
the cover slip was cleaned, and then the cover slip was inverted
onto the depression slide. Experience showed that a definite sized
meniscus filled the depression so as to allow only a very small air
bubble to be under the slip and yet let it rest on the surface of
the slide so there was no movement of the eggs while they were
being counted. Only one layer had to be counted since the eggs
and the oocysts floated next to the cover slip.
A commercial grade of calcium chloride was used to make the
saturated solutions. The solution was allowed to stand for a time
so that any fine material would sediment. In order to alleviate
the possibility of air bubbles from collecting on the surface of
the meniscus the solution had to be vacuumed prior to its use.
The slide was examined within an hour so the saturated cal¬
cium chloride did not harm the eggs and oocysts enough to spoil
the count. After longer periods of time Eimeria oocysts collapse.
The efficacy of the technique for removing Eimeria oocysts
from naturally infected soil was determined by running repeated
samples from the same soil. In experiments to determine the
numbers of oocysts removed, three, one-half cubic centimeter
samples from each specimen of naturally infected soil were
processed as described. Three menisci were built up and removed
from each sample without disturbing the sediment. This was to
see if any oocysts remained after the first and second menisci
were removed. Each sample was then shaken up, recentrifuged,
and three menisci were reformed and removed. This was re¬
peated three to five times to see how many oocysts remained in
the soil after the first centrifugation. Three samples from each
156 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
specimen . were run in this manner. The results are shown on
Table 1. This table shows that an average of over 90% of the
oocysts were recovered by the first meniscus of the first centri¬
fugation, and that the number of oocysts recovered from the first
meniscus of each of the three samples from one specimen were
consistent.
TABLE 1
Number of Eimeria Oocysts Recovered From Samples of Soil
To test the consistency of the technique on Heterakis eggs,
two one cubic centimeter samples were removed from each of
19 specimens of naturally contaminated soil and run in the same
manner. The numbers of Heterakis eggs in the first meniscus
1952] Guilford & Herrick — Coccidia of Pheasants
157
from each sample were counted. The results are tabulated on
Table 2. These data show that counts of Heterakis eggs were uni¬
form, especially when one considers the small numbers of eggs
in the soil.
TABLE 2
Numbers of Heterakis Eggs From 1 cc. Samples From Same
Specimen of Soil
Since soil specimens were taken about two feet from each
corner of the pens away from places of high and continually
changing contaminations, such as near feeders and water foun¬
tains, and as droppings were carefully avoided, the technique
was thought to be reliable for determining fluctuations of num¬
bers of parasitic contaminants in shelter pens.
Rainfall data were taken daily throughout the brooding season
with standard rainfall equipment.
Results and Discussion
The results from the 1947 and 1948 studies are shown on
Graphs 1 and 2, which show respectively for each year, the aver¬
age numbers of Eimeria oocysts, Heterakis and Cappillaria eggs
in each cubic centimeter of soil, as well as the rainfall, on suc¬
cessive weeks after the pheasants were placed in each of the ten
pens. These graphs show that the average numbers of eggs or
oocysts were at approximately the same level on the same week
after the pheasants were on the ground in both 1947 and 1948,
independent of the date that they were first placed in the pens.
158 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
The range of variation of the parasite eggs and oocysts in the
ten pens is shown at the bottom of the graphs below the respec¬
tive date. Graph 1 shows that a heavy series of rains fell during
the first week that the pheasants were on the ground in 1947 ;
later in this year the pens became very dry and dusty because of
the lack of rain and long continuous heat. In 1948 there was rain
wetting the soil on the week that the pheasants were placed on
HETERAKIS EGGS 0-2 0-2 0-2 0-8 0-6 0-4 0-14 0-18 0-12 0-8 2-38
CAPILLARIA EGGS 0-2 0 0 0-14 0-4 0-2 0-6 0-6 0-16 2-22 0-14
RANGE OF VARIATION AMONG TEN PENS
Graph 1. Showing the relation of rainfall to the number of coccidia oocysts
and parasite eggs found in pheasant shelter pens in 1947.
the ground. None of the rains was as heavy as those in 1947, but
they were more evenly spaced and consequently the ground,
though dry at times, did not become dusty as it did in 1947.
The data on Graph 1 show that coccidia oocysts were found in
the soil of several pens one week after the pheasants were placed
on the ground in 1947. Within three weeks the numbers of
oocysts had increased from none to an average of 1,100 per cubic
centimeter of soil for each pen. They then disappeared rapidly
within the following 2 or 3 weeks until only small numbers were
found throughout the remaining part of the brooding season;
this was true with one exception in which 500 oocysts were found
1952] Guilford & Herrick — Coccidia of Pheasants
159
11 weeks after the birds had been on the ground. This latter case
was thought to be due, possibly, to a dropping which was acci¬
dentally taken with the soil specimen.
Graph 2 shows the results obtained in 1948. Unsporulated
oocysts were found on the soil one week after the pheasants were
in the pens and the oocysts reached a peak of 921 per cubic centi¬
meter by the third week. Thus the numbers of oocysts were
COCCIDIA
HETERAKiS EGGS
CAPILLARIA EGGS
0-2S 2-65 l4~-3000 14-1000 3-55 0-15 0-1 0-2 0-1 0-500
0-4 0-2 0-8 0-3 0-2 0-10 1-12 0-12 0-16 4-48
0-6 0-6 0-5 0-2 0-2 0-8 0-20 0-5 0-15 0-15
RANGE OF VARIATION AMONG TEN PENS
Graph 2. Showing the relation of rainfall to the number of coccidia oocysts
and parasite eggs found in pheasant shelter pens in 1948.
greatest in both 1947 and 1948 on the same week after the
pheasants were on the ground, though they did not decline as
rapidly nor as completely in 1948 as they did in 1947.
These data suggest that the initial spring rains made the soil
a suitable environment for coccidia for several weeks. They also
suggest that coccidia oocysts sporulated and infected most of the
pheasants, and these then were responsible for depositing the
large numbers of oocysts found three weeks after they were in
the pens. The decline of the numbers of oocysts in the samples
160 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
was thought to be due to the fewer numbers deposited after three
weeks, the rapid disintegration of the oocysts with the onset of
dry weather, and the fact that the pheasants after five weeks,
had access to the runs and were therefore less crowded and were
depositing fewer oocysts in the area of the shelter pen.
Graphs 1 and 2 show that only a small number of Heterakis
eggs were found within the first 30 to 40 days after the pheas-
ants were placed in the pens. Non-embryonated eggs were found
from four to seven weeks after the chicks were placed in the
pens. Embryonated eggs were found with them during the sev¬
enth week after the pheasants were on the ground in both 1947
and 1948. A sharp increase in the numbers of eggs was noted
between the ninth and twelfth weeks. In 1947 the increase
occurred between the ninth and eleventh weeks while in 1948 the
increase was between the tenth and twelfth weeks.
Capillaria eggs were also found in small numbers during the
early part of the brooding season and remained in small numbers
for six to seven weeks in both years (Graphs 1 and 2). In 1947,
on the seventh and eighth week after the pheasants were on the
ground, eggs increased in the samples, until on the ninth to
eleventh week relatively large numbers of Capillaria eggs were
found. The data show a similar situation in 1948, indicating that
there was a steady increase in the numbers of these eggs from
the seventh to the twelfth week.
Since few disintegrated Heterakis or Capillaria eggs were
found, the data suggest that these eggs were not destroyed by
the hot dry weather and that most of those deposited remained
in the soil throughout the brooding season.
It is evident from Graphs 1 and 2 that there were large num¬
bers of Heterakis and Capillaria eggs in the shelter pens in the
fall, and that they had been deposited in moderate numbers even
when the pheasants had access to the runs. In the spring when
the new hatch of pheasants was placed on the soil, the numbers
of Heterakis and Capillaria eggs were much reduced. There was
an average of 10.7 Heterakis eggs per cubic centimeter of soil
in the fall of 1947, just before the pheasants were removed from
the brooder line, but at the beginning of the 1948 season the
same pens had an average of only 0.2 Heterakis eggs per cubic
centimeter of soil. Thus over 98% of the eggs has disappeared
over the winter. There was an average of 6.4 Capillaria eggs per
cubic centimeter of soil over the winter when the pens were not
in use. Eimeria oocysts were undetected in the soil in the spring
of 1947 when a large number of samples were examined before
the pheasants were placed on the ground. In 1948 no data were
gathered from the pens before the pheasants were on the ground,
1952] Guilford & Herrick— Co ccidia of Pheasants 161
but nine days after they were placed in the shelter pens, soil
samples disclosed only unsporulated oocysts indicating that they
were from fresh infections. This agrees with the results of
Warner (1938), Delaphane and Stewart (1933), Patterson
(1933) and Farr and Wehr (1949), all of whom worked on the
survival of oocysts on the soil.
The numbers of Syngamus eggs are not shown on the graphs
because their appearance in the soil samples was erratic. At some
time during the latter part of the summer of 1947, disintegrated
gapeworm eggs were found in all but one of the ten pens. Their
presence followed a high incidence of gapeworm symptoms in
the early and middle part of August. Very few gapeworm eggs
were found in 1948. Since the weather was hot and dry during
both brooding seasons, and even though gapeworm eggs were
deposited in a viable state during both brooding seasons, evi¬
dence from soil samples indicated that very few, if any, of the
Syngamus eggs survived long enough on the sandy soil of the
Wisconsin State Game and Fur Farm to infect pheasants. Thus
even though pheasants can become infected with gapeworms by
ingesting the embryonated eggs it was a minor factor. Soil sam¬
ples were taken during the last week of July from a game farm
where a large amount of spilled feed and droppings held the
moisture in the soil. At this time the pheasants had been on the
ground for seven weeks. These samples were taken from five
pens and examined in the same manner as previously described.
There were respectively 40, 18, 16, 26, and 82 viable gapeworm
eggs per cubic centimeter in these pens, indicating that moist
conditions were necessary for the maintenance of gapeworm
eggs.
Summary and Conclusions
A reliable technique for removing Heterakis eggs, Capillaria
eggs and Syngamus eggs, and Eimeria oocysts from the soil was
used to study seasonal fluctuations in the numbers of these para¬
sitic contaminants in the soil of pheasant shelter pens on the
Wisconsin State Game and Fur Farm.
Specimens of soil were gathered weekly from the same ten
pens during the 1947 and 1948 brooding seasons.
Eimeria oocysts increased from a negligible number to an
average of 1,106 per cubic centimeter of soil in 1947 and an
average 921 in 1948, within three weeks after the pheasants
were placed in the shelter pens. The numbers of oocysts declined
in the fourth and fifth weeks, and only small numbers of them
could be found from the fifth to the twelfth week after the
pheasants were placed on the ground.
162 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
Heterakis eggs average 1.6 eggs per cubic centimeter of soil
at the beginning of the brooding season of 1947, and 0.2 eggs
per cubic centimeter of soil at the beginning of the 1948 brood¬
ing season. They increased in numbers during the late part of
the brooding season in both years and on the eleventh week in
1947 they averaged 10.7 eggs per cubic centimeter, and on the
twelfth week in 1948 they averaged 18.8 eggs per cubic centi¬
meter of soil. There was a 98% decrease of these eggs over the
winter when the pens were not in use.
Capillaria eggs averaged 1.0 eggs per cubic centimeter of soil
at the beginning of the 1947 brooding season, and 0.2 eggs per
cubic centimeter of soil at the beginning of the 1948 brooding
season. They increased in numbers during the late part of the
brooding season in both years, and on the eleventh week in 1947
they averaged 6.4 eggs per cubic centimeter of soil. There was a
decrease of 97% in the number of these eggs over the winter
when the pens were not in use.
Syngamus eggs were found to be disintegrated in the soil of
hot, dry pens, but on another game farm where the soil was
moist and covered with feed and droppings many viable gape-
worm eggs were found in samples of soil.
Acknowledgements
The writers express sincere appreciation to director William
Ouborn and assistant director B. A. Barger of the Wisconsin
State Game and Fur Farm, and to all of the workmen, particu¬
larly Mr. Fuller and Mr. Grunkie, who with the spirit of co¬
operation and the willingness to spend time on extra details in
addition to their regular duties, made these studies possible.
Literature Cited
Andrews, J., and H. Tsuchiya. 1931. The distribution of coccidial oocysts
on a poultry farm in Maryland. Poultry Sci. 10:320-327.
Delaphane, J. P., and H. O. Stuart. 1933. The survival of avian coccidia
in soil. Poultry Sci. 14:67-69.
Farr, Marion M., and Everett E. Wehr. 1949. Survival of Eimeria acer-
vulina , E. tenella, and E. maxima oocysts on soil under various field
conditions. Ann. New York Acad. Sci. 52(4) :468-472.
Patterson, F. D. 1933. Studies on the viability of Eimeria tenella in soil.
Cornell Vet. 23:232-249.
Stevenson, R. T. 1943. Factors influencing infection of ranch raised silver
foxes with Toxicara canis. Ph.D. thesis. Univ. Wis.
Warner, D. E. 1933. Survival of coccidia of the chicken in soil and on the
surface of eggs. Poultry Sci. 12:343-348.
PRELIMINARY LIST OF HARVESTMEN OF WISCONSIN
WITH A KEY TO GENERA*
Lorna R. Levi and Herbert W. Levi
University of Wisconsin Extension Center , Wausau
After several years of intensive spider collecting, the authors
found that they had accumulated also a moderate number of
harvestmen. It was felt that if this collection were worked up,
the information obtained from it might be of value or of interest,
as no other list of the order has been compiled for this state.
However, this list can not be considered complete, and further
collecting must be done.
The papers of Davis and Bishop were found useful in making
determinations. Dr. and Mrs. C. Goodnight very kindly identified
those individuals which presented difficulties. Sincere thanks are
offered to them as well as to Sister Mary Melanie and her stu¬
dents, Professor A. Hasler, Dr. N. Collias, Dr. D. Lowrie, Mr. R.
Hunt, Miss R. Schiferl, and all others who contributed to the
collection.
Thanks are also extended to Professors L. E. Noland and N. C.
Fassett for help and encouragement which made possible several
collecting trips throughout Wisconsin in the summer of 1949.
Artificial Key to the Genera of Wisconsin Harvestmen
A. Some or all coxae with anterior and/or posterior marginal rows of
denticles (fig. 1) ; terminal claw of palp toothed ventrally at base
(fig. 3).
About 8 species, males ranging from 3.5 to 6 mm. in length. .Leiobunum
AA. Coxae smooth, spiny or hairy, but never with marginal rows of
denticles; terminal claw of palp absent, or if present, not toothed.
B. Terminal claw of palp absent.
C. Palp very long and slender, almost as long as first pair
of legs; tibia and tarsus not swollen and only sparsely
armed with fine setae.
Male about 1 mm. in length . Crosby cus
CC. Palp stout; tibia and tarsus swollen and densely armed
with bristles (fig. 2).
Male about 3 mm. in length . Sabacon
* Supported in part by the Research Committee of the Graduate School of the
University of Wisconsin from funds supplied by the Wisconsin Alumni Research
Foundation.
168
164 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
1952]
Levi & Levi — Harvestmen of Wisconsin
165
BB. Terminal claw of palp present.
D. Femur of palp with a ventro-lateral row of 3 to 10 stout
spines, the longest being as long or almost as long as
the femur is thick (fig. 9) ; femur of palp with a promi¬
nent distal median process (fig. 8) ; femurs of legs with
bristles or hairs.
E. Eye tubercle nearly as wide as the thorax, and one
third as long as the body (fig. 7) ; eye tubercle
smooth and with a broad longitudinal canal; ante¬
rior margin of carapace in front of eye tubercle
smooth; femur of palp only with distal median
process.
Male about 1.4 mm. in length. . . Caddo
EE. Eye tubercle less than one sixth as wide as thorax,
and less than one third length of thorax alone (fig.
1) ; eye tubercle with a row of spines on either side
of the narrow longitudinal canal; anterior margin
of carapace in front of eye tubercle with 3 stout
spines; femur, patella and tibia of palp all with
distal median processes (fig. 8).
Male about 5 mm. in length . Odiellus
DD. Femur of palp with bristles, but no stout spines; palp
segments without prominent distal processes; femurs of
legs with rows of stout spines.
F. Tibia of fourth leg distinctly angular in cross-
section, with rows of short setae on the angles (fig.
4) ; males have a prominent spur on the second
segment of the chelicerae (fig. 6).
Male about 6 mm. in length . Phalangium
FF. Tibia of fourth leg round in cross-section with
longitudinal rows of spines and hairs (fig. 5) ;
males without spur on chelicerae.
Male about 5 mm. in length . Opilio
Class Arachnida
Order Phalangida (Opiliones)
Suborder Palpatores
Family Nemastomatidae Simon
Genus Crosbycus Roewer 1914
Crosbycus dasycmenus (Crosby), 1911. Taylor County: Che-
quamegon National Forest. This single specimen was found in
Sphagnum.
Family Ischyropsalidae Simon
Genus Sabacon Simon 1879
Sabacon crassipalpe (L. Koch), 1879. Grant County: Wyalu-
sing State Park. Kewaunee County: north of Kewaunee.
Shawano County: Neopit. This and the following species prob-
166 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
ably occur in much greater numbers than this collection indi¬
cates. However, partly because of their small size, they may be
easily overlooked.
Genus Caddo Banks 1892
Caddo agilis Banks, 1892. Douglas County: Cedar Island,
Brule.
Genus Odiellus Roewer 1923
Odiellus pictus (Wood), 1870. Douglas County: Pattison State
Park; Cedar Island, Brule. Fond du Lac County: Mauthe Lake,
Kettle Morain State Park. Langlade County: Polar. Lincoln
County : five miles west of Corning.
Genus Phalangium Linnaeus 1758
Phalangium opilio Linnaeus, 1758. This species is very common
in all parts of Wisconsin.
Genus Opilio Herbst 1778
Opilio parietinus (De Geer), 1778. Crawford County: Prairie
du Chien. Marathon County: Nutterville.
Genus Leiobunum C. L. Koch 1839
Leiobunum calcar (Wood), 1870. Ashland County: Copper
Falls State Park. Door County: Peninsula State Park; Pota-
watomi State Park. Florence County: Tipler, Nicolet National
Forest. Grant County: Fennimore.
Leiobunum flavum Banks, 1894. Grant County: Wyalusing
State Park. Vernon County: Timber Coulee, Coon Valley.
Leiobunum longipes longipes Weed, 1887. This species is com¬
mon in southern and central Wisconsin, but we have no records
of it from counties north of Lincoln County, though it probably
does occur farther north.
Leiobunum nigropalpi (Wood), 1870. Ashland County: Copper
Falls State Park. Forest County: Laona. Jackson County: Castle
Rock Roadside Park. Oneida County: Lake Tomahawk. Price
County: Chequamegon National Forest, Memorial Grove. Wal¬
worth County : Wychwood ; College Camp.
Leiobunum politum Weed, 1889. Adams County: Roche a Cri
Roadside Park. Ashland County : Copper Falls State Park.
Buffalo County: Merrick State Park. Chippewa County: Brunet
Island State Park. Douglas County: Pattison State Park; Cedar
Island, Brule. Fond du Lac County: Mauthe Lake, Kettle
Moraine State Park. Forest County : Laona. Manitowoc County :
1952]
Levi & Levi — Harvestmen of Wisconsin
167
Point Beach State Forest. Oconto County: Machickanee County
Forest. Price County: Chequamegon National Forest. Trem¬
pealeau County: Perrot State Park. Vernon County: Coon Valley;
Wildcat Mountain State Park. Walworth County: Fontana.
Leiobunum ventricosum ventricosum (Wood), 1870. Douglas
County: Cedar Island, Brule. Florence County: Tipler. Grant
County: Wyalusing State Park. Walworth County: Wychwood;
College Camp.
Leiobunum verrucosum (Wood), 1870. Waushara County:
Wautoma.
Leiobunum vittatum (Say), 1821. This species is very common
in all parts of Wisconsin.
Literature Cited
Bishop, S. C. 1949. The Phalangida of New York. Proc. Rochester Acad.
Sci. 9(3) :159-235.
Davis, N. W. 1934. A Revision of the Genus Leiobunum of the United
States. Amer. Midland Nat. 15(6) :662-705.
Kastner, A. 1928. Opiliones. Die Tierwelt Deutschlands. 8:1-49.
Roewer, C. Fr. 1923. Die Weberknechte der Erde. Gustav Fischer, Jena.
1116 pp.
Walker, M. E. 1928. A Revision of the Order Phalangida of Ohio. Ohio
Biol. Survey. 4(4) :153-175.
SOME EFFECTS OF THIOURACIL IN THE GERMAN
BROWN TROUT1
Eldon D. Warner
Zoology Department, University of Wisconsin
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
The goiterogenic action of thiourea in fish has been demon¬
strated by Goldsmith, et al. (1944) . In experiments on viviparous
hybrids of Platypoecilus maculatus x Xiphophorus hellerii, these
workers found that the drug inhibited growth and development
and brought about thyroid changes similar to those described in
the higher vertebrates. The present study was undertaken to
determine the effects of the related compound, thiouracil, on the
eggs and fry of the German brown trout ( Salmo trutta fario).
Materials and Methods
Five hundred developing trout eggs were obtained 16 days
after fertilization from the State Fish Hatchery at Madison,
Wisconsin. Approximately half of the eggs were placed on a tray
constructed of plastic screen and suspended in a 12-liter battery
jar containing a 0.033% thiouracil2 solution. The remaining eggs,
serving as controls, were similarly suspended in a jar of water.
Continuous aeration was supplied by an aquarium pump. The
liquids in both experimental and control containers were changed
twice weekly, the water used having been drawn from the tap
at least three days prior to any given change. In order to main¬
tain the low temperatures necessary for trout development, the
battery jars were placed in a large galvanized tank through
which cold tap water circulated. During the course of the experi¬
ment (from mid November until early May) the water tempera¬
tures varied from 8 to 15 degrees centigrade. Temperature
changes from day to day were small and were the same in both
battery jars. The effects of thiouracil on egg mortality and hatch¬
ing time were noted.
Five days after hatching, 50 fry from thiouracil-treated eggs
were transferred to 3-liter jars containing 0.033% thiouracil
solutions. On the same day 100 fry from control eggs were placed
in 3-liter jars of water. The two experimental and four control
jars each contained 25 young trout. Twenty-six days later the
1 Supported by a grant from the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation.
a Courtesy of Lederle Laboratories.
169
170 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
water in two of the control jars was replaced by 0.033% thioura-
cil. Thus, two groups of thiouracil-treated fish were under obser¬
vation, Series I having been immersed in the solution from the
16th day of embryonic life and Series II from the 31st day after
hatching. The procedures for aeration, changing of liquids, and
maintenance of low water temperatures were the same as de¬
scribed for the eggs. Beginning 25 days after hatching, the young
trout were fed finely chopped fresh beef liver three times weekly.
At intervals during the experiment, eggs and fry were pre¬
served in Bouin’s fluid for histological study. Transverse serial
sections of the head and anterior body regions were cut at 10
micra and stained with Delafield’s hematoxylin and eosin.
Results and Discussion
Egg mortality and hatching: In Figure 1, a graphic compari¬
son is made between experimental and control eggs as to mor¬
tality and hatching time. Of the eggs developing in thiouracil,
13% died before or during the hatching period. The correspond¬
ing figure for the control eggs was 9%. Thiouracil, therefore,
had only a slight toxic effect.
Figure 1. Percentages of thiouracil-treated and control trout eggs hatched
between the 35th and 41st days after fertilization.
1952]
Warner — Thiouracil in Trout
171
Hatching in the experimental jar took place between the 36th
and 41st days after the eggs were fertilized. The greatest inci¬
dence was on the 39th day when 39% of the eggs hatched. In the
control jar, the process began on the 31st day and continued until
the 40th day with a peak of 52 % of the eggs hatching on the 38th
day. Thus, thiouracil produced a slight but definite delay in
hatching. These results are confirmed by an earlier unpublished
experiment (Warner, 1948) in which trout eggs developing in
0.033% solutions of thiourea and thiouracil were retarded about
24 hours in their hatching as compared to eggs developing in
suspensions of carp pituitary powder and in water. Similarly,
Grossowitz (1946) reported delays up to ten days in the hatching
of hen’s eggs after treatment with varying doses of thiourea.
Although thiouracil treatment brought about a delay in the
hatching of trout eggs, histological examination revealed no dif¬
ferences between experimental and control thyroids in fish pre¬
served at that time. Therefore, it cannot be stated with certainty
that the delay was the result of thiouracil-induced hypothy¬
roidism.
Later development: For nine weeks after hatching the young
trout appeared to be in good health, but between the 67th and
77th days a period of excessive mortality ensued. Inadequate
diet and overcrowding were two of the more probable factors in¬
volved in the large number of fatalities. The incidence of death
was highest among the Series I fry, only three individuals sur¬
viving until the 84th day when that portion of the experiment
was terminated. At that time 12 Series II fry and 16 controls
remained alive and in good condition. With the exception of
specimens preserved at intervals for histological study these fish
were observed until they attained an age of 154 days.
Certain external effects of thiouracil treatment became appar¬
ent during the post-hatching period. A delay in yolk-sac resorp¬
tion was observed among the experimental fry of Series I. Six
weeks after hatching this structure was still prominent in 50%
of the thiouracil-treated individuals but was conspicuous in only
15% of the controls. Since the thyroids of the experimental fry
were markedly enlarged at this time, the delay can be attributed
to a hypothyroid condition brought about by thiouracil treat¬
ment. In the Series II fish no thyroid changes had occurred and
there was no delay in yolk-sac resorption.
After immersion in thiouracil for 85 days (64 days post¬
hatching) bright reddish areas appeared in the ventral pharyn¬
geal and pericardial regions of all Series I fry. The same situa¬
tion developed in the Series II fish after 93 days of thiouracil
treatment. This condition seemed to be due at least in part to an
172 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
engorgement of the ventral aorta and its tributaries associated
with enlargement of the thyroid gland.
Between the 3rd and 44th days after hatching, the average
body length of 25 Series I trout selected at random increased
from 14.7mm to 27.1mm while over the same period an equal
number of control fry similarly selected increased from 15.7mm |
to 27.8mm. Subsequent measurements on the 55th and 68th days ;
after hatching showed no further gain in average body length
among either experimental or control fry. It should be pointed
out that this cessation of growth coincided roughly with yolk-sac
resorption and immediately preceded the period of heavy mor¬
tality. It is possible, therefore, that the fry could not adapt them¬
selves to the changeover from a yolk-sac type of nutrition to a
liver diet. Overcrowding may also have been an important factor
in growth stoppage and subsequent death. Among the Series II
fry and their controls, some growth occurred during the later
stages of the experiment. At 154 days after hatching, five
thiouracil-treated fish had attained an average length of 33.9mm
while six controls of the same age averaged 35.8mm. The fore¬
going measurements reveal no striking impairment by thiouracil
of growth in length in either series of experimental fish.
Other more subjective changes in body proportion, coloration,
and behavior were apparent in both Series I and Series II fry
toward the end of the periods of thiouracil treatment. Several of
the experimental fish presented a slightly humpbacked appear¬
ance. The head was relatively short and blunt and the gill region
from a ventral view was abnormally broad. The body was com¬
paratively thin in many cases although this may have been due
in part to a lack of food in the alimentary canal. The vertical
bands of dark pigment cells along the flanks were smaller and
less well defined in a greater proportion of thiouracil-treated fry
than in the controls. The experimental fish were for the most
part more sluggish in their movements and less voracious in
their feeding habits than the untreated fry.
Thyroid Histology: Histological studies of control thyroids
(Figures 3 and 5) were made in conjunction with similar obser¬
vations on both series of thiouracil-treated fish. As a result some
aspects of normal thyroid development were noted which seem
worthy of mention. They are summarized as follows :
(1) Small thyroid follicles containing colloid were first seen in
27 day embryos.
(2) In embryonic and early post-hatching stages the thyroid
follicles were found in two separate groups close to the ventral
aorta near the junctions of the first and second branchial arter¬
ies. In older fry, follicles were seen in almost all pharyngeal
Figure 2. Thyroid gland of 63-day thiouracil-treated fry showing follic¬
ular hypertrophy, hyperplasia and loss of colloid. Transverse section at
level of second branchial artery. C, cartilage of lower jaw; A, ventral
aorta; F, thyroid follicle. X258.
Figure 3. Thyroid gland of 63-day control fry. Section at level of second
branchial artery. F, thyroid follicle. X258.
Figure 4. Thyroid gland of 84-day thiouracil-treated fry showing loss of
follicular organization. Section at level of second branchial artery. X258.
Figure 5. Thyroid gland of 84-day control fry at level of second branchial
artery. X258.
1952]
Warner — Thiouracil in Trout
173
sections at the levels of the 1st and 2nd gill arches with a few
extending into the 3rd gill arch region. They were more diffusely
arranged along the aorta than in earlier stages, but the heaviest
concentrations were still near the bases of the first two pairs of
branchial arteries.
(3) An increase in number of follicles occurred during the
first two months after hatching. As an example, in a newly-
hatched fry, 12 were counted, whereas in a fish 63 days old at
least 100 were present. No marked increase beyond this number
was noted in later stages.
(4) Considerable variation in follicle size was apparent in all
stages studied. The extreme range in maximum diameters of
those measured was between 10 and 65 micra. Relatively greater
numbers of large follicles were present in older fish.
(5) Colloid was present in all follicles except those of ex¬
tremely small size, and the amount per follicle appeared to in¬
crease somewhat with age. In most cases the colloid was slightly
drawn away from the follicle cells.
(6) In young follicles the epithelium was cuboidal in nature
while in later stages low cuboidal and squamous types predomi¬
nated.
The thyroids of Series I experimental fish were studied in 16-
and 27-day embryos and in 11 stages of fry between the ages of
one and 84 days. Up to and including the time of hatching, no
effects of thiouracil treatment were evident. The first change in
thyroid histology was observed in an eight-day fry which had
been immersed in thiouracil for 29 days. Here, a loss of follicular
colloid was accompanied by a moderate cellular hypertrophy. At
25 days posthatching, marked thyroid enlargement was appar¬
ent. Colloid was almost completely absent and in several
instances the lumens of the follicles were difficult to distinguish.
In 63 day fry the thyroid had enlarged so as to fill almost the
entire connective tissue space around the aorta (Figure 2).
Measurements of several representative follicles showed a range
in maximum diameters between 30 and 170 micra. Studies of
successive sections revealed a folding or lobulation of the wall in
follicles of extreme size. The lumens in most cases were slit-like
and contained little or no colloid. Measurements of cells in the
columnar type epithelium averaged 16 micra, about four times
the height of cells in control thyroids of the same age. Distinct
hyperplasia had occurred in 77- and 84-day thyroids, but many
of the follicles, particularly in the latter stage, appeared to have
lost their organization and follicular boundaries were not easily
recognized (Figure 4). The cells for the most part were smaller
than at 63 days although considerable variation in size was
174 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
apparent. This atypical picture may have been the beginning of
thyroid exhaustion, but the specimens studied were undoubtedly
in poor health, having been preserved during or just after the
period of widespread mortality. Therefore, factors other than
thiouracil may have been involved in changing the histology of
these glands.
In the second experimental series, nine stages of fry between
the ages of 42 and 154 days were studied. Loss of colloid and
cellular hypertrophy were first observed in two 50-day speci¬
mens. These fish had undergone thiouracil treatment for 19 days,
a period of immersion ten days shorter than that required to
produce hypothyroid symptoms in the Series I fry. The thyroids
of month-old fry, therefore, appeared to be somewhat more sus¬
ceptible to the effects of thiouracil than were those of 16-day
embryos. These results may have been brought about by (1)
greater sensitivity of the older thyroids to thiouracil, or (2)
greater production or more effective utilization of thyrotrophic
hormone from the hypophysis in the older fish.
Typical hypertrophy and hyperplasia occurred in the later
Series II stages. The greatest enlargement was observed in a 154-
day fish which had been under the influence of thiouracil for 123
days. Here, the thyroid formed a continuous compact mass
around the ventral aorta throughout the gill arch region. Some
of the follicles extended dorsally to the pharyngeal epithelium
and laterally to the gill cartilages and gill arch muscles. The
vascularity of the gland was more pronounced than that observed
in younger specimens. Thus, the thyroids of Series II fry showed
a progressive increase in size and number of cells with no indi¬
cation of exhaustion in the later stages.
The picture of hypothyroidism brought about by thiouracil in
the German brown trout resembles in several respects the syn¬
drome of goiter in hatchery brook trout ( Salvelinus fontinalis)
described by Marine and Lenhart (1910) . Pharyngeal reddening,
lack of growth inhibition, sluggishness, and lowered viability
were common to both species. The changes in thyroid histology
of loss of follicular colloid, hypertrophy, hyperplasia, and migra¬
tion of follicles to outlying areas also followed the same general
pattern. The brook trout goiters were more extreme, many of
them being observable externally. This greater development may
be attributed to the more advanced age of the fish involved and
to the much longer period of exposure to the goiterogenic factor.
Another point of quantitative difference is the earlier and more
complete loss of colloid observed in the thiouracil-treated glands
of the German brown fry. The main causative agent of goiter in
the brook trout was believed to be the diet consisting of hog liver
1952]
Warner — Thiouracil in Trout
175
and heart (Marine, 1914). It is of interest to note that the beef
liver diet to which the German brown trout were subjected pro¬
duced no histological symptoms of hypothyroidism.
Effects of thiouracil in young trout were in general the same
as those obtained by Goldsmith and co-workers with thiourea in
viviparous tropical hybrids. However, marked growth inhibition
occurred in the latter fish but not in the former. Aside from
species and drug differences, another factor involved in this dis¬
crepancy may have been the lower environmental temperatures
to which the trout were exposed. As a result, the effectiveness of
thiouracil in lowering metabolic rates may have been reduced,
thereby causing less retardation of growth. The onset of histo¬
logical symptoms of hypothyroidism in the trout occurred from
20 to 30 days earlier than that reported for the tropical fish. This
would indicate a greater sensitivity of the trout thyroid.
It can be stated that the action of thiouracil in trout, particu¬
larly in its effect on thyroid histology, is comparable to that
reported for birds and mammals.
Summary
Treatment of German brown trout eggs with thiouracil pro¬
duced a slight delay in hatching time. Immersion of newly-
hatched fry in thiouracil solutions for periods up to 154 days
delayed yolk-sac resorption and decreased activity and viability,
but caused little inhibition of growth in length. Marked thyroid
enlargement occurred in fish exposed to thiouracil for more than
30 days.
Acknowledgments
Sincere appreciation is expressed to Dr. Roland K. Meyer for
his suggestion of the basic problem and his critical appraisal of
the finished paper. Special thanks are due Dr. Joseph G. Baier
for considerable time and effort spent in perfecting some of the
apparatus used in the above experiments.
References
1. Goldsmith, E. D., R. F. Nigrelli, A. S. Gordon, H. A. Charipper, and
M. Gordon. 1944. Endocrinology 35(2) :132-133.
2. Grossowitz, N. 1946. Proc. Soc. Exp. Biol. & Med. 63(1) 151-152.
3. Marine, D. and C. H. Lenhart. 1910. J. Exp. Med. 12:311-337.
4. Marine, D. 1914. J. Exp. Med. 19:70-88.
5. Warner, E. D. 1948. Unpublished data.
THE BIOLOGICAL EFFECT OF COPPER SULPHATE
TREATMENT ON LAKE ECOLOGY
Kenneth M. Mackenthun and Harold L. Cooley
Public Health Biologists, Wisconsin Committee on
Water Pollution
Introduction
The adequate control of algae is of great importance to the
people living on the shores of fertile lakes. Since copper sulphate
has been used in the control of algae for many years, many
people have questioned the effects of continued treatment upon
lake ecology. It is known that copper will accumulate upon the
lake bottom following repeated treatments. To those who are
conservation minded there is the question of what is the effect
of accumulated copper upon bottom-dwelling organisms which
are available as potential fish food. It has been pointed out by
Nichols, Henkel and McNaul (1946) that the greatest amount of
accumulated copper (Cu) is found at the greatest depths in the
lake and therefore if a toxic action were present it should exert
the greatest effort on the profundal organisms. This paper is an
outgrowth of studies designed to formulate an answer to this
basic question. It is hoped that this preliminary work will en¬
courage a greater amount of research aimed at solving the
problem of algae control.
Experimental copper sulphate treatment for the control of
algae was begun as early as 1918 on the Madison lakes. More
extensive control started in 1925 when Domogalla (1926) re¬
ported that 108,600 pounds of copper sulphate was used on Lake
Monona, a lake of 3,482 acres, between May and September.
During the early years of this program the chemical treatment
operations were not supervised by a state agency. A need existed
for some type of control over such a program and in 1938 an
Executive Order created an interdepartmental committee pres¬
ently consisting of representatives from the State Board of
Health, the Wisconsin Conservation Department, and the State
Laboratory of Hygiene. The functions of this committee are to
approve and supervise nuisance control activities and procedures
wherever conducted in the state, to conduct research to deter¬
mine the effect of control measures in the application of chem¬
icals, and to test and develop control methods that will abate
177
178 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
nuisances without serious deleterious effects upon other aquatic
life.
After many years of continuous copper sulphate treatment,
particularly on the Madison lakes, questions arose regarding the
possible deleterious effect which this treatment might have upon
the fish population of the treated waters. Hasler (1947) and
Schoenfeld (1947, 1950) were foremost in calling attention to
this possibility. The Wisconsin Committee on Water Pollution
(1939) has shown that fish will not be killed in concentrations
of copper sulphate normally used for algal control. Also, Domo-
galla (1935) found that the zooplankton was not affected by
copper sulphate treatment by eleven years of chemical treatment
of the Madison lakes. The chief criticism of algal control by this
method lay in the possible deleterious effect of accumulated
copper in the bottom muds upon bottom-dwelling organisms.
Bottom Productivity
Juday (1922) in a quantitative study of the bottom fauna of
the deeper waters of Lake Mendota found an average of 3,500
Tubifex and Limnodrilus ; 557 fingernail clams, Pisidium idaho-
ense; 593 bloodworms, Chironomus tentans ; and ±25,000 phan¬
tom chironomids, Corethra punctipennis per square meter of
bottom. A considerable variation in the density of the population
existed at different stations, at different depths, and at different
seasons of the year. The peak of the population density was
found to occur during the months of January and February.
Adamstone and Harkness (1923) and Adamstone (1924) found
that the number of bottom organisms per square meter in Lake
Nipigon, Canada, varied from 753 to 1,057. Eggleton (1934) con¬
ducted a study aimed at a comparison of the benthic population
in four lakes in northern Michigan which are geographically
closely situated but ecologically widely different. He found the
population density ranged from 294 to 7,200 organisms per
square meter. Calhoun (1944) in his study of the bottom fauna
of Blue Lake, California, found 16 to 135 organisms per one-
fourth square foot Ekman dredge haul.
In an effort to determine the possible effect of continuous
copper sulphate treatment upon bottom productivity, four lakes
were chosen for study in Wisconsin. Two of the lakes lie in the
Madison lake area and two lie in the Oconomowoc-Waukesha
lake area. Table 1 presents the physical and historical charac¬
teristics of these bodies of water.
Lake Mendota was the largest of the lakes studied and lies
above Lake Monona in the Madison lake chain. The primary
1952] Mackenthun & Cooley — Copper Sulphate Treatment 179
source of nutrients entering this body of water occur from nat¬
ural land drainage. Lake Monona, on the other hand, has re¬
ceived a portion of the sewage effluent from the City of Madison
until 1950 with the exception of a brief period between 1937 and
1942 when the Burke treatment plant was closed. In addition,
the majority of the City of Madison storm sewers discharge
directly into Lake Monona. As a result, Lake Monona has pre¬
sented a continuous algae problem, and rough fish have also
become abundant under these ecological conditions.
TABLE 1
Physical and Historical Characteristics of Waters Studied
The copper sulphate applications for algae control on Lake
Monona have been the heaviest of any waters in the state. Over
a 26-year period, 1,697,639 pounds of copper sulphate have been
applied, whereas Lake Mendota has received no appreciable
treatment. Lake Pewaukee has received a shoreline treatment
for the past three years of 26,000 pounds of copper sulphate.
Lake Nagawicka was chosen as a control since it has received no
treatment for algae control.
In the present study, all bottom samples were taken with an
Ekman dredge during the months of January and February at
a time when population abundance was at a peak. Sampling sta¬
tions were chosen along four transverse lines extending into the
deeper waters of the lake. An attempt was made to locate at least
ten stations for every ten-foot change in the contour of the lake
bottom. The samples were placed in five-quart pails after collec¬
tion and transported to the laboratory where they were screened
through a U. S. Standard #35 sieve and the organisms so re¬
tained were placed in 10% formalin for identification and
enumeration.
180 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
TABLE 2
Average Number of Organisms per Square Meter of Bottom
Figure in parenthesis represents total organisms excluding
Corethra punctipennis
* Inadequate samples to calculate averages.
At the same time, samples were retained for total copper
determinations in the bottom muds. Nichols et al. (1946) in an
extensive study of this problem, report that 18 to 1,098 milli¬
grams of copper per kilogram of bottom mud (dry weight) was
found in Lake Monona and 32 to 135 milligrams of copper per
kilogram of bottom mud (dry weight) was found in Lake Men-
dota. The greatest concentrations of copper were found in the
deeper portions of the lake and it seems that the natural grading
process tends to carry the precipitated copper compounds to the
lower levels.
The results obtained in the present study are in general agree¬
ment, but the amount of copper contained in the bottom mud of
Lake Monona is somewhat lower. The problem in recent years
has not been so acute, and the total amount of treatment conse-
TABLE 3
Relative Abundance of Various Organisms per Square Meter of Bottom
% is the per cent of occurrence in samples Ave. is the average number of organisms per square meter
1952] Mackenthun & Cooley — Copper Sulphate Treatment 181
Inadequate samples to calculate averages.
182 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
quently has been reduced. Our findings indicate that the bottom
muds of Lake Monona contain up to 480 milligrams of copper
per kilogram of mud on a dry-weight basis, whereas Lakes Naga-
wicka and Pewaukee contain up to 22 and 55, respectively.
Table 2 gives the average number of organisms found at the
various depth contours for the lakes studied, and Table 8 pre¬
sents the relative abundance of various types of organisms in
each of the lakes. It is interesting to note that the bloodworm,
Tendipes plumosus, first appeared in Lake Mendota at the 50-
foot contour and remained abundant throughout the deep-water
area. Very few of this species were observed in either Lake
Monona or Nagawicka, but they were fairly abundant through¬
out the entire Lake Pewaukee area. The phantom chironomid,
Corethra punctipennis, first appeared between the 30- and 50-
foot contours in all of the lakes. The greatest concentration of
these organisms occurred in the deeper waters of the lakes.
Oligochaeta worms were quite erratic in population density. In
Lake Mendota they were concentrated in waters in which the
depth exceeds 40 feet. Conversely in Lakes Monona and Naga¬
wicka the Oligochaeta were concentrated in shallow water up to
a depth of 50 feet, and in Lake Pewaukee very few worms were
found beyond a depth of 35 feet. The fingernail clam, Pisidium
idahoense was concentrated at the 20-30-foot contour in Lake
Mendota although they were present over the entire lake bottom.
These organisms were very rare in Lakes Monona and Naga¬
wicka, and few were found in depths exceeding 25 feet in Lake
Pewaukee. It is interesting to note that the population of pro¬
fundal organisms found in Lake Mendota during the present
survey varies from the results found by Juday only in the rela¬
tive numbers of bloodworms and phantom chironomids found
per unit area. About seven times more bloodworms were found
per unit area during the current survey but only one-tenth as
many phantom chironomids were found as compared to the 1922
survey.
The total population of bottom organisms varied greatly be¬
tween the separate waters and also between the various depths
within the same body of water. The population of bottom organ¬
isms in Lake Mendota greatly exceeded that found in any of the
other lakes. Lake Mendota further demonstrated the greatest
variation between the depth contours. Two areas of population
density occurred — one in the littoral area and one in the pro¬
fundal. The low point in population density was apparent at the
30-60-foot contour. Eggleton (1931) in his studies of two Michi¬
gan lakes found that a zone of concentration of profundal bottom
animals occurred in the upper profundal and lower sub-littoral
1952] Mackenthun & Cooley — Copper Sulphate Treatment 183
regions during the summer. This zone shifted downward in
autumn and upward in spring. The number of species and of
individuals varied with the season in different lakes and in
different depressions within the same lake.
Statistical consideration was given to the total number of
organisms per square meter for all samples taken at a depth of
30 feet or greater. Thirty-six samples were taken in excess of
30 feet in Lake Mendota. These contained a mean of 6,935 organ¬
isms per square meter with a standard deviation of 4,105 and a
standard error of the mean of 684. The 35 samples from Lake
Monona possessed a mean of 849, a standard deviation of 432,
and a standard error of the mean of 73. In Lake Nagawicka, 23
samples taken at a depth greater than 30 feet possessed a mean
of 1,619, a standard deviation of 1,795, and a standard error of
the mean of 374. The 19 samples from Lake Pewaukee had a
mean of 1,620, standard deviation of 602, and standard error of
the mean of 137. In comparing possible similarity between any
two sets of data, Lakes Monona and Nagawicka, as well as Lakes
Pewaukee and Nagawicka, were found to be significant. All other
combinations of data are not significant.
Toxicity of Precipitated Copper Sulphate to
Bottom Organisms
Experiments were conducted to determine the effect of pre¬
cipitated copper sulphate mixed in known quantities of lake mud
upon bottom-dwelling organisms. Commercial copper sulphate
was precipitated in hard lake water and a weighed portion of the
precipitate suspension was thoroughly mixed in a small amount
of lake mud from untreated Lake Mendota by means of a Waring
Blendor. The stock mud was then thoroughly mixed, by means of
an electric mixer, in varying proportions with normal lake mud
and one kilogram was placed in each of several identical test
jars. After the mud was superimposed with one litre of lake
water, normal organisms removed from Lake Mendota were
placed in each of the test jars. A total of 25 Tendipes plumosus
and 15 Pisidium idahoense were placed in each. The experimental
jars were placed in a constant temperature water bath at 9°C.
for 60 days. The experimental organisms were counted at the
end of 30 days and again at the end of 60 days. Two controls
were established for each set of 10 experimental jars. The re¬
sults of the experiments (A.B.C. and D.) are tabulated at the
end of the paper. In one experiment with copper concentrations
as high as 750 milligrams per kilogram of mud on a dry weight
184 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
Experiment A
Copper concentration of 750 mg. /kg. (dry mud) by laboratory analysis.
Experiment B
Copper concentration of 2,000 mg. /kg. (dry mud) by laboratory analysis.
2Copper concentration of 2,680 mg. /kg. (dry mud) by laboratory analysis.
3Copper concentration of 2,500 mg. /kg. (dry mud) by laboratory analysis.
1952] Mackenthun & Cooley — Copper Sulphate Treatment 185
basis, (Experiment A), an 80% survival was found in both the
control and experimental jars. Similar results were obtained in
an experiment containing copper concentrations of 2,700 milli¬
grams per kilogram of mud on a dry-weight basis (Experiment
B). A third experiment (C) was run with copper concentrations
up to 21,000 milligrams per kilogram of mud on a dry-weight
basis although it is not expected that one would encounter such
a condition in the natural state. A severe mortality was encoun-
Experiment C
*Water was unavoidably discontinued in water baths with the result that tempera¬
tures rose beyond the limit of tolerance.
Experiment D
186 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
tered in the Chironomus larvae at the end of 30 days on the test
jars containing 9,600 milligrams or more per kilogram of mud
on a dry- weight basis. On the other hand, 79% of the fingernail
clams were alive in the 11,200 milligram test jar at the end of
60 days, and 21% of the fingernail claims survived a concentra¬
tion of 17,400 milligrams per kilogram of mud on a dry-weight
basis for a period of 60 days.
In an effort to determine whether or not Lake Mendota organ¬
isms would survive in muds from other lakes under similar ex¬
perimental conditions, these organisms were placed in bottom
mud from six lakes (Experiment D) including Lake Monona
with a copper content of 450 milligrams per kilogram of mud
(dry weight) . The 60-day survival rate was not indicative of any
toxic quality in the Lake Monona mud.
Conclusions
1. Although the toxic limit of copper sulphate, precipitated
and accumulated in bottom muds, upon certain types of bottom¬
dwelling organisms could not be accurately determined in the
time allotted, laboratory tests indicate that it is near 9,000 parts
per million copper on a dry-weight basis.
2. Results of these studies indicate that the accumulation of
copper (Cu) in bottom muds, resulting from the use of copper
sulphate to control algae in hard water lakes, is considerably
lower in concentration than the amounts experimentally deter¬
mined to have a deleterious effect on the profundal bottom¬
dwelling organisms studied.
3. From the results of these studies it is indicated that differ¬
ences occurring in the population density of bottom organisms
in the four lakes studied are due to ecological variables within
these separate bodies of water.
Acknowledgment
Grateful acknowledgment is given to the Sub-Committee on
Aquatic Nuisance Control whose support and guidance made this
study possible, to the Wisconsin Conservation Department for
providing laboratory facilities in which tests and experiments
were conducted, and to Dorothy McNaul, Chemist of the State
Laboratory of Hygiene, for making the numerous copper deter¬
minations.
1952] Mackenthun & Cooley — Copper Sulphate Treatment 187
Literature Cited
1. Adamstone, F. B. and Harkness, W. J. K. 1923. The Bottom Organisms
of Lake Nipigon. Univ. Toronto Stud.; Publ. Ont. Fish. Res. Lab.
15:123-170.
2. Adamstone, F. B. 1924. The Distribution and Economic Importance of
the Bottom Fauna of Lake Nipigon, with an appendix on the Bottom
Fauna of Lake Ontario. Univ. Toronto Stud.; Publ. Ont. Fish. Res.
Lab., 24:33-100.
3. Calhoun, A. J. 1944. The Bottom Fauna of Blue Lake, (San Francisco)
Calif. Calif. Fish and Game, Vol. 30, No. 2, pp. 86-94.
4. Domogalla, Bernard. 1926. Treatment of Algae and Weeds in Lakes
at Madison, Wisconsin. Engineering News-Record, December 9, 1926,
pp. 3-7.
5. Domogalla, Bernard. 1935. Eleven Years of Chemical Treatment of
the Madison Lakes — Its Effects on Fish and Fish Foods. Trans. Amer.
Fish. Soc., 65:115-120.
6. Eggleton, Frank E. 1931. A Limnological Study of the Profundal
Bottom Fauna in Certain Fresh-water Lakes. Ecol. Monogr. 1(3):
231-331. 63 fig.
7. Eggleton, Frank E. 1934. A Comparative Study of the Benthic Fauna
of Four Northern Michigan Lakes. Papers of the Mich. Acad. Sci.,
Arts and Lett., Vol. XX pp. 609-634. Published in 1935.
8. Hasler, Arthur D. 1947. Antibiotic Aspects of Copper Treatment of
Lakes. Wis. Acad. Sci., Arts and Letters. 39 :97-103.
9. Juday, C. 1914. The Inland Lakes of Wisconsin — The Hydrography and
Morphometry of the Lakes. Wis. Geol. and Nat. Hist. Surv. Bull. 27.
Sci. Ser.: 1-137.
10. Juday, C. 1922. Quantitative Studies of the Bottom Fauna in the Deeper
Waters of Lake Mendota. Trans. Wis. Acad. Sci., Arts and Letters,
20:461-493.
11. Moore, Geo. T. and Kellerman, Karl F. 1904. A Method of Destroying
or Preventing the Growth of Algae and Certain Pathogenic Bacteria
in Water Supplies. Bulletin 64, Bureau of Plant Industry, U. S.
Department of Agriculture.
12. Moyle, John B. 1949. The Use of Copper Sulphate for Algae Control
and its Biological Implications. Limnological Aspects of Water Supply
and Waste Disposal. Pub. of the Amer. Assoc, for the Adv. of Sci.,
Washington, D. C. : 79-87.
13. Nichols, M. Starr, Theresa Henkel and Dorothy McNaul. 1946.
Copper in Lake Muds from Lakes of the Madison Area. Trans. Wis.
Acad. Sci., 38:333-350.
14. Sawyer, C. N., J. B. Lackey and A. T. Lenz. 1945. An Investigation of
the Odor Nuisance Occurring in the Madison Lakes, Particularly
Monona, Waubesa, and Kegonsa from July, 1943-July, 1944. Rept.
Governor’s Committee, 92 pp., 25 fig., 27 tables.
15. Schoenfeld, C. 1947. Don’t Let ’em Spray. Field and Stream, No. 4:
46, 79, 80, 81, August.
16. Schoenfeld, C. 1950. The Case Against Copper. Hunting and Fishing,
11, 12, July.
17. Wisconsin Committee on Water Pollution. 1939. Chemical Treat¬
ment of Lakes and Streams. Wis. State Bd. Health, Comm, on Water
Pollution.
18. Wisconsin Committee on Water Pollution. 1946. Aquatic Nuisance
Control in Wisconsin. 35 pp. Madison, Wisconsin.
THE RELIGIOUS CONVICTIONS OF THE ABBE PROVOST
Berenice Cooper
State College , Superior , Wisconsin
Information about the Abbe Prevost is limited even for the
scholar, and for the average reader who is not curious about
Ph.D. dissertations and the publications of learned societies, or
who does not read French or German with ease, there is prac¬
tically nothing.
Of course, opera-lovers are aware that the librettos of Puc¬
cini’s Manon and of Massenet’s Manon Lescaut are based upon a
sentimental novel by Antoine Francois Prevost, and students of
French literature know the abbe as an eighteenth-century nov¬
elist, who in addition to Manon Lescaut, wrote a number of long-
winded and seldom-read romances and translated the novels of
Richardson into French. Histories of French literature give a
few pages to Prevost as a sentimental novelist and as a jour¬
nalist who by his Pour et Contre sought to promote better Anglo-
French relations in literature. Encyclopedias, except for the
Roman Catholic Encyclopedia, give a brief sketch of his work
and of his life.
But this scant recognition is accorded him only as a writer of
romances, a translator, and a journalist. His contribution to the
history of religious toleration and to the development of religious
liberalism has been almost entirely ignored. Those few scholars
who have written about Prevost in connection with the religious
and philosophical controversies of his time, have connected him
with Jansenism, partly on the basis of a few passages in Manon
Lescaut and partly on the basis of his quarrels with the Jesuits.1
All critical evaluations have failed to consider the more impor¬
tant evidence of his later work, Le Philosophe anglais ,2 and they
1 For a discussion of arguments for Pr§vost’s Jansenism, see Henri Harrisse,
La Vie monastique de Vabbe Prdvost (Paris: Le Clerc, 1903), pp. 25-29, 49-50;
Paul Hazard, “JansSnisme”, Etudes critique sur Manon Lescaut (Chicago: Univer¬
sity of Chicago Press, 1924), pp. 47-69; Eugene Lasserre, Manon Lescaut de Vabbe
Pr&vost (Paris: Soci§t§ Frangaise d’Editions Litteraires et Techniques, 1930), pp.
90-118; Andre de Maricourt, Ce bon Abb6 Prevost (Paris: Hachette, 1932), pp.
101-09 ; Franz Pauli, Die Philosophischen Grundanschauungen in den Romanen de
Abbe Provost, im besonderen Manon Lescaut (Marburg: Ebel, 1912), pp. 13—92.
2 It should be noted in justice to both Hazard and Lasserre that they have
pointed out the fact that Prdvost revised a passage on grace in the 1753 edition
of Manon Lescaut, ten years after he had completed Le Philosophe anglais, and
that Professor Hazard in his paper “Un romantique de 1730 : l’abbS PrSvost,”
Harvard Tercentenary Publications: Authority and the Individual (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press. 1937), says, “II hesite ; quelquefois il est pour les
accommodements qui rendent moins penible la voie du salut, comme les Jesuits ;
189
190 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
have misinterpreted his quarrel with the Jesuits as indicating
that he sympathized with their enemies.
A careful reading of Le Philosophe anglais will show that the
satire of the Jesuits in this novel is a consistent part of a book
which has for its purpose the exposure of narrow sectarianism,
bigotry, and casuistic interpretation of dogma both Protestant
and Catholic. Jansenists and Protestants come off no better than
do Jesuits when judged by Cleveland’s standards for what he
designates as “true religion”: that it must satisfy his reason,
that it must be consistent with principles of love and justice
toward fellow-men, and that it must furnish strength and com¬
fort in time of sorrow.3
Since Prevost states in the preface to Le Philosophe anglais
that his own opinions are identical with those of Cleveland,4 this
novel becomes important in any estimate of the author’s char¬
acter and religious convictions. Furthermore, it was written over
a period of six or seven years when Prevost was resolving the
conflict in his own mind, and although the first part was pub¬
lished soon after the publication of Manon Lescaut, the second
part, containing the clear statement of Cleveland’s religious
views, was not published until 1738-39, four and five years after
Prevost apparently had resolved the conflict in his own opinions.
To understand the significance of Le Philosophe anglais as an
expression of the religious convictions of Prevost, one should
first look at the relation of the writing and the publication of the
novel to the story of the early life of the author. The biography
of Antoine Francois Prevost d’Exiles is a drama of intense re¬
ligious conflict finally resolved by reconciliation with the church
and the order which exiled him.
His life from the age of sixteen until his twenty-third year was
a stormy conflict between the world and the cloister. Twice he
ran away to the army from his novitiate in the Society of Jesus.
After the Jesuits had forgiven him and taken him back the sec¬
ond time, he decided to enter the Benedictine order. We have his
own words for it that he took his vows with mental reservations
which he felt justified his breaking them later.5
After seven years as a Benedictine in various houses of that
order, the abbe was at Saint-Maur where the discipline was espe¬
cially strict, and he applied for papal permission to transfer to
quelquefois il pense, comme les Jansenistes . . p. 302. But Professor Hazard
here as always when he writes of Provost treats him as an instable person, not a
serious thinker.
3 Le Philosophe anglais (Rouen: Racine, 1785), V, vii, 4-15.
4 Ibid. I, “Preface,” ii.
5 Letter to Dom Clement de la Rue, quoted by Harrisse, L’abbe Prevost, (Paris :
Levy, 1896), p. 163.
1952]
Cooper — Abbe Prevost
191
the less rigid discipline of the house at Cluny.* * 6 Papal permission
was slow in coming, although Prevost maintained that his supe¬
rior deliberately kept the papal dispensation lying upon his desk
after it arrived. Whatever may be the truth about that matter,
the impatient Prevost fled to Holland and then to England,
becoming for six years Prevost d’Exiles.
It was during his period of exile that he brought out the first
four volumes of Le Philosophe anglais ou histoire de Monsieur
Cleveland, fils naturel de Cromwel, ecrite par lui-meme, et
traduite de Vanglois par V auteur des Memoir es d’un homme de
qualite. The last four volumes were not published until 1738-39,
after his return to the church in 1734, and the content of each
of the two parts is related to the exile and to the reconciliation,
if Prevost spoke sincerely in saying that his opinions agreed with
Cleveland’s.
This story of Mr. Cleveland Prevost attempted to represent as
a true biography based upon a manuscript given him by Cleve¬
land’s son. He made so elaborate a pretense that he published an
English translation of his French manuscript before the book
came off the press.7 But during the controversies provoked by
the publication of Cleveland, as the book is often called, he forgot
his elaborate pretense and began to defend his purpose in writing
Le Philosophe anglais.
The four volumes of 1731-32 tell the story of Cleveland’s
being educated by his mother in the principles of moral phil¬
osophy and natural religion,8 of the failure of this philosophy
to endue his soul with strength sufficient to bear great sorrow,
and of his disillusionment first with moral philosophy and nat¬
ural religion and then with revealed religion as presented in
turn by a Protestant minister, a Jansenist, and a Jesuit. No one
of these representatives of organized religion comes off well dur¬
ing Cleveland’s examination of what each group has to offer as a
substitute for the views he has discarded.
Although Prevost is equally severe in his satire of the claims
of each one, only the Jesuits seem to have expressed their resent¬
ment ; the story of the exchange of letters with them is an inter-
«Harrisse says that friends urged him to apply for the transfer because the life
at Cluny would permit him a kind of study suitable to his talents. La Vie monas-
tique de de Vabb6 Prevost , pp. 32-33.
7 According to Professor George Sherburn, the book was reviewed as genuine
memoirs in a magazine devoted exclusively to non-fiction, Historia Litter aria, II, 9
(March, 1731, 285-92). See Professor Sherburn’s review of Mysie Robertson’s
edition of Provost’s Memoir es et avantures d’un homme de qualite , Modern Phil¬
ology, XXV (1927) 246-48.
8 The teachings of Elizabeth Cleveland are always designated as moral phil¬
osophy, and Cleveland all through the eight volumes refers to his opinions in his
youth as “my philosophy.” But he teaches a tribe of American Indians a natural
religion and states several times in the novel that he believes in a Supreme Being,
in loving his fellow-men, and in treating them with justice and kindness.
192 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
esting episode.9 Although the Bibliotheque Belgique lamented
the deistical tendencies of the novel,10 no protests from Jansen-
ists or from Protestants are recorded in the material examined
for this study.
The controversies about Prevost's satire of the Jesuits had
scarcely died down before he became reconciled with the church
and was received again into the Benedectine order with the stip¬
ulation that he perform a second novitiate. The remainder of
his life was spent as an unattached abbe, most of the time as
aumoner for Prince Conti. Apparently these obligations did not
prevent his pursuing a literary career, for in addition to consid¬
erable translating, editing, and other literary work, he completed
a novel, Le Doyen du Killerine and added four volumes to Le
Philosophe anglais. It is in the preface to the 1738-39 volumes
that he states that the purpose of the novel is to show that peace
of mind can be found only through “true religion” and expresses
surprise that any readers could feel that the book had done any
harm to religion, and he explains at some length the plan of the
book, that it shows the earlier views of Cleveland to be incom¬
plete.11
The publication of these concluding volumes of Cleveland's
story follows Prevost’s resolution of the conflicts in his own
religious life. His affirmation that the book represents his own
views requires that any just estimate of his character take
account of those volumes of Le Philosophe anglais which were
published seven and eight years later than Manon Lescaut
(1731) and which treat the conversion of Cleveland from a nat¬
ural religion to a revealed religion.
The reader who will look beneath the superficialities that are
typical of most eighteenth-century novels before 1740, can not
fail to recognize that in Le Philosophe anglais the real theme is
the conflict within the hero's mind between two philosophies of
religious thought, naturalism and supernaturalism ; and that the
real action is not the shipwrecks, the wandering in the American
wilderness, the political and love intrigues, the revenge and per¬
secution episodes. These are only the backdrop for the drama of
the evolution of the hero’s progress from confidence in the power
of moral philosophy and natural religion to a faith in a “true
9 Hazard, “Sur Manon Lescaut ” Etudes critiques, pp. 59-63.
10 October, 1732, pp. 419-50.
11 This defense of the purpose of Le Philosophe anglais had already appeared as
part of the preface to Le Doyen Killerine and when in 1738 Etienne Neaulme at
Utrecht published volume six of Le Philosophe anglais (Neaulme’s 1936 edition of
the first part was five volumes instead of four) Pr£vost prefaced this continuation
with an “Avertissement” incorporating the statement already published in the 1936
edition of Le Doyen.
1952] Cooper — Abbe Prevost 193
religion” that reconciles the best of naturalism with the best of
supernaturalism.
Cleveland’s search throughout the long narrative is for peace
of mind; the “true religion” which finally resolves all the con¬
flicts in his intellectual and spiritual life is the outcome of a
struggle in which the motivating forces are his experiences with
the dominant philosophical and religious systems of the late
seventeenth and the early eighteenth centuries.
Prevost’s treatment of Cleveland’s reactions to these contro¬
versial ideas is one of the best sources of information on his own
religious convictions since he has asserted that his ideas agree
with Cleveland’s. To examine Le Philosophe anglais as such a
source of information is the purpose of this paper.
Cleveland’s mother taught him a moral philosophy akin to
Neo-Stoicism: happiness may be attained through the right
emotions and the right ideas and through the solid principles of
virtue and the constant rules of wisdom and reason. To live by
these principles means educating the heart as well as the mind
for irregular impulses, or passions, must be controlled. Cleveland
says that if we could have on this earth men without passions,
we would have a society of happy persons.12
At one period in his early adventures, Cleveland lives among
a friendly tribe of American Indians and teaches them a religion
of nature similar to seventeenth-century Deism. It was this part
of the book to which the reviewer in Bibliotheque Belgique took
exception.
Throughout his youth Cleveland finds this moral philosophy
and natural religion adequate as a source of inner strength.
Cromwell’s plots against his former mistress and her son, even
the death of his mother, and a long series of misfortunes follow¬
ing that sad event do not shake the equanimity of Cleveland.
But when he is led by circumstantial evidence to believe that
his beloved wife, Fanny, has eloped with his best friend, Gelin,
Cleveland finds that moral philosophy has no comfort for him.
He renounces it as sophism, an evil illusion, a false phantom
which has failed to endue his soul with strength in time of
greatest need. Re-examining his philosophy, he finds no logical
flaws in it, but the fact remains that when the wound is to the
tenderest affections of the human heart, moral philosophy has no
consolation to offer; its power is limited. What Cleveland asks
is a faith that can bring him comfort for sorrow and assure him
peace of mind.
12 Le Philosophe anglais , I, i, 43.
194 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
After denouncing philosophy for its failure, Cleveland plunges
into a period of despair so dark that he is about to commit sui¬
cide and also to kill his two little sons in order to save them from
such a horrible world as this; but the pleas of the children
weaken his resolution, and he again learns that the heart is more
powerful than reason, for his suicide had seemed perfectly log¬
ical to him. The logic of suicide is supported by Cleveland’s study
of philosophy and constitutes another influence of Stoicism, since
the Stoics approved suicide under certain circumstances. Cleve¬
land also cites the examples of Cato, Demosthenes, Mithridates,
and Mark Anthony as authority for suicide’s being consistent
with virtue and wisdom.
The household of Cleveland is so alarmed by this frustrated
desire for suicide that two women, Mrs. Bridge and Mme. Lallin,
beg him to listen to the consolations of religion. Having dis¬
carded his old philosophy and natural religion, Cleveland has
nothing to lose by an examination into what revealed religion
has to offer, and he agrees (since Mrs. Bridge is a Protestant
and Mme. Lallin, a Catholic) to listen to Minister C., a Protes¬
tant clergyman, and Father Le Bane, a Roman Catholic priest,
who holds Jansenist views as it later transpires. Finding that
listening to them alternately confuses him, Cleveland decides to
hear the Protestant entirely through first and then to hear the
Catholic faith expounded.
The Protestant proves to be a bigoted, intolerant man, who
presents religion so that it seems to Cleveland dark and for¬
bidding. The doctrines Minister C. expounds do not agree with
Cleveland’s standards of love of fellowmen, justice, and reason.
Suddenly, before his conferences with Minister C. are con¬
cluded, Cleveland is served with a lettre de cachet and is taken
to the house of the bishop of Angers, not as a prisoner, he is
told, but as a guest ; his children are put in a Catholic school and
his niece in a convent. He learns that the Catholics, knowing
that he was listening to a Protestant minister, think that his
desire to receive religious instruction should be gratified, but
that they wish him to receive sound instruction.
Cleveland happens to be an English citizen, and after demand¬
ing his rights and appealing to the king through the English-
born Duchess Henriette, he is released.
Now if the Abbe Prevost had a strong Jansenist bias, it is
impossible to think that he would use an episode like this, one in
which the hero’s vigorous resentment of his treatment by the
Jansenist ecclesiastics might be interpreted as representing the
author’s opinion.13
™Ibid. V, vii, 21-22.
1952]
Cooper — Abbe Prevost
195
Neither can one argue on this basis that Prevost was partial
to the Jesuits. One can sympathize with their objections to the
characterization of Father Ruel, a Jesuit suggested by the
Duchess Henriette as a good antidote for the sombre picture of
religion given by Father Le Bane, the Jansenist.
Father Ruel advises Cleveland to fall in love as a means of
curing his despair, and he introduces him to Cecile, with whom
Cleveland does fall in love. This Jesuit is a casuist in religious
philosophy and a treacherous intriguer ; making use of informa¬
tion gathered in the confessional from Mme. Lallin, he plots
against Cleveland’s escape to England and from Roman Catholic
influence.
But this episode in the story comes at the end of the volumes
published in 1731-32, and the most important evidence of
Prevost’s religious convictions is found in that part of the novel
that he completed after he had been reconciled with the church
and the Benedictine order.
It is true that the Jesuits are treated with more consideration
in the last four volumes. There are elaborate explanations in the
preface regarding the use of a Jesuit as a character in the story.
Cleveland visits his sons who are students in the Jesuit College
de Louis-le-Grand, where they had been forcibly placed through
Father Ruel’s machinations. There Cleveland is impressed favor¬
ably with the Jesuits in charge, with the general conduct of the
students, with the general atmosphere of the school, and with its
prestige in France at a period when the order is being perse¬
cuted.14
Lord Clarendon, a Protestant, approves the college for the
splendid training it gives, and makes a perhaps mildly satirical
remark, that until children reach the age of reason and can think
for themselves, it makes little difference what ideas of religion
are presented to them.15
Father Ruel, killed during another misguided intrigue against
Cleveland, repents and confesses that the motive for all he did
was personal pride in making Cleveland a convert. Gelin, a once
treacherous friend but now a convert and a Jesuit, becomes the
devoted tutor of Cleveland’s sons at the College de Louis-le-
Grand ,16
Cleveland’s wife, with whom he is reunited after charges based
upon circumstantial evidence have been refuted, becomes a
devout Catholic, and her father confessor is characterized sym-
14 Ibid. VII, xii, 164.
35 Ibid.
16 Ibid. VIII, xv, 230.
196 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
pathetically by the author, although there are a few sly bits of
good-humored satire about his zeal to make converts.17 Cegile,
who has been discovered to be Cleveland’s daughter lost in her
infancy and mourned as dead, becomes a convert to Catholicism,
although she has been reared a Protestant by her foster parents.
Hers is a death-bed conversion. Cleveland respects the religion
of his wife and envies her the consolation which she derives from
it at the time of their mutual bereavement.
Still searching for peace of mind and a religion that will sat¬
isfy his reason as well as comfort his heart, Cleveland has made
in the meantime a brief investigation of the philosophy of mate¬
rialism as taught by Hobbes and kept alive in France by a group
of philosophes whose experiments only convince Cleveland that
it is best to recognize the limitations of human intelligence.18
Finally Cleveland’s conversion to a fully satisfying faith is
accomplished by Lord Clarendon, to whom he turns with the plea
that this friend will not offer vague and uncertain suppositions
but reveal in the attributes of the Sovereign-Being, or in man’s
nature, or in the ideas of reason and the nature of things, an
appearance of proof, a quality of justice, a shade of truth that
will reconcile the frightful contradictions of life.
Although he has envied Fanny the consolations of her religion,
has discussed with her the relation of nature to grace, and has
listened with approval to her sage comment, that the bonds of
nature are not destroyed by the gift of grace, Cleveland seems
never to have considered becoming a Catholic ; and Fanny seems
undisturbed by the fact that his conversion to “true religion” is
accomplished by the exiled Lord Clarendon, noted for his perse¬
cution of Catholics during the period of his power in England.
If there is any truth in the story, reported by Professor
Harrisse, that Chancellor Aguesseau permitted the printing of
Le Philosophe anglais in France only upon the condition that
Cleveland be converted to Catholicism in the last volume,19 the
Chancellor can not have read the book, for while Cleveland’s
views might be accepted as orthodox Catholicism as far as they
go, they omit many doctrines fundamental in Catholicism, and
the book contains a spirited plea for the breaking down of sec¬
tarian divisions because these controversies do the cause of true
religion great harm.20
™ Ibid. VII, xii, 187.
™Ibid. VIII, xv, 53-67.
™Ibid. 203.
20 Le Philosophe anglais in Oeuvres Choises (Amsterdam and Paris: Serpente,
1783) IV, 430. This passage was deleted from all editions published at Amsterdam
and Rouen from 1757-85.
1952]
Cooper — Abbe Prevost
197
One of the most obvious omissions of fundamental Catholic
dogma in Cleveland’s full statement of his religious views, is
that Christ is never mentioned, nor is salvation through accept¬
ance of His vicarious sacrifice. The statement could easily be a
Unitarian creed. Neither is there any mention of the Virgin
Mary and the Immaculate Conception. There is no talk of sin,
of confession, and of repentance.
Another notable characteristic of Cleveland’s conversion is
that no minister or priest has any part in it and that there is no
recognition in any manner of a church or any organized religious
group. Cleveland is converted by a layman who expounds to him
a religion that reconciles natural and supernatural religion and
that includes may views similar to those of Neo-Stoic Christians
and Latitudinarians of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth
centuries.
The best that is offered by natural religion and by the moral
philosophy taught to Cleveland by his mother, is recognized as
an anticipation of the tranquil mind which can be attained only
through religion, for although the law of grace does not deny
the natural law, nature alone is insufficient and must be supple¬
mented by supernatural grace.21
This “true religion” meets all the tests of reason and over¬
comes Cleveland’s objections to Minister C.’s Protestantism,
Father LeBane’s Jansenism, and Father Ruel’s interpretations
of religion.
The ethical principles to which Cleveland has subscribed all
his life, and without which no religion can appeal to him, are
fundamental in this “true religion”: justice, moderation, and
toleration. Dogmatism, narrow sectarianism, and persecution of
groups holding opposite religious views are irrational and do
harm to religion.
Asceticism and enthusiasm are equally inconsistent with “true
religion.” Here Cleveland seems to be opposing both the clois¬
tered orders of the Catholic church and the fanatical evangelistic
spirit of much Protestantism.
What, then, are we entitled to conclude regarding the religious
convictions of the Abbe Prevost? His prefatory statement that
the views of Mr. Cleveland agree with his own and the fact that
the book containing the final statement of Cleveland’s faith was
published four years after the Abbe’s reconciliation with the
Catholic church and the Benedictine order, justify the conclusion
that the religious convictions of Prevost were exceptionally lib-
21 The story of Cleveland’s conversion may be found in the Rouen edition, 1785,
VII, xii, 135-40 ; VIII, xv, 202-215.
198 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
eral for a man of his affiliations, since they place no emphasis
upon the church as an institution through which men find God.
Religion appears to be for the Abbe Prevost a private affair.
No peace of mind has come to Cleveland through the authority
of the church or through its representatives. He has lived and ;
searched for a faith that satisfies his reason. He has learned the
limitations of human intelligence, that man lives not alone by his
head but must live also by his heart, that he is not strong enough
through his own nature to bear the sorrows of life or to recon¬
cile the contradictory claims of head and heart, or to control his
passions wisely, that he needs the aid of divine grace to supple¬
ment the resources of his own intelligence.
In these ideas of the power of the passions to cause human
misery and the need to control them by reason, in the emphasis
upon ethical living as more important than dogma, and in the
affirmation of belief in a Supreme Being, who may be discovered
in the operations of natural law, there is the influence of both
Neo-Stoicism and Deism; in the emphasis upon Christian unity
through recognition of beliefs that are common to all faiths,
there is the influence of the Latitudinarianism of the Age of
Reason ; and in the synthesis of all these ideas of the early eight¬
eenth century lies the unique contribution of the Abbe Prevost.
Certainly these views are not orthodox Catholicism, for they
omit too much vital Catholic doctrine ; they are not identical with
those of natural religion or any of the forms of Deism, for they
recognize the supernatural and revelation.
But does not the treatment of the theme of Le Philosophe
anglais merit for the Abbe Prevost recognition as a man who in
his own way solved the conflict among the religious ideas of his
period?
At least, the sentimental romanticism of Manon Lescaut,
effective as it is of its kind, fails to represent the mature Prevost,
the eighteenth-century religious liberal, who has synthesized the
best of pagan philosophy with the best of Christian and who
reconciled in his own thinking naturalism and supernaturalism
in religion.
As modern criticism re-examines and re-evaluates other long
accepted estimates of literary men, it is time to compare the
work of the mature Prevost with the work of his romantic imma¬
turity and to realize that after the writing of Manon Lescaut
there is another Prevost.
I am ready to concede that Le Philosophe anglais is cluttered
with too much melodrama of the popular eighteenth-century
plot, that the style of Manon Lescaut rises to emotional heights
not reached in Le Philosophe anglais, that as far as technique of
1952]
Cooper — Abbe Prevost
199
writing the novel is concerned, Manon Lescaut is superior; but
there is another basis of evaluation by which Le Philosophe
anglais is superior to Manon Lescaut, an estimate based upon
the universal significance of the theme, the contribution of that
theme to the history of ideas, and the value of the book as a
spiritual biography of an eighteenth-century liberal.
Perhaps it is unfortunate that Prevost chose to bury in an
eight-volume novel the story of the development of Cleveland’s
religious opinions, but perhaps discretion dictated this disguise,
since the opinions which are so far from being consistent with
the author’s religious affiliations, receive the Abbe’s endorsement
in the preface to Le Philosophe anglais.
THE BIRTH AND DEVELOPMENT OF GROUND-WATER
HYDROLOGY— A HISTORICAL SUMMARY
James E. Hackett
Department of Geology, University of Wisconsin
Abstract
Basic to the science of ground-water hydrology are the follow¬
ing: (1) replenishment of underground water by precipitation
and infiltration; (2) the fundamental principles of geologic
occurrence; (3) the understanding of the physics of under-
ground-water movement. The historical development of these
three fundamental concepts is traced and their intergration into
the science of ground-water hydrology is described.
Introduction
More than 50 years ago, Archibald Geikie (1897), one of the
great figures of natural science in the nineteenth century, wrote,
“In science, as in all other departments of human knowledge and
inquiry, no thorough grasp of a subject can be gained, unless the
history of its development is clearly appreciated.”
This paper is a review of the birth and development of the
science of ground-water hydrology — that science which deals
with the occurrence and movement of underground water. This
summary makes no pretense of adding to the historical data
which have been ably recounted by several other authors.1
Rather, it is concerned only with the basic concepts of the sci¬
ence, their development from earliest times to the present, and
their integration into the present science of ground-water
hydrology.
It is hoped that this brief survey will, in the words of Geikie
(1897), give some perspective to those who “while eagerly press¬
ing forward in the search after the secrets of nature, are apt to
keep the eye too constantly fixed on the way that has to be trav¬
elled, and to lose sight and remembrance of the paths already
trodden.”
1The excellent historical treatments of Adams (1938), Baker and Horton (1936),
and Meinzer (1934), (1942) furnished the historical data outlined in the following
discussion. The reader interested in original sources is referred to the comprehen¬
sive references given in these papers.
201
202 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41 ;
Basic Concepts
■
The science of ground-water hydrology is based on three fun- !
damental concepts. They can be stated as follows: (1) under¬
ground water originates when moisture precipitated from the
atmosphere soaks into the ground; (2) the rocks in the upper
crust of the earth are the receptacles, the reservoirs, containing
underground water. Their nature controls the occurrence of sub¬
surface water; and (3) movement of underground water obeys
certain physical laws.
These three concepts are relatively simple. Geologist and lay¬
man alike accept them. But the evolution of the concepts has been
a long one. They have become firmly established only after gen¬
erations of work. With their establishment the science of ground-
water hydrology has come of age. By tracing the development of
each of the three concepts, the slow growth of the science to its
present status may be best understood.
Origin of Underground Water
The first concept to be developed was that underground water
forms eventually from rainfall. We now believe that water is
transferred to the atmosphere by evaporation, is then delivered
to the ground by precipitation, and a portion then seeps into the
ground to replenish our underground-water supplies. However,
this modern concept of the hydrologic cycle is opposite to the
theory generally held up to the late eighteenth century. Prior to
the late eighteenth century, the rainfall, or pluvial cycle, was not
generally accepted because of two false assumptions. They were :
(Ij) there was not enough rainfall to supply all the underground
water, and (2) rainfall could not soak through the apparently
impermeable surface of the earth.
The original hydrologic cycle was first stated by the Greek
philosophers to explain the origin of springs and rivers. They
believed that the water supplying the springs and rivers was
contained in one or many subterranean caverns. Two main
hypotheses were developed by the first century A.D. to account
for the replenishment of these subterranean caverns. The
hypotheses were : ( 1 ) water was conducted from the sea through
subterranean channels below the mountains. It was then purified
and raised to springs; and (2) the subterranean atmosphere, and
perhaps the earth itself, were condensed into moisture in the
caverns under the mountains. Note that neither explanation
called for rainfall as the prime source of underground water.
Rainfall was discarded because it was not believed to be adequate
in amount nor able to penetrate through the earth's surface.
1952]
Hackett — Ground-Water Hydrology
203
During the Dark Ages the subject of the origin of under¬
ground water was almost completely neglected. The subject be¬
came of general interest again with the coming of the Middle
Ages. During the Middle Ages the view of the church was re¬
garded as paramount on all questions. The hydrologic cycle
approved by the church was the old Greek theory that the water
originated in the sea and was transported landward by some
subterranean route. The writers and scholars of the Middle Ages
accepted this explanation. It was heresy to doubt it.
But those accepting the subterranean return of sea water to
account for underground water were confronted with two prob¬
lems. These were: (1) the necessity of eliminating salt from the
sea water by either distillation or filtration, and (2) the eleva¬
tion of the water from the level of the sea to the level of the
springs and rivers. By the latter part of the seventeenth century,
it was recognized that salt could not be filtered out but could be
removed by distillation. The most popular theory of the time
stated that sea water made its way into the interior of the earth
to encounter a central fire. There the water was evaporated and
steamed up through the earth’s crust to the mountain tops. The
salt was left behind in the rock through which the steam had
passed.
When, however, the new scientific method was applied to the
problem of the origin of underground water, the true hydrologic
cycle became apparent. Quantitative experimental work in the
latter part of the seventeenth century provided the basis for the
rejection of the old subterranean hydrologic cycle. The experi¬
mental work of two Frenchmen, Perrault and Mariotte, proved
false the assumptions that had led to the acceptance of the sub¬
terranean hydrologic cycle. These assumptions were: (lj) rain¬
fall was not adequate to supply the underground reservoirs, and
(2) the surface of the earth was too impermeable to allow
passage of moisture.
Pierre Perrault, in 1674, presented the results of the first
serious attempt to actually measure rainfall and determine its
relation to the amount of water carried off by the rivers. He
made measurements of rainfall over a three-year period in the
Seine River basin above a point in Burgundy. He then roughly
estimated the area of the basin and the run-off from the basin.
He was able to demonstrate that the quantity of water that fell
on the basin as rain or snow was about six times the quantity of
water discharged by the rivers. Perrault thereby proved that
rainfall was adequate to account for the discharge of springs
and rivers.
204 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
At about this same time, the French physicist, Mariotte, made
more exact studies of discharge in the Seine River basin. His
publications, appearing after his death in 1884, essentially veri¬
fied Perrault’s conclusions. Mariotte further demonstrated, by
experimentation at the Paris Observatory, that seepage through
the earth cover compared with the amount of rainfall. He also
demonstrated the increase in the flow of springs during rainy
weather and the decrease during time of drought. It was then
evident that the earth did permit the penetration of moisture.
The observations of Perrault and Mariotte laid the foundation
for further investigation which greatly strengthened the evi¬
dence in favor of the rainfall-infiltration concept. As a result, the
hydrologic literature from the last quarter of the seventeenth
century, through the eighteenth century, and into the early part
of the nineteenth century consisted mainly of a defense of the old
subterranean cycle against the pluvial or rainfall cycle. The out¬
come of the controversy saw the pluvial cycle almost universally
accepted among scientists by the first part of the nineteenth cen¬
tury. In 1791, the basic features of the modern concept of the
hydrologic cycle were presented by La Metherie. He explained
that a part of the water from rain and snow consists of run-off
across the land surface. A second part is held in the soil, later to
feed the plants or to evaporate. A third part penetrates to reser¬
voirs at greater depths from which it may gradually issue as
springs.
It required over 2,000 years to develop the concept that under¬
ground water is recharged, replenished, by the seepage of rain¬
fall into the ground. Compared to this, the development of the
other two basic concepts and the consequent establishment of the
science of ground-water hydrology was rapid. The basic concepts
yet to be developed were: (1) the geologic control of the occur¬
rence of underground water, and (2) the physical law controlling
underground-water movement.
Occurrence of Underground Water
Underground water is strictly controlled by the nature of the
rock in which it is contained. Therefore, the understanding of
the occurrence of underground water required the understanding
of the basic principles of geology. The fundamental principles of
geology were established about the beginning of the nineteenth
century. The way was then open for the study of the basically
geologic problems of the occurrence and movement of under¬
ground water.
1952]
Hackett — Ground-Water Hydrology
205
French engineers, geologists, and well drillers were especially
active in the study. This was largely due to an intense interest in
artesian conditions and in drilling artesian wells in France dur¬
ing the first half of the nineteenth century. A large number of
publications appeared based on extensive research in different
phases of the subject. As a result, the basic principles of the
geologic occurrence of underground water and the hydrostatic
theory of artesian flow were well established by the middle of
the nineteenth century.
Movement of Underground Water
The basic principle governing the movement of underground
water through water-bearing materials was recognized and
described by the French hydraulic engineer, Henri Darcy. His
publication in 1856 gave the results of a series of experiments
on the flow of water in sands. His conclusions were expressed in
a formula now known as Darcy’s Law. The law governs the rela¬
tion between velocity of percolation, permeability of water-bear¬
ing materials, and the hydraulic gradient of free or confined
water. Darcy’s classical work marks the final step in the estab¬
lishment of the science of ground-water hydrology.
Development of Ground-Water Hydrology
Much of the work by European engineers and geologists dur¬
ing the last two or three decades of the nineteenth century and
into the twentieth century was devoted to the study of ground-
water hydrology in connection with the development of water
supplies for public waterworks and other uses. In 1906 Gunther
Thiem, a German hydrologist, established the basis for modern
quantitative held studies. He developed a field method for deter¬
mining permeability and rate of flow from pumping tests and
the resultant drawdown in observation wells.
But it is in the United States that we have realized the fullest
development of the science of ground-water hydrology. It is here
that the practical applications of the principles of the science
have been most widely made. Systematic quantitative methods
of investigation have been developed to attack the problems of
underground-water supply and recovery. These methods have
been developed by the United States Geological Survey, particu¬
larly, and by many state geological surveys and other govern¬
mental units.
206 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
Summary and Conclusion
The science of ground-water hydrology is less than one hun¬
dred years old. But the development of its fundamental concepts
had taken well over two thousand years. The concepts are: (1)
underground water originates when moisture precipitated from
the atmosphere soaks into the ground; (2) the rocks in the upper
crust of the earth are the reservoirs containing underground
water and their nature controls the occurrence of the subsurface
water; (3) movement of underground water obeys certain
physical laws.
It is the development of these concepts and the consequent
establishment of the science of ground-water hydrology that has
permitted the successful solution of practical problems of under¬
ground-water recovery and conservation.
Bibliography
Adams, F. D., The birth and development of the geological sciences, pp.
426-460, 1938.
Baker, M. N. and Horton, R. E., Historical development of ideas regarding
the origin of springs and ground water: Am. Geophys. Union Trans.,
pt. 2, pp. 395-400, 1936.
Geikie, Archibald, The founders of geology, p. 1, London, Macmillan Co.,
1897.
Meinzer, 0. E., The history and development of ground-water hydrology:
Washington Acad. Sci. Jour., vol. 24, no. 1, pp. 6-32, 1934.
- . Hydrology (Physics of the earth IX), pp. 8-30, 1942.
Fig. 1. Cylindrical cone-trap employed in blowfly collections,
THE SEASONAL INCIDENCE OF BLOWFLIES AT
MADISON, WISCONSIN (DIPTERA-CALLIPHORIDAE) 1
Robert J. Dicke and John P. Eastwood
University of Wisconsin
Very little information is available on the biology, distribu¬
tion, and seasonal incidence of blowflies in Wisconsin. These
flies, however, are of considerable economic importance to the
animal industries of the State. Blowflies occur abundantly in a
variety of domestic situations, and on farms are commonly asso¬
ciated with dairy cattle, sheep and swine. The adults of all
species feed on, or are at least attracted to, carrion. With the
exception of the cluster fly, Pollenia rudis (Fab.), the maggots
of Calliphorids are generally saphrophytic in feeding habit and
most commonly breed in decaying animal tissue. Invasions of
blowfly maggots into the necrotic wounds and diseased tissues of
domestic animals are frequently observed, and parasitic myiasis
(sheep strike) is known to occur in Wisconsin sheep. These
breeding habits would suggest that blowflies may serve as vectors
of animal diseases and as an important source of food contami¬
nation. A study of blowflies indigenous to Wisconsin was initi¬
ated during the years 1949 and 1950 by trapping flies in the
vicinity of Madison, Wisconsin.
Procedure: Blowflies were collected in baited cylindrical cone-
traps (Fig. 1). The traps were two feet high by one foot in
diameter, and were covered with 16-mesh wire screen. An inner
wire screen cone 18 inches high with an opening one inch in
diameter at the apex was attached to the base of the screen
cylinder. The top of the cylinder was fitted with a removable
wooden plate. Four strips of wood attached to the screened sides
served as supports raising the base of the cage two inches above
ground level. A strip of 4-mesh wire screen attached at the base
served to exclude rodents. Flies attracted to a carrion bait placed
under the screen cone entered through the openings at the base
of the cylinder and eventually worked their way upward through
the opening at the apex of the cone and into the trap proper.
Trapped flies were readily removed through the top of the cage.
The carcasses of four white rats placed at the base of the trap
1 Approved for publication by the Director of the Wisconsin Agricultural Experi¬
ment Station. Supported in part by a grant from the Research Committee of the
Graduate School from funds supplied by the Wisconsin Alumni Research Founda¬
tion.
207
208 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
served as the attractant. All of the traps were in continuous
operation. Flies were collected and the baits replaced at weekly
intervals.
Ten traps were maintained from March 29 to December 27 for
both years. Collection sites were as follows :
1. Genetics Building, on University campus.
2. Stock Pavilion, on University campus.
8. Hog Barn, on University campus.
4. Fur Farm, on University campus.
5. Sheep Barn, East Hill Farms, 1 mile west of Madison.
6. Loose-housing or Pen Barn, East Hill Farms, 1 mile
west of Madison.
7. Gugel Farm, 7 miles west of Madison.
8. An abattoir in the vicinity of Madison.
9. University Arboretum at maintainance buildings.
10. State Fish Hatchery, 4 miles south of Madison.
No active breeding of blowflies in carrion occurred at any of
the collection sites. General sanitation in respect to fly attraction
appeared to be satisfactory at the Arboretum and Fish Hatchery.
Discarded experimental animals held in waste receptacles for
periods of two days before collection were the principal sources
of attraction at the Genetics Building and Stock Pavilion. Large
numbers of blowflies were observed hovering over animals and
excrement at all of the remaining collection sites.
Results: Fourteen species of blowflies were collected. Actual
counts of trap collections are summarized in Table 1 with species
listed according to their relative abundance. The most common
species collected was Phormia regina (Meigen) representing
51.05 per cent of the total collection for 1949 and 41.80 per cent
for 1950. Lucilia illustris (Meigen), Phaenicia sericata (Meigen)
and Protophormia terrae-novae (Robineau-Desvoidy) were next
in abundance although the total collection of all three of these
species was less than that of P. regina. Maximum collections
were less than 5 per cent of the total for Bufolucilia silvarum
(Meigen) and Cynomyopsis cadaverina (Robineau-Desvoidy),
and less than 2 per cent for Calliphora vicina Robineau-Desvoidy
and Pollenia rudis (Fab.). The total collections of Phaenicia
caeruleiviridis (Macquart), Calliphora vomitoria (Linn.), Calli¬
phora livida Hall, Callitroga macellaria (Fab.), and Calliphora
terrae-novae Macquart represented less than 1 per cent of the
total collection in 1949 and less than 2 per cent in 1950. Eucalli-
phora lilaea (Walker) was rare with only 12 specimens collected
for the entire 1950 season.
The total blowfly catch for 1950 (263,992 flies) was only 61.4
per cent that of the total catch for 1949 (429,511 flies). This
Summary of Blowfly Trap Collections at Biweekly Intervals
1952] Dicke & Eastwood — Madison Blowflies 209
FEB. MARCH APRIL MAY JUNE JULY AUG. SEPT. OCT. NOV. DEC.
1952]
Dicke & Eastwood — Madison Blowflies
211
difference in total collections may be a reflection of comparative
weather conditions for the two years (Fig. 2). During April
through August of 1950 the mean temperature averaged 5.3° F.
below the mean for 1949. In May the mean temperature was
7.5° F. below that of 1949, and 6° F. below for July and August.
Trap collections were only % of the 1949 catch during the month
of May, and approximately *4 during J une and the early part of
July. During the month of September the mean temperature for
1950 was 3.5° F. above that of the mean for 1949. This relatively
warmer month reflected an increased catch in 1950 that was
from four to two times that of 1949 (total catches for September
15 and 30 respectively) . During the period April through Octo¬
ber, the total precipitation in 1949 was 21.30 inches compared
with 30.25 inches in 1950. The combination of a comparatively
cool, wet spring and summer may have been adverse to several
of the more abundant species of blowflies.
Total catches were significantly less in 1950 than in 1949 for
P. regina (Fig. 3), P. sericata (Fig. 4), and P. terrae-novae
(Fig. 5). Collections for P. regina in 1950 were only one-half
that of 1949, while collections of P. terrae-novae were only 26.4
per cent that of 1949. The peak abundance of P. sericata was
shifted from July 31 in 1949 to August 15 in 1950, along with a
reduction of 58 per cent of the 1949 catch. These species appar¬
ently are more prevalent during the warm summer months, and
the cooler weather occurring during the spring and summer of
1950 may account for these differences in trap catches.
Total collections of C. cadaverina (Fig. 6) were increased in
1950 by 34.3 per cent. This species appears to prefer cool weather
since it is most abundant during early spring and late fall, with
a marked reduction in numbers during June, July and August.
L. illustris (Fig. 7) was more abundant during 1950 with an
increased catch of 76.6 per cent. The seasonal occurrence of this
species is difficult to interpret on the basis of comparative
weather conditions. Two population peaks occurred during
spring and early summer for both years, with greatest numbers
collected during the comparatively cooler weather of 1950. Two
additional peaks, however, occurred during the comparatively
warmer fall of 1950. P. rudis was also more abundant during
1950. The larvae of this species, unlike all of the other Calli-
phoridae collected in this study, do not breed in carrion but are
parasitic on earthworms. The relatively greater precipitation in
1950 (3.75 inches more rainfall during April, May and June)
may have resulted in a greater availability or abundance of
earthworms for parasitism.
212 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
1952]
Dicke & Eastwood — Madison Blowflies
213
214 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters
[Vol. 41
NO. FLIES
Summary of Total Blowfly Trap Collections Tabulated According to Collection Site
1952]
Dicke & Eastwood — Madison Blowflies 215
TABLE 2 — (Continued)
Summary of Total Blowfly Trap Collections Tabulated According to Collection Site
216 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
1952]
Dicke & Eastwood — Madison Blowflies
217
Total collections of species at individual collection sites are
summarized in Table 2. Flies were most numerous in 1949 at a
local abattoir (151,457) with 35.3 per cent of the total collection
for that year. The second most abundant collecting sites were the
Fur Farm (75,462) and Stock Pavilion (74,246) on the Univer¬
sity campus. Flies were least abundant at the Fish Hatchery site
(2,029). In 1950, collections at the Fur Farm (5,695) were only
7.6 per cent that of 1949 while at the abattoir (24,566) collec¬
tions were 16.2 per cent and at the Stock Pavilion (32,953) 44.3
per cent. Collections were largest in 1950 at the Pen Barn
(56,328) and least at the Fur Farm (5,695). Increased collec¬
tions over 1949 were observed at the Pen Barn, Fish Hatchery,
Arboretum, and Sheep Barn. P. regina was the most numerous
species at nearly all of the collection sites. In 1949, P. sericata
was most numerous at the Sheep Barn and Gugel Farm, and
L. illustris was most abundant in 1950 at the Fish Hatchery. Fly
populations for the two years were extremely variable through¬
out the collecting areas. For example, in 1949, 20,930 specimens
of P. terrae-novae were collected at the Fur Farm while in 1950
only 64 appeared in the trap. At the Fish Hatchery, collections
of P. regina were increased from 639 in 1949 to 8,829 in 1950.
A similar increase for L. illustris also occurred at this collection
site.
Summary : Collections of blowflies were made in the area of
Madison, Wisconsin during 1949 and 1950. Bait traps were in
continuous operation for a period of eight months at ten sites
representing various conditions of blowfly breeding and attrac¬
tion. Fourteen species of blowflies were collected. Listed in order
of their relative abundance these were: Phormia regina (Mei-
gen), Lucilia illustris (Meigen), Phaenicia sericata (Meigen),
Protophormia terrae-novae (Robineau-Desvoidy) , Bufolucilia
silvarum (Meigen), Cynomyopsis cadaverina (Robineau-
Desvoidy) , Calliphora vicina Robineau-Desvoidy, Pollenia rudis
(Fab.), Phaenicia caeruleiviridis (Macquart), Calliphora vomi-
toria (Linn.), C. livida Hall, Callitroga macellaria (Fab.), Calli¬
phora terrae-novae Macquart, and Eucalliphora lilaea (Walker).
The total blowfly catch for 1950 was only 61.4 per cent that of
the total catch for 1949. A relatively cool spring and summer in
1950 combined with a much higher precipitation appeared to
have an adverse effect on several of the more abundant species.
While most species were adversely affected by the weather con¬
ditions of 1950, the catches for four species were increased over
that of 1949. Fly populations were uniform for the two-year
period at only one collecting site (Genetics Building). At all
other sites, collections were extremely variable.
THE GREEK TRANSLATION OF AUGUSTUS’
RES GESTAE
Donald R. King
Beloit College
Augustus liked to view the political institution with which he
replaced the old Roman Republic as in fact a restoration of that
Republic, and in writing his Res Gestae he stressed this repub¬
lican view of the nature of his government. Everywhere in it
he insisted on the forms and distinctions of the old Republic.1
Further, he emphasized the fact that it was the Republic and
people of Rome that profited by his deeds, and he failed to men¬
tion any service to the provinces of the Empire. In the words of
one recent scholar: “Jamais oeuvre ne fut de destination plus
romaine . . . qu’est-ce qu’un provincial y pouvait bien lire qui
le touchat directment? Lorsqu’ Auguste y parle des provinces,
c’est seulment pour se vanter de les avoir conquises, pacifiees,
ou recouvrees, c’est-a-dire, ajoutees ou rendues a l’empire du
peuple romain.”2 The Roman emperor kept the distinction clearly
defined between the Roman Republic on the one hand, and the
empire, the possession of the Republic on the other, and he
wished to appear only as the champion of the former.3
In the years after the death of the divine Augustus, however,
a different concept and a different practice — the concept partly
molding and partly molded by the practice, and the practice
partly molding and partly molded by the concept — developed in
the Roman world, finding its fullest expression in the teachings
of the Stoic and Cynic philosophers, and its concrete manifesta¬
tion in the persons and rule of the “good emperors” of the second
century.4 Many factors, of course, economic, political, religious,
psychological, and physical, were involved in this change. Many
of these factors were beyond the knowledge or power of the men
!J. Gage, “Res Gestae Divi Augustae” (Paris, 1935), 35, says “Auguste ait cru
devoir y soutenir avec tant d’application la version rSpublicaine de sa revolution
. . Cf. 24, note 1 of the same work, “Noter, dans ce sens, outre des formules
traditionelles comme Vimperium populi Romani , le soin avec lequel Auguste . . .
distingue, dans le ch. 15, les diverses categories du peuple de Rome . . See also
W. Weber, “Princeps” (Berlin, 1936), I, 192-195, et passim.
2 Gag§, op. cit.} 23-24.
8 See Michael Grant, The Augustan Constitution ’ in “Greece and Rome” XVIII
(October, 1949), 97-112, especially 102 seq. for discussion and some explanation of
the importance attached to his championship of the Republic by Augustus and his
contemporaries.
4 See note 17.
219
220 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
involved, and so beyond their control, but in some small part, at
least, the new concept and practice evolved as they did through
the conscious effort of Roman officials. In the Greek translation
of the Res Gestae, inscribed together with the Latin on the walls
of the Augustan temple at Ancyra in Galatia, and probably in
many other places throughout the eastern empire, there is evi¬
dence of the existence of such conscious effort, and some illus¬
tration of the manner and direction it took. For in the transla¬
tion there is apparent, although hitherto not noted, an imperial
attitude or point of view that is quite out of keeping with the
republicanism of the original. The translator ignored or slurred
over the Republican and Roman emphasis of Augustus, and
stressed, on the contrary, the imperial aspects of his deeds. This
attitude is apparent in the generalization of references to par¬
ticular historical events and their results, and in the vocabulary
and phraseology of the Greek.
The superscription of the Latin text reads as follows : “Rerum
gestarum divi Augusti, quibus orbem terrarum imperio populi
Romani subiecit, et impensarum quas in rem publicam popu-
lumque Romanum fecit, incisarum in duabus aheneis pilis, quae
sunt Romae positae, exemplar subiectum.”5 The Greek reads
simply : Medrj pp,rjvev pevai vireypacturjaav xpaijeis re /cat Scopeat SejSacrrou deov as
a7re\t7rez' ext 'Pco/xr/s evKexapaypevas x^X/cats arrfKa ts dvaiv. The two qual¬
ifying clauses in the Latin text, “by which he subjected the whole
world to the empire of the Roman people” and, “which he ex¬
pended on the people and Republic of Rome,” bring out the fact
that the deeds and expenditures of Augustus were to the advan¬
tage of the people and Republic of Rome. These two clauses are
entirely omitted in the translation. The effect of this omission
is twofold. The services described in the Latin as of value to
Roman and the Romans are represented in the Greek as general
services, and the distinction made in the Latin between a ruling
Romen and the Romans are represented in the Greek as general
Greek. Thus at the outset there is a clear example of the differ¬
ence in spirit between the two copies.
In paragraph 1, Augustus begins the account of his deeds with
mention of his action as a youth of nineteen in raising an army
and forcing Antony to leave Rome (November 44 B.C.), thereby
giving a measure of freedom to the Senate which had been domi¬
nated by Antony and his party since the assassination of Caesar.
The Latin reads: “. . . exercitum privato consilio et privata
impensa comparavi, per quern rem publicam a dominatione fac-
5 All quotations from the Res Gestae follow the text of Gage, op. cit., and the
references are to that text by paragraph and sentence.
1952] King — Translation of Augustus’ Res Gestae
221
tionis oppressam in libertatem vindicavi.”6 The second clause here
is not translated very precisely in Greek. Instead we have the
Words, “Ta kolpcl TTpaypara e/c rrjs r&v avvopoa apievoov 8ov\r]a s e\ei$epcocra.”
Td KOLva irpay/xara although it might pass as a translation of the
Latin “res publica” has a much more generalized connotation
than the Latin phrase. A more accurate translation would have
been the phrase rd drjpoaia irpaypara, which is used by the trans¬
lator twice in other sentences of this same paragraph, or
dripLOKparla, used by Appian and other Greek writers, both of
which have the republican connotations of the Latin res publica.
Then the Greek words r&v awopoGapkvuv are no translation of
the Latin f actio. The latter was used to denote a political clique,7
and in this instance refers to the clique headed by Antony, the
power of which was broken by Augustus. The ordinary Greek
translation of this word was Gravis. 8 The words used here r&v
awopoi Taukvw, meant “the conspirators.” They were used in Greek
to refer to the party of the assassins who murdered Caesar.
They are so used for example, by Cassius Dio in his discussion
of these events.9 This is probably their meaning here. Thus,
6 See Weber, op. cit., 140-142; Gag6, op. cit., 73. In the next line of this same
paragraph (Res Gestae 1, 2) Augustus says that imperium and other honors were
granted to him by the Senate in return for this restoration of the Republic to
liberty. It was Cicero in his fifth Philippic, delivered before the Senate on January
1, 43 B.C. (some days after Antony’s departure), who proposed to that body that
imperium be awarded to Augustus. In making the proposal (which was passed by
the Senate immediately — see the Fasti of Augustus, Gag6, op. cit., 163) he stated
specifically that it was as a reward for Augustus’ services against Antony in the
previous two months that imperium was to be granted. Philippics V, 16, 42—45 ;
“nullum erat consilium publicum, nulla libertas . . . hie (Augustus) ex Antonii
amicia, sed amicioribus libertatis, contra Antonium confecit exercitum ; . . . huius
praesidio Antonii dominatus oppressus est. Demus igitur imperium Caesari . . .”
Cf. Philippics, III 4-10 ; “qua peste (Antony) privato consilio rem publicam . . .
Caesar liberavit . . .’’ Velleius, II, 60-61: “Torpebat oppressa dominatione Antoni
civitas ; . . . cum C. Caesar XVIIII annum ingressus . . . privato consilio maiorem
senatu pro re publica animum habuit . . . mox cum Antonius occurrisset exercitui
. . . eum (Augustus) senatus honoratum ...”
7 For the exact meaning of f actio, see Lily Ross Taylor, “Party Politics in the
Age of Caesar” (Berkley, Calif., 1949), 9 seq.
8 For example: Appian, II, 146, oc rrjs Honireiov araaeus. Ill, 4, iic rtfs aracrecos ; et passim.
9 DiO, 46, 47, 3: , ‘oi re aiiroxeipes tov KaLoapos yevofievoi kclI oi avvonoaavres <x4>Lcnv . . .” Cf. also
Appian’s phrase in reporting the words of one of the assassins who at the time of
Caesar’s murder exhorted the people to remember (B.C. II, 17, 119) : “nai Bpovrov tov
■KoXai Kai tG>v Tore a4>i<nv bnwnoaij.evojv." Cf. further for the meaning of the word, Plutarch,
Sertorius, 27, 4: “tw Uepirewa (rwofj.oaafj.evwv.” It has been argued by Von Premer-
stein (Abhandlungen Bayerischen Akademic, No. 15 for 1937, pp. 26 seq. — “Wesden
und Wesen des Principate”) that the words t&v awo^aa/ievcop were meant by the
translator to refer to the factio of Antony. Von Premerstein based this on passages
in Appian (B.C. Ill, 46 and 58) and in Cassius Dio (XLV 13, 5) describing how
many of the Roman senators joined with the army in taking the official oath of
allegiance to Antony as head of the state in 44 B.C. This interpretation of r
awo/xoa afikvwv is not possible for two reasons : 1. The factio of Antony was the small
group of politicians closely allied with him to control the state (see note 7 above)
and not the great mass of thousands of Romans who owed and swore allegiance
to him as an officer of the Roman Republic. Would we speak of Americans who
had taken an oath of allegiance to the President of the United States as “con¬
spirators”? 2. The senators who had taken this oath of allegiance were the very
ones who were freed from the domination of Antony and his factio , as is clear
222 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
where Augustus wrote, “I brought freedom to the republic,
which had been oppressed by the domination of a political clique”
(meaning Antony and his followers), the translator wrote, “I
freed society from the slavery of the conspirators” (meaning the
assassins of Caesar and their followers) .
Why? The answer, I think, is this. The action of the young
Augustus in expelling Antony from Rome and the resultant free¬
dom of the Senate and Republic of Rome from his control could
be and were interpreted as services of value to Romans and to
the Roman Republic. That appears clearly in the works of Cicero
and Velleius, who speaks of it in almost the same words that
Augustus used here.10 On the other hand, even if known to the
ordinary provincial of Asia Minor at the time of Augustus’
death, this deed would not have appeared to him as a very great
service. For some time before the battle of Philippi, however,
Brutus and Cassius, leaders of the party of assassins, had over¬
run Asia Minor, besieged cities there, exacted large sums of
money from the whole province. Accordingly the victory of
Augustus over the conspirators in that battle might well appear
to the provincials as liberation and a service worthy of record.* 11
Thus the Latin copy notes a service of particular benefit to Rome
and the Republic, whereas the Greek records instead a service
to the empire.
In paragraph 25 Augustus wrote: '‘Mare pacavi a praedoni-
bus. Eo bello servorum qui fugerant a dominis suis et arma
contra rem publicam ceperant, triginta fere millia capta dominis
ad supplicium sumendum tradidi.” The Greek version of this
reads : QaXaaaav TreLpaTevopevrjv vtto airoaTCLTcov 8ov\uv elprjvevaa e £
rpets 7 rov pvpLadas rots deairoTcas els Ko\a(nv TapedaiKa. The Latin sen¬
tences refer, as the editors point out, to the war carried on by
Augustus against Sextus Pompey (39-36 B.C.), who had estab¬
lished himself in Sicily and was preying on Roman commerce
with a force of escaped slaves and pirates. In the Latin copy
Augustus brings out the fact that a particular war (eo bello) is
referred to, and one which was fought against men who had
taken up arms against the Roman Republic. “Er gibt diesem
Krieg seinen eigenen Sinn . . . Die Befriedung des Meers von
der Seeraiiberplage, die Rettung Roms, Italiens, der res publica
aus ihren Noten, die Wahrung der Gesetze, der sozialen Ordnun-
from the second passage of Appian (B.C. Ill, 58) cited above. They were precisely
the representatives of the constitutional Republic to whom Augustus restored inde¬
pendence from Antony. In other words they were not the fiactio but the victims of
the factio.
10 See citations in note 6 above.
11 See Appian, IV, 8, 62; 8, 64; 9, 73; 9, 74; 10, 80—81. Laodicea, Tarsus, Rhodes,
Xanthus and Peters were captured and forced to pay great sums of money. Besides
this, ten years tribute was exacted from the whole province.
1952] King — Translation of Augustus ’ Res Gestae 223
gen Roms, die Widerherstellung seiner Ruhe, sind notwendig,
erweisen den Krieg als gerecht, den Sieger als den legitimen
Hiiter des populus Romanus . . .”12 The Greek copy, however,
by omitting all specific references to a war and to the Republic,
records, instead of a victory which was specifically to the advan¬
tage of Rome and the Romans, only the general act which was of
service to the whole empire, clearing the sea of pirates. Here
again, then, as in the superscription and in paragraph 1, the
Greek version neglects the Augustan emphasis on the fact that
his deeds were services to the Republic and people of Rome, and
records them instead as services of general imperial value.
The Greek translation of the Latin phrase res publica are
further evidence of the difference in attitude between Augustus
and the translator. This phrase occurs eight times in the Latin
copy. It is only precisely and definitely translated into Greek
three times. Two of these instances occur in paragraph 1 and
have to do with Augustus’ official appointment as dictator and
triumvir, the third is in paragraph 7 and likewise deals with
Augustus’ triumvirate. In each of these three cases res publica
is well translated by 8rjp6aLa irpaypara. In a fourth instance in
paragraph 1, which deals with the action of Augustus in liberat¬
ing the Republic from the domination of Antony, the phrase is
translated by rd kolvcl irpaypara. The generalizing significance of
this translation has already been noted (p. 221). The fifth occur¬
rence of the words is in paragraph 2, which refers to the war
waged by the conspirators against the Republic. The Latin reads :
“Et postea bellum inferentis rei publicae vici bis acie.” The
Greek reads : ‘Vat pera ravra avrovs iro\epov kir L<f)epovT as rr\i TvaTplbi 8ls
heUrjaa 7rapard£et.” The Greek substitutes the “fatherland” for the
“republic” and thus, while not changing the facts of the case,
changes the point of view. Augustus makes the point here, as he
did in recording his war with Sextus Pompey, that the attack of
his opponents was directed against the Roman Republic. He thus
paints himself as her champion, her guardian against aggres¬
sion, the picture of himself which would be important in the eyes
of Romans. The Greek text, on the other hand, brings out the
point that the conspirators were attacking not the Republic, but
their fatherland and thus represents Augustus as the victorious
opponent of traitors, a role which would enhance his prestige
throughout the empire. In the superscription, in paragraph 25,
referring to the war with Sextus Pompey, and in paragraph 34,
the words res publica are omitted entirely. The omission in each
case has the same effect, i.e., to represent an action of Augustus
“Weber, op. cit ., 195.
224 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
as affecting the empire in general, instead of the Roman Republic
alone.
Other evidence of the translator’s general imperial point of
view as contrasted with the strictly Roman attitude of Augustus
is found in his treatment of the Latin words, externas and
universum. In paragraph 3, Augustus wrote, “Externas gentes
. . . conservare quam excidere malui.” The translator gener¬
alized the clause by rendering it, “T aWvrj .... eawa /jlclWov t}
e&Ko\pa,” omitting the word for foreign in Greek although he had
just used it, efarutovs, a few lines above to describe wars which
would have been foreign from the point of view of the empire as
well as of Rome.
In paragraph 5, Augustus, discussing a food crisis in Rome,
writes of freeing “populum universum” the whole people, from
fear and danger by his administration of the grain supply. Of
course Augustus’ words are true of the populum Romanum, but
from the viewpoint of the provincial, the use of universum here
is nonsense, and the translator omits it. In paragraph 34 also,
where Augustus writes of the mass personal oath of allegiance
to himself sworn by the citizen population of Italy and the West,
he uses the phrase “per consensum universorum” Again “uni-
versorum” might be permissible exaggeration here if one were
thinking only in terms of Romans, but would be very untrue as
viewed by the provincial of Asia Minor. The translator renders
the phrase “/card, rds ei>xas t&v wav TvokeiT&v,” leaving out any refer¬
ence to “universorum.”
Other traces of this difference in attitude may be noted in the
phraseology and vocabulary of the Greek translation. In his
writing Augustus, “soucieux du mot precis et volontiers tech¬
nique, surtout quand il s’agit du vocabulaire politique,” was par¬
ticularly careful to observe the political distinctions of the
Roman Republic.13 The translator was not so careful. In para¬
graph 1, Augustus emphasized that he had raised the army with
which he freed the Republic privato consilio et privata impensa,
i.e., as a private citizen without magisterial imperium. The trans¬
lator ignored the words privato . . . privata and rendered the
phrase simply kurjt. koll k/jLoXs avaXunacnv, although as appears
in paragraph 21, he did know the Greek word idtcorLKos which
would have translated privatus .14
Again, he translated municipium, which had a technical mean¬
ing in Latin, by the unqualified Greek word tt6\ls, instead of
13 Gag§, op. cit., 38.
14 Weber, op. cit., 144, notes this change from the legal to the personal sphere.
He says, “Das zweimalige ‘privato’-'privata’ iiberfiihrt er aus der Kechtssphare in
die personliche (eju w-ejug).”
1952] King — Translation of Augustus' Res Gestae 225
using the Greek howLklttlov, which was the technical equivalent
of the Latin word,15 and in so doing puts municipia on the same
level as the other communities of the Empire. Also the three
Latin terms, populus (Romanus) , plebs (Romana) , and civitas
(Romana) , each of, which has a distinct and different political
meaning in the Latin copy are all consistently translated by the
same Greek expression, 6 8r}po$ t&v 'Vwpa'iuv, without qualification.16
In this case, where Augustus distinguished between different
divisions of the republic, the translator puts them all in the same
category as “the state,” the drjpos. That he did this intentionally,
and that his failure to distinguish between them was not due to
the paucity of his vocabulary or to ignorance of the technical
distinctions in the Latin words is shown by the fact that he did
know a different and more exact Greek word for each of the
Latin words. This appears in his use of oxXou to translate plebs
urbana in paragraph 15 where he wishes to distinguish plebs
urbana from the plebs Romana as a whole, and in his use of TroXts
as a translation of civitas in paragraph 24, where it is not a
question of the Roman civitas.
Again, to his translation of the phrase corona civica (par. 34)
the translator added the qualifying phrase 6 didopevos h d aurripla t&v
irokeLTcbv, in Greek to bring out the technical connotation of the
Latin, where the connotation puts Augustus in a flattering light
even from the imperial point of view. Also his use of Wvyj in¬
stead of drj/jLos to translate populi in paragraph 26, where it is a
question of non-Roman and semi-civilized peoples, shows that he
appreciated the technical connotations of words and could make
distinctions in Greek when he wanted to do so. Thus, often where
Augustus preserved republican forms and distinctions in his
language the translator seems intentionally to have ignored
them.
Further evidence of a similar nature is found in the transla¬
tions of the Latin phrase imperium populi Romani, the empire
of the Roman people. This phrase occurs six times in the Latin
text. The first time it occurs in the superscription and is com¬
pletely omitted in the Greek version as noted above (p. 220) . The
second occurrence of the words is in paragraph 13: “. . . cum
per totum imperium populi Romani terra marique esset parta
victoriis pax . . .” The Greek simplifies this as follows:
“ .. . dprivevonevrjs rijs vtto Tcojuatots iraar/s yijs re kclI daXaaarjs ...” Note that
the Greek again omits the phrase imperium populi Romani, sub-
« Res Gestae, 3, 3: 16, 1; 16, 2; 21, 3. Cf. tt6\ls for oppidum — 26, 5.
16 Populus — Res Gestae, 5, 1 ; 14, 1 ; passim. Plebs — 15, 1; 15, 4; App. 1. Civitas
— 5, 2.
226 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
stituting h to T cofxaLois, and also omits reference to the victories
by which peace had been gained. The omission here as in the
superscription has a double effect. The contrast between the
ruling Roman Republic and the subject empire is considerably
softened, and again a republican form preserved by Augustus
has been ignored by the translator. The same effect is noted in
other translations of this phrase in paragraphs 26, 27, 30 where
imperium is translated in each case by the Greek word riye/iovia,
a weak term for imperium and one which suggests the leadership
of Rome, not the imperial possession of Rome. The Greek word
Kvpirja, which was in the translator’s vocabulary (see par. 34)
would have been a more accurate translation.
At this point it is possible to trace a pattern in the work of
the translator. Where Augustus was careful to point up the value
of his services to the Roman Republic, or where he preserved
republican forms and precise distinctions in his language, the
translator either changed, neglected or obscured the Augustan
emphasis, giving a general and imperial application to what
Augustus had given a parochial, Roman and republican stress.
By these changes he produced a new and non-Augustan picture
of the emperor and the empire. By his failure to translate the
Latin phrase res publica and certain other phrases in the super¬
scription and in paragraphs 1 and 25, the translator pictured
Augustus as the benefactor of the whole empire, not of the
Roman Republic alone. By his refusal to use the word universum
of Romans alone, or the word externas of non-Roman peoples
within the empire, or to translate the technical meaning of
municipium, and by his translations of imperium as leadership,
he represented the Empire as a group of communities and
peoples without distinction under the leadership of Rome. This
picture of a universal state of similar communities under Roman
hegemony rather than a diverse group of Roman republican units
on the one hand, and subject peoples on the other, is strength¬
ened by his failure to convey in Greek the political distinctions
involved in the Latin words populus, plebs, civitas, and privatus.
These divergences noted in the Greek are all the more remark¬
able in view of the high fidelity of the Greek to the Latin text in
general throughout the document. Weber (op. cit. 224) concludes
his comprehensive comparison of the two copies thus, “Oft genug
wurde beobachtet, dass dieser Mann (the translator) mit sel-
tener, fast peinlicher Treue dem Werk des Agustus, seinen
Teilen wie dem Ganzen, sich hingegeben hat.” Accordingly one
must conclude that the examples cited are not the result of care-
1952] King — Translation of Augustus' Res Gestae 227
lessness or negligence but show a definite intentional difference
in the viewpoint of Augustus and the translator. Moreover, it is
important to keep in mind when considering the question fully
that for the ordinary Greek-speaking provincial the Greek copy
of the Res Gestae was the only copy. The picture of Augustus
and Augustan deeds in it is the one he would take away with
him. Quite obviously, then, the translator wanted to convey to
the provincials a different picture from the one Augustus had
painted of himself. Augustus wanted to appear as the champion
of the Roman Republic, to impress Romans. It was their good
opinion he sought, not that of the provincials. The translator was
evidently more concerned to impress the provincials; it was
their good opinion he considered important.
This desire for the emotional loyalty and support of the non-
Roman inhabitants of the Empire is significant of a change in
the attitude of Roman rulers which was more and more to be
reflected in their administration of imperial affairs. It is also
significant of the actual political conditions that now prevailed
in the Roman state. The Republic was dead. The technical dis¬
tinctions of its political vocabulary could be ignored by the trans¬
lator of the Res Gestae because they were practically speaking
meaningless. The institutions for which they stood no longer had
any real validity, and were being replaced by others. From the
evidence of the Greek translation it appears that after Augustus'
death Roman officialdom recognized the death of the Republic,
in a way he had not, and considered it important to gain the
allegiance and moral support of the whole empire, to weld its
inhabitants together around the figure of the emperor as the
benefactor of all alike. The Princeps was no longer to be the
chief citizen and benefactor of a Roman Republic ruling a diverse
group of foreign conquered states, as Augustus had pictured
himself, but the chief citizen and benefactor of a universal state,
as he is pictured by the translator.
The chief elements in this latter picture bring it close to the
later Stoic-Cynic concept of the empire and the emperor.17 For
the philosophers, the Roman Empire is one universal state (pla
ttoXls iraaa ij oiKovfikvy]) ; in this state there are no “foreigners" ;
and at its head is a leader (riyepcov) and benefactor (evepyeryjs)
of all. Compare with these points the translator's refusal to use
the word “foreigners" of inhabitants of the Empire (p. 224), his
refusal to distinguish different classes of communities (p. 224),
his designation of the Empire as a leadership (yyepovia), and his
17 For a good discussion of this concept see M. Rostovtzeff, “Social and Economic
History of the Roman Empire” (Oxford, 1926), 127-128, and 115.
228 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
picture of Augustus as benefactor of the whole Empire (pp.
220-225). The existence of the Greek translation of the Res
Gestae as a widespread and permanent document of propaganda
must have made a material, if silent and unconscious, contribu¬
tion to developing and fixing the Stoic-Cynic concept in the minds
of the provincials in the eastern half of the Empire.18
™ The identity of the translator, whether Roman or Greek, official or lay, has not
been considered in this paper. On the basis of currently available evidence it is
insoluble, and for the purposes of the argument here it is enough to note that who¬
ever the translator was, his work was certainly inscribed on the -walls of Augustus’
temple with knowledge and approval of Roman officialdom.
PRELIMINARY SEDIMENTARY ANALYSIS OF THE
PLEISTOCENE SEDIMENTS ON THE BOTTOM
OF LAKE GENEVA, WISCONSIN
Syl Ludington Jr.
Acknowledgement
The writer wishes to acknowledge the help and assistance of
many who contributed their time, effort, and money to the suc¬
cess of the project.
To Dr. G. William Holmes, formerly of the Department of
Geology of Beloit College go thanks for his help and patience in
explaining the different laboratory techniques and the valuable
suggestions in writing this paper. The project is deeply indebted
to Mr. Ernst Schmidt of the Geneva Lake Boat Company for the
use of his equipment while the corer was in operation. The writer
would also like to thank Mr. and Mrs. C. B. Kuhlman for the use
of their summer home for a base of operations on the summer
week ends while the experiment was being conducted, and to Mr.
Donald Kuhlman, the author’s co-worker in this experiment. The
help of Mr. Robert Cannon and Mr. Raymond Schmidt of Safway
Steel Products, Inc., Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, who assisted in
construction of the corer, is greatly appreciated.
No one is to be singled out for a major contribution as all had
an integral part in the success of the experiment.
Introduction
The purpose of this analysis is to try to determine the age of
the sediments on the bottom of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin and to
correlate the results with known Pleistocene history following
the Cary substage of the Wisconsin glaciation when the lake was
formed.
The methods used were the mechanical analysis of sediments
as outlined by Krumbein and Pettijohn (1938) and by the use of
the Atterberg liquid limits machine to find the clay content in
the sediments (Terzaghi and Peck, 1948) .
It is known that there have been many changes in climate
since the formation of Lake Geneva in Cary time, the largest
being the Mankato substage about 25,000 years ago, Cochrane
glaciation of 10,000 years ago, the climatic optimum 7,000 years
ago, and the neoglacial stage ending about 100 years ago (Flint,
229
230 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
1948) . Assuming that all the sediments at the bottom of the lake
represent deposition since the Cary substage, it is hoped to cor¬
relate major breaks in the samples to these changes in climate.
Previous Geologic Work
N. M. Fenneman (1902) studied the shore features, the
sources, and the outlet of Lake Geneva. He gives an exceptionally
accurate account of the shore features, their formation, and the
former height of the lake level.
W. C» Alden (1904) presents a detailed account of the glacial
formation of Lake Geneva as a result of the Delevan lobe of the
Lake Michigan glacier. It is a thorough presentation with accu¬
rate descriptions of the moraines, their position, and their
lithology.
Alden (1918) further advanced his study of the geology of
southeastern Wisconsin with certain revisions in the quaternary
geology. He includes an analysis of the Ordovician and Silurian
formations in the area.
W. H. Whitbeck (1921) studied the geography of the area for
its temperature and rainfall characteristics.
Geography
Location
Lake Geneva is located between 88 degrees 15 minutes west
longitude and 42 degrees 20 minutes north latitude in the south¬
ern part of Walworth County which is located in the southeast¬
ern section of Wisconsin. The lake is 8 miles long with a width
ranging from % to 2 miles and trends east-west. At the west end
of the lake is the city of Fontana with a population of 461 and
on the north side Williams Bay is located with a population of
717. The largest city on the lake, Lake Geneva, is located at the
eastern end of the lake with a population of 3,238 (1940 census) .
Climate
The climate of the Lake Geneva area is near the southern
boundary of the humid continental, short summer zone. This is
more commonly known as the spring wheat area with an average
growing season of from 3 to 5 months. The average annual range
in temperature is 55 degrees (Finch and Trewartha, 1942).
The average yearly rainfall is 30 inches with rain or snow
approximately 100 days a year. The lowest temperature recorded
is 28 degrees below zero F. and the killing frost extends on the
average from the middle of October to the last of April (Whit¬
beck, 1921).
1952]
Ludington — Pleistocene Sediments
231
Historical Sketch
The earliest recorded history of the area dates back to 1836
when the area was surveyed and the section lines were laid out
by John Brink and John Hodgson who were government sur¬
veyors.
The name of the lake originated with the early settlers that
traveled from Geneva, New York. The Indian name for the lake
is Maunk Suck while the French called it Gros Pied after the
Indian chief of the Pottawatamie tribe, Big Foot. The Pottawa-
tamies lived at the head of the lake which is now known as Fon¬
tana but moved out of the area in 1840 after the government
purchased their land. They were apparently a peaceful tribe as
there is no evidence of any disputes with the whites (Baker,
1869).
Drainage
The water of the lake is derived from springs which discharge
into the lake and from small streams which deliver the water
from other springs in the area. There are a number of springs
in Fontana area that deliver cold clear water by stream to the
lake. At certain places, water issues from springs at the base of
a bluff at a considerable elevation above the lake level. At the
north side of Fontana and at the west side of the lowland north
of William's Bay, the lines of seepage or springs lie 30 to 40 feet
above the lake level. This results in the formation of peat on a
slope below the seepage line that forms a terrace 10 to 20 feet
high.
The outlet of the lake is in the northeast corner of the lake
where the waters empty into the White River which flows in a
northeasterly direction to where it joins the Fox River. Approxi¬
mately 1 million gallons a day flow into the river, the water being
controlled by a dam in the city of Lake Geneva (Fenneman,
1902).
Lithology
There are three formations underlying Lake Geneva that
strike north and dip slightly to the southeast. The Ordovician
Galena dolomite underlies the western section of the lake, and
the contact is located at Yerkes Observatory on the north shore
and old Marengo Beach on the south shore. Overlying the Galena
dolomite is the Maquoketa shale (the Cincinnati shale of earlier
reports with the base of the formation trending from Yerkes
Observatory on the north and Marengo Beach on the south, east¬
ward to Cisco Bay on the north to the Lake Geneva Yacht Club
on the south shore. This is overlain by the Silurian Niagara
282 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol.41
dolomite with its western contact being the eastern contact on
the Maquoketa shale, and extends as far east as Lake Michigan
(Alden, 1918).
Galena Dolomite
This Ordovician formation is buff colored, uneven textured,
earthy to finely crystalline, magnesian limestone, that is regu¬
larly bedded in layers about 4 to 14 inches thick. It is porous
and in places showing small irregular cavities an inch or so in
diameter. It carries an appreciable amount of chert in rounded
nodules distributed along more or less definite horizons. The
average thickness of the Galena dolomite combined with the
older Trenton limestone is 260 feet (Alden, 1918) .
Maquoketa Shale
The Ordovician Maquoketa shale is a soft bluish and greenish
clay shale with intercalated magnesian limestone layers. This
shale formation was easily removed where the capping of the
Niagara dolomite no longer remains. The outcrops are patchy
but the few that have been observed indicate that it lies con¬
formably on the Galena dolomite. The average thickness of the
Maquoketa shale is 185 feet but a driller on the south shore of
the lake drilled 300 feet without passing entirely through it
(Alden, 1918).
Niagara Dolomite
This Silurian formation lies unconformably on the Maquoketa
shale and is associated with patches of Clinton iron ore. It is a
white to bluish gray crystalline dolomite. It is generally well
stratified in regular, little fractured courses varying in thickness
from a few inches to 30 inches or more. The formation is gen¬
erally rather fossiliferous and has an average thickness of 312
feet (Alden, 1918).
Glacial Geology
In the Tazewell substage of the Wisconsin glaciation the ice
flowed westward down the preglacial Geneva Valley. This valley
offered a discharge for the glacial waters which flowed south¬
ward through the north-south trending preglacial Troy Valley
which was located to the west of Lake Geneva. When the ice
advance ceased, Marengo Ridge was formed as a terminal
moraine, it trends north-south and is located west of Fontana,
Wis. This moraine blocked the outlet of the valley.
During the Cary substage, part of the Deievan lobe of the
Lake Michigan glacier flowed southward across Geneva Valley
and formed the Darien moraine located on the south side of the
1952]
Luding ton — Pleis tocene Sediments
233
lake which covered Marengo Ridge and again blocked the outlet
of the lake. The water then left the Nippersink outlet at Genoa
Junction on the southeast side of the lake. The ice then retreated
northward and formed the Elkorn moraine on the north side of
the lake (Alden, 1904).
Coring Operation
The tube for the coring device was built out of steel tubing
8 feet long with an inside diameter of 1.510 inches. It was found
that the inside diameter must be at least .010 inches larger than
the l1/^ inch plastic tubing that is inserted in the steel tube.
The weights for the corer were fashioned from two steel ball
bearings with a combined weight of 110 pounds. The balls were
welded opposite one another around a ten-inch length of steel
tubing that had an inside diameter large enough to fit around
the 8-foot tube but small enough so that a collar welded 2 feet
from the top would prevent the weights from falling lower on
the tube. A nose was made out of heavy gauge steel tubing that
could be inserted in the lower end of the 8-foot tube. The nose
was held in place by threading two opposite holes in the nose
and inserting 2 bolts through the wall of the 8-foot tube into the
threaded holes of the nose.
To retain the sediments in the plastic tubing small brass
fingers were soldered to a brass ring that was placed between
the nose and the plastic tubing which allowed the sample to pass
into the corer but prevented the sediment from washing out.
A valve was attached to the top of the corer that would allow
water to pass through the tube on descent but would close on
ascent to prevent water from washing the sample out of the
plastic tubing (Figure 1).
A large steel barge was borrowed for the experiment that had
a winch mounted in the center and a boom that could swing out
over the front end of the barge. Three-strand *4- inch line was
wound on the winch, passed through a block on the boom, and
was attached to a hook on the top of the corer. The corer was
allowed to fall through the water with the friction on the un¬
winding line on the winch keeping the corer in a vertical posi¬
tion.
It was difficult to tell the relation of core penetration to the
length of the core obtained. Grease was rubbed on the outside
of the corer in the hope that some idea of the penetration could
be obtained but it was never known if the corer fell on its side
after it penetrated the bottom.
234 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
1952]
Ludington — Pleistocene Sediments
9Q
65
Analysis of the Cores
The cores taken ranged in length from 82 cm. to 46 cm., with
an average length being 50 cm. The reason for the 82-cm. core is
that the brass core retainer was not used and therefore there is
not as much compression as in other cores. Of all the cores taken,
core 4 with its 82-cm. length showed more than the other sam¬
ples. It is recommended that if any further work is done on the
Pleistocene sediments in the nearby lakes that the core retainer
be omitted from the coring tube.
Each core was split in half lengthwise so that one half could
be preserved for further analysis for pollen, organic material,
and fossils.
The material in the cores when first opened was plastic, had
a uniform texture, and had a dark gray color. When color
changes were found in the cores, samples were taken above and
below each change. Where no breaks were visible, the samples
were taken at equal intervals in the core.
There were two methods of analysis used. The first was the
pipette method outlined by Krumbein and Pettijohn (1938). The
purpose of the pipette analysis is find the size distribution of
the sediments. It also reveals the median size, the sorting, and
the skewness. The second method which acted as a check on the
first was the Atterberg liquid limits test described by Terzaghi
and Peck (1948). The results of this test indicate the plasticity
of the sediment which is a function of the per cent of clay min¬
erals present to the rock flour and the kind of clay minerals
present.
Results of Analysis
When the median size of the sediments at the top of each core
is plotted on a graph the results indicate a pattern which par¬
allels the depth of the water and the distance from the shore;
the sediments close to the shore are coarse when compared to the
sediments at the top of the cores taken in the center of the lake.
The sediments in the bottom of one core were coarse with
traces of gravel which are of Cary age. Samples taken above this
coarse gravel are fine and very plastic compared to the non¬
plastic gravels. This fine plastic sediment indicates that it was
deposited after the retreat of the Cary glaciers. Above this fine
sediment there is a change to coarse material, though not as
coarse as the sediment in the bottom of the core containing the
Cary gravel. This second appearance of coarse sediment should
represent the effect on the lake by the Mankato glacier. This
MEDIAN SIZE (MM) LIQUID LIMIT AGE
236 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters |_Vol. 41
o
<
o
10
m
P10URE 2
1952]
Ludington — Pleistocene Sediments
237
coarse sediment has a low plasticity, and above this material
there is a change to fine material with high plasticity, represent¬
ing deposition of modern day sediments (Figure 2) .
Conclusion
The Delevan lobe of the Lake Michigan glacier flowed south-
westward until it reached the Illinois border near Walworth,
Wisconsin. With the approach of the Cary-Mankato interglacial
period, the glacier began its retreat and formed a recessional
moraine on the south shore of what is now Lake Geneva. The
glacier again retreated and formed a moraine which is now the
north shore of the lake. As the glacier retreated to the north,
the melt waters which were loaded with material emptied into
the lake. With the warm interstadial period approaching, smaller
size particles were deposited on top of the larger sized particles
with their poorer sorting.
The Mankato glaciation followed the warm interstadial period
and reached the south shore of Lake Winnebago which is 83
miles north of Lake Geneva. The glacier is supposed to have
flowed south in the area which is now Lake Michigan as far as
the Illinois-Wisconsin state line, if this line were projected
across to Lake Michigan (Flint, 1948). The ice in the Lake
Michigan area would have been 64 miles from the Lake Geneva
area.
With Lake Geneva in the periglacial area there was increased
frost action, precipitation, and loess was being deposited over
the area by the winds blowing off the front of the glacier.
The increased waters in the streams emptying into the lake
increased their load that resulted in larger size particles being
carried into the lake.
With the retreat of the Mankato glacier, precipitation de¬
creased, chemical weathering increased, and the particles again
became smaller with better sorting. This condition continued
until the present day with good sorting and a small median size
in the sediments.
Though there have been changes in climate since the Mankato,
they have not been large enough to cause an alteration in the size
of the sediments on the lake floor.
Bibliography
1. Alden, W. C., 1918, The Quaternary geology of southeastern Wisconsin
with a chapter on the older rock formations, U. S. G. S. prof, paper
106, pp. 85-93.
2. Alden, W. C., 1904, The Delevan lobe of the Lake Michigan glacier,
U. S. G. S. prof, paper 34, pp. 50-51.
238 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 41
3. Baker, October 5, 1869, Pioneer history of Walworth county (speech),
Wisconsin historical collections, pp. 441-475, Vol. VI.
4. Fenneman, N. M., Lakes of southeastern Wisconsin, 1902, pp. 63-76.
5. Finch, V. C., Trewartha, G. T., 1942, Elements of geography, physical
and cultural, pp. 229-233.
6. Flint, R. F., 1948, Glacial geology and the Pleistocene epoch, pp. 268,
400-403.
7. Twenhofel, W. H., 1932, Treatise on sedimentation, pp. 256-260.
8. Whitbeck, R. H., 1921, The geography and development of southeastern
Wisconsin, pp. 20-21.
£o&. 73
W 7 V\f (a 3
TRANSACTIONS
OF THE
WISCONSIN ACADEMY
NATURAE SPECIES RATIOQUE
SCIENCES, ARTS AND LETTERS
VOL. XLII
OCT 8 1953
rn.onVtf ....
MADISON, WISCONSIN
1953
The publication date of Volume 42 is
August 27, 1953
TRANSACTIONS
OF THE
WISCONSIN ACADEMY
OF
SCIENCES, ARTS AND LETTERS
VOL. XLII
\
NATURAE SPECIES RATIOQU E
MADISON, WISCONSIN
1953
The publication date of Volume 42 is
August 27, 1953
OFFICERS OF THE WISCONSIN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES,
ARTS AND LETTERS
President
Katherine G. Nelson, Milwaukee-D owner College
Vice Presidents
In Science: William H. Barber, Ripon College
In Arts: Ella M. Martin, Wisconsin State College, Platteville
In Letters: Berenice Cooper, Wisconsin State College, Superior
Secretary-Treasurer
Robert J. Dicke, University of Wisconsin
Librarian
Halvor 0. Teisberg, University of Wisconsin
Council
The President
The Vice Presidents
The Secretary-Treasurer
The Librarian
Charles E. Allen, past president
Paul W. Boutwell, past president
A. W. Schorger, past president
H. A. Schuette, past president
L. E. Noland, past president
0. L. Kowalke, past president
W. C. McKern, past president
E. L. Bolender, past president
Committee on Publications
The President
The Secretary-Treasurer
A. W. Schorger, University of Wisconsin
Committee on Library
The Librarian
C. A. Elvehjem, University of Wisconsin
A. M. Fuller, Milwaukee Public Museum
H. A. Sequin, Wisconsin State College, Superior
Committee on Membership
The Secretary-Treasurer
Lois Almon, Wisconsin State College, Eau Claire
J. W. Thomson, University of Wisconsin
L. Zellmer, Wisconsin Sfate College, Platteville
Representative on the Council of the American Association
for the Advancement of Science
Robert J. Dicke
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
Spenser, 1552-1952. Merritt Y. Hughes . 5
Beginnings of Chemical Education in Beloit, Lawrence and Ripon Col¬
leges. Robert Siegfried and Aaron J. Ihde . 25
The Abbe Prevost and the Modern Reader. Berenice Cooper . 39
Preliminary Reports on the Flora of Wisconsin. XXXVII. Cyperaceae.
Part I. H. C. Greene . . . . . . 47
Notes on Wisconsin Parasitic Fungi. XVIII. H. C. Greene . 69
Parasites of Northwest Wisconsin Fishes IV. Summary and Limno¬
logical Relationships. Jacob H. Fischthal . . . 83
The Cheese Manufacturing Regions of Wisconsin, 1850-1950. Loyal
Durand, Jr . 109
The Membracidae of the University of Wisconsin Arboretum. Clifford
J. Dennis and Robert J. Dicke . 131
One Hundred Years of Earth Science at Milwaukee-Downer College.
Katherine G. Nelson . . . . 143
Stratiomyidae of Wisconsin (Diptera). Juanita Sorenson and C. L.
Fluke . 149
Determination of Electrometric Properties of Ground Water by a Field
Method. R. S. Pierce . 173
Decomposition of Hard Maple Sawdust by Treatment with Anhydrous
Ammonia and Inoculation with Coprinus Ephemerus. Charles B.
Davey . 177
Relation of the Understory to the Upland Forest in the Prairie-Forest
Border Region of Wisconsin. Margaret L. Gilbert and J. T.
Curtis . 183
The White-Tailed Deer in Early Wisconsin. A. W. Schorger . 197
Memory and Desire and Tennessee Williams’ Plays. John J. Enck. . . 249
Arthur Miller: An Attempt at Modern Tragedy. Alvin Whittey . 257
The Role of Science in the Thought of W. D. Howells. Harry W. Clark 263
Proceedings of the Academy. 1951 . 305
Proceedings of the Academy. 1952 . . . . . 309
SPENSER, 1552-1952
Merritt Y. Hughes
I. His Challenged Art
Not long ago a Wisconsin writer in need of refreshment after
finishing a detective novel decided to go back to Spenser's Faerie
Queene for a change of air. He found the poem better than he
remembered it from his undergraduate days and ended by read¬
ing it entire to his wife and two friends. His pleasure in the
poem surprised him for he had vaguely accepted the standards
by which Spenser is relegated to an almost juvenile status with
his knights and ladies and monsters and unchartable, make-
believe world that adult taste puts away with other childish
things. The spinner of detective yarns may have been lured on
from stanza to stanza by the verbal music of the poem, as Mr.
Mark Van Doren confesses is his case in spite of his low rating
of the poet's art and mind. And Mr. Van Doren speaks for the
majority of American readers when he says that, in spite of
Spenser's mastery of “a certain style which nobody else can use,
at his centre he is an intellectual amateur, a gentleman moralist,
a high-Renaissance Englishman who writes better than he thinks
or feels."1 Spenser, thinks Mr. Van Doren, loved “poetry more
than he loved truth," and the key to his mind is simply the fact
that he was “drunk with allegory." The effect of his intoxication
— according to Mr. Cleanth Brooks in Modern Poetry and the
Tradition — was to reduce poetry for him and all his tribe to “an
allegorical construct, an abstract framework of statement which
was to be illustrated and ornamented by overlaying the frame¬
work with concrete detail."2 Mr. Brooks is so struck by the gulf
between the art of the Spenserians and the wit of John Donne
and the Metaphysical poets that he would rewrite the history of
English poetry in the light of the contrast between the intellec¬
tual and imaginative immaturity of the Spenserians all the way
down to Tennyson on the one hand, and on the other the mature
mastery of the radical image and the poetic symbol by the school
of Donne in the seventeenth century and by its heirs, with Mr.
T. S. Eliot as their guide, in the twentieth.
By an interesting historical paradox, it was Spenser's most
powerful though not his most devoted champion in the twentieth
1 Mark Van Doren. The Noble Voice. New York, 1946. P. 232.
2 Cleanth Brooks. Modern Poetry and the Tradition. Chapel Hill, 1939. P. 220.
5
6 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
century, William Butler Yeats, who first suggested that he was
the victim of something very like what Mr. Eliot has named
“dissociation of sensibility.,, As early as 1907, in Discoveries, I
Yeats stressed the split between intellect and emotion, the
divorce between the “higher” and “lower faculties” in the post-
Renaissance world as so inimical to poetry that, by the beginning
of the twentieth century, “the highest faculties had faded, taking
the sense of beauty with them, into some sort of vague heaven,
and left the lower to lumber where they best could.”3 Yeats saw
the “conflict between the aesthetic and moral interests” in Spen¬
ser no less clearly, though he left it to the next generation to con¬
demn the poet — as Mr. Traversi has done in Scrutiny — for his
fatal “attraction to Neo-Platonism,” the evil that drove him and
Milton, “by their very genius, to crush the true poetic genius of
English.”4 For Mr. Traversi Neo-Platonism is one with Puri¬
tanism — the puritanism of Calvin the damned, and Luther, and
all the rest of these blighters whom, as Mr. Ezra Pound pro¬
tested in Jefferson and/or Mussolini, “we Americans have,
whether we like it or not, on our shoulders.”5 In Spenser Mr.
Traversi sees simply the Puritan with a “disembodied and de¬
structive intellect preying on the body to kill the soul.” That, for
him, is “the importance of Spenser and Milton, and the relation
of their development to the English tradition.” Everywhere down
to the age of Tennyson he finds “their pallid successors . . . pro¬
ducing a dead poetic language — sterile emotions issuing in steri¬
lized speech.”6 Mr. Traversi bulldozes a royal road to under¬
standing of English poetry over the buried reputations of all the
Spenserians from Milton to Tennyson. Mr. F. R. Leavis rides the
same way with equal disregard of the cost to the Golden Treas¬
ury when he derives Tennyson “from Spenser by way of Milton
and Keats,” and declares that Milton's acknowledgment of
Spenser as his “original” is given an “obvious significance by
the mention of Tennyson.”7
In biology we would suspect a theory of sterility as a typically
heritable trait, and in literature we should hesitate to attribute
it to a poet whose distinctive qualities appear for three centuries
after his death as dominant characteristics in his tribe. When
the world was under Spenser’s spell the poets gloried in their
inheritances from him — traits, for example, like the “elegant
3 William Butler Yeats. Discoveries. Dundrum, 1907. P. 7.
* Scrutiny. Vol. V (1937). Pp. 284-285.
5 Ezra Pound. Jefferson and/or Mussolini. L’ideale statale. Fascism as I have
seen it. London, 1935. P. 44.
6 Scrutiny. Vol. V. P. 291.
7 F. R. Leavis. Revaluation. London, 1936. P. 56.
1953]
Hughes — Spenser, 1552-1952
7
turns on the word and on the thought”* * 8 that Dryden called the
finest things in English poetry and confessed that he had delib¬
erately derived from Spenser. To Mr. Van Doren these “elegant
turns” of Spenser are not apparent or are the vices of his “ex¬
tensive art,” which fails for “lack of force, because its imagery
never short-circuits itself, never generates heat by resisting con¬
vention.”9 In the ecology of modern poetics it is a dogma that
imagery can never have a healthy growth under the shadow of
allegory; that in its presence sensibility is always ununified and
stultified. Mr. Brooks by implication accepts the dogma when he
contrasts Yeats’ Blood and the Moon on this score with The
Faerie Queene. In Blood and the Moon he sees a “very fine ex¬
ample of unification of sensibility” simply because the poem “re¬
fuses to be reduced to allegory — allegory which is perhaps the
first attempt which man makes to unite the intellect and the emo¬
tions when they begin to fall apart — Spenser’s Faerie Queene for
example.”10
It may be unfair to Mr. Brooks to hold him strictly for his
short work with allegory. He can hardly intend to condemn it in
its entire range from its direct variety (to use Mr. Rex Warner’s
terms) in Bunyan through its intermediate forms in Spenser and
the allegorical dramatis personae of Strindberg and the expres¬
sionists, to its indirect forms in Kafka. The time has passed for
off-hand dismissal of Spenser’s allegory in Lowell’s words as
“imagination adapted for beginners in words of one syllable and
illustrated with cuts.”1'1 Lowell wrote under the spell of Hazlitt’s
famous dictum that if Spenser’s readers would not “meddle with
the allegory, it would not meddle with them.”12 For over a cen¬
tury Hazlitt’s doctrine could be applied to all the classical alle-
gorists. Even an artist of Henry James’ gift for the allegory that
revolves around symbols — as it appears in The Wings of the
Dove, The Golden Bowl, and The Ivory Tower — could condemn
Hawthorne’s symbolism as an “element of cold and ingenious
fantasy,” impotent and “passionless.” Herbert Read is probably
right in quoting these words13 as evidence that James could not
appreciate Hawthorne, Spenser, or Bunyan though his own cre¬
ative gift developed in their direction. Modern fiction and poetry,
even while they move toward allegory, are shy of approval of
8 John Dryden in the Essay on Satire. In Essays of John Dryden. Selected by
C. D. Yonge. London, 1882. Pp. 102-103.
8 Mark Van Doren in The Noble Voice. P. 247.
10 Cleanth Brooks in Modern Poetry and the Tradition. P. 181.
11 The Writings of Janies Russell Lowell. London, 1890. Vol. IV. P. 324.
12 1 Complete Works of William Hazlitt. London, 1930. Vol. V. P. 38.
13 Herbert Read in The Sense of Glory. Cambridge, 1928. P. 161.
8 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
Spenser's medium. Stephen Spender's attempt to get away from
“the substantive" to
“the general and from thence
To an almost Spenserian and occult
Prosopopoeia,”
as Karl Shapiro reminds us,14 was far from successful. Although
at first he
“Used the abstraction as a metaphor,
Concretely and with humor,”
he was foredoomed to failure in the end because
“the figure,
Full of the serum of old melancholy,
Distended in its shell and burst.”
The grounds of our aversion to Spenserian allegory lie deeper
in our contemporary culture than we can dig. One of the deepest-
rooted of them is indicated by Miss Tuve when she observes that
as “the painter of the poets" Spenser stands ih danger of the
modern abomination of “painting" by the symbolists in their
“flight with Yeats from painted symbolic object to symbol."15
On evidence mainly negative, the extent of the desertion of “the
poets’ poet" by the poets of the twentieth century is hard to
measure. More significant than their shyness of ecstatic Spen¬
serian echoes like those of the young Keats in Sleep and Poetry
is the sadness or bitterness of modern reminiscence of Spenser.
A typical case is Mr. Eliot's evocation of the Thames of Spenser's
Prothalamion in contrast with the foul river whence
“The nymphs are departed,
And their friends, the loitering heirs of city
directors ;
Departed, have left no addresses.
Sweet Thames, run softly till I end my song,
Sweet Thames, run softly, for I speak not loud
or long.”
Or, as in Ruth Pitter’s Song of Thames, we drop to a symbol of
hope in her cygnet from the confident images of pride in the
swans of the Prothalamion— the swans which convoy the “two
honorable and Vertuous ladies, the ladie Elizabeth and the ladie
Katherine Somerset," as they are rowed to their spousal by
barge from the river stairs of Somerset House. In Miss Pitter’s
poem, after her vision of the city scourged by vice and war, the
14 Karl Shapiro in Essay on Rime. London, 1947. P. 42.
15 Rosamond Tuve in Elizabethan and Metaphysical Imagery. University of Chi¬
cago Press, 1947. P. 6.
1953]
Hughes — Spenser, 1552-1952
9
swan can emerge only as an incongruous symbol of beauty’s
perennial defiance of engulfing ugliness :
. . on the polluted river,
Thick with impurity yet crowned with honour,
There sails a creature raised above pollution,
Proud and immaculate as winter ermine,
He who was last year’s cygnet . . .”
Perhaps the only spirit among twentieth-century poets to be
powerfully kindled by a Spenserian love of Platonic beauty has
been Bridges, the only voice proclaiming that
“All earthly beauty hath one cause and proof,
To lead the pilgrim soul to beauty above.”
Even among the later Victorians there were few to hail Spenser
as Charles Doughty did in The Clouds:
“Dear Master Edmund, since from thy pined flesh,
Thou was unbound: is fallen thy matchless Muse;
Alas the while ! on many evil days :
Wherein, as waxed untuneable, can men’s ears
Now, no more savour thy celestial lays!”
In unqualified admiration for Spenser Doughty stands alone.
How far the prophetic morality and archaic language and highly
personal rhythms of The Dawn in Britain are indebted to The
Faerie Queene is a dark question. Certainly they perpetuate less
of the spirit and style of Spenser than Doughty piously intended
that they should.
The only outstanding twentieth-century poet to champion
Spenser has been the man whose influence and example have per¬
haps most told against him, the young Yeats. In 1906 Yeats
found him a good enough companion to select nearly three hun¬
dred of his pages to “remember and carry about.” Dated though
Yeats’ edition is by its precious illustrations, it could (if it were
again cheaply reprinted) become the most viable road to pleasure
in Spenser for modern readers who ignore or distrust him. Its
choice of four eclogues from The Shepheardes Calendar to put
beside some “Gardens of Delight” from The Faerie Queene, its
representation of “Happy and Unhappy Love” by minor pieces
like An Hymne of Heavenly Beautie and the Epithalamion as
well as by the epic episodes of Florimell and Marinell from The
Faerie Queene, put the poetry under rubrics that are valid for
devout Yeatsians. If the selections make Spenser seem too much
at home among those “smooth pastoral scenes and lovely effemi¬
nate islands” that the young Yeats thought “made him a poet,”16
16 Poems of Spenser. Selected with an Introduction by W. B. Yeats. References
are to the reprint of London, 1926.
10 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
they do not make him an idle singer or master of a merely escap¬
ist idyllic poetry. Under the caption “Emblems and Qualities”
he gathered up all the Spenserian passages to which he had
found that he responded most spontaneously himself. As the
“finest invention” among them he selected that “Vision of Scud-
amour” in the Fourth Book of The Faerie Queene, canto x, which
Van Doren dismisses as one of “several pretty places” that are
“concocted by recipe.” As the essence of Spenser Yeats included
what he called the “House of Love” together with the “Houses”
of Despair, Richesse, and Friendship to stand with the “Wander¬
ing of the Stars” and the cantos of Mutabilities Whenever he
returned to these “emblems,” Yeats found himself transported
out of the realm of allegory, where he was “for the most part,
bored,” into the symbolism that he admired. All of them, he
thought, “either, like the House of Mammon (Richesse), have
enough antient mythology, always in implicit symbolism, or, like
the Cave of Despair, enough sheer passion to make one forget or
forgive their allegory, or else they are, like the vision of Scuda-
mour, so visionary, so full of a sort of ghostly midnight anima¬
tion, that one is persuaded that they had some sort of strange
purpose and did truly appear just in that way to some mind worn
out with war and trouble.”18
The Romantic poets themselves never paid a more devout
homage than this of Yeats to Spenser. But to Yeats the Romantic
devotion to Spenser seemed blind, and he denied that Shelley had
a right to be regarded as a true Spenserian. To prove his point
he took a stanza from Laon and Cythna (as a narrative poem
fairly comparable with The Faerie Queene) and contrasted “its
varied and trouble rhythms” and its “indolent wandering hither
and thither at the beckoning of fancy” with the steady “rush of
Spenser’s verse on to some pre-ordained thought.” This criticism
contrasts with recent objection to The Faerie Queene as an ex¬
pression of will rather than of free imagination — an objection
with certain sides of which Yeats himself sympathized. Certainly
in his own work Yeats deliberately determined to take as free a
course as did Goethe or Andre Gide or any modern writer. The
pre-ordained ethical and political intention that Spenser pro¬
fessed in his letter to Raleigh at the head of The Faerie Queene
is perhaps the main modern stumbling block to enjoyment of the
poem. On the political even more than the ethical point Spenser
is vulnerable for there is little dissent today from Robert Graves’
17 Yeats took the “House of Love” from The Faerie Queene, IV, x ; Despair from
I, ix ; Richesse from II, vii ; and Friendship from IV, _ “The Wandering of the
Stars” is the Prologue to Book V.
18 Poems of Spenser. P. xlv.
1953]
Hughes — Spenser, 1552-1952
11
opinion that, “Poets, insofar as they are behaving poetically,
steer well clear of politics.”19 Yeats himself was angry with
Spenser because he “gave his heart to the state,” and for that
reason questioned his right to occupy himself “with moral and
religious questions at all.”20 For us the crucial question about
Spenser is whether the rush “of his verse to some pre-ordained
thought” may not be a consequence of his engagement (to use
Sartre’s term with a difference) in politics, ethics, and even
metaphysics.
II. His Unpopular Politics
Spenser’s heart, it must be acknowledged, was given to the
state, and his poetry is full of faith in a hierarchical society. To
these convictions we owe the poetry that was born of his prag¬
matically ideal synthesis of politics, ethics, and metaphysics.
Sympathy with his thought may be difficult in this four-
hundredth year after his birth. In a democratic world his social
principles are alien, and his' approval of England’s active mili¬
tary policies in Ireland and Holland easily passes as bigoted or
imperialistic today. His best informed Irish critic, Pauline Hen¬
ley, exonerates him of religious fanaticism in his support of the
sternest and most aggressively Protestant of Elizabeth’s Lords
Lieutenant in Ireland, and she also clears him of “conscious”
hypocrisy in his “worship of the state.”21 Yet she is harder than
Yeats on Spenser for his severity to Ireland in his View of the
country and in the Fifth Book of The Faerie Queene. She car¬
ries her political quarrel to the point of questioning whether the
English were justified in supporting “the revolt of the Nether¬
lands” and the effort of the Dutch to throw off “the foreign yoke
of Philip II, securing control over their own government, and
establishing their right to practice the religion of their choice.”22
Opposite to Miss Henley we have Edwin Greenlaw’s robust
acceptance of Spenser as a spokesman for “British imperialism.”
For Greenlaw Spenser was “a man of action as well as a writer
of verse,”23 and his ideas about Ireland were but one aspect of
more ambitious visions which he shared with Raleigh, Drake,
and Walsingham. In common with Elizabeth’s more aggressive
counsellors Greenlaw saw Spenser as committed by the historical
and political allegory of The Faerie Queene to war to the death
with Spain, and after the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588
19 Quoted in The London Times Literary Supplement, 30 September, 1949.
20 Poems of Spenser. P. xxviii.
21 Pauline Henley. Spenser in Ireland. Cork, 1928. Pp. 184 and 170.
22 Ibid. P. 177.
23 Edwin Greenlaw. Studies in Spensers Historical Allegory. Baltimore, 1932.
P. 160.
12 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
to the suppression of all spirit of rebellion in Ireland and to the
establishment of new colonies farther west, in America, “in
opposition to those of Spain.”24 Only if we read Renaissance his¬
tory as Greenlaw did can we share his enthusiasm for the causes
that Spenser loved or agree that his poems give us “an interpre¬
tation of Elizabethan political idealism without parallel else¬
where.”25 Most modern readers of Spenser, however, are so little
stirred by the historic struggles of his time that they are glad to
take refuge with one of the most learned trackers of the literary
sources of his political thought in avoiding the “shouting and
tumult”26 of the international scene as it appeared to Spenser in
Ireland in the two last decades of the sixteenth century. It is easy
to see Spenser against that background as an “imperialist,” and
from that opprobrious view of him it is still easier to go on to
condemn the very basis of his political thought, as Miss Henley
did, as undemocratic, “anti-equalitarian,” and tainted with the
poison of John Calvin’s superstitious reverence for “success in
life” as “the mark of Divine Love.”27
As the key to Spenser’s politics Miss Henley pointed to the
allegory of communism overthrown by the Knight of Justice,
Artegall, in the Fifth Book of The Faerie Queene. The commu¬
nist spokesman is no dialectical materialist though he is a
“mighty gyant”28 and “admired much of fooles, women, and
boyes/’2& Intellectually, he is a man of straw as he boasts that he
will balance heaven and hell, fire and air together, reform all
kingdoms,
“And all things would reduce unto equality.”£0
Practically, the giant is a dangerous demagogue as he attracts
“the vulgar,” who
“. . . cluster thicke unto his leasings vaine,
Like foolish flies about an hony crocke,
In hope by him great benefite to gaine,
And uncontrolled freedome to obtaine.”31
The giant’s equalitarian logic lacks the speciousness of the rea¬
soning of Marx and Lenin, but it had the ring of actuality for
Spenser’s readers because it recalled the slogans of the Peasants’
War in Germany in 1525 and of Ket’s rebellion in Norfolk in
^Ihid. P. 159.
25 Ibid. P. 165.
26 h. S. V. Jones. Spenser’s Defense of Lord Grey. Urbana, 1919. P. 10.
27 Spenser in Ireland. P. 188.
28 The Faerie Queene, V, ii, 30, 1.
29 Ibid., V, ii, 30, 9.
so Ibid., V, ii, 32, 9.
si Ibid., V, ii, 33, 1-5.
1953]
Hughes — Spenser, 1552-1952
13
1549. Artegall’s reply is two-fold : a formal plea for a social hier¬
archy and a final application of force. The act of force, the vio¬
lent overthrow of the giant by Artegall’s iron squire Talus, is
intolerable to readers who, like Miss Henley, see the entire epi¬
sode as a “scathing attack on democracy and its aspirations.”
Talus is not ingratiating. The best that can be said for him is
that he does his duty without a trace of sadism and follows the
behests of Justice with perfect alacrity. But to modern readers
he smacks of the Gestapo and OGPU. The common reader’s re¬
action to him is that of Keats, who wrote in his copy of The
Faerie Queene the prophecy that Spenser’s equalitarian giant
would one day learn to use the press so well that, “meeting Arte-
gall and Talus grim,”32 he would strike them both with blindness.
To accept Talus as a poetic image in even the qualified way that
Coleridge did,33 we should have to share his conception of the
truth of reason which is recognizable because “it can come forth
out of the moulds of the understanding only in the disguise of
two contradictory conceptions.”34 Unfortunately, Coleridge did
not develop his allusion to Talus as an imperfect poetic image.
Had he done so, he might have seen Talus and Artegall as coa¬
lescing in a conception of the value of justice and its sanctions,
while the levelling giant becomes an image of the popular aspira¬
tions that challenge and in the end enlighten and purify justice
itself.
Artegall’s plea for a social hierarchy is not original, and to
those who regard Spenser as a willing tool of the state it is un¬
convincing. For he is simply paraphrasing the parallel in the
Homily of Obedience (1547) 35 between God’s assignment of
“kings princes with other governors under them, all in good and
necessary order,” with “the water above” that “raineth down in
due time” and “the sun moon stars” etc. that “do keep their
order.” Says Artegall :
“The hils doe not the lowly dales disdaine;
The dales doe not the lofty hils envy.
He maketh Kings to sit in soverainty;
He maketh subjects to their powre obay;
He pulleth downe, He setteth up on hy;
He gives to this, from that He takes away;
For all we have is His: what He list doe, He may.”36
32 Keats. Edited by Horace E. Scudder. Boston, 1899. P. 9.
33 Coleridge’s Miscellaneous i Criticism . Edited by Thomas M. Raysor. London, 1936.
P. 38.
34 Quoted from Table Talk , April 30, 1830, by I. A. Richards in Coleridge on
Imagination. Second edition. London, 1950. P. 166.
36 Quoted at length by E. M. W. Tillyard in The Elizabethan World Picture.
London, 1943. P. 82.
86 F. Q.: V, ii, 41, 3-9.
14 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
For readers who reject both hierarchy and divinity Artegall’s
social hierarchy by divine right is a hard doctrine. It can easily
be distorted, as it is by Mr. Van Doren when he says that Spen¬
ser’s “chief fear seems to be lest the poor get money and the
gentry be dethroned.”87 It would be less unfair to Spenser and
more illuminating for the reader if Mr. Van Doren were to try
to place Artegall’s speech in the tradition that reaches from far
behind the Homily of Obedience through The Faerie Queene to
the famous speech of Ulysses on order and degree in society in
Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida:
“The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre
Observe degree, priority, and place . . .,,3S
One reply to Mr. Van Doren’s criticism may be found in Spen¬
ser’s Sixth Book, the “Legend of Courtesy,” though the virtue is
defined in terms of the social hierarchy that Artegall defends.
Spenser made the “roote of civill conversation” itself consist in
the art of bearing one’s self
“aright
To all of each degree, as doth behove.
For whether they be placed high above
Or low beneath, yet ought they well to know
Their good, that none them rightly may reprove
Of rudenesse, for not yeelding what they owe.”38
This rule is best tested by the Knight of Courtesy, Sir Calidore,
when he finds himself among shepherds whose wealth is more
than enough to make him welcome as an honored, non-paying
guest. He has his condescending moments, but there is also gen¬
erosity in his treatment of a churlish rival for a shepherdess
who, like Perdita in The Winter's Tale, finally proves to be a
princess. In terms of wealth Calidore’s host is sure that he has
been wise to drop a successful career at court for a rustic life
where he finds that “the little that (he has) growes dayly
more.”40 And Calidore agrees with him that “It is the mynd that
maketh good or ill,”41 and is ready to join him in
“this safe retyre
Of life, which here in lowlinesse ye lead,
Fearelesse of foes, or Fortunes wrackfull yre,
Which tosseth states, and under foot doth tread
The mightie ones, affrayd of every chaunges dread.”42
37 The Noble Voice. P. 244.
38 Troilus and Cressida , act I, scene iii, lines 85—86, f£.
39 F. Q.: VI, ii, 1, 3-9.
40 F. Q VI, ix, 21, 5.
41 F. Q.: VI, ix, 30, 1.
42 F. Q.: VI, ix, 27, 5-9.
1953]
Hughes — Spenser, 1552-1952
15
The upshot of the “Legend of Courtesy” is that Calidore has to
learn — as Mr. Empson notes — that “the refined thing must be
judged by the fundamental thing, because strength must be
learned in weakness and sociability in isolation.” The great point
of Spenser's “Book of Courtesy” seems to Mr. Empson to be this
basic paradox about social values. And it is interesting to find
him adding that “Spenser's ideas are very well suited to a social¬
ist society, and have been made to fit in very well with the dogma
of the equality of man,” though they hardly seem admissible in
“a rigid proletarian aesthetic.”43
Another reply to Mr. Van Doren is to be found in Spenser's
“Legend of Temperance.” In the Second Book of The Faerie
Queene that virtue is only less political than it is ethical, as it is
in Aristotle's Politics and, from the Christian point of view, in
Langland's Vision of Piers Plowman. On the basis of parallels
between Spenser's first two books and the masques that enter¬
tained Elizabeth on some great occasions in her reign Greenlaw
held that “Spenser's temperance, like his holiness, was a political
virtue.”44 From the political point of view the most interesting
canto in Book II is the seventh, in which Guyon visits “Mam¬
mon's Delve” and proves himself temperate enough — in the high
Aristotelian and Christian senses of the virtue — to withstand all
temptations of wealth and power. The canto is not only an alle¬
gory of personal self-discipline; it is a challenge to the main
weakness of the new, plutocratic Tudor nobility; it is an effort
to solve the problem of a true elite. In Mammon's Delve the
wealth of the world is Guyon's for the taking, and he refuses it
even when Mammon appeals to his passion for glory and tells
him that this “worldly mucke” is the sinews of the great wars
that make ambition virtue. The language of the god of wealth is
patterned on Satan's words to Christ in the Gospel when, after
displaying “the kingdoms of this world and the glory of them,”
the Devil says, “All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall
down and worship me.”45
“Wherefore, if me thou deigne to serve and sew,
At thy command, lo ! all these mountaines bee,”4*5
says Mammon to Guyon. On the latter's refusal, we are given to
understand, rests more than the safety of his own soul. Critics
may quarrel as to whether Guyon's unyielding virtue is that of a
Stoic rejecting “Mammon's offers of wealth in favor of ‘un-
43 William Empson. Some Versions of Pastoral. London, 1935 & 1950. P, 20.
44 Studies in Spenser’s Historical Allegory. P. 93,
45 Matthew, 4, 8-9.
Q. : II, vii, 9, 1-2.
16 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
troubled nature/ ”47 or of Aristotle’s liberal man despising all
wealth that is valued merely for its own sake. There is no reason
for the debate if we think of Guyon as a public as well as a pri¬
vate figure. If his temptation is a threat to the integrity of a man
with public responsibility, we need not follow one school of
critics who find it unnatural that he “is not even much tempted
by the gross worldly wealth laid before him in the House of
Mammon.”48
Opinions may differ as to whether the Knight of Temperance
ever became a poetic image, a true symbol of the practice of the
most necessary and prosaic of the virtues. There is no doubt of
the power of the images that surround him in his delve : Mam¬
mon himself and his daughter Philotime, who is the passion for
earthly glory that assaults heaven and creates hell; and the
slaves in the delve must have been as moving a symbol for the
Elizabethans as ever the dwarfs in the Nibelungenlied were for
the mediaeval Germans. The slaves at Mammon’s anvil provoke
the timeless revulsion against the spiritual bondage of the pas¬
sion for wealth; their resentment of Guyon’s aloofness mirrors
the fanaticism of the profit motive in its truceless war with the
spirit.
In the “Legend of Temperance” the political moral should be
perennially acceptable under all constitutions and even under a
plutocracy. We all condemn corruption and applaud honesty. But
not many of us approve of the doctrine of degree or social hier¬
archy in Books V and VI or of its complement, the doctrine of
cosmic and civil concord, in Book IV, the “Legend of Friend¬
ship.” The virtue of the Third Book, the “Legend of Chastity,”
we accept only when it becomes clear that its heroine, Britomart,
is to represent married love and maternity. We are not by any
means so sympathetic as were Spenser’s contemporaries with the
politico-ecclesiastical allegory of his First Book, the “Legend of
Holiness,” for today the very title suggests self-righteousness
and the fanaticism of the wars of religion. Nor are we reassured
when in canto viii we find St. George, who in the political alle¬
gory is England just as in the moral allegory he is Everyman,
being made a captive by the embodiments of spiritual pride and
falsehood, Archimago and Duessa. His rescue by Prince Arthur
has traditionally been interpreted as signifying England’s asser¬
tion of its Protestantism against Rome. The interpretation is not
inevitable, but with due allowance for Spenser’s respect for the
older faith, it cannot be far wide of the mark. If this is the sum
47 C. S. Lewis. The Allegory of Love. Oxford, 1936. P. 328.
^Herschel Baker. The Dignity of Man. Cambridge, 1947. P. 314.
1953]
Hughes— Spenser, 1 5 52-1952
17
of the historical allegory in Book I, the modern reader who has
nothing but a plague for both the houses in the wars of religion,
must be profoundly disappointed.
There is a way, however, to read the story of St. George as a
political allegory above the melee of ecclesiastical strife. The
political allegory may be read as a counterpart of the moral one,
which is that of every young idealist who, like St. George, be¬
comes the champion of Truth, who is always in the position of
the persecuted damsel Una in Spenser's story. St. George's ad¬
ventures with her can be read on the religious level of the way¬
faring Christian finding truth through experience both in retreat
and in action rather than by any simple commitment to implicit
faith in any creed or church. But St. George's adventures may
also be read as an allegory of the experience that is always being
repeated at one stage or another on the public or national level.
In essence, it is the bitter but comic experience that is implied in
Lincoln's observation that you can fool all the people some of the
time but not all of them all the time. St. George, Spenser tells
us, was “a clownish young man" whose bane was his credulity.
We find him forever being beguiled by Hypocrisy in the form of
Archimago and by Error in that of Duessa. There is irony in his
first deception as he sits under a tree that speaks with a human
voice to warn him that it was once a man like himself before its
metamorphosis by
“one Duessa, a false sorceresse,
That many errant knights hath brought to wretchednesse.”49
Without the faintest suspicion that his companion is that same
Duessa, St. George follows her trustingly to the House of Pride.
After disillusion there he is as ready as ever to be deceived again
under another green tree when
“The witch approaching gan him fairly greet,
And with reproch of carelessenesse unkind
Upbrayd, for leaving her in place unmeet.”50
Forgetful that the desertion had been hers rather than his, St.
George succumbs to her charms and is once more betrayed to
pride, which now takes the sadistic form of her lover and his
persecutor, Orgoglio.
Almost to the end Una's “fresh, unproved knight" remains the
fool of the witch and the enchanter. From every misadventure
St. George emerges a sadder but a not much wiser man. When at
last he goes into retreat in the House of Holiness and tries to
49 F. Q. : I, ii, 34, 8-9.
60 F. Q. : I, vii, 3, 6-8.
18 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
learn something from a kind of monastic discipline he is so
immature that he wishes to renounce the world out of hand with
all its “deedes of armes . . . and ladies love.”51 From this dream
of a royal road to sanctity he has to be recalled to his promise to
Una to travel a way that must lead finally to a supreme deed of
arms in her service. Her patience, fortunately, is limitless, for
she is humble and perhaps remembers her own failure on one
critical occasion to recognize the enchanter Archimago. One of
the strangest things about Una is that she too has to learn by
experience. Her failure to recognize Archimago for what he is
until the very end of her story seems to one of Spenser’s most
sympathetic contemporary readers “the most bewildering thing
about her.”52 Bewildering it certainly is unless we regard her as
more or less than absolute Truth in a Platonic or Christian sense.
In her story she is one of Spenser’s most human characters, and
the touch of gullibility about her seems to be a part of her inno¬
cence. It is because she is perfectly innocent that she escapes
being comic like her champion though she must share his pre¬
dicament.
Spenser’s “Legend of Holiness” is a divine comedy in the
mediaeval sense that it is a tale with a happy ending. If he had
completed The Faerie Queene as he planned it, St. George and
Una might have reappeared in some final cantos at least distantly
rivalling the close of Dante’s Paradise. But Spenser’s First Book
is also comic in the modern sense for on the politico-ecclesiastical
level it is a parable of John Bull muddling through the Reforma¬
tion to the Elizabethan settlement. And on the moral and psycho¬
logical levels it is comic because its clownish hero is Everyman
in quest of what all men must seek though few find. But St.
George is also the people whose patron saint he traditionally is.
And through the very fallible saint Spenser confessed his coun¬
try’s worst mistakes in its pilgrimage towards what we call the
Elizabethan Settlement. But the religious question, Spenser
knew, can never be settled by any act of a queen or parliament,
and that is why, at the end of the story, St. George must break
off his honeymoon with Una to return for the duration of an
indefinite emergency to the service of the Fairy Queen.
III. His Not Quite Obsolete Ethics
The conclusion of Spenser’s Second Book in the destruction of
the Venusberg of its Circe-like villain, the witch Acrasia, by the
Knight of Temperance, is not defensible, like the close of his
51 F. Q.: I, vii, 47, 5-6.
62 W. B. C. Watkins. Shakespeare and Spenser. Princeton, 1950. P. 157.
1953]
Hughes — Spenser, 1552-1952
19
First Book, on grounds of mingled wisdom and humor in a
beatific vision with this-worldly meaning on both the psycho¬
logical and political levels. Guyon’s final act in his Legend is the
most severely criticized scene in The Faerie Queene because it
exposes Spenser’s dualistic ethic so starkly against one of his
most enchanting backgrounds. The canto is shot through with
reminiscences of Homer’s story of the transformation of Ulysses’ .
men into beasts on the isle of Circe. But to many modern readers
Spenser’s version of the story suffers in comparison both with
Homer’s and with its most recent recreation in fiction, by James
Joyce in Ulysses. Among Homeric commentators in the Renais¬
sance there was all but unanimous agreement on an ethical alle¬
gory as the substance of the story, and Spenser’s Knight of Tem¬
perance is patterned on Homer’s Odysseus not fancifully like
Joyce’s Leopold Bloom, but simply in the light of the contem¬
porary view of the Odyssey as a spiritual pilgrimage. Spenser’s
Guyon is committed by his role to be the reverse of Bloom’s
timidity, fecklessness, and aimlessness. Readers who regard
Marion Bloom’s reverie of unashamed lust as the fitting capstone
of Joyce’s work can hardly rejoice in Guy on’s condemnation of
the hog Gryll, who, alone among the rout of Circean beasts in
Acrasia’s bower, refuses to be restored to human form. When
the miracle is performed in spite of him, he curses its operator,
the Palmer who stands beside Guyon as a kind of embodiment
of a Socratic daimon or incarnation of Aristotle’s practical wis¬
dom, for bringing him “from hoggish form to naturall.” And the
canto ends with Guyon’s outburst :
“See the mind of beastly man,
That hath so soone forgot the excellence
Of his creation, when he life began,
That now he chooseth with vile difference
To be a beast, and lacke intelligence !”
To whom the Palmer thus:
“The donghill kinde
Delightes in filth and fowle incontinence:
.Let Gryll be Gryll, and have his hoggish tninde :
But let us hence depart whilest wether serves
and winde.”53
So the “Legend of Temperance” ends in an edifying burst of
moral indignation against the kind of nature that portrays itself
in Marion Bloom’s soliloquy.
As a whole, Spenser’s treatment of the gardens of Acrasia
challenges comparison with Joyce’s Walpurgisnacht in the Dublin
53 F. Q.: II, xii, 87.
20 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
slum, in the brothel of his Circe, Bella Cohen. If we judge the
two scenes from the point of view of the purity (in the aesthetic
sense) of their art, i.e., from their freedom from the didactic and
the kinetic elements which Joyce said in The Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man were equally inimical to the stasis of pure
aesthetic experience, then the decision is not obvious. Spenser’s
conclusion may be didactic, and it must be acknowledged that
there is a trace of the kinetic in some of Guyon’s adventures —
particularly in the kindling of “secrete signes of lust” in his eyes
by “two naked damzelles” bathing in a fountain and not caring
“to hyde
Their dainty partes from view of any which them eyd.”54
We have the word of a French critic55 that, at least for the frail
reader, the effect of the bathing beauties is distinctly kinetic. In
Joyce’s Walpurgisnacht in Bella Cohen’s establishment we have
the word of a United States judge that there is nothing porno¬
graphic, but are we certain that in Joyce’s scenes there is
nothing didactic — nothing approaching Guyon’s “Let Gryll be
Gryll” ? Joyce’s critics protest too much that didacticism and
pornography are equally abhorrent to him; that in “the pande¬
moniac welter of motile apparitions” in the Dublin brothel “the
artist keeps a tight rein on the tigers of wrath which draw his
chariot through the inferno.”56 According to another commen¬
tator, however, Stephen Daedalus’ adventure is an iconoclast’s
assault upon “commercialism, ignorance, prejudice, and in¬
ertia.”57 In Joyce’s Dublin Mr. Foster Damon finds “disgust”
(something not far from indignation) prevailing over the horror
and pity that “assail us on all sides.”58 We are told that Joyce’s
objective handling of his material contains a curse upon it, and
so by a short step we reach the declaration that Ulysses has “a
universal message — a weird cry from the very depths of Dublin
to the rim of the world — the cry of tortured conscience, ‘ayenbite
of inwit.’ ”59 In the brothel scene it “appropriately” breaks out
in the echo of Blake’s lines :
“The harlot’s cry from street to street
Shall weave old England’s winding sheet.”
In any artistic treatment of the subject of Joyce’s Walpurgis¬
nacht and Spenser’s Bower of Acrasia a modicum of both the
Q. : II, xii, 68, 7-9.
55 J. A. A. Jusserand. A Literary History of the English People. London, 1925.
Vol. II. P. 497.
68 Stuart Gilbert. James Joyce’s “Ulysses”. London, 1930. P. 312.
67 Richard M. Kain. Fabulous Voyager. Chicago, 1947. P. 241.
68 S. Poster Damon. “The Odyssey in Dublin,” in The Hound and Horn, III (1929).
P. 13.
59 p. J. Smith. A Key to the “ Ulysses ” of James Joyce . Chicago, 1927. P. 99.
1953]
Hughes— Spenser, 1 5 52-1952
21
didactic and the kinetic or pornographic is hard to exclude. In
the presence of lust most men feel a pull towards both libertinism
and puritanism. Cries of pain over the didacticism of the
“Legend of Temperance” as Neo-Platonism feeding, vampire¬
like, on the flesh, are as absurd as attempts to condemn Joyce by
the guilt of his association with the psychoanalysts. Joyce’s bitter
realism and absorption in personal confession in his Walpurgis-
nacht may be incommensurable with Spenser’s impersonal and
traditional treatment of the Homeric story of Circe. The kinetic
element in Joyce, the “obscenity” and “deliberately flaunted
filth” of which one critic speaks with regret and explains as “the
direct result of a startled recoil from the terrific mental and
moral repression of the Church,”60 can hardly be paralleled in
The Faerie Queene. The didactic element, if Stephen Daedalus’
searing rage and mordant wit in Bella Cohen’s brothel be
acknowledged as in any way parallel with Guyon’s contempt for
Gryll, can hardly be denied. And it certainly cannot be denied
that the parallel extends to the imagery that is essential to both
Spenser’s allegory and Joyce’s realism, the animal imagery of
the story of Circe.
The bestial aspect of Joyce’s Walpurgisnacht seems to be of
its essence. Joyce himself spoke of Bloom as suffering “a feral
metamorphosis,” and said that the tap of Bella Cohen’s fan
(Circe’s wand) completed his “metamorphosis into utter ani¬
malism.” Although he spoke of it as “a costume episode,” with
Bloom changing clothes half a dozen times, he also called it “an
animal episode, full of animal allusions, animal mannerisms.” In
attributing these words to Joyce in a conversation in a cafe in
the Rue de la Grenelle in Paris, Frank Budgeon interprets his
attitude toward his Circe episode as almost that of a pathologist
studying the “brutal one-sidedness of vice.”61 He seems to have
regarded Joyce as a psychoanalyst rather than as in any way
affected by “ayenbite of inwit.” Certainly he thought of the Wal¬
purgisnacht differently from Mr. Gilbert, who found it like “a
mediaeval bestiary” in its “perpetual interplay of human and
bestial forms.”62 The reference to the bestiaries suggests at least
the possibility that Joyce thought in terms of the dualistic ethic
of those mines of exempla for mediaeval preachers. If this unjus¬
tifiable interpretation is pushed too hard, it may make Joyce
guilty of the Neo-Platonic heresy of feeding the spirit on the
flesh by imagining life as an unceasing struggle between the indi¬
vidual’s bestial and human instincts, or between the former and
60 H. S. Gorman. James Joyce. The First Forty Years. London, 1941. Pp. 126-127.
61 Prank Budgeon. James Joyce and the Making of “ Ulysses .” London, 1934. P. 234.
62 James Joyce’s “Ulysses.” P. 312.
22 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
his divine potentialities. In Pico della Mirandola’s treatise On
the Dignity of Man that doctrine was restated for Italy and all
Europe on the eve of Spenser’s century. His symbolism was rad¬
ically determined by it, as we know from his use of its mediaeval
form in the procession of the Seven Deadly Sins in the “Legend
of Holiness63 and from his use of the animals again as symbols
of the sins in the attack on the castle of the soul in the “Legend
of Temperance.”64 In the cases of both men it is easy to interpret
fascination by “feral metamorphosis” as betraying susceptibility
to the puritanism as well as to the Neo-Platonism that Mr. Tra-
versi found nefariously at work in The Faerie Queene. And to
complete the false impression in Joyce’s case we might misapply
his famous resolve at the end of The Portrait of the Artist to
devote his powers to forging the conscience of his race. Certainly
it was to that object that Spenser’s work was devoted.
As a critical tour de force the resemblances between the ethics
of the two men might be carried further. If it is taken for
granted that Joyce was no puritan, no Neo-Platonist, and no
ethical dualist, and if it is further taken for granted that the
Walpurgisnacht is radically influenced by Jung’s doctrine of “the
rendition of the animal influences of the id,”65 as Mr. Kane be¬
lieves to be the case, it can be plausibly pled that Spenser was an
artist of psycho-analytic propensity. Like his later contemporary
Robert Burton, the first famous English humanist to make a
medical approach to moral problems, Spenser thought that one
of the most useful truths that poets have “shadowed in their
witty fictions” was the fact that “a man given over to his lust,
is no better than a beast”66 In saying this Burton was thinking
of analytical quite as much as he was of didactic writing. In
Guyon’s speech to Gryll we have an instance of its didactic state¬
ment, but in the allegory of the Seven Sins’ attack in animal
forms on the castle of the soul we have the psychologist’s under¬
standing of the soul’s weakness against them. Its final defense
requires more than the help of the Knight of Temperance; it
demands the intervention of Prince Arthur himself.
Arthur, rather than the Knight of Temperance, is the main
measure of the difference between Joyce’s ethic and Spenser’s,
and between Spenser’s and that of his socially-motivated critics.
In the Letter to Raleigh Spenser said that he intended Arthur to
represent the virtues of magnificence and perhaps of magnan¬
imity as “Aristotle and the rest” had taught. In the Nicoma-
63 F. Q.: I, iv, 18-35.
64 F. Q.: II, xi, 6-14.
65 Fabulous Voyager. P. 137.
66 Robert Burton. The Anatomy of Melancholy. Ill, iii, 1. The italics are Burton’s.
1953]
Hughes — Spenser , 1552-1952
23
chaean Ethics , in a passage that Pico knew well, Aristotle dis¬
cussed magnanimity as the sum of all the virtues and as divine
because it was most remote from all brutishness. The systematic
writers on ethics in the Renaissance, however, usually treated
magnanimity as a royal virtue closely allied to magnificence, or
glorious deeds in war and peace. Between magnanimity as a
divine antithesis to the feral aspects of human nature and mag¬
nificence as the pursuit of glory there was a gap which Spenser
tried and perhaps failed to close. He tried to bridge it by making
Arthur the lover of the Fairy Queen, whom he identified with
pure glory. In her service Arthur rescued St. George from
Orgoglio — a deed above reproach in the moral allegory, but per¬
haps tainted in the historical allegory by the selfishness of the
political compromises of the Elizabethan settlement of the
Church of England. In the ecclesiastical allegory of Book I, and
still more in the allegory of Arthur’s intervention in Book V67
in behalf of Beige (the Netherlands) against Geryoneo (Philip
II of Spain) Arthur’s love of Gloriana is exposed to the devastat¬
ing observation of Mr. Bronowski that, “Whatever we may think
are the social virtues, glory is not one of them.”68
If Spenser could read Mr. Bronowski, he would follow him
with difficulty. Though he knew very well that there was more
than one way of thinking about the Queen’s ecclesiastical and
foreign policies, he could not understand how by its very nature
“the last infirmity of noble mind” could be dangerous to society.
To grasp that dogma he would need a course in modern history
taught with dialectical confidence. In defense of his own view of
the matter he might plead that Arthur is not, like St. George and
Artegall, the embodiment or servant of the state. Arthur is the
wind of the spirit that blows where it lists but is always — as
Guyon observes — first of all in love with glory and at war with
Fortune.
So are St. George and Guyon in their special ways at war with
Fortune, and the former is brought to the verge of suicide by
contemplating her denial of human freedom by
“Feare, sicknesse, age, losse, labour, sorrow, strife,
Payne, hunger, cold, that makes the hart to quake.”69
The supreme danger to human freedom, however, as Guyon
knows, is within. For modern readers it was put into classic form
by Joyce when he wrote in Ulysses: “What went forth to the
ends of the world to traverse not itself? God, the sun, Shake-
F. Q.: V, xi, 1-34.
68 J. Bronowski. The Poet’s Defense. Cambridge, 1939. Pp. 47-48.
60 F. Q. : II, ix, 44, 6-7.
24 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
speare, a commercial traveller, having itself traversed in reality
itself, becomes that self . . . Self which itself was ineluctably
preconditioned to become.”70 In contrast with Joyce’s summation
of the substance of his novel we may recall Spenser’s statement
in the final canto of his Second Book of a realization of a higher
self that occasionally comes to the aid of the ordinary self as
Arthur does to the other knights of The Faerie Queene at need.
The idea of a higher self —
“our Selfe, whom though we do not see,
Yet each doth in himselfe it well perceive to be.”71
— -is stated by the divinity of life itself, the mysterious deity
Genius, who is identified by the commentators with the Daimon
of Socrates, the male and female generator of life Agdistes, or
the ultimate forces of virtue in nature. On the level of ordinary
experience the transcendent self is the reality implied in the
thought of a man’s “coming to himself.” Spenser thought of it in
terms of freedom from anything ineluctably preconditioned as
well as from the bestiality that Aristotle contrasted with the
divinity of his magnanimous man. To this conviction or sense
of a super-self in Spenser is owing that rush of his verse “to
some pre-ordained thought,” which Yeats admired. To it also is
owing whatever subservience of the autonomous imagination to
the will the modern reader may find in The Faerie Queene and
blame for the weaknesses that he sees in its rhythms, imagery,
or construction.
70 James Joyce. Ulysses. London, 1936. P. 479.
71 P. Q II, xii, 47, 8-9.
BEGINNINGS OF CHEMICAL EDUCATION IN BELOIT.
LAWRENCE AND RIPON COLLEGES
Robert Siegfried1 and Aaron J. Ihde
Department of Chemistry , University of Wisconsin
The liberal arts colleges located in Beloit, Appleton and Ripon
were founded within a few years of one another when Wisconsin
was achieving statehood and establishing its state university.
The early development of chemistry in the University was re¬
viewed recently by Ihde and Schuette.2 It is the purpose of the
present paper to review the parallel rise of the subject in three
of the state’s liberal arts colleges.
Beloit College
The Fourth Convention of the Presbyterian and Congrega¬
tional Churches of Illinois and Wisconsin was the active group
which secured from the Wisconsin Territorial Legislature in
1846 the charter for the school to be founded near the border of
the two states. The founding fathers of the institution included
Yale graduates, and the plans for the college reflected the ideas
and ideals of the venerable institution at New Haven.
Instruction in college subjects was offered to several students
in the fall of 1847. There was as yet no building and no faculty.
The teaching was entirely in the hands of Mr. Sereno T. Merrill
who was director of the Beloit Seminary which had been founded
earlier to prepare students for college entrance. This arrange¬
ment continued until the following spring when Joseph Emerson
(B.A. Yale ’41) arrived to take over the professorship of lan¬
guages and Jackson J. Bushnell (B.A. Yale ’41) became pro¬
fessor of mathematics and natural philosophy.3
The chair of chemistry and natural sciences went unfilled until
the fall of 1849 when Stephen Pearl Lathrop arrived in Beloit.
Lathrop was a graduate of Middlebury College (B.A. ’89) and
the Medical College of Vermont at Woodstock (M.D. ’43). The
years prior to his coming to Beloit were spent as a science
teacher at Middlebury College, Assistant Geologist for the State
Geological Survey, and principal of the Female Seminary at
Middlebury.4
The first college catalog stated that “Arrangements have been
made for providing apparatus illustrating the departments of
Chemistry and Natural Philosophy which will be ready for use
25
26 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
at the beginning of the coming collegiate year.”5 One term of
chemistry was offered during the junior or senior year, Silli-
man’s book being used as a text.
Lathrop was lured away from Beloit in 1854 to become the
first occupant of the chair of Chemistry and Natural History at
the University of Wisconsin. In order to make demonstrations
before the students of the state institution it was necessary for
him to borrow apparatus from the older college downstate. It
was four years before the Lathrop vacancy was filled by a qual¬
ified chemist. Chemistry and natural science were not taught
during the first three of these years. In 1857-58 William Hayes
Ward (B.A. Amherst ’56) served as tutor in these subjects. He
left at the end of the term to prepare for the ministry at Andover
Theological Seminary.6
Henry Bradford Nason (B.A. Amherst ’55), who had just
completed his doctorate in chemistry under Friedrich Wohler at
Gottingen, arrived in 1858 to take over the courses in chemistry,
physiology, geology, and mineralogy. The offerings in chemistry
were still limited to one term per year since Nason held a similar
chair in Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at Troy, N. Y., to which
he commuted semi-annually. Scientific apparatus was further
improved during this period when Nason made purchases dur¬
ing trips to Europe. Of particular interest is the Chemical Soci¬
ety of Beloit College sponsored by Nason. This society was one
of the earliest college societies of its type. Thomas C. Chamber-
lain, who later became one of the world’s leading geologists and
was for some years president of the University of Wisconsin,
was one of the members.7
Nason decided in 1866 to devote his full time to the post in
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He filled this position with dis¬
tinction for many years. A measure of the respect which he
attained was shown in 1890 when he was elected president of
the American Chemical Society. He was succeeded at Beloit by
Elijah Paddock Harris, (B.A. Amherst ’55, Ph.D. Gottingen ’59)
who had been teaching at Victoria College in Canada during the
previous six years. Harris added a term of organic chemistry to
the offerings at Beloit. His stay was terminated after two years
when he returned to Amherst College to become Professor of
Chemistry, a post which he held there until his retirement in
1907.
A third Amherst graduate with a Gottingen Ph.D. under
Wohler then appeared upon the scene at Beloit. James H. Eaton
soon discontinued the course in organic chemistry but expanded
the general course to a full year. Laboratory work was intro-
1953] Siegfried & Ihde — Beginnings of Chemical Education 27
Elijah P. Harris, Beloit Erastus G. Smith, Beloit Russell Z. Mason, Lawrence
1866-1868 1881-1921 1854-1865
James C. Foye, Lawrence Charles W. Treat, Lawrence Lyman B. Sperry, Ripon
1867-1892 1892-1918 1869-1873
1953] Siegfried & Ihde — Beginnings of Chemical Education 29
duced for the first time in 1869. A third term of chemistry was
soon added and the students were now receiving instruction in
qualitative and quantitative analysis and in spectrum analysis.
When Eaton died suddenly in 1876 his chair remained unfilled
for five years. His courses in chemistry were offered by other
faculty members until 1880. During that year C. Gilbert Wheeler,
a Harvard graduate who had studied at Heidelberg and Berlin,
divided his time between Beloit and Chicago Medical College.
Wheeler offered two courses in inorganic chemistry using Nor¬
ton’s text and two courses in organic chemistry using his own
text.
The following year saw the appointment of Erastus Gilbert
Smith (B.A. Amherst ’77, Ph.D. Gottingen ’83) to the Professor¬
ship of Chemistry and Mineralogy. He was the fourth chemistry
appointee at Beloit to have graduated from Amherst College and
studied at Gottingen during the days when chemical instruction
in that German university was under the influence of Friedrich
Wohler. Smith’s stay at Beloit was a long and significant one.
By the time of his retirement as Emeritus Professor of Chem¬
istry in 1921, chemistry instruction at Beloit had evolved to
modern form. The department had greatly expanded both with
respect to variety of courses offered and the facilities for instruc¬
tion.
In 1892 the department moved into the new Pearsons Hall of
Science, designed by D. H. Burnham, famous Chicago architect.
Completion of the building greatly stimulated the work in chem¬
istry and saw the department offering one-term courses in gen¬
eral chemistry, qualitative analysis, and organic chemistry
before the end of the century. Quantitative analysis was a two-
term course. Physical chemistry was added in 1905. Other
courses, such as sanitary chemistry, applied chemistry, chemistry
for teachers, and electrochemistry, were offered at various times.
By 1906 the instructional load was sufficient to require a sec¬
ond staff member. Howard Dexter Smith (B.S. Rhode Island
College ’01, Ph.D. Tufts ’06) served as Instructor in Chemistry
for three years. When he left to take a position at the Lowell
Textile Institute he was succeeded by Ben L. Glascock (B.A.
Texas ’07, Ph.D. Pennsylvania ’09). Glascock remained only one
year and was followed by Andrew F. McLeod (Ph.D. Chicago
’06). McLeod had taught soils at Wisconsin, and organic and
biochemistry at Chicago before coming to Beloit. When he left
Beloit in 1919 he had attained the rank of Associate Professor.
Paul Winslow Boutwell, a Beloit graduate of 1910, received his
Ph.D. in agricultural chemistry at the University of Wisconsin
30 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
in 1916. He joined the department at Beloit in 1920 and became
head of the department the following year upon the retirement
of Professor Smith. He was joined in that year by the late Wil¬
liam J. Trautmann who had just received his doctorate at Wis¬
consin.
The rise of the present era of chemistry at Beloit followed a
strong tradition of chemical education from the days the college
opened its doors. The first occupant of the chair was a graduate
of a recognized medical school. From then until 1921, the subject
was taught, except for two short interludes, by American grad¬
uates of Amherst College who took their doctoral degrees in
chemistry at Gottingen during the days when the influence of
Wohler was profound.
Lawrence College
Territorial Governor Henry Dodge, early in 1847, signed the
charter establishing Lawrence Institute of Wisconsin. The cir¬
cumstances surrounding the founding of this college were asso¬
ciated with the activities of Eleazir Williams, claimant to the
title of the “Last Dauphin.” Williams, an Episcopal missionary
among the Wisconsin Indians, was financing his activities with
money borrowed from Amos Lawrence, a Massachusetts mer¬
chant. In order to avoid foreclosure on the 5,000 acres of Wis¬
consin land which Williams had pledged as security, Lawrence
purchased the land. Since his own health was poor the land was
deeded to his son, Amos Adams Lawrence.
The idea of establishing a denominational college on the Fox
River Valley land was soon germinating in the mind of the
younger Lawrence. The lack of Episcopal strength in Territorial
Wisconsin caused him to turn to the vigorous Methodist sect.
In 1846 he proposed to Reverend William H. Sampson, presiding
elder of the Fond du Lac District of the Rock River Conference,
that he would give $10,000 for the founding of a college on the
Lawrence lands provided that the sum would be equalled in the
territory. The money was raised, the charter was granted, and
a site was chosen on the banks of the Fox River. The site, to the
disappointment of Lawrence, was not on his lands but near Lake
Winnebago. The village which grew up in the vicinity was incor¬
porated in 1857 as Appleton, being named for Samuel Appleton
of Boston, a distant relative of Mrs. Lawrence. Work was begun
on the first college building in the fall of 1848 and instruction
began a year later.
The first classes were offered at the preparatory level under
Principal William Sampson. James M. Phinney, A.M., a graduate
1953] Siegfried & Ihde — Beginnings of Chemical Education 31
of Wesleyan University of Middleton, Connecticut, served as
teacher of mathematics and natural science until 1852. The first
catalog lists one quarter of chemistry offered in the first year of
the college preparatory course. Johnston's text was used. In the
second catalog, chemistry had been moved to the last two quar¬
ters of the first year, Gray’s text being used. Second-year ladies
were now included in the course.
The College Department was opened in 1853 when Edward
Cooke began his six-year presidency. Reverend Cooke (A.M.
Wesleyan ’38) had been teaching and serving as principal in
several Eastern seminaries before his call to Lawrence. During
his first year the professorships of Mathematics and Astronomy
and of Natural Science and Experimental Philosophy were un¬
filled, so the president taught these subjects. According to the
catalog, one term of chemistry was offered to fourth-year stu¬
dents — of whom there were none as yet.
The Reverend Russell Zelotes Mason (A.M. Wesleyan ’44)
became Professor of Mathematics and Experimental Philosophy
in the next year. He had been teaching mathematics and science
at McKendree College at Lebanon, Illinois, the institution which
had given President Cooke a D.D. the previous spring. The cata¬
log now listed two terms of chemistry for the junior year. These
two terms continued without change through 1863. Mason’s title
changed repeatedly, becoming Professor of Natural Science and
General Physics by 1858. A year later he became acting president
when Cooke resigned to take the pastorate of a Milwaukee
church. Mason became president the following year, holding the
position until 1865, when he resigned “on account of supposed
religious heresies.”9 He remained in Appleton in the mercantile
and manufacturing business until 1879, when he moved to Silver
Cliff, Colorado, to establish an assayer’s office. He received an
honorary LL.D. from the state university in 1866.
Mason’s title became Professor of Ethics and Civil Polity in
1861, though he continued to teach the courses in science for two
more years. Mathematics had been dropped from his shoulders
with the coming in 1860 of Henry Pomeroy (B.S. Rensselaer ’41,
A.M. Union College ’43) as Professor of Mathematics and Civil
Engineering. Two terms of chemistry were still being offered,
using Silliman or Gregory as alternative texts.
Reverend Samuel Fallows (B.A. Wisconsin ’59, A.M. Wes¬
leyan) became Professor of Natural Science and General Physics
in 1863 but his time and efforts were largely devoted to recruit¬
ing the Fortieth Wisconsin Regiment which went to the front on
J une 14, 1864. Fallows accompanied the group, composed of pro-
32 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
fessors and students from Wisconsin colleges, as lieutenant
colonel. He never resumed his teaching duties at Lawrence
though he became well known in religious and educational circles.
His position was filled in 1865 by Welsh-born John Eugene
Davies (B.A. Lawrence ’62) who had just served in the Union
Army for three years. Davies was doing work toward a medical
degree at Chicago Medical College and in 1867 he left to take a
faculty position at that institution. He received his M.D. a year
later and became Professor of Natural History and Chemistry at
the University of Wisconsin. At this institution his activities
were gradually diverted from chemistry so that by 1874 he was
confining his activities to physics and astronomy and soon there¬
after solely to physics. He remained at Wisconsin until his death
in 1900.
Chemistry became part of the professorial title in 1867, when
James C. Foye became Professor of Chemistry and Physics. He
had been teaching science and carrying out administrative work
in several female academies since receiving his A.M. from Wil¬
liams College in 1863. He remained at Lawrence twenty-six
years. Chemistry was reduced to one term in the senior year dur¬
ing Foye’s early years. Youman’s book was used as a text.
Two terms of chemistry were not again offered until 1874. At
that time Wilbur Fisk Yocum (B.A. Lawrence ’60) changed
from the professorship of Mathematics and Astronomy which he
had held for four years to Professor of Natural History and
Geology. When Yocum left two years later his chair went unfilled
until 1886. During this time it was necessary for Foye to teach
the courses in natural history and geology as well as those in
chemistry and physics.
Laboratory work in analytical chemistry and mineralogy was
introduced in 1882. Two years later a third term was added as
a senior elective. Eight hours per week during this term were
devoted to instruction in qualitative analysis. Clarke’s “Chem¬
istry” and Foye’s “Chemical Problems” were now used as texts.
Experimental demonstrations were given daily in the lectures.
Foye’s instruction, if we are to trust reminiscences of alumni,
was not particularly inspiring. One alumna later said, “In 1885,
when I was a Freshman, there was hardly any such thing as
science as it is now understood. Professor Foy (sic) held up to
our admiring gaze certain things which he looked at and declared
them to be red or white, and we stood in a circle to receive shocks
from an electric machine. But it was not until Professor Cramer
came back in ’86 that the modern era began.”10
1953] Siegfried & Ihde — Beginnings of Chemical Education 33
Professor Frank Cramer, to whom she refers, became Pro¬
fessor of Natural History and Geology in 1886. He had just re¬
ceived his baccalaureate degree at Lawrence the previous spring.
Since he had been close to graduation a year earlier he had been
able to spend a year at Yale in special scientific study. He proved
to be a popular and inspiring teacher at Lawrence but was forced
to resign in five years on account of ill health. He went to Cali¬
fornia where he was active in establishing the Preparatory
School for Boys at Stanford University.
The thirty-year presidency of Samuel Plantz, beginning in
1894, saw great changes in Lawrence University. The six presi¬
dents preceding Plantz had all been Methodist ministers, four of
them being graduates of Wesleyan University. Academic em¬
phasis had been on Greek and Latin, with little thought being
given to the place of the natural and social sciences in the con¬
temporary world. Plantz, a graduate of Lawrence in 1880, went
on to the ministry but brought back to his alma mater a new
enthusiasm to give the institution a real place in the life of Wis¬
consin. A vigorous campaign for endowments was initiated and
faculty members with more extensive and specialized training
were added to the staff. Only a few Ph.D’s were on the faculty
when Plantz became president, and their degrees were most often
of the honorary variety ; i.e., Foye had received a doctorate from
Asbury University (later De Pauw) in 1882. After the coming
of Plantz, there was a concerted effort to add German and Amer¬
ican Ph.D.’s to the faculty.
When Foye left in 1892 to take charge of the chemistry in¬
struction at Armour Institute his chair was filled by Earle D.
Shepard, A.B. After only two years he was replaced by Charles
Watson Treat (Ph.B. De Pauw ’90, A.M. ’93). Treat had also
done summer work at the Lick Observatory, at Stanford, and
continued to do summer work at Chicago. President Plantz’s
activities soon led to the endowment of Treat’s chair of physics
and chemistry by Philetus Sawyer, prominent Oshkosh lumber¬
man and politician. By 1901 the two subjects had achieved suffi¬
cient importance to bring about a separation. Treat continued
giving the instruction in physics until 1918. Lewis Addison
Youtz (Ph.B. Simpson ’90, Ph.D. Columbia ’02) came in 1901 to
direct the instruction in chemistry until his retirement in 1934.
The construction of the Stephenson Hall of Science in 1898
gave added emphasis to the sciences. Isaac Stephenson, well
known in Wisconsin political circles on account of his purchase
of a Senate seat, was the chief donor toward the project.
34 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
The catalog of 1904 reveals courses in general inorganic, quali¬
tative and quantitative analysis, organic — including eight hours
of laboratory work per week, physical chemistry and industrial
chemistry. Student assistants were now helping with laboratory
instruction.
Youtz continued as the sole chemistry professor until Florence
Stouder (B.A. Denver ’19, Ph.D. Illinois ’25) was added to the
staff in 1924. Upon her marriage in 1929 to Archie D. Power,
Professor of Physics, she was succeeded by Stephen Foster
Darling (B.S. Minnesota ’22, Ph.D. Harvard ’28).
Ripon College
The citizens of Ripon were ambitious, in 1851, to have an insti¬
tution of learning in their small community. A charter was
secured from the state legislature and construction was begun
on a stone building for Brockway College. Financial difficulties
soon stopped progress. The Winnebago District of the Conven¬
tion of Presbyterian and Congregational Ministers and Churches
turned deaf ears to appeals for aid, but Reverend J. W. Walcott
of Menasha took over administration upon payment of $400.
Instruction at the preparatory level began in the spring of 1853.
The College continued an uncertain existence and even built
another stone building, again largely by local efforts. The finan¬
cial crisis of 1857 and the coming of the Civil War, however,
forced the Convention to consider abandoning this educational
venture. The school was closed during the year 1861-62 and the
campus and building were leased to the government as a training
place for the First Regiment of Wisconsin Cavalry. However,
local loyalty again came to the rescue and sufficient funds were
raised by subscription in 1862 for the Convention to recognize
the college. Under the name of Ripon College, the school was
rechartered in 1864. In 1868 the Convention relinquished all
ecclesiastical control and the sole governing powers were vested
in the trustees.
The first catalog was published for the year 1864-65. Two
terms of chemistry were offered, one in general chemistry and
one in organic and agricultural chemistry, both in the junior
year. These courses were taught by Reverend William H. Ward,
Professor of Latin, Natural Sciences and Physical Training.
This was the same William Ward who had served as tutor at
Beloit College in 1857-58 and who later became well known as
the editor of the New York Independent . After two years, Pro¬
fessor Ward’s chemical efforts were replaced by those of Daniel
1953] Siegfried & Ihde — Beginnings of Chemical Education 35
Merriman, A.M., whose official title was simply Professor of
Natural Sciences.
The catalog of 1868-69 first includes the word “chemistry” in
a professorial title but the Professorship of Chemistry and
Natural History was unfilled that year. From 1869 to 1873
Lyman Beecher Sperry (A.M. Oberlin, M.D. Michigan ’67) filled
the chair of Chemistry and Natural Science. The catalog of 1870-
71 stated that “The Chemistry Department is provided with
Laboratory and Lecture Room and there is considerable appa¬
ratus for the illustration of other Physical Sciences.” Under
Sperry’s tutelege, two terms of inorganic and one of organic
chemistry were offered.
Sperry’s chair was filled by Dr. Moses Barrett who died two
months after coming to Ripon. William Gay Ballantine (A.M.
Marietta ’68) came in February 1874 but stayed less than two
years. Alvah H. Sabin (B.S. Bowdoin ’76, M.S. ’79) took the
position in 1876. In 1877 a new building housing the Chemistry
and Astronomy Departments was completed. Three terms of
chemistry were offered during the sophomore year. Sabin left
in 1880, becoming a specialist in paints and varnishes. He did
considerable lecturing at various schools in the East and Middle
West, including the University of Wisconsin in 1901-02.
During the years from 1880 to 1889 there was no permanent
teacher of chemistry employed, but chemistry never lost its place
in the curriculum. No matter what the special field of the man
who taught the chemistry courses, chemistry was always in¬
cluded in his title. For example, two of the other faculty mem¬
bers who taught chemistry during this interval were Charles H.
Chandler (B.A. Dartmouth ’68, M.A. ’71), Professor of Chem¬
istry and Physics, and C. Dwight Marsh (B.A. Amherst ’77,
M.A. ’80), Professor of Chemistry and Biology. As many as four
terms of chemistry were offered during this time, but consisting
only of general and analytical. Laboratory work was included as
a regular part of the curriculum and the analytical courses con¬
sisted almost entirely of that type of instruction, ten hours a
week being required.
With the coming of William Stowell Leavenworth (B.S. Ham¬
ilton ’89, M.S. ’92) in 1889, Ripon again had its chemistry and
physics instruction on a more permanent basis. During his four¬
teen-year stay, the chemistry department expanded into some¬
thing like its present organization. More and varied types of
courses were offered and it became possible to major in the sub¬
ject. A significant influence on this expansion was the building
of Ingram Hall of Science, completed in 1900. The chemistry de-
36 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
partment occupied the third floor. The facilities available were a
lecture room adequate for fifty students, a general laboratory for
thirty-five students, a quantitative laboratory for sixteen, and a
qualitative laboratory for twenty. In addition there was a private
laboratory for advanced students, and a private laboratory for
the incumbent professor. All laboratories were equipped with
hoods and other standard equipment.
The catalog for 1900-01 listed the following courses in chem¬
istry: general; two courses in qualitative analysis; quantitative
analysis ; organic ; medical chemistry consisting of urinalysis and
toxicology. In the next few years various other courses were
offered intermittently; mineralogy, for example, and a second
semester of organic especially for premedical students.
George F. Weida (B.S. Kansas ’90, Ph.D. Johns Hopkins ’94)
was the first Ph.D. to hold the post of Professor of Chemistry at
Ripon. His arrival in 1903 followed Professor Leavenworth’s
acceptance of a position at Olivet College in Michigan. Dr.
Weida’s short stay from 1903 to 1907 did not cause any signifi¬
cant change in the offerings or organization of the chemistry
department except the introduction of a course in the history of
chemistry. In 1907 Weida took a position as Professor of Chem¬
istry at Kenyon College in Ohio.
A further expansion in the course offerings came under Albert
Franklin Gilman (B.S. Amherst ’97, Ph.D. Denver ’13), whose
name first appears in the catalog of 1906-07. By the end of his
first year at Ripon, Gilman was offering, in addition to the
courses previously given, a term of physical chemistry and
another term of organic.
In 1909 Burrell O. Raulston (A.B. Marysville ’09) was em¬
ployed as Instructor in Chemistry to relieve Gilman of a part of
his rather extensive load. Raulston had been a student of Gilman
at Maryville before the latter came to Ripon. Raulston was at
Ripon only three years, and upon his departure a part of the
teaching burden was taken by successive seniors who were
majoring in chemistry. The first senior to hold this position of
Laboratory Assistant in Chemistry was E. L. Krause who, after
taking his M.A. at the University of Wisconsin, became Pro¬
fessor of Chemistry at Marietta College in Ohio. In 1917 Gilman
left Ripon to accept a post at Huron College. In 1920 he became
Professor of Chemistry at Carroll College.
Augustus Lawrence Barker (B.S. Alabama ’10, M.S. ’ll, Ph.D.
Wisconsin ’22) became Professor of Chemistry at Ripon in 1917
upon the departure of Gilman.
1953] Siegfried & Ihde — Beginnings of Chemical Education 37
General Trends
This review of chemistry instruction in three Wisconsin col¬
leges reveals certain similarities as well as differences. Similarity
is apparent in the manner in which teaching programs evolved.
The teaching programs rather clearly fall into three periods:
1) the natural science, 2) the physical science, and 3) the chem¬
ical. This same trend was apparent in the development of chem¬
ical instruction at the University of Wisconsin.2
The natural science period occurred in the early years in each
college. During this period the science courses, and often even
the mathematics courses, were taught by one professor. He might
be an M.D. but was as likely to be a minister. In alternating
terms he was likely to teach physics and chemistry, botany and
zoology, geology and mineralogy, mathematics and astronomy.
With growth of the colleges there was a transition to the
physical science period where chemistry was taught along with
physics and perhaps geology and mineralogy. Biology and mathe¬
matics were no longer part of the chemistry teacher’s repertory.
The professor of chemistry and physics could no longer be called
“Reverend” and was likely to have some graduate training in the
sciences, possibly even a doctor’s degree. The offerings in chem¬
istry were increased somewhat to include the organic and analy¬
tical aspects of the subject. Laboratory instruction was intro¬
duced during this period.
The chemical period began when a full-time professorship of
chemistry was established. The occupant of the chair carried a
Ph.D. in the subject, or acquired one during his period of tenure.
Laboratory instruction was expanded and student assistants
were added to the staff. Later an additional staff member of pro¬
fessorial rank would be added. The curriculum was enriched by
courses such as physical chemistry, food analysis, and industrial
chemistry.
The duration of each of the periods varied greatly in the dif¬
ferent institutions. Beloit passed almost at once from the first
to the second. The State University required almost two decades
to make the same step, while Lawrence and Ripon failed to com¬
plete the transition before 1890. The State University, however,
made the second transition rather quickly, while the other three
colleges failed to complete the step before the beginning of the
twentieth century.
Laboratory work was inaugurated at Beloit in 1869, at Ripon
in 1880, and at Lawrence in 1882. Beloit was the first to acquire
a separate building for the sciences (1892). The science build-
38 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
ings at Lawrence and Ripon were not constructed until 1898 and
1900, respectively. Separate professorships of chemistry were
created at Beloit in 1898, Lawrence in 1901, and Ripon in 1904.
The parallelism in the development of chemical instruction in
these three colleges is particularly striking when the different
organizational and economic circumstances of these schools is
considered. The causes of these parallel trends must lie outside
the immediate environment of the schools themselves. The in¬
creased importance attached to science in general and chemistry
in particular at the turn of the century seems to be a factor in
these trends. The Census Committee of the American Chemical
Society reported at the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Meeting in
1901 that since 1876 “accommodations for students and teachers
have increased as one to twenty-five.,,11 The expanding facilities
for chemical education within these Wisconsin colleges can be
interpreted as the manifestation of this more general trend.
Acknowledgment
We wish to express our appreciation for the help given to us
by Professors H. A. Brubaker, W. P. Gilbert, and W. F. Raney
of Lawrence College ; Paul W. Boutwell, Robert H. Irrmann, and
the late R. K. Richardson of Beloit College; A. L. Barker and
E. A. Tenney of Ripon College; and H. A. Schuette of the Uni¬
versity of Wisconsin.
Notes and Literature
1. Present Address: Boston University, Boston 15, Massachusetts.
2. Ihde, A. J., and H. A. Schuette. “Early days of chemistry at the Uni¬
versity of Wisconsin,” J. Chem. Educ., 29, 65-72 (1952).
3. Eaton, Edward Dwight. Historical Sketches of Beloit College, A. S.
Barnes and Co., New York, 1928, p. 30.
4. Boutwell, Paul W. “Stephen Pearl Lathrop. A Pioneer Chemist in
Wisconsin.” Trans. Wis. Acad. Sciences, Arts, Letters, 41, 95-116
(1952).
5. Catalogue of the Officers and Students of Beloit College and Beloit
Seminary for the Year 18U9-50. Beloit, 1850, p. 18.
6. Smith, Erastus G. in Eaton op. cit., p. 212.
7. Boutwell, Paul W. “The Chemical Society of Beloit College, 1863-66.”
Trans. Wis. Acad. Sciences, Arts, Letters, 41, 83-94 (1952).
8. Van Klooster, H. S. “Friedrich Wohler and His American Pupils.”
J. Chem. Educ., 21, 158-170 (1944).
9. Alumni Record of Lawrence University. Appleton, 1881, p. 17.
10. Alumni Record (Lawrence) 1857-1905. Appleton, 1905, p. 30.
11. Baskerville, C., L. Kahlenberg, C. E. M unroe, W. A. Noyes and
E. F. Smith. “Report of the Census Committee.” Twenty-fifth Anni¬
versary of the American Chemical Society, New York City, April 12
and 13, 1901. Supplement to the Journal of the American Chemical
Society, p. 101, 1902.
THE ABBfe PREVOST AND THE MODERN READER
Berenice Cooper
State College , Superior, Wisconsin
Within the present century, there has been a revival of interest
in the work of a number of writers, because new significances
have been discovered in what they have been saying to us. Per¬
haps this re-evaluation may be explained by our having become
aware of problems and meanings which their contemporaries
only faintly realized.
The influence of Freudian psychology and the emphasis upon
symbolism in the interpretation of literature have contributed
to making Melville a more important figure than he was before
1919. During this generation, Hawthorne’s reputation has been
increasing while Irving’s has declined. Henry James is being
read with an enthusiasm due partly to the insights of modern
psychology and to the present interest in matters of literary
form. John Donne and the metaphysical poets are more admired
than they were a hundred years ago, and the method of the so-
called “new criticism” is one of the causes for the twentieth-
century revival of interest in these poets.
Such re-evaluations may do late justice to a man who was
ahead of his times or who wrote in symbolic terms carrying a
meaning that sometimes even he may have comprehended only
imperfectly ; again the revival of interest may be due to the uni¬
versality of the problem with which the earlier writer was con¬
cerned, to the work’s being contemporary in the Spengler sense,
our age having reached a stage of culture (or civilization, alas!)
which parallels that of the writer’s epoch.
It is high time to re-evaluate the work of the Abbe Prevost
and to direct attention from the sentimental novel of his emo¬
tionally unstable early career to the philosophical novel of his
maturity, for the later work changes entirely the interpretation
that has been given of his contribution to literature and to the
history of ideas.
If the Abbe Prevost is to be known only through the story of
Manon Lescaut and her faithful lover, the Chevalier des Grieux,
the abbe becomes only a minor figure in the history of a literary
form which is quite out of fashion. Even those readers who in¬
sist upon sentimentality in their fiction prefer it today in the
39
40 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
modern dress of the slicks and the pulps and think the melan¬
choly hero, romantically devoted to his amoral sweetheart, rather
silly and find her final regeneration unconvincing. Those who
read for something more than escape from reality, cherish from
the past many books more vitally relevant to their lives than
such a sentimental romance as Manon Lescaut.
It is not necessary, however, to belittle Manon Lescaut in
order to show that it is totally unfair to a true evaluation of
Prevost as a literary man that he should be remembered only for
this earlier work1 and that students of literature should ignore
his more mature work, Le Philosophe anglais, the story of Cleve¬
land, the English philosopher.
Rather than belittling Manon Lescaut, it is necessary only to
show that the later novel, while sharing with Prevost’s other
romances the characteristic defects of early eighteenth-century
fiction, has a theme that concerns the premises of twentieth-
century philosophical and religious thought and that even at
some of its subordinate plot levels, it treats of matters of greater
interest to the modern reader than the sorrows of Des Grieux’s
unrequited love and Manon’s fatally delayed regeneration.
In presenting Le Philosophe anglais as a book that requires a
re-evaluation of Prevost and that deserves discovery by the
modern reader, one might borrow a term popular in modern crit¬
icism and call attention to its three “levels of reference.” On the
lowest level, there is the popular eighteenth-century tale. All the
stereotyped melodrama of the period is there: adventures in
escaping from persecution, subsequent hazards of sea voyage
and hardships of the American wilderness with both friendly
and cannibal tribes of Indians;2 loss of and reunion with loved
ones ;3 sentimental love and melancholy ;4 repentance of the chief
villain and defeat of other persecutors ;5 restoration to happiness
and to fortune.6
One may go so far as to claim that at this level there is some¬
thing for the modern lover of escape fiction in magazines, radio
1 Although Manon Lescaut was published in 1731 as the last volume of Memoires
et avantures d’un homme de qualite and the first four volumes of Le Philosophe
anglais were also published in 1731, the last four volumes were published 1738—39,
after the author’s reconciliation with the church and return from exile, and these
volumes have a distinctly different tone. They concern the mature reflections of the
English philosopher Cleveland and resolve for him the conflict between rational
philosophy and religion.
2 Le Philosophe anglais (Rouen: Racine, 1785), III, 65-192.
8 Ibid., IV, 115-40; V, 161-216.
' Ibid., IV, 116-23.
5 Ibid., 124-31.
“Ibid., VII, 142-43, 176-80 ; VII, 188, 209-15.
1953]
Cooper — The Abbe Prevost
41
serials, and movies. If the writers of movie scenarios ever dis¬
cover the wealth of exotic setting and melodramatic plot buried
in this only partly translated French novel, technicolor and
proper advertising can do wonders with the story of the colony
on St. Helena. Here was a Utopia except for the lack of enough
husbands for the very marriageable young women. The failure
of the attempt at eugenic, committee-directed marriages between
the lovely virgins and the young men imported by the govern¬
ment contains truly dramatic moments that would lend them¬
selves to a typical movie spectacle.7
Cleveland’s early life in Rumney Caverns where he and his
mother hide away from the vengeance of Cromwell, who is de¬
termined to kill his former mistress and her illegitimate son,
would provide Orson Welles with the kind of dimmed light and
shadow he loves, and Cleveland’s meeting with his future wife
and her father in these same caverns, his discovery of the in¬
scription telling the story of another of Cromwell’s victims, the
escape of Cleveland, Fanny, and Axminister to France would
provide fresh content for the stereotyped movie melodrama.8
One further illustration of movie sources hidden at this lower
“level of reference” is the story in the later volumes of Cleve¬
land’s falling in love with Cegile, who is finally proved to be his
daughter. The incest motif is treated in so genteel a manner that
it would pass the standards of Hollywood censorship ; yet it car¬
ries sufficient suggestion of the tabooed subject to furnish mate¬
rial for the sort of advertising that stimulates box office receipts.9
On the second level, Le Philosophe anglais may be enjoyed for
its incisive satire of political and religious institutions. There is
satire upon dictatorship in the story of Cleveland’s government
of the Abaquis, an Indian tribe.10 Organized religion, whether
Catholic or Protestant, is unmercifully satirized wherever it is
intolerant, dogmatic, superficial, or gloomy in its teachings.11
The Jesuits are perhaps more thoroughly satirized than the
Jansenists, but there are a few attractive Jesuits in the novel
while no redeeming traits relieve the portraits of the Jansenists.
Both Protestant ministers, one in the story of the colony on St.
Helena and one who tries to convert Cleveland, are narrow
bigots. Sometimes the satire is subtle; sometimes it is a kind of
• Ibid., II, 33-170.
»Ibid ., I, 11.
"Ibid., V, 69-160 ; VIII, 156-57.
10 Ibid., Ill, 115-73.
" Ibid., V, 7-15, 19-33, 48-85.
42 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
mildly irreverent humor as when Cleveland makes fun of ecclesi¬
astical robes.12
The satirical treatment is not merely destructive in its pur¬
pose, nor does it exist merely for the sake of exposing the faults
of social institutions. It prepares the way for the climax of the
novel and is perfectly integrated with the theme of Cleveland’s
search for a philosophy of life that will satisfy the demands of
his reason and endue his soul with strength to bear the tragedy
of living. The failure of his early views, which he designates as
natural philosophy, to sustain him in time of crisis, his futile
examination of Protestant, Jansenist, and Jesuit interpretations
of religion, his disillusionment with the materialistic philosophy
of the French philosophes ,18 are stages in his evolution toward
the “true religion” to which he is at last converted.
It is the third “level of reference,” however, that gives the
book its claim to recognition as a serious contribution to the uni¬
versal problem of the meaning of life and of suffering. On this
third level, Cleveland is the English philosopher, not the hero of
a melodramatic romance; he is man faced with the confusing
problems of all time. The incidents of the novel become part of
an extended metaphor of the stages of thought through which a
thoughtful man evolves a triumphant faith and an eclectic phil¬
osophy of life that preserve for him that which his intellect
accepts and respects and that add to rational belief what
du Noiiy has characterized as “the inspired traditions repre¬
sented by the Christian religion.”14 Cleveland, like many twen¬
tieth-century men discards superstition and outgrown dogma and
narrow sectarianism disguised as religion, but he reaches the
conclusion that man is more than a reasoning animal and that
his aspiration toward something in the uncharted infinite has
meaning. Philosophy anticipates, says Cleveland, what religion
realizes.13
That the modern reader is concerned with such a theme as this
is evident from the interest in such recent books as Lecomte du
Noiiy’s Human Destiny, Max Otto’s Science and the Moral Life,
and the continuing interest in Alfred Whitehead’s Lowell Lec¬
tures of 1925, published as Science and the Modern World.
13 The irreverent clause, “et que je crus d’abord en chemise,” is deleted in the
Rouen edition of 1785, as it was from a number of editions between 1757 and 1783.
For an account of censored editions, see my paper, “Variations in the Text of
Eighteenth Century Editions of Le Philosophe Anglais Transactions of the Wis¬
consin Academy, XXXII (1940), 287-98.
13 Le Philosophe anglais, VIII, 53-69.
14 Lecomte du Noiiy, Human Destiny (New York: Longmans Green, 1947), p. 257.
15 Le Philosophe anglais, VIII, 215.
1953]
Cooper — The Abbe Prevost
43
The Abbe Prevost, writing in the early eighteenth century, did
not state the conflict between rationalism and religion in exactly
the same terms as do twentieth-century philosophers. He wrote
of natural philosophy, which was the name he gave to a Neo-
Stoic ethics and to the study of natural law. He lived before
Comte gave us the term Positivism, but he wrote of the mate¬
rialism of the French philosophes influenced by Hobbes.10
Apparently the abbe rejects institutionalized religion alto¬
gether for in the story of Cleveland’s conversion there is no
mention of church or priest or sacraments. “True religion” is
presented by Lord Clarendon after Cleveland has examined and
found wanting both Protestantism and Catholicism. In Cleve¬
land’s summary of this “true religion” there is no mention of
Christ as a vicarious savior or even as an ideal for the good life,
although the follower of “true religion” is called a Christian.
Faith in God and in immortality are mentioned as important be¬
liefs. Religious duties include ethical living and reading the Bible
and the lives of saints.17
Asceticism plays no part in this “true religion”; the wise use
of pleasures of the senses is a part of the good life. No principles
of natural philosophy are rejected as false; they are merely in¬
sufficient because they fail to take account of the needs of the
human heart, which only religion can satisfy. Natural law needs
to be supplemented by supernatural law.18
I realize that in my enthusiasm for Le Philosophe anglais, I
am tempted to exaggerate its claims upon the interest of the
modern reader, but with allowance for this enthusiasm, I believe
that analysis of the contents supports the argument that this
philosophical novel presents a far different Prevost than we have
known through Manon Lescaut.
Prevost tells us in the preface to Le Philosophe anglais that
his views agree with Cleveland’s.19 Upon that declaration, I base
a revised interpretation of his character. He was far more than
a romanticist. He took seriously the conflicts in the dominant
ideas of his period, and while writing a melodramatic novel that
would be a best-seller of his day, he took pleasure in placing
beneath the surface of adventure, love, and intrigue the theme of
the search of man for the answer to the most important ques¬
tions in life.
16 Ibid., 53-69.
v Ibid., 213.
18 Ibid., 211.
10 Ibid., “Preface,” ii.
44 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
The author of Le Philosophe anglais has raised and answered
in his own way a series of questions that have been raised again
and again in the history of thought, questions which still concern
twentieth-century philosophers.
Can man find through his knowledge of natural law a strength
of spirit that will enable him to meet the tragedy of living? To
this Prevost’s answer is that the study of natural law is the
beginning of wisdom but that it must lead into the study of the
higher law.
Is it possible to find a philosophy that gives meaning to life
with all its suffering and tragedy and brings to man peace of
mind and soul? To this question his answer is that there is a
supernatural world beyond the natural world and toward this
uncharted infinite man reaches. Only through recognition of the
realm beyond the reach of natural law can man find the spiritual
strength to go on with the struggle for existence.
What part shall institutionalized religion play in the life of a
man whose ideal it is to live with his fellowmen in a spirit of
justice and love? The answer here seems to be that the church
need play no part at all. At least it is not mentioned as a neces¬
sary element in the religious life.
In the three twentieth-century books which I have mentioned
above, we find conclusions remarkably similar to Prevost’s.
Max Otto writes:
We might then indeed speak of science and religion without
equivocation or confusion, as inseparable and complemen¬
tary endeavors in man’s attempt to make himself at home
on this planet.20
Alfred Whitehead says :
Religion is the vision of something that stands beyond, be¬
hind, and within the passing flux of immediate things ; some¬
thing which is real, and yet waiting to be realized; ....
something that gives meaning to all that passes and yet
eludes apprehension ; something whose possession is the final
good, and yet is beyond all reach; something which is the
ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest.21
Lecomte du Noiiy says:
The extraordinary strides made in the conquest of nature
will not bring man the happiness he has the right to expect,
unless there is a corresponding moral development. This
development can only be based, in our actual society, on a
30 Max Otto, Science and the Moral Life (Mentor Book 43), p. 180.
21 A. N. Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (Mentor Book 28), p. 191.
1953]
Cooper — The Abbe Prevost
45
unification, a reconciliation of the rational — -science — with
the irrational— faith ; of the ponderable with the imponder¬
able ; on an explanation of the relation between matter and
spirit . . ,212
It has been my purpose in previous papers read before the
Wisconsin Academy23 to present the contributions made to the
history of ideas by the Abbe Prevost’s Le Philosophe anglais.
In this paper I have argued that this novel represents a more
significant and mature work than Manon Lescaut and entitles
the abbe to be associated in the mind of the modern reader with
all those who are dissatisfied with a completely rationalistic
materialism.
For those modern readers who are interested in the evolution
of a personal philosophy that gives life meaning, the Abbe
Prevost is a contemporary, provided they will make themselves
acquainted with Le Philosophe anglais.
22 du Noiiy, p. 256.
PRELIMINARY REPORTS
ON THE FLORA OF WISCONSIN. XXXVII.
CYPERACEAE
Part I. — Cyperus, Dulichium, Eleocharis, Bulbostylis,
Fimbristylis, Eriophorum, Scirpus, Hemicarpha,
Rynchospora, Psilocarya, Cladium, Scleria
H. C. Greene
Carex, by far the largest and most complex genus of the
Cyperaceae, is being presented separately as Part II in this
treatment of Wisconsin sedges. The maps showing distribution
of species are based on the collections in the herbaria of the Uni¬
versity of Wisconsin and the Milwaukee Public Museum. For
most species the collections are fairly numerous and representa¬
tive and it is felt that the maps based on them are, in most cases,
more than ordinarily useful in giving a picture of the true dis¬
tribution of the species concerned.
Key to the Genera of Cyperaceae in Wisconsin
1. Flowers all perfect, i.e., stamens and pistil in the same flower
2. Basal empty scales of spikelets none, or rarely 2 (sometimes
3 in Eleocharis smallii)
3. Scales of spikelets 2-ranked, and keeled
4. Flowers without bristles (perianth) ; achenes beakless;
inflorescence terminal; spikelets few — many-flowered, usu¬
ally elongated or slender . . . . . . Cyperus
4. Flowers with bristles; achenes beaked, inflorescence axil¬
lary; stem hollow, round in cross-section; leaves many, with
a conspicuous sheath . . . Dulichium
3. Scales of spikelets spirally imbricated (overlapping)
4. Base of style persistent on the achene as a tubercle
5. Spikelet solitary; leaves reduced to sheaths; bristles
usually present on achenes; plants primarily of moist to
wet habitats . . . . . . . Eleocharis
5. Spikelets several or numerous; leaves with blades;
achenes lacking bristles; plants of dry sandy habitats
. . . . . . . . . Bulbostylis
4. Base of style not persistent on the achene as a tubercle
5. Flowers without any inner scales
6. Base of style enlarged (but readily detachable from the
achene) ; bristles none . . . Fimbristylis
6. Base of style not enlarged; bristles usually present
7. Bristles 6, but each 4-6-cleft to near the base, mak¬
ing them appear numerous, silky, usually white, all
much exserted (projecting) . . . Eriophorum
47
48 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
7. Bristles 0-8, short, not silky (a single exception,
whitish and exserted in S. hudsonianus) . Scirpus
5. Flowers characteristically with an inconspicuous inner
scale (plants resembling a very small and delicate
Scirpus ) . H emicarpha
2. Basal empty scales of the spikelets 3 or more
3. Styles 2-cleft; enlarged base of style persistent on the achene
as a tubercle
4. Spikelets few-flowered; bristles usually present. . . . . Rynchosporci
4. Spikelets many-flowered; bristles none . . Psilocarya
3. Styles 3-cleft; enlarged base of style not persistent on the
achene; bristles none; only the uppermost scale of spikelet
bearing flower and fruit . Cladium
1. Flowers all imperfect, i.e., stamens and pistils not in the same
flower
2. Pistillate flower subtended by a flat scale; achene naked, bony,
and usually white . Sclcria
2. Pistillate flower wholly enclosed by a sac (perigynium) , the style
protruding through the opening at the top . . . Carcx
The key to genera of the Cyperaceae has been adapted from
that used by Mr. C. C. Deam in his “Flora of Indiana”, as has
also the following key to the species of Cyperus found in Wis¬
consin.
Key to the Wisconsin species of Cyperus
1. Stigmas 2; achenes flattened, not 3-angled; spikelets flat; scales
falling from the rachis at maturity
2. Exserted style branches many, conspicuous, long, projecting up
to 4 mm. ; scales dull . . . . C. diandrus
2. Exserted style branches few, inconspicuous, short, not project¬
ing more than 2 mm.; scales shining, deep brown . C. rivularis
1. Stigmas 3; achenes 3-a.ngled
2. Spikelets in globose heads, or in short clusters, the rachis (axis)
not more than 1 cm. long
3. Involucral bracts recurved or widely spreading at maturity;
leaves linear, mostly less than 2 mm. wide
4. Scales of spikelets tapering to a long recurved point; spike¬
lets in clusters, but not in markedly compact globose heads;
spikelets frequently more than 8-flowered; plants of wet
sandy shores . C. inflexus
4. Scales of spikelets not with recurved points; spikelets in
compact terminal, globose or ovoid-globose heads; spikelets
all less than 8-flowered, or only a few with 8 or more
flowers; plants of dry, sterile, usually sandy habitats
. C. filiculmis var. macilentus
3. Involucral bracts erect or ascending
4. Scales of spikelets tapering to a long, recurved point ; leaves
less than 2 mm. wide; dwarf annuals of wet sandy shores
. . . . . . C. inflexus
4. Scales of spikelets not tapering to a long recurved point;
leaves linear but usually wider than in C. inflexus; peren¬
nials of dry, sterile, usually sandy habitats
1953], Greene— Flora of Wisconsin. XXXVII. Cyperaceac 49
5. Scales 2-2.5 mm. long, the mucro (pointed tip of scale)
less than 0.5 mm. long; achenes 1.5-2 mm. long; spikelets
5-9-flowered . . . . . C. Houghtonii
5. Scales mostly 3-4.5 mm. long, the mucro 0.5-1 mm. long;
achenes 2.5-3 mm. long; spikelets 4-16-flowered. . C. Schweinitzii
2. Spikelets on an elongated rachis (axis) 1-3 cm. long
3. Flowers remote, the successive scales not reaching the bases
of the ones above on the same side of the rachis. . . . . C. Engelmanni
3. Flowers close together, the successive scales overlapping the
bases of the ones above
4. Scales mostly 2.7-4 mm. long; culms with corm-like bases
5. Spikelets erect or ascending, more than 2 5 mm. wide;
achenes ellipsoid, about 2.5 mm. long and half as wide
. . C. Schweinitzii
5. Spikelets widely spreading or reflexed, less than 2.5 mm.
wide; achenes linear-oblong, mostly 1.5-2 mm. long and
about 0.3 mm. wide . . . . . . C. strigosus
4. Scales less than 2.7 mm. long; culms without corm-like bases
5. Scales 1-1.5 mm. long; flowers very closely imbricated,
the scales overlapping more than half their length ; wings
of rachis white, extending to and fused with the base of
the scale next above; achenes about 0.8 mm. long
. C. erythrorhizos
5. Scales mostly 2-2.5 mm. long; flowers not very closely
imbricated, the scales usually overlapping less than half
their length; achenes 1-1.5 mm. long
6. Plants with numerous fibrous roots, annual ; culms with
1-4 leaves; longest rays of umbel generally less than
5 cm. long; spikelets usually dense, reddish-brown, at
maturity easily broken into segments below the flowers
. . . . C. ferruginescens
6. Plants with numerous scaly stolons that at length bear
a tuber, perennial; culms very leafy, leaves usually
more than 4; rays of umbels usually 4-13 cm. long;
spikelets usually straw-colored, sometimes light reddish-
brown; at maturity not separating into segments below
the flowers . . . . . . C. esculentus
Cyperus diandrus Torr. (Fig. 1). Wet soil on the borders of
streams and lakes. Often confused with the next species.
C. RIVULARIS Kunth. (Fig. 2). Wet soil on the borders of
streams and lakes. In Wisconsin more abundant than C. dian¬
drus.
C. inflexus Muhl. (Fig. 3). On the sandy shores of lakes and
along streams. According to Beam, dried specimens of this plant
have a pleasing odor, similar to that of dried slippery elm leaves.
C. filiculmis Vahl. var. macilentus Fern. (Fig. 4). On dry
sterile, mostly sandy soil.
C. houghtonii Torr. (Fig. 5). On sandy soil. Grading into the
next species, but usually macroscopically distinguishable by the
smaller, more compact inflorescence.
50 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
C. schweinitzii Torr. (Fig. 6). On dry sandy shores, banks
and cuts. Common.
C. engelmanni Steud. (Fig. 7). Low, moist ground on the
borders of lakes and ponds.
C. STRIGOSUS L. (Fig. 8). Common in many situations, except
dry sand.
C. erythrorhizos Muhl. (Fig. 9). Moist situations, sometimes
abundant in beds of dried-up ponds and sloughs.
C. ferruginescens Boeckl. (Fig. 10). Moist soil, along lakes
and rivers. Except for its more reddish color, quite similar to the
following species in its above-ground parts.
C. esculentus L. Chufa. (Fig. 11). On the borders of ponds
and lakes, and along streams. This species tends to be weedy and
may spread extensively by means of its small, edible, nut-like
tubers.
Dulichium arundinaceum (L.) Britton. (Fig. 12). Bog mar¬
gins, wet swamps, and borders of lakes and ponds. A striking
species, with its pointed, stiffly projecting, grass-like leaves with
conspicuous sheaths. By its hollow stems at once distinct from
any other sedge. This plant prefers acid waters and, due to hard
water, is hence rare along the Wisconsin and Mississippi Rivers.
(The collection at Trempeleau was made in a wet depression in
the sand terrace there and is not from the river bottoms).
Key to the Wisconsin species of Eleocharis
1. Stem nearly as thick as the spikelet; scales persistent
2. Stem jointed, stout, 0.5-1 m. high . E. equisetoides
2. Stem not jointed
3. Plants stout, tall, stem sharply 4-angled . E. quadrangulata
3. Stems slender, 1-2 mm. thick, bluntly 3-angled . . . .E. Robbinsii
1. Stem decidedly more slender than the spikelet; scales readily
deciduous at maturity
2. Plants from a rootstock 2 mm. or more thick
3. Stigmas 2 ; achenes 2-angled
4. A solitary sterile scale at the base of and encircling the
spikelet . . . . . . .E. calva
4. 2-3 sterile scales at the base of the spikelet, the lowest not
encircling the base of the spikelet; tubercle depressed-
deltoid; stems from slender and wiry to stout and rather
soft . . . . . . .E. Smallii
3. Stigmas 3 ; achenes 3-angled
4. Stems flattened, 0.5-7 dm. high; scales sharp-pointed, dark
chestnut brown; achene dull yellow or brownish; tubercle
broadly conical . . . . . E. compressa
4. Stems angled
5. Stems capillary, 4-angled, striate, 2-8 cm. high; tip of
upper sheath whitened ; scales elliptic-oblong with rounded
tips; achenes pale straw-colored, 0.7-1 mm. long; tubercle
narrow, flattened, with a short point in the middle. . . .E. nitida
1953] Greene— Flora of Wisconsin. XXXVII. Cyperaceae 51
5. Stems slender, 6-8-angled, up to 4 dm. high; tip of upper
sheath dark-margined ; achenes wax-yellow to golden-
yellow, noticeably pitted, 0. 9-1.5 mm. long; tubercle
broadly conical (as in E. compressa with which this
species may be confused) . . . E. elliptica
2. Plants without rootstocks or with thread-like rootstocks
3. Spikelets 3-9-flowered, rarely as much as 15-flowered; usually
dwarf plants not over 5 cm. high
4. Bunches of stems not connected by rootstocks; some stems
usually very short; achenes finely pitted in longitudinal
lines; tubercle slender conical-awl-shaped. ........ .E. intermedia
4. Bunches of stems connected by slender rootstocks; all stems
about the same length, capillary and angled
5. Stems often forming a turf; tubercle distinct from the
body of the achene; achenes small, pale-brownish, with
3-ribbed angles and 2-3 times as many smaller interme¬
diate ribs, also transversely striate . . . E. acicularis
5. Stems only a few together, or solitary; tubercle confluent
with body of achene and differentiated from it only by its
darker color; achenes transversely striate
. . . . E. pauciftora var. Fernaldii
3. Spikelets many-flowered
4. Stigmas 2 ; achenes 2-angled
5. Sheaths white and loose toward the tip; stems 2-15 cm.
high; achenes olive-green to blackish; obovoid, 1 mm. or
more long; tubercle conical . . . E. olivacea
5. Sheaths close and often dark-margined at the tip
6. Plants with rootstocks; base of tubercle much nar¬
rowed. Slender and depauperate members of the E.
Smallii group may key out here
6. Plants without rootstocks; tubercle broadest at base
7. Tubercle nearly or quite as broad as the achene
8. Tubercle a third to half as high as the body of the
achene; spikelet ovoid; plants highly variable in
size . E. obtusa
8. Tubercle flattened, not more than a fourth as high
as the body of the achene; spikelet cylindrical, 5-16
mm. long; achenes lacking bristles
. . . E. Engelmanni f. detonsa
7. Tubercle less than two-thirds as broad as the achene,
higher than broad; spikelet globose-ovoid to ovoid-
cylindric; plants highly variable in size . E. ovata
4. Stigmas 3; achenes 3-angled
5. Summit of upper sheaths loose, of very delicate texture,
cut at an oblique angle
6. Achene with longitudinal ridges; tubercle distinct from
body of achene, broader than high, with flange-like
base . . . . . E. Wolfii
6. Achene without longitudinal ridges; tubercle not dis¬
tinct from body of achene, 2-3 times as high as broad,
slender, awl-shaped . . . . E. intermedia
52 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
5. Summit of upper sheaths close, firm, green- or dark-
margined, cut nearly square across the top; the pyram¬
idal tubercle much smaller than the body of the achene
and not sharply differentiated from it; the spikelets
spindle-shaped; stems flattened and striate-grooved, wiry,
erect, 3-12 dm. long, often arching and rooting at the tip
. . . . . . . . . .E. rostellata
Eleocharis equisetoides (Ell.) Torr. Jointed Spike Rush.
(Fig. 13) . Shallow water. The only Wisconsin collections were
made in 1893 at Lake Wingra, Madison, where the species is now
extinct.
E. QU adran gulat A (Michx.) R. & S. Square-stem Spike Rush.
(Fig. 13). Shallow water of lakes and ponds. So far collected at
but two stations in Wisconsin.
E. Robbinsii Oakes. Triangle Spike Rush. (Fig. 13) . Shallow
water and wet shores. When growing in water this species may
produce tufts of floating capillary abortive stems or fine leaves.
E. calva Torr. (Fig. 14) . Wet bogs and shores throughout the
state.
E. Smallii Britt. (Fig. 15) . Muddy and sandy shores and
shallow water. E. palustris (L.) R. & S., the name formerly
applied to most Wisconsin specimens having this general mor¬
phology is here discarded, following H. K. Svenson1 who con¬
siders the European E. palustris to be distinct from the Amer¬
ican plants.
E. compressa Sull. (Fig. 16). Wet places along rivers and
lakes.
E. nitida Fernald. (Fig. 16) . On wet red clay of alkaline re¬
action. Perhaps a post-glacial relic. Collected at a single station
within the city limits of Superior, Douglas Co.
E. elliptica Kunth. (Fig. 17). Wet sandy shores of Lakes
Superior and Michigan ; also swamps and sedge meadows.
E. intermedia (Muhl.) Schultes. (Fig. 18). Marshy and
springy areas, and muddy or sandy shores of lakes and ponds.
E. PAUCIFLORA (Lightf.) Link var. fernaldii Svenson. (Fig.
19) . Marl bogs and the Lake Michigan shore.
E. ACICULARIS (L.) R. & S. Needle Spike Rush. (Fig. 20).
Common on wet shores and in shallow water. The grass-like sub¬
merged f. inundata Svenson is occasionally collected in Wiscon¬
sin. (This species has been supposed to lack tubers, whereas
E. parvula (R. & S.) Link, otherwise resembling E. acicularis,
has been supposed to have tubers. Sterile tuber-bearing plants
from Devils Lake, Sauk Co., were determined as E. parvula, but
later similar plants were found fruiting and proved to be E. aci-
1 Rhodora 49: 61. 1947.
1953] Greene — Flora of Wisconsin. XXXVII. Cyperaceae 53
Cyperus inflexus
Cyperus filiculrais
var. raacilentus
54 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
Cyperus Engelroanni Cyperus strigosus
Cyperus esculentus
Dulichium arundinaceura
1953] Greene— Flora of Wisconsin . XXXVII. Cyperaceae 55
-f- Eleocharis quadrangulata
■ Eleocharis Robblnsii
Eleocharis calva
• Eleocharis compress a
• Eleocharis nitida
t«i
56 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
var. Fernaldii
Eleocharis olivacea
E. Engelmanni f. detonsa
• Eleocharis ovata
■ Eleocharis rostellata
1953] Greene — Flora of Wisconsin. XXXVII. Cyperaceae 57
58 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
Eriophorura angustif olium
-f-Scirpus hudsonianus
■ S. cespitosus var. callosus
1953] Greene— Flora of Wisconsin. XXXVII. Cyperaceae 59
■ Scirpus Hallii
* Scirpus Smith! i
«fS. Smith! i var. setosus
Scirpus fluviatilis
Scirpus rubrotinetus
60 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
• Scirpus atrovirens
-t-S. atrovirens var. georgianus Scirpus lineatus
pelius
1953] Greene — Flora of Wisconsin. XXXVII. Cyperaceae
• H. micrantha var. minor
■ Rynchospora fusca
minor
+ R. glomerata var. minor
f. discutiens
• Cladium mariscoides -hScleria verticillata
62 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
cularis , so until its presence is otherwise demonstrated £7. par-
wZa cannot be considered to occur in Wisconsin) .1
E. WOLFll Gray. (Fig. 21) . On wet, acid sand.
E. ENGELMANNI Steud. f. detonsa (Gray) Svenson. (Fig. 21).
Damp sand and drying pond bottoms.
E. olivacea Torr. (Fig. 21) . Bogs and wet shores.
E. ovata (Roth) R. & S. (Fig. 22). Distinguished with diffi¬
culty from, and grading into, E. obtusa (Willd.) Schultes. (Fig.
23).
E. rostellata Torr. Beaked Spike Rush. Walking Sedge. (Fig.
22). Wet marl borders of lakes. A single collection from Long
Lake, Racine Co.
E. obtusa (Willd.) Schultes. (Fig. 25). Muddy places, com¬
mon.
Bulbostylis Capillaris (L.) C. B. Clarke (Stenophyllus
capillaris (L.) Britton). (Fig. 24). Frequent in dry, sandy, fal¬
low fields and other dry sandy situations. ( B . capillaris var.
crebra Fernald, characterized by having the pedicels longer than
the spikelets and lacking sessile spikelets at the bases of the
leaves, apparently does not occur in Wisconsin. The species
proper, with sessile spikelets at the bases of the leaves and with
the normal spikelets longer than their pedicels is well repre¬
sented, but much of the Wisconsin material is depauperate, or
collected early in the season, and hence lacks the sessile spikelets
at the leaf bases) .
Fimbristylis autumnalis (L.) R. & S. (Fig. 25). Wet shores
of lakes, streams and sloughs. Absent, or at least not up to the
present collected, over wide areas in the northern, central west¬
erns and southeastern parts of the state.
The following key to Eriophorum has been adapted from the
key used by Mr. C. C. Deam in his “Flora of Indiana”.
Key to the species of Eriophorum in Wisconsin
L. Spikelets solitary; involucre none; scales lead color . E. spissum
1. Spikelets 2-several; involucre of 1-several leafy bracts
2. Leaves 1-2 mm. wide, channeled their entire length; 1 primary
involucral bract
3. Upper leaf blade shorter than its sheath . E. gracile
3. Upper leaf blade longer than its sheath . . .E. tenellum
2. Leaves 1.5-6 mm. wide, flat at least below the middle; the in¬
volucral bracts more than 1
3. Scales of spikelets with only one prominent rib; stamens 3;
plants of May and June
1 Svenson, H. K. — Rhodora 36: 388. 1934.
1953] Greene — Flora of Wisconsin. XXXVII. Cyperaceae 63
4. Upper leaf sheaths dark-girdled at summit; midrib of scales
not extending to the apex, the upper part of scale hyaline,
rib prominent below apex . . . E. angustif olium
4. Upper leaf sheaths not dark-girdled at summit; midrib of
scales extending to apex. . . E. viridi-carinatum
3. Scales of spikelets with several prominent ribs; stamen 1;
bristles varying from tawny to white; plants of August and
September . . . . . .E. virginicum
Eriophorum spissum Fernald. (Fig. 26). Bogs in northern
Wisconsin and similar situations near the Lake Michigan shore.
E. GRACILE Koch. (Fig. 27). Bogs and swamps.
E. tenellum Nutt. (Fig. 28). Occurring in situations similar
to those in which E. gracile is found.
E. VIRGINICUM L. (Fig. 29). Marshes and tamarack bogs
throughout the state, except in the southwestern portion where
such habitats are rare.
E. viridi-carinatum (Englem.) Fern. (Fig. 30). Bogs and
sedge marshes.
E. angustifolium Roth. (Fig. 31) . Sloughs, marshes and bogs.
The species of Eriophorum are collectively known as the Cot¬
ton Grasses because of the cottony appearance produced by the
whitish, long-projecting and much divided bristles.
Key to the species and varieties of Scirpus in Wisconsin
1. Involucre none, or merely the modified outer scale of the solitary
terminal small spikelet
2. Bristles of achene rounded, setulose; involucre very short,
equalling or only slightly exceeding the solitary spikelet; sheaths
at base bearing a slender almost bristle-shaped leaf; a plant of
dry habitats . . . . . . . .S. Clintonii
2. Bristles of the achene flat and strap-like, without barbs
3. Bristles about twice length of achene . 5. cespitosus var. callosus
3. Bristles white, long, far exceeding achene and scales. ( Similar
in appearance to Eriophorum) ; culms slender, many in a row
from a running rootstock . . . S. hudsonianus
1. Involucre of one or more leaves, appearing as if a continuation of
the stem, or foliaceous
2. Involucre of a single leaf, appearing as if a continuation of the
stem
3. Spikelets not stalked ; stems rarely more than 1 m. tall
4. Spikelet solitary; stems weak, usually supported by the
water, often with tufts of hair-like leaves . .S. subterminalis
4. Spikelets usually 2 or more ; stems erect
5. Stems sharply 3-angled, 2-5 mm. thick, from a rootstock;
side of stem nearly flat; involucral leaf 4-15 cm. long
6. Scales of spikelet red-brown; achene with an abrupt
short point . . . . . S. americanus
6. Scales of spikelet yellow-brown; achene with an abrupt
long point . S. Torreyi
64 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
5. Stems bluntly 3-angled, 1-1.5 mm. thick, from tufted roots
6. Scales about 0.5 mm. long . . .' . . . .see Hemicarpha
6. Scales about 2 mm. long
7. Achene strongly cross-wrinkled . S. Hallii
7. Achene smooth, or very lightly wrinkled
8. Achene convex on both sides
9. Bristles present . S. debilis
9. Bristles absent . .S', debilis var. Williamsii
8. Achene flat on one side and convex on the other
9. Bristles absent . . . .S. Smithii
9. Bristles present . S. Smithii var. setosus
3. Spikelets on stalks or long rays, or sometimes spikelets
crowded; stems 1-2 m. tall
4. Achene 3-angled, plump, pale grayish-brown, with 2-4
bristles less than or scarcely equalling the achene, 1.7-2
mm. broad; conspicuous whitish, flattened stamen filaments
commonly present; spikelets usually solitary, ellipsoid, 8-14
mm. long, grayish-brown on rather long pedicels. .S. heterochaetus
4. Achene 2-angled
5. Spikelets ovoid, 5-10 mm. long, distinctly reddish-brown,
loosely clustered; achehes 1.3-1. 5 mm. broad, somewhat
flattened on one side; stems in fresh specimens soft and
spongy, light green, usually more than 1 cm. thick at base
. . . . . S. validus
5. Spikelets long-ellipsoid or subcylindric, drab, grayish-
brown, 1-2 cm. long; achenes 1.7-1. 9 mm. broad, convex
on both sides; stems in fresh specimens firm in texture,
dark olive-green, 3 mm.-l cm. thick at base . S. acutus
2. Involucre of 2 or more leaves
3. Largest involucral leaves 1 mm. or less wide at base; style
swollen at base, but not persisting as a tubercle .... see Fimbristylis
3. Largest involucral leaves 2-10 mm. wide at base; style not
swollen at base
4. Spikelets 5-10 mm. thick; stems sharply triangular, thick,
from stout tuber-bearing rootstocks . . . S. fluviatilis
4. Spikelets 1-5 mm. thick; stems mostly bluntly triangular,
2-5 mm. thick; inflorescence characteristically wide and
much branched
5. Upright stems solitary from rootstocks; achene bristles
barbed downward, or rarely absent
6. At least the lower sheaths red, bristles barbed nearly to
the base . . . . . 5. rubrotinctus
6. All the sheaths green; bristles barbed only above the
middle
7. Bristles about equalling the achene; the lower sheaths
superficially nodulose-septate . . . S. atrovirens
7. Bristles shorter than the achene, or absent; sheaths
smooth, not nodulose-septate. .S. atrovirens var. georgianus
5. Upright stems in large clumps, without rootstocks;
bristles smooth
6. Bristles scarcely longer than the scales; spikelets
nearly all long-stalked; scales golden-brown with a
broad green midrib; leaves linear, flat, pale green,
rather broad, 0.5-1 cm. wide, or rarely wider . S. lineatus
1953] Greene — Flora of Wisconsin. XXXVII. Cyperaceae 65
6. Bristles much longer than the scales, giving the inflo¬
rescence a wooly appearance
7. Spikelets mostly without stalks, in clusters of 2-15
8. Involucels (secondary involucres, e.g., at bases of
spikelet clusters) reddish-brown
9. Spikelets 3-6 mm. long. . . . . S. cyperinus
9. Spikelets 7-10 mm. long. . .S. cyperinus var. Andrewsii
8. Involucels black; rays of inflorescence very un¬
equal; scales of spikelets greenish-black; leaves
bright green, rather soft, 2-5 mm. broad . . . S. atrocinctus
Scirpus clintonii Gray. (Fig. 32). Drying marl bogs, and
marshes.
S. CESPITOSUS L. var. callosus Bigel. (Fig. 32). Sedge
meadows.
S. HUDSONIANUS (Michx.) Fernald (Fig. 32). Cold bogs and
wet shores. Close to Eriophorum, under which it is sometimes
treated.
S. subterminalis Torr. (Fig. 33). Shallow water, ponds, and
streams.
S. torreyi Olney. (Fig. 34). On wet sandy shores of soft to
medium hard water lakes in northwestern Wisconsin.
S. americanus Pers. (Fig. 35). Wet sandy shores of hard
water lakes.
S. debilis Pursh. (Fig. 36) . Sandy lake shores.
S. DEBILIS var. WILLIAMSII Fernald (Fig. 36). Same habitat as
for the species.
S. hallii Gray. (Fig. 37) . Wet, muddy shores.
smithii Gray. (Fig. 37). Sandy lake shores.
S. smithii var. setosus Fernald. (Fig. 37). Same habitat as
for the species.
S. HETEROCHAETUS Chase. (Fig. 38). Hard water lakes, and
sloughs along rivers.
S. validus Vahl. (Fig. 39). Wet situations in medium hard
water.
S. acutus Muhl. (Fig. 40). In both hard and soft water.
S. fluviatilis (Torr.) Gray. (Fig. 41). On borders of hard
water lakes.
S. RUBROTINCTUS Fernald. (Fig. 42). Swales in northern and
eastern Wisconsin.
S. atrovirens Muhl. (Fig. 43). Swales and marshes. S. atro-
virens var. georgianus (Harper) Fernald is very rare in Wis¬
consin but intermediate forms, characterized by lower sheaths
superficially nodulose-septate as in the species and the bristles
(perianth) imperfectly developed as in the variety, are not
uncommon.
66 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
S. lineatus Michx. (Fig. 44). Swales and marshes in the
eastern part of the state.
S. cyperinus (L.) Kunth. (Fig. 45). Wet shores, swales and
marshes.
S. CYPERINUS var. pelius Fernald. (Fig. 46). In situations
similar to those in which S. cyperinus occurs.
S. pedicellatus Fernald. (Fig. 47). Swales, lake and stream
shores.
S. atrocinctus Fernald. (Fig. 48). Swales, marshes and wet
shores of lakes.
Key to the varieties of Hemicarpha micrantha in Wisconsin
(after Friedland, Amer. J. Bot. 28: 860* 1941)
1. Perianth-scale equal to or exceeding the achene, neither deeply excised
nor vestigial
2. Scale with no definite vascular tissue; muero (pointed tip) of
the glume longer than the body . . var. aristulata
2. Scale with 3-5 vascular strands; muero of the glume shorter
than or subequal to the body . var. Drummondii
1. Perianth-scale shorter than the achene, deeply excised, sometimes
2-cleft, vestigial or even absent . . . var. minor
The var. aristulata, included to complete the key, has a more
western range and has not so far been found in Wisconsin.
Hemicarpha micrantha (Vahl.) Pax. var. drummondii
(Nees) S. Friedland (Fig. 49). Damp sand. A single collection
from Arena, Iowa Co. This species has the plants growing in
loose clumps, the culms erect or ascending.
H. micrantha var. minor (Schrad.) S. Friedland. (Fig. 49).
Sandy borders of ponds and rivers. In this species the plants
grow in dense dwarfed clumps, with the outer culms recurved-
spreading.
The following key to Rynchospora has been adapted, with
additions and omissions, from that used by Mr. C. C. Deam in
the “Flora of Indiana”.
Key to the species and varieties of Rynchospora in Wisconsin
1. Scales of spikelets white or nearly so, becoming tawny with age;
spikelets in terminal and axillary corymbose heads; perfecting
only one flower; stamens 2; bristles 9-12 . . . R. alba
1. Scales of spikelets chestnut color; spikelets perfecting more than
one flower ; stamens 3 ; bristles 6, rarely more
2. Bristles long and conspicuous (3 times as long as the achene),
extending straight upward from the achene . . . . R. fusca
1953] Greene — Flora of Wisconsin. XXXVII. Cyperaceae 67
2. Bristles not long and conspicuous
3. Leaves all filiform ; spikelets 3-6, in terminal clusters
4. Bristles barbed . . . . . . . R. capillacea
4. Bristles smooth. . . . . R. capillacea f. leviseta
3. Leaves wider, flat; spikelets numerous, in clusters or heads
4. Bristles downwardly barbed . . . . . .R. glomerata var. minor
4. Bristles smooth . . .R. glomerata var. minor f. discutiens
Rynchospora alba (L.) Vahl. (Fig. 50). Bogs. A distinctive
and easily recognized species.
R. FUSCA (L.) Ait. f. (Fig. 51). Bogs. A single collection, made
more than 50 years ago at Port Wing, Bayfield Co., where it
should be sought again.
R. capillacea Torr. and R. capillacea f. leviseta (Hill)
Fernald. (Fig. 51). Bogs, borders of marly, spring-fed pools,
and damp sandy-clay soil on the Lake Michigan bluffs.
R. GLOMERATA (L.) Vahl. var. minor Britton and R. glome¬
rata var. MINOR f. DISCUTIENS (Clarke) Fernald. (Fig. 52). Low
places and wet sandy shores.
PsiLOCARYA scirpoides Torr. (Fig. 53). Drying shores of
lakes.
Cladium mariscoides (Muhl.) Torr. (Fig. 53). Swales,
marshes and lake shores.
Key to the species of Scleria in Wisconsin
1. Achenes smooth, ovoid, about 3 mm. long, including the basal disk
(hypogynium) ; disk covered with a whitish foam-like crust; culms
0.5-1 m. high, roughish; leaves broadly linear, 3.5-9 mm. wide,
roughened . . . S. triglomerata
1. Achenes not smooth, globose, rough-wrinkled with short elevated
ridges, about 1 mm. long; disk almost obsolete; culms simple,
slender, smooth, 1-9 dm. high; leaves narrowly linear, glabrous
. . . . . . . 5. verticillata
Scleria triglomerata Michx. (Fig. 54). Moist, sandy soil or
marshes.
S. verticillata Muhl. (Fig. 54). A single collection made by
Mr. S. C. Wadmond at Delavan, Walworth Co., on an open boggy
slope descending to a creek.
In the maps which indicate the distribution of species of
Cyperaceae an open circle, (0), indicates a sight record by a
reliable observer. All other figures are based on actual herbarium
specimens.
I am indebted to Mr. A. M. Fuller of the Milwaukee Public
Museum for his prompt cooperation in submitting the Museum
collections of Cyperaceae for inspection, and to Professor N. C.
Fassett for advice and guidance in the course of the study.
NOTES ON WISCONSIN PARASITIC FUNGI. XVIII
H. C. Greene
Department of Botany, University of Wisconsin, Madison
The collections on which this series of notes is based were,
unless stated otherwise, made during the season of 1952.
Leptosphaeria sp. on Phalaris arundinacea var. picta (cult.)
occurs on elongate dead areas on leaves that were, in the main,
still living. Coll. August 23 at Madison. The scattered to sub¬
seriate perithecia are on lesions on both green and chlorotic areas
of this variegated ornamental and are in good maturity. It seems
likely that the fungus is weakly parasitic. A rather large and
confusing assemblage of species of Leptosphaeria have been de¬
scribed on Gramineae, mostly on culms, and any further formal
descriptions do not seem justified at present. Notes on this col¬
lection are as follows: Perithecia black, globose, 100-115/a diam. ;
asci broadly clavate, 60-65 x 13-14/a ; ascospores olivaceous,
3-septate, the penultimate cell slightly enlarged, falcate, 21-23
x 5-6/x.
Cytospora evonymi Cooke was associated with a destructive
twig blight of Evonymus fortunei (E. radicans) at Madison, but
it is not certain that it was the primary agent.
Phyllosticta, which seems not to correspond with any of the
considerable number of species reported on that host, was col¬
lected on Rhus radicans at Madison, August 14. The black, sub-
globose pycnidia, approx. 150-175/a diam., which are somewhat
imperfect below, are scattered and epiphyllous on large, dead,
yellow-brown, wedge-shaped lesions involving the tips of the
leaves. The conidia are hyaline, cylindric, 5-7 x 2-2.5/a.
Phyllosticta sp. on Rhamnus cathartica, collected at Madi¬
son, August 3, while technically seemingly referable to this
genus, is scarcely the ordinarily encountered representative. The
dark-olivaceous pycnidia are strongly erumpent, almost superfi¬
cial, on dead areas near the leaf tips. They are subglobose and
the walls are lined with a conspicuous layer of closely ranked
conidiophores, about 20 x 2/a. In some pycnidia there is a basal,
olivaceous, pseudoparenchymatous cushion over which the phores
are ranged. The pycnidia measured run from 200-330/a in the
largest diam. The fusoid conidia are hyaline, 4-6 x 2-2.5/a.
Phyllosticta sp. occurred on small cinereous spots on the
leaves of Stachys palustris at Madison, September 2. The pyc-
69
70 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
nidia are black, pseudoparenchymatous, small, about 65/* diam.,
globose, with a dark ostiolar ring.The conidia are hyaline, bacilli-
form, 3-4 x 1/*. Possibly the precursor of a perfect stage.
Phyllosticta (or Phoma ? ) on Castilleja sessiliflora at
Gibraltar Bluff, Columbia Co., July 30. The capsules are thickly
studded with the pycnidia which are black, flattened, pseudo¬
parenchymatous, variable in size, the largest up to 175/* diam.
The conidia are short-cylindric, hyaline, 5-6 x 2-2.5/*. Possibly
parasitic.
Phyllosticta on Plantago rugelii, collected in small quantity
at Madison, July 27, differs from other species described on
Plantago, as indicated in the key given by Tehon and Daniels
(Mycologia 19: 118. 1927). The spots are orbicular, about 1.5
cm. diam., with wide brown margins and cinereous centers. The
pycnidia are black, subglobose, 150-175/* diam., while the conidia
are hyaline and rod-shaped, 4-5 x 1.5/*.
Phoma sp. was conspicuously and consistently present on dead
leaders of the previous season’s growth on plants of Spiraea alba
at Madison. Profuse development of healthy lateral branches had
occurred below the dead terminal portion. It seems likely, but
is not certain that the fungus is secondary. The pycnidia are in
the epidermal tissue, gregarious, black, subglobose, about 75-
100/* diam., with accompanying weakly radiating strands of
dark, thick-walled, mostly isodiametric cells, producing a vaguely
dendritic effect. The conidia are hyaline, mostly ovoid, rather
variable, 4-6.5 x 3-3.5/*.
Coniothyrium sp., possibly parasitic, occurred on narrow,
dead marginal strips of otherwise still green leaves of Carex
aquatilis at Madison, July 17. The black, shining, seriate pycnidia
are 75-100/* diam. The elliptic or fusoid conidia are a clear
purplish-brown, 8-11 x 4-4.5/*.
Ascochyta sp. on Napaea dioica, collected near New Glarus,
Green Co., August 9, bears the pycnidia, mostly epiphyllous, on
large, mottled, brown and white, wedge-shaped areas. This was
compared with Ascochyta althaeina Sacc. & Bizz., but the latter
is confined to rounded, small, sharply defined spots and has
smaller conidia than the specimen on Napaea, where they run
from 8-15 x 3. 5-4. 5/*, without a noticeable constriction at the
septum. The pale brown pycnidia are subglobose, thin-walled,
about 125/* diam.
Ascochyta sp., which seems quite distinct and well-marked,
was collected on leaves of Verbena urticae folia at Madison, July
2. The spores are within the size range of those of an Ascochyta-
1953] Greene — Notes on Wisconsin Parasitic Fungi. XVIII 71
Stagonospora complex encountered in previous years in the same
vicinity on Verbena stricta so, in the expectation that further
collections may clarify relationships, formal description is de¬
ferred. The lesions are large, brown or purplish-brown, wedge-
shaped areas, which originate at the leaf tips and become pro¬
gressively larger with the spread of the infection, until ulti¬
mately the entire leaf dies back. The lower stem leaves are usu¬
ally those affected. The pycnidia, which are scattered over the
lesions, are of the usual Ascochyta type, rather large, pale brown
and thin-walled. The hyaline, uniseptate conidia are about 7-13
x 3-4 /x, and may or may not guttulate, depending on the pyc-
nidium in which they are borne. Many of the more heavily in¬
fected leaves bore numerous, rather prominent, almost superfi¬
cial, immature, black perithecia, interspersed among the Asco¬
chyta pycnidia. Some of these leaves were placed in a wire cage
which was set out in the field in the vicinity of the original col¬
lection. About a month later the leaves were examined again and
it was found, rather surprisingly, that some of the perithecia had
matured, producing large hyaline, uniseptate ascospores. They
seem closest to Melanopsamma and it seems highly probable that
this is the perfect stage of the Ascochyta.
Ascochyta sp. on Kuhnia eupatorioides, collected August 27,
in LaFollette Memorial Park on the east shore of Lake Kegonsa
in Dane Co., is borne on small, scattered, angled, cinereous spots.
The black pycnidia are epiphyllous, subglobose, about 115-125 /a
diam. The hyaline conidia are cylindric, 7-11 x 2-3 /a. Coll, only
in small quantity.
Stagonospora sp. on Cyperus fiiliculmis var. macilentus. Dane
Co., Madison, July 29. The host plants were brown and dead at
the time of collection, but are studded from top to bottom with
the black, somewhat elongate pycnidia and it seems very likely
that this fungus was the cause of the necrosis. The pycnidia are
approx. 125-175/a in long diam. The spores, which are not very
numerous, are hyaline, granular, 17-26 x 5.5-6.5/a, 1-2-septate.
Stagonospora cyperi Ell. & Tracy, the only other species of which
I find a report on Cyperus, has spores which are much smaller
and out of the range of the Wisconsin specimen.
Stagonospora on Carex lanuginosa, collected at Madison,
July 13, is so far undetermined as to species. The medium-sized
pycnidia are on straw-colored spots on the narrow leaves. The
conidia are hyaline, 2-septate, subcylindric, straight or slightly
curved, cell contents granular, many cells with one or two oil
droplets, 35-55 x 10-13/a. The Stagonosporae seem to have an
affinity for Carex and a considerable array of species have been
72 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
listed thereon. A critical study would probably reduce the num¬
bers of species significantly.
Stagonospora sp. on J uncus tenuis, Madison, June 25, has
spores whose dimensions correspond to those of Stagonospora
trimera (Cooke) Sacc., but the original description is too meager
to allow of satisfactory determination. North American Fungi
No. 341, issued as this species, was examined, but spores were
not found. The Madison material is on plants of the current sea¬
son, but as they had been completely killed back when observed,
it is a question whether or not the fungus was the primary agent.
Septoria lepachydis Ell. & Ev. was extremely destructive to
leaves of Brauneria purpurea at Madison. Large areas or entire
leaves had become brown or blackish, and bore many hundreds,
if not thousands, of the tiny pycnidia. Ordinarily this vigorous
host is free of extensive fungus infection of any sort, although a
small earlier specimen of S. lepachydis on it was reported in my
Notes III.
Septoria on Solidago rigida, collected August 1, 1951, near
Marshall, Dane Co., has not been determined. The rather large
black pycnidia are amphigenous on large, indefinite, brown, dead
areas. The leaves bear numerous small purplish spots but, so far
as examined, they are sterile. The slightly flexuous spores are
filiform-acicular, mostly about 50-60 x 1.5/*. Perhaps close to
S, fumosa Peck, but dissimilar from other collections assigned
to that species.
Leptothyrium sp. occurred in profusion on the flower stalks
and capsules of Wulfenia (Besseya) hullii, near Brodhead, Green
Co., August 9. A metamorphosis of at least the surface layers of
the host had taken place and stalks and capsules were a conspic¬
uous, shining black. The black, flattened fruiting bodies, mostly
on, but not confined to the capsules, are about 150-175 /* diam.,
or rarely more. They are firmly seated within the carbonized
host tissues, yet withal erumpent. The conidiophores are bottle¬
shaped and in a rather compact basal layer. Most of the hyaline
conidia are fusoid and straight, occasionally moderately curved,
about 10-16 x 2-3/*. A few of the conidia are almost allantoid.
There had evidently been no seed set, so the fungus is perhaps
parasitic. However, Wulfenia hullii is one of our earliest bloom¬
ing spring plants, so it may be that the flowering stems were
languishing or dead before being attacked.
Colletotrichum sp. occurs in questionable relationship to
the host on the terminal portions of living leaves of Carex ceph-
alophora in two collections from the vicinity of Madison in July
and August. This is a large, coarsely setose fungus, with falcate
1953] Greene— Notes on Wisconsin Parasitic Fungi. XVIII 73
conidia well over 20/a in length. The fungus has fruited in great¬
est profusion on dead or dying tissue which is closely adjacent
to the still green portion of the leaf. Possibly weakly parasitic.
Cladosporxxjm sp., parasitic on Achillea millefolium , Madison,
July 31, is extremely interesting in the host-parasitic relation¬
ship in that it is confined, or nearly so, to the trichomes which
have been invaded to the degree that at many points they are
literally packed with light brown, short-septate mycelium. The
trichomes of Achillea have a short, inflated, cellular basal portion
and many of those which are infected have broken off at this
point, at which there is usually produced a tuft of spreading
conidiophores. On the distal portions of the trichomes the phores
are usually not in definite tufts, but in series radiating from the
substratum. They are highly variable in length, and hence in
septation, but all are clear, dark brown, tortuous, occasionally
branched, and several times closely geniculate at the somewhat
paler tips. The conidia are catenulate, pale olivaceous-gray, usu¬
ally with a distinct spore scar at each end, fusoid, subfusoid, or
subcylindric, 7-14 x 3-5/a, continuous or 1-septate. Achillea mille¬
folium , with its very hairy surface, serves as a trap for air-borne
spores, and the spore situation is not entirely clear. A good many
Alternaria spores are found in mounts from this material, but it
is not thought that they were formed here. As shown by allergy
counts, they are present in the air in great numbers in mid- and
late summer. At various points on the mycelium in some mounts
there have been noted muriform, almost sessile, Stemphylium-
like structures, and their relation is also obscure.
Liatris ligulistylis leaves, collected at Madison, August 11,
bear on large (1-1.5 cm.) rounded, dull brown lesions, a fungus
which appears probably parasitic, but which I have been unable
to place satisfactorily even as to genus. The conidia are 17-23 x
3-3.5/a, faintly olivaceous, subcylindric to subfusoid, 1-septate
and occasionally somewhat constricted at the septum. There is a
prominent truncate spore scar. The conidiophores are in small
tufts of not more than 6 or 7, from a small, dark, substomatal
tubercle. They are clear brown, continuous, 12-22 x 4-4.5/a, many
of them with a strongly curved tip which is once or twice genicu¬
late. Suggestive of a depauperate Cercospora . The spores are not
of the type usually associated with Cladosporium, Scoleco tri¬
chum, or Fusicladium .
Carex crinita var. gynandra, growing in deep shade around
the border of a woodland pool in the Town of Primrose, Dane
Co., July 12, 1951, is heavily infected by an interesting, but so
far undetermined fungus in the Heterosporium-Helmintho-
74 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
sporium category. The dead, brown, distal portions of the leaves
have scattered over them on their upper sides an organism
which, under hand lens inspection, appeared to be a Colletotri-
chum. However, the supposed setae are small tufts (3-6 in a
tuft) of erect-spreading, brown, 5-8-septate conidiophores, 130-
200 x 6-7/a, slightly paler at the tip which may have a few closely
spaced geniculations. These phores arise from a small, dark,
compact, rounded, pseudoparenchymatous, stromatoid base,
about 50-65/a diam. The few conidia which were observed are
about 30-35 x 6-7/a, 3 -sept ate, pale yellowish-gray and appear¬
ing smooth, or almost so. This fungus might perhaps be referred
to the genus Cercosporidium Earle, which Chupp considers to be
doubtfully distinct from Cercospora.
Helminthosporium spp. (?) have been found, both at Madi¬
son, on Scirpus acutus and on Juncus tenuis in what may be a
parasitic relationship. While the dimensions are entirely different,
the spores are of a similar type, and are not of the sort encoun¬
tered in graminicolous species of Helminthosporium. In both
cases there is a strongly tapered, attenuate apex, which is hya¬
line, or subhyaline, and non-septate. The enlarged basal portion
is septate and shows the cell lumen condition usually found in
old, mature Helminthosporium spores. On Scirpus acutus the
spores run from about 100-130 x 12-15/a, and are 6-9-septate,
with the appendage not accounting for more than a quarter or a
third of the overall length. On Juncus tenuis, however, in the
case of a spore 165 x 11/a and 8-septate, the non-septate, hyaline
apical portion is 100/a or three-fifths of the entire length.
Cercospora sp. (?) on stems of Juncus balticus var. littoralis
was collected at Madison, July 2. The short conidiophores are in
spreading tufts of approx. 3-6, protruding from stomatal open¬
ings, and arising from a small substomatal tubercle. They are
continuous, brown below, with pallid tips, closely geniculate at
the tip with very prominent spore scars, 15-22 x 4-4.5/a. The
spores are clavate, truncate below with large scar, straight or
almost so, with only a slight taper to the obtuse tip, rather thick-
walled and pale olivaceous, mostly indistinctly 2-septate, about
50-60 x 4-4.5/a.
Additional Hosts
The following hosts have not been previously recorded as bear¬
ing the fungi mentioned in Wisconsin.
Microsphaera euphorbiae (Peck) B. & C. on Euphorbia
preslii . Dane Co., Madison, September 20.
1953] Greene— Notes on Wisconsin Parasitic Fungi. XVIII 75
Acanthostigma occidentale (Ell & Ev.) Sacc. Conidial
stage on Cirsium altissimum . Green Co., New Glarus Woods,
September 4 .
Claviceps purpurea (Fr.) Tul Selerotia on Festuca elatior.
Green Co., New Glarus, August 9.
Phyllac h ora puncta (Schw.) Orton on Panicum subvillo-
sum . Vilas Co., Sayner, September 1940. Coll. L, H. Shinners.
Phragmxdxum americanum (Peck) Diet. II, III on Rosa seti-
gera (cult.). Dane Co., Madison, August 14.
PUCCXNXA RUBXGO-VERA (DC.) Wint. I on Anemone cylindrica.
Columbia Co., Gibraltar Bluff near Okee, June 8. II, III on
Agropyron smithii. Columbia Co., Portage, September 15.
PUCCXNXA silphii Schw. on Silphium terebinthinaceum X
laciniatum. Dane Co., Morrisonville, August 22. This was with
the parent species which were likewise infected. I assume that
this hybrid is var. pinnatifidum of S. terebinthinaceum , as of
Gray's Manual where it is based on leaf characters. However,
not only leaves, but flowers are intermediate.
Pellicularia fxlamentosa (Pat.) Rogers on Solanum dul¬
camara. Dane Co., Madison, July 21. Strictly hypophyllous, and
appearing strongly parasitic.
Phyllosticta grossulariae Sacc. on Ribes alpinum (cult.).
Dane Co,, Madison, August 24.
Phyllosticta cacaliae H. C. Greene on Solidago rigida.
Dane Co., Morrisonville, August 22. Reported hitherto in Wis¬
consin on Cacalia tuberosa , Senecio aureus , Silphium perfoli-
atum , and Silphium terebinthinaceum. Admittedly, the specific
name was an unfortunate choice, in view of the host range. On
S. rigida the spots are orbicular, about .5-. 7 cm. diam., cinereous
with a narrow brown or yellow-brown border.
Asteromella Andrew six Petr, was highly destructive to the
following cultivated species of Gentiana at Madison : G. setigera,
G. clausa , G. kisselringii, G. purdomi , and G. lagodechiana.
Grown and coll, by J. T. Curtis.
Ascochyta syrxngae Bres, on Syringa josikaea (cult.). Dane
Co., Madison, August 18.
Darluca filum (Biv.) Cast, on Puccinia gentianae III on
Gentiana puberula. Columbia Co., near Portage, Septemebr 17.
Rarely found on telia.
Septoria andropogonis J. J. Davis on Andropogon scoparius.
Sauk Co., Cactus Bluff, Town of Prairie du Sac, July 11. The
spores are slightly wider, and the pycnidia slightly larger, than
in typical material on A. furcatus, but the specimen falls well
within Sprague's expanded conception of S. andropogonis, as set
76 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
forth in his “Diseases of Cereals and Grasses in North America”,
where he reports a collection on A. scoparius from Nebraska.
Also on Sorghastrum nutans, Columbia Co., near Lodi, July 23.
This specimen shows spores as described for the type on Andro-
pogon furcatus, as well as some larger spores of the sort found
in S. andropogonis var. sorghastri Greene & Sprague (Farlowia
1 : 576. 1944) showing intergrading, as might be expected.
Septoria solidaginicola Peck on Solidago rigida. Dane Co.,
Morrisonville, August 22. The spots are irregularly angled or
rounded, mostly rather large and not very clean-cut. The pyc-
nidia are gregarious on the cinereous central portion.
Hainesia lythri (Desm.) Hohn. (Pezizella) on Rosa blanda.
Dane Co., Madison, August 19. On Rhus copallina. Dane Co.,
Madison, August 21. On Potentilla arguta. Dane Co., Belleville,
September 13.
Ovularia sphaeroidea Sacc. on Vicia villosa. Dane Co., Madi¬
son, September 20. Coll. L. Weathers.
Heterosporium gracile (Wallr.) Sacc. on Belamcanda chin-
ensis. Iowa Co., along County Trunk C, 3 miles southeast of Lone
Rock, August 12. The host plants had persisted and were spread¬
ing in a long-abandoned farm garden.
Cercospora caricis Oud. ( C . caricina Ell. & Dearn.) on Car ex
pubescens. Sauk Co., Devils Lake, September 10.
Cercospora granuliformis Ell. & Holw. on Viola pedata.
Richland Co., near Lone Rock, August 12. Det. Chas. Chupp.
Additional Species
The fungi mentioned have not been previously reported as
occurring in Wisconsin.
Mycosphaerella altera (Pass.) House on Equisetum
arvense. Dane Co., Madison, July 15. On the dead tips of living
branches.
Cintractia psilocaryae (Tracy & Earle) Clint, on Psilocarya
scirpoides. Marquette Co., Westfield, September 18, 1934. Coll.
N. C. Fassett. On a phanerogamic specimen only recently
mounted and filed in the Wisconsin Herbarium. As reported in
the “North American Flora”, Massachusetts and Rhode Island
are the only other localities for the smut on this host.
Herpobasidium deformans Gould is the name applied to the
fungus reported in Wisconsin lists as Glomerularia lonicerae
Peck. Martin, in his “Revision of the North Central Tremellales”
(Univ. Iowa Studies in Nat. Hist. 19(3) : 1952) states that the
so-called conidia are really resting spores produced after the
basidia.
1953] Greene — Notes on Wisconsin Parasitic Fungi. XVIII 77
Phomopsis pimpinellae (Ell.) comb. nov.
Septoria pimpinellae Ell. (Jour. Mycol. 7: 277. 1894.)
Abundant material on leaves of Taenidia integerrima, at Mad¬
ison, August 2, 1952, shows both scolecospores and Phoma- type
spores borne regularly in the same pycnidium. The latter are
subfusoid to fusoid, ca. 11-14 x 2.5-3. 5 /*, while the scolecospores
are mostly 20-25 x 1.5 /*, strongly curved, tapered to a point at
one end and subobtuse at the other. A small specimen collected
at Madison in 1949 (Amer. Midi. Nat. 44: 640. 1950) did not
show the fusoid spores, but as noted at the time the fungus
seemed suggestive of Phomopsis.
Ascochyta sonchi (P. Henn.) Syd. on Sonchus asper.
Columbia Co., two miles south of Rio, July 26. This was orig¬
inally described as Diplodina sonchi P. Henn. Sydow’s Myco-
theca germanica No. 2387, issued as A. sonchi on leaves of
Sonchus oleraceus proves, upon examination to be quite worth¬
less for purposes of microscopic comparison, as is the case with
so many numbers of this over-issued series. However, the Wis¬
consin material approximates the description fairly closely,
although the conidia, instead of being 8-13 x 3-3. 5/* as described,
run 10-15 x 3.5-4 /*. The conspicuous spots are orbicular with
pale brown centers, somewhat sunken, 2-7 mm. diam., and with
a moderately wide, elevated purplish margin. Occasional lesions
occur on the stems.
Stagonospora glycericola R. Sprague on Glyceria grandis.
Dane Co., Madison, July 5. Sprague states that, on the basis of
the material he studied, he regards this species as a saprophyte.
The Wisconsin collection, however, appeared to be parasitic, inso¬
far as could be judged from the newer lesions. Where infection
had been heaviest the leaves were killed back.
Urohendersonia stipae sp. nov.
Maculis pallidis, elongatis, fuscis varie; pycnidiis olivaceis,
subglobosis, muris tenuibus, ostioiatis, gregariis vel sparsis;
conidiis olivaceis, cylindraceis vel fusoideis late, distincte 3-sep-
tatis, 25-30 x 8.5-10/*, pedicellatis, pedicellis affixis constanter,
hyalinis, curvis in spiris laxis, hliformibus, 19-28 x 1-1.5/*.
Spots pallid, elongate, with fuscous mottling; pycnidia oliva¬
ceous, subglobose, thin-walled, ostiolate, gregarious or scattered ;
conidia olivaceous, cylindric or broadly fusoid, distinctly 3-sep-
tate, 25-30 x 8.5-10/*, pedicellate, pedicels remaining attached to
spores, hyaline, curved in a lax spiral, filiform, 19-28 x 1-1.5/*.
On living leaves of Stipa spartea. Madison, Dane County, Wis¬
consin, U. S. A., July 29, 1952.
78 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
The areas on which the pycnidia occur are dead, but were sur¬
rounded by living tissue, and the fungus is considered to have
functioned as a parasite. A highly interesting and unusual form,
differing from Hendersonia in the persistent pedicels which, in
the spores lying free in a mount, appear as caudate appendages.
Septoria QUINQUEseptata R. Sprague on Koeleria cristata.
Sauk Co., Cactus Bluff, Town of Prairie du Sac, July 7, 1945. In
this specimen the pycnidia, which are about 175/*, diam., are
clustered on small ashen spots. The spores are 5-7-septate and
closely resemble Sprague’s figure of them. It seems possible that,
as Sprague suggests in his “Diseases of Cereals and Grasses in
North America”, p. 253, this is but a variant of Septoria andro-
pogonis, J. J. Davis.
Colletotrichum madisonensis sp. nov.
Maculis cinereis vel pallido-brunneis, elongatis varie ; acervulis
sparsis irregulariter, epiphyllis, subcuticularibus, planis, fuscis,
amplitudinibus formisque variis, prope circulis vel elongatis,
100-450/*, in mensuris longis; setis in marginibus plerumque,
sparsis vel gregariis, plerumque brevibus, pote robustis, rectis
vel curvis, vel sinuosis nonnihil, subacuminatis, continuis vel
1-septatis raro, fuscis, 25-60 x 4-4.5/*,; conidiis hyalinis, sub-
fusoideis vel subfalcatis, 17-23 x 3.5-4/*; conidiophoris brevibus,
ampulliformibus, in ordinibus planis compactis.
Spots cinereous to pale brown, variously elongate; acervuli
irregularly scattered, epiphyllous, subcuticular in origin, appla-
nate, dark brown, variable in size and shape, from almost round
to elongate, 100-450/* in long dimension; setae mostly marginal,
scattered or in loose clusters, mostly short, rather stout, straight
or curved, or somewhat sinuous, subacuminate, continuous, or
rarely 1-septate, dark brown, 25-60 x 4-4.5/*; conidia hyaline,
subfusoid or subfalcate, 17-23 x 3.5-4/*; conidiophores short,
flask-shaped, in a compact, flat layer.
On living leaves of Carex lacustris. Madison, Dane County,
Wisconsin, U. S. A., June 25, 1952.
The pale spots in which the acervuli occur are themselves usu¬
ally surrounded by brown tissue, the whole often forming a cen¬
tral stripe toward the distal end of the long leaf. The extreme
tip of an infected leaf is usually brown and dead. The cuticle
above an acervulus is frequently ruptured, but often remains
attached, forming a little flap which follows the outline of the
acervulus. Also collected on Carex stricta at Madison, August 8,
1952.
1953] Greene-— N otes on Wisconsin Parasitic Fungi. XVIII 79
Cylindrosporium interstitialis sp. nov.
Maculis nullis ; acervulis elongatis varie, 65-80/* latis, in inter-
stitiis mesophyllis foliis, hypophyllis, saepe in seriebus ; conidio-
phoris inconspicuis, fere obsoletis ; conidiis robustis, rectis vel
flexuosis vel curvis, hyalinis, 20-36 x 3-4/*, 2-3-septatis.
Spots none ; acervuli variously, elongate, 65-80 /* wide, in meso-
phyll between the leaf ribs, hypophyllous, often in series; coni-
diophores inconspicuous, almost obsolete ; conidia stout, straight,
flexuous, or curved, hyaline, 20-36 x 3-4/*, 2-3-septate.
On living leaves of Spartina pectinata. Madison, Dane County,
Wisconsin, U. S. A., July 27, 1952.
Sprague in his “Diseases of Cereals and Grasses in North
America” lists only two other species of Cylindrosporium on
native Gramineae, both based on Wisconsin material. These are
C. calamagrostidis Ell. & Ev. and C. glyceriae Ell. & Ev., neither
of which resembles C. interstitialis. The infected leaves show an
obscure yellowing and speckling, but there are no definite spots.
In Spartina the only accessible mesophyll tissue abuts on the
spaces between the heavily sclerified ribs, and this accounts for
the restricted placement of the acervuli.
Cercoseptoria scirpi sp. nov.
Maculis areis immarginatis pallidis, in caulibus supra; coni-
diophoris nullis vel rudibus; tuberibus compactis, olivaceis, sub-
globosis, infra stomatibus, 20-25/* diam. ; conidiis in fasciis ex
tuberibus, hyalinis, flexuosis, apicibus obtusis vel subobtusis,
40-55 x 3.5-4/*, obscure 3-septatis.
Spots immarginate pallid areas on the upper stems; conidio-
phores none or rudimentary ; tubercles compact, olivaceous, sub-
globose, substomatal, 20-25/* diam. ; conidia borne in small tufts
on the tubercles, hyaline, flexuous, ends obtuse or subobtuse,
40-55 x 3.5-4/*, obscurely 3-septate.
On living stems of Scirpus acutus. Madison, Dane County,
Wisconsin, U. S. A., August 8, 1952.
Most of the conidia are somewhat more obtuse at one end than
at the other. This is another of those borderline forms that are
neither Cylindrosporium nor yet Cercosporella. Although the
conidia are in small tufts, this is not apparent from a hand lens
examination, which shows only a sordid-whitish, appressed-
farinose surface, without revealing the presence of the fungus.
Infection was restricted to the upper stem.
80 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
Cercoseptoria iridis (Ell. & Halst.) comb. nov.
Cylindrosporium iridis Ell. & Halst. (Jour. Mycol. 6 : 34. 1890).
Although I have not seen the specimen on which Ellis and
Halsted based their description, I am quite confident that mate¬
rial collected on Iris virginica var. shrevei in southern Wisconsin
in 1952 is but a somewhat better development of the same thing.
I consider this fungus to belong properly in the Moniliaceae,
although indeed it verges even on the tuberculariaceous. In the
Wisconsin specimens the spores are up to 35 x 2/a, although most
are shorter and more slender, while the conidiophores are about
as the authors described them, approx. 8 x 2/a. Despite the non¬
descript phores I am transferring this to Cercoseptoria , as each
tuft is borne on a small tubercle.
Cercospora sxmulans Ell. & Kell, on Amphicarpa hracteata.
Green Co., New Glarus Woods, July 5, 1951. Chupp has exam¬
ined this specimen and states that it is atypical in the almost
complete lack of color in the conidiophores, but otherwise is
characteristic. He informs me that, depending on conditions of
development, certain Cercosporae exhibit considerable varia¬
bility in depth of coloration of the conidiophores.
Cercospora canescens Ell. & Mart, on Phaseolus vulgaris.
Dane Co., Madison, August 25.
Alternaria araliae sp. nov.
Maculis obscuro-brunneis, zonatis infirme, conspicuis, orbicu-
laribus, saepe magnis, .5-3 cm. diam. ; conidiophoris unis vel in
fasciis parvis non plus quarn 3, intrastomatibus, epiphyllis,
robustis, prope rectis vel curvis leviter, non-geniculatis, apicibus
truncatis, cicatricibus prominentibus, Claris, pallido-brunneis,
40-65 x 6-9/a, 2-4-septatis, cellis basibus fere amplis distincte ;
conidiis acrogenis, longo-attentuatis, claro-olivaceis infra, ap^ci-
bus fere hyalinis, basibus obtusis, cicatricibus prominentibus,
non-muriformis vel restricte tantum, 70-180/a longis x 10-17/a
infra, 125-170 x 15-17/a plerumque, 3-10- (6-10- plerumque)
septatis.
Spots dull brown, faintly zonate, conspicuous, orbicular, often
large, .5-3 cm. diam. ; conidiophores arising singly or in small
tufts of not more than 3, intrastomatal, epiphyllous, stout, almost
straight or slightly curved, non-geniculate, tip truncate, with
prominent spore scar, clear pale brown, 40-65 x 6-9/a, 2-4-sep-
tate, the basal cell usually noticeably enlarged; conidia acro-
genous, long-tapering, clear olivaceous at base to almost hyaline
at the narrow tip, base obtuse with prominent scar, non-muri-
form or only sparingly so, 70-180/a long x 10-17/a at the base,
1953] Greene — Notes on Wisconsin Parasitic Fungi. XVIII 81
mostly 125-170 x 15-17, 3-10- (mostly 6-1 0-) horizontal septa-
tions.
On living leaves of Aralia racemosa. Madison, Dane County,
Wisconsin, U. S. A., September 19, 1952.
This is plainly not Alternaria panax ( panacis) Whetzel.
Authentic material of A. panax from the Herbarium of the De¬
partment of Plant Pathology at Cornell University differs mark¬
edly from the fungus on Aralia in characteristics of both conidia
and conidiophores. A typical conidium of A. araliae shows the
following measurements : 128/x overall length, 15/*, wide at base,
4jx at tip, the septate, olivaceous basal portion 63/x long, the
strongly tapered, subhyaline, non-septate apical portion 65/*, long.
Alternaria fasciculata (C. & E.) Jones and Grout on Cal-
listephus chinensis (cult.). Kenosha Co., Kenosha, September 20.
Coll. A. 0. Paulus, Referred here with some doubt. A number of
specimens in the Wisconsin Herbarium, labeled as A. fasciculata,
were examined and found to be quite variable, especially as re¬
gards conidiophores. The spores of the current collection show
good correspondence with the description, and the fungus
appears to have been definitely parasitic.
'
PARASITES OF NORTHWEST WISCONSIN FISHES
IV. SUMMARY AND LIMNOLOGICAL RELATIONSHIPS*
Jacob H. Fischthal
The 1944-1946 studies on the parasites of northwest Wiscon¬
sin fishes, reported by Fischthal (1947, 1950b, 1952) for the
Fish Management Division of the Wisconsin Conservation De¬
partment in its desire for more knowledge on the distribution,
incidence, and intensity of parasitism in fishes from the many
lakes and streams of the state, are, in the present paper, sum¬
marized and limnological factors relating to parasitism consid¬
ered. In an abstract of a paper read at the 24th annual meeting
of the American Society of Parasitologists, Fischthal (1949c)
presented a preliminary discussion of these topics.
Summary
Over the 3-year period a total of 4,532 fishes, representing 61
different species and subspecies distributed in 17 families and
collected from 124 different lakes and streams, were examined
for parasites and 4,186 or 92.4 per cent were infected with at
least one species (Table 1). Of these 4,532 fishes examined, 34.4
per cent were from streams. The fishes from streams were 85.3
per cent parasitized, while the remainder from lakes and flow-
ages were 96.1 per cent infected. Bangham (1948), also working
in Wisconsin, found 91 per cent of 13,855 fishes harboring para¬
sites. These fishes were collected during the summers of 1943
through 1948 and the college year of 1947 to 1948.
The 92.4 per cent total infection for northwest Wisconsin is,
for the most part, relatively high in comparison with surveys
conducted elsewhere in the United States and Canada. In a study
of the Upper Snake River drainage and Yellowstone Lake,
Wyoming, Bangham (1951) indicated that 92.3 per cent of 2,535
fishes contained at least one species of parasite. Freshwater
fishes from southern Florida studied by Bangham (1940)
showed 88 per cent of 1,380 fishes parasitized. Bangham (1941)
found 84.3 per cent of 560 fishes from Algonquin Park (Ontario)
lakes infected. In a further study of the Algonquin Park region
Bangham and Venard (1946) showed 75.8 per cent of 676 fishes
to harbor at least one species of parasite. Hunter (1941) found
* Contribution No. 3 from the Department of Biological Sciences, Harpur
College, State University of New York, Endicott, New York.
83
84 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
parasites in 72.5 per cent of 598 Connecticut fishes. In a survey
of Lake Erie, Bangham and Hunter (1939) found 58.3 per cent
of 2,158 fishes infected with parasites. Essex and Hunter (1926)
obtained parasites from 39 per cent of 652 fishes from lakes and
streams of the central states. A comparison of the per cent in¬
fection of families of northwest Wisconsin fishes with fishes of
other surveys is shown in Table 2. Essex and Hunter (1926), in
the central states, and Holl (1932), in North Carolina, found
that stream fishes were less parasitized than lake fishes.
More than 121 species of parasites were found during the
course of the surveys. Of these more than 106 were helminths ;
these include at least 51 species of trematodes, 26 cestodes, 21
nematodes, and 9 acanthocephalans. In addition there were en¬
countered 5 species of copepods, 1 virus, and an undetermined
number of species of protozoans, glochidia, and leeches. A com¬
posite check list of the forms taken is presented in Table 3.
Pearse (1924) in a study of fish parasites in 5 Wisconsin lakes
found 90 species of parasites, 72 of which were helminths. Van
Cleave and Mueller (1934) found 68 species of worms in Oneida
Lake, New York, fishes. In Lake Erie fishes Bangham and
Hunter (1939) listed 114 species of parasites, 97 of which were
helminths. Bangham (1940) found 75 species of parasites (60
helminths) in southern Florida freshwater fishes. Hunter (1941)
listed 61 species of parasites from Connecticut fishes ; 47 species
were worms. Bangham and Venard (1942) in Reelfoot Lake,
Tennessee, fishes found 71 species of helminths out of a total of
83 parasite species. In northern Wisconsin Bangham (1946)
found 82 species of parasites, 67 of which were worms. Bangham
and Venard (1946) listed 71 of the 75 species of fish parasites
from Algonquin Park, Ontario, lakes as helminths. Bangham
(1951), in Wyoming fishes, found 49 species of parasites, 39
being helminths.
The larval parasites occurred most frequently and in more
hosts than did any other of the developmental stages. Next in
line were the immature forms, most of which would not reach
sexual maturity in the hosts in which they were encountered.
These were present because the hosts happened to have taken
food containing the larval stage in the life cycle. Host-specificity
played an important role in regard to the distribution of the
various species of adult parasites.
Among the trematodes the metacercarial stage of some
occurred as follows: in 7 of the 8 hosts listed as harboring
Bucephalus elegans; Clinostomum marginatum in all 27 ; in 4 of
the 8 hosts with Cryptogonimus chyli; Diplostomulum scheuringi
1953] Fischthal — Parasites of Wisconsin Fishes IV 85
in all 20 ; Diplostomulum spp. in all 35 ; Neascus spp. in all 43 ;
Posthodiplostomum minimum in all 25; and Tetracotyle spp. in
all 19. Although immature stages of trematodes were taken from
a variety of hosts, it is known that in almost all cases these would
reach sexual maturity wherever encountered. Only a very few
species of adult trematodes showed a great lack of host-speci¬
ficity. These were Allocreadium lohatum with 6 hosts, Alloglos-
sidium corti with 6 (all ameiurids), Azygia augusticauda with
15, Crepidostomum cooperi with 14, and C. cornutum with 7.
Most all the other adult trematodes had 1, 2 or 3 hosts. An unde¬
termined number of species of monogenetic trematodes in the
superfamily Gyrodactyloidea were recovered from the gills of
30 hosts.
Among the cestodes Proteocephalus spp., represented by a
variety of unidentified larval and immature worms, was the most
widely distributed with 26 hosts listed. Proteocephalus pearsei
was found in 17 hosts, but was sexually mature only in the perch
(Perea flavescens) ; it probably would not reach maturity in the
other 16 hosts. Proteocephalus ambloplitis, perhaps the most
detrimental of fish cestodes because of its relation to sterility in
the black basses, was taken in the larval stage from 16 hosts ; in
3 of these 16 also occurred the sexually mature adult (Amia
calva, Micropterus d. dolomieu, M. salmoides). Triaenophorus
nodulosus occurred in 9 hosts, reaching sexual maturity only in
members of the Esocidae; they were found encysted in the
majority of hosts. Bothriocephalus cuspidatus was seen in 8
hosts, but as immature forms which apparently only matured in
one, Stizostedion v. vitreum. Proteocephalus stizosthethi occurred
in 5 hosts as immature individuals, but matured in only 1 of
these (Stizostedion v. vitreum). The remainder of adult cestodes
occurred in only 1, 2 or 3 hosts.
Among the nematodes immature Camallanus oxycephalus was
found in 22 hosts ; sexually mature worms occurred in only 9 of
these 22. Adults of Capillaria catenata inhabited 7 hosts, Con-
tracaecum brachyurum 5, and Dichelyne cotylophora 7. A wide
variety of hosts were inhabited by adult Rhabdochona cascadilla,
Spinitectus carolini, and S. gracilis with 14, 15, and 17, respec¬
tively. Encysted larval Spiroxys sp. occurred in 22 different
hosts. Larval and immature Contracaecum spp. (probably C.
brachyurum of fishes and C. spiculigerum of birds) occurred in
40 hosts. All the other adult nematodes were found only in 1, 2
or 3 hosts.
Among the acanthocephalans Leptorhynchoides thecatus had
the most numerous hosts, occurring as encysted or adult forms
86 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
in 37 fishes. Lincicome and Van Cleave (1949), from personal
observations and the published literature, reported L. thecatus
from 79 fish hosts. Fischthal (1950a), from data based on the
1945 and 1946 northwest Wisconsin fish parasite surveys, added
7 new hosts to their list. Pomphorhynchus bulbocolli was encoun¬
tered as encysted and adult worms in 31 hosts ; Neoechinorhyn-
chus cylindratus in 12 hosts.
Among the protozoans a variety of unidentified species of
Myxosporidia were recovered from 29 hosts, while Trichodina
spp. was observed on 21. The copepods were not too numerous,
Ergasilus caeruleus being the most common with 6 hosts. Vari¬
ous species of larval clams, glochidia, were taken from 34 hosts.
Leeches occurred on 10 hosts. One readily recognized virus, the
cause of lymphocystis in Stizostedion v. vitreum, was present.
Due to the appearance in the literature of papers pertaining
to parasites listed in these 1944-1946 parasite surveys, certain
additional information should be given here in order to bring the
data up to date. In the 1944 survey (Fischthal, 1947) Table 5 on
Salmo gairdnerii irideus lists Phyllodistomum sp. This form is
P. lachancei described by Choquette (1947). Choquette (1948)
declared Cystidicoloides harwoodi (Chandler, 1931) a synonym
of Metabronema salvelini (Fujita, 1920), the latter receiving
priority. Therefore, this designation should be applied to C. Inar-
ivoodi listed in the 1944 survey in Tables 4 (Salmo trutta fario),
5 (S. gairdnerii irideus), and 6 (Salvelinus /. fontinalis) , and in
the check list of parasites. For the same survey, in Table 15
(Nocomis biguttatus) and in the check list of parasites, the
designation Cestodaria is incorrect and should be changed to
Caryophyllaeidae. In Table 38 on Micropterus d. dolomieu and
39 on Micropterus (=Huro) salmoides of the 1944 survey the
form Sanguinicola sp. has been described as a new species, S.
huronis, by Fischthal (1949b) ; it is already listed under this
new name in the 1945 survey (Fischthal, 1950b). Fischthal
(1951) described a new genus and species of cestode, Pliovitel-
laria wisconsinensis, based in part on specimens listed as Caryo¬
phyllaeidae under Notemigonus crysoleucas auratus and Hybor-
hynchus notatus in the 1945 survey ; the new designation is used
in the 1946 survey (Fischthal, 1952) for the specimens from
N . crysoleucas auratus.
Because printer's proof on the 1944 survey (Fischthal, 1947)
was not read by the author, certain similar omissions were made
in the published account which should now be inserted. In por¬
tions of Tables 28, 30, 42, and 43 the number of fishes examined
for each water and the number infected were omitted. In adding
1953] Fischthal — Parasites of Wisconsin Fishes IV 87
this data the water will be listed first, followed by two figures;
the first figure is the number examined, the second is the number
infected. For Table 28 (Esox Indus) on p. 185: Namekagon
River 3-3, Rocky Ridge Lake 5-5, Silver Lake 9-9, Spooner Lake
4-4, Staples Lake 17-17, Upper Turtle Lake 20-20, Vermillion
Lake 5-5, Vermillion River 1-1, Whalen Creek 2-2, Windigo
Lake 5-5, and Yellow River (W.) 11-11. For Table 30 (Perea
flavescens) on p. 190 : Ellsworth Lake 5-4, Lost Land Lake 2-2,
Marshmiller Pond 2-2, Meadow Creek 1-1, Namekagon River
15-15, Red Cedar River 1-1, Spooner Lake 3-3, Staples Lake 10-
10, Teal Lake 11-11, Upper Turtle Lake 15-15, Windigo Lake
4-4, and Yellow River (W.) 12-12. For Table 42 (Lepomis m.
macrochirus) on p. 210: Devils Lake 15-15, Lost Land Lake 15-
15, Namekagon River 16-16, Round Lake 12-12, Silver Lake
14- 14, Spooner Lake 10-10, Staples Lake 15-15, Teal Lake 16-
16, Tozer Lake 6-6, and Windigo Lake 13-13. For Table 43
( Ambloplites r. rupestris) on p. 212: Namekagon River 5-5, Red
Cedar River 1-1, Silver Lake 11-11, Spooner Lake 1-1, Staples
Lake 2-2, Teal Lake 18-18, Tozer Lake 1-1, Upper Turtle Lake
15- 15, Vermillion River 2-2, Windigo Lake 13-13, and Yellow
River (W.) 11-11.
RELATIONSHIP OF LIMNOLOGICAL FACTORS IN LAKES
TO PARASITISM IN FISHES
Lakes vary widely in physical, chemical and biological charac¬
teristics, and these factors appear to have some effect upon the
distribution of fishes and their parasites. Cross (1938) came to
the same general conclusion. Pearse (1924) stated that, “Before
all the factors which influence parasitism in fishes are known, if
they ever are, parasitologists and ecologists will have to labor for
several generations.” Van Cleave and Mueller (1934) fully con¬
curred with Pearse. As a result of my experiences in the studies
on northwest Wisconsin fish parasites, I wish at this time to re¬
emphasize the need for several more generations of study.
Ward (1910) stated that the parasitic fauna of any animal is
primarily a function of its habitat. Pearse (1924) noted that the
habitats of fishes are important in their relation to parasitic in¬
fection. Welch (1935) pointed out that “these (physical and
chemical conditions) and other possible conditions, in their vari¬
ous combinations and intensities, make up the fundamental envi¬
ronmental structure upon which the occurrence, distribution, and
success of aquatic organisms depend. Each of these inorganic
conditions functions in one or more ways in exerting influence
88 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
upon organisms, and, in addition, the organisms exert influences
upon each other; . . . Conditions within an environment are, to
a great extent, mutually dependent, and in nature, factors are
always operating in the presence of others.” Bangham (1946)
stated that the chemical, biological and physical characteristics
of the habitat of the host appear to have a rather marked effect
on distributions of the parasites.
A consideration of the principal limnological factors in rela¬
tion to parasitism in lake fishes will be undertaken. It must be
kept in mind that any consideration of the influence of a single
factor on the organism is merely a necessary method of approach.
Physical Factors
Form of basin: It is well known that greater biological pro¬
ductivity is favored in a lake when there is a close superposition
of the photosynthetic zone over the decomposition zone. The
closer and more permanent the association of these zones the
greater the productivity. In contrast, the steeper the slope of the
basin the greater the removal of the decomposition zone to the
hypolimnion with the result that much of the essential decom¬
position materials become inaccessible. High productivity tends
to favor a high incidence and intensity of parasitism in fishes.
Trematodes require a molluscan intermediate host in their life
cycles. Many further require a second intermediate host, utiliz¬
ing such forms as turbellarians, mollusks, aquatic annelids, and
various aquatic insects and crustaceans. The cestodes frequently
make use of copepods for their transfer hosts. Acanthocephalans
are known to require amphipods as intermediate hosts. Most all
those organisms associated with the parasite life cycles prefer
dwelling in the littoral zone of a lake where the greatest extent
of superposition of plants and decomposition materials usually
occur. Thus, in a productive area, parasitism is enhanced by this
close association of fish host, intermediate host, and the larval
stages of the various species of parasites.
Shore line and changes in water level: Welch (1935) stated
that under strictly comparable conditions, the greater the length
of shore line the greater the biological productivity. An increased
irregularity of the shore line tends to produce more protected
bays and coves, usually more shallow water with a resultant in¬
crease of superposition of photosynthetic and decomposition
zones, and a greater diversity of bottom and margin conditions.
All these produce a more desirable habitat for aquatic plants and
animals. The end result is a close superposition of the parasitized
and unparasitized fish populations, invertebrate and vertebrate
1953] Fischthal— Parasites of Wisconsin Fishes IV 89
intermediate hosts, and the various larval stages seeking neces¬
sary hosts. Bangham and Hunter (1939) and Hare (1943) noted
higher fish parasitism in shallow waters.
Changes in water level, if sharp, decrease the littoral zone and,
therefore, the effective superposition of the fish population and
the stages in the life cycles of the various parasites and their
intermediate hosts. The result would be a decrease in biological
productivity with a resultant decrease of parasitism. Snails, in¬
sects, plankton, and fishes, with their parasites, may be trapped
in small pools, and die as a result of oxygen depletion, high tem¬
peratures, or the complete drying of these pools. These animals,
therefore, would no longer be available as hosts. Conditions such
as these are constantly at work in Moose Lake and the Chippewa
Flowage, the water level changes being effected in the spring
(rising) and in the fall and winter (lowering) for hydroelectric
purposes.
Water movements: Movements of water within a lake are pro¬
duced by inlets and outlets, by underground seepage and springs,
and by wind action. These movements would help to distribute
floating or suspended free-living larval stages of fish parasites
as well as plankters harboring larval parasites. In this way para¬
sites may be brought into contact with hosts within other parts
of a lake or the drainage system in order to complete the life
cycle. Water movements may affect fish parasitism adversely by
moving free-living larval parasites or parasitized plankters out
of reach of the next necessary host in the life cycle. This would
decrease the incidence and intensity of parasitism by breaking
up the superposition of aquatic organisms.
Wave action: The action of waves on exposed shores leave
them almost barren of aquatic life and, therefore, sources of
parasitism as only burrowing forms can withstand the molar
action of waves. Pearse (1924) stated that the small fishes living
in shallow waters (exposed) have fewest parasites.
Temperature: The influence of temperature on aquatic organ¬
isms is important. The thermal stratification of lakes affects the
vertical and horizontal distribution of organisms. The colder
waters of the hypolimnion are not conducive to a high produc¬
tivity and, therefore, concentrates much of the fauna of a lake in
the epilimnion and thermocline. This limiting factor may serve
to increase the superposition of hosts and parasites, resulting in
a higher incidence and intensity of parasitism in fishes. Temper¬
ature affects seriously the metabolic rate of poikilothermic inver¬
tebrate and vertebrate hosts. As examples, sporocyst and cer-
carial development in the trematode life cycle is almost entirely
90 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
arrested in snails due to cold, and conversely, is greatly enhanced
by high temperatures. Fishes are known generally to harbor
more parasites in the summer and fall than in the colder seasons.
This may be accounted for in part by the seasonal variation of
infected aquatic organisms, they being abundant in warm sea¬
sons and scarce in cold. Warm waters in all seasons have a higher
productivity than cold waters, these conditions affecting para¬
sitism of fishes. Some parasites are known to be considerably
reduced in numbers or to disappear entirely from their aquatic
hosts during the winter season. Temperature changes also affect
the feeding rate of fishes. In the cold winter months some fishes
feed very little; some such as the carp and gizzard shad, are
known to sink into a stupor without feeding at all during some
such periods. Since parasitism of fishes with adults is of neces¬
sity a result of their feeding on infected intermediate hosts, con¬
ditions lowering the rate of feeding would result in a lowered
incidence and intensity of infection. Conversely, high summer
temperatures increase the rate of food-getting with the resultant
increase in the degree and variety of parasitism. Pratt (1919),
Essex and Hunter (1926), and Bangham and Hunter (1939)
noted a greater variety and higher parasitism in fishes during
warm months.
Light: The influences of light on parasitism in fishes may be
directly concerned with the organisms in the parasite life cycle
or may be related to the photosynthetic process. Light is known
to affect the emergence of cercariae from snails, some preferring
darkness, others light, and still other coinciding with the rising
or setting sun. The movements of some plankters and other
aquatic organisms, including fishes, are affected by light. Diurnal
movements of various invertebrates and fishes are well known.
These must coincide as closely as possible with events in the par¬
asite life cycle in order to effect the necessary steps for continued
development and propagation of the parasitic species concerned.
Light is essential to photosynthesis in aquatic plants, both rooted
and planktonic, resulting in increased productivity of lakes.
Again, parasitism in fishes may be favored. A prolonged shutting
out of light from the lake during the winter, when heavy snow
cover on the ice prevents light penetration, results in the inabil¬
ity of plants to produce its photosynthetic by-product oxygen.
The effect may be a winter-kill which would affect the parasites
by killing any free-swimming larval stages or the hosts harbor¬
ing parasites in various stages of the life cycles. Even if the win¬
ter-kill is not complete, it would immeasurably cut down on fish
parasitism due to the availability of fewer hosts essential in the
life cycles.
1953] Fischthal — Parasites of Wisconsin Fishes IV
91
Chemical Factors
Dissolved oxygen: In lakes there is a stratification of oxygen
closely correlated with the thermal stratification. The hypolim-
nion is usually deficient in oxygen and, therefore, can only be
invaded temporarily by most aquatic organism. These must get
out of the hypolimnion or perish. No doubt many plankters bear¬
ing larval parasites or capable of serving as intermediate hosts
for parasites do perish in this manner. As mentioned in connec¬
tion with thermal stratification the concentration of hosts and
parasites above the hypolimnion produces a greater possibility of
completion of parasite life cycles. As also mentioned above a
light winter-kill in lakes, resulting from a depletion of oxygen
under the ice cover, decreases fish parasitism. During the sum¬
mer there have occurred instances of oxygen exhaustion at night
and oxygen replacement during the day in plant-choked ponds
and lakes, resulting in a partial kill of fishes, plankton, and
benthos. Thus it is seen that parasitism is increased or decreased
by the presence or absence of a sufficient quantity of oxygen as it
affects location and distribution of fishes, plankton, bottom or¬
ganisms, insects and snails in relation to the parasites in their
various developmental stages. An insufficient supply of oxygen
can weaken a fish so that it may be more susceptible to attack by
various parasites. Welch (1935) mentioned that various investi¬
gators have pointed out definite evidences of a close relation
between insufficient dissolved oxygen and parasitic diseases of
fishes. Elliott and Russert (1949) raised the question as to
whether an infection with Clinostomum marginatum may dis¬
turb the oxygen demand of perch so as to make them more sus¬
ceptible to oxygen deficiencies under the winter ice cover.
Carbonates : Soft waters (seepage lakes) possess very little
carbonates and as a result are usually unproductive. Hard waters
(drainage lakes) are usually very productive. When carbonates
are scarce, then the mollusk population so necessary for trema-
tode life cycles is absent or very much reduced because of the
lack of shell building materials. Many crustaceans also seem to
be reduced or lacking when carbonates are scarce, producing a
noticeable lack of intermediate hosts for acanthocephalans. Both
Bangham (1946, 1948) and Fischthal (1949c) have pointed out
these conditions as prevalent in soft water lakes. They also men¬
tioned that as the hardness of the water increased the incidence
and intensity of parasitism increased accordingly.
Hydrogen-ion concentration (pH) : Acid lakes (in part soft
water and bog lakes) have little or no mollusks because the acid
either dissolves or corrodes the carbonate shells, reducing trema-
92 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
tode parasites in fishes. Plankton too is much reduced in acid
waters, and cestodes and acanthocephalans are seriously reduced
due to lack of necessary intermediate hosts. As neutrality and
alkalinity are reached there is an increase in the biological pro¬
ductivity of lakes, and along with this an increase in fish para¬
sitism is noted. Bangham (1946) noted this in northeast Wis¬
consin lakes in relation to largemouth bass.
Pollution : Pollution of waters with certain organic wastes,
especially manures, may aid in the development of certain
aquatic organisms. It is common fish management policy for
small farm ponds and fish hatchery ponds to fertilize these
waters with either manure or commercially prepared fertilizers
in order to increase the biological productivity. Therefore, the
natural drainage of manures into lakes increases their produc¬
tivity, especially algae, plankton, and bottom organisms. This
condition favors an increased parasitism in fishes because of the
greater element of certainty for stages in the parasite life cycle
finding the next hosts. Pollution with excessive creamery wastes
or sewage, and with most industrial or mining wastes are usually
detrimental to aquatic organisms of all kinds. These effects are
brought about through the altering of the physical and especially
the chemical nature of the environment. Certain essential hosts
in the parasite life cycle may be eliminated. If the biochemical
oxygen demand is great enough, most of the aquatic organisms,
including those bearing the various stages of the parasite life
cycle, would be killed. Thus parasitism certainly is reduced or
entirely eliminated along with their hosts.
Biological Factors
Plankton: As has already been pointed out in the discussion of
physical and chemical conditions the plankton plays an impor¬
tant role in the parasitism of fishes, particularly regarding the
cestodes and acanthocephalans.
Benthos: The benthos (bottom fauna) of lakes is significant in
the parasite life cycle. Trematodes especially make much use of
this group of aquatic organisms. Snails or clams serve as the first
intermediate hosts for all digenetic trematodes. In addition
aquatic insects, various annelids, turbellarians, and crustaceans
serve as second intermediate hosts.
Aquatic plants: As previously noted the greater the superpo¬
sition of the photosynthetic zone over the decomposition zone,
the greater the biological productivity of a lake. Weedy bays and
shore lines produce a high incidence and intensity of parasitism,
especially of trematodes in fishes, because of the greater super-
1953] Fischthal — Parasites of Wisconsin Fishes IV 93
position of hosts and stages in the parasite life cycles. Snails,
insects, various plankters and many species of fish prefer weedy
habitats. Pearse (1924), Van Cleave and Mueller (1934), and
Bangham and Hunter (1933) also point out this effect on para¬
sitism.
Food chain : Van Cleave and Mueller (1934) have stated,
“When they first begin to take food, the fry of many fishes start
to accumulate a parasitic population within their bodies. The
food habits of a fish, and many of the conditions of its environ¬
ment, influence the number and nature of the parasites which it
will carry.” Marshall and Gilbert (1905), Bangham and Hunter
(1939), Hunter (1941) and Hare (1943) made similar observa¬
tions. Van Cleave and Mueller stated further, “Regardless of
feeding habit of the adult, most fresh-water fishes for a while
after birth feed on plankton. Since plankton organisms serve so
commonly as hosts for larval worms the young fish feeding on
plankton are peculiarly open to invasion by the larval parasites.
The young of fishes not infrequently have parasitic populations
unlike those of the older ones of the same species and these dis¬
similarities may be traced directly to differences in food habits
at different ages.” Hare (1943) likewise noted this condition.
Fishes are most heavily parasitized at the season when they are
most actively feeding. However, as pointed out by Essex and
Hunter (1926), there is a considerable seasonal as well as local
variation in the food available to fishes.
Many of the larval worms in fishes are present because of the
food habits of carnivorous fishes and of fish-eating birds. Notable
examples of the latter are Clinostomum marginatum and various
strigeids ( Neascus spp., Diplostomum spp., and Tetracotyle
spp.) among the trematodes, Ligula intestinalis among the
cestodes, and Contracaecum spiculigerum among the nematodes.
Reptiles are responsible for the larval nematode, Spiroxys sp.,
occurring in fishes.
Fish population : Various interrelations between species and
within a single species may affect the incidence and intensity of
parasitism in fishes. Species of fishes may be in constant com¬
petition with each other for mutually preferred habitats and for
similar foods. Overlapping may enhance parasitism if the para¬
site involved reaches maturity within the different host species
or if one species of fish serves as intermediate host for the para¬
site of another. On the other hand, if the parasite shows host-
specificity, parasitism may be reduced because one of the fish
species will be removing from the food supply those intermediate
hosts bearing larval parasites or leave fewer intermediate hosts
Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
available for infection. Van Cleave and Mueller (1934), working
with larval Clinostomum marginatum, and Fischthal (1949a),
with the same parasite and larval Neascus spp., indicated that
apparently within a single species of fish there may exist sepa¬
rate shallow water and deep water populations; this conclusion
was based on the fact that inshore perch and centrarchids har¬
bored the above named parasites, while those from the deeper,
off-shore waters were almost always uninfected. Percentages of
infection with any given species of parasite for a single species
of fish may be misleading unless all the groups within the species
are sampled.
Movements of fish of a single species through the lake would
affect their parasitism. Some species of fishes migrate either sea¬
sonably (at spawning time) or regularly, and, therefore, may
show a wider variety of parasites picked up in the variety of
habitats visited; examples of such fishes are the northern pike,
muskellonge, and walleye. Pearse (1924) noted that the highest
average infection per fish occurred in those which invaded the
greatest variety of habitats. He stated further that the lake with
the largest variety of habitats has the greatest variety of fishes
and parasites. Holl (1932) reemphasized this viewpoint. Some
other species of fishes such as the cisco show vertical diurnal
movements, and parasitism in these species may be associated
with feeding on plankton near the surface of the lake. Still other
fishes exhibit horizontal diurnal movements, spending the day in
deep water and the evening or night feeding in shallow waters
where most parasitism probably is acquired.
RELATIONSHIP OF LIMNOLOGICAL FACTORS IN
STREAMS TO PARASITISM IN FISHES
Many of the conditions affecting parasitism of fishes in lakes
apply to the stream environment. However, a number of funda¬
mental limnological differences of significance are present for a
stream which should be discussed.
Physical Factors
Water movements: Current in one direction is the outstanding
feature of stream environments. In general the greater the
velocity of the current the greater the divergence of stream and
lake populations. Current tends to carry those aquatic organisms
(all plankton and some benthos) subject to water movements
downstream. Depending on the circumstances, it may insure com¬
pletion of steps in the parasite life cycle by bringing the various
developmental stages into contact with the next host, or it may
1953] Fischthal — Parasites of Wisconsin Fishes IV 95
break the chain of events in the life cycle by sweeping develop¬
mental stages beyond the reach of the next host. Current rate
may vary considerably within the length of a stream and within
any given cross section. Such differences often determine the
position of organisms, and this in turn would influence the life
cycles of parasites to some extent, especially where hosts in the
life cycle may seek similar positions. In streams, however, this
superposition of organisms is not quite as important as in lakes
because the current would tend to distribute parasites and some
hosts more readily and thus assure proper contacts. Currents
tend to create pools beyond riffles, logs, brush, boulders and other
obstructions, and provide places for fishes and other organisms
to concentrate. This would tend to increase parasitism.
Temperature: Temperature in streams tends to be uniform at
all depths and to follow air temperature more closely than lakes ;
also, thermal stratification is absent. Therefore, the kinds of
organisms tend to be restricted because of only one temperature
which many others might not be able to tolerate. Seasonal varia¬
tions in temperature produce seasonal changes in plankton and
bottom organisms. The cold water streams, trout waters, usually
have a restricted fish population as well as invertebrate fauna.
Bangham (1948) and Fischthal (1949c) have mentioned that
cold water trout streams have a very low incidence and intensity
of parasitism when compared to warm water streams.
Turbidity: The greatest extremes of turbidity occur in
streams. In some streams high turbidity is an usual condition
during the year, while in others it is only temporary and caused
by heavy rains or spring thaws. This turbidity is largely due to
silt, detritus and other non-living substances. The general effect
of turbidity is to cut down light penetration, to cover over feed¬
ing and spawning areas of fishes, and under certain circum¬
stances to cover over and smother bottom organisms and their
habitats. Especially during times of high water or flood there is
a general scouring of the stream bottom and shifting of mate¬
rials downstream, finally settling down over the bottom after the
waters recede to completely alter the habitat that previously ex¬
isted. The molar action of turbid streams, especially during high
water, is extreme with a considerable detrimental effect on most
all aquatic organisms. The general effects of all this on para¬
sitism in fishes in streams is tremendous, and tends toward its
reduction.
Chemical Factors
Dissolved oxygen: The mechanical actions of currents provides
a high supply of dissolved oxygen at all depths. This permits all
96 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
organisms access to all parts of the stream without danger of
oxygenless regions as in stratified lakes. This condition coupled
with the current tends to permit complete distribution through¬
out the stream of larval parasites and their necessary interme¬
diate hosts.
Biological Factors
Plankton: Streams have a relatively low plankton production.
Inasmuch as plankters frequently serve as intermediate hosts for
fish parasites, their paucity would result in a lower incidence
and intensity of fish parasitism. Headwater areas are almost
entirely devoid of plankton; the middle portions usually have a
maximum plankton population; plankton declines in the lower
sections. Therefore, within a single stream, parasitism of fishes
may be correlated with the distribution of plankton, being very
low or lacking in the upper portion, and more pronounced in the
middle and lower sections. Backwaters and sluggish regions of
streams, with conditions more like that of a lake, tend to produce
more plankton with the result that fish parasitism is usually
increased.
Benthos : In streams the benthos plays a most important role
in fish parasitism. Due to the current the plankton is reduced
and the benthos, in the form of mollusks, annelids, insects, and
crustaceans, plays an important part in transfer of larval fish
parasites by serving more frequently as intermediate hosts. In
swift waters and in headwaters the benthos, usually insects, is
the most important of the aquatic groups regarding parasitism
in fishes. The riffle bottoms usually exceed the pool bottoms in
productivity. In the sluggish waters and in backwaters with a
soft bottom, the benthos is usually more abundant and diver¬
sified, and with the plankton, is influential in parasitism of fishes.
Aquatic plants: Aquatic plants are usually much reduced in
streams. Sometimes they may grow along the edges, but with
limited success. Water mosses may be found in rapid current.
Backwaters and sluggish waters may develop an extensive vege¬
tation, more of the lake type in character than of a stream. In
these sluggish-water areas the vegetation serves as support for
many components of the fauna. The result is a greater biological
productivity because of the superposition of the photosynthetic
zone over the decomposition zone. This condition always favors
a higher incidence and intensity of all forms of fish parasitism.
The vast majority of streams examined in northwest Wisconsin
by the author were free of aquatic plants.
Food chain: In swift streams or in swift sections of streams
the fishes, insects and other benthos are predominantly bottom
1953] Fischthal — Parasites of Wisconsin Fishes IV 97
dwellers or inhabitants of pools. They are dependent mostly on
the drifting of food down to them from upstream. Therefore,
parasitism of the fishes is likewise dependent on the downstream
drift of larval parasites and their necessary hosts. Microorgan¬
isms form an important part of the diet. In sluggish streams and
backwaters pelagic fishes and plankton are present, and feeding
is usually by actively seeking the food. In this instance para¬
sitism is usually brought about by the active feeding habits of
the fishes and some intermediate hosts.
Fish population: Many of the stream fishes are common also
to lakes, however, the incidence and intensity of parasitism is
usually lower in the former. Some species of fishes are almost
entirely confined to a stream habitat, notably the trout, many
cyprinids, mudminnow, the darters, muddler, and the stickle¬
backs. Fishes in streams tend to seek the pools. This provides a
concentration of fishes and assures passage of larval parasites
encysted in fishes to those carnivorous species in the population.
Fish-eating birds play an important part in parasitizing snails
and subsequently fishes with larval parasites. The larval genus
Neascus and larval Posthodiplostomum minimum , both reaching
maturity in birds, were the most common parasites encountered
in stream fishes.
EFFECTS OF PARASITISM ON THE FISH HOST
From the author’s experiences in the examination of north¬
west Wisconsin fishes it is apparent that the condition of most
fishes is not seriously handicapped by their parasite burden.
There were instances where it did appear that parasitism had an
adverse effect on the condition of the host but this could not be
established with certainty because of the possibility of other
factors within the host or its environment paralleling this para¬
sitism and being wholly or in part responsible for the condition
of the host. In the dynamics of an aquatic environment there are
many factors (physical, chemical, biological) which can influence
the condition of a fish or fish population. Unless all factors in the
environment are understood and taken into account in the analy¬
sis of any accumulated data or unless rigid controls are main¬
tained, it is extremely hazardous, even after statistical treatment
of the data, to claim with certainty that parasitism is the cause
of poor condition. Misinterpretations may easily result without
the whole of the picture. It is also possible, in certain instances,
that the poor condition of fishes may be due to factors other than
parasitism, and that the parasites were more readily acquired
98 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
as a result of greater susceptibility because of this poor condi¬
tion. Investigators finding these fishes in poor condition and
heavily parasitized may conclude that the condition resulted
from parasitism. Here again, erroneous conclusions would be
formulated unless the entire histories of the fishes were known.
Pearse (1924) stated that most fish parasites do little harm to
their hosts. Pratt (1919) and Hunter (1941) mentioned that
although many parasites do little damage to the fish host, they
occasionally cause serious epidemics.
General debility: Due to parasitism some fishes become slug¬
gish in their activity and are more readily captured by the
angler, by other fishes, and by fish-eating reptiles, birds and
mammals. Essex and Hunter (1926) related how heavily infected
(with cestode larvae) large-headed, slender-bodied rainbow trout
in a Montana lake were less resistant to capture than normal
trout. Bangham and Hunter (1939) pointed out the sluggish con¬
dition of fishes infected with larval Ligula intestinalis. Hunter
(1941) cited examples of sluggishness due to heavy infections
with Clinostomum marginatum in some fishes, with larval Ligula
intestinalis in minnows, and with larval Schistocephalus in
coregonid fishes. As Hunter pointed out, the examples he cited
were extreme ones which “serve to illustrate the point that para¬
sites may produce a noticeable effect upon their host. Undoubt¬
edly, moderate infections have a definite but less readily detect¬
able effect”. Elliott and Russert (1949) suggested that older
perch having a heavy infection with Clinostomum marginatum
may be more susceptible to anaerobiosis because of an increased
oxygen demand or because of a generally debilitated condition
due to parasitism.
Retardation of growth: Parasites are probably capable of re¬
tarding growth in fishes, but as noted above the extent to which
the former alone effect growth under natural conditions is ex¬
tremely difficult to ascertain. Hubbs (1927) claimed that the
cyprinid, Platygobio gracilis, was stunted by a heavy tapeworm
infection. Cross (1935, 1938), in a study on fish-parasite rela¬
tionships in the Trout lake region of Wisconsin, concluded that
heavily parasitized fishes were retarded in growth. However,
Elliott and Russert (1949) were dissatisfied with Cross’ calcula¬
tions, “which were an approximate comparison of the size, as
well as the number of parasites of different kinds in a fish, to
the latter’s size and weight.”
Loss of weight: Weight loss in fishes due to parasitism also
probably occurs. As noted above, it is most difficult under natural
conditions to determine the extent to which parasites alone effect
1953] Fischthal — Parasites of Wisconsin Fishes IV 99
this weight loss. Essex and Hunter (1926) indicated that the
thin, emaciated condition of rainbow trout from a Montana lake
was due to heavy parasitism with a larval tapeworm. Hunter and
Hunninen (1933) reported that smallmouth bass from lakes in¬
fected with larval Proteocephalus ambloplitis weighed less than
uninfected smallmouth bass of the same age group from rivers.
Hunter and Hunter (1938) found that a group of young small¬
mouth bass experimentally heavily infected with the larval black
grub, Crassiphiala ambloplitis, showed a statistically significant
loss of weight when compared with the control fish. This is a
scientifically sound experiment and more of this general type are
needed and are necessary to find out more concerning the effects
of all types and degrees of parasitism on fishes. Bangham (1938)
stated that centrarchids in southern Florida, when heavily in¬
fected with larval Posthodiplostomum minimum and nematodes,
were often thin and lacked fat about their visceral organs. Cross
(1938) concluded that parasitism in fishes of the Trout Lake
region of Wisconsin caused a loss in weight. Bangham and
Hunter (1939) mentioned that emaciation in certain fish
appeared correlated with the presence of hundreds of acantho-
cephalans in the intestine. Woodbury (1940) and Elliott and
Russert (1949), working with Clinostomum marginatum infec¬
tions in perch, did not find any correlation between parasitism
and the coefficient of condition (length-weight relationship show¬
ing the degree of relative well-being) of these fish.
Loss of sight : That parasites cause impairment of sight or
complete loss of sight is a certainty. Many of northwest Wis¬
consin fishes possessed larval Diplostomulum in the humors and
lenses of the eyes. Although no definitely blind fishes were taken,
many had their sight impaired by the heavy infections found.
Ferguson and Hayford (1941) reported blindness or impaired
vision caused by larval flukes (Diplostomum) in the lenses of the
eyes of hatchery trout and other fishes. They concluded that
blind fish cannot feed properly even in a hatchery, become ema¬
ciated and sluggish, and eventually die.
Sterility : One of the most devastating parasites of fishes is the
bass tapeworm, Proteocephalus ambloplitis. Heavy infections of
the gonads with the larval stage (plerocercoid) has resulted in
sterilization of adult basses of all species. The author has found
largemouth and smallmouth basses in northwest Wisconsin that
were completely sterile or partially so due to this larval tape¬
worm. Rich (1924) was one of the first to report this condition.
Since that time this parasite has been reported by many different
investigators from such areas as Ohio, Wisconsin, New York,
Connecticut, Lake Erie, Mississippi River, Ontario, and others.
100 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
Other pathologic conditions: Much pathologic effects on the
hosts' tissues were noted in northwest Wisconsin as a result of
the presence of various parasites. The larval bass tapeworm,
Proteocephalus ambloplitis, in basses especially has caused a con¬
siderable amount of adhesions in the mesentery and connecting
viscera. These adhesions were so great that the organs could be
separated only with great difficulty. This has also been noted by
the many investigators who have reported the larval bass tape¬
worm from fishes in various sections of the United States and
Canada. Pearse (1924) recorded destruction of liver tissue by
larval tapeworms. Bangham (1938), for southern Florida, and
the present author, noted that cysts of Posthodiplostomum mini¬
mum riddled the liver, and caused adhesions in the mesenteries
in centrarchids. Hare (1943), summarizing the effects noted by
others that acanthocephalans have on their hosts, stated that the
Acanthocephala are so abundant in most hosts as to cause serious
damage. He noted in his own collections that when the intestinal
lumen was clogged, laceration of the walls with holes was fre¬
quent, resulting in inflammation and yellowing of the tissues.
Similar effects produced by acanthocephalans were frequently
noticed in northwest Wisconsin fishes, even in light infections.
Bangham and Venard (1946) noted that leeches which attached
to the inside surface of the operculum, and the acanthocephalan,
Pomphorhynchus bulbocolli, found with their long, spiny pro¬
boscides deeply embedded in the intestine, caused considerable
damage to their hosts, Catostomus commersonnii. Pearse (1924)
mentioned copepods which suck blood from the gills as injurious
to fishes. Hunter (1941) discussed Bacterium salmonicida, the
cause of furunculosis in trout, as causing lesions in the organs
and body musculature. No doubt, Wisconsin in times past has
stocked infected trout from diseased hatcheries before the dis¬
ease was diagnosed. Protozoan cysts caused by Microsporidia (in
the flesh) and Myxosporidia (in the flesh, gills, viscera, and
mesenteries) have an adverse effect on the host and no doubt
makes the latter sluggish and easy prey to other animals. Lym-
phocystis, a virus disease of walleyes, produced huge, ugly
tumor-like growths of the flesh on the outside of the body. The
effect it has on the walleye population of a lake is not known;
however, from tagging experiments conducted by the author in
northwest Wisconsin to study migration of this fish, it was noted
that the growths may entirely disappear in one year with the
previously infected areas in some clearly visible because of the
newly formed, somewhat differently pigmented skin over them.
1953] Fischthal — Parasites of Wisconsin Fishes IV
101
TABLE 1
Summary of Parasite Survey Data, 1944-1946
102 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
TABLE 1 — (Continued)
Summary of Parasite Survey Data, 1944-1946
Comparison of Percent Infection of Northwest Wisconsin Fishes With Other Surveys
1953]
Fischthal — - Parasites of Wisconsin Fishes IV
103
104 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
TABLE 3
Check List of Parasites, 1944-1946
Trematoda
No. Spp.
Parasite Fish Infected
1. Acolpenteron catostomi Fischthal and Allison, 1942. ... 1
2. Allocreadium ictaluri Pearse, 1924 . 1
3. Allocreadium lobatum Wallin, 1909 . 6
4. Allocreadium sp . 1
5. Alloglossidium corti (Lamont, 1921) . 6
6. Alloglossidium geminus (Mueller, 1930) . 3
7. Anonchohaptor anomalum Mueller, 1938 . 1
8. Azygia augusticauda (Stafford, 1904) . 15
9. Bucephalopsis pusilla (Stafford, 1904) . 1
10. Bucephalus elegans Woodhead, 1930 . 8
11. Bucephalus sp . 1
12. Bunodera leuciopercae (Mueller, 1776) . 1
13. Bunodera sacculata Van Cleave and Mueller, 1932. ... 2
14. Bunoderina eucaliae Miller, 1938 . 2
15. Caecincola parvulus Marshall and Gilbert, 1905 . 2
16. Clinostomum marginatum (Rudolphi, 1819) . 27
17. Crepidostomum cooperi Hopkins, 1931 . 14
18. Crepidostomum cornutum Osborn, 1903 . 7
19. Crepidostomum farionis (Mueller, 1788) . 2
20. Crepidostomum isostomum Hopkins, 1931 . 4
21. Crepidostomum lintoni (Pratt in Linton, 1901) . 1
22. Crepidostomum sp . 1
23. Cryptogonimus chyli Osborn, 1903 . 8
24. Diplostomulum scheuringi Hughes, 1929 . 20
25. Diplostomulum spp . 35
26. Gyrodactyloidea . 30
27. Macroderoides flavus Van Cleave and Mueller, 1932. . . 2
28. Macroderoides parvus (Hunter, 1932) . 1
29. Macroderoides spiniferus Pearse, 1924 . 1
30. Neascus spp . 43
31. Octomacrum lanceatum Mueller, 1934 . 2
32. Phyllodistomum brevicecum Steen, 1938 . 1
33. Phyllodistomum etheostomae Fischthal, 1942 . 4
34. Phyllodistomum lachancei Choquette, 1947 . 1
35. Phyllodistomum lysteri Miller, 1940 . 1
36. Phyllodistomum nocomis Fischthal, 1942 . 1
37. Phyllodistomum notropidus Fischthal, 1942 . 1
38. Phyllodistomum pearsei Holl, 1929 . 1
39. Phyllodistomum spp . 2
40. Phyllodistomum staffordi Pearse, 1924 . 3
41. Phyllodistomum undulans Steen, 1938 . 1
42. Plagiocirrus primus Van Cleave and Mueller, 1932. ... 2
43. Plagioporus sinitsini Mueller, 1934 . 2
44. Posthodiplostomum minimum (MacCallum, 1921) . 25
45. Rhipidocotyle papillosum (Woodhead, 1929) . 3
46. Sanguinicola huronis Fischthal, 1949 . 2
47. Sanguinicola occidentalis Van Cleave and Mueller, 1932 2
1953] Fischthal — Parasites of Wisconsin Fishes IV 105
TABLE 3 — (Continued)
Check List of Parasites, 1944-1946
No. Spp.
Parasite Fish Infected
48. Sanguinicola spp . . . . . 2
49. Tetracotyle spp . . . 19
50. Trematoda — larval spp . . . 4
51. Triganodistomum attenuatum Mueller and Van Cleave,
1932 . 2
Cestoda
1. Abothrium crassum (Block, 1779) . . 1
2. Biacetabulum infrequent Hunter, 1927 . . 1
3. Biacetabulum sp . 3
4. Bothriocephalus claviceps (Goeze, 1782) . . 2
5. Bothriocephalus cuspidatus Cooper, 1917 ............ 8
6. Bothriocephalus formosus Mueller and Van Cleave, 1932 4
7. Bothriocephalus sp . 3
8. Caryophyllaeidae . 3
9. Corallobothrium fimbriatum Essex, 1927 . 4
10. Corallobothrium giganteum Essex, 1927 . . 1
11. Glaridacris catostomi Cooper, 1920 . 3
12. Glaridacris c.onfusus Hunter, 1929 . 2
13. Glaridacris intermedius Lyster, 1940 . 1
14. Haplobothrium globuliforme Cooper, 1914 . 1
15. Hymenolepis sp. . . 2
16. Ligula intestinalis (Linnaeus, 1758) . 2
17. Pliovitellaria wisconsinensis Fischthal, 1951 . 2
18. Proteocephalus ambloplitis (Leidy, 1887) . 16
19. Proteocephalus fluviatilis Bangham, 1925 . . 2
20. Proteocephalus pearsei LaRue, 1919 . 17
21. Proteocephalus perplexus LaRue, 1911 . 1
22. Proteocephalus pinguis LaRue, 1911 . . . 4
23. Proteocephalus spp . . . . 26
24. Proteocephalus stizostethi Hunter and Bangham, 1933 5
25. Triaenophorus nodulosus (Pallas, 1781) . . . 9
26. Triaenophorus stizostedionis Miller, 1945 . . 2
Nematoda
1. Camallanus oxycephalus Ward and Magath, 1917. .... 22
2. Capillaria catenata Van Cleave and Mueller, 1932.... 7
3. Contracaecum brachyurum (Ward and Magath, 1917) 5
4. Contracaecum spp . 40
5. Cucullanus sp . 1
6. Cystidicola stigmatura (Leidy, 1886) . 1
7. Dichelyne cotylophora (Ward and Magath, 1917) ..... 7
8. Dichelyne robusta (Van Cleave and Mueller, 1932) ... 3
9. Dichelyne sp . 1
10. Hepaticola bakeri Mueller and Van Cleave, 1932 . 2
11. Metabronema salvelini (Fujita, 1920) . 3
12. Nematoda — larval sp. . . 1
13. Philometra cylindracea (Ward and Magath, 1917) .... 2
106 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
TABLE 3 — (Continued)
Check List of Parasites, 1944-1946
Parasite
14. Philometra nodulosa Thomas, 1928 .
15. Philometra spp .
16. Oxyuridae .
17. Rhahdochona cascadilla Wigdor, 1918 .....
18. Rhahdochona sp . . .
19. Spinitectus carolini Holl, 1928 .
20. Spinitectus gracilis Ward and Magath, 1917
21. Spiroxys sp .
Acanthocephala
1. Leptorhynchoides thecatus (Linton, 1891) ...........
2. N eoechinorhynchus crassus Van Cleave, 1919 ........
3. N eoechinorhynchus cylindratus (Van Cleave, 1913) . . .
4. N eoechinorhynchus rutili (Mueller, 1780) .
5. N eoechinorhynchus saginatus Van Cleave and Bang-
ham, 1949 . . . .
6. N eoechinorhynchus spp . . .
7. N eoechinorhynchus tenellus (Van Cleave, 1913) .
8. Octospinifer macilentus Van Cleave, 1919 . . .
9. Pomphorhynchus bulbocolli Linkins, 1919 .
Protozoa
1. Chloromyxum spp . . . .
2. Epistylis spp . .
3. Microsporidia .
4. Myxosporidia . . . .
5. Trichodina renicola (Mueller, 1931) .
6. Trichodina spp . .
Copepoda
1. Achtheres micropteri Wright, 1882 . .
2. Argulus catostomi Dana and Herrick, 1837 .
3. Argulus versicolor Wilson, 1902 .
4. Ergasilus caeruleus Wilson, 1911 .
5. Ergasilus sp .
1. Glochidia
Mollusca
Hirudinea
1. Illinobdella moorei Meyer,, 1940 . . .
2. Illinobdella spp . . . .
Virus
No. Spp.
Fish Infected
2
3
1
14
1
15
17
22
37
4
12
4
1
5
3
1
31
4
4
1
29
1
20
4
2
3
6
2
34
1
9
I
1. Lymphocystis
1953] Fischthal— Parasites of Wisconsin Fishes IV
107
References
Bangham, R. V. 1938. Parasites of Centrarchidae from southern Florida.
Trans. Amer. Fish. Soc. 68 : 263-268.
- 1940. Parasites of fresh-water fish of southern Florida. Proc. Florida
Acad. Sc. 5: 289-307.
- 1941. Parasites of fish of Algonquin Park lakes. Trans. Amer. Fish.
Soc. 70: 161-171.
- 1946. Parasites of northern Wisconsin fish. Trans. Wisconsin Acad.
Sc., Arts & Let. 36: 291-325.
- 1948. Variation in distribution of Wisconsin fish parasites. J. Para-
sitol. 34(6,Sect.2) : 21.
- 1951. Parasites of fish in the Upper Snake river drainage and in
Yellowstone lake, Wyoming. Zoologica 36: 213-217.
Bangham, R. V. and Hunter, G. W., III. 1939. Studies on fish parasites of
Lake Erie. Distribution studies. Zoologica 24 : 385-448.
Bangham, R. V. and Venard, C. E. 1942. Studies on parasites of Reelf oot
lake fish. IV. Distribution studies and checklist. J. Tennessee Acad. Sc.
17: 22-38.
- 1946. Parasites of fish of Algonquin Park lakes. II. Distri¬
bution studies. Publ. Ontario Fish. Res. Lab. No. 65: 33-46.
Choquette, L. P. E. 1947. Phyllodistomum lachancei sp. nov., a trematode
from the ureters of Salvelinus fontinalis (Mitchill), with a note on its
pathogenicity. Canadian J. Res., D 25 : 131-134.
- 1948. On the species of the genus Metabronema Yorke and Maple-
stone, 1926, parasitic in trout and char. Canadian J. Res., D 26: 329-
333.
Cross, S. X. 1935. The effect of parasitism on growth of perch in the Trout
lake region. J. Parasitol. 21 : 267-273.
- 1938. A study of the fish parasite relationships in the Trout lake
region of Wisconsin. Trans. Wisconsin Acad. Sc., Arts & Let. 31: 439-
456.
Elliott, A. M. and Russert, L. R. 1949. Some condition characteristics of
a yellow perch population heavily parasitized by Clinostomum mar¬
ginatum. J. Parasitol. 35: 183-190.
Essex, H. E. and Hunter, G. W., III. 1926. A biological survey of fish para¬
sites from the Central States. Trans. Illinois Acad. Sc. 19: 151-181.
Ferguson, M. S. and Hayford, R. A. 1941. The life history and control of
an eye fluke. Prog. Fish-Cult., Memo. 1-131, No. 54: 1-13.
Fischthal, J. H. 1947. Parasites of northwest Wisconsin fishes. I. The 1944
survey. Trans. Wisconsin Acad. Sc., Arts & Let. 37 : 157-220.
- 1949a. The over-wintering of black grubs and yellow grubs in fish.
J. Parasitol. 35: 191-192.
- 1949b. Sanguinicola huronis n. sp. (Trematoda: Sanguinicolidae)
from the blood system of largemouth and smallmouth basses. J. Para¬
sitol. 35: 566-568.
- - 1949c. Parasites of northwest Wisconsin fishes. J. Parasitol. 35 (6,
Sect.2) : 30.
- 1950a. Additional hosts and geographical distribution records for
the common fish acanthocephalan, Leptorhynchoides thecatus. J. Para¬
sitol. 36: 88.
- 1950b. Parasites of northwest Wisconsin fishes. II. The 1945 survey.
Trans. Wisconsin Acad. Sc., Arts & Let. 40 (Pt.l): 87-113.
108 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
- 1951. Pliovitellaria wisconsinensis n. g., n. sp. (Cestoda: Caryo-
phyllaeidae) from Wisconsin cyprinid fishes. J. Parasitol. 37: 190-194.
- 1952. Parasites of northwest Wisconsin fishes. III. The 1946 survey.
Trans. Wisconsin Acad. Sc., Arts & Let. 41: 17-58.
Hare, R. C. 1943. An ecological study of the worm parasites of Portage
Lakes fishes. Ohio J. Sc. 43 : 201-208.
Holl, F. J. 1932. The ecology of certain fishes and amphibians with special
reference to their helminth and linguatulid parasites. Ecol. Monogr. 2:
83-107.
Hubbs, C. L. 1927. The related effects of a parasite on a fish. J. Parasitol.
14: 75-84.
Hunter, G. W., III. 1941. Studies on the parasites of fresh-water fishes of
Connecticut. In “A fishery survey of important Connecticut lakes”.
Bull. Connecticut Geol. & Nat. Hist. Surv. No. 63: 228-288.
Hunter, G. W., Ill and Hunninen, A. V. 1933. Studies on the plerocercoid
larva of the bass tapeworm, Proteocephalus ambloplitis (Leidy), in the
small-mouthed bass. In “A biological survey of the Raquette water¬
shed.” Suppl. 23rd Ann. Rept. New York St. Conserv. Dept. 1933:
255-261.
Hunter, G. W., Ill and Hunter, W. S. 1938. Studies on host reactions to
larval parasites. I. The effect on weight. J. Parasitol. 24: 477-481.
Lincicome, D. R. and Van Cleave, H. J. 1949. Distribution of Leptorhyn-
choides thecatus, a common acanthocephalan parasitic in fishes. Amer.
Midi. Nat. 41: 421-431.
Marshall, W. S. and Gilbert, N. C. 1905. Notes on the food and parasites
of some fresh-water fishes from the lakes at Madison, Wisconsin. Rept.
U. S. Fish. Comm. 1904: 513-522.
Pearse, A. S. 1924. The parasites of lake fishes. Trans. Wisconsin Acad. Sc.,
Arts & Let. 21 : 161-194.
Pratt, H. S. 1919. Parasites of fresh-water fishes. Econ. Circ. U. S. Bur.
Fish. No. 42: 1-8.
Rich, W. H. 1924. Progress in biological inquiries, 1923. Rept. Div. Sc. Inq.
Fiscl. Yr. 1923, Appendix VII. Rept. U. S. Comm. Fish. 1923, Bur.
Fish. Doc. No. 956: 1-27.
Van Cleave, H. J. and Mueller, J. F. 1934. Parasites of Oneida lake fishes.
Part III. A biological and ecological survey of the worm parasites.
Roosevelt Wild Life Ann. 3: 161-334.
Ward, H. B. 1910. Internal parasites of the Sebago salmon. Bull. U. S. Bur.
Fish. 28: 1151-1194.
Welch, P. S. 1935. Limnology. McGraw-Hill, N. Y. 471 pp.
Woodbury, L. A. 1940. A quantitative study of parasites of fishes with
special reference to Clinostonum marginatum in the perch in Walsh
Lake, Michigan. Ph.D. Thesis, Univ. of Michigan.
THE CHEESE MANUFACTURING REGIONS OF
WISCONSIN, 1850-1950
Loyal Durand, Jr.
University of Tennessee
Antecedents of the Industry in Wisconsin
The manufacture of cheese, throughout three hundred years
of American history, has “moved” from east to west across the
northern portion of the nation — the agricultural region utilized
for dairying, and known today as the American Dairy Region.
The colonists of Rhode Island, Connecticut, and eastern Massa¬
chusetts were the main dairymen and cheesemakers of an early
period, and Narragansett cheeses of Rhode Island, Braintree
cheeses of Massachusetts, and Litchfield cheeses of Connecticut
were well known in the seaboard markets of the colonies. In time,
cheese manufacture was transported to interior New England,
particularly the Berkshire region of Massachusetts and to Ver¬
mont as those areas were settled.
The settlement of upstate New York by New Englanders, fol¬
lowing the Revolutionary War, resulted in the transfer of cheese
manufacture to the Mohawk Valley and to western New York.
New York State superseded New England as the great cheese
state. The settlements of New Englanders in the Western Re¬
serve of Ohio (the northeastern portion of that state) likewise
resulted in the rise of an important cheese industry. For fifty
years or more the Western Reserve bore the nickname “Cheese-
dom,” and, during the period of one hundred years ago, New
York State and Ohio contributed the bulk of the cheese manufac¬
tured in the United States. The cheese was marketed under either
a regional name, as in New England, or as New York cheese.
Actually nearly all of the production consisted of the English-
style Cheddar Cheese, now known in the United States as Amer¬
ican Cheese.1
1 For a more detailed study of the historical geography of cheese manufacture
in New England, New York, and Ohio see Loyal Durand, Jr., The Migration of
Cheese Manufacture in the United States, Annals of the Association of American
Geographers , Vol. 42, 1952, pp. 263-282. Further references are cited in this article.
109
110 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
Cheese Manufacture During the Settlement
Days in Wisconsin
The southeastern portion of Wisconsin was settled during the
1830’s and 1840’s by pioneers who moved from the East by way
of the Erie Canal-Great Lakes waterway. These settlers arrived
mainly from New York State, but many Vermonters and other
eastern Americans were among them.2 Milwaukee and Southport
(now Kenosha) were important points of entry, and from these
ports the New Yorkers and Yankees spread to the interior coun¬
ties of the extreme southeast.3
During the late 1840’s the first of several waves of foreign
immigrants also began to reach Wisconsin ; Germans entered the
lakeshore counties north of Milwaukee, Swiss settled in Green
County, and Norwegians founded several communities.4
Dairying and cheese manufacture was important on some
farms of southeastern Wisconsin from the days of earliest settle¬
ment. Some of the Eastern settlers, particularly New Yorkers
who had moved from cheese regions, engaged in the manufacture
of farm-dairy cheese almost from the time of their advent in
their new homes.5 The Census of 1850 records that 400,283
pounds of cheese were made on the farms of Wisconsin during
1849, a very respectable total considering the short time that
settlers had been in the region. Kenosha County, the heart of
Yankee settlement, produced 57,271 pounds of cheese, or nearly
15 per cent of the total. Other counties “high” in output were
Walworth (53,240), Waukesha, Racine, Rock, Jefferson, Dodge,
and Dane. At this time the “German” counties north of Milwau¬
kee had practically no production, and the “Swiss” county of
Green produced only 8,417 pounds.6
2 The reader is referred to the numerous publications of the Wisconsin Historical
Society if he is interested in more detail. The purpose of this paper is not that of
dealing- with the settlement, but with the cheese industry as influenced in part by
that settlement.
3 See Joseph R. Schafer, The Yankee and the Teuton in Wisconsin, Wisconsin
Magazine of History. Vol. 6, Pt. 1, Dec. 1922, pp. 125-145. Pt. 2, Dec. 1922, pp.
261-279. Pt. 3, March 1923, pp. 386-402. Pt. 4, Vol. 7, Sept. 1923, pp. 3-19. Pt. 5,
Dec. 1923, pp. 148-171.
4 Guy-Harold Smith, The Settlement and the Distribution of the Population in
Wisconsin, Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters,
Vol. 24, 1929, pp. 53-107.
5 The first successful cheese factory in the United States was not established
until 1851. Farm-dairy cheese was made at home before this.
6 This original low output of the “foreign” areas is not surprising, despite popular
belief to the contrary. Well-documented sources in the State Historical Library
show that the Swiss, like others on the frontier, were originally wheat farmers,
and turned to dairying in numbers only after their hilly fields became badly eroded,
and their wheat became subject to the difficulties which beset wheat elsewhere in
Wisconsin. Once the shift was made, however, they became avid dairymen. It was
mainly the eastern American (called Yankee at the time, even though he need not
have come from New England) who introduced cheese manufacture to Wisconsin.
1953] Durand — Cheese Manufacturing Regions of Wis.
Ill
Cheese Manufacture During the '‘Wheat Period”
in Wisconsin
Wisconsin’s cheese production was 1,104,300 pounds during
1859. At this time the state was still in the midst of its wheat
boom; in fact the year 1860 witnessed the largest wheat crop
grown in the state (but not the largest acreage) . Thus, even dur¬
ing the wheat period of Wisconsin’s agricultural history the
farm-dairy manufacture of cheese was important, particularly
in the southeast. Settlers from Ohio, as well as from New York
and New England, were of importance in cheese manufacture.
John V. Robbins of the Town of Burke, Dane County, who had
migrated there from Cincinnati, exhibited a farm-dairy cheese
weighing 650 pounds at the Wisconsin State Fair of 1859, and
one weighing 1650 pounds at the Fair in I860.7 Many of the
cheese producers of the southeastern part of the state worked
cooperatively; neighbors “changed milk,” one making the cheese
one day and another the next out of the combined neighborhood
supply of milk.8 In fact, Koshkonong, Wisconsin, claims a “co¬
operative cheese factory” dating from 1848 or 1849, prior to the
establishment of the first cheese factory in the United States in
1851 in Oneida County, New York; it was, however, not the
actual forerunner of the cheese factory system, as was the Wil¬
liams factory of New York.
The entire setting of the settled portions of Wisconsin, during
the early period under discussion, was mainly that of a wheat
state on the frontier. Dairying and cheese-making, although im¬
portant over wide areas, was subordinated, except in a few
regions, to wheat culture. The state was a leading wheat pro¬
ducer during the 1850’s. By 1860 wheat occupied 15 per cent of
the cultivated land, and was grown on more than a million acres ;
during the Civil War Wisconsin was the “granary” of the North ;
Milwaukee in 1862 led all wheat markets of the World. In 1878
over two million acres of wheat were harvested, the top year in
acreage. However, the top in wheat production had been reached
on the smaller acreage of 1860 — nearly 30 million bushels. The
late 1860’s and 1870’s saw declining wheat yields. Soils had been
depleted by one-crop agriculture, chinch bugs had seriously
affected the crop of several years, and rusts, smuts, blight dis¬
eases, and winter-killing had taken tolls. In the ten years 1878
to 1887, wheat acreage declined from over two million to less
7 Charles L. Hill, John V. Robbins, Pioneer Agriculturist, Wisconsin Magazine of
History, Vol. 34, No. 4, Summer 1951, p. 231.
8 Benjamin H. Hibbard, The History of Agriculture in Dane County, Wisconsin,
Bulletin of the University of Wisconsin, No. 101, Madison, 1904, p. 158.
112 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
than one million, and in 1895 it was down to only 800,000 acres
in the entire state. The farmers of Wisconsin by this time could
not compete in wheat with the newer lands of the prairies far¬
ther west ; wheat declined in both actual acreage and in the per¬
centage of cultivated land it occupied, until it soon was down to
less than one per cent — the present situation.
Dairying became much more important in Wisconsin as wheat
declined ; the increased dairying added to, and built on, the foun¬
dation that had been made by some of the Eastern Americans
and a few foreign settlers, from the start of settlement. In other
words, while it is commonly said that “the state shifted from
wheat to dairying,” the shift was not made by the many indi¬
viduals and regions which had been important in cheese and
butter production from the first. The increase in dairying, and
in cheese manufacture, was owing to many reasons.9 Among
these were: (1) the environmental similarity to New York dairy
regions; (2) the fact that many settlers had possessed experi¬
ence in dairying during their youth on the farms of New York
and western New England; (3) recommendations made by many
persons of the Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment Station; (4)
the energy and enthusiasm of Governor Hoard, both officially and
unofficially; (5) the early start made in dairying by hundreds
of eastern settlers in their new homeland, many of whom had
prospered during the time their neighbors had been beset by
difficulties with wheat, — hence they served as examples to be
copied in their neighborhoods; (6) the presence, in compact
colonies, of Swiss in parts of southwestern Wisconsin and of
Germans along the lake shore north of Milwaukee, many of
whom, like the New Yorkers, had possessed dairy experience in
their homelands; and (7) numerous other reasons, prominent
locally. Negatively, as the shift was made from wheat, the Wis¬
consin farmers, owing to the environmental framework, could
not engage in the Corn Belt agriculture which was developing to
their south in Illinois.
Access to eastern markets was undoubtedly of great advantage
to Wisconsin as it shifted from wheat to dairying. The lake route
was utilized during the open season from the days of earliest
settlement. However, by the 1850’s and 1860’s through railroad
lines from Chicago to the East had been well established, and
trunk and branch lines reached practically all parts of settled
Wisconsin. The refrigerator railroad car had been perfected dur-
9 A detailed account of the rise in dairying- from the g-eographical viewpoint is
given in : Glenn T. Trewartha, The Dairy Industry of Wisconsin as a Geographic
Adjustment, Bulletin of the Geographical Society of Philadelphia , Vol. 23, 1925,
pp. 93-119.
1953] Durand — Cheese Manufacturing Regions of Wis .
113
in g the period of 1870 to 1875, and “through fast freight” service
was available. The railroads, anxious for business, promulgated
special rates. Beginning with 1874, it was possible to ship Wis¬
consin cheese to New York in refrigerator cars for $1.00 per
hundred pounds.10 After this date Wisconsin joined New York
in becoming an important exporter of cheese to Great Britain,
and Wisconsin cheese competed with New York cheese in the
cities of the Atlantic Seaboard.
The Development of Cheese Factories in Wisconsin
The first cheese factory in Wisconsin was built in 1864 at
Ladoga in Fond du Lac County by Chester Hazen, a transplanted
New Yorker. Other early factories were erected in Bear Valley,
Kichland County, and in the southeastern counties. Between 1864
and 1870 fifty- three American cheese factories were built. The
first Swiss cheese factory was built in 1870 near Monticello,
Green County, by Niclas Gerber, a Swiss immigrant, who had
previously spent several years making Limburger cheese in the
Mohawk Valley of New York.* 11 Following this year, the expan¬
sion in number of cheese factories was very rapid.
By the end of the nineteenth century several specialized cheese
regions had developed (Fig. 1). Wisconsin's cheese production
was 77,748,600 pounds, Ohio had been passed (1880) in produc¬
tion, Wisconsin had surpassed New York State in number of
cheese factories, and was about to pass that state in cheese pro¬
duction, and assume first rank in the nation — this occurred be¬
tween 1900 and 1910. By 1899, Wisconsin contained some 1,500
factories, located at rural crossroads — the central place to which
farmers delivered their milk ; of these 1,227 were making cheese
alone.12
10 Glenn T. Trewartha, The Green County, Wisconsin, Foreign Cheese Industry,
Economic Geography , Vol. 2, 1926, p. 302.
11 The relatively slow start of the Swiss cheese region in Wisconsin is shown by
the fact that the cheese production of Green County in 1859 was only 7600 pounds,
less than in 1849, while the state increase during these years was from 400,000 to
more than a million pounds. This is even further evidence that it was the Eastern
Americans rather than the “foreigners” who were the mainstay of the early indus¬
try in Wisconsin.
12 The Commissioner of Agriculture in Wisconsin lists 2,522 dairy manufacturing
plants operating in 1895-1896. Of these, 951 are listed as creameries, and 1,571 as
cheese factories, but no distinction is made of combined butter and cheese plants.
( Biennial Report of the Dairy and Food Commissioner of Wisconsin for the years
1895 -1896, Madison, 1896). The United States Census of 1900 credits Wisconsin
with 1,227 cheese factories making cheese only (see Table VII), and 60 combined
cheese and butter factories. The first listing made in Wisconsin, that of 1892, con¬
tains names of plants as cheese factories which were later listed as creameries.
These were apparently combined plants. The 1,571 cheese factories listed by the
state are seemingly more nearly correct in this case, and the Census figure of 1,227
is possibly too low.
114 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
The great increase in number of cheese factories, and in cheese
production in Wisconsin after 1870, was attendant upon many
favorable market factors. Among these were: (1) the increasing
market in the growing industrial cities of the Atlantic Seaboard
and the Great Lakes shorelands, and (2) the important (at that
time) overseas market in Great Britain, which was served mainly
by the cheese regions of New York and Wisconsin, although
Canada was a growing competitor during the 1880’s, and virtu¬
ally captured the entire British market by the late 1890’s. So
important was the British trade during this period that Wiscon¬
sin, like New York, received official complaints from England
whenever cheese was not of high quality, or when “filled cheese”
was shipped overseas.13
Regionalization of Wisconsin Cheese Regions to 1900
Cheese manufacture in Wisconsin was highly regionalized
(Fig. 1). Two main areas stood out by 1900 — (1) the lakeshore
counties north of Milwaukee, and (2) part of southwestern Wis¬
consin. Within these areas, and adjacent to them, however, there
were five well-developed cheese regions. These were based on (1)
location and (2) the type of cheese manufacturd — whether the
American cheddar cheese or a foreign variety, such as Swiss or
Limburger. The five regions were :
1. The American cheese region of the extreme southeast of
the state — Kenosha, Racine, Walworth, Waukesha, and
nearby counties. This was the core region of original
cheese manufacture based on Eastern American settle¬
ment.
13 An example, published in the First Annual Report, State Dairy and Food
Commissioner of Wisconsin, 1890, Madison, 1890, is the following — a letter from
seven members of the Liverpool Trade Association written on March 26, 1890, to
H. C. Thom, Dairy Commissioner of Wisconsin :
“Dear Sir : We desire to inform you that a committee of the undersigned has
been appointed by this Association to watch the interests of the cheese trade,
which are being seriously menaced by the continued increase in the manufacture
of the article known as ‘filled cheese.’ . . .
“The legitimate interests of the ‘Trade’ are seriously imperiled, and the reason¬
able expectation of the consumer disappointed, and we are clearly of the opinion
that the distribution of ‘filled’ cheese is disgusting to the British public with the
pure article, and that our Trade and mutual interests are in danger of suffering
a permanent and lasting injury.
“We are in communication with the Home Sanitary authorities, are placing the
matter before our Agricultural Government department, and members of the House
of Commons. . . .”
Of interest in the increasing awareness of Wisconsin in its position in cheese
manufacture was the reply, which pointed out that no filled cheese was being
manufactured in the state as of 1890, but admitted that some Wisconsin skimmed
milk was being hauled six miles into Illinois for filling. The “filling” of cheese was
usually with oleo oil ; in other words this was substituted for butterfat. New York
outlawed this practice during the 188 0’s, and Wisconsin soon followed suit with
the enactment of stricter dairy regulations.
1953] Durand — Cheese Manufacturing Regions of Wis.
115
2. The Brick cheese region of Dodge County, also in glaci¬
ated southeastern Wisconsin northwest of Milwaukee.
Although Brick cheese is classed as a “foreign” cheese, it
was actually developed in Dodge County in the late 1860’s
by John Jossi, a cheesemaker who was interested in per¬
fecting a type intermediate between Swiss and Lim-
burger.
3. The American cheese region of the eastern lakeshore
counties of Wisconsin. This extended from Milwaukee
north to Green Bay and out the Door Peninsula, and in¬
land to the Fox River Valley — Lake Winnebago country¬
side. The region centered on Sheboygan County. Much of
this area received the bulk of the early German settle¬
ment in Wisconsin,14 but had earlier a veneer of Eastern
Americans who preceded the Germans and other foreign
colonists — such as the Bohemians of parts of Manitowoc
County, Belgians in Kewaunee and Door counties, Lux-
emburgers in northern Ozaukee County, Dutch in south¬
eastern Sheboygan County, and others.
4. The Swiss and Limburger cheese region centering on the
Swiss colonies of Green County.
5. The American cheese region of the southwest. This was
north and northwest of the Swiss area, but contiguous
to it. Included in this region were parts of Iowa, Grant,
Richland, and Sauk counties.
In addition to the well-defined regions of cheese specialization,
cheese was manufactured in scattered locations in the Driftless
Area of western Wisconsin, and in the north-central area of de¬
veloping agriculture. This latter region, destined to become one
of Wisconsin’s leading cheese regions of the twentieth century
was beginning to be outlined in 1900, particularly by the increas¬
ing concentration of cheese factories in northwestern Wood,
northeastern Clark, and western Marathon counties (Fig. 1).
During this period, however, much of the region was still in its
lumber era, or was just emerging into the period of agricultural
development.
Wisconsin Cheese Regions at the Close of the
Nineteenth Century
The reasons for the locations and the type of product of the
cheese regions of Wisconsin are varied from place to place.
Although some are clear (i.e., transfer by New Yorkers of
i4 For a map of the main regions of German settlement in Wisconsin see Loyal
Durand, Jr., Dairy Barns of Southeastern Wisconsin, Economic Geography, Vol. 19,
1943, pp. 37-44.
116 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
American cheese production to southeastern Wisconsin and
knowledge of Swiss types of cheese by many Swiss colonists who
had had experience in the industry before they came to America)
others are more involved. Many factors entered the picture,
although they all operated under the general setting of a favor¬
able climatic, economic, and human environment. The present
paper does not purport to explain these ; the following summary
deals, rather, with the historical geography of the cheese regions
as they existed at the close of the nineteenth century. As in New
York, northeastern Ohio, and even in Europe at the time, cheese
manufacture in Wisconsin was carried on in highly specialized
regions. These did not include all of the dairy districts of the
state ; other regions, for example, specialized in the manufacture
of butter.
(1) The Southeastern American cheese region, at the close of
the century, had 72 cheese factories. Twenty of these were con¬
centrated in Jefferson and Walworth counties in the environs of
Whitewater. There were factories in the extreme southeast cor¬
ner of the state, at that time well beyond the outer limits of the
Chicago milkshed, and even in Milwaukee County. Unlike the
other cheese regions, this area likewise contained many cream¬
eries and was important in butter production, and, also unlike
other regions, it had passed its peak in number of factories. This
was apparently attained during the 1880’s. The peak cheese pro¬
duction of the extreme southeast was also attained during the
1880’s ; Kenosha County was higher in output at this time than
in 1900, and Walworth County, during 1885, produced 2% mil¬
lion pounds of cheese, and Jefferson over 3 million pounds, and
were fourth and third, respectively, in cheese manufacture
among Wisconsin counties — positions they had lost by 1900.
(2) The Dodge County Brick cheese region was highly local¬
ized, but overspread slightly into adjacent counties. Dodge
County alone contained 122 rural crossroads cheese factories,
many of them less than two miles from one another.
(3) The cool eastern lakeshore region north of Milwaukee led
Wisconsin as a region in numbers of factories and in cheese pro¬
duction. It contained well over 600 rural crossroads cheese fac¬
tories, and was the heart area for the production of American
cheese. Sheboygan County was the core of the region, and pos¬
sessed 136 cheese factories, or one factory for every 3.8 square
miles of area. Within the county, the marketing center of Ply¬
mouth, by the 1890’s, had superseded Little Falls and other New
York markets as the price-quoting center of the United States
American cheese industry, and was the headquarters of the
1953] Durand — -Cheese Manufacturing Regions of Wis . 117
Figure 1. Wisconsin Cheese Factories, 1896. At this time the counties of the
extreme southeast had passed their peak in number of factories. The East¬
ern Lakeshore American Cheese Region and the Green County Foreign
Cheese Region of the southwest were outstanding; note the extreme con¬
centration of cheese factories in both Sheboygan and Green counties. The
Dodge County Brick Cheese Region was contiguous with the Eastern Lake-
shore Region on the former’s northeast.
118 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
Figure 2. Wisconsin Cheese Factories, 1949. Note the absence of factories
in the old producing region of extreme southeastern Wisconsin, and the
northward and westward migration of Wisconsin’s cheese factories. Factory
densities in the Eastern Lakeshore American Cheese Region have declined
appreciably. On a county basis the present greatest density of factories is
now in Dodge County and in Green and immediately adjacent counties
(southwestern Dane, southeastern Iowa, and eastern Lafayette).
1953] Durand — Cheese Manufacturing Regions of Wis. 119
Cheese Board. Adjacent Manitowoc County possessed 111 cheese
factories, Fond du Lac County had 73, and Kewaunee 64. The
manufacturing region started immediately north of Milwaukee
and continued northward for over 150 miles, extending the entire
distance out the Door Peninsula between Green Bay and Lake
Michigan; Door County had 36 cheese factories, one even on
Washington Island off the northern end of the peninsula.
(4) The Swiss cheese region of southwestern Wisconsin, be¬
yond the glaciated territory, contained over 300 cheese factories.
Green County led Wisconsin on the county basis in number of
factories with 208; this was one cheese factory for every 2.8
square miles of area. The Swiss people of the region, frugal and
excellent farmers, were expanding outward from their original
locations; many of the farmers followed the custom of purchas¬
ing a farm for their sons upon the latter’s marriage. The Swiss
thus were moving into southwestern Dane and eastern Lafayette
counties, and “transporting” Swiss cheese manufacture with
them. By 1900 the six southwestern towns of Dane County had
been included in the Swiss cheese region, and 43 factories were
located here.15 The region of manufacture was also expanding in
other directions, including a southward movement into north¬
western Illinois.16 The Swiss region, located in the dissected
Driftless Area, had cheese factories on the crests of limestone
ridges as well as in sandstone (and some limestone) valleys. The
late O. E. Baker, during his work in Wisconsin, attempted to
correlate cheese manufacture with the limestone lands of the
uplands.17 Trewartha found no such correlation.18 A factor of
some importance in the spread was the continual arrival of
cheesemakers from Switzerland, each anxious to start his own
plant in the New World.
(5) Parts of the southwestern Driftless Hill lands of Wiscon¬
sin developed American cheese manufacture, particularly in Sauk
and Richland counties to the north and northwest of the Swiss
cheese region, and in parts of Iowa, Lafayette, and Grant coun¬
ties to the west. The Richland County area was one mainly of
Eastern and of Ohio settlement, the Sauk region of mixed east¬
ern American and German settlement. This region possessed
some 150 cheese factories in 1900. Iowa County, divided between
the American and the Swiss cheese regions, had 88.
15 Hibbard, op. cit., page 178, recognizes this localization as “social.” He also
attempts a climatic interpretation as a partial explanation of why Dane County,
consisting of 35 townships, had all but one of its cheese factories in this small
southwestern section.
16 Loyal Durand, Jr., Cheese Region of Northwestern Illinois, Economic Geography,
Vol. 22, 1946, pp. 24-37.
17 Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment Station, Bulletin 223, 1912.
18 Trewartha, op. cit., 1926, page 307.
120 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
(6) Lastly, cheese manufacture was developing in the east-
west band of newly settled territory across the north-central part
of the state. Here settlement followed the lumber period. During
the 1890’s this region, except locally, was still mainly in a semi¬
pioneering state. The sources of settlers were in the “old” lake-
shore counties to the southeast, such as Sheboygan and Manito¬
woc, or directly from Europe. No doubt some of the lakeshore
pioneers “transported” their interest in cheese manufacture
with them.1* Cheese factories entered the region as land was
cleared and devoted to stumpy pasture, then to hay and improved
pasture. Each factory helped materially in aiding farm improve¬
ment by providing a steady local market for the milk produced
by the cattle grazing on new clearings. Marathon and Clark
counties, destined later to become two of the leading cheese man¬
ufacturing counties of Wisconsin, had 13 cheese factories each in
1896.
Summary to 1900
Cheese manufacture was a firmly established subdivision of
the dairy industry of Wisconsin by 1900. The industry was
highly concentrated regionally, as in New York and elsewhere.
Rural cheese factories, located at country crossroads, were im¬
portant landscape features of the cheese regions, and were the
focal points for the daily early morning delivery of milk by the
farmers ; in the foreign cheese areas, during the warmer portions
of the summer, the factories received milk twice a day, after the
morning and evening milking, and cheese was made twice a day
during this season. Plymouth in Sheboygan County became the
marketing center for American cheese, and Monroe in Green
County the marketing center for the three main foreign varieties
manufactured in the state — Swiss, Brick, and Limburger. At the
close of the century the cheese regions of Wisconsin received
practically no competition from city urban markets or from
condenseries.
Cheese Manufacture in Wisconsin, 1901-1950
The cheese production of Wisconsin increased remarkably
during the half-century 1901-1950. Cattle increased in number
from one million to 2A/% million. Milk production per cow in-
19 For a more detailed study of part of this region see Loyal Durand, Jr., The
West Shawano Upland of Wisconsin : A Study of Regional Development Basic to
the Problem of Part of the Great Lakes Cut-Over Region, Annals Association
American Geographers, Vol. 34, 1944, pp. 135—163.
1953] Durand— Cheese Manufacturing Regions of Wis. 121
creased to more than 5,500 pounds of milk per year (national
average 4,500). Thus, although the state was invaded by the
urban milkshed of Chicago, became a source of milk for the
growing cities of Wisconsin, supplied fresh milk and cream to
many Eastern and Southern cities,20 became the leading producer
of condensed and evaporated milk, and continued as a large
butter manufacturer, the cheese industry was able to continue
and expand. Cheese production rose to 148 million pounds in 1910
(greater than New York State’s production had ever been), to
363 million pounds in 1925, and 561 million in 1950. Percentage¬
wise, Wisconsin’s largest share of the nation’s cheese production
was in both 1923 and 1927, each with 71.5 per cent. At present,
despite the large production, it is about half of the national out¬
put— reflecting the development of new cheese-producing regions
elsewhere.
The number of rural crossroads cheese factories in Wisconsin
reached a peak of 2,807 during 1922, and has declined steadily in
numbers since then. More than 1,000 new factories were built
between 1900 and 1918. However, by 1925 many factories began
to close, and others consolidated. Closed factories generally were
in the areas near the cities, and in their expanding milksheds,
and could not compete in price for milk with the urban distribu¬
tors. Others were forced out of production by the building of
condenseries in their neighborhoods. Consolidation began with
improved roads, with the advent of trucks for collection of milk
from a wider area, and with the concentration of manufacturing
operations in order to compete on a firmer basis with other types
of dairy plants. The Depression and later the World War II con¬
solidation hastened the elimination of marginal cheese factories.
By 1928 the total number of cheese factories was down to 2,400 ;
the figure dipped below 2,000 in 1937, then dropped steadily to
1,509 in 1945 and 1,313 in 1949 (Fig. 2). New multiple-purpose
plants have been constructed, many of them in villages rather
than at rural crossroads ; these are equipped to manufacture not
only cheese, but other dairy products, depending upon price con¬
ditions. The very fact that 1,313 plants produced half a billion
pounds of cheese in 1950, and that 2,807 factories of 1922 made
301 million pounds, tells the story of the increasing size of Wis¬
consin cheese factories. Although several hundreds of the one-
or two-man crossroads cheese factories remain in Wisconsin’s
cheese regions, and are a distinctive feature of the cultural land¬
scape, they are even now being further reduced in numbers as a
20 Loyal Durand, Jr., Recent Market Orientations of the American Dairy Region,
Economic Geography , Vol. 23, 1947, pp. 82-40.
122 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
result of continuing trends toward consolidation of the industry
into larger central plants, employing several cheesemakers.21
The general movement of the cheese industry in Wisconsin
during the first fifty years of the twentieth century was north
and west (Fig. 2). As will be noted in the following regional
summary of cheese regions, all of the cheese areas outlined dur¬
ing the nineteenth century continued production, with the excep¬
tion only of the extreme southeast — the earliest producing
region, and the one closest to Milwaukee and Chicago. The other
cheese regions, however, expanded northward, even into the
Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and westward, to the Mississippi
River in extreme southwestern Wisconsin. As a consequence of
this expansion the cheese regions of southeastern Wisconsin in
general attained their maximum number of cheese factories early
in the century and even before this in the very southeastern
counties; their decline had begun before the state maximum of
2,807 factories was reached. The cheese regions farther north
and west reached their maximum number of factories somewhat
later, and the more northern areas were ones which witnessed
expansion in the total number of rural crossroads cheese facto¬
ries even into the 1930’s.
The cheese regions of Wisconsin, during the 1901-1950 period,
retained their identity as “American” and “foreign” regions. At
the end of the period the state was manufacturing just about half
of all the American cheese made in the United States. Its per¬
centage of foreign cheese was much higher, although the total
poundage of these varieties is far less than that of American
cheddar cheese. The Wisconsin Swiss cheese region makes two
thirds of the national total of Swiss cheese. The state percentage
of United States manufacture of Brick cheese is about 90, it hav¬
ing declined slightly from a top of 94.2 per cent in 1983. Wis¬
consin produces 95 per cent of the Muenster cheese, between a
half and two thirds of the Limburger cheese, half of the Italian
cheese, and 20 per cent of the Cream cheese of the country. For
other varieties the combined output is 40 per cent of the national
total ; these include Neufchatel, the Dutch types — such as Edam,
21 The United States Census of Manufactures, 1947, does not shed much light on
the size of cheese factories, in terms of employment, because the smallest listed
classification is that of 1-19 employees. On this basis over 97 per cent of Wiscon¬
sin’s cheese factories possessed 19 employees or less. Actually many of the factories
may have only one or two cheesemakers, and perhaps employ five or six truckers
to collect and deliver the milk, and then return the cans to the farm. There is still
some patron-delivery of milk, but it is declining. This is also the situation “in old
cheese regions’’ like New York, where 87 per cent of the cheese factories possess
19 or fewer employees. However, in “new cheese areas,” to which the industry
has been moving, there are very large cheese factories ; thus in Tennessee, 60 per
cent of the cheese factories have between 20 and 99 employees.
1953] Durand — Cheese Manufacturing Regions of Wis. 123
Gouda, and Leyden- — types such as Primost, Bond Ost, and Nord
Ost, the Blue Mold cheeses, French cheeses, Tilsit cheese, and
others. In addition, a “secondary” production of process cheese
occurs in the cheese regions.22 The raw material for this is
already-manufactured natural cheese. The cheese is ground up
and processed at 16 large plants, located in cities of the cheese
regions, and built next to railroad facilities for the national dis¬
tribution of their product. Their location is thus urban, rather
than at rural crossroads or in villages ; Green Bay possesses four
processing plants, Plymouth has two, Monroe and Manitowoc
one each and the other eight are in smaller cities.
Wisconsin Cheese Regions, 1901-1950
There were seven cheese regions in Wisconsin during all or
part of the period 1901-1950. One went out of production early
in the century. Two northern ones developed mainly during the
period, following the settlement and development of parts of the
northern half of the state. The five older regions, as discussed in
the section previous to 1900, will be described first.
(1) The old Southeastern American cheese region, at the
southeastern corner of the state, succumbed to the inroads of
condenseries early in the twentieth century, and later the few
remaining cheese factories were overwhelmed by the great areal
increase of the Chicago, Milwaukee, Racine and Kenosha milk-
sheds. Today the former cheese region is the heart of the out-of-
state shipments of market milk to Chicago. During 1950, Keno¬
sha, Racine, and Walworth counties shipped over 311,000,000
pounds of milk out-of-state; this was 30 per cent of the total
shipped from Wisconsin. Despite this, some condenseries still
remain, but the cheese industry is unable to face the severe eco¬
nomic competition, and the high prices paid for market milk,
and only a few factories persisted even into the 1920’s.
(2) The Dodge County Foreign (Brick) cheese region con¬
tinued its intensive cheese production. This region “overflows”
slightly into adjacent counties, but Dodge County alone is the
largest cheese producing county in Wisconsin, and in the entire
United States. The 1950 cheese production of Dodge County,
which contains only 897 square miles, was 42,552,000 pounds.
This county total exceeded the cheese production of every state
except New York, Illinois, Missouri, Minnesota, Ohio and Ten¬
nessee; it was approximately the same as the two last-named.
22 These figures are not included in the total of cheese production, because the
cheese which is processed has already been recorded as natural cheese.
124 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
The Dodge total in 1950 was composed of 14,546,000 pounds of
Brick and Muenster cheese, 5,097,000 pounds of American
cheese, 3,452,000 of Italian types, 15,000,000 or more pounds of
Cream cheese, and the balance of other types. Originating as a
Brick cheese region, the appellation with respect to the region
is no longer strictly correct ; other types are now more important
in quantity. Brick cheese was perfected within the county in the
late 1860’s, however, and has continued to be important ; the ad¬
vent of other varieties in the county manufacture has been owing
mainly (1) to difficulties in the Brick cheese market since the
1940’s, and (2) the establishment, by a large national distribu¬
tor, of a Cream cheese factory to service the midwestern markets
with packaged cream cheese.
The manufacture of Brick and Muenster cheese is quite wide¬
spread in the region. Other types are more concentrated in their
regional distribution, largely owing to individual choice and to
establishment of local marketing and manufacturing operations.
Beaver Dam is the center of Cream cheese manufacture. May-
ville and its environs have an important Dutch-type-of-cheese
industry. Rolling Prairie is the regional center for the French
types. Campbellsport in adjacent Fond du Lac County is an im¬
portant focus for the Italian types, but many crossroads factories
in Dodge County contribute to this total.23
Dodge County, at the close of the first fifty years of the twen¬
tieth century, had 118 cheese factories, the greatest county total
in Wisconsin. It was one of two southern Wisconsin counties with
as many factories as in 1896, but had experienced a decline in
numbers from the peak of 170 in 1922. At one time there were
as many as three cheese factories in certain single rural square
miles.24 The regional total of cheese factories in the entire region
today is about 165.
(3) The Eastern Lakeshore American Cheese Region inten¬
sified its production during 1901-1950. The region contained
nearly 1,000 rural crossroads cheese factories in 1920. Factory
densities per unit of area were very high ; there was one cheese
factory for every 4.2 square miles of area in Sheboygan County,
for every 5 square miles of Manitowoc, 6.2 of Fond du Lac, and
6.7 of Kewaunee. During this period the region made over one
third of Wisconsin’s cheese. The names “Plymouth” and “She¬
boygan” had replaced the names “Little Falls” and “Herkimer”
23 Loyal Durand, Jr., Italian Cheese Production in the American Dairy Region,
Economic Geography, Vol. 24, 1948, pp. 217—230.
24 See maps in Loyal Durand, Jr., Cheese Region of Southeastern Wisconsin,
Economic Geography, Vol. 15, 1939, pp. 283-292, especially the map on page 290.
1953] Durand — Cheese Manufacturing Regions of Wis. 125
as this Wisconsin region took over the national quotations and
quality market formerly held by the New York city and county.
Some 450 cheese factories now constitute the operating units
of the region. Cheese output remains at a third of the state total.
Within the region the centers of manufacturing and marketing
have shifted northward. This is partly because of (1) encroach¬
ments on the south by Milwaukee milk distributors, (2) because
of the growth of fresh-milk markets in the lakeshore and Fox
River Valley cities, (3) owing to the advent of condenseries in
the region (built there by large national corporations desiring
to locate their plants in very large milk-producing areas),25 and
(4) because of increased cheese production after 1910 in the
farming regions north of Green Ray, following the lumber and
cut-over period.26 Plymouth retains its importance as a market¬
ing, processing, and wholesaling center, as the location of the
Cheese Board, and as the source of price quotations in the
national marketing of American cheese, but it is no longer the
geographical center of this cheese region. This location has been
taken over by Green Bay with the northward advance of cheese
manufacture ; as a result Green Bay today possesses processing,
wholesaling, and warehouse facilities, and is the site of several
major national distributors of cheese.
(4) The Green County Foreign cheese area includes all of
Green County, southwestern Dane and southeastern Iowa coun¬
ties to its north, eastern Lafayette County to its west, and north¬
ern Stephenson County, Illinois, to its south. It has also ex¬
panded, during the 1940’s, in a proturberance westward across
Lafayette, and into Grant County, the southwestern county of
Wisconsin. Green County is the core of the region, and manu¬
factured 17,000,000 pounds of Swiss cheese in 1950, or just about
40 per cent of the total of the Wisconsin portion of the region.
Green zealously guards its name for Swiss and Limburger
cheese; like Herkimer County, New York, in the past, it has
obtained a name for quality. Other forms of dairy manufacture
(several condenseries have been built because of the very large
milk production per unit of area) are tolerated but are not ex¬
actly welcomed. Monroe, Mount Horeb (Dane County) and some
25 One large national chain-store organization built a condensery in the city of
Manitowoc, said to be now the “largest” condensery in the world. During 1950,
Manitowoc County produced 16 per cent of all the evaporated and condensed milk
of Wisconsin, and a little over 3 per cent of that of the entire United States.
Cheese production in the county dropped from 21 million pounds in 1933 to 15
million in 1950, and cheese factories declined in numbers during the same period
from 104 to 59.
26 For example, between 1896 and 1920 Shawano County cheese factories in¬
creased in number from 20 to 101, Oconto from 4 to 69, and Marinette from 2 to 40.
126 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
other towns conduct an annual cheese festival and elect a Cheese
Queen; local Chambers of Commerce stress the industry. Every
effort is made to aid the cheese industry and to advertise it
nationally.
The expansion of the Swiss cheese region has been in part
through out-movements of the sons of farmers of Swiss ancestry.
A high percentage of the Swiss remain on farms, and buy out
neighboring farmers. In large part, however, the expansion has
come through the “migration” of Swiss cheesemakers, who move
outward, yet who do not wish to be too far from their “regional
capital” and center of the industry at Monroe. The region has
received a constant influx of cheesemakers from Switzerland,
many of whom have served apprenticeships on the Alpine upland
pastures. A third factor in the movement has been the relatively
high price for Swiss cheese. By no means are all of the cheese¬
makers Swiss, although the majority are; the Flanagan and
Olson Cheese Company, for example, manufactures Swiss cheese
in Green County near Argyle. The farmers who supply milk to
the factories are mainly of Swiss descent near the core of the
region, but are of Norwegian, Irish, German, and early Amer¬
ican ancestry in other localities.
The production of Swiss cheese in 1950 in Wisconsin set an
all-time new record; the output of 53,260,000 pounds increased
by 5,000,000 pounds over 1949. Of the state total, Green County
contributed 32 per cent, Lafayette 24, and Dane 12; the region
contributed 83 per cent (Barron County in northwestern Wis¬
consin made 12 per cent). Monroe is the main marketing center,
and Brodhead, also in Green County, a secondary center.27
The increased Swiss cheese production has been attained by
fewer, but larger factories than in the past, although like lake-
shore Wisconsin the rural crossroads factory is still a very im¬
portant feature of the regional scene, and more than 150 still
operate. The 208 Green County factories of 1896 had been re¬
duced in number to 157 by 1922, exactly 100 by 1941, and 87 at
present. The number in other counties has also decreased. Some
very large factories, employing several cheesemakers, have been
constructed in Monroe and other communities, and draw sup¬
plies of milk from greater distances than the small rural plants.
They manufacture Swiss cheese throughout the year, while the
smaller crossroads factories make Brick cheese during the winter
27 Only Wisconsin, Illinois and Ohio are important in the manufacture of Swiss
cheese. Actually the Illinois output is just south of Green County, mainly in
Stephenson County, and is regionally a part of the Monroe and southwestern Wis¬
consin area. The Ohio Swiss cheese region is the second regionally in the nation,
but Illinois is the second state in production.
1953] Durand — Cheese Manufacturing Regions of Wis. 127
if the daily supply of milk is not adequate for a 230-pound wheel
of Swiss cheese.
Limburger cheese factories are scattered throughout the Green
County region. Wisconsin in 1950 manufactured 3,479,000
pounds of Limburger, more than half the nation’s total.28 Monroe
is the marketing center for this variety. It is, in fact, the “for¬
eign cheese center,” and quotes prices on Swiss, Brick, and Lim¬
burger cheese.
(5) The American Cheese Region of Southwestern Wisconsin
merges on its east and south with the Swiss cheese region. Some
200 cheese factories constitute the operating units of the region.
Of these, 74 are north of the Wisconsin River in the rugged
Driftless Area hill lands of Sauk, Richland, Vernon, and Craw¬
ford counties; approximately 140 American cheese factories are
south of the river, in the rugged north-facing escarpment lands
in northern Iowa and Grant counties, and on the gently rolling
back slope of Military Ridge in southwestern Iowa, western La¬
fayette, and southern Grant counties. Boscobel, Blue River, and
one or two other towns serve as marketing and wholesaling cen¬
ters ; there is not the regional dominance of any one market such
as is found in other Wisconsin cheese regions.
The eastern portion of the southwestern cheese region is “old
cheese country,” and was well established before the turn of the
century. The western portion, next to the Mississippi River in
Crawford and Grant counties is “newer cheese country,”-— the
cheese industry has expanded westward to the Mississippi, much
as it has expanded northward in other parts of Wisconsin.
Cheese production in Crawford and Grant counties has increased
steadily; it gained by nearly 50 per cent in Crawford between
1940 and 1950, and by almost 150 per cent in Grant. Grant
County, by 1950, had become the third American cheese county
in Wisconsin, with a production of 24,315,000 pounds, and the
fourth county in total cheese production— 28,000,000 pounds.29
Finally (6 and 7), there are two cheese regions in Wisconsin
which have developed mainly during the present century.
(6) The North-Central American Cheese Region is located (1)
north of the Central Sand Plain of the state, and (2) south of
the northern cut-over and forest region. The heart of the region
28 Only Wisconsin, New York, and Illinois are important in production of Lim¬
burger cheese. The Illinois manufacture is immediately south of Green County,
Wisconsin, and the regional situation parallels that of Swiss cheese (see foot¬
note 27).
29 Dodge, Clark, Marathon, Grant. In large part, of course, these are high on a
county basis because of their large area, although Dodge heads the list on any
basis.
128 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
is the heavy soil area (Colby Silt Loam and similar soils) of
Marathon, Clark, and northern Wood counties. The pioneer and
the cheese factory came to the region almost together. As new
land was sold, the farmers utilized the land as stumpy pasture;
as more land was cleared permanent pastures and hayfields fol¬
lowed. A cheese factory furnished a local market for milk. As
more cattle were added to the farms of the region, the cheese
factory expanded its production. A small crossroads cheese fac¬
tory proved ideal under these “pioneer” conditions; the factory
furnished an outlet for milk, provided the surrounding farmers
with a monthly cash income, and manufactured a product which
could withstand shipment from the region.
The North-Central Cheese Region was developed following a
lumber period. It was settled mainly by colonies of Europeans —
Germans, Poles, and others. Its early cheesemakers were Amer¬
ican-trained, and were often graduates of cheesemaking courses
(such as the Short Course at the University of Wisconsin), or
American cheesemakers from southern Wisconsin who had
served apprenticeships, and who themselves “migrated” north¬
ward. A regional product developed in this new area is the Colby-
style American cheese, which differs slightly in its moisture con¬
tent from the “normal” American cheese.
The North-Central Cheese Region was settled in only a few
localities by 1900. In 1896 Marathon County possessed but 13
cheese factories, Clark had 13, and Wood 14. Between this year
and 1922 the region was largely settled, and it witnessed the con¬
struction of 340 cheese factories. In the latter year Clark County
had a total of 135 factories, Marathon 157, and Wood 64. Thus
in a short quarter of a century the region attained its greatest
number of factories. In line with the trend elsewhere in Wiscon¬
sin, the number has now been reduced to a total of 155 in the
three-county area, plus a few additional in adjacent counties
which are partly included in the region.
The late start of the North-Central Cheese Region, compared
to older southern Wisconsin, is reflected in production figures.
Marathon County produced only 51,000 pounds of cheese in 1895.
The production expanded with settlement; it reached a million
pounds in 1904, 10,000,000 in 1914, and 25,000,000 in 1924. Clark
County followed an almost identical pattern in years and quan¬
tity. After 1925 the region was almost entirely settled and devel¬
oped; in 1950 these two counties, each producing 36,600,000
pounds of cheese, stood tied for second and third among Wis¬
consin counties (after Dodge) in cheese manufacture. Practically
all of the product is American cheese.
1953] Durand — Cheese Manufacturing Regions of Wis. 129
(7) The Northwestern American and Foreign Cheese Region
lies in Barron, Polk, Dunn, and St. Croix counties. Like the
North-Central Region it is mainly a development of the present
century. This region does not have the closely-spaced cheese fac¬
tories, even today, possessed by Wisconsin’s other cheese regions.
It is actually a dual area so far as American and Foreign product
is concerned; the manufacture of Swiss, Italian, and American
cheese is important, and the region actually constitutes the sec¬
ond cheese region of the state in the production of Swiss cheese.
Individual factories specialize in one of the types. The northward
migration of several Swiss cheesemakers from Green County to
Barron County to found their own factories explains in part the
origin of the Swiss industry. One of the Italian cheese companies,
originally located at Lake Nebagamon in the cut-over country of
Douglas County, south of Lake Superior, built several factories
in the farming regions of the Northwestern Cheese Region when
their needs for milk outgrew that which could be supplied by the
farmers of the cut-overs. The American cheese industry of the
region antedates the foreign types, it having originated during
the 1890’s in the southern, settled portions of that time, mainly
the St. Croix County part.
Summary
Wisconsin now produces half a billion pounds of cheese annu¬
ally. This is half of the production of the United States. Abso¬
lutely, the manufacture of American cheddar cheese is the most
important subdivision of the industry, but relatively the state’s
manufacture of foreign types of cheese is a greater percentage
of the national total of these types.
The centers of cheese production in Wisconsin have shifted
north and west from southeastern Wisconsin, the region to which
early settlers from New York and New England first introduced
the industry. Seven main regions of specialization in cheese man¬
ufacture have characterized Wisconsin; six remain in produc¬
tion. In gross form, the combined cheese regions of today form
a crescent in the state, with the horns in the southwest and
northwest, and the body along the eastern lakeshore. The cres¬
cent of cheese manufacture includes very diverse terrain; part
of it is in the rugged sedimentary Driftless Area; part is in
smoother Driftless Area; a large share is in glaciated eastern
Wisconsin; and some lies over the crystalline rock areas of the
north-center, in glaciated countryside of both new (Wisconsin)
and old glacial drift, and also in some of the unglaciated territory
of this section.
130 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
Cheese production is of such importance in the cheese regions,
and so of the state, that national fame for cheese has been
attained. So important is the industry that, although greatly con¬
centrated in the specialized cheese regions, there is at present
some cheese manufacture in 60 of the 71 counties of Wisconsin.
All of the main geographic divisions of the state engage in the
industry in some degree, and moderate manufacture is carried
on even in the Central Sand Plain of the state, and in the North¬
ern Cut-Over and Forest Region. However, despite the wide¬
spread manufacture, the cheese industry, as formerly, remains
highly concentrated in specialized regions so far as the bulk of
production is concerned.
THE MEMBRACIDAE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF
WISCONSIN ARBORETUM1
Clifford J. Dennis and Robert J. Dicke
During the summer of 1950, a survey of the adult Membra-
cidae was made at the University of Wisconsin Arboretum. Cer¬
tain species of the Membracidae or “tree-hoppers” are of impor¬
tance as pests of agricultural crops, although the family is a
large one comprising many “non-economic” forms. The purpose
of this study was to determine the seasonal incidences and habi¬
tats of the Membracids in a restricted but diversified area such
as in the Arboretum. A record was also taken of the plants on
which Membracids were collected. No attempt was made to deter¬
mine the reason for the insect’s presence on a particular plant.
Procedure . Weekly collections were made from May 12 to
November 16 in selected ecological areas. These areas are indi¬
cated in Fig. 1, and were as follows :
General Description Areas
Abandoned apple orchard . . A
Sand prairie . . . B
Oak opening’s . . C,D
Horticultural area . . . . . E
Black locust . . F,G,H
High prairie . . . . . . I
Low orairie . . . J
Marsh . . . K,L
Aspen . . . M
Cottonwood-aspen swamp .............................. N
Oak-hickory . . 0,P
Willows . . . Q
Collections were made by means of a sweeping net. The sam¬
pling procedure was not designed to demonstrate numbers of the
narticular species.
Results and Discussion. Fifty species of Membracids were col¬
lected during the summer of 1950. These species and the plants
on which they were collected are listed in Table 1. The prefer¬
ence of Membracids for oaks was apparent. On white oak, 26
species were collected, while 29 species were taken from black
oak and bur oak. Of the 50 species collected, 36 belong to the
tribes Telamonini and Smiliini which in general are tree-inhabit-
1 The co-operation of the University of Wisconsin Arboretum Committee is
acknowledged for their encouragement of this study and the use of their facilities,
and for permission to reproduce the map used in Fig. 1.
131
132 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
in g, preferring oak. The relatively large numbers of species
which were collected in the Horticultural and Cottonwood —
aspen swamp areas reflect the presence of oak trees.
A number of species were collected from economically impor¬
tant crop plants. For example, eight species occurred on sweet
clover and three on apple. A knowledge of collection records
from wild hosts for economically important species is often an
important factor in control. Stictocephala bubalus, for example,
is an important pest of orchard crops. In addition to apple, this
species was found on sweet clover, haw, American elm, golden-
rod, nettle, and wild plum.
The seasonal incidences of the Membracids are summarized in
Table 2. These data indicate that certain groups are variable in
their occurrence. The Smiliini, for example, were the first adults
to appear and uniformly occurred only during the spring and
early summer. Seasonal incidence may indicate the overwinter¬
ing habits of some species. Adults of Entylia bactriana and
Pubilia concava, for example, appeared briefly early in spring
although their principal occurrence was during late fall. Over¬
wintering in the adult stage was indicated for these species.
Generally, males of all species appeared earlier than females but
did not persist as long.
The numbers of Membracid species collected in each of the
habitats studied are indicated below.
Number of
Habitat Species
Abandoned apple orchard . 4
Sand prairie . 0
Oak openings . 35
Horticultural area . 28
Black locust . 8
High prairie . 3
Low prairie . 1
Marsh . 9
Aspen . 0
Cottonwood-aspen swamp . . . . . 13
Oak-hickory . 35
Willows . 0
Summary
1. A survey of the Membracidae was made at the University
of Wisconsin Arboretum during the summer of 1950 to deter¬
mine the number of species present, their seasonal incidences,
habitats and plants on which they may be collected.
2. Fifty species of Membracids were collected. These were
principally taken from oak, although many other plants harbored
Lelgend
Path - p -
Planting Boundary -ip
Indian Mounds «3r
Service. Drive - s -
Fine Lane - F -
Boundary - - -
Structures ■
Marsh *
Ponds jgm ho-nee
COLLECTI NG
AREAS
..
1953] Dennis & Dicke — Membracidae of U. W. Arboretum 133
them. Studies on seasonal incidences have indicated the probable
overwintering habits of two species.
3. Relatively few of the species studied were of economic im¬
portance as pests of agronomic crops. However, all species may
be considered of potential importance to the agriculturist, and
fundamental information on their biology and habits should be
known. Of the economically important species such as the Buffalo
Treehopper (Stictocephala bubalus) information was gained in
respect to habits and plants harboring the species under uncul¬
tivated conditions.
TABLE 1
Membracid Species and Plants on Which They Were Collected
Subfamily Membracinae
Campylenchia latipes (Say)
Sweet clover, goldenrod, wild sunflower, red clover, giant ragweed,
small ragweed, black oak, nettle, alfala
Enchenopa binotata (Say)
Black locust sweet clover, black oak
Subfamily Smiliinse
Tribe Polyglypb ni
Entylia baciriana Germar
Giant ragweed, goldenrod
Pubilia concava (Say)
Giant ragweed, wild sunflower, nettle, white oak, bur oak, sweet
clover, compass plant
Vanduzea tosequata (Say)
Black locust
Tribe Smilimi
Cyrtolobus arcuatus (Emmons)
Black oak, bur oak, white oak
Cyrtolobus discoidalis (Emmons)
White oak, bur oak, black oak, shagbark hickory
Cyrtolobus fenestratus (Fitch)
Black oak, bur oak
Cyrtolobus fuliginosus (Emmons)
Bur oak, white oak, black oak, shagbark hickory, hazel, black locust
Cyrtolobus fuscipennis Van Duzee
Bur oaj<; white oak, black oak
Cyrtolobus griseus Van Duzee
Bur oak, white oak, black oak
Cyrtolobus helena Woodruff
Bur oak, white oak, black oak, swamp white oak, chinquapan oak
Cyrtolobus inermis (Emmons)
Bur oak, white oak, black oak
Cyrtolobus maculifrontis (Emmons)
Bur oak, white oak, black oak, swamp white oak
Cyrtolobus pallidifrontis (Emmons)
White oak, bur oak, shagbark hickory
134 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
TABLE 1 — (Continued)
Membracid Species and Plants on Which They Were Collected
Cyrtolobus pulchellus Woodruff
Black oak, bur oak, white oak
Cyrtolobus querci (Fitch)
White oak, bur oak, black oak
Cyrtolobus tuberosus (Fairmaire)
White oak, bur oak
Cyrtolobus vau (Say)
White oak, bur oak, black oak
Ophiderma definita Woodruff
White oak, bur oak, black oak
Ophiderma evelyna Woodruff
Black oak, white oak, bur oak, shagbark hickory
Ophiderma flava Goding
Black oak, white oak
Ophiderma grisea Woodruff
White oak, black oak, gray dogwood
Ophiderma pubescens (Emmons)
Black oak, white oak, bur oak
Ophiderma salamandra Fairmaire
White oak, bur oak, black oak, shagbark hickory, smooth sumac
Xantholobus intermedius (Emmons)
Black oak
Xantholobus lateralis Van Duzee
White oak, bur oak
Xantholobus muticus (Fabricius)
Black oak, white oak, bur oak
Smilia camelus (Fabricius)
Black oak, bur oak
Tribe Telamonini
Archasia belfragei Stal
Bur oak
Archasia galeata (Fabricius)
Black oak
Carynota mera (Say)
Shagbark hickory
Glossonotus crataegi (Fitch)
Haw
Telamona decorata Ball
Bur oak, white oak, black oak
Telamona maculata Van Duzee
Bur oak
Telamona monticola (Fabricius)
Bur oak, black oak
Telamona spreta Goding
Bur oak, black oak
Telamona tiliae Ball
Bur oak, white oak, black oak, haw, hackberry
Telamona tristis Fitch
Hazel
1953] Dennis & Dicke — Membracidae of U. W. Arboretum 135
TABLE 1 — (Continued)
Membracid Species and Plants on Which They Were Collected
Telamona westcotti Goding
White oak
Thelia bimaculata (Fabricius)
Black locust
Tribe Ceresini
Acutalis tartarea (Say)
Goldenrod, giant ragweed
Spissistilus borealis (Fairmaire)
Sweet clover, apple, nettle, black locust, goosefoot, black cherry
Stictocephala albescens (Van Duzee)
Hazel, choke cherry
Stictocephala bubalus (Fabricius)
Sweet clover, apple, haw, American elm, goldenrod, nettle, wild plum
Stictocephala constans (Walker)
Goldenrod, sweet clover
Stictocephala diceros (Say)
Nettle, black raspberry
Stictocephala lutea (Walker)
Sweet clover, wild sunflower, shagbark hickory, bur oak, black oak,
white oak
Stictocephala taurina (Fitch)
Sweet clover, giant ragweed, small ragweed, apple, nettle, wild sun¬
flower, wild plum, wild grape, goosefoot, black locust
Tortistilus inermis (Say)
Sweet clover, wild sunflower, giant ragweed, small ragweed, red
clover
Seasonal Incidence of Membracidae Collected in the University of Wisconsin Arboretum1
136
Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
Seasonal Incidence of Membracidae Collected in the University of Wisconsin Arboretum'
1953] Dennis & Dicke — Membracidae of U. W. Arboretum 137
Seasonal Incidence of Membracidae Collected in the University of Wisconsin Arboretum
138
Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
TABLE 2 — ( Continued )
Seasonal Incidence of Membkacidae Collected in the University of Wisconsin Arboretum1
1953] Dennis & Dicke — Memhracidae of U. W. Arboretum 139
Seasonal Incidence of Membracidae Collected in the University of Wisconsin Arboretum1
140
Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
a
-c
$
u
a
"3
a
A
1
<0
TABLE 2 — (Continued)
Seasonal Incidence of Membracidae Collected in the University of Wisconsin Arboretum:
1953] Dennis & Dicke — Membracidae of U. W. Arboretum 141
"0 z
W o
c>~
^ o
8 S
c §
in
8.
C/5 JO
<u 13
£ £
£<£
X o
ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF EARTH SCIENCE AT
MILWAUKEE-DOWNER COLLEGE
Katherine Greacen Nelson
In March, 1951, Milwaukee-Downer College celebrated the
one-hundredth anniversary of the granting of the charter which
gives it the right to operate as an institution of higher learning
and to grant degrees. A month later, the Wisconsin Academy of
Sciences, Arts and Letters met on the campus, and it seemed to
be an appropriate time to take stock of the role science has
played at the college in that time. To cover the role of all the
sciences over a period of a hundred years, however, seemed too
broad a subject for a limited paper, and so the author has con¬
fined her investigation to her own fields of Geology and Geog¬
raphy.
This bit of research was really started in order to answer a
questionnaire from the Association of Geology Teachers, which
asked — among other things — when geology was first taught at
the college. As the files in the Museum did not reveal this in¬
formation, the old catalogues of both Milwaukee Female College
and Wisconsin Female College were investigated. Surprisingly
enough, both colleges list geology in their earliest catalogues, and
the teaching of it has been almost continuous throughout the
century. It must be admitted that at times this continuity was
maintained through close affiliation with a preparatory depart¬
ment, which is no longer a part of the college. But if we acknowl¬
edge that early relationship between the college and the semi¬
nary, Milwaukee-Downer can trace the history of the teaching
of the earth sciences back more than a hundred years.
The very first announcement of the new school that was to
open in the young city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on September
14, 1848 — Milwaukee Female Seminary — lists Geology among
the Middle Class studies. Geography was considered a prepara¬
tory study.
Three years later, under the influence of Catherine Beecher,
the Seminary was expanded and the advanced classes were
known as the Normal Institute, and a little later as Milwaukee
Female College. The college course was divided into three De¬
partments, each with a principal teacher. These were :
143
144 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
1. Mathematics and Natural Science.
2. Geography, History and Mental Science.
3. Language, Belles Lettres and Composition.
Geography was taught in all classes, and was under the super¬
vision of Mrs. Lucy Parsons, who had started the Seminary in
1848. Geology was taught by Mrs. Wilson, in the Department of
Mathematics and Natural Science. It was commenced in the third
term of the Middle Class, and continued in the Senior Class.
The course listings are the same for several years, although
the teachers changed frequently. Additional interest in the earth
sciences is evidenced in the catalogue for 1852-1853, which an¬
nounced that a Cabinet of Natural History had been commenced.
That marked the founding of the Museum. In order to add to this
Cabinet, as well as to the Library, there was organized in
November, 1855, the “Curious Society.”1 It was divided into sec¬
tions, and the one interested in geology was called the “Rockites.”
They learned about geology from Increase Lapham, engineer and
early investigator of Wisconsin’s geology and archeology, who
was the first president of the Board of Trustees of Milwaukee
Female College.
In 1863, S. S. Sherman became principal of the college, and
he took over the lectures on geology, which for many years con¬
tinued to be taught in the second term of the third or junior year.
Sherman put his own cabinet of minerals, fossils and shells at
the disposal of the class, and ordered Hall’s Great Geological
Charts and Guyot’s Mineral Charts. Dr. Lapham’s cabinet was
also available to the class, and continued to be so after Mr.
Sherman left the college, apparently taking his cabinet with him.
The catalogue of 1872-1873 states that a valuable cabinet of
Natural History was added that year. The next year Miss Har¬
riet E. Ohlen was teaching physical geography and geology, and
a half year of each was required. That is the year when Mrs.
Thomas A. Greene was first listed as a trustee. Her husband’s
geological collection was a valuable addition to the college much
later.
From 1874 on, physical geography was taught only in the
Seminary. The College continued to teach geology in the junior
year. The text listed in the 1874-1875 catalogue is Dana’s
Manual. This book, in its Fifteenth Edition, Revised, was being
used as the text in Mineralogy in 1951, Milwaukee-Downer’s
centennial year. The same catalogue notes two important occur¬
rences: the transfer of the Museum of Natural History to a
1 Kieckhefer, Grace Norton, The History of Milwaukee— Downer College, 1851-
1D51, Milwaukee-Downer College Bulletin, Series 33, No. 2, November, 1950, p. 96.
1953] Nelson — Earth Science at Milwaukee-D owner 145
special room; and the introduction by President Farrar of a
course for women patrons. A year later this became the Ladies'
Art and Science Class, which not only attended series of lectures
at the college, but which donated many valuable books to the
Library, and bought some of the early specimens, casts and
models for the Museum. Mrs. Greene was a member of this class.
The catalogues of these years note additions of ores to the
mineral collection. Field excursions, in connection with the sci¬
ence course, are mentioned.
William S. Barnard, Ph.D., held the position of Professor of
Natural History in 1877-1878. At this time, five cabinets were
purchased from Professor Henry A. Ward of New York, for in¬
struction in Lithology, Mineralogy, Geology, Osteology and
Zoology.
Beginning in 1880, geology was no longer required of all
students, but was considered an elective.
A drawing of the Natural History Room, in the catalogue of
1885-1886, is surprisingly similar to the ground-floor exhibit
room of the Museum today. The cases are the same, and some of
the specimens can be recognized. The resemblance is even more
striking in the photograph in the 1891 catalogue. These cata¬
logues state that there are optical lanterns for use in Geography,
History, Geology and Art lectures. The number of views for the
lanterns increased from 5,000 in 1886 to 10,000 the following
year.
Meanwhile, another college had been established at Fox Lake,
in 1855. This was known for many years as Wisconsin Female
College, but in 1889 the name was changed to Downer College,
out of gratitude to its benefactor, Judge Jason Downer. (It is
interesting to note that his wife was a member of the Ladies' Art
and Science Class of Milwaukee College.) Downer’s offerings and
requirements in regard to the earth sciences were similar to
those of Milwaukee College. Geography was taught in the Junior
or High School Division, and geology in the College or Senior
Division. Geology, known as Science 4, was taught in the first
semester of the senior year. There were four recitations a week.
Downer’s science club was called the Agassiz Society.
Miss Ellen Sabin, as president of Downer College, had been so
successful that the trustees of Milwaukee College approached her
with an offer. In 1895, the two colleges were combined. The
Downer faculty, students and equipment were moved to the Mil¬
waukee campus, and the institution became Milwaukee-Downer
College. President Sabin, herself, was interested in the teaching
of geography, and her large globe of the world is now housed in
146 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
the Greene Memorial Museum. Sabin Science Hall is named in
her honor.
At Milwaukee-Downer College, geology continued as an offer¬
ing in the first semester of the senior year. It was required in
the science course, and was an elective in the other courses. The
Agassiz Club continued for several years. The catalogue of 1896-
1897 stresses the importance that laboratory work and field trips
played in all the science classes. Trips to the Public Museum as
well as to the college museum are mentioned.
The college was moved to its present location in 1899. The
science classrooms and the museum were located on the third
floor of Merrill Hall. From 1900 to 1912, the catalogues continue
to describe the museum and its collections of minerals and fos¬
sils, but apparently geology was not taught in the college during
those years. Until 1911, however, the year in which the Seminary
and the College were separated, the high-school courses were
described in the college catalogue, and physical geography was
taught continuously there. It included a bit of physiography,
meteorology, mineralogy, astronomy and visits to the Public
Museum and to the Weather Bureau. In the later years of this
period, a study of the geology of Wisconsin formed a unit of this
inclusive course in earth science.
The years 1912-1913 mark the beginning of a new era for
earth science at Milwaukee-Downer. Thomas A. Greene, whose
wife had been one of Milwaukee College’s first women trustees,
and whose daughter, son and grandson have served as trustees
of Milwaukee-Downer, had accumulated one of the finest collec¬
tions of minerals and fossils in the middle west. Following his
death, the collection awaited disposal for several years. Then, in
1912, his daughter, Mrs. Horace A. J. Upham and his son,
Colonel Howard Greene, gave the collection to Milwaukee-
Downer College. Mrs. Upham also gave $10,000 toward building
a museum to house the collection. The Greene Memorial Museum
was completed in 1913, and dedicated that year, with Rollin D.
Salisbury as the principal speaker on the occasion. While the
Greene Collection occupied the main or upstairs floor of the new
building, the other specimens and cabinets of the college were
placed in a large room on the ground floor. A classroom was pro¬
vided for the new Department of Geology.
The story of the Museum and its additional collections is an¬
other one from this brief history of the teaching of the earth
sciences at the college. The history of the departments of Geology
and Geography since 1913 is much more complete than the
earlier development. This paper can only skim briefly over the
1953] Nelson — Earth Science at Milwaukee-D owner 147
years in which these departments have been staffed by Margaret
Louise Campbell, Olive J. Thomas, Carol Y. Mason, Esther Aber¬
deen, Elmer R. Nelson and Katherine F. Greacen, now Mrs.
Frank H. Nelson. Under their direction the courses offered in
both geology and geography have been enlarged and multiplied,
and the exhibits in the Museum have been made available to
many. Neither geology nor geography is a required course today,
but a good number of students continue to elect both. There are
not a great many girls who major in either at any college, but the
equipment and instruction are available at Milwaukee-Downer
for those who choose the earth sciences as their field.
Bibliography
1. Greacen, Katherine F. and Ball, John R. Studies of Silurian Fossils
in the Thomas A. Greene Memorial Museum at Milwaukee-Downer
College. Trans. Wis. Acad. Sciences , Arts and Letters, Vol. XXXVI,
1944, pp. 415-419.
2. Kieckhefer, Grace Norton. The History of Milwaukee-Downer Col¬
lege, 1851-1951. Milwaukee-Downer College Bulletin, Ser. 33, No. 2,
November, 1950.
3. Catalogues of:
Downer College
Milwaukee Female College
Milwaukee-Downer College
Wisconsin Female College
STRATIOMYIDAE OF WISCONSIN (DIPTERA)
Juanita Sorenson and C. L. Fluke*
The family Stratiomyidae is a relatively small one. Essig,
1942, estimated the species in the world at 1,200. These flies are
generally distributed throughout the world with the greatest
number of species in the Neotropical region.
Stratiomyidae are quite common in Wisconsin. There are
thirty-nine identified species representing sixteen genera in the
University of Wisconsin collection.
The adult Stratiomyidae, in general, fall into three easily rec¬
ognizable groups. The first group is medium to large, black flies
with yellow or greenish striped abdomens. These are the typical
“soldier flies.” The second group is small to medium sized, metal¬
lic flies with elongated abdomens ; the third group is small black
flies with telescoped abdomens which are rarely marked with
yellow.
The antennae are of two general types. The first type is conical
and has an arista ; the second type is elongated with a flagellum
and often terminating in a style.
The adult Stratiomyidae can always be recognized by the discal
cell which is located toward the fore margin of the wing with
four veinlets leading from the discal cell toward the hind margin,
but often one or two of these veinlets have disappeared or are
not easily visible.
In most species the eyes of the males are contiguous and those
of the females are widely separated. Occasionally the eyes are
separated in both sexes.
Stratiomyidae are commonly referred to in the literature as
being found on flowering bushes and shrubs in the same locali¬
ties as Syrphidae. In collecting around Madison in the summer of
1951, the black and yellow striped species were found commonly
on flowering plants ; the metallic groups were found most abun¬
dantly on foliage bushes in shaded areas, and the small black
flies were collected almost exclusively on the inside of windows
in old buildings. Usually the best collecting time on the windows
was in late afternoon when the windows were shaded.
Although the adult forms have been studied extensively, rela¬
tively little is known of the immature stages.
* University of Wisconsin.
149
150 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
Eggs that have been observed are usually in clusters lying
parallel to each other on the undersides of leaves or aquatic
weeds.
The larvae are aquatic, semi-aquatic or terrestrial in habitat.
They vary in length from four to forty millimeters and in color
from a dirty white to nearly black. The aquatic larvae usually
have a fusiform body with an elongated terminal segment. They
are often found in creeks and muddy streams where they feed on
micro-organisms. Many larvae of the subfamily Stratiomyinae
are aquatic.
The semi-aquatic larvae, often found in decaying organic
matter are less than one inch long and have nearly parallel sides
with blunt head and terminal segments. Many members of the
subfamily Sarginae belong to this group.
Terrestrial larvae are usually very small and are often found
under bark. All segments are about equal in length and have on
them long conspicuous setae.
Stratiomyidae larvae are distinguished from all other dipter¬
ous larvae because of a heavy deposit of calcium carbonate on all
body parts. This secretion is at times so thick that it obscures
the delicate larval parts.
The pupal stage is inactive and spent within the last larval
skin. Usually larval characteristics are in evidence in the pupa,
and can be seen through the pupal case.
The following keys and descriptions are based on specimens in
the collections of the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee Public
Museum, and J uanita Sorenson.
STRATIOMYIDAE OF WISCONSIN
Key to the Genera1
1. Abdomen with seven visible dorsal segments . 2
Abdomen with six or less distinct abdominal dorsal segments . 3
2. Scutellum four-spined . ACT IN A Meigen
Scutellum unspined . ALLOGNOSTA Osten Sacken
3. Antennae with an arista . . 4
Antennae without an arista; often terminating in a style . 5
4. Abdomen long and slender; often resembling a club . 6
Abdomen usually short and broad . 8
5. Four posterior veins all of which arise from the discal cell; medium
to large flies usually having black and yellow striped abdomens. . . 13
Three posterior veins; if four posterior veins, only three arise from
discal cell; small flies sometimes marked with yellow . 15
1 Modified from James and Curran.
1953] Sorenson & Fluke — Stratiomyidae of Wisconsin 151
6. Second segment of antennae produced finger-like into third segment
. . . . . . . . PTECTICUS Loew
Second segment of antennae not produced finger-like into third seg¬
ment . . 7
7. Anterior ocellus remote from the other two a distance greater than
the length of base of ocellar triangle ........... .S ARGUS Fabricius
Ocellar triangle equidistant . . MEROS ARGUS Loew
8. Metallic flies . . . . . 9
Non-metallic flies, usually black . . 10
9. Discal cell small; posterior veins weak and not extending to wing
margin; very small flies . MICROCHRYSA Loew
Discal cell normal; posterior veins strong and extending to wing
margin; medium-sized flies . CEPHALOCHRYSA Kertesz
10. Black flies strongly marked with yellow; four weak posterior veins
. . . . . . . OXYCERA Meigen
Wholly black flies; three strong posterior veins . 11
11. Antennae elongate . . . . . BERKSHIRIA Johnson
Antennae disc-like . 12
12. Dark brown spot on inside of antennae. .NEOPACHYG ASTER Austen
Antennae wholly light-colored . . . P ACHY G ASTER Meigen
13. Five-segmented flagellum, never forming a style; ratio of first seg¬
ment to second, 2:1 or more; large flies . 14
Six-segmented flagellum; fifth segment short and ring-like; sixth
segment set on an angle to rest . ODONTOMYIA Meigen
14. Face receding; scutellar spines located outside median third of scu-
tellar rim . STRATIOMY S Geoffroy
Face produced; scutellar spines weak and usually located at apex on
median third of rim . . . LABOSTIGMINA Enderlein
15. Face strongly produced to a snout . . NEMOTELUS Geoffroy
Face not strongly produced . EUPARYPHUS Gerstaecker
ACTINA Meigen
Actina viridis (Say)
Beris viridis Say, 1824, Long’s Exped. App., 368; 1859, Compl.
Works 1 :251.
Actina viridis James, 1939, Annals Ent. Soc. Amer. 32:548.
Male Head: Face and front dark metallic green with long,
stiff black hairs ; antennae black and elongate with terminal seg¬
ments forming a horn ; eyes separated by one-fifth the width of
head. Thorax: Entirely metallic green with long white hairs on
dorsum ; scutellum with four spines ; legs yellowish brown ;
stigma brown. Abdomen: Metallic green to brown; seven visible
dorsal segments.
Female Head: Similar; face and front shining metallic green
with only a few scattered white hairs; eyes separated by one-
152 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
third the width of head. Thorax and Abdomen same as male.
Length 3 to 5 mm.
Found commonly in Columbia and Dane Counties during May
and early June.
ALLOGNOSTA Osten Sacken
Key to the Species
1. Abdomen with yellowish transparent areas in center of tergites
. . . fuscitarsis (Say)
2. Abdomen with tergites uniformly black or bronze, .obscuriventris (Loew)
Allognosta fuscitarsis (Say)
Beris fuscitarsis Say, 1823, Journ. Acad. Sci. Philadelphia, 3:29,
6:155.
Allognosta fuscitarisis James, 1939, Annals Ent. Soc. Amer.
32:544.
Male Head: Face and front black and densely covered with
silvery pubescence ; antennae elongated with basal segments
yellow, terminal segments black; eyes contiguous. Thorax: Dor¬
sum black with white hairs; legs yellow to brown; wings with
definite brown stigma. Abdomen: Black with yellow transparent
areas in middle of tergites ; seven visible dorsal segments.
Female Head: Face black with dense silvery pubescence;
front black with two sclerites above antennae outlined with sil¬
very pubescence; eyes separated by a distance one-third the
width of head. Thorax: Dorsum black with yellow pile; pleura
black to brown.
Widely distributed in Dane and Columbia Counties but found
also in Racine and Brown Counties. Most common during June
and July.
Allognosta obscuriventris (Loew)
Metoponia obscuriventris Loew, 1863, Centuria 4 :45.
Allognosta obscuriventris James, 1939, Annals Ent. Soc. Amer.
32:544.
Male Head: Face black; front black with silvery pubescence
along eye margin ; antennae elongate with basal segments brown,
terminal segments black; eyes contiguous. Thorax: Black with
scattered yellow hairs; wings hyaline without a stigma. Abdo¬
men: Uniformly bronze tergites; seven visible dorsal segments.
Female Head: Face and front black with two sclerites above
antennae outlined with silvery pubescence.
Collected commonly in Fond du Lac, Waupaca, Dane and
Columbia Counties during June and July.
1953] Sorenson & Fluke — Stratiomyidae of Wisconsin 153
ODONTOMYIA1 Meigen
Key to the Species
(Modified from James)
FEMALES (Eyes widely separated)
1. R-m cross vein present . . . . . 4
R-m cross vein absent . . . . 2
2. Two yellowish vittae on disc of thorax . . . 3
Disc of thorax entirely black . . . vertebrata Say
3. Face prominent below base of antennae . . . trivittata (Say)
Face receding below base of antennae . . truquii Bellardi
4. Femora black; apices often yellowish . interrupta Latreille
Femora yellow (or yellowish) . 5
5. Pile beneath anterior basitarsi as long or longer than width of segment 6
Pile beneath anterior basitarsi less than the width of the segment. ... 7
6. Face tuberculate . . pilimana Loew
Face receding below antennae . borealis James
7. Abdomen black with interrupted yellow bands on posterior edges of
tergites 2, 3, and 4 . pubescens Day
Abdomen green or yellow in ground color with median black stripe .... 8
8. Face yellow (or dark reddish yellow) . 9
Face black . . . . virgo (Wiedemann)
9. Face yellowish with dark ocellar triangle and a dark spot on each side
of front . cincta Latreille
Face decidedly reddish with darker lines in sutures
. . . . hydroleonoides Johnson
MALES (Eyes contiguous)
1. R-m cross vein present . . . . . 4
R-m cross vein absent . . . . . . . 2
2. Face yellow (or yellowish) . 3
Face brown; oral margin black . vertebrata Say
3. Disc of thorax black with two yellowish spots . truquii Bellardi
Disc of thorax entirely black . trivittata (Say)
4. Femora black; apices often yellowish . . . interrupta Latreille
Femora wholly yellow (or yellowish) . 5
5. Pile underneath anterior basitarsi as long as or longer than width of
segment . 6
Pile underneath anterior basitarsi not as long as width of segment. ... 7
6. Face tuberculate . . . . . pilimana Loew
Face receding . borealis James
7. Face and front yellow . cincta Latreille
Face and front black . 8
8. Abdomen black with interrupted yellow bands on posterior edges of
segments two, three and four . pubescens Day
Abdomen green or yellow with median black stripe . 9
9. Third antennal segment black; style blunt . virgo (Wiedemann)
Third antennal segment yellow; style sharp . hydroleonoides Johnson
1 Odontomvia Meigen, 1803 - - Eulalia Meigen, 1800.
154 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
Odontomyia vertehrata Say
Odontomyia vertehrata Say, 1824, Long’s Exped. App. 2:369;
1859, Compl. Works 1:251.
Odontomyia vertehrata Johnson, 1895, Trans. Amer. Ent. Soc.
22:260.
Male Head: Face and front brown; antennae brown. Thorax:
Black with yellow tomentum ; legs yellow ; r-m cross vein absent.
Abdomen: yellow to green with a narrow, median, black stripe.
Female Head: Face yellow with a brown spot on each side of
facial prominence ; front yellow with a brown, wavy, interrupted
transverse band above antennae and three brown markings below
ocellar triangle; ocellar triangle brown; occiput yellow. Thorax:
Black with scutellum, spines, and lateral margin behind the
suture yellow. Abdomen: Yellow with tergites having a wide
black transverse band.
Specimens collected in Dane and Walworth Counties during
June and July, and in Door and Vilas counties during late July
and early August.
Odontomyia interrupta Latreille
Odontomyia interrupta Latreille, 1811, Ency. Meth. 8:433, 434.
Odontomyia interrupta Johnson, 1895, Trans. Amer. Ent. Soc.
22:265.
Male Head: Face and front black with long white hairs; an¬
tennae black with sharply pointed styles. Thorax: Black with
scutellar rim and spines yellow; femora dark brown; r-m cross
vein present. Abdomen: Black with narrow yellow indentations
along posterior edges of tergites.
Female Head: Face black with long white hairs; front black
with yellow lateral stripes along frontal suture and a yellow spot
on each side of ocellar triangle.
Very common in Dane and Columbia Counties and found also
in Door, Brown, and Racine Counties. Most commonly collected
during late May and early June.
Odontomyia pilimana Loew
Odontomyia pilimana Loew, 1865, Centuria 6:27.
Odontomyia pilimanus Johnson, 1895, Trans. Amer. Ent. Soc.
22:263.
Odontomyia pilimana James, 1936, Annals Ent. Soc. Amer.
29:531.
Male and Female Head: Face black and tuberculate; front
black; antennae light brown to yellow with black styles. Thorax:
1953] Sorenson & Fluke — Stratiomyidae of Wisconsin 155
Black with white tomentum ; legs yellow ; pile under front basi-
tarsi as long or longer than width of segment; r-m cross vein
present. Abdomen: Yellow with narrow black median stripe
dorsally.
Distributed throughout Dane and Jefferson Counties during
July and August.
Odontomyia trivittata (Say)
Stratiomys trivittata Say, 1829, Journ. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phil.
6:160; 1859, Compl. Works 2:356.
Odontomyia trivittata Johnson, 1895, Trans. Amer. Ent. Soc.
22:259.
Male Head : Face tuberculate; face and front yellow; anten¬
nae brown. Thorax: Black with scutellum and lateral margin
yellow; legs yellow; r-m cross vein present. Abdomen: Yellow
with narrow median black stripe dorsally.
Female Head: Face tuberculate; face yellow with brown spot
on each side of facial prominence ; front yellow with brown inter¬
rupted transverse band. Thorax: Black dorsally with two pale
vittae ; wide lateral margins and scutellum yellow.
Dane County , July 5, 1951, 1 female (C. L. Fluke). Madison,
June 2, 1931, 1 female (C. L. Fluke) ; June 30, 1929, 1 male
(M. H. Doner) ; August, 1946, 1 female.
Odontomyia truquii Bellardi
Odontomyia truquii Bellardi, 1859, Saggio di Ditterol Messico
1:37.
Odontomyia truquii Johnson, 1895, Trans. Amer. Ent. Soc.
22:273.
Male Head: Face and front yellow; antennae brown. Thorax:
Dorsum black with two large yellow spots; pleura, lateral mar¬
gins and scutellum yellow; pectus black; r-m cross vein absent.
Abdomen: Yellow with median black stripe dorsally.
Female Head: Face yellow and receding below antennae;
front yellow with a brown, wavy, transverse line above antennae
which is connected by narrow brown vertical lines to a wide
brown transverse spot around ocellar triangle. Thorax: Dorsum
black with two pale vittae. Abdomen: Yellow with first segment
almost wholly black dorsally and tergites two to five with black
transverse bands.
Columbus: July 8, 1924, 1 female. Dane County: July 19, 1914,
1 male (Wm. S. Marshall) ; August 30, 1950, 1 male (D. G.
Allen). Madison: May, 1946, 1 female.
156 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
Odontomyia borealis James
Odontomyia borealis James, 1936, Annals Amer. Ent. Soc.
29:537.
Male and Female Head: Face and front black; face receding
below base of antennae; antennae yellow with black, sharply
pointed styles. Thorax : Black with yellow hairs; legs entirely
yellow; pile under anterior basitarsis as long or longer than
width of segment; r-m cross vein present. Abdomen: Yellow to
green with median black stripe dorsally.
Specimens collected in Dane, Crawford and Jefferson Counties
during July. Paratypes of males and females are in the Univer¬
sity of Wisconsin collection.
Odontomyia yubescens Day
Odontomyia yubescens Day, 1882, Proc. Acad. Nat. Sci. Phila.
77.
Odontomyia yubescens Johnson, 1895, Trans. Amer. Ent. Soc.
22:264.
Odontomyia yubescens James, 1936, Annals Ent. Soc. Amer.
29:530.
Male Head: Face and front black; antennae black with
pointed styles. Thorax: Black with long white pile; scutellar rim
and spines yellow; femora yellow. Abdomen: Black with conspic¬
uous indentations of yellow on tergites two, three and four.
Female Head: Face black; front black with yellow streaks
along and covering the frontal suture; yellow spot on each side
of ocellar triangle. Thorax: Black with short yellow hairs. Abdo¬
men: Black with yellow indentations on posterior borders of
tergites.
Very common in Dane and Columbia Counties during May and
June. Found also in Door and Winnebago Counties.
Odontomyia virgo (Wiedemann)
Stratiomys virgo Wiedemann, 1830, Ausser. Zweifl. Ins. 2:69.
Odontomyia virgo Johnson, 1895, Trans. Amer. Ent. Soc. 22:262.
Male and Female Head: Face and front black; antennae
black with blunt styles. Thorax: Black with short yellow hairs;
legs entirely yellow; pile on anterior basitarsi not as long as
width of segment; r-m cross vein present. Abdomen: Green with
median black stripe dorsally.
Found very commonly in Columbia, Dane and Door Counties
during July and August.
1953] Sorenson & Fluke — Stratiomyidae of Wisconsin 157
Odontomyia cincta Latreille
Figure 3
Odontomyia cincta Latreille, 1811, Ency. Methodique 8:432.
Odontomyia cincta Johnson, 1895, Trans. Amer. Ent. Soc. 22:
253.
Odontomyia cincta James, 1936, Annals Ent. Soc. Amer. 29:547.
Male Head: Face and front green ; antennae yellow with black
styles. Thorax: Disc and pectus black; scutellum, spines and lat¬
eral margins green ; legs entirely yellow ; r-m cross vein present.
Abdomen: Green with black triangular spots forming a median
stripe dorsally.
Female Head: Face green; front green with a black spot
along each eye margin; ocellar triangle black; occiput green.
Thorax: As in male. Abdomen: Green with black central tri¬
angles which unite but do not form a stripe.
Collected commonly in Dane and Columbia Counties during
May and June. Specimens found also in Crawford, Manitowoc
and Oshkosh Counties.
Odontomyia hydroleonoides Johnson
Figure 10
Odontomyia hydroleonoides Johnson, 1895, Trans. Amer. Ent.
Soc. 22:261.
Odontomyia hydroleonoides James, 1936, Annals Ent. Soc. Amer.
29:535.
Male Head: Face black and receding below antennae; front
black ; antennae reddish yellow with black, sharply pointed styles.
Thorax: Black with erect white pile; legs yellow; pile beneath
anterior basitarsi no longer than width of segment; r-m cross
vein present. Abdomen: Yellow with median black stripe
dorsally.
Female Head: Face and front shining reddish yellow. Thorax
and Abdomen: As in male.
Door County: August 9, 1929, 1 female (C. L. Fluke). Madi¬
son: July 19, 1929, 1 female (C. L. Fluke) ; July 4, 1941, 1 female
(C. L. Fluke) ; July 14, 1917, 1 female (C. L. Fluke) ; July 15,
1930, 1 female, 1 male (C. L. Fluke) ; July 3, 1929, 1 male (C. L.
Fluke) .
158 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
PLATE I
All drawings were made with the aid of the camera lucida
Figure
1. — Stratiomys bruneri Johnson, female. Anterior view of face.
2. — Stratiomys badia Walker, male. Antenna.
3. — Odontomyia cincta Latreille, male. Antenna.
4. — Sargus decorus Say, male. Antenna.
5. — Odontomyia pubescens Day, male. Wing.
6. — Sargus decorus Say, male. Wing.
7. — Berkshiria aldrichi Malloch, female. Wing.
8. — Stratiomys bruneri Johnson, female. Scutellum.
9. — Nemotelus unicolor Loew, male. Abdomen — dorsal view.
10. — Odontomyia hydroleonoides Johnson, female. Abdomen — dorsal view.
11. — Sargus decorus Say, male. Abdomen — dorsal view.
1953] Sorenson & Fluke — Stratiomyidae of Wisconsin 159
160 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
STRATIOMYS Geoffroy
Key to the Species
FEMALES (Eyes widely separated)
1. Eyes hairy . . badia Walker
Eyes bare . . . . . . . . 2
2. Fore femora yellow (usually entire leg yellow) . . . . bruneri Johnson
Fore femora black or half black . . . . . . 3
3. Fourth abdominal tergite with entire posterior border yellow ........ 4
Fourth abdominal tergite entirely black or with interrupted yellow
posterior border . . . . 5
4. Face and oral margin yellow . . . obesa Loew
Face and oral margin black . . . normula unilimbata Loew
5. Fourth abdominal tergite entirely black . . . . . . . 6
Fourth abdominal tergite with interrupted yellow posterior border .... 7
6. Only slight extension of yellow inward on tergites of segments two and
three; fourth tergite entirely black . . . . meigenii Wiedemann
Yellow trapezoids or triangles extending in from lateral edges of ter¬
gites of segments two and three . . . . . . 8
7. Fore tibia with definite brown band; small yellow spot below ocellar
triangle . . . normula normula Loew
Fore tibia entirely yellow to reddish brown; large yellow spot around
ocellar triangle . . . . . norma Wiedemann
8. Basal half of posterior femora yellow . adelpha Steyskal
Posterior femora entirely black . . . . discalis Loew
MALES (Eyes continguous)
1. Eyes hairy . . . badia Walker
Eyes bare . . . . . 2
2. Fore femora yellow (usually entire leg yellow) . bruneri Johnson
Fore femora black or half black . . 3
3. Fourth abdominal tergite with posterior border entirely yellow . 4
Fourth abdominal tergite entirely black or with interrupted posterior
yellow border . . . . . . 5
4. Face yellow . . . . . obesa Loew
Face black . . . . . . . normula unilimbata Loew
5. Fourth abdominal tergite black with at most extremely short prolonga¬
tions of yellow inward . . . . . . . . 6
Fourth abdominal tergite with interrupted yellow posterior border. ... 7
6. Abdominal tergites two and three without yellow markings
. . . . . .meigenii Wiedemann
Abdominal tergites two and three with yellow triangles or trapezoids . . 8
7. Fore tibia with definite brown band . . . . .normula nomula Loew
Fore tibia entirely yellowish to reddish brown ...... . norma Wiedemann
8. Basal half of posterior femora yellow (usually large flies)
. . . . adelpha Steyskal
Posterior femora entirely black (usually medium-sized flies)
. . . . . . . . . . discalis Loew
1953] Sorenson & Fluke — Stratiomyidae of Wisconsin 161
Stratiomys badia Walker
Figure 2
Stratiomyia badius Walker, 1849, List 3:529.
Stratiomyia badius Johnson, 1895, Trans. Amer. Ent. Soc. 22:
243.
Stratiomys badia James and Steyskal, 1952, Annals Ent. Soc.
Amer. 45:392.
Male Head: Face yellow with median dark brown stripe;
front brown; antennae black with bristle-like hairs on second
segment ; eyes hairy. Thorax : Black with scutellar rim and spines
yellow; legs yellow to brown. Abdomen: Black with interrupted
yellow bands on posterior border of tergites two and three;
entirely yellow posterior border on tergite four.
Female Head: Face as in male; front yellow, lined with one
transverse brown band just above the antennae, a second trans¬
verse brown band extends from the ocellar triangle, and a ver-
ticle band centrally connects the two transverse bands. Thorax:
Black with scutellum and spines yellow. Abdomen: Black with
interrupted yellow posterior borders on tergites two, entire
yellow posterior border on tergite three, and entire yellow pos¬
terior border tapering to a point ventrally on tergite four.
Not found commonly in Wisconsin. A few collections made in
Oneida, Dane, and Door Counties during July and August.
Stratiomys bruneri Johnson
Figures 1 and 8
Stratiomyia bruneri Johnson, 1895, Trans. Amer. Ent. Soc. 22:
233.
Stratiomys bruneri James and Steyskal, 1952, Annals Ent. Soc.
Amer. 45:392.
Male Head: Face yellow with median brown stripe; front
brown; antennae dark brown. Thorax: Black with yellow hairs;
metapleura, propleura, scutellum and spines yellow ; legs yellow.
Abdomen: Yellow with wide transverse black band on tergites.
Female Head: Face yellow with narrow median brown stripe;
front yellow with variable brown transverse spot extending
ventrad from around ocellar triangle. Thorax and Abdomen: As
in male.
Collected in Dane County most commonly in July.
162 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
Stratiomys obesa Loew
Stratiomyia obesa Loew, 1865, Centuria 6:11.
Stratiomyia lativentris Johnson, 1895, Trans. Amer. Ent. Soc.
22:233.
Stratiomys obesa James and Steyskal, 1952, Annals Ent. Soc.
Amer. 45:392.
Male Head : Face yellow with median brown stripe; front
dark brown ; occiput yellow ; antennae black. Thorax : Black with
scutellum and spines yellow; legs light brown. Abdomen: Black
with interrupted yellow band on tergite two, usually interrupted
yellow band on tergite three and entire yellow posterior border
on tergite four.
Female Head: Face yellow with narrow light brown median
stripe ; front yellow with black “W” mark over ocellar triangle.
Thorax: As in male. Abdomen: Black with usually interrupted
yellow posterior borders on tergites two and three ; entire yellow
posterior border on tergite four ; often, however, the yellow pos¬
terior border on tergite three is not interrupted.
Collected in Dane and Door Counties during June and July.
Stratiomys normula unilimbata Loew
Stratiomyia unilimbata Loew, 1865, Centuria 6:6,12.
Stratiomyia unilimbata Johnson, 1895, Trans. Amer. Ent. Soc.
22:236.
Stratiomys normula unilimbata James and Steyskal, 1952,
Annals Ent. Soc. Amer. 45 :402.
Male Head: Face and front black with long white hairs;
antennae black. Thorax: Black with scutellum and spines yellow;
legs brown to yellow with black femora. Abdomen: Black with
interrupted yellow bands on posterior borders of tergites two
and three; entire yellow posterior border tapering to a central
point on tergite four. (Description from a male from Waukegan,
Illinois.)
Female Head: Face black with yellow spot along eye margin;
front black with yellow spot below ocellar triangle.
Madison: June 28, 1918, 1 female (C. L. Fluke) ; June 17, 1914,
1 female (A. C. Burrill).
Stratiomys meigenii Wiedemann
Stratiomys meigenii Wiedemann, 1830, Ausser. Zweifl. Ins. 2:61.
Stratiomyia meigenii Johnson, 1895, Trans. Amer. Ent. Soc. 22:
238.
Stratiomys meigenii James and Steyskal, 1952, Annals Ent. Soc.
Amer. 45:396.
1958] Sorenson & Fluke — Stratiomyidae of Wisconsin 163
Male Head: Face and front black with long white hairs.
Thorax: Black with short white hairs; scutellum black with
narrow rim and spines yellow; legs yellow with black femora.
Abdomen: Black with widely interrupted yellow posterior bands
on tergites two and three ; almost no yellow band on tergite four ;
median yellow stripe on tergite five ; whole abdomen has a convex
glossy appearance.
Female Head : Face black with yellow spot along eye margin;
front black with yellow spot below ocellar triangle; antennae
black. Thorax : As in male. Abdomen: Usually entirely black
dorsally except for median stripe on fifth tergite.
Uncommon in Wisconsin. Collected in Dane County during
May and June.
Stratiomys normula normula Loew
Stratiomyia normula Loew, 1865, Centuria 6:5.
Stratiomyia normula Johnson, 1895, Trans. Amer. Ent. Soc. 22 :
285.
Stratiomys normula normula James and Steyskal, 1952, Annals
Ent. Soc. Amer. 45:402.
Male Head: Face and front entirely black. Thorax: Black
with long white hairs; scutellum and spines yellow; fore tibia
with definite brown band; femora black. Abdomen: Black with
interrupted yellow posterior bands on tergites two, three and
four ; median yellow stripe on tergite five.
Female Head: Face black; front black with small yellow spot
below ocellar triangle. Thorax: Black with dark yellow pile.
The abdominal markings in both the males and females of this
subspecies vary considerably.
Widely distributed in Dane, Columbia and Fond du Lac Coun¬
ties. All specimens collected in June.
Stratiomys norma Wiedemann
Stratiomys norma Wiedemann, 1830, Ausser. Zweifl. Ins. 2:62.
(N.A.)
Stratiomyia norma Johnson, 1895, Trans. Amer. Ent. Soc. 22:
236.
Stratiomys norma James and Steyskal, 1952, Annals Ent. Soc.
Amer. 45:396.
Male Head: Face and front entirely black. Thorax: Black
with dark yellow hairs; scutellum and spines yellow; fore tibia
entirely yellow to reddish brown. Abdomen: Black with inter¬
rupted yellow posterior bands on tergites two, three and four;
median yellow stripe on tergite five.
164 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
Female Head: Face black with yellow spot near eye margin;
front black with large yellow spot extending ventrad from
around ocellar triangle. Thorax and Abdomen: As in male ex¬
cept usually a central yellow triangle on tergite three.
Collected commonly in Columbia, Dane, Crawford, Fond du
Lac, and Waupaca Counties during June, July and early August.
Stratiomys adelpha Steyskal
Stratiomys adelpha Steyskal, 1952, Annals Ent. Soc. Amer. 45:
393.
Stratiomyia discalis Auctt. (non Loew).
Male Head: Face and front black with long white pile.
Thorax: Black with long pale yellow pile; scutellar rim and
spines yellow; posterior femora with basal half yellow, apical
half black. Abdomen: Black dorsally with large yellow lateral
rectangle on tergite two and a small lateral yellow triangle on
tergite three; tergite four entirely black; median yellow stripe
on tergite five.
Female Head: Face black; front black with yellow spot below
ocellar triangle.
This species is unusually large and is the Stratiomys discalis
of Auctt. non Loew.
Collected commonly in Dane, Columbia and Green Counties
during May and June.
Stratiomys discalis Loew
.
Stratiomyia discalis Loew, 1865, Centuria 6:14.
Stratiomyia discalis Johnson, 1895, Trans. Amer. Ent. Soc. 22:
240.
Stratiomys media James, 1933, Journ. Kan. Ent. Soc. 6:67.
Stratiomys discalis James and Steyskal, 1952, Annals, Ent. Soc.
Amer. 45:393.
Male Head: Face and front wholly black. Thorax: Black with
silvery hairs on dorsum; narrow rim and spines of scutellum
yellow; posterior femora entirely black, rest of leg yellow.
Abdomen: Entirely black with yellow lateral rectangles on ter¬
gite two, small yellow lateral triangles on tergite three, and no
yellow posterior border on tergites four and five.
Female Head: Face black with long white hairs; front black
with a small yellow spot below ocellar triangle. Thorax: Black
with dense white hairs. Abdomen: As in male.
1953] Sorenson & Fluke — Stratiomyidae of Wisconsin 165
This species is smaller than Stratiomys adelpha and is most
easily told by the femora which are entirely black in S. discalis
and half yellow and half black in S. adelpha.
Found in Dane, Columbia and Green Counties during late May
and June.
LABOSTIGMINA Enderlein
Key to the Species
(From James and Steyskal, 1952)
1. Eyes densely and distinctly pilose . viridis (Bellardi)
Eyes bare . obscura (Latreille)
Labostigmina viridis (Bellardi)
Odontomyia viridis Bellardi, 1859, Saggio di Ditterol. Messico
1:36.
Odontomyia viridis Johnson, 1895, Trans. Amer. Ent. Soc. 22:
270.
Labostigmina viridis James and Steyskal, 1952, Annals Ent. Soc.
Amer. 45 :406.
Male : No specimens available.
Female Head: Face strongly produced below antennae; face
yellow with a brown spot around protuberance and extending
over protuberance and to each side of it ; front yellow with inter¬
rupted brown transverse band ; large brown spot around ocellar
triangle; eyes hairy. Thorax: Black dorsally with pale yellow
pubescence ; calli, humeri, pleura and scutellum yellow ; scutellar
spines reduced; femora black. Abdomen: Black with continuous
posterior border on tergites three and four.
Waukesha County: July 21, 1913, 1 female.
Labostigmina obscura (Latreille)
Odontomyia obscura Latreille, 1811, Ency. Methodique 8:433.
Odontomyia obscura Johnson, 1895, Trans. Amer. Ent. Soc. 22 :
27°.
Labostigmina obscura James and Steyskal, 1952, Annals Ent.
Soc. Amer. 45:408.
Male Head: Face and front entirely black; antennae amber at
base with black terminal segment; eyes bare and contiguous.
Thorax: Scutellum yellow with small apical, proximal spines;
dorsum black with golden colored pubescence; legs yellow with
black femora. Abdomen: Black with interrupted yellow band-like
indentations on posterior edges of tergites two and three and
faintly on four. (Description from a Mississippi male, Oxford,
April, 1940. F. M. Hull.)
166 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
Female Head: Face strongly produced to a prominence below
base of antennae ; face black with yellow markings at lower lat¬
eral angles where yellow extends inward from the occiput ; front
black with a large yellow spot below the ocellar triangle and a
pair of yellow spots lateral to this central spot ; a second pair of
yellow proximal spots are located above the antennae and a third
pair are lateral to the antennae; occiput and vertex are yellow
with an area around the ocellar triangle; eyes bare and widely
separated. Thorax : Dorsum black with short silvery pile; meta¬
pleura with yellow borders on anterior and dorsal edges; scu¬
te! lum and small apical scutellar spines yellow. Abdomen: Black
with a narrow yellow lateral margin.
Madison: July 21, 1929, 1 female (C. L. Fluke) .
Nemotelus unicolor Loew
Figure 9
Nemotelus unicolor Loew, 1863, Centuria 3:11.
Nemotelus unicolor Melander, 1903, Psyche 10:176.
Male Head: Face and front entirely black; face produced to a
snout; antennae elongate and project from head just below the
middle of head in profile; eyes contiguous. Thorax: Wholly shin¬
ing black; scutellum black; halteres pale yellow; femora black,
rest of legs yellow except posterior tibia which have a dark
brown band. Abdomen: Shining black; abdomen broader than
thorax.
Female Head: Similar to male; antennae elongate and project
at the middle of the head in profile; eyes widely separated.
Thorax and Abdomen: As in male. Length: 3-41/2 mm.
Collected commonly in Dane and Columbia Counties during
June and July.
Euparyphus tetraspilus Loew
Euparyphus tetraspilus Loew, 1866, Centuria 7:15.
Euparyphus tetraspilus Curran, 1927, Trans. Royal Soc. of
Canada 5:217.
Male Head: Face brown; front yellow; antennae and ocellar
triangle black; eyes contiguous. Thorax: Black with two yellow
longitudinal vittae; scutellum, spines, humeri, calli and lateral
margins yellow. Abdomen: Black dorsally with two yellow spots
on each of tergites three and four; a large central yellow spot
on tergite five.
Female Head: Face black with silvery stripe along eye mar¬
gin ; front black with two yellow vittae near eye margin ; lower
1953] Sorenson & Fluke — Stratiomyidae of Wisconsin 167
occiput yellow to silvery, upper occiput black with yellow spot on
each side of ocellar triangle. Thorax and Abdomen: As in male.
Length : 4 to 5 mm.
Found commonly in Dane and Columbia Counties during June
and July.
Oxycera albovittata Malloch
Oxycera albovittata Malloch, 1915-17, Bull. Illinois State Lab. of
Nat. Hist. 12 :330.
Male Head: Face black with silvery stripe along eye margin;
front black; antennae reddish yellow; eyes contiguous. Thorax:
Dorsum black with four bright yellow vittae; lateral margin,
calli, humeri, scutellum and scutellar spines yellow. Abdomen:
Black with a large yellow spot on tergite three ; yellow border on
lateral edges of tergites two, three, four and five.
Female Head : Face as in male; front black with two yellow
vittae; occiput and vertex yellow; eyes separated by one-third
the width of head. Thorax and Abdomen: As in male. Length:
4 to 5 mm.
Madison: June 12, 1918, 1 male (C. L. Fluke) ; July 6, 1918,
1 male (C. L. Fluke) ; June, 1933, 1 female.
SARGUS Fabricius
Key to the Species
(Modified from James, 1935)
1. Femora metallic green . viridis Say
Femora black or yellow; not metallic . 2
2. Femora black; dark cloud over discal cell . cuprarius Linneaus
Femora yellow; wings entirely hyaline . 3
3. Metapleura white; other pleurites metallic . clavis Williston
Metapleura brown; other pleurites brown . decorus Say
Sargus viridis Say
Sargus viridis Say, 1823, Journ. Acad. Sci. Phila. 3:87; 1859,
Compl. Works 2:77.
Geosargus viridis James, 1935, Can. Ent. 67 :271.
Male Head: Face metallic green; front entirely metallic
green; antennae and arista black; eyes separated by a distance
slightly greater than width of ocellar triangle. Thorax: Entirely
metallic blue ; femora metallic, rest of legs black ; wings without
cloud over discal cell. Abdomen: Shining metallic green; same
width as thorax and elongate.
Female Head: Face metallic green; front metallic blue-green
with very small interrupted ivory frontal calli; eyes separated
by a distance equal to one-third the width of the head. Thorax:
168 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
As in male. Abdomen: Shining metallic green; wider than
thorax.
Collection data show scattered collecting from May through
August in Dane, Columbia and Fond du Lac Counties.
Sargus cuprarius Linnaeus
Musca cuprarius Linnaeus, 1758, Systema Naturae 10:598.
Geosargus cuprarius James, 1935, Can. Ent. 67 :271.
Male Head: Face brown to black; front dark metallic green
with small interrupted ivory-white calli; antennae black with
black arista; eyes narrowly separated by width of ocellar tri¬
angle. Thorax: Metallic green-blue; legs brown to black; dark
cloud over discal cell. Abdomen: Metallic with coppery to violet
reflections.
Female Head: Face brown; front metallic green with inter¬
rupted ivory-white calli ; eyes separated by one-fourth the width
of head. Thorax and Abdomen: As in male.
Scattered distribution in Kewaunee, Dane, Green, Door, Racine
and Washburn Counties from late June to mid- August.
Sargus clavis Williston
Sargus clavis Williston, 1885, Can. Ent. 17 :123.
Geosargus clavis James, 1935, Can. Ent. 67 :271.
Male Head: Face brown to yellow; front white; antennae
reddish brown with black arista; eyes contiguous. Thorax:
Metallic green with lateral margins and metapleura white; legs
yellow. Abdomen: Club-shaped with metallic coppery lustre; seg¬
ments longer than wide. (Males from Tennessee.)
Female Head: Face brown; front metallic green with non-
interrupted white frontal calli ; eyes separated by one-fourth the
width of head. Thorax: As in male. Abdomen: Less club-shaped
than in male ; dark metallic with violet reflections.
Walworth County: July 15, 1913, 1 female (62209 M.M.).
Sargus decorus Say
Figures 4, 6 and 11
Sargus decorus Say, 1824, Long’s Exped. App. 2:376; 1859,
Compl. Works 1:257.
Geosargus decorus James, 1935, Can. Ent. 67 :272.
Male Head: Face black ; front metallic blue-green with inter¬
rupted ivory-white calli ; eyes narrowly separated by ocellar tri¬
angle. Thorax: Dorsum metallic green; pleura brown; legs yel¬
low. Abdomen: Metallic coppery color with dense golden pile.
1953] Sorenson & Fluke - — Stratiomyidae of Wisconsin 169
Female Head: Similar to male; eyes separated by one-third
the width of head. Thorax: As in male. Abdomen: Uniformly
dark with metallic reflections ; wider than in male.
Found in Dane, Columbia and Kewaunee Counties. Common
in late May and early June and again in August and early Sep¬
tember.
Merosargus coerulifrons (Johnson)
Sargus coerulifrons Johnson, 1900, Ent. News 11 :325.
Merosargus coerulifrons James, 1941, Ent. News 52:107.
Male: No specimens available.
Female Head: Face brownish yellow; front metallic blue-
green with a wide white transverse ridge above antennae ; anten¬
nae reddish brown; arista black; eyes separated by one-fourth
the width of head; ocellar triangle equilateral. Thorax: Dorsum
metallic green ; pleura brownish yellow ; pectus black ; legs yellow
except hind tibia which are white on basal halves and black on
apical halves ; posterior basitarsi and first tarsal segments white ;
wings hyaline with dark veins. Abdomen: Dark metallic with
violet reflections.
Madison: July 16, 1951, 1 female (J. S. Sorenson).
PTECTICUS Loew
Key to the Species
Front black . . . . sackenii Williston
Front yellow . . . . . . trivittatus (Say)
Ptecticus trivittatus (Say)
Sargus trivittatus Say, 1830, Journ. Acad. Sci. Phila. 6:159;
1859, Compl. Works 2:355.
Ptecticus similis Williston, 1885, Can. Ent. 17 :124.
Ptecticus trivittatus James, 1935, Can. Ent. 67 :269.
Male Head: Face white to light green; front yellow; second
antennal segment produced finger-like into third segment; eyes
nearly contiguous. Thorax: Yellow to pale brown; hind basitarsi
and all tarsal segments yellow to light brown. Abdomen: Yellow
dorsally with pale brown transverse band on anterior half of
each segment.
Female: Differs from male only in having eyes widely sepa¬
rated. Length 9-11 mm.
Dane County: August 7, 1947, 1 male (Student). Madison:
September 27, 1950, 1 male (D. G. Allen) ; July 5, 1951, 1 female
(J. S. Sorenson).
170 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
Ptecticus sackenii Williston
Ptecticus sackenii Williston, 1885, Can. Ent. 17:124.
Ptecticus sackenii Janies, 1985, Can. Ent. 67 :269.
Male Head : Face white; front black; antennae yellow with
pale brown arista ; second antennal segment produced finger-like
into third segment; eyes nearly contiguous. Thorax : Yellow with
basitarsi and base of second tarsal segment black to dark brown ;
second and third tarsal segments white or yellow. Abdomen:
Yellow dorsally with brown transverse band on anterior half of
each segment.
Female : Same as in male except eyes widely separated.
Madison: August 1, 1917, 1 male (C. L. Fluke) ; August 18,
1926, 1 female (C. L. Fluke).
Cephalochrysa nigricornis (Loew)
Chrysonotus nigricornis Loew, 1866, Centuria 7 :14.
Isosargus nigricornis James, 1935, Can. Ent. 67 :274.
Cephalochrysa nigricornis James, 1939, Ent. News 50:218.
Male Head: Face and front black. Thorax: Metallic green to
coppery with heavy golden pile dorsally ; legs yellow ; large angu¬
lar discal cell. Abdomen: Metallic blue-green; as wide as thorax.
Female Head: Face brown ; front metallic blue with distinct
white transverse band above antennae. Thorax: Metallic green
to blue dorsally. Abdomen: Broader than thorax; metallic blue
to green.
Found in Dane and Columbia Counties during June and July.
One specimen collected in Washburn County.
Microchrysa polita Linnaeus
Musca polita Linnaeus, 1758, Systema Naturae 10:598.
Microchrysa polita James, 1935, Can. Ent. 67 :272.
Male Head: Face and front metallic brown; antennae and
arista dark brown ; eyes contiguous. Thorax: Metallic blue-green ;
legs yellow with dark band on femora and tibia; very small
discal cell. Abdomen: Metallic green with golden hairs; broader
than thorax.
Female Head: Face and front bright metallic green; eyes
separated by a distance more than one-third width of head.
Thorax and Abdomen: As in male. Length: 3 to 4% mm.
Found in June through mid-September in Dane, Door and
Washburn Counties.
1953] Sorenson & Fluke— Stratiomyidae of Wisconsin
171
Berkshiria aldrichi (Malloch)
Figure 7
Johnsonomyia aldrichi Malloch, 1915, Annals Ent, Soc. Amer.
8:313.
Male Head: Face and front shining black; silvery pile along
eye margin on face ; ocellar triangle black with brownish ocelli ;
eyes contiguous; antennae elongate with two basal segments
yellow, remainder black; arista black at base with white flagel¬
lum; antennae project above middle of head in profile. Thorax:
Shining black with fine light brown pubescence ; thoracic suture
distinct; seutellum black with a definite marginal rim; legs yel¬
low except apices of tibiae and basal joints of tarsi yellow.
Abdomen: Shining black with indistinct divisions between seg¬
ments. Length : 3 to 4 mm.
Female: No specimens available.
Madison: (University Arboretum) May 14, 1951, 1 male (C.
L. Fluke).
Neopachyg aster maculicornis (Hine)
Pachygaster maculicornis Hine, 1902, Ohio Naturalist, 2:228.
Neopachyg aster maculicornis Malloch, 1915, Annals Ent. Soc.
Amer. 8:318.
Male Head: Face black with wide silvery band on eye margin ;
front black with depressions above antennae covered with silvery
pile ; front comparatively narrower between eyes than in female ;
antennae conical, yellow with a conspicuous glossy dark brown
spot on inner surface of third complex segment. Thorax: Meso-
notum shining black and covered with silvery pile; distinct sil¬
very diagonal stripe on metapleura. Abdomen: Shining black;
abdominal divisions not distinct.
Female Head: Similar to male. Thorax: Mesonotum shining
black and covered with short brassy colored pile. Abdomen: As
in male. Length 2 to 3.5 mm.
Collected on windows in Dane County in June and July.
Pachygaster pulcher Loew
Pachygaster pulcher Loew, 1863, Centuria 3:16.
Pachygaster pulcher Malloch, 1915, Annals Ent. Soc. Amer. 8:
315.
Male : No specimens available.
Female Head: Face and front shining black; silvery pile
along eye margin on face; antennae yellow with dark brown
172 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
arista ; antennae situated below middle of head in profile.
Thorax: Black, covered with short yellow hairs; halteres with
dark brown spot on under side; scutellum projects upward, with¬
out distinct rim; legs yellow except for brown band on femora.
Abdomen: Uniformly shining black. Length: 2 to 3 mm.
Dane County: July 23, 1951, 2 females (J. S. Sorenson).
Bibliography
Aldrich, J. M. 1905. A Catalog of North American Diptera, Smithsonian
Institute, No. 1444.
Curran, C. H. 1927. Synopsis of the Canadian Stratiomyidae. Trans. Royal
Soc. Canada. Section V. 21:191-228.
- 1934. The families and genera of North American Diptera. The
Ballou Press, N. Y.
Graenicher, S. 1913. Records of Wisconsin Diptera. Bull, of Wis. Nat.
Hist. Soc. Vol. 10. Nos. 3 and 4:175-178.
Hull, Frank M. 1930. Notes on several species of North American Pachy-
gasterinae. Ent. News 41:103-106.
James, Maurice T. 1933. New Stratiomyidae in the Snow Entomological
Collection. Journ. Kan. Ent. Soc. 6:66-71.
- 1935. A review of the nearctic Geosarginae. Can. Ent. 67:267-275.
- 1936a. Some evolutionary trends in the Stratiomyidae. Annals Ent.
Soc. Amer. 29:624-626.
- 1936b. A proposed classification of the nearctic Stratiomyinae.
Trans. Amer. Ent. Soc. 62:31-36.
- 1936c. The genus Odontomyia in America North of Mexico. Annals
Ent. Soc. Amer. 29:517-550.
- 1936d. The Stratiomyidae of Colorado and Utah. Journ. Kan. Ent.
Soc. 9:33-48.
- 1939a. A review of the nearctic Beridinae. Annals Ent. Soc. Amer.
32:543-548.
- 1939b. Synonomy of Isosargus. Ent. News 50:218.
- 1941a. Notes on the nearctic Geosarginae. Ent. News 52:105-108.
- 1941b. A preliminary study of the new world Geosarginae. Lloydia.
4:300-309.
James and Steyskal. 1952. A review of the nearctic Stratiomyini. Annals
Ent. Soc. Amer. 45:385-412.
Johansen, O. A. 1935. Aquatic Diptera. Part II. Cornell University Ag.
Experiment Station Memoir 177.
Johnson, C. W. 1895. A review of Stratiomyia and Odontomyia of North
America. Trans. Amer. Ent. Soc. 22:227-278.
Malloch, J. R. 1915. A revision of the North American Pachygasterinae
with unspined scutellum (Diptera). Annals Ent. Soc. Amer. 8:305-321.
- 1915-17. Bull. Illinois State Lab. of Nat. Hist. 12:330.
Williston, Samuel W. 1908. Manual of North American Diptera. 3rd
Edition.
Verrall, G. H. 1905. British Flies V. Stratiomyidae Etc. London.
DETERMINATION OF ELECTROMETRIC PROPERTIES
OF GROUND WATER BY A FIELD METHOD1
R. S. Pierce2 * *
Soils Department, University of Wisconsin
The reaction, oxidation-reduction potential, and specific con¬
ductance of ground water exert pronounced influence on the dis¬
tribution of vegetation on hydromorphic soils. These properties
taken together express two major ecological conditions: degree
of water oxygenation and supply of nutrient elements, particu¬
larly bases (Hartmann, 1928; Averell and McGrew, 1929;
Laatsch, 1944).
As revealed by a study of organic soils in Wisconsin (Wilde
et al., 1950), stagnant bogs, characterized by an average reaction
of pH 4.2, redox potential of — 250 m.v., and specific conductance
of 7.8 mhos X 105, support only struggling stands of black
spruce and tamarack. Ground water of organic soils with slow
but constant internal drainage showed average values of pH 6.1,
redox potential — 50 m.v., and specific conductance 25 mhos X
105 ; such soils support mixed stands of hardwoods and conifers
which attain yields as high as 30 or 40 cords per acre. Alluvial
soils, subirrigated by well-oxygenated ground water enriched in
bases, are correlated with forest stands whose rate of growth at
times exceeds that of most productive upland soils. The ground
water of alluvial soils usually has a nearly neutral reaction, posi¬
tive redox potential and specific conductance approaching 40
mhos X 105. However, the ground water of periodically inun¬
dated areas shows great variation in its composition, and there¬
fore average values have questionable significance.
Another study (Wilde and Randall, 1950) detected that stands
of aspen on siliceous soils owe their rapid growth to the fertiliz¬
ing effect of hard water enriched in electrolytes by contact with
lenses of lacustrine clay or other fertile substrata. In other in¬
stances, however, tree growth was found to be depressed by
ground water carrying an excess of calcium and magnesium car-
1 Publication authorized by the director of the Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment
Station. This work was supported in part by the Wisconsin State Conservation
Department.
2 The writer owes a debt of gratitude to Dr. S. A. Wilde, Soils Department,
under whose direction this work was conducted, and to Dr. G. A. Rohlich,
Hydraulics Laboratory, University of Wisconsin, for helpful suggestions concerning
methods for analysis of ground water.
173
174 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
bonates. There is evidence that the chemical composition of
ground water affects the activity of microorganisms, develop¬
ment of humus layers (Hesselman, 1910; Feher, 1933), and in
turn, natural regeneration of selectively logged forest stands.
Figure 1. Portable apparatus for the determination of redox potential of
soils in situ (schematic diagram) : (1) potentiometer, (2) calomel half cell
in reservoir with saturated KC1 solution, (3) bead valve in % inch Tygon
tubing, (4) galvanized sampling pipe, length 3 feet, diameter 1 inch, (5)
electrode lead, (6) electrode assembly, (7) 100-mesh screen openings, (8)
removable steel point, (9) metal driving hammer, (10) glass capillary tube,
(11) plastic insulating sheath, (12) platinum electrode, (13) water inlets,
(14) fitted rubber stopper.
The technique of electrometric analysis of ground water is ex¬
tremely simple and rapid. Unfortunately it is handicapped by
difficulties in obtaining samples not contaminated with oxygen,
as well as the preservation of samples in their original condition
1953] Pierce-Electrometric Properties of Ground Water 175
during transportation. Therefore, an attempt was made to follow
the technique used by Starkey and Wight (1946) in their study
of corrosion of iron in soil, and to develop a direct electrometric
method for analysis of ground water in situ. The procedure is
reported in this paper.
The soil is excavated until slight seepage of ground water is
evident. A galvanized-iron well point is tapped into the gley
horizon with a driving hammer to a depth of 18 inches (Figure
1). The assembly of the platinum electrode and capillary tube of
the KC1 bridge is inserted into the well pipe. The calomel half
cell is placed in a glass tube with saturated KC1 solution. This is
connected with the capillary tube to form a KC1 bridge from the
calomel half cell to the water, a device which precludes contami¬
nation of the cell by suspended colloids. The platinum electrode
and calomel half cell are connected to a portable Beckman poten¬
tiometer, Model N-2 (Beckman Instruments, Inc.). Two drops
of KC1, released by pinching the bead valve, assure a complete
circuit. After allowing a few minutes for the system to reach
equilibrium, the reading is taken. The pH value is obtained in a
similar manner by substituting a glass electrode for the platinum
electrode.
Before the determination of specific conductance, the tempera¬
ture of the water is recorded by an ordinary thermometer. Then,
a conductivity cell is inserted into the well pipe and connected to
a portable Solu-Bridge (Industrial Instruments, Inc.). The scale
of the bridge is set at the recorded temperature and the reading
is taken. The entire analysis consumes not more than 15 minutes,
not counting the time required for soil excavation.
The technique devised appears to provide not only simplifica¬
tion and acceleration of ground water analysis, but also greater
accuracy of the results obtained. It is hoped that this method
will find application in silviculture, soil drainage, irrigation prac¬
tice, and artificial regulation of ground water.
Literature Cited
Averell, J. L. and P. C. McGrew. 1929. The reaction of swamp forests to
drainage in northern Minnesota. State Dept, of Drainage and Waters.
St. Paul, Minn.
Feher, D. 1933. Untersuchungen iiber die microbiologie des Waldbodens.
Berlin.
Hartmann, F. K. 1928. Kiefernbestandestypen des nordostdeutschen Dilu¬
viums. Neudamm.
Hesselman, H. 1910. On the oxygen content of water and its influence on
the development of bogs and forest growth. Meddel. Statens Skogsfors.
7:91-125 (In Swedish).
176 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
Laatsch, W. 1944. Dynamik der deutschen Acker-und Waldboden. Ed. 2.
Th. Steinkopff, Dresden.
Starkey, R. L. and K. M. Wight. 1946. Anaerobic corrosion of iron in soil.
Amer. Gas Assoc., 420 Lexington Ave., N. Y.
Wilde, S. A. and G. W. Randall. 1950. Chemical characteristics of ground
water in forest and marsh soils of Wisconsin. Trans. Wis. Acad. Sci.
Arts and Letters. 40: 251-259.
Wilde, S. A., J. Trach and S. F. Peterson. 1950. Electrometric properties
of ground water in major types of Wisconsin organic soils. Soil Sci.
Soc. Amer. Proc. 14:279-281.
DECOMPOSITION OF HARD MAPLE SAWDUST BY
TREATMENT WITH ANHYDROUS AMMONIA AND
INOCULATION WITH COPRINUS EPHEMERUS 1
Charles B. Davey2
Soils Department , University of Wisconsin
The growth of population and the development of civilization
are always paralleled by a depletion of soil organic matter,
caused by cultivation, erosion, and burning. This explains why
numerous efforts are now being made to replace the lost soil
organic matter by waste materials. One of these materials is saw¬
dust, produced daily in enormous quantities by wood-using indus¬
tries.
Numerous attempts to use sawdust for the preparation of
composts or direct treatment of the soil have been made, with
results which have not always been satisfactory (Allison and
Anderson, 1951; Attoe, 1949; Johnson, 1944; Lunt, 1950; Motte,
1931; Nostitz, 1937; Turk, 1943; Viljoen and Fred, 1924; Wal¬
ters, Fox, and Wycoff, 1951 ; and Wells, 1950). The adverse prop¬
erties of sawdust, which reduce its value as a fertilizer, are:
high content of alcohol-benzen solubles, resistance to decay, gen¬
eral poverty of nutrient elements, high carbon-nitrogen ratio,
and fixation of nitrogen and other nutrients by organisms
employed in the decomposition of cellulose.
This study aimed to remove or reduce some of these adverse
effects of sawdust by preliminary chemical and microbiological
treatments. Sawdust of hard maple ( Acer saccharum Marsh.)
was treated with anhydrous ammonia, the alkaline reaction neu¬
tralized with phosphoric acid, and the material brought to a de¬
sirable nutrient content by the addition of potassium sulfate and
other nutrient salts. This prepared medium was inoculated with
wood-decomposing fungi. The details of this procedure and the
results obtained are presented in this report.
The first step in the procedure involved the estimation of the
amount of anhydrous ammonia needed to overcome the unfavor-
1 Publication authorized by the director of the Wisconsin Agricultural Experiment
Station. This work was supported in part by the Wisconsin State Conservation
Department.
2 The writer is indebted to Dr. S. A. Wilde, under whose guidance this investi¬
gation was conducted, and to the late Dr. C. Audrey Richards of the U. S. Forest
Products Laboratory, Division of Forest Pathology, for helpful advice and cultures
of cellulose-destroying fungi.
177
178 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
Figure 1. Photomicrographs showing degree of decomposition of maple sawdust treated with 15 lbs. anhy¬
drous ammonia, 2.5 lbs. phosphoric acid, and 5 lbs. potassium sulfate, per cubic yard, after 3 months com¬
posting. A. Inoculated with Lenzites trabea . B. Inoculated with Coprinus ephemerus 250x.
1953] Davey — Decomposition of Hard Maple Sawdust 179
able effect of the high carbon-nitrogen ratio. The sawdust was
treated with anhydrous ammonia at rates ranging from 1 to 24
pounds of elemental nitrogen per cubic yard, using the technique
for peat composting of Voigt et al. (1949). These trials indicated
that 12 pounds of elemental nitrogen, or 15 pounds of anhydrous
ammonia, per cubic yard is the optimum amount, considering
both economic and nutritional aspects.
By further tests, it was established that ammonia-treated saw¬
dust requires 2% pounds of phosphoric acid per cubic yard to
bring the reaction of ammonia-treated sawdust to pH 6.5. This
treatment enriches the sawdust in phosphorus at the rate of
about 2 pounds of P205 per cubic yard. This amount is well cor¬
related with average phosphorus requirements of crops, provided
the sawdust is applied to the soil at the rate of 20 to 30 cubic
yards per acre.
Considering the standards for average soil fertility mainte¬
nance, the application of 50 per cent potassium sulfate was made
at the rate of 5 pounds per cubic yard of sawdust.
In initial trials, the chemically treated sawdust was inoculated
with two species of wood-decomposing fungi: Lenzites trabea
and Lentinus lepidius. Pure cultures of these organisms were ob¬
tained from the U. S. Forest Products Laboratory, Division of
Forest Pathology. After periods of 3 and 6 months, the incubated
media were examined and the effect of microorganisms deter¬
mined analytically. However, the results indicated only a mod¬
erate rate of decomposition.
Concurrent with this work, some chemically treated compost
was treated with a small quantity of hardwood-hemlock leafmold.
Three weeks after the addition of leafmold, the sawdust showed
prolific growth of C opr inns ephemeras , a fungus with short¬
lived fruiting bodies, but tremendously active mycelia.
Coprinus ephemeras was isolated and transferred to fresh
chemically treated sawdust. The mycelia developed with great
rapidity and within three weeks produced another crop of fruit¬
ing bodies. The growth of Coprinus was followed by the develop¬
ment of larvae and adults of Sciaridae spp., commonly called
“fungus gnats/' Microscopic observation revealed the presence
of a dense and diversified population of microorganisms, as well
as a greatly reduced particle size of the sawdust material (Figure
1). The energetic fermentation was associated with emanation
of ammonia and an odor resembling that of actively decomposing
horse manure.
After fermentation for 5 months, the energy material appar¬
ently had become exhausted and the compost had reached the end
180 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
point of microbiological activity. Samples of fresh sawdust,
chemically treated sawdust, and sawdust that had been decom¬
posed by Coprinus ephemeras, were analyzed for color, particle
size, and base exchange capacity. The results are reported in
Table 1.
TABLE 1
Effect of Chemical Treatment and Inoculation With Coprinus
ephemerus on Color, Particle Size, and Base Exchange
Capicity of Hard Maple Sawdust
The results of particle size analysis indicate drastic change in
the physical makeup of fermented sawdust. This was paralleled
by a pronounced melanization of material, as indicated by Mun-
sell notation, and a nearly 700 per cent increase in the ionic
exchange capacity. It should be noted that the latter property
indicates the accumulation of lignin, i.e., the fraction which is,
in a great degree, responsible for retention of nutrient elements,
particularly bases.
Literature Cited
1. Allison, F. E. and Anderson, M. S. 1951. The use of sawdust for
mulches and soil improvement. Agr. Res. Adm., B.P.I., S. and E., Div.
Soil Mgmt. and Irrig., Beltsville, Md.
2. Attoe, 0. J. 1949. Shavings for bedding save plant food. Hoard’s
Dairyman, 94: No. 1, p. 18.
3. Johnson, W. A. 1944. The effect of sawdust on the production of toma¬
toes and fall potatoes and on certain soil factors affecting plant
growth. Proc. Amer. Soc. Hort. Sci., 44:407-412.
1953] Davey- — Decomposition of Hard Maple Sawdust 181
4. Lunt, H. A. 1950. Wood chips as a soil amendment. Bui. 33, North¬
eastern Wood Util. Council, 8 p.
5. Motte, M. H. 1931. The use of sawdust as a fertilizer. Jour. Agr. Prat.,
95:192.
6. Nostitz, A. V. 1937. The effect upon the soil of sawdust used as stable
litter. Bodenkunde u. Pflanzenernahr, 3:211-218.
7. Turk, L. M. 1943. The effect of sawdust on plant growth. Mich. Agr.
Exp. Sta. Quart. Bui., 26: No. 1, 10-22.
8. Viljoen, J. A. and Fred, E. B. 1924. The effect of different kinds of
wood and wood-pulp cellulose on plant growth. Soil Sci., 17:199-212.
9. Voigt, G. K., Brener, W. H., and Wilde, S. A. 1950. Liquid ammonia
treatment of composting fertilizers. Soil Sci. Soc. Amer. Pro., 14:
281-283.
10. Walters, C. S., Fox, H. W., and Wycoff, H. R. 1951. Composting coarse
hardwood sawdust with a bacterial accelerator. Jour. For., 49 : No. 12,
910-911.
11. Wells, J. S. 1950. Use of sawdust for ericaceous crops. Amer. Nursery¬
man, 91:7-8, 33.
RELATION OF THE UNDERSTORY TO THE UPLAND
FOREST IN THE PRAIRIE-FOREST BORDER
REGION OF WISCONSIN1
Margaret L. Gilbert and J. T. Curtis
University of Wisconsin, Madison
As part of a study of the plant communities of Wisconsin,
started in 1946, Curtis and McIntosh (1951) studied the tree
composition of the upland deciduous forest in southwest Wiscon¬
sin. They found that “No distinct groups of stands were appar¬
ent-— rather the entire series of communities formed a continuum
in which a definite gradient was exhibited from initial stages
composed of pioneer species to terminal stages composed of
climax species.” Such a pattern of community change along a
gradient was termed by these authors a “vegetational contin¬
uum.” Brown and Curtis (1952) have shown a similar continuum
for the tree communities of the northern conifer-hardwoods in
Wisconsin. The present paper is concerned with the relationship
of the understory shrub-herb population to the tree continuum
in southwest Wisconsin, the same area studied by Curtis and
McIntosh (1951).
The area studied is in the ecotone between grassland and de¬
ciduous forest, south of the tension zone between southern and
northern hardwood forests, and west of the maple-beech forest.
Before settlement by Europeans, the prairie-forest border region
was kept in prairie and oak-opening by frequent fires set by the
Indians. Only sites protected from these fires could support
closed forest. Since settlement, and cessation of the fires, the oak-
openings have grown into closed oak woods. These woods are
composed of open-grown trees, and of a first generation of forest
trees, mostly of the species which were present on the site as
scattered trees or grubs when the fires stopped. Although there
has not been time for canopy succession on most of the sites, the
understory has changed from a prairie to a forest community.
The physiography, climate, soil, and vegetation of the area are
discussed in detail in Curtis and McIntosh (1951) .
The authors wish to express their appreciation to Drs. R. P.
McIntosh, and P. B. Whitford for use of data from their files,
1 This work was supported in part by the Research Committee of the Graduate
School of the University of Wisconsin from funds supplied by the Wisconsin
Alumni Research Foundation.
183
184 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
and to Mr. F. J. Gruenberger of the University of Wisconsin
Computing Service for his aid in the coding and statistical treat-
ment of the data.
Methods
Most of the stands used in this study are the same as those
employed to determine the upland forest continuum in the area.
In addition, a few stands studied by Whitford (1949) in north¬
ern Illinois are included. The three criteria used for selection of
the stands were, that they be large enough to minimize the edge
effect (minimum of 15 acres), free from disturbance such as fire,
cutting, or grazing, and on upland sites where no runoff waters
accumulate.
Presence was taken in the entire stand, in a preliminary sur¬
vey to determine the condition of the stand with regard to dis¬
turbance. Frequency data were taken in 64 stands investigated
in 1949 and 1950 in connection with the tree continuum study.
Twenty one-quarter milacre quadrats, placed at one-half the
random point samples, were laid down in each stand. Species
present in the quadrat were recorded on field data sheets. Later,
in the laboratory, these data were transferred to standard data
sheets, and frequency was computed.
Values for presence were transferred to marginal punch cards,
and to Holorith cards. Cole’s index of association (Cole, 1949)
was calculated for each of fifty species with every other, using
the I.B.M. electronic calculator and tabulator. The species were
chosen on the dual bases of occurrence in over 10 per cent of the
stands and of reaching a frequency of 40 per cent or more in at
least one of the stands studied.
The taxonomic nomenclature follows that of Gray’s Manual of
Botany, 8th edition, 1950.
Results
In order to evaluate forest stands in terms of their total tree
composition, Curtis and McIntosh (1951) developed the con¬
tinuum concept. This is the idea of a gradient of some factor
along which other factors may vary according to predictable
patterns. The concept is applicable to gradients of environment
as well as to gradients of vegetation. In the case of the trees, a
continuum index (C. I.) value for each stand was calculated as a
weighted summation of relative values of frequency, density, and
dominance for all tree species in the stand. The weighting, by a
“climax adaptation value,” indicates primarily the shade-toler¬
ance of the species as compared to Acer saccharum, the most
1953] Gilbert & Curtis — Understory of the Upland Forest 185
Figure 1. Per cent presence in 500 unit intervals of the tree continuum
index.
Figure 2. Average frequency in 500 unit intervals of the tree continuum
index.
186 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
shade-tolerant species within the limits of the study. When a
number of stands are arranged in the order given by the con¬
tinuum index, not only the trees, but also the shrubs, herbs, other
organisms, and environmental factors show definite trends.
Figures 1 and 2 show per cent presence and average frequency
for selected understory species with points plotted in consecutive
intervals of 500 units along the tree continuum. The size of the
intervals chosen to obtain the frequency and presence values is
arbitrary. A different interval size, or a different base unit would
not change the total reaction picture of the species, but might
change the location of the mode on the C.I. gradient.
Presence Index
Figure 3. Per cent presence in 80 unit intervals of the presence index.
To determine how closely the shrub-herb population follows
the gradient of canopy change as measured by the tree C.I., five
groups of ten species each were chosen on the basis of the species
in each group having a definite high point in per cent presence
somewhere within one of the 500 unit C.I. intervals. The species
shown in Figure 1 illustrate the general pattern of response of
the species chosen to make up the groups. A list of the species is
given in Table 1.
To make further computations easier, the particular species
out of the fifty which were present in each stand were punched
on a marginal punch card, and the percentage of the total which
occurred in each group was computed. These per cents were
1953] Gilbert & Curtis— Under story of the Upland Forest 187
TABLE 1
Presence index groups compared with the classification of Dansereau
(1943). Symbols 7, L, and £ refer to light tolerance: I, indifferent; L, helio-
phile; S, sciophile. Symbols A, M, and H refer to moisture tolerance: A,
arid; M, mesophile; H, hydrophile.
Presence index group Dansereau (1943)
I. Amorpha canescens
Comandra umbellata
Cypripedium calceolus v. pubescens
Galium boreale
Monarda fistulosa
Physocarpus opulifolius
Rhus glabra
Rubus idaeus v. strigosus
Smilacina stellata
Vicia americana
II. Agrimonia gryposepala . I A
Apocynum androsaemifolium . LA
Asclepias exaltata
Helianthus strumosus
Lonicera prolifera
Potentilla simplex
Pteridium aquilinum v. latiusculum . LA
Rubus allegheniensis . . LA
Taenidia integerrima
Zizia aurea
III. Aquilegia canadensis . LA
Arali a racemosa . SM
Aster sagittifolius
Bromus purgans
Diervilla lonicera . LA
Hystrix patula
Lathyrus ochroleucus
Lysimachia quadrifolia
Panicum latifolium
Thalictrum dioicum . SM
IV. Asa rum canadense . S M
Brachyelytrum erectum . S M
Caulophyllum thalictroides . S M
Cornus alternifolia . S M
Hepatica acutiloba . S M
Mitella diphylla . S M
Polygonatum pubescens . S M
Ranunculus abortivus. . S H
Viburnum acerifolium . I A
Xanthoxylum americanum . S M
V. Allium tricoccum . S M
Claytonia virginica (C. caroliniana) . S M
Cystopteris fragilis . SH
Dentaria laciniata (D. diphylla) . S M
Dicentra cucullaria . S M
Erythronium albidum (E. americanum) . S M
Laportea canadensis . S H
Menispermum canadense . I M
Tovara virginiana . SM
Trillium recurvatum . S M
188 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
weighted according to the tree C.I. interval of the group. Thus
the group representing the interval from 800 to 800 C.I. was
weighted 1; the group from 801 to 1300 C.I., 2; and so on, to the
group from 2301 to 2800 C.I. which was weighted 5. The
weighted per cents were summed to give a presence index for the
stand. The range of this index, 100 to 500 units, corresponds to
that of 300 to 2800 units on the tree C.I. A sample computation'
of the presence index is given in Table 2. As shown in Table 3,
the correlation between the tree C.I. values, based on the canopy
species, and the presence index, based on the shrubs and herbs,
is highly significant. The trends in per cent presence exhibited
when individual species are plotted along the presence index
(Figure 3) are similar to their trends along the tree C.I. (Figure
1 ) . Figure 4 indicates the trends exhibited by other representa¬
tive species.
TABLE 2
Sample computation of the presence index. See Table 1 for species
comprising the groups.
Stand # : 1035
C.I. : 2451
Frequency index: 495
TABLE 3
Correlation coefficients (r) and significance of indices calculated.
C./.
Presence index . r= 0.726
d.f. = 89
r. o i = 0.274 Presence
index
Frequency index . r= 0.765 r = 0.890
d.f. = 62 d.f. = 62
r. oi= 0.348 r. oi= 0.348 Frequency
index
Acer-Quercus index . r = 0.868 r = 0.902 r = 0.854
d.f. =62 d.f. = 116 d.f. =62
r. oi = 0.274 r. o i = 0.251 r.0i= 0.348
1953] Gilbert & Curtis — Understory of the Upland Forest 189
Presence Index
Figure 4. Per cent presence in 80 unit intervals of the presence index.
190 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
The same procedure as that followed above in calculating the
presence index was repeated, using frequency data. The per cent
of the total frequency found in each group was calculated,
weighted, and summed, to give a frequency index to the stand.
In the stand used as an example in Table 2, the frequency index
is 495, the presence index, 438. While there were species of
groups II, III, and IV present in the stand, they were represented
by few individuals. Therefore the relative frequency of group V
is higher than its relative presence. Although there are differ¬
ences between the two indices in individual stands, the relative
positions of the stands in the frequency index are highly signifi¬
cantly correlated with the positions in both the presence index,
and the tree C.I. (Table 3) .
TABLE 4
Species used in deriving the Acer saccharum-Quercus velutina index. Spe¬
cies in set A occur in the 10 stands where Quercus velutina reaches its
highest importance values, and are not found in the 10 stands where Acer
saccharum reaches its highest importance values. Species in set B occur in
the Acer stands and not in the Quercus stands. Roman numerals indicate
the presence index group of the species (Table 1).
A.
I Amorpha canescens
Anomone cylindrica
1 1 Apocynum androsaemi folium
1 1 1 Aquilegia canadensis
Ceanothus americana
I Comandra umbellata
I Monarda fistulosa
1 1 Pteridium aquilinum v. latiusculum
I Smilacina stellata
Vaccinium virginianum
Veronicastrum virginicum
B.
Carex albursina
Conopholis americana
Cornus rugosa
V Dicentra cucullaria
V Erythronium albidum
Festuca obtusa
Floerkea proserpinacoides
Impatiens capensis
Isopyrum biternatum
V Laportea canadensis
Orchis spectabilis
Panax quinquefolia
Phlox divaricata
Ranunculus septentrional is
Solidago flexicaulis
V Tovara virginiana
Trillium grandiflorum
V Trillium recurvatum
IV Viburnum acerifolium
To determine whether the understory population changes
would follow the reactions of individual canopy species as well
as the gradient of the total tree complex, two sets of 10 stands
were chosen. One set comprised the 10 stands in which Acer sac¬
charum reaches its highest importance values, the other set the
10 stands in which Quercus velutina reaches its highest impor¬
tance values. Acer saccharum was chosen as an example of a
shade-tolerant, Quercus velutina as an example of a shade-intol¬
erant tree. The herbs and shrubs present in these stands were
1953] Gilbert & Curtis — Understory of the Upland Forest 191
recorded on standard data sheets, and lists of species which
occurred in one set and not the other were compiled (Table 4).
These two groups of species correspond in tolerance to groups I
and V of Table 1. The groups were therefore weighted 1, and 5,
and another index was computed in the same manner as the
above. The stand index values according to this Acer saccharum-
Quercus velutina index are highly significantly correlated with
the values of the tree C.I., the presence index, and the frequency
index, as shown in Table 3.
All of the indices calculated above are highly significantly cor¬
related with each other, and with the tree C.I. This indicates that
the shrub-herb population, taken as a whole, responds to chang¬
ing environment in the same way as does the canopy population,
when the data are based on the evidence of groups of species
chosen for their tolerances as compared with the tolerances of
the trees. Since no two species have the same pattern of tolerance
to the changing environment, it would seem better to start on an
individual species basis, and derive any arbitrary groups needed
for a particular problem from the pattern of all the species
present in the population.
Using data obtained from the application of Cole’s index of
association (Cole, 1949) to fifty understory species, a start was
made toward the independent derivation of a continuum of
shrubs and herbs for the southern Wisconsin upland forests. The
criteria used for the original choice of the fifty species were such
as to include common species which did not necessarily show any
tolerance pattern within the limits of the study. Presence of the
species was punched on Holorith cards, one card for each stand
studied. The cards were fed through an electronic calculator
which computed the association of each species with every other
according to Cole’s index, and the standard error of each index
value. Significance of the index values was tested by the t test
(Snedecor, 1946). Out of 1,225 tests, 23 were significant. Eight
species pairs showed negative association; 15 showed positive
association. The pattern of occurrences together for these species
is shown in Figure 5. Similar methods of association analysis
have been employed by Agrell (1945) and by Tuomikoski (1942) .
The species shown in Figure 5 arrange themselves into two ter¬
minal groups, connected by species such as Parthenocissus in -
serta and Osmorhiza claytoni whose tolerance limits are greater
than the environmental range studied. The upland forest stands
in southern Wisconsin contain varying proportions of “pioneer”
and “climax” species together with species with wide tolerance
limits.
.
192 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
1953] Gilbert & Curtis— Understory of the Upland Forest 193
Discussion
When stands are arranged along a continuum based on the tree
complex, the shrubs and herbs show definite trends in presence
and frequency. However, no two species show exactly the same
tolerance pattern. There are no groups of species evident; in¬
stead there is a continuous variation in the population similar to
that found in the canopy population by Curtis and McIntosh
(1951), and Brown and Curtis (1952).
Some species, such as Aralia racemosa, Agrimonia grypose-
pala, and Hepatica acutiloba in Figure 3, and Carex pensylvanica
and Rhus radicans (Figure 4) reach a definite high point in per
cent presence and average frequency within the limits of the
upland deciduous forest continuum studied. Below and above this
point, the species are present in fewer stands, and are less fre¬
quent in the stands in which they do occur. Other species seem to
reach their optimum habitat right at the limits of the study, or
beyond them. Amorpha canescens (Figure 3) and Smilacina
stellata (Figure 4) are prairie plants which persist in the woods,
but with a decreasing presence, and low frequencies. Dentaria
laciniata (Figure 3) and Carex albursina (Figure 4) are exam¬
ples of species which are characteristic of the mesic, closed-
canopy upland woods. These species are not present in the dryer,
more open woods, but may become still more common in woods
which are more moist than those studied. Current investigations
of the oak-openings and the floodplain hardwoods will better de¬
limit the tolerances of such marginal species. Species in one
genus often show very different tolerance patterns, as for ex¬
ample Carex albursina and C. pensylvanica, and Smilacina race¬
mosa and S. stellata in Figure 4.
In general, both presence and frequency show the same trends
along all the indices studied. The mode of the species curve based
on presence data may not fall in the same class interval as that
based on frequency data, however, and one measure may show a
broad optimum range, while the other shows a definite high
point. Frequency values are greatly influenced by the distribu¬
tion of individuals in the stand, as shown by Whitford (1949).
Better methods of determining the kind and amount of departure
from a random distribution are urgently needed.
Many authors have come to the conclusion that, “The plant-
indicator value of individual species is distinctly less than that
of groups of species, on the same basis of classification” (Kitt-
redge, 1938). Although each species exhibits a different adaptive
response to the complex of environmental factors, arbitrary
194 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
groups of species which have optimum ranges more or less in
common may be chosen, and made useful tools in studying the
reaction of the whole population to changing habitat conditions.
In the present study, groups of species chosen either on the basis
of their response to the total tree complex, or of their association
with some tree which is dominant in a certain environmental
range, were used to compare the variation in the understory
along the tree continuum. In accordance with the findings for
prairie plants (Curtis, 1951), it was determined that presence
based on groups of species, is of considerable value as a quanti¬
tative measure of population reaction.
Similar arrangements of species are found with all methods
employed in the study. Using the presence index groups (Table
1) as the basis of comparison, species arrangements derived
from the occurrence of species with two trees (Table 4) and
from relative mutual occurrences (Figure 5) show that species
which appear to have similar tolerance patterns along the tree
G.I. occur with one dominant, and have a high relative mutual
occurrence. In Figure 5, species which have a broad mode in per
cent presence, such as Osmorhiza claytoni, show high mutual
occurrence with all the other species tested, and thus are placed
in the center of the series until further information as to their
tolerance limits is available.
It is interesting to compare the general range of tolerance for
the same, or closely related, species found in Quebec (Dansereau,
1943) and in Wisconsin (Table 1). Both regions are at the edge
of the southern hardwood forest. In Quebec, the transition is to
northern conifer-hardwood and boreal forest; in Wisconsin to
northern conifer-hardwood forest and prairie. Thus, the
“pioneer” species are different in the two regions. None of the
species in group I of the indicator groups in the Wisconsin study
occur in the Quebec study (Table 1). In Wisconsin the species
which occur in the drier stands come from the prairie, in Quebec
from the boreal forest. As the environment changes toward a
closed canopy and moister conditions, more species are found in
common. Most of the species seem to show similar environmental
requirements in both regions. Viburnum acerifolium (Figure 4)
is an exception, and some species such as Thalictrum dioicum
(Figure 4) and Aralia racemosa (Figure 3) which occur
throughout the environmental range studied in Wisconsin appear
to be confined to the maple woods in Quebec.
1953] Gilbert & Curtis — Understory of the Upland Forest 195
Summary
1. The upland hardwood forests of the prairie-forest border
region of Wisconsin and northern Illinois were studied by means
of a presence survey in 118 stands, and twenty one-quarter
milacre quadrats laid down at random in 64 of the 118 stands.
2. The relation of the shrub-herb population to the tree com¬
plex was tested by the use of indices, based on presence and fre¬
quency of groups of shrub and herb species which reached their
optimum development in some interval of the tree continuum
index. The indices were compared with the pattern of canopy
change based on importance values. An index based on the re¬
sponse of shrubs and herbs to two dominant trees was also com¬
pared with the tree continuum index. Correlations of these three
shrub-herb indices with each other, and with the tree continuum
index were significant beyond the 1 per cent level.
3. A study of the internal dynamics of the shrub-herb popula¬
tion was started using data obtained from Cole’s index of asso¬
ciation. Species which were used both in deriving the presence
index and in the test for association appear in the same relative
position in both methods.
4. There are no discrete groups of species to be found in the
understory layers of the upland hardwoods of this area. Instead,
as found for the trees, there is a continuously shifting complex
of species along the environmental gradient.
Literature Cited
Agrell, I. 1945. The collemboles in nests of warm-blooded animals; with
a method for sociological analysis. Lunds Universitets Arskrift. 41 :
1-19.
Brown, R. T. and J. T. Curtis. 1952. The upland conifer-hardwood forests
of northern Wisconsin. Ecol. Mono g. 22: 217-234.
Cole, L. C. 1949. Measurement of interspecific association. Ecology 30:
411-424.
Curtis, J. T. 1951. A Wisconsin prairie continuum based upon presence
data. Bull. Ecol. Soc. Amer. 32: 57. Abst.
Curtis, J. T. and R. P. McIntosh. 1951. An upland forest continuum in
the prairie-forest border region of Wisconsin. Ecology 32: 476-496.
Dansereau, P. 1943. L’erabliere Laurentienne. Can. J. Res. 21 : 66-93.
Kittredge, J. 1938. The interrelations of habitat, growth rate, and associ¬
ated vegetation in the aspen community of Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Ecol. Monog. 8: 151-246.
Snedecor? G. W. 1946. Statistical Methods. Iowa State College Press, Ames.
Tuomikoski, R. 1942. Untersuchungen ueber die Untervegetation der
Bruchmoore in Ostfinnland I. Zur Methodik der Pflanzensoziologischen
Systematik. Ann. Bot. Soc. Zool. Bot. Fenn. Vanamo 17 : 1-200.
Whitford, P. F. 1949. Distribution of woodland plants in relation to suc¬
cession and clonal growth. Ecology 30 : 199-208.
THE WHITE-TAILED DEER IN EARLY WISCONSIN
A. W. SCHORGER
The white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) has always
been the most important large game animal east of the Missis¬
sippi River. The settlers upon the fringe of civilization depended
largely upon it for food and clothing. Also, deer skins formed an
important commodity in overseas commerce. In the Trans-
Allegheny region they served as currency, a skin having a value
of one dollar in trade. The present-day slang term of one “buck”
had its origin in this custom. In Wisconsin there was a consider¬
able traffic in hides when the fur trade was active. Venison be¬
came an important source of income during the latter half of the
nineteenth century, since the building of railroads furnished
access to distant markets.
This deer has remarkable recuperative powers and when given
reasonable protection will soon multiply to the carrying capacity
of the land. It is one of the few large game animals that will
adapt itself to old, agricultural regions. Within recent years it
has spread southward in Wisconsin as far as Rock County.
Presettlement History. The first definite mention of deer in
Wisconsin appears to have been by Radisson, who was in north¬
western Wisconsin the winter of 1661-62. He wrote in his quaint
style: “The weather continued so 3 dayes that we needed no
racketts [snowshoes] more, for the snow hardened much. The
small staggs are [as] if they were stakes in it after they made
7 or 8 capers. It’s an easy matter for us to take them and cutt
their throats with our knives.”1
Large and small stags were reported abundant at Lake Poygan
by Allouez2 in 1669. The large stags of the early French explor¬
ers were wapiti, commonly called elk. While descending the Wis¬
consin River in 1673, on their voyage to the Mississippi, Joliet
and Marquette3 saw many deer on the lower Wisconsin. Mar¬
quette, in November, 1674, followed the Wisconsin shore of Lake
Michigan southward. In Manitowoc County, an Indian brought
the party a deer, and at the Milwaukee River one of Marquette’s
men shot another.4
Deer appear to have occurred sparingly along the southern
shore of Lake Superior. This is understandable in view of the
prevalence of coniferous trees and the deep snow that rendered
the deer an easy prey to wolves and Indians. According to Hub-
197
198 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
bard5 deer were unknown along Lake Superior in the Upper
Peninsula of Michigan prior to 1840. Shiras6 stated that deer
were unknown on the north shore in 1870 and that there were
only a few on the south shore. Their remarkable increase later,
attributed to lumbering, is shown by the killing of 80,000 deer
in each of the years, 1879, 1880, and 1881. Most of them were
taken within ten miles of Lake Superior. The source of Shiras’
statistics is unknown.
The few early references to deer on the south shore indicate
that the population was small prior to 1850 and that it increased
rapidly after this date. When Henry7 arrived at Chequamegon
Bay in 1765, he found the Indians clothed mainly with “dressed
deer-skin.” The large Indian population residing at this place
had to live mainly on fish, the mammals having been virtually
exhausted. When the Indians set out on their hunt for furs the
winter of 1765-66, they went 100 leagues westward to the
Superior-Duluth region.
Interesting information on the early presence of deer in the
Upper Peninsula is given by Foster and Whitney. “Within this
township [Iron County] the Mackigamig receives from the right
its two principal tributaries, the Mitchikau or Fence river and
the Nebegomiwini or Night- watching river. The origin of these
terms as explained by our voyageurs was this : At one time the
deer were observed to be very numerous about the mouth of the
former, and the Indians, to secure them, built a fence from one
stream to the other. They [deer] would follow rather than leap
over this barrier, until they were entrapped by their concealed
foe. This method of capturing the deer is also practised on the
Menomonee.”8 They discovered remains of deer in the ancient
copper mining pits. Near the Ontonagon River fragments of the
cranium, humerus, and horn of a deer were discovered under
nineteen feet of debris.
Lieut. Allen9 in 1832 reported that the Indians of Grand Island,
Lake Superior, live on fish and some game, principally the “com¬
mon red deer,” which were killed between this place and Lake
Michigan. He remarked that the Indians of Huron and Kewenaw
Bays had exhausted the deer and bear that once furnished them
food.
Deer are mentioned by some of the travelers in the Upper
Peninsula. McKenney,10 while at the Ontonagon River on J uly 23,
1826, wrote that there was no game in the Porcupine Mountains
except bear and the “common red deer.” On October 7, 1844,
about ten miles west of Grand Island, Pitezel11 found on the shore
1953]
Schorger — White-Tailed Deer
199
of Lake Superior the remains of wigwams with the bones of deer
and bear hanging in the bushes.
Deer became common after 1850. Kohl was at La Pointe, Wis¬
consin, the summer of 1855, and wrote: “I recently saw here a
hunter who had returned from the hunting-grounds in the upper
peninsula with an extraordinary quantity of game. In six weeks
he had killed to his own gun no less than fifty-five deer.”12
The hunters at Marquette complained in 1862 that the wolves
were driving away all the deer.13 Cartwright14 and a companion,
hunting in Marquette County, Michigan, killed 67 deer the
winter of 1870-71 ; and in two subsequent seasons 97 and 80 deer
respectively. A party of five hunters from Winnebago County,
Wisconsin, returned in January, 1874, from the Sturgeon River
with 80 deer.15 In the 1880’s, deer were very plentiful in School¬
craft County, “upwards of forty” being in sight at one time.1'6
There is an interesting comment on one means of distribution
of deer by Andrews: “By the action of drifting ice . . . even
animals, such as squirrels, rabbits, deer, moose, caribou, and
bears have navigated the waters of Lake Superior, and been
landed on islands to which they could not otherwise have gained
access.”17
Early references to deer along the Wisconsin shore of Lake
Superior are few. Governor Doty18 wrote in 1820 that the Fond
du Lac Indians (Duluth-Superior region) do not have deer. Rev.
Ely19 traveled extensively in extreme northwestern Wisconsin in
the years 1833-54. It was not until February 27, 1839, that a
deer is mentioned for the vicinity of Duluth. On this day he re¬
corded that an Indian had killed a deer that had been chased by
dogs for three days. There is no mention of deer being seen in
his frequent journeys by land and water between Superior and
La Pointe. In September, 1848, Peyton20 made an overland jour¬
ney from La Pointe to the St. Croix River. Then as now the route
covered for the most part a sandy plain sparsely timbered. He
mentioned the distant sight of deer.
Schoolcraft, in his journey up the St. Croix River in 1832,
stopped at Chief Kabamappa’s village and wrote : “He observed
in speaking of game that the red deer was found on the adjoining
plains.”21 This village was about ten miles below Upper St. Croix
Lake, hence near modern Gordon, Douglas County. Rev. Ely19
recorded on June 27, 1834, that before reaching the same village,
which he spells Kabomob, his Indian guide jumped a deer.
Deer were more plentiful in the latitude of Lac du Flambeau.
Malhiot22 was in charge of a trading post at this lake during the
fall and winter of 1804-05. On October 5 he recorded that he had
200 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
traded for 528 deer skins. It is impossible to determine how many
of them represented deer taken in the immediate vicinity. Allen9
stated in 1832 that the Indians of this lake, in fall and winter,
kill large numbers of deer which are very plentiful along the
Chippewa River. This stream lies about 40 miles west of Lac du
Flambeau. It is possible that the Indians, to obtain deer in quan¬
tity, descended the Flambeau River to its junction with the Chip¬
pewa in extreme southern Rusk County.
The Lac Vieux Desert region, Vilas County, according to
Cram,28 had a fair number of deer in 1841. On the approach of
winter, however, the Indians went southward to hunt deer. The
valley of the Menominee had deer in great abundance and was a
favorite winter hunting ground for Indians from various quar¬
ters. Cram remarked that all of the country on the upper part of
the river had been burned over.
The St. Croix River and its tributaries seem to have had a
good deer population. Curot24 makes numerous references to the
purchase of deer skins and venison at his post on the Yellow
River, Burnett County, during the winter of 1803-04. Not all of
the deer were killed in Wisconsin. An entry for March 2, 1804
reads: “Mr. Sayer’s Men arrived after Dinner today with 20
pieces of dried meat, the remains of 41 Deer that the savages of
the river au serpent [Snake River, Minnesota] had killed.”
Rev. Ely19 recorded on June 27, 1834, that his Indian raised a
deer near the headwaters of the St. Croix. An Indian guide on
April 19, 1839, below the mouth of the Yellow River, shot a doe
with “three foetuses,” and on the following day another deer was
seen near the mouth of the Namekagon River. Schoolcraft, writ¬
ing on July 27, 1831, offered a suggestion for the presence of
deer in the region: “The country as we descend [the Namekagon
River] assumes more the appearance of upland prairie, from the
repeated burnings of the forest. The effect is, nearly all the small
trees have been consumed, and grass has taken their place. One
result of this is, the deer are drawn up from the more open parts
of the Mississippi, to follow the advance of the prairie and open
lands towards Lake Superior.”25 In 1843 Rev. Alfred Brunson26
drove a wagon from Prairie du Chien to La Pointe, a good indi¬
cation of the openness of the country. Schoolcraft27 wrote in 1831
of the abundance of “Virginia deer” from Rice Lake, Barron
County, southward along the Red Cedar River.
The Green Bay area was well stocked with deer from the
earliest times. De Lignery, in the expedition of 1728 to chastise
the Foxes, reached Green Bay where: “Our savages went into
the woods, but soon returned bringing with them several roe-
1953]
Schorger — White-Tailed Deer
201
bucks. This species of game is very common at this place, and we
were enabled to lay in several days provisions of it.”28 The spring
of 1780, the expedition to which John Long29 was attached,
reached Green Bay where plenty of deer, bear, and other provi¬
sions were obtained.
Lahontan,30 in 1688, found deer plentiful at Lakes Winnebago
and Butte des Morts. In 1837 Marryat31 found the tracks of deer
plentiful near Lake Winnebago and saw a herd of fifteen.
In the winter of 1827-28, Fonda32 was engaged to carry the
mail from Green Bay to Fort Dearborn (Chicago). He was
dressed in a hunting shirt of smoke-tanned buckskin, a cap of
wolf-skin with tail attached, and moccasins of elk hide. After
leaving Green Bay he would frequently find herds of deer that
had yarded in the “heavily timbered bottoms.” Deer were also
abundant when southeastern Wisconsin was reached. According
to Le Claire133 deer were plentiful in the Milwaukee region in
1800.
There was a plausible, well-established belief that a pro¬
nounced increase in deer took place in southern Wisconsin after
the close of the Black Hawk war in 1832. Most of the Indians
were moved to reservations west of the Mississippi or to north¬
ern Wisconsin. This did not deter them, however, from return¬
ing for winter hunts. White immigration, a trickle in the begin¬
ning, required a number of years to affect the increase of deer.
When Keating’s party crossed southwestern Wisconsin in the
summer of 1823, only one deer was seen.34 The absence of game
was attributed to the killing of deer at all seasons by the Indians
due to the feeling that they were gradually losing the use of the
land.
Later the case was put as follows: “Since the Indians have
left this part of the country, wild game has become plenty. As
their principal subsistence has been derived from hunting, not¬
withstanding the strong efforts made to permanently introduce
agriculture among them, they have made game of all kinds very
scarce in the neighborhood of the settlements, where they de¬
lighted to camp. Deer are now found in this vicinity [Prairie du
Chien] in large numbers.”35 McCleod36 thought that deer had in¬
creased three-fold since the withdrawal of the Indians.
In spite of Indians and mining developments, deer were abun¬
dant in southwestern Wisconsin in the 1830’s. Hoffman37 found
large herds on the prairies in February, 1834. Smith wrote of
the summer of 1837 : “The deer are often seen sporting over the
prairie, and in the groves and oak openings ; they are frequently
aroused out of the high grass, and as the rifle of the hunter has
202 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
not yet sufficiently alarmed them in their secret lairs, they are in
a measure less wild than in parts more densely settled; I have
often seen them in my rambles, quietly gazing at the traveller,
until he had passed by.”38
It is related by Grignon39 that the Menomonees made their
hunt on the Black River during the winter of 1795-96. Two
Indian brothers got into a dispute as to their prowess in killing
deer. The following day they hunted from dawn until evening.
One Indian returned with the tongues of nine deer and the other
with ten.
The Chippewa River was long famous for its game. Le Sueur40
informs us that this stream was known as the Bon-Secours from
the abundance of buffalo, elk, bear, and deer (chevreuils) to be
found there. Guignas41 was with the French party that built
Fort Beauharnois on the western shore of Lake Pepin in 1727.
In October, when the buildings were finished, some of the people
set out to fmd the herds of fallow deer (betes fauves) of all spe¬
cies of which they had heard so much in Canada. Deer proved to
be scarce and it was difficult to kill any. They were hunting on
the wrong side of the river as the Wisconsin shore had much
more game than the Minnesota.
Methods of Hunting
Prior to the introduction of firearms, the Indians had four
methods of hunting deer. These are described by George Cop¬
way,42 an educated Ojibway, who spent considerable time in Wis¬
consin. 1. The deer was snared by placing a rope noose made of
wild hemp (Apocynum) along the runways. When caught the
deer choked to death. 2. Sharp stakes were driven into the ground
beside a log over which a deer was expected to jump. When suc¬
cessful, the stake pierced the deer’s vitals. 3. Deer were run into
the water by dogs and then could be taken easily; or they were
exhausted by a chase in deep snow. 4. They were killed with bow
and arrow at salt-licks, or at the borders of lakes and streams
where they were accustomed to feed. An Indian could shoot a
deer at a distance of 50 paces. Flambeaus made of birch bark or
other combustible materials were used for night hunting. In this
way a very close approach to the animal could be made. Candles
were subsequently used in place of torches. Lockwood,43 when on
the lower Wisconsin in 1827, gave the Indians some candles with
which to hunt.
A method of hunting deer on Lake Winnebago has been de¬
scribed by J. G. Thompson, who came to Neenah in 1846.44 When
a deer was driven into the lake by wolves, the Indians would
1953]
Schorger — White-Tailed Deer
203
pursue in a canoe. A loop, bent on the end of a hickory pole, was
slipped over the deer’s head and the canoe drawn sufficiently
close that the animal could be despatched with a tomahawk.
The earliest Europeans to land in America found that the
Indians hunted deer by building converging fences and driving
them to a narrow aperture or pound. Morgan45 states that the
Iroquois built fences of brush in the shape of a V, each wing
being two or three miles in length. The woods were fired to drive
the deer to the apex. Sometimes 100 deer were taken. Usually
the game was driven into the trap by beaters. Firing the woods
might destroy the fence so that it could be used for only one
drive.
The use of fences by the Indians for driving deer in northeast¬
ern Wisconsin was mentioned previously. It is unexpected that
this method of hunting would have persisted until the 1880’s.
In 1883 the Indians had twelve miles of fence about six miles
west of Phillips and were reported to be killing deer in large
numbers.46 At the same time the following item originated at
Iron River: “At Big Trout Lake [Vilas County] there is what
is known as a deer fence, fifteen miles long, made by felling trees
in such a manner that deer cannot get through, and they travel
along seeking a place to get out, when the slaughter takes place.
We are told on reliable authority that three Indians killed in a
few days, recently, one hundred and fifty deer for their hides
only . . .”47 The construction of fifteen miles of fence would be a
Herculean task and it is doubtful if any modern Indians would
have built one of this length.
An old and often described method of hunting in the southern
part of the state was to fire the prairies and oak openings. Reli¬
ance was generally placed on driving the deer into lakes or
stream valleys where the hunters were stationed. P. P. Crane,
an early resident of Beloit, has described the procedure in that
area: “Also in the fall of 1837, when the prairie grass had be¬
come old and dry, smokes were seen rising on the prairies, some
days in one direction, others in a different direction. It was ascer¬
tained that these fires were started by the Indians for hunting
purposes. Whenever they wanted to take a deer, a rifle party
would go forward, leaving others behind. The rifle party would
go to a selected point, when the party behind would start a long
line of fires which soon extended for several miles, being driven
by the wind, and as the flames approached, the deer would bound
along to get away from the fire, and thus rush toward the rifle¬
men and be shot down.”48
204 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
Deer were run down in Marquette County. Muir states: “In
winter, after the first snow, we frequently saw three or four
Indians hunting deer in company, running like hounds on the
fresh, exciting tracks. The escape of the deer from these noise¬
less, tireless hunters was said to be well-nigh impossible; they
were followed to the death.”49
The whites had fewer methods of hunting, still hunting and
driving being the commonest. In the “Big Woods” of Dunn
County, artificial salt-licks were prepared. The deer were shot on
moonlight nights from a platform built in a tree 30 to 40 feet
from the ground.50 The deer was brought home in winter by fas¬
tening the head to the tail of a horse and dragging it over the
snow. Occasionally two deer were fastened to the horse.
The “shining” of deer at night by means of a light was prac¬
tised by many hunters. Near Hudson, in 1865, John E. Bartett
killed nine deer and wounded four more in one night by “fire
hunting,” as “shining” was known at the time.51
Hunting on horseback was common. In Dunn County a bell
was attached to the horse. The deer being accustomed to the bells
on cattle permitted a close approach. “Atticus,” who lived in
Racine, wrote in 1844 : “The largest and best game is the deer.
These are so plenty that they were sold in our market last winter
at seventy-five cents apiece. In the western part of the Territory
they are hunted on horseback, with horns, and killed with shot¬
guns instead of rifles. One individual there — a man of undoubted
veracity, a lawyer who stands high in his profession, whose
sporting has not interfered with his business, and who formerly
resided in Illinois — says, that during his residence in that State
and in this Territory, he has killed over two thousand deer.”52
The favorite method of hunting deer on the prairies was from
a sleigh. Elizabeth Baird,53 while visiting at Delevan, Walworth
County, in February, 1842, was taken on a hunt. Every person
was dressed in white. After driving a short distance, a large herd
of deer was sighted and it seemed to her that there were hun¬
dreds of them.
The method of hunting in the town of Christiana, Dane
County, has been described as follows: “Previous to its settle¬
ment, this was a favorite hunting ground with the settlers in the
adjoining towns. Deer were then very plenty, and one of the
favorite methods of hunting them in winter was to get what was
called a ‘drive’ on them. Taking advantage of their curiosity, and
knowing they could be easily approached with a team, several
men in a sleigh followed their trail until within rifle shot, when
the team was turned and driven around the deer, the men jump-
1953]
Schorger — White-Tailed Deer
205
in g out behind trees at convenient intervals. As soon as they
were well surrounded, the firing commenced, and the deer were
driven from one side of the circle to the other, a large number
frequently being killed before the herd succeeded in making its
escape.”54
The pernicious use of set-guns was very widespread and con¬
tinued through the period covered by this paper, to 1900, in spite
of a prohibitory law. Only a few examples will be given. A
farmer living in the Peshtigo Sugar Bush, Marinette County,
visited his set-guns in November, 1874. At one a deer was found.
He accidentally walked against the string of the second gun and
was critically wounded.55 In Taylor County, a homesteader,
Anton Kuehrt, was killed on October 28, 1885, when he walked
into his own set-gun.56 Usually the victim was an innocent
hunter. Richard Purkiss of Chelsea, Taylor County, sprung a set-
gun in November, 1893, and was killed.57
Migration
A century ago the belief existed that deer migrated southward
in winter from northern Wisconsin. Cram23 states that the
Indians of the Lac Vieux Desert region moved southward “fol¬
lowing the deer for the winter hunt.” Dart58 came to Green Lake
County in 1840 at which time “deer were plentiful, except when
they went south in winter to escape the cold.” If this were the
case, hunters would not have gone northward. Muir49 came to
the adjoining county of Marquette in 1849. He mentions that
some of his enterprising neighbors went every fall with their
teams to the pine regions in the northern part of the state to
hunt and returned with half a dozen deer, one or two bears, and
fifteen to twenty bushels of cranberries. A doubt might be raised
that the trips were made mainly to kill deer when they were so
plentiful locally. The deer in fall were very fond of winter wheat
after it had grown for about a month and were easily killed by
the hunter, lying in wait for them at night. Muir states that one
man in this manner killed 30 or 40 in one small field.
A note from Oshkosh for the year 1881 states: “Bears and
deer are very plenty in Wisconsin this fall, as the acorn crop is
immense, and it is bringing the deer down from the Lake Supe¬
rior region in large numbers.”59 It was stated in the same year
that the tracks of deer could be seen everywhere at Phillips, Price
County, in summer, but in fall the deer migrated. Subsequently
it was also said that the deer moved southward on the approach
of winter.60
206 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
At Glidden, Ashland County, the majority of the deer were
believed to migrate about the middle of September, but three
weeks later they were, inconsistently, “very numerous.”61 An old
hunter thought that the scarcity of deer at Hayward in 1885 was
due to a movement southward where there were more acorns.62
Old hunters informed Shiras6 that an extensive fall and spring
migration formerly took place in all of northern Michigan and
Wisconsin. Since he believed that there were very few deer on
the southern shore of Lake Superior prior to 1870, any notice¬
able movement must have taken place since that date. He states :
“Early in May, as soon as the depth of the snow permitted travel,
thousands of does worked their way north traveling alone in a
broad belt along the south shore of Lake Superior, where a few
weeks later the fawns were born. The bucks came more leisurely,
but by early June the migration was over.” The return move¬
ment began the middle of August and was in full swing by Sep¬
tember. It has also been stated that local and migratory deer
occur in Michigan.63 The migratory deer passed through a cer¬
tain section in fall and returned in spring. Local people claimed
that they could distinguish between the residents and migrants.
There is no authentic information to support the statements
that formerly there was a migration of deer, using the word in
its commonly accepted sense. All the accounts were obtained
from hunters and may be set down as folklore. There are similar
traditional beliefs. For example, in the fall of 1912, I shot a large
buck near Herbster, Wisconsin. An old resident insisted that it
was a “swamp” buck and readily distinguishable from a “hill”
buck. The latter part of December, 1878, old hunters reported
that the deer in Jackson County had been moving northward for
a week or two. Opinions were divided on whether this meant that
mild or severe weather was approaching.64
The year (1895) that “Julian” wrote on migratory deer,
Hough65 was in Vilas County, Wisconsin. A trapper told him that
there were few better deer areas than that in the vicinity of Big
St. Germain Lake where the deer wintered in a “heavy thicket.”
The local disappearance of deer was usually due to yarding. Even
in the southern part of the state they concentrated in winter in
swamps, thickets, or heavy timber.
Commerce
In the days of the fur trade deer contributed meat, tallow, and
hides. The trading post, depending upon its location, obtained its
fresh meat, venison, from the Indians. The daily ration of the
Canadian canoeman consisted of a quart of hulled corn, or peas,
1953]
Schorger — White-Tailed Deer
207
and two ounces of tallow. On this diet he performed the hardest
kind of physical labor to the despair of the modern dietitian.
Grignon39 and his associate, Jacob Franks, about 1806, shipped
from Green Bay to Mackinac 120 kegs of deer tallow weighing
about 10,000 pounds.
The traffic in venison became enormous in the latter part of
the nineteenth century. The lumber camps bought deer carcasses
directly from professional hunters, or hired men to shoot for the
camp mess. For example, the winter of 1868-69, James Terry
engaged to hunt for John Sterling who had two camps on the
North Fork of the Eau Claire River.66 He received his board and
$4.00 per deer. Up to the first of January of this winter, he killed
38 deer and two bears ; and up to the first of January the follow¬
ing winter, 47 deer. These were moderate bags. Further data on
the numbers killed by professional hunters will be found in the
section on the histories of deer in the various counties.
The local consumption of deer was comparatively small until
the construction of railroads provided easy transportation to the
large cities within and without the state. Scarcely a newspaper
failed to comment on the scarcity or abundance of deer and the
price of venison. In December, 1850, a load of 22 deer was
brought to Milwaukee and the lot purchased by the Plankinton
Hotel.67 A quarter of a century later, the following comment was
made in Milwaukee: “Venison is so plenty in this market that
the pedestrians wish there was some public park for the deer
instead of having them occupy the sidewalks.”68
It was stated in January, 1866, that 3,000 deer had been
brought into Eau Claire over a period of three months. Many of
these were hauled to Sparta to be shipped by rail to Milwaukee.69
The deer season of 1879 at the village of Colby was considered
only fair, but there were shipped from that station fifty whole
deer weighing 6,334 pounds, and 1,860 pounds of saddles making
a total of 8,194 pounds.70 There were shipped from Peshtigo dur¬
ing the season of 1882, 1,047 saddles of venison. The total weight
of saddles, hams, and carcasses shipped was 61,726 pounds.71
The aggregate annual shipments from the various railway sta¬
tions must have been enormous.
The trade in deerskins from the Upper Great Lakes was exten¬
sive by 1700, indicating that the valuable furs were no longer
easily obtainable. The Sansquartier72 inventory made at Detroit
in 1709 contains a large percentage of deerskins. The skins were
sold under several classifications : bucks, does, fawn, red ( rouge) ,
blue (bleu), grey (gris) , shaved (rasee), and dressed. Red refers
to the summer pelage. During the fall molt the hairs for a time
208 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
have a bluish cast before attaining the full gray of the winter
coat.
Lists of skins collected at various posts are numerous, but fre¬
quently it is impossible to determine the locality, or even the
state, of their origin. In December, 1820, the Indian Office at
Washington offered at auction 82,200 pounds of deerskins, most
of them shaved. These were obtained principally at Fort Orange,
on the Missouri, and at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin.73 Most of
the records of the American Fur Company, and other companies,
are equally vague on origin since the data from the individual
posts have been lost.
There are many records of the number of deerskins handled
by the Green Bay traders, but there is no assurance that all of the
skins were obtained in the Green Bay region. The Menominees
might make their winter hunt on the Upper Mississippi and
trade their skins at Green Bay. In August, 1811, the South West
Fur Company gave credit to Pierre Grignon, Green Bay, for 891
deerskins; and a year later for 74 deerskins. Jacob Franks, Green
Bay, turned over to the South West Fur Company 265 deerskins
in July, 1813, and 131 a year later.74 Jacques Porlier, another
Green Bay trader, received credit from the American Fur Com¬
pany for 2,468 skins in August, 1821.
An invoice of furs received at Mackinac from Porlier and
Grignon, Green Bay, in June, 1832, contains the following
items:75
Skins
Pounds Price per lb.
869 shaved deer, heavy
1824 shaved deer, light .
140 red bucks .
682 red does .
66 badly shaved deer
65 grey shaved deer .
2640 }
3120 }
360 l
1200 \
99
193
$0.28
0.26
0.20
0.125
In 1833 Porlier and Grignon sold 2,499 deerskins, and in 1834,
2,058 skins.
The deerskins collected by the American Fur Company at two
Wisconsin posts for the years 1835 and 1836 are :75
Green Bay Outfit Milwaukee Outfit
1835 1836 1835 1836
Deerskins undressed, pounds . . 7,610 8,817 3,232 1,307
The average deerskin weighed about two pounds.
Trade in deerskins was appreciable until towards the end of
the nineteenth century. Two men, Carr and Rand, in January,
1882, brought to Sparta 100 deerskins, the result of their hunt.76
1953]
Schorger — White-Tailed Deer
209
In 1883, John Carlson, of Trade Lake, Burnett County, obtained
1400 pounds of “buckskin” from the Indians.77
Large Deer
The weights of a large number of deer are recorded in the
newspapers. Wisconsin hunters considered any deer large that
weighed over 200 pounds, and if over 250 pounds, exceptionally
large. Schoonmaker78 gives the weight of two New York deer
entire at 390 and 397 pounds. A close approximation of the live
weight of a deer is obtained by dividing the dressed weight by 80
and multiplying the quotient by 100. Scott79 gives the calculated
live weight of nine Wisconsin deer as ranging from 312 to 383
pounds.
The weights of some Wisconsin deer are given below:
* Dressed.
** Not dressed,
f Condition not stated.
Factors Affecting the Population
There were many winters when the deer suffered severely.
Marquette4 spent the hard winter of 1674-75 at the present site
of Chicago. On January 24 he mentioned that all the wild animals
felt the bad weather; and on March 20, that the deer were so
lean that some of those killed were abandoned.
A crust on deep snow was one of the worst conditions that the
deer could meet. Then they were an easy prey to wolves and to
hunters on snowshoes. Anderson89 had a trading post on the Min¬
nesota River the winter of 1806-07. In March a crust formed on
the snow and the Indians tomahawked every deer that could be
found for sheer amusement. The winter following not a deer
could be found.
There are many references to the effect of the winter of 1856-
57 on Wisconsin deer. Joseph V. Jones came to Durand, Pepin
County, in 1856. That winter the snow was six feet deep on the
210 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
level so that the deer were unable to travel. Many were killed
with clubs and hundreds starved.90 The situation was equally bad
in Grant County where the deep, crusted snow permitted a great
slaughter. The deer were killed by simply knocking them on their
heads. By January they were so lean from starvation that the
venison was not marketable.91 In November, 1857, deer, though
formerly abundant in Richland County, were reported scarce.
The deep snow of the previous winter led to their easy destruc¬
tion by wolves and to wanton killing by hunters.92
A report from Prairie du Chien reads : “The market was never
so plentifully supplied with venison as at present. It is selling at
wholesale from $3 to $5 per hundred. A friend of ours killed a
drove of seven last week in one day. He followed the path made
through the hard crust, until they could scarcely walk and then
with a Sharpe’s rifle shot them down one after the other. We
thought last summer, when noticing some Frenchmen bringing
home each morning from 5 to 8 deer, obtained by Fire Hunting
on the Wisconsin and Paint Creek, that they would soon kill off
all the Deer; but we are now convinced that deer hunting in
December exceeds Fire Hunting five hundred per cent, for the
very reason that the animals are now rendered helpless by the
deep snows, and are murdered by every farmer’s boy in the
country. Some three sleigh loads of venison passed our office
every day last week and as many more this week.”93
It is stated by Harvey Brown94 that about Christmas, 1857, a
crust about one-half inch in thickness formed on the deep snow
in Buffalo County, and that nearly every deer perished. Follow¬
ing the spring thaw, their bodies were found in nearly every
coulee. Deer were stated to be abundant near New London, Wau¬
paca County, in February, 1857, but owing to the crust on the
snow the Indians were killing them off with clubs and hatchets.95
Large numbers were also killed in Outagamie County at the same
time.96
An experienced hunter, Jonathan Cartwright, hunted in the
Menomonie woods, Dunn County, at this time and states : “This
winter was the hardest on deer of any I have ever known. White
men and Indians slaughtered them in great numbers. They would
put on snow-shoes, and taking a hatchet, but no gun, would strike
them down. . . . One man told me that he killed ten in one day,
and that in some places the Indians had taken them by hun¬
dreds.”14 They were very scarce the following two years.
Similar weather conditions prevailed the winter of 1868-69.
A crust formed on the snow in Door County in February and
deer w^ere slaughtered in wholesale fashion.97 As an indication,
1953]
Schorger — White-Tailed Deer
211
Ambrose Hummel of Green Bay killed 88 deer that season along
the Menominee River.98
The winter of 1887-88 produced great hardship for the deer
in northeastern Wisconsin. Two hunters at Bryant, Langlade
County, caught a herd of 17 deer in the deep snow and killed all
of them.99 The effect of this winter on the deer is clearly shown
by the following account from Florence : “A fear prevails among
hunters that deer will be considerably scarcer than usual next
fall. There is no doubt that the severe weather of the past winter
has played havoc with the noble game. The deep snow not only
placed the deer at the mercy of their enemies, especially the
wolves, but covered up all kinds of vegetation so much as to
create a sort of famine among the animals. The capture of dozens
of live deer by men during the past two or three months, is due
almost as much to exhaustion produced among them by lack of
food as to the deep snow in which they foundered. The animals
would have been more successful in getting away from both men
and wolves if they had been in better condition physically. Gaunt
as rails, nearly starved and pitiably weak, thousands of them
have undoubtedly been killed by wolves in Northern Wisconsin
and Michigan during the winter, and it is possible that many
have been starved to death. Men who worked in the woods during
the latter part of the winter tell some almost incredible stories
concerning the poor animals. The deer have sought refuge, pre¬
sumably from wolves, in lumber camps, and have devoured the
boughs of pine trees almost as soon as the men felled them, and
while the latter were working near at hand. That their condition
is very poor is shown by the experience of some lumbermen en¬
gaged in driving logs on the Popple River. A few days since,
while working, these men saw a large buck trying to cross the
river on some logs ahead of them. The animal, who did not see
the men, succeeded, by dint of hard labor, in getting about half
way across the river and then fell down, exhausted, on the logs.
When the men reached him, a few moments later, he did not
make the slightest attempt to get away. They took pity on his
weak condition, and, with great care and kindness, carried him
over the logs and into the woods, where they left him. They say
the animal was hardly able to stand up and that he was so poor
that his bones protruded through his hide.”100
The above conditions prevailed when the state deer population
was small in comparison with that in recent years. The necessity
for controlling the number of deer by shooting when the popula¬
tion exceeds the carrying capacity of the land is beyond question.
The effect of overbrowsing on forest reproduction is also very
212 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
important. Sentiment on the deer problem may be sadly mis¬
placed.
There is little information on the killing of deer outright by
forest fires. The Peshtigo fire in the fall of 1871 was one of the
worst on record in Wisconsin. L. D. Gray, who hunted along the
Menominee River that fall stated that large numbers of deer
were killed by the fires. Eight deer were found burned to death
at one place.101 Less than a year later deer returned to the burned
regions around Peshtigo.102 In the fall of 1894, 25 deer were
found dead on a knoll near Black River Falls where they were
surrounded by fire.103
Despite the numerous old claims of heavy destruction of deer
by wolves, bobcats, and lynx, no data are available to show that
these predators ever had more than a minor effect on the deer
population. The long-standing bounties on these carnivores has
led to the near extinction of the timber wolf and lynx. A recent
study by Thompson104 reveals that the timber wolves remaining
in Wisconsin, in the territories over which they ranged, were
ineffectual in preventing an over-population of deer.
The ecological changes produced by extensive lumbering in
Wisconsin after 1850 led to a great increase in the deer popula¬
tion. The cutting of the coniferous forests was especially impor¬
tant since the land was soon covered by young hardwoods and
forage plants, thereby creating a favorable deer habitat. A low
point in the state’s deer population was reached about 1890. This
resulted almost entirely from over-shooting. The game laws were
largely ignored and frequently flouted. Jackson, in 1908, in dis¬
cussing the gradual decrease in the number of deer stated : “The
cause of this decrease is not inefficient legislation, but it is be¬
cause of inefficient protection from wolves and law-breakers.”105
It is certain, however, that prior to 1899, when venison could be
sold, the gun was largely to blame.
Under the game laws of 1897, the following were considered
“deer counties”: Adams, Ashland, Barron, Bayfield, Buffalo,
Burnett, Brown, Chippewa, Clark, Door, Douglas, Dunn, Eau
Claire, Florence, Forest, Iron, Jackson, Juneau, Langlade, Ke¬
waunee, Lincoln, Marathon, Marinette, Marquette, Oconto,
Oneida, Pepin, Pierce, Polk, Portage, Price, Sauk, Sawyer,
Shawano, Taylor, Trempealeau, Vilas, Washburn, and Wood. A
distributional map, rating deer common, scarce, and doubtful,
was published by Cory106 in 1912.
1953]
Schorger — White-Tailed Deer
213
Legislation for the Protection of Deer
1851. First law. The killing of deer was prohibited from February 1 to
July 1.
1858. The open season remained unchanged.
1860. The open season was reduced two months, and ran from August 1 to
January 1.
1867. The hunting season was increased by one-half month: August 1 to
January 15.
1869. The use of set-guns was prohibited.
1875. It was forbidden to “ensnare or trap” any deer. Hunting with dogs in
Kewaunee County whs prohibited.
1876. The use of dogs in hunting was prohibited throughout the state.
1877. The open season was reduced and ran from September 15 to January
1. The use of dogs was permitted in Ashland, Douglas, and Bayfield
counties. The deer season in Burnett County was reduced to 15 days
until 1883.
1879. The killing of deer in Door County except for personal use as food
was prohibited and no deer could be exported from the county.
1880. The shining of deer in Door County was prohibited. The open season
in Douglas, Bayfield, and Ashland counties ran from August 15 to
November 30. Elsewhere north of Vernon, Sauk, Columbia, Dodge,
Washington, and Ozaukee counties, the open season was one-half
month shorter: September 1 to November 30.
1881. The open season throughout the state ran from September 15 to
January 1.
1883. The exportation of venison from the state was prohibited. The open
season was reduced and ran from November 1 to December 15.
Hunting of deer at night with lights was made illegal.
1885. The open season was changed to cover the period October 1 to Novem¬
ber 30. Deer could be killed only for food.
1887. The open season was shortened and ran from October 1 to Novem¬
ber 10.
1889. The act permitting the use of dogs in Ashland, Douglas, and Bayfield
counties was repealed. The open season was increased by five days
and ran from October 15 to December 1.
1891. The open season was reduced by 15 days: November 1 to December 1.
The sale of venison was made illegal if done eight days after the
season closed.
1895. Each hunter could transport but two deer. The open season ran from
November 1 to 20. Sheboygan County was closed to deer hunting for
five years.
1897. The open season ran from November 1 to 20. The killing of deer on
ice or in the water was prohibited. Sheboygan and Fond du Lac coun¬
ties were closed for five years. The bag limit was two deer of any
kind. Settlers could kill deer for the use of their families. The sale,
transportation, or trading of venison five days after the close of the
season was prohibited. The first licenses were issued. The fee was
$1.00 for a resident and $30.00 for a non-resident.
1899. The length of the open season was unchanged. It was made illegal to
sell venison during the first six days of the season or ship or sell six
days after the close of the season.
214 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
Histories of Deer in the Counties
Adams. Deer were killed formerly in large numbers. In Feb¬
ruary, 1857, S. U. Hamilton arrived in Sheboygan with a load of
26 deer that he and his father had killed in Adams County. He
estimated that over 1000 deer were shot in the county during the
season.1 A party of hunters from the vicinity of Beaver Dam
arrived in that town on December 25, 1861, with a load of deer
that had been killed in Adams County.2 Deer were plentiful in
1867, 3 and so common the following year that hams were sold by
the Indians at six cents per pound.4 The year 1872 was not a suc¬
cessful season ; however one hunter killed four deer in one day.5
Venison was quite common in 1878 when the saddles sold at six
cents per pound.6 In 1874 venison was virtually a drug on the
market. Carcasses brought only four to five cents a pound in
Kilbourn.7 There were killed in the town of Quincy in November,
1894, three “antelope,”8 a term occasionally used for a spike buck.
1 Sheboygan Times , Feb. 7, 1857. 3 Beaver Dam Argus , Dec. 27, 1861. 3 Friendship
Press , Nov. 29, 1867. * Ibid., Dec. 4, 1868. 5 Ibid., Nov. 30, Dec. 7, 1872. 3 Ibid., Jan.
3, 1874. tlbid., Dec. 12, 1874. 8 Ibid., Nov. 17, 1894.
Ashland. Lapham1 in 1858 listed the deer as one of the mam¬
mals of the Penokee Range southeast of Ashland. Apparently
they did not become common in the Ashland region until the late
1870’s. When a deer was caught in Chequamegon Bay in Septem¬
ber, 1872, it was considered a stray.2 On October 28, 1875, it was
stated that the fifth deer for the season had been brought into
Ashland, so that they were still not very common.3 In the fall of
1880, deer were reported plentiful and in excellent condition.
Two men killed 15 by the end of September.4 One hunter at
Glidden, in November, 1884, killed seven deer in one week.5 In
1885 deer were reported rather scarce around Ashland,6 but
around Glidden they were numerous in 1885 and 1886.7 Two
hunters from Medford killed 20 deer in the county in the season
of 1892.8
1 Lapham, I. A. Original diary, Aug. 24-Sept. 23, 1858. Wis. Hist. Soc. ; Trans.
Wis. State Agr. Soc. for 1858-59. 5 (1860) 399. 3 Ashland Press, Sept. 21, 1872.
3 Ibid., Oct. 23, 1875. 4 Ibid., Aug. 28, Oct. 2, 1880. 5 Glidden Pioneer, Nov. 26, 1884.
6 Ashland Press, Nov. 14, 1885. 7 Glidden Pioneer, Oct. 29, Nov. 5, 12, 1885; June 3,
Sept. 23, 1886. 8 Medford Star and News, Dec. 3, 1892.
Barron. In December, 1872, three sleds arrived in Menomonie
with 65 deer that had been killed in the vicinity of Rice Lake.1
Deer were shot in great numbers in the fall of 1875. Two Chetek
hunters killed “some forty” deer and several bears.2 Hunters re¬
ported deer and bear more plentiful in the fall of 1877 than for
a number of years.3 Many were shot in 1879. Hunters from
Pierce County killed large numbers near Cumberland. By early
1953]
Schorger — White-Tailed Deer
215
December a hunter at Barron had killed and shipped 23 deer.4
Elijah Haines, of Clinton, also shot 23.5 Many deer were killed
at Rice Lake the following year.6
The Eau Claire markets received large quantities of venison
from Barron and other northern counties in 1883.7 B. L. Eighmy
killed 16 deer the season of 1884.8 They were unusually numerous
in 1886. Two Chetek hunters killed over 30 deer. About 75 deer
were shipped from Cameron.9 Large numbers were killed in 1889
and 1892.10 There was a decided decline in the deer population at
this time. By 1897 venison was scarce and expensive at Rice
Lake.11 Considerable venison was reported shipped from Rice
Lake the following year.12
1 Menomonie News, Dec. 21, 1872. 2 Rice Lake < Chronotype, Nov. 20, Dec. 25, 1875.
3 Ibid., Nov. 28, 1877. 4 Rice Lake Chronotype, Nov. 13, Dec. 4; Barron Shield, Dec.
4, 1879. 5 Barron Shield, Jan. 1, 1880. 6 Rice Lake Chronotype, Oct. 21, Nov. 11,
1880. 7'Eau Claire (w) Free Press, Nov. 8, 1883. 8 Chetek Alert, Nov. 29, 1884.
9 Chetek Alert, Nov. 6, Dec. 4 ; Barron Shield, Dec. 3, 1886. 10 Chetek Alert, Nov. 15,
28, 1889; Nov. 18, 1892. n Rice Lake Chronotype , Nov. 5, 12, 1897. ™ Ibid., Nov. 4,
1898.
Bayfield. Shields,1 while at Bayfield, was informed that the
previous September three Indians killed 14 deer within twenty
miles of town. Three hunters from Waupaca, after an absence of
two weeks in November, 1883, returned with 11 deer and two
bears killed near Bayfield.2 In the late fall of 1883, David
Downer, while hunting at Cable, killed 19 deer, the two largest
weighing 225 and 240 pounds, respectively.3 During the season
of 1884, a Bayfield hunter is reputed to have killed 75 deer, 5
moose, and one bear in Bayfield and Douglas Counties.4 A. Angus
in November, 1885, sold in Ashland ten deer killed in the vicinity
of Pike Lake, Bayfield County.5 Four Neillsville hunters killed
16 deer in the county in the season of 1887. 6 A party of five hunt¬
ers from Appleton spent six weeks in the fall of 1892 on Pike
River and averaged seven deer per week. The station agent at
Pike River stated that 600 deer had been shipped from that place,
the maximum for any season.7
1 Shields, G. O. Rustlings in the Rockies. Chicago (1883) 281. 2 Waupaca Post,
Nov. 29, 1883. 3 Durand Courier, Nov. 9, 1883. 4 Madison State Journal, Jan. 20,
1885. 5 Ashland Press, Nov. 7, 1885. 6 Neillsville Republican and Press, Nov. 3, 1887.
7 Appleton Crescent, Dec. 3, 1892.,
Brown. When Ellis1 arrived at Green Bay in 1822, game, in¬
cluding deer, was abundant. In July, 1834, Bishop Kemper2 saw
a “place where they shoot deer” within a mile of town. This was
probably a tree-platform. Deer were killed in abundance in 1853
and 1854.3 They were considered more plentiful in 1868 than for
many years. One was caught in the city of Green Bay, from
which place carcasses were shipped southward daily by express.4
A Green Bay hunter, Ambrose Hummel, killed 88 deer in the
216 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
season of 1868. 5 The early spring of 1869, there was deep snow
with a heavy crust. Deer appeared to be especially numerous and
they came into the settlements. The Indians at Little Kaukauna
(Little Rapids) are said to have killed 15 in two days.6
This statement appeared in 1870: “We notice that the usual
winter supply of venison is beginning to come in. Last season
vast numbers of deer were slaughtered within a circuit of fifty
miles from this city. We have known one hunter to bring in
thirty at one time. They are shipped by express to the Chicago
and Milwaukee markets. During the hunting season many who
make a business of trapping and hunting come to this region as
offering superior advantages for their avocation.”7
Venison was so cheap in Green Bay in 1878 that it was con¬
sidered as not covering the cost of the ammunition.8 At about
this time the county no longer furnished many deer for domestic
use. In 1876 the statement was made that deer are particularly
plentiful “north of us.”& A few deer continued to be killed in the
county. A deer ran through the main streets of Green Bay on
November 28, 1892 ;10 and three appeared within the city limits
in September, 1901.11
1 Ellis, A. G. Recollections. Wis. Hist. Colls., 7 (1876) 240. 2 Kemper, Bishop
Jackson. Wis. Hist. Colls., 14 (1898) 429. 3 Green Bay Advocate, Oct. 13, 20; Nov.
30, 1854. 4 Green Bay Advocate, Nov. 19, Dec. 3; Gazette, Nov. 21, 1868. 5 Green
Bay Advocate, Oct. 28, 1869. 6 Green Bay Gazette, March 13, 1869. 7 Green Bay
Advocate, Nov. 10, 1870. Ibid., Dec. 11, 1873. 2 Ibid., Oct. 19, 1876. *> Ibid., Dec. 1,
1892. 11 Ibid., Sept. 21, 1901.
Buffalo . Deer were plentiful about 1855. The county was a
favorite hunting ground for the Indians. Cooke states: “The
Sioux, whose tribal home grounds were west of the Mississippi,
found that in our part of Wisconsin there were more elk, deer
and bear than in Minnesota along the Mississippi.”1 The Cookes
could see deer and elk crossing their valley almost daily. Deer
were never again as plentiful after the winter of 1856-57, with
its deep snow, as they died in large numbers.2
The effect of the deep snow seems to have been overcome
within a decade. In 1865, a Mr. Bump of Mondovi killed 11 deer
in three days of hunting, while two other men killed six in one
day. In the town of Belvidere, forty deer were seen in one day,
one herd containing 18.3 In 1869 deer were reported not as plen¬
tiful as the previous year; however, two men killed 12 in two
weeks near Gilmanton.4 A hunter in the town of Modena killed
five fine deer within an hour.5 Many deer were reported killed in
the county in 1878. Two hunters shot six to seven deer in one
week near Gilmanton.6
1 Cooke, W. W. A frontiersman in northwestern Wisconsin. Wis. Mag. Hist., 23
(1940) 288, 290, 297. 2 Curtiss-Wedge, F. History of Buffalo and Pepin Counties,
1953]
Schorger — -White-Tailed Deer
217
Wisconsin. Winona (1919) 953. 3 West Eau Claire Argus, Dec. 28, 1865. 4 Alma
Express, Dec. 16, 1869. 5 Ibid., Jan. 6, 1870. 6 Madison State Journal, Nov. 15, 1878;
Mbndovi Herald, Dec. 28, 1878.
Burnett . Large numbers of deer were killed in this county. In
February, 1876, George Matwawos, of Yellow Lake, arrived in
Ashland with a load of venison. He and ten other hunters killed
165 deer during the winter of 1875-76.1 Over 500 saddles of veni¬
son were shipped from Rush City, Minnesota, in one week in
December, 1877. Most of these deer were killed in Chisago
County, Minnesota, and Burnett County.2 Deer were stated to be
so plentiful in the vicinity of Grantsburg in 1878 that two or
three would be seen by going five miles from town in any direc¬
tion.3 The season of 1885, two camps containing seven hunters
killed 41 deer up to the latter part of November.4 Deer were
abundant in 1886. Two hunters killed 40 during the season.
Thoreson and Johnson, of Grantsburg, shipped nearly 500 sad¬
dles of venison to St. Paul up to December 10, and expected to
handle several hundred more.5 It was estimated that at least 1000
deer were killed during the seasons of 1895 and 1896. The com¬
plaint was made that many hunters, particularly the Indians, pay
little attention to the laws regulating the closed and open
seasons:6
1 Ashland Press, Feb. 19, 1876. 12 Grantsburg- Sentinel, Dec. 21, 1877. 3 Ibid., Nov.
8, 1878. 4 Ibid., Dec. 4, 1885. 5 Ibid., Dec. 3, 10, 24, 1886. 3 Ibid., Feb. 4, 1897.
Calumet. The county does not appear to have contained many
deer within recorded time, due presumably to the Indians on the
reservations. The population in 1840 consisted of 530 Stock-
bridge and Brothertown Indians, and three whites.1 In October,
1866, seven does shot along the eastern shore of Lake Winnebago
were brought into Appleton.2 Deer were reported in 1868 as
“never so plenty/'3 but all subsequent information indicates that
the number was quite small. Two deer were killed near Chilton
in 1871.4 The following season five men took five deer in a day’s
hunt on Killsnake Creek.5 This creek was a favorite place for
hunting. John Mayer, town of Charlestown, killed six deer in the
season of 1876.6 The two hunters who killed a large doe at the
mouth of the Killsnake in 1877 were envied.7 A hunting party
that tracked a buck along this creek in 1880 failed to capture it.8
1 Cammuck, T. Wis. Hist. Eolls., 1 (1855) 104. 3 Appleton Post, Oct. 25, 1866.
3 Chilton Times, Dec. 26, 1868. 4 Ibid., Nov. 4, 11, 1871. 5 Ibid., Nov. 16, 1872. 6 Ibid.,
Dec. 9, 1876. 7 Ibid., Oct 6, 1877. 8 Ibid., Dec. 4, 1880.
Chippewa. Formerly one of the best deer counties in the state.
Grignon1 relates that in the days of the fur trade the Chippewas
at the Falls of the Chippewa River were given ammunition by a
trader and told to bring in as many deer as they could kill. The
218 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
following night they brought in thirty. It was stated in Novem¬
ber, 1877, that venison was never more plentiful and that about
50 carcasses were shipped from Chippewa Falls to the Chicago
market every week.2 Deer were quite plentiful in 1878, and 22
were shipped from the Falls on one day.3 It was feared in 1882
that deer would approach extinction at the rate at which they
were being killed.4 Two years later three men killed 22 deer in
the town of Big Bend.5 In 1885 one hunter, Sebe Miles, returned
to Chippewa Falls with 20 “very nice” deer.6 A buck stated to
weigh 300 pounds was on exhibition.7
One hunter reported deer very scarce in 1888. However, Dan
Scommon killed 19 deer up to November 1, principally along the
Jump River.8 It was reported in 1890 that more deer were killed
that season on the Chippewa waters than ever before, and that
they were increasing in number.9 Two years later they were
again reported plentiful and it was estimated that during the
month of November 200 carcasses were sold in Chippewa Falls.10
By 1900 deer were reduced to modest numbers. At Stanley only a
small number were killed during the season of 1898 in compari¬
son with the previous year.11
1 Grignon, Augustin. Wis. Hist. Colls., 3 (1857) 240. 2 Chippewa Falls Herald ,
Nov. 23; Times, Nov. 21, 1877. 3 Chippewa Falls Times, Oct. 2, 1878. ^Chippewa
Falls Herald, Dec. 22, 1882. 5 Ibid., Nov. 21, 1884. 6 Chippewa Falls Times, Nov. 25,
1885. 7 Chippewa Falls Herald, Oct. 23, 1885. 8 Chippewa Falls Times, Nov. 14, 1888.
a Chippewa Falls Herald, Dec. 5, 1890. 10 Ibid., Dec. 2, 1892. 11 Stanley Republican,
Nov. 19, 1898.
Clark. A lady who cooked for a boarding house at Neillsville
during the winter of 1851-52, prepared 21 deer that season.1
During one week in November, 1864, Theodore Davis killed 14
deer and 4 bears in the town of Weston.2 Deer were reported
very plentiful in 1869, one hunter killing five in three days.3 A
squaw, Kate Scott, killed about 20 deer in the county during the
season of 1870.4 There was a protest from the village of Green¬
wood on the slaughter of deer during the season of 1873 : “It has
been no uncommon thing for the last eight or ten days to see deer
passing down the road by the score and we might say by the
hundred.”5 Hundreds were hauled through Neillsville.6
Deer continued abundant for many years. A hunter in the
town of Thorp killed 35 deer during the season of 1881. 7 In 1887
deer were reported “very thick” on the North Fork of the Eau
Claire River. Large numbers were killed in the county and
shipped from Neillsville to Chicago during the last week of
October.8
In 1889 it was said that Neillsville hunters seldom found any
deer to kill ; but at the same time loads of venison passed through
1953]
Schorger— White-Tailed Deer
219
Thorp.9 It is probable that this venison originated in Taylor
County. Deer were scarce in the town of Longwood in 1890.10
A considerable number of deer and bear were shipped from
Granton during the season of 1893.11 Hunters at Humbird had
very poor success in 1897.12 The following statement was made
at Neillsville for the season of 1898 : “We are unable to ascertain
the number killed in this county during the twenty days’ hunt
but judging from the number shipped from this city alone the
slaughter was great.”1,3
1 Neillsville Republican and Press, Dec. 15, 1910; Proc. Wis. Hist. Soc. for 1913.
(1914) 126. 12 Neillsville Advocate, Nov. 21, 1864; Madison State Journal, Nov. 29,
1864. 3 Neillsville Republican: Madison State Journal, Dec. 6, 1869. 4 Black River
Palls Banner, Dec. 24, 1870. 5 Neillsville Republican, Nov. 15, 1873. 6 Neillsville
Press, Nov. 14, 1873. 7 Colby Phonograph , Feb. 15, 1882. 8 Neillsville True Repub¬
lican, Oct. 27, 1887; Times, Nov. 3, 1887. 9 Neillsville Republican and Press, Oct.
26, Nov. 23, 1889. 10 Ibid., Oct. 23, 1890. 41 Ibid., Oct 19, 1893. 42 Ibid., Nov. 11, 1897.
13 Ibid., Nov. 24, 1898.
Columbia . The information on deer in this county is limited.
A few deer were seen near Kilbourn (Wisconsin Dells) the
winter of 1857-58, but none were known to have been killed:
“Mr. Prentis, who lives near here, and who has killed a number
every season, informs us that he has not seen one this winter.
A great many were destroyed last winter.”1 (The winter of 1856-
57 was marked by deep snow.) Deer hunters at Portage were
said to have had unusual success in 1866. 2 The fall of 1868, Joe
Brickwell, town of Lewiston, killed five deer. He then went to the
town of Lemonweir, Juneau County, and killed an additional 17
deer.3 In March, 1869, the tracks of three deer and six wolves led
to the Wisconsin River near Kilbourn.4 In September, 1890, a
deer was shot at Wyocena by Dick Lobdell.5 Deer were never
exterminated in this county, a few persisting along the Wiscon¬
sin River.
1 Kilbourn Mirror, Jan. 19, 1858. E Portage Reporter: Madison State Journal, Dec.
3, 1866. 3 Portage Register, Feb. 8, 1869. 4 Kilbourn Mirror, March 24, 1869. 5 Portage
Register, Sept. 27, 1890.
Crawford. This county had a large deer population and was a
favorite hunting area until the latter part of the 19th century.
An army officer stationed at Prairie du Chien wrote on Aug. 23,
1847 : “Turkeys and deer are plenty in the woods.”1 Large num¬
bers were reported killed in 1864 and 1868.2 Many of the Bos-
cobel gunners hunted in this county.3 Local venison sold in
Prairie du Chien in December, 1882, at ten cents a pound.4 In the
winter of 1882-83, Amos De Voe of Boscobel shot 12 deer in the
county.5
1 H., A. S. Sport in the West. Porter’s Spirit of the Times, 17 (Sept. 11, 1847) 33.
2 Prairie du Chien Courier: (Madison State Journal, Nov. 29, 1864; Dec. 21, 1868.
3 Boscobel Dial, Dec. 4, 1874; Oct. 31, 1879; Dec. 3, 1880; Nov. 11, 1881. 4 Prairie
du Chien Courier, Dec. 12, 1882. 5 Boscobel Dial, Jan. 5, 1883.
220 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
Dane . Jefferson Davis in 1829 camped on the site of Madison,
where “Fish and water-fowl were abundant; deer and pheasants
less plentiful/’1 In 1836, Featherstonhaugh2 had occasional
glimpses of deer with their fawns.
Deer must have increased greatly during the next few years
for by 1847 the hunting was excellent. At this time about 100
Indians camped in the timber on the north side of Lake Mendota
for some weeks and made a great slaughter of deer.3 A year later
so many deer were offered for sale in Madison that the extermi¬
nation of the species was feared.4 There may have been two
“raids” by the Indians, or a confusion in dates. H. A. Tenney
wrote : “The way they were slaughtered at times in mere sport,
was a wicked waste. In 1849 the Winnebagoes camped near the
present Insane Hospital. Spreading over the country, they drove
all the deer of all kinds towards the center and killed all — spar¬
ing none. They had over 500 carcasses, when a band of citizens
went over and drove them off, but the deer never recovered from
that fatal raid.”5
Good data on the abundance of deer in the county in the 1840’s
are given by Park.6 It was not uncommon in spring to see 20 to
30 deer in a herd at Blue Mounds. George Dow saw as many as
200 in a herd in the town of Cambridge, and often 75 to 100. The
town of Deerfield was so named on account of the excellent hunt¬
ing. The firing of the prairies by the Indians to drive out the
deer was an event much dreaded by the settlers in the town of
Burke. An early settler in the town of Berry wrote: “In those
early times there were plenty of deer, and often as many as
twenty-four head at a time were seen feeding upon the fields of
winter wheat sown by the early settlers. The town was a favorite
resort with the Indians ... In the fall of 1848, about sixty-five
of them and their families remained near my land, on section 27,
for about six weeks, killing deer. When they prepared to depart,
they loaded each of their ponies with a fresh killed deer, which
they purposed carrying to Milwaukee to sell . . . The deer con¬
tinued plentiful for a number of years, but the constant settling
up of the Town, and the killing of them, made their appearance
very scarce, so that the last deer known to have been killed in the
town was by myself in 1856.”
The winter of 1847-48, Mahlen Hasbrock and brother killed
103 deer in the town of Vermont.7 There was very little timber
in the town at this time, the growth being chiefly brush and
saplings.
The last deer was killed on the site of Madison in 1847. It was
an old buck that had a trail over University Hill.8 Few deer
1953]
Schorger — White-Tailed Deer
221
appear to have been killed in the county between 1850 and 1900.
Local sportsmen went a distance to hunt. Two deer, seen at
Arlington on August 28, 1881, were considered a rare sight.9 One
was also seen in June of this year in the town of Westport.10 In
December, 1884, no deer were known to have been killed in the
county during the season.11 An unusual event was the killing of
a deer in Lake Mendota by Charles Freeman, of Madison, in
November, 1889.12 On November 13, 1897, a large deer was shot
in the town of Verona by John Anderson.13 Another was killed
in this town in November, 1898. It was stated to have weighed
340 pounds when killed and 220 pounds dressed. One of the
weights, probably the former, must be incorrect. A herd of 22
deer in the town was believed to have descended from the two
deer that escaped from a deer farm that Otto Tupfer kept in the
town of Middleton several years previously.14 This is an unneces¬
sary assumption as the deer may well have wandered in from the
Wisconsin River bottoms as they do today.
1 Butler, J. D. Taychoperah, the Four Lakes country. Wis. Hist. Foils., 10 (1888)
75. 2 Featherstonhaugh, G. W. A canoe voyage up the Minnay Sotor. London, 2
(1847) 89. 3 Madison Argus, Nov. 23, Dec. 24, 1847. 4 Ibid., Dec. 19, 1848. 5 Durrie,
D. S. A history of Madison. Madison, (1874) 163; cf. W. J. Park, p. 394. 6 Park,
W. J. Madison, Dane County and surrounding towns. Madison, (1877) 238, 269-70,
354, 369, 394, 432, 477, 489. 7 Butterfield, C. W. History of Dane County, Wisconsin.
Madison, (1880) 934. 8 Durrie, l.c. 9 Madison State Journal, Sept. 5, 1881. 10 Madison
Democrat , June 14, 1881. 11 Madison State Journal, Dec. 18, 1884. 12 Milwaukee
Journal, Nov. 19, 1889. 13 Madison State Journal, Nov. 15, 1897. 14 Ibid., Nov. 5, 1898.
Dodge. There is so little information for this county that deer
must have been exterminated rather early. A hunter from Fox
Lake shot a buck at Lost Lake in December, 1854. 1 A buck and
two does were shot near Beaver Dam Pond at this time.2 The
following season deer were brought into Fox Lake almost daily.3
1 Fox Lake Times: Milwaukee (d) Democrat, Dec. 22, 1854. 2 Fox Lake Times:
Milwaukee (d) Democrat, Jan. 9, 1855. 3 Fox Lake Journal: Milwaukee (w) Wis¬
consin, Dec. 23, 1856.
Door. The northern part of the peninsula was especially good
for deer. Three hunters from Racine killed 50 deer during the
season of 1873 at North Bay.1 In 1874 two men from Racine
killed 43 deer in the county in about a month’s time.2 There was
an abundant crop of acorns the fall of 1877 and deer were unusu¬
ally fat. An “immense number” were killed, an estimated 1500
for the county. The use of dogs was widespread in defiance of the
law.3- Large quantities of venison from the county were shipped
south through Kewaunee in 1880.4 In 1883 deer were considered
more abundant than for several years. At North Bay they were
found in the swamps. When driven from the latter, they took to
the water and generally escaped.5 Five years later deer were con¬
sidered scarce.6 Subsequently they were killed in limited num-
222 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
bers. In 1891 it was said that, “at the present rate of extermina¬
tion there will not be a solitary one left in this region five years
from now.”7 The shooting of three deer on Chamber’s Island is
mentioned. A “large number” were killed in the northern part of
the county in the fall of 1895. 8 It was estimated that not over 25
were killed in the county in 1897, up to the middle of November.9
1 Sturgeon Bay Advocate , Dec. 25, 1873. 2 Kewaunee Enterprise: Racine Advocate,
Jan. 16, 1875. 3 Sturgeon Bay Advocate, Nov. 29, Dec. 13, 1877. i Kewaunee Enter¬
prise, Dec. 3, 1880. 5 Sturgeon Bay Advocate, Dec. 6, 1883. 6 Ibid., Nov. 17, 1888.
'Ibid., Nov. 7, 14, 1891. 8 Ibid., Nov. 9, 1895. 3 Ibid., Nov. 13, 1897.
Douglas. Many years elapsed before deer were common on the
Brule River. In May, 1856, a deer was reported seen on the
Nemadji River, about eight miles south of Superior. The com¬
ment was made that the animal seldom comes so close to Lake
Superior.1 At this time hunters went to the upper St. Croix for
deer.2 A few deer were seen on the headwaters of the Nemadji
River in October, 1858, 3 and a year later they were reported
quite common a few miles west of Superior.4 -In 1867 it was
stated that deer were numerous, but that few were killed ;5 how¬
ever, when a deer was killed on the Nemadji River on January 1,
1874, it was still considered comparatively uncommon near
Superior.6
Deer were uncommon until about 1875, after which date the
increase was quite rapid. In December, 1876, one hunter killed
twelve deer in a short time ;7 and eleven years later the slaughter
was “immense.”8 In the fall of 1890 deer were reported plentiful
due to the light snowfall of the last winter.9 During the hunting
season of this year, N. Lucius and Company shipped about 200
saddles of venison from White Birch and Gordon.10 The follow¬
ing year it was estimated that 2800 deer were killed in the
county, 2000 of which were shipped from three points.11 A con¬
temporary estimate placed the number of deer killed at the more
probable figure of 1000.12 Verwyst,13 writing in 1895, states that
he was informed that 2500 deer were killed in one season in the
county a few years previously. It was estimated that 1000 deer
would be shipped from the county during the hunting season of
1897. 14
1 Superior Chronicle, May 13, 1856. 2 Ibid., Nov. 17, 1857. 3 Ibid., Oct. 5, 1858.
1 Ibid., Oct. 1, 22, 1859. 5 Superior Gazette: Madison State Journal, Jan. 7, 1868.
6 Superior Times, Jan. 3, 1874. 7 Ibid., Dec. 15, 1876. 8 Ibid., Nov. 5, 1887. 9 B.
Shooting and Fishing, 9 (2), (Nov. 6, 1890) 16. 10 Superior Times, Nov. 1, Dec. 13,
1890. 11 Baraboo Republic, Dec. 10, 1891. 32 Superior Times, Nov. 28, 1891. 13 Verwyst,
C. Wis. Hist. Colls., 13 (1895) 428. 14 Shell Lake Watchman, Nov. 6, 1897.
Dunn. The early abundance of deer in the “Big Woods” is dis¬
cussed by Gibbs.1 Deer were reported quite plentiful around
Menomonie in 1872. 2 In 1873 deer were more plentiful than for
1953]
Schorger — White-Tailed Deer
223
many years past and large quantities were brought to town;
however, deer were reported scarce the following year.3 It was
estimated that between 150 and 200 deer were killed in the
winter of 1874-75 in the town of Tiffany, and only about 100 in
the following season.4 In 1877, one hunter in the town of Knapp
killed about 12 deer, and another in the town of Tiffany 21. 5
A. H. Best and sons killed 57 deer in the town of Tiffany, and
the Whisler brothers of the town of New Haven, 29, of which 16
were lost due to the warm weather.6 A total of 64 deer were
killed in the town of Tiffany in the season of 1878.7 There is re¬
corded the killing of 38 deer in the towns of Tiffany and Knapp
in 1879. 8 The seasons of 1880 and 1881 were poor.9 The fall of
1882, Josiah and Joshua Hicks of the town of Colfax killed 47
deer; Edwin Best of the town of New Haven, 37 ; and O. E. and
C. M. Best of the town of Tiffany, 44.10 The season of 1883 was
very poor.11 Subsequently deer were killed in only modest num¬
bers.12
In February, 1870, a lynx killed a deer near Menomonie.
Undersheriff Doolittle set a trap and caught the lynx.13
1 Gibbs, O. Lake Pepin Fish-Chowder. N. Y., (1869) 93-94, B Menomonie News,
Nov. 16, 1872. 3 Ibid., Dec. 13, 1873; Oct. 24, 1874. * Ibid., March 6, 1875; Jan. 1,
1876. 5 Ibid., Dec. 15, 22, 1877. 3 Ibid., Jan. 5, 19, 1878. * Ibid., Feb. 1, 1879. &Ibid.,
Nov. 29, Dec. 20, 1879. * Ibid., Nov. 27, 1880; Dec. 17, 1881. ™ Ibid., Dec. 23, 1882;
Jan. 6, 1883. Yl Ibid., Dec. 15, 22, 1883. ™ Ibid., Nov. 11, 1887; Nov. 20, 1890.
]3 Menomonie News : Chippewa Falls Herald, Feb. 26, 1870.
Eau Claire. On December 10, 1860, a lot of 31 deer were
brought to Eau Claire. About 50 were received within three
days.1 Five years later it was estimated that 3000 deer were
brought to town over a period of three months.2 Large loads of
venison arrived in Eau Claire in 1867 and 1868.3 In 1870, a hunt¬
ing party of four men secured one bear and 9 large deer in nine
days.4 Two professional Augusta hunters, S. Hoag and Charles
Martin, killed 102 deer in the season of 1871. 5 A party hunting
near Augusta in 1878 killed 18 deer.6 Deer were scarce and shy
at Sumner, presumably in Barron County, in 1884. 7 On Decem¬
ber 12 of this year a band of forty Indians disposed of 35 saddles
of venison obtained along the South Fork of the Eau Claire
River.8
An old experienced hunter of Eau Claire, D. P. Graves, is cred¬
ited with shooting three tons of venison “in the woods toward
the Superior region” in 1886.9 The killing of deer in small num¬
bers continued, but the county was no longer attractive to pro¬
fessional hunters.
1 Eau Claire Free Press, Dec. 13, 1860. 2 Eau Claire Free Press: La Crosse Demo¬
crat, Jan. 22, 1866. 3 Eau Claire (w) Free Press , Dec. 19, 1867; Dec. 3, 1868.
224 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
i Ibid., Dec. 22, 1870. 5 Augusta Herald , Jan. 6, 1872. 6 Menomonie News , Nov. 9,
1878. 7Eau Claire (d) Free Press, Nov. 25, 1884. 8 Eau Claire (d) Leader, Dec. 14,
1884. ® Chippewa Falls Times, Nov. 24, 1886.
Florence. Objections were made in 1882 to the presence of so
many hunters from Ohio. Venison was being brought to Florence
by the ton.1 Deer were comparatively scarce in 1883, and it was
thought that Florence might no longer be so extensive a “deer
port” owing to the law prohibiting the shipping of venison from
the state.2 Fine hunting was reported for 1884. 3 Foreign hunters
were reported not as successful as usual in 1885; however, a
party of five Ohio hunters within a month killed 25 deer at
Patton Lake.4 The following year a party of four Ohio hunters
killed 34 deer on the Little Popple River.5 C. S. Osborn killed 18
deer in 25 days on the Popple River in 1888.6 Venison was plen¬
tiful at the beginning of the season but later there was great
scarcity.7 Deer were considered scarce in 1889 and it was esti¬
mated that only about 500 were killed.8
Only about one-half of the usual number of deer were killed
in 1890 ;9 and they were scarce during the years following.10 The
kill in 1897 was only about one-third of the usual number.11 They
were so scarce in 1898 that it was believed doubtful if more than
50 were killed in the county.12 Comparatively few were killed in
1899 at the opening of the season.13
1 Florence Mining News, Nov. 25, 1882. e Ibid., Nov. 3, 24, 1883. 3 Ibid., Dec. 13,
1884. 4 Ibid., Nov. 14, 21, 1885. 5 Ibid., Nov. 20, Dec. 4, 1886. « Ibid., Nov. 3, 1888.
7 Ibid., Oct. 13, 20, 27, 1888. 8 Ibid., Aug. 24, Nov. 30, 1889. 9 Ibid., Oct. 11, Nov. 22,
1890. i «Ibid., Oct. 24, 1891; Oct. 15, 29, Nov. 26, Dec. 3, 1892; Oct. 28, 1893; Oct.
20, 1894. 11 Ibid., Nov. 6, 20, 1897. ™ Ibid., Nov. 12, 19, 1898. 13 Ibid., Nov. 11, 1899.
Fond du Lac. Deer were comparatively scarce by 1865 and
confined largely to the eastern edge of the county. A small num¬
ber of deer were brought into Fond du Lac in the late fall of
1867. A load of eight deer was considered very unusual.1 Venison
was scarce and expensive in 1868 though a man in the town of
Empire is stated to have killed 16 deer after a snowstorm.2 Veni¬
son was plentiful in 1869 due to importation from the Black
River, Outagamie County.8 Late in December of this year a con¬
siderable number of deer drifted into the towns of Forest and
Marshfield but were soon killed.4
Deer were more numerous in the eastern part of the county
during the season of 1870 than for some years.5 Venison, ob¬
tained locally, was also abundant in 1871. 6
Hunters complained of scarcity of deer in 1872. 7 From this
date on only an occasional deer was reported killed. Venison was
being received by express in 1872, the source of which is in
doubt. Five men hunting in the “north” for five weeks killed 34
deer.8 Hunters were stated to have sent in “more than the usual
1953]
Schorger — White-Tailed Deer
225
supply of venison” during the season of 1873. This is meaning¬
less without further information.9 Venison at this time was being
imported from Marinette.10
1 Fond du Lac (w) Reporter, Nov. 30, Dec. 21, 28, 1867. 8 Fond du Lac Reporter,
Nov, 28; Commonwealth, Nov. 25, 1868. 3 Fond du Lac Reporter, Dec. 4, 1869.
* Ibid., Jan. 1, 1870. 5 Fond du Lac (w) Commonwealth, Nov. 19, 1870. 6 Fond du
Lac Reporter, Dec. 9; Commonwealth, Dec. 23, 1871. 7 Fond du Lac (w) Common¬
wealth, Nov. 23, 1872. 8 Fond du Lac Reporter, Nov. 30, Dec. 28, 1872. 9 Ibid., Nov.
8, 1873. 19 Ibid., Nov. 15, 1873.
Forest . There is no early information. Much game, including
deer, was obtained by hunters in 1888. 1 Indians bringing venison
to Crandon in 1889 reported that there was not much game.2
Deer was scarce the following season.3 Indians had only fair suc¬
cess with deer in 1892; however, M. S. Barker bought 1000
pounds of venison from them at Armstrong.4 On October 26,
1893, John Bowers brought to Eagle River ten deer that were
killed in the northern part of Forest County.5 The complaint was
made that deer were being exterminated by market hunters so
that few were left for the local people. Very few were killed at
Three Lakes.6
1 Crandon Republican, Oct. 23, 1888. 2 Crandon Forest Leaves, Nov. 28, 1889.
3 Crandon Forest Leaves, Nov. 6, 13; Republican, Nov. 26, 1890. 4 Crandon Repub¬
lican, Nov. 24, 1892. 5 Eagle River Democrat, Oct. 28, 1893. 6 Crandon Forest Leaves,
Nov. 2, 23, 1893.
Grant . When Hollman1 settled at Platteville in 1828, deer, elk
and other game were to be found in “astonishing quantities.”
Rev. Brunson2 estimated that in the course of a ride of ten miles
near Platteville on November 25, 1835, he saw the tracks of 50
deer. James Grushong, who arrived in 1832, often saw droves of
thirty to forty running through the woods ; and Daniel R. Burt
saw herds of thirty feeding at one time.3 Concerning his arrival
at Platteville, Evans wrote: “The first winter [1846-47] we were
here there was a great snow, and deer were plentiful. Hunters
brought venison into Platteville, and so great was the supply that
they never thought of bringing the forequarters. Generally, they
brought only the saddles, and sold these for two or three cents a
pound.”4 In October, 1877, David Connelley, living at Woodman,
killed a buck weighing 220 pounds.5
1 Hollman, F. G. Auto-biography. Platteville, n.d., p.3. (MS prepared in 1870).
2 Brunson, A. Wis. Hist. Colls., 15 (1900) 264. 3 Anon. History of Grant County,
Wisconsin . Chicago, (1881) 552, 575. 4 Evans, J. H. Proc. Wis. Hist. Soc. for 1909.
(1910) 240. 5 Boscobel Dial, Oct. 12, 1877.
Green. There is little information on the status of deer in this
county. In 1845, Duerst1 found at the site of New Glarus much
game, including deer. Monroe sportsmen were hunting deer in
the late fall of 1857, but their success was not stated.2
1 Duerst, M. Diary, 1845, of New Glarus Colony. Wis. Hist. Colls., 15 (1900) 333.
2 Monroe Sentinel, Nov. 25, 1857.
226 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
Green Lake. Richard Dart settled in the county in 1840, when :
“Deer were plentiful, except when they went south in winter to
escape the cold.”1 This belief arose because the deer wintered in
swamps and other sheltered places. Deer seem to have been ex¬
terminated at a relatively early date. The venison in the market
at Princeton in 1878 was evidently brought in from abroad2 as
there are several references to hunters going north for deer. It
is impossible to determine if the deer brought into Berlin in 1872
were killed locally or elsewhere.3
xDart, Richard. Proc. Wis. Hist. Soc. for 1909. (1910) 260. s Princeton Republic,
Dec. 6, 1873. 3 Berlin Courant , Dec. 19, 1872.
Iowa. This was a good county for deer. Mrs. Daniel Buggies,
who came to Ridgeway in 1841, stated that during the first few
years of her residence, hunters from Mineral Point, Madison,
and Janesville came there to hunt for weeks at a time. In one
season there were 17 dressed deer hanging in trees near the
house.1
Deer continued plentiful for many years. In 1852, C. A.
Desilva, of Dodgeville, killed 23 in six days.2 Two men, the winter
of 1854-55, in a hunt of three or four days, killed 11 deer with¬
in a few miles of Mineral Point.3 They were reported plentiful as
late as December, 1869.4 The origin of a load of venison sold in
Mineral Point is not given.5 Four deer were seen at Avoca in
December, 1871.6
1 Anon. History of Iowa County, Wisconsin. Chicago, (1881) 602. 12 Mineral Point
Tribune: Milwaukee Sentinel, Dec. 9, 1852. 8 Mineral Point Tribune, Jan. 10, 1855.
4 Lancaster Herald, Dec. 21, 1869. 6 Mineral Point Democrat, Dec. 29, 1869. 6 Black
Earth Advertiser, Dec. 14, 1871.
Iron. This county was late in acquiring deer in abundance. In
1874, Joe Current and his uncle killed about 20 deer at Moose
Lake in a period of two weeks.1 A drowned doe was found in
Lake Lavina in May, 1886. During the open season deer were
reported plentiful north of Hurley.2 They were reported scarce
before the opening of the season of 1889, but later plentiful
around Hurley.3 Deer were unusually plentiful in 1890.4 It was
stated in 1892 that deer were unknown at Hurley seven years
previously5 (1885). One hundred deer hunters from Ohio and
Indiana were reported living in special cars on the branch line
of the Wisconsin Central in 1895. 6
i Ashland Press, Dec. 5, 1874. 3 Hurley Miner, May 13 ; Nov. 13, 1886. 3 Ibid., Aug.
29, Nov. 7, 14, 1889. 4 Ibid., Oct. 30, Nov. 20, 1890. 6 Ibid., Dec. 3, 1892. « Ibid., Nov.
2, 1895.
Jackson. In one week in January, 1856, 200 deer were hauled
into Sparta for shipment to New York City. They were pur¬
chased at four cents a pound from two men who killed them a
1953]
Schorger — White-Tailed Deer
227
short distance north of Black River Falls.1 At the same time a
farmer living near Sparta returned with his second load of
twenty deer that he had secured near Black River Falls.2 In the
fall of 1867, E. G. Slayton and brother of the town of Leon,
Monroe County, killed 86 deer.3 These were probably shot in
Jackson County.
Large quantities of venison were sold at Black River Falls in
1866 at six to eight cents a pound.4 Some deer were killed in 1868,
but for some unexpressed reason there were fewer deer hunters
in Jackson and Clark counties than for a number of years.5
Deer were reported “not very plenty”during the season of 1870.°
Three years later G. M. Bowman killed 17 deer in six to seven
weeks within two to six miles of Black River Falls.7 A modest
number was shot near Merrillan in 1882, and two were killed
by a train.8
The season of 1893 was very poor at Merrillan.9 The deer pop¬
ulation at this time was very low. Deer were unusually scarce in
1894 near Merrillan where only three or four deer were killed.10
The following season was equally poor.11 Thirteen hunters from
Baraboo spent a week at City Point and killed but two deer.12
Only one deer was killed at Melrose during the season.13 Very
few were killed in 1896.14 A total of 373 deer licenses was issued
in the county in 1897, and somewhat over 10,000 for the state.
There was complaint of illegal shipment of venison.15
1 Sparta Watchman: Milwaukee (d) Sentinel, Jan. 16, 1856. 2 Sparta Watchman:
Milwaukee (d) Sentinel, Feb. 1, 1856. 3 Sparta Eagle, Jan. 23, 1867. 4 Black River
Falls Banner: Madison State Journal, Dec. 6, 1866. 5 Black River Falls Banner,
Nov. 21, Dec. 5, 1868. 6 Ibid., Dec. 24, 1870. 7 Ibid., Dec. 6, 1873. 8 Merrillan Leader,
Dec. 1, 15, 1882. 8 Ibid., Oct. 13, 20, 1893. *> Ibid., Oct. 12, 26, Nov. 2, 1894. ^ Ibid.,
Nov. 15, 1895. 12 Ibid., Nov. 8, 1895. 13 Black River Falls Banner, Nov. 28, 1895.
14 Merrillan Leader, Oct. 23, 30, Nov. 13, 1896. 15 Ibid., Nov. 5, 12, 26, Dec. 10, 1897.
Jefferson. Deer were abundant at the time of settlement.1
Cravath2 refers to deer repeatedly. Caswell3 settled near Lake
Koshkonong in 1837 and states : “Deer were rarely found on the
prairie. They naturally took to the woods in fall and to the oak
openings in the winter, for there they could always find acorns
by pawing the snow for them. They would in winter herd to¬
gether, and seek the oaks, sometimes in droves of fifty or more.”
Actually the deer used the prairies extensively in summer and
fall. In winter the cover of tall grass and forbs was destroyed by
burning or snow. Caton4 gives a long account of methods of
hunting deer on the Illinois prairies.
In the fall of 1847, deer were uncommonly numerous.5 A
hunter frequently returned with a deer after an absence of an
hour or two. Venison sold in Watertown in the fall of 1849 at
$2.00 per 100 pounds.6 The Rock River woods were full of deer
228 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
during the winter of 1853-54, and hunters brought them in by
the sleigh load.7
A good knowledge of the abundance of deer is obtained from
Cartwright8 who settled in the Bark River Woods, town of Sulli¬
van, Jefferson County, in 1842. The winter of 1842-43 he and a
companion killed about 75 deer. He states: “The deer used to go
into the oak openings at night to get acorns to eat. In the morn¬
ing they would go into the swamps and stay during the day. We
used to go out very early in the morning, and watch upon the
runways. One time I killed four before sunrise.
“In one hunt I caught thirteen deer in three days. I have quite
a number of times caught five in a single day. Once I got six in
one day ... In 1855, when I did some of my iast hunting in
Jefferson County, the deer were very scarce. There have, prob¬
ably, not been a half dozen killed there since that time.”
The date for the sharp decline of deer in Jefferson County
given by Cartwright is approximately correct. In the fall of 1855
they were reported scarce in regions where they were quite
numerous the year previously.9 Later it was reported that a Mr.
Johnson had killed 40 during the season.10 In 1857, “Weasel”11
reported deer so scarce around Watertown that it was not worth
while hunting them. The shooting of a young deer at Watertown
in November, 1856, is recorded.12 During the winter of 1856-57,
E. H. Pearse killed 30 deer in the woods between Watertown and
Jefferson.13 Two deer were seen by Fred Seaver on the west shore
of Rock Lake in the spring of 1867.14
1 Keyes, Elisha W. Early days in Jefferson County. Wis. Hist. Colls., 11 (1888)
416. B Cravath, P. Early annals of Whitewater, 1837—1867. Whitewater, (1906) 18,
40, 49, 61, 84, 178, 189. 3 Caswell, Lucien B. Reminiscenses. MS Wis. Hist. Soc. Lib.
pp. 19, 20. 4 Caton, J. D. The antelope and deer of America. N. Y. (1877) 388-97.
5 Watertown Pilot, Dec. 8, 1847. 6 Watertown Chronicle, Sept. 5, 1849. 7 Watertown
Register, Jan. 21, 1854. 8 Cartwright, David W. Natural history of western wild
animals. Toledo (1875) 159, 161. 9 Jefferson Jeffersonian, Oct. 25, 1855. 10 Ibid., Feb.
14, 1856. & ‘Weasel”. Porter’s Spirit of the Times, N.S. 3 (Nov. 28, 1857) 202.
,a Watertown Democrat, Nov. 8, 1856. 15 Ibid., Feb. 5, 1857. 14 Hawkins, A. S. Tracts.
Wis. Acad. Sci., 32 (1940) 57.
Juneau. Game was abundant prior to 1850.1 In 1859 deer were
plentiful on Bear Creek where the Indians killed seven in one
day ; and a Mr. Hurd, town of Clearfield, brought a load of veni¬
son to New Lisbon.2 Deer abounded in 1869 and sold at five cents
a pound.3 The number killed the following year was considerably
lower owing to absence of snow and the low price of venison.4
They were considered plentiful in 1871, a dozen being brought
into Mauston within a week.5 Few were killed in 1872 and 1873. 6
In 1874 there was fine deer hunting at the “ranch” of Hon. T.
McConnell in this county.7 Hunting, however, was not considered
profitable.8
1953]
Schorger— White-Tailed Deer
229
The hunting was moderately good in 1876 and 1877, quantities
of venison being shipped by express.9 There was a decided drop
in the amount of venison marketed in 1878.10 Up to the first week
of December, 1882, 25 carcasses were brought to Mauston.11 In
November, 1887, a wagon load of deer passed through New Lis¬
bon, where hunters were considered particularly successful ; but
game was scarce at Mauston.12 In succeeding years deer were
killed in only small numbers. Six deer were killed by Frank Allen,
town of Lemonweir, in the season of 1889.13
1 Kingston, J. T. Wis. Hist. Colls., 8 (1879) 383, 397. 2 Mauston Star, Sept. 28;
New Lisbon Argus, Nov. 26, 1859. 3 New Lisbon Argus, Nov. 18, 25, 1869. 4 Mauston
Star, Dec. 15, 1870; New Lisbon Argus, Jan. 12, 1871. 5Mauston Star , Nov. 2, 30,
1871. 6 New Lisbon Argus , Nov. 21, 1872; Nov. 6, 13, Dec. 18, 1873. 7 Princeton
Republic, Dec. 19, 1874. 8 New Lisbon Argus, Jan. 7. 1875. 9 Ibid., Nov. 2, 23, 30,
Dec. 14, 1876; Nov. 15, 1877. ™ Ibid., Dec. 26, 1878. 41 Mauston Star, Dec. 7, 1882.
112 New Lisbon Argus, Nov. 3, 10; Mauston Star, Nov. 17, 1887. 13 Mauston Star,
Dec. 5, 1889.
Kenosha. This county comprised mainly prairie and oak open¬
ings. Lothrop1 found deer so numerous in 1835 that in making
a survey of twenty miles, 50 or more might be seen ; occasionally
as many as 20 in a herd. The letters of Quarles, written from
Kenosha, have some interesting information :
November 7, 1837. “I am anticipating rare sport in shape of
occational deer hunting this winter — they are very plenty — I
have seen a large number — Last Wednesday saw seven in one
drove 75 yards from me & discharged my shot gun but did not
so much as friten them.”
February 14, 1839. “Deer are very plenty. I have seen from 30
to 40 in a day Their meat is fat & much better flavour than at
the east their food being different.”2
1 Lothrop, J. Historical sketch of Kenosha County. Wis. Hist. Colls., 2 (1856) 462.
8 Quarles, J. V. Letters. Wis. Mag. Hist. 16 (1933) 299, 310.
Kewaunee. Deer were common to abundant until about 1878.
In January, 1874, venison continued to arrive in Ahnapee in
abundance.1 The winter of 1874-75 “John Feezier’s boys” killed
40 deer and the winter previous 38. 2 In December, 1875, deer
were numerous in the town of Montpelier and many were killed.3
They continued numerous in 1876 and 1877.4 Hunters were now
going to Door County. One hunter from the town of Carlton
brought home nine deer in 1878 ;5 and the following year a party
of hunters from Kewaunee killed a deer at Whitefish Bay.6
Deer were reported very scarce in the towns of Carlton and
Casco in 1881. 7 In 1889 it was said that there were no deer in
the county to kill.8 The sight of a deer in the town of Red River
in December, 1894, was worthy of comment.9 In the fall of 1896
230 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
a large number of deer was reported seen in the town of Gard¬
ner.10
xAhnapee Record , Jan. 8, 1874. 2 Kewaunee Enterprise, Jan. 26, 1875. 8 Ibid., Dec.
4, 1875. 4 Ibid., Dec. 9, 1876; Nov. 9, 1877. * Ibid., Dec. 20, 1878. * Ibid., Oct. 24,
1879. 7 Ibid., Nov. 4, 18, 1881. 8 Ibid., Oct. 18, 1889. 8 Ibid., Dec. 28, 1894. “Ahnapee
Record, Nov. 19, 1896.
La Crosse. One of the famous deer hunters of this county was
Jack Rand. In December, 1862, he brought into La Crosse a load
of 25 deer and reported that they were scarce and wild.1 The fol¬
lowing winter he killed and marketed 55 deer. Had it not been
for the deep snow, he thought that he would have killed 100.2
As late as 1871 many deer were killed within eight miles of La
Crosse, chiefly in the Mormon Coulee. One deer was killed with
a pistol within the city limits.3
xLa Crosse Democrat, Dec. 24, 1862. ® Ibid., Jan. 15, 1864. 8 La Crosse (d) Demo¬
crat, Dec. 21, 1871.
Lafayette. The spring of 1834, when Rodolph1 arrived at the
present site of Darlington, he counted more than fifty deer in a
herd. In 1853, when W. M. Curry arrived, deer were still abun¬
dant.2 Several deer were killed in the fall of 1868 north of Darl¬
ington.3 Venison was plentiful in this village the following
season.4
1 Rodolf, T. Pioneering in the Wisconsin Lead Region. Wis. Hist. Colls., 15 (1900)
353. 2 Curry, W. F. In Commemorative biographical record of the counties of Rock,
. . . and Lafayette, Wisconsin . Chicago, (1901) 292. 8 Darlington Democrat, Dec. 11,
1868. *Ibid., Dec. 3, 1869.
Langlade. There is little information on this county. The end
of November, 1883, three Shiocton hunters returned through
Shawano with 9 deer obtained during a hunt of about a week’s
duration at Lily.1 Another party passed through Shawano on
November 30, 1886, with a wagon-load of deer shot in the neigh¬
borhood of Lily.2 Venison was plentiful in the market at Antigo
in October, 1889.3 A party of hunters from Manitowoc County
secured 9 deer near Antigo, and found a set-gun, in the season
of 1895.4 Alvin Smith of Antigo shot three deer in one day in the
fall of 1897.5 Hunters managed to have venison on sale in Antigo
by noon of the opening day in 1898. 6
1 Shawano Journal, Nov. 30, 1883. 2 Ibid., Dec. 3, 1886. 8 Antigo Republican, Oct.
31, 1889. 4 Manitowoc Pilot, Nov. 21, 1895. 5 Antigo Republican, Nov. 11, 1897.
6 Antigo Item, Nov. 5, 1898.
Lincoln. David Finn homesteaded between Wausau and Merrill
in 1860 and found deer very numerous.1 In 1877 Hank Sails killed
9 deer up to the last week of November.2 Deer were considered
more abundant in the spring of 1879 than ever before.3 They
were so abundant in 1882 that the statement was made that a
person could not go more than 80 rods without seeing two or
1953]
Schorger — White-Tailed Deer
231
three.4 There was an apparent scarcity for a number of years.
In 1896 deer hunters had good success. Four hunters left Spirit
Falls with 11 deer; however two good hunters living at Bay Mill
did not get one.5 They were numerous at Spirit Falls in 1897, 6
and especially plentiful in 1898.7 There were issued this season
361 deer licenses in comparison with 427 for 1897. Large ship¬
ments of venison were made from Tomahawk in 1900. It was
estimated that 50 deer were killed within a radius of five or six
miles of Heafford Junction.8
Merrill Herald , Feb. 22, 1921. 2 Merrill Advocate , Nov. 24, 1877. 3 Ibid., June 16,
1879. 4 Ibid ., June 26, Nov. 20, 1882. 5 Tomahawk Tomahawk , Oct. 31, Nov. 7, 1896.
6 Ibid ., Oct. 30, 1897. * Ibid., Nov. 5, 26, Dec. 3, 1898. * Ibid., Nov. 10, 17, 1900.
Manitowoc. Deer were numerous in 1859 and for some years
afterwards.1 In 1876 they were reported more numerous than for
some years.2 The next year several deer were shipped from Two
Rivers.3 They were hunted at New Denmark (Cooperstown) in
1879.4 Great numbers were shipped through Manitowoc from the
north in 1885. 5 In 1887 deer were found close to the city limits of
Manitowoc. One was shot in the swamp south of the city. Dogs
chased a deer through the streets of Mishicot, and five deer were
seen in the town of Liberty.6 Deer became rare before the end of
the century. One was killed at English Lake in November, 1898 :
“There are said to be a number of deer in this county this year.”7
1 Plumb, R. G. A history of Manitowoc County. Manitowoc, (1904) 6. 2 Two Rivers
Chronicle , Oct. 24, 1876. 3 Ibid., Nov. 13, 1877. 4 Ibid., Nov. 19, 1879. 6 Manitowoc
Times, Dec. 1, 1885. 6 Manitowoc Times, Oct. 27 ; Pilot, Oct. 29; Two Rivers Chron¬
icle, Nov. 1, 26, 1887. 7 Manitowoc Pilot, Nov. 10, 1898.
Marathon. David Finn settled between Wausau and Merrill in
1860 when deer were very numerous.1 They remained numerous
for many years afterwards.2 It was stated in 1881 that the wolf
had nearly disappeared while deer were becoming more numer¬
ous.3 Deer were unusually plentiful in the fall of 1887 and many
were killed.4 The large number killed in 1899 was attributed to
the fact that they were more numerous than usual.5
1 Merrill Herald, Feb. 22, 1921. 2 Wausau Pilot, May 29, 1874; Nov. 18, 1876;
Nov. 24, 1877 ; Torch of Liberty, Dec. 12, 1878. 3 Wausau Torch of Liberty, Jan. 13,
1881. 4 Wausau Wisconsin, Oct. 29, Pilot and Review, Oct. 18, 1887. 6 Wausau Wis¬
consin, Nov. 25, 1899.
Marinette. Within historic time the valley of the Menominee
was excellent deer territory. In 1869 they were reported unusu¬
ally plentiful on the headwaters of the Peshtigo.1 L. D. Gray, a
professional hunter of Green Bay, killed 26 deer along the
Menominee during the season of 1871. He killed 68 deer in each
of the years 1869 and 1870.2 A party of five men from Appleton
and Neenah killed 48 deer in the same region in the fall of 1872.3
The same year three hunters from De Pere killed 23 large deer
232 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
along the Menominee.4 They were killed in large numbers in
1874. 5 A protest arose in 1886 against the wholesale slaughter of
deer and the shipment of the carcasses to Chicago.6 Two years
later hunters had poor success and venison was scarce in the
Marinette markets.7 Opinions differed on the season of 1889. At
Marinette the kill was the smallest ever known. It was claimed
that Peshtigo hunters killed more deer than were reported for
any other section of the state.8 Three hunters killed 15 deer in
the vicinity of the Peshtigo River.9
Deer were killed in only modest numbers during the next
decade. They were reported scarce in 1891, 1893 and 1895.10 The
shooting was better in 1896. A party of Peshtigo hunters shot
about 15 deer on the headwaters of the Thunder and Peshtigo
rivers and seven were displayed in a Marinette market. A
farmer at Pound killed five deer but other hunters from this
village had very poor success.11 They were reported plentiful in
1900, 12 probably in contrast with recent years.
1 Oconto Lumberman: Madison State Journal, Nov. 25, 1869. 2 Green Bay Advo¬
cate, Jan. 4, 1872. 3 Appleton Crescent, Dec. 14, 1872. 4 De Pere News, Jan. 11, 1873.
5 Marinette and Peshtigo Eagle, Oct. 17, 1874. 6 Marinette Eagle, Nov. 27, 1886.
7 Ibid., Oct. 27, Nov. 3, 1888. 8 Ibid., Nov. 16, 30, 1889. 9 Green Bay Gazette, Nov.
21, 1889. 10 Marinette Eagle, Nov. 7, 1891; Oct. 14, 1893; Nov. 9, 16, 30. 1895.
11 Ibid., Oct. 3, Nov. 7, 1896. 42 Ibid., Oct. 27, 1900.
Marquette. John Muir was cited previously on the early abun¬
dance of deer in this county. On November 25, 1876, Fred Pond,
who subsequently became a noted writer on sports, and a com¬
panion went on their first deer hunt. A deer that was shot eight
miles northwest of Westfield was not recovered until the next
day, by which time it had been nearly consumed by wolves.1 A
doe was shot and another deer wounded in the town of Spring-
field on November 21, 1877.2 Deer were killed also in 1879.8 In
1882, “quite a number’’ were shot west of Westfield and shipped
from that village.4 The following season five deer were brought
into Westfield and several were seen between Westfield and
Lawrence on December 18.5 In the fall of 1889 a butcher at
Montello purchased a deer from Chippewa Falls since venison “is
a scarce article in this section.”6 It is doubtful if the county was
ever without deer as these animals would drift in from Adams
County.
1 Montello Express, Dec. 9, 1876. 2 Ibid., Nov. 24, 1877. 3 Ibid., Dec. 20, 1879.
tlbid., Nov. 4, Dec. 9, 1882. * Ibid., Nov. 24, Dec. 22, 1883. « Ibid., Nov. 9, 1889.
Milwaukee. Deer persisted in the Milwaukee area for a long
time. In 1839 they were still so common that they could be seen
almost daily: “How plainly I can see, after all these years, the
beautiful young mother and the fine looking father coming
1953]
Schorger — White-Tailed Deer
233
through the big trees on their horses, just as the sun was going
down, each with a gun across the front of the saddle and each
with a deer strapped at the back of the saddle with its legs hang¬
ing down and its horns standing out — for the little mother was a
fine shot and could bring down her own game on earth or in the
air as well as any man could.”1
The severe winter of 1842-43, venison was so plentiful in Mil¬
waukee that it was difficult to give it away.2 A marked scarcity
might have been expected afterwards, but in January, 1844, a
Capt. Sanderson secured six deer within ten to twelve miles of
the city.3 They continued to be common until 1852. In December
of this year several were shot near town.4 On about November 4,
1858, a deer was driven into the old Milwaukee harbor and
killed.5
1 Fitch, Martha E. Wis. Mag. Hist., 9 (1925) 81. 2 Milwaukee Sentinel, Feb. 15,
1843. 3 Ibid., Jan. 20, 1844. * Ibid., Dec. 11, 28, 30, 1852. Milwaukee (d) Wisconsin,
Nov. 4 ; Sentinel, Nov. 5, 1858.
Monroe. There is no information showing that Monroe County
was especially good for deer. Even in the 1850’s the hunters from
this county went mainly to Jackson County as will be observed
under Jackson County.
Oconto. In 1863 deer were so plentiful as to appear at the edge
of the village of Oconto.1 They were reported plentiful in 1874
and 1875.2 Deer were plentiful in 1876 but hunters had poor suc¬
cess in the absence of snow.3 Many were killed in 1877.4 Consid¬
erable venison was shipped from Oconto in 1878. The party of
Pensaukee hunters who “came down” with 23 deer after a hunt
of three weeks may have shot them in Marinette County.5 Hunt¬
ing was good the year following.6 The reports for 1881 were
mixed. Three men in killing three deer had “remarkable suc¬
cess” ; yet, a party of five hunters brought in 22 deer.7 Large
numbers were killed in 1886 and 1889. 8 The shooting appears to
have been overdone in the latter year, for in 1891 the number
killed was only one-half that of two years previously.9 A further
decrease was recorded for 1893.10
1 Oconto Pioneer, Nov. 6, 1863. 2 Oconto Reporter, Feb. 7, 1874; Oct. 16, Dec. 18,
1875. 3 Ibid., Nov. 25, Dec. 9, 1876. * Ibid., Jan. 5, 1878. 5 Ibid., Nov. 23, 30, 1878.
6 Ibid., Dec. 13, 1879. 7 Ibid., Oct. 22, Dec. 10, 1881. 3 Ibid., Oct. 2, Nov. 20, 1886;
Oct. 19, Nov. 2, 23, 1889. » Ibid., Dec. 4, 1891. 10 Ibid., Nov. 11, 1893.
Oneida. Deer do not appear to have become numerous until the
latter part of the 19th century. A large number were brought
into Rhinelander in 1892.1 The poor season of 1893 was attrib¬
uted to a change in the game laws, forest fires in September, and
the depredations of wolves.2 Due to the local low price of five to
six cents per pound on carcasses, many deer were shipped out of
234 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
Rhinelander in 1894.3 Deer were “quite plentiful” in 1895.4 In
1897 only a few were killed at Pratt Junction,5 but they were
considered more plentiful at Minocqua than for some years.6
Deer were plentiful around Minocqua in 1898 and a large num¬
ber was killed.7 Though numerous at Rhinelander, but few were
killed due to the absence of snow.8 Large numbers were shot at
Minocqua in 1899 and 1901. 9
1 Rhinelander Herald, Nov. 19, 1892. 2 Ibid., Nov. 4, 1893. 3 Ibid., Oct. 27, 1894.
4 Ibid., Oct. 26, 1895. 5 Ibid., Nov. 13, 1897. 6 Minocqua Times, Nov. 11, 1897. 7 Ibid.,
Nov. 17, 24, 1898. 8 Rhinelander Herald, Nov. 12, 1898; Two Rivers i Chronicle , Nov.
15, 1898. » Minocqua Times, Nov. 16, 1899 ; Nov. 21, 28, 1901.
Outagamie. Mrs. M. A. Bristol1 attended a wedding at Grand
Kaukaulin in 1829, when, among other meats, venison was
served. Following a light snowfall in November, 1854, many deer
were killed within one to two miles of Appleton.2 An immense
number was killed in February, 1857, when the snow was crusted.
Two Indians killed 14 deer in the town of Center on February
14.3 So many deer were killed in 1860 that venison sold for four
cents per pound.4 They were numerous again in 1861, 5 and un¬
usually so in 1868, when the slaughter had not been equalled
since the crusted snow of 1857. Set-guns were reported in use in
the northern part of the county.6
Deer were quite plentiful in 1869, one hunter killing four in
one day.7 They were reported unusually numerous around Shioc-
ton in 1870.8 They were reported plentiful again in 1871 and
1872.? More deer than usual were killed in the county in 1875.10
In 1876 they were exceptionally plentiful at Seymour and a large
number was killed in February, 1857, when the snow was crusted,
that 150 deer were killed within a radius of live miles from
Shiocton.12 Appleton hunters returning from the “north” in 1888
reported deer very scarce.13 Only a few deer were killed at
Shiocton in 1897, due to the dryness of the woods.14
1 Bristol, Mrs. M. A. Wis. Hist. Colls., 8 (1879) 303. 2 Appleton Crescent, Nov. 18,
1854. 3 Ibid., Feb. 21, 1857. 4 Ibid., Dec. 1, 22, 1860. « Ibid., Nov. 30, 1861. 3 Ibid.,
Dec. 12, 19, 26, 1868. 7 Ibid., Nov. 27, 1869. 8 Ibid., Nov. 19, 1870. ° Ibid., Dec. 16,
1871; Nov. 16, 1872. ™ Ibid., Dec. 9, 1875. u Ibid., Dec. 7, 1876. 12 Milwaukee (d)
Sentinel, Dec. 12, 1878. 13 Appleton Crescent, Nov. 10, 1888. 14 Shiocton News, Nov.
26, 1897.
Ozaukee. The winter of 1838-39 was spent by Vieau1 at what
is now the site of Port Washington. He took to Milwaukee by
ox-team loads of venison and wild turkeys. Ficker2 settled in the
town of Mequon while deer were still plentiful. He states that
during the winter of 1852-53 there were 80 to 90 deer along
Lake Michigan, about five miles east of his place, and that more
than 50 were killed in one small area.
1 Vieau, Sr., A. J. Narrative. Wis. Hist. Colls., 11 (1888) 231. 2 Ficker, G. T. Wis.
Mag. Hist., 25 (1942) 348.
1953]
Schorger — White-Tailed Deer
235
Pepin. This small county is situated at the mouth of the Chip¬
pewa River, which was known to the early French as Bon
Secours, or Good Succor, from the abundance of deer and other
large game animals. Prior to the winter of 1856-57, deer still
occurred in large numbers. The snow was four feet deep on the
level that winter and the deer population never recouped its
losses.1
1 Curtiss— Wedge,. F. History of Buffalo arid Pepin Counties, Wisconsin. Winona,
(1919) 1004.
Pierce. Deer hunting was very rewarding. In the winter of
1856-57, three men killed over 200 deer and several elk in the
region between the Trimbelle and Rush rivers.1 Many were killed
in the county in 1868 and in 1872.2 In the latter year deer were
plentiful and in excellent condition at Bay City where one herd
of 15 was seen.3 The population dwindled gradually to a small
number. A deer seen in the town of El Paso on November 18,
1900, was believed to be the only one seen in the county for
several years.4
1 Prescott Transcript, Feb. 14, 1857. 2 Prescott Journal, Dec. 11, 1868; Ellsworth
Herald, Nov. 20, 1872. 3 Prescott Transcript, Dec. 12, 1872. 4 Ellsworth Herald, Nov.
22, 1900.
Polk. Deer were fat and abundant in 1865. 1 A great number
were killed in the last two weeks of October, 1866. Two of the
deer weighed 229% and 245 pounds respectively.2 The scarcity
of deer in 1867 was blamed on the Indians.3 James Bailey, town
of Farmington, rode a belled horse in hunting and sometimes
shot five to eight deer in one day.4 Deer were plentiful in 1873.
Z. M. Frasier of Clam Falls came into St. Croix Falls with 20
deer that he sold at five cents per pound. The following report on
this season appeared from the town of Lincoln: “Worthy Pren¬
tice and a partner have killed 75 deer during the winter; W. D.
Thompson, 40; J. Tomkins, 30; and George Dunham about the
same number.”5 A dealer in Osceola purchased about 75 deer at
seven cents a pound, and shipped them to T. D. Randall, Chicago,
receiving 12% cents a pound.6
George Reed, of Clear Lake, killed 25 deer and one bear in the
season of 1877 up to December l.7 During the same season Matt
Young, town of Eureka, killed six deer in one day; and H. F.
Muzzey, town of Luck, shot 26 deer from November 6 to Decem¬
ber l.8 During the season of 1879, one hunter killed 35, and an¬
other 25 deer at Clear Lake.9 The shooting was good at this place
in 1880.10 A hunting party from Osceola returned with 15 deer.11
Messrs. Grimes and Muzzey of Clear Lake killed 84 deer in
1882.12 The following year deer were scarce.13 In 1884, a hunting
236 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
party that spent a month in the woods returned with only 14
deer.14 Subsequently deer were killed in only limited numbers.15
1 Osceola Press, Aug-. 16, 1865. 2 Ibid., Nov. 3, 1866. 3 Ibid., Nov. 27, 1867. 4 Ibid.,
Dec. 24, 1869. 5 Ibid., Nov. 1, Dec. 27, 1873. 3 Ibid., Jan. 10, 1874. 7 1bid., Dec. 8, 1877.
8 Ibid., Dec. 22, 29, 1877. 9 Clear Lake News, Jan. 30, 1880. 10 Ibid., Nov. 20, 1880.
11 Osceola Press, Dec. 11, 1880. 12 Clear Lake News, Nov. 3, Dec. 29, 1882. 18 Osceola
Press, Dec. 1, 1883. 14 Ibid., Dec. 6, 1884. 15 Osceola Press, Nov. 29, 1890; St. Croix
Falls Standard, Nov. 21, 1895 ; Osceola Press, Nov. 13, 1897.
Portage. During the first four days of December, 1855, T. J.
Townsend killed 17 deer in the town of Amherst.1 Deer were so
plentiful at Plover in 1864 that a dozen was killed by each of
two hunters.2 In December, 1874, a Fond du Lac hunter returned
with seven deer shot near Stevens Point.3 Two hunters killed
“some thirty deer” and three bears near Junction City in 1875.4
In 1877 deer were reported quite numerous near Stevens Point.5
A large number of deer were killed in 1879. One Asa Mathewson
was reputed to be particularly skillful at this business. He killed
10 in one week.6 On Nov. 6, 1881, W. G. Bailey shot a lynx while
it was eating a deer. The lynx had evidently killed the deer as the
latter was still warm.7 Deer were shot in numbers along the
Plover River in 1882, 1883, 1884, 1885, and 1886.8 On November
7, 1887, Frank Slusser, town of Linwood, brought to Stevens
Point seven deer killed a few miles north of the city. Deer were
reported plentiful in 1887.9 Some deer were killed in 1888, but
the county had ceased to be an attractive hunting area. On
November 17, 1889, four men hunted a day on White River with¬
out seeing a deer.10
1 Waupaca Spirit: Milwaukee (d) Democrat, Dec. 28, 1855. 2 Plover Times:
Madison State Journal, Dec. 15, 1864. 3 Fond du Lac Reporter, Dec. 12, 1874.
4 Grand Rapids Reporter, Dec. 9, 1875. 6 Fond du Lac Commonwealth, Nov. 17, 1877.
6 Stevens Point Gazette, Oct. 22, Nov. 5, 12, 26, 1879. 7 Stevens Point Democrat,
Nov. 12, 1881. 8 Stevens Point Gazette, Oct. 25, 1882; Democrat, Nov. 3, 1883;
Democrat, Nov. 22, 1884; Gazette, Nov. 18, 1885; Gazette, Nov. 10, 1886. 9 Stevens
Point Gazette, Nov. 9, 1887. 10 Ibid., Nov. 20, 1889.
Price. Information on deer in this county is limited. Shields1
states that a Mr. Fewell shipped over 3000 pounds of venison
from Phillips about 1880. Deer were reported abundant in 1881
and 1882 ;2 then the statement was made that not a single deer
track was reported the winter of 1883-84.3 Small numbers of
deer were reported killed up to 1888. This year they were stated
to be plentiful but that few had been brought to Phillips.4 They
were scarce around Prentice in 1896.5
1 Shields, G. O. Rustlings in the Rockies. Chicago, (1883) 282. 2 Phillips Badger,
Aug-. 31, 1881; Dec. 6, 1882. 3 Ibid., Feb. 13, 1884. 4 Phillips Times, Oct. 20, 1888.
6 Prentice Calumet, Oct. 30, 1896.
Racine. Dyer, who lived in the town of Burlington, wrote : “In
the winter of 1839, one hundred and five deer, by actual count,
were seen to ford Fox River near the claim of Mr. [David] Bush-
1953]
Schorger — White-Tailed Deer
237
nell.”1 A few years later Bottomley,2 who settled near Rochester,
did not report deer plentiful. In the spring of 1847, he and two
other hunters succeeded in killing three deer. A note from
Racine, dated July 18, 1849, reads: “There are deer here, but not
so abundant as they once were.”3 A deer was seen in the northern
outskirts of Racine in January, 1872.4 In December, 1887, a wolf
hunter found the tracks of a deer in the western part of the
county along the Fox River. This deer was reported killed later
at Burlington.5
1 Dyer, C. E. Official record of the Old Settlers Society of Racine County. (1871)
61. 2 Quaife, Milo M. An English settler in pioneer Wisconsin: the letters of Edwin
Bottomley. Madison, (1918) 70, 152. 3 B. and S. Sporting in Wisconsin. Porters
Spirit of the Times, 19 (Aug1. 11, 1849) 295. 4 Racine Argus: Madison State Journal,
Jan. 13, 1872. 6 Racine Journal, Dec. 21, 1887.
Richland. A party of hunters from Mineral Point returned
from Richland County early in January, 1855, with between 30
and 40 deer, and 10 bears.1 The county contributed many deer to
the market. An article, dated January 5, 1857, in a Madison
paper states : “A hunter in town today says the woods are full of
slain deer, and that they will be brought to town with a perfect
rush as soon as the snow will permit. The snow is so very deep
that the deer are easily hunted down and captured, but it is diffi¬
cult to get them out of the woods. He states that himself and one
or two others have about forty hung up on trees awaiting an
opportunity to get them to market.”2
It is doubtful if the above pertains to Dane County at this date.
Furthermore, four days later an item referring to the slaughter
of deer states that 108 deer arrived in the city from Richland
County for shipment east by rail.3 The lot weighed ten tons, giv¬
ing an average of 185 pounds. Apparently only the largest deer
were brought in for shipment.
Market hunting reduced the number of deer rather rapidly.
In January, 1856, it was stated: “Richland County, we will ven¬
ture to say, has furnished more venison for the eastern markets
this winter, than has any other county in the State. Every few
days, wagon loads of whole deer pass through this village for
Madison and Milwaukee. We fear that our forest will soon be
stripped of this kind of game.”4
A year later few deer were brought to market and most of
these were consumed locally.5 They were considered quite plenti¬
ful up to 1868. 6 In December, 1881, none was known to have been
killed in the county.7 The DeVoe brothers of Boscobel shot four
deer at Lone Rock in October, 1884.8
1 Mineral Point Tribune, Jan. 10, 1855. 2 Madison Argus and Democrat, Jan. 5,
1857. 3 Ibid., Jan. 9, 1857. 4 Richland Center Observer, Jan. 29, 1856. 5 Ibid., Dec. 23,
1856. 6 Ibid., Nov. 19, 1868. 7 Richland Center Republican and Observer," Dec. 1, 1881.
8 Boscobel Dial, Oct. 28, 1884.
238 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
Rock. In December, 1852, two Milwaukee men hunted two days
on Rock Prairie and killed five deer and seven wild turkeys.1
Deer are stated to have disappeared from the vicinity of Janes¬
ville by 1856 ;2 however, a farmer on January 7, 1875, brought
to this city three deer that he had shot two days previously.3
1 Milwaukee Sentinel , Dec. 30, 1852. 2 Guernsey, O. History of Rock County
Janesville, (1856) 173. 3 Janesville Gazette , Jan. 7, 1875.
Rusk. A deer weighing 276 pounds dressed was killed on Deer
Tail Creek in the fall of 1885.1 Two men hunted on this creek for
ten days in 1887 and returned with eight deer.2 A load of 19 deer,
killed near Bruce, passed through Chippewa Falls, in November,
1889.3 In November, 1897, it was stated that 25 to 30 deer,
shipped from Bruce, passed nightly through Rhinelander.4
’•Chippewa Falls Times , Oct. 7, 1885. 2 Chippewa Falls Herald , Nov. 11, 1887.
3Chippewa Falls Times, Nov. 20, 1889. 4 Rhinelander Herald, Nov. 13, 1897.
Saint Croix. The number of deer killed in the 1850’s was very
impressive. The winter of 1854-55 a farmer up the St. Croix
killed about fifty deer, and two other men 30 within ten days.1
The following season a company under Joseph Lagrue of Hudson
killed 76 deer and five bears in ten days. Guy Salisbury and a
companion shot 26 deer in five days, and other hunters did nearly
as well.2 Four men killed 133 deer on Apple River.3 In February,
1856, a man from Apple River brought to Prescott a load of 16
deer, the last of 200 that he had transported during the winter.4
There seemed no end to the deer brought into Hudson during the
winter of 1858-59. A lot of 60 to 70 deer was awaiting shipment
to St. Paul.5 In January, 1860, a hunter killed 11 deer in a week
within five miles of Hudson.6
Deer were abundant in 1863. 7 The season following one hunter
shot five deer in one forenoon.8 In the fall of 1865, J. E. Bartlett
of Hudson killed 9 deer in one night by fire-hunting.9 Elias
Grimes, town of Emerald, killed 8 deer in one day in the season
of 1869.10 At this time a Mr. Bailey, town of Knapp, shot 31 deer
up to December 1 ; and W. Briggs, town of Eau Galle, in one day
killed 11 deer and wounded three others which were secured the
following morning.11 In the winter of 1871-72, George Reed
killed 91 deer, eleven of which were secured in a single day.12
The Bailey family, of the town of Knapp, “shot or otherwise got
in their possession” 68 deer in the fall of 1875. Nearly 100 deer
were shipped from Baldwin.13 Only a few deer were killed at
New Richmond during this season.14 The locality from which
H. F. Muzzy, of Star Prairie, returned after killing 42 deer is
not stated.15
1953]
Schorger — White-Tailed Deer
239
The year 1880 appears to have been the last when deer were
killed in quantity. In general, hunters were not very successful ;
however, George Reed, town of Cylon, killed about 30 deer.16
There was a scarcity of venison in the Baldwin markets in 1889.17
i Hudson Star , April 11, 1855. a Ibid., Dec. 12, 1855. s Ibid., Feb. 6, 1856. 4 Prescott
Transcript, Feb. 8, 1856. 5 Hudson Star: Milwaukee (d) Sentinel, Feb. 22, 1859.
6 Hudson Star: Milwaukee (d) Sentinel, Jan. 31, 1860. 7 Hudson Star: Madison
State Journal, Nov. 17, 1863. 8 Hudson Star: Madison State Journal, Dec. 8, 1864.
9 Madison Capitol, Sept. 5, 1865. 10 Osceola Press, Dec. 31, 1869; Hudson Star, Jan.
5, 1870. 11 Hudson Star and Times, Dec. 1, 1869; Jan. 21, 1870. 3)3 New Richmond
Republican: Milwaukee (d) Sentinel, Jan. 16, 1872. 13 Hudson Star and Times, Dec.
17, 1875. 14 New Richmond Republican, Dec. 1, 1875. 15 New Richmond Democrat ,
Jan. 22, 1880. 16 Hudson Star and Times, Nov. 19, Dec. 3, 1880. 17 Baldwin Bulletin,
Nov. 29, 1889.
Sauk. In 1854, three men hunting for five days killed 16 deer
and 2 bears north of the Baraboo River.1 The last week in De¬
cember, 1856, A. Lezert, of Baraboo, shot five deer.2 A herd of 11
deer was seen at Marble Ridge, near Reedsburg, in April, 1875.3
The following year deer were reported more numerous than for
several years, and it was estimated that thirty were killed in the
county in one week.4 The county has an area of 840 square miles
and in 1889 the deer population was estimated at 200.5 Hunters
were attracted from a distance. In 1889 and 1892, Pearl De Voe
of Boscobel killed deer near Spring Green.6 At no times have the
deer been exterminated in this county.
1 Milwaukee (d) Democrat, Dec. 19, 1854. 2 Baraboo Republic, Jan. 3, 1857.
3 Reedsburg Free Press, April 15, 1875. 4 Baraboo Republic , Nov. 29, 1876. 5 Ibid.,
Nov. 13, 1889. « Boscobel Dial, Dec. 12, 1889 ; Dec. 1, 1892.
Sawyer. The early history is unknown. Deer were plentiful in
1884 and a considerable number was killed.1 The following season
they were very scarce.2 The fall of 1886, Milo Russell killed 12
deer.3 Many deer were killed in the fall of 1892 : “Henry Belden,
George Moore and Sebe Brown killed twenty-six large deer last
month. They made a business of it and sent them to Milwaukee/’4
1 Hayward News, Nov. 15, Dec. 27, 1884. 2 Ibid., Oct. 24, 1885. 3 Hay ward Journal-
News, Nov. 6, 1891. 4 Ibid., Nov. 12, Dec. 9, 1892.
Shawano. Early accounts are wanting. Deer were abundant in
the fall of 1873 and again in 1874. 1 During the next decade there
were many accounts of deer killed but nothing on their abun¬
dance. In the fall of 1877, A. K. Porter killed a deer in the town
of Waukechon that weighed 285 pounds dressed.2 Sixteen deer
were brought into Tigerton in one day during the first week of
December, 1881.3 They were quite numerous in the town of
Angelica in 1882, and large numbers were killed along the Lake
Shore Railroad.4 Large numbers were killed in the fall of 1884,
several parties returning with 20 to 30 deer.5 In the fall of 1885
a party of three hunters returned from “the up country” with
240 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
29 deer.6 It is to be assumed that the large kills were made in the
counties to the north. A man named Lucia found a herd of seven
deer in the Indian reservation in the fall of 1887 and killed three
of them. At this time three deer that had been feeding in a
wheatfield at the edge of Shawano were shot.7 Deer were re¬
ported scarce in 1889. 8 They were plentiful “up north” in 1890,
a party shooting 18 in two days.9 In November, 1892, the hunt¬
ing was poor in the town of Almon, but many deer were “sent
down from the woods.”10
1 Shawano Journal, Nov. 8, 1873; Nov. 28, 1874. 2 Ibid., Nov. 3, 1877. 3 Oshkosh
Times, Dec. 10, 1881. 4 Shawano Journal, Dec. 1 ; Advocate , Nov. 9, 1882. 6 Shawano
Advocate, Dec. 11, 1884. 6 Shawano Journal, Nov. 27, 1885. 7 Shawano Advocate,
Nov. 3, 10, 1887. 8 Ibid., Oct. 24, 1889. 9 Ibid., Nov. 20, 1890. 10 Ibid., Nov. 17, 24,
1892.
Sheboygan . Deer were reported more plentiful in the fall of
1868 than for several years.1 There is no information that deer
were at all abundant at this time. In 1870 venison was on sale in
Sheboygan, to which place were brought five deer killed in the
northern part of the county.2 The killing of a deer at Elkhart
Lake on November 3, 1873, 3 is followed by a long silence. In 1892,
an “unusual event” was the killing of a deer in the town of
Greenbush. Shortly afterwards another was wounded but not
secured.4 In 1895 the hunting of deer in the county was prohib¬
ited for five years. Nevertheless, in the fall of 1895 a large deer
was killed illegally by Louis Reiss.5 A herd of four deer was seen
in the town of Greenbush in October, 1896.6
1 Sheboyg-an Herald: Madison State Journal, Dec. 16, 1868. 2 Sheboygan Herald,
Dec. 16, 23, 1870. 3 Plymouth Reporter, Nov. 6, 1873. 4 Sheboygan Times, Nov. 19,
26, 1892. 5 Plymouth Review, Dec. 4, 1895. 6 Ibid., Oct. 14, 1896.
Taylor. Apparently this was a good county for deer but there
is no information that they were killed in large numbers. Several
were seen near Medford in November, 1875.1 They were reported
plentiful and being killed in every direction in 1877.2 The hunt¬
ing was good in 1881.3 Venison was a drug on the market in the
season of 1883. At a price of five cents a pound, there was little
inducement to ship many.4 Hunters were not very successful in
1885, deer being scarce and the woods noisy. Hunters northward
on the Penokee Range were reported having good success.5 The
following season was no better.6 In the years 1887 to 1889,
hunters were very successful.7
Hunters were reported more numerous than deer in 1890. 8 The
killing of eight deer by Adam Christman in the season of 1891
may be considered a feat.9 Venison was plentiful the year follow¬
ing. On November 23 a load of 20 deer shot by four Indians was
brought to Medford.10 The poor success in the season of 1893 was
attributed to lack of snow and noisy woods.11 The Stratton broth-
1953]
Schorger — White-Tailed Deer
241
ers from Jackson County hunted near Medford in 1895 and re¬
ported deer plentiful.12 In 1897 deer were shipped daily from
Medford the first week of the season. There were 440 hunting
licenses issued in the county.13 A party of five men hunted a week
to obtain seven deer in 1898. 14 In 1899 deer were reported plenti¬
ful throughout the county.15
1 Medford News, Nov. 25, 1875. 2 Ibid., Nov. 24, 1877. 8 Medford Star and News,
Nov. 5, 1881. *Ibid., Nov. 17, 24, 1888. 8 Ibid,, Oct. 31, 1885. « Ibid., Nov. 13, 1886.
7 Ibid., Nov. 5, 1887; Nov. 3, 1888; Nov. 9, 23, 1889. 8 Ibid., Nov. 15, 1890. ® Ibid.,
Nov. 28, 1891. Ibid ., Nov. 12, 26, 1892. u Ibid,, Oct. 28, 1893. » Black River Palls
Banner, Nov. 21, 1895. i8,1 Medford Star and News, Nov. 6, 27, 1897. 14 Ibid,., Nov. 12,
1898. i ^ Ibid., Oct. 28, 1899.
Trempealeau . When Bunnell1 came to Trempealeau in June,
1842, deer were abundant. James Reed took his rifle and was
gone from the cabin only a few minutes before he returned with
a deer. Reed remarked that, ‘The bluffs are full of deer; though
they hide at this season of the year.” Fire-hunting was much in
vogue. Four deer spent a forenoon in the outskirts of Arcadia in
December, 1877.2 A few remained in the county in the 1890’s.
i Bunnell, L. H. Winona and its environs. Winona, (1897) 185, 195, 330. 2 Arcadia
Republican: Merrillan Leader, Dec. 29, 1877.
Vernon. Information on deer in this county is meager, but
there is reason to believe that the early population was as high
as in the other counties bordering the Mississippi. In November,
1873, they were reported more numerous than at any time since
the “winter of the deep snow.”1 One deer was reported killed in
the vicinity of Viroqua in December, 1875.2
1 Viroqua Censor : Madison State J ournal, Nov. 11, 1873. 2 Viroqua Censor, Dec.
15, 1875.
Vilas. In the early days deer were not common. Only a few
appear to have been killed in 1893.1 Deputy Game Warden
Mackie thought that the bounty on the wolf and lynx should be
increased as they were making a great slaughter of the deer.2
This was one of the recurring obsessions. Deer were plentiful in
1895. There was protest against non-state hunters and a strin¬
gent license law was suggested. Ninety-three deer were shipped
out of Eagle River in one day, and it was stated that nearly as
many were shipped from Conover, State Line, Star Lake, Wood¬
ruff, and Minocqua. Shipment of 700 to 1000 deer was believed
to be a fair estimate for the season, and exceeding probably the
number left alive.3 Hough,4 having noticed much sign of deer,
was informed by Joe Blair that there were few better localities
for deer than that around Big St. Germaine Lake.
The scarcity of deer in the fall of 1896 was attributed to the
“army” of Indiana and Illinois hunters in the area the previous
242 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
year.5 Deer were reported plentiful in 1899.6 During the season
of 1900, three men killed five deer in four days at Black Oak
Lake.7 It was stated that 750 deer licenses were issued in the
county in 1901.8 Cory9 was informed that 300 deer were shipped
from Eagle River in November, 1906.
1 Eagle River Democrat, Oct. 7, 21, 1893. 2 Ibid., Oct. 14, 1893. 3 Ibid., Oct. 21,
Nov 4, 18 25, 1895. 4 Hough, E. Forest and Stream, 45 (Dec. 28, 1895) 558. 5 Eagle
River News Oct. 26, 1896. « Ibid., Oct. 23, 1899. 7 Minocqua Times, Nov. 22, 1900.
8 Eagle River News, Dec. 2, 1901. ® Cory, C. B. The mammals of Illinois and Wis¬
consin. Chicago, (1912) 64.
Walworth. This county abounded in deer in 1838. “Herds of
from ten to twenty were frequently seen.”1 According to Hol¬
lister,2 the last deer was killed near Delavan in 1846, and the last
seen in 1852.
i Baker, Charles M. Pioneer history of Walworth County. Wis. Hist. Colls., 6
(1872) 466. 2 Hollister, N. The last records of deer in Walworth County, Wisconsin.
Bull. Wis. Nat. Hist. Soc., 6 (1908) 143-44.
Washburn. The early history of deer in this county is a blank.
Deer were plentiful in the fall of 1891. One hunting camp con¬
tained 11 deer, some of which were believed to have been killed
illegally. One hunter reported having killed 20 deer in nine days
of hunting at Shell Lake. Hunters at Spooner had only fair suc¬
cess.1 The number killed in the fall of 1892 was small due to the
“slaughter” the year previous.2 A hunter at Minong killed 10
deer in the fall of 1894.3 The following year it was stated that
deer were becoming scarcer yearly.4 The 1897 season was poor.
Many of the “foreign” hunters at Minong neither shot nor saw
a deer.5 Only a few deer were killed in 1898. They were quite
plentiful at White Birch but the brush was too thick for success¬
ful hunting. After the game wardens had confiscated two loads
of venison, 18 saddles were stolen.6 A large amount of venison
was shipped from Spooner.7 Scarcity of deer was the comment
for 1899. It was said that it no longer paid to hunt them at Mills.8
1 Shell Lake Watchman, Nov. 12, 19, 26, Dec. 3, 1891. « Ibid., Nov. 17 1892. •/Md.,
Nov. 8, 1894. 4 Ibid., Nov. 28, 1895. 5 Ibid., Nov. 27, 1897. 6 Ibid., Nov. 17, 24, Dec. 8,
1898. 7 ’ibid., Nov. 12, 1898. 8 Ibid., Nov. 23, 1899.
Washington. Information on deer in this county is almost a
blank. Elizabeth Maxon was married in 1846 and settled on
Cedar Creek with her husband. During the first years they were
bountifully supplied by the Indians with “venison, fish, wild tur¬
key . . . -”1 According to the accounts of the early settlers, game,
including deer, was incredibly abundant.2
4West Bend News, March 6, 1907. 2 Quickert, Carl. The story of Washington
County. West Bend, (1923) 23.
Waukesha. John Olin1 arrived in Waukesha in May, 1836.
Near the White Rock Spring at Pewaukee, he saw “as many as
1953]
Schorger — White-Tailed Deer
243
eighty deer in a drove.” The winter of 1841-42, when Unonius2
settled at Pine Lake, the deer appeared in the timber in large
numbers. On one occasion an Indian drove four deer to the
smooth ice of the lake and hamstrung them with a tomahawk.
When the snow became deep, Unonius went on a hunt with the
Indians who with snowshoes ran down the deer. An English
settler who came to Mukwonago the fall of 1843 wrote that deer
were sometimes seen but he had seen only one.3 They were re¬
ported scarce in the county in 1857.4
1 Olin, C. C. The complete record of the John Olin family. Indianapolis, (1893)
p. iv. 2 Unonius, G. New Upsala. Wis. Mag. Hist., 19 (1936) 295, 308, 309. 3 Mil¬
waukee Courier, June 26, 1844, 2, 4 Madison State Journal, Dec. 24, 1857.
Waupaca. Large numbers of deer were killed near New Lon¬
don in the fall of 1856.1 The crust on the snow in February, 1857,
permitted the Indians to slaughter them with clubs and hatchets.2
Deer were scarce in the fall of this year.3 In 1866 they were re¬
ported plentiful throughout the county.4 A wholesale slaughter
of deer was reported for the neighborhood of Ogdensburg the
winter of 1868-69 when they collected in droves on account of
the deep, crusted snow.5 In October, 1876, a hunting party re¬
turned with seven deer.6
Deer were not killed in large numbers after 1875. The end of
October, 1877, five deer were shipped to Milwaukee from Weyau-
wega, but not all of the hunters from this place were successful.7
A party of five hunters from Weyauwega, hunting “north of
here,” in two weeks killed only seven deer.8 On November 4, 1879,
four deer were shot at Rural.9 The killing of six deer on the head¬
waters of the Little Wolf River by one hunter in two days was
considered exceptional success.10 In November, 1880, a load of
eight deer passed through Ogdensburg.11 A party of four hunters
from Weyauwega, away for twelve days, killed only one deer.12
During the season of 1881 local hunters killed seven deer in the
northern part of the county.13 The locality where two men shot
12 deer in the fall of 1883 is not given.14 Seven deer were killed
by four hunters on the headwaters of the Little Wolf in October,
1885.15 In October, 1887, five hunters shot seven deer in town
Twenty-Five.16 Three deer were killed by two men on their hunt¬
ing expedition in October, 1890.17
1 New London Times, Nov. 14, 1856. 2 Ibid., Feb. 27, 1857. 3 Weyauwega Weyau-
wegan , Nov. 15, 1857. 4 Waupaca Criterion: Madison State Journal, Dec. 11, 1866.
6 Waupaca Criterion: Madison State Journal, March 11, 1869. 6 Weyauwega Times,
Oct. 28, 1876. 7 Weyauwega Chronicle, Oct. 27; Times, Nov. 24, 1877. 8 Weyauwega
Chronicle, Dec. 1, 1877. 0 Waupaca Post , Nov. 8, 1879. 10 Ibid., Dec. 6, 1879. 11 Ibid.,
Nov. 4, 1880. 313 Weyauwega Chronicle, Nov. 27, 1880. 13 Ibid., Dec. 10, 1881. uIbid.,
Nov. 17, 1883. 16 Waupaca Post, Oct. 29, 1885. 16 Ibid., Oct. 20, 1887. 17 Weyauwega
Chronicle, Oct. 29, 1890.
244 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
Waushara. Deer were so common in the fall of 1865 that nearly
everyone spoke of seeing or shooting one.1 The deer population
seems, however, to have been of a modest number. Deer were
brought in almost daily in December, 1867.2 On November 20,
1869, four deer were shot within as many miles of Wautoma.3
A few were killed in 1871. Lorenzo Rawson, of Hancock, passed
through Wautoma with a “load” of deer for the eastern market.4
A few deer were shot annually in succeeding years. In 1877, deer
were reported quite plentiful in the hills north and west of Wau¬
toma, and some were killed.5 A hunter from Montello shot two
deer at Coloma in November, 1880.6 Though many hunters were
in the field the end of November, 1882, only one deer was re¬
ported shot. Subsequently two were killed in the town of Rich-
ford.7
i Wautoma Argus , Oct. 27, 1865. * Ibid., Nov. 28, Dec. 12, 1867. 3 Ibid., Nov. 25,
1869. 4 Ibid., Nov. 16, 23, Dec. 28, 1871. 6 Ibid., Nov. 2, 16, 1877. 6 Montello Express,
Nov. 27, 1880. 7 Wautoma Argus, Dec. 1, 15, 1882.
Winnebago. In June, 1856, Walter James went “night-hunting”
in his canoe on a small lake near Muckwa and found deer plenti¬
ful.1 They were abundant in 1868 and large numbers were
brought into Oshkosh.2 In 1873 only a small number of deer
appeared in the Oshkosh market where they sold at 6 cents per
pound by the carcass. The 81 deer killed and shipped to New
York were certainly not shot in the county.3 Venison was a drug
on the market at Oshkosh in 1875 due to the warm weather and :
“The crop of old bucks must have been immense this year, as we
have noticed about four bucks to one doe make their appearance
in this market.”4 Venison was plentiful and cheap in 1878.5 Large
numbers of deer were killed in the vicinity of Norrie in 1881. 6
Considerable venison appeared in the Oshkosh market in 1882
and sold at 121/2 cents per pound.7
1 Harney, R. J. History of Winnebago County. Oshkosh, (1880) 112. 2 Oshkosh
Journal, Nov. 21: Times, Nov. 24; Northwestern: Madison State Journal, Nov. 28,
1868. 3 Oshkosh Times, Nov. 5, Dec. 31; Neenah Gazette: Madison State Journal,
Jan. 5, 1874. 4 Oshkosh Times, Dec. 11, 1875. 5 Ibid., Nov. 16, 1878. * Ibid., Nov. 26,
1881. 7 Ibid., Nov. 25, 1882.
Wood. Deer were plentiful in the fall of 1873. A load of 14 was
brought into Grand (Wisconsin) Rapids.1 About 20 deer were
killed in the neighborhood of Centralia within a period of two
weeks in 1875.3 In October, 1887, seven deer were shot by the
Searles brothers in two days.3 Following a snowfall at this time,
32 deer were killed within a radius of four miles of Grand
Rapids.4 Deer were killed yearly. As late as 1895, venison sold
for 8 cents per pound in Marshfield. The fall of this year two
deer were brought into Marshfield before 9:00 o’clock on the
1953]
Schorger— White-Tailed Deer
245
morning that the season opened, the claim being made that they
were tame deer. That fall the Dupee brothers, living near Pitts-
ville, killed nine deer and four bears. The last deer killed, a buck,
weighed 315 pounds.5 In 1896, 22 deer were killed in the vicinity
of Grand Rapids the last two weeks of October.6 Deer were plen¬
tiful in 1897. About 600 licenses were sold.7 Hunters had a suc¬
cessful season in 1898 also.8
1 Grand Rapids Reporter, Dec. 18, 1873. 2 Ibid., Dec. 2, 1875. 3 Ibid., Oct. 27, 1887.
4 Wausau i Central Wisconsin, Oct. 29 ; Milwaukee Journal, Nov. 7, 1887. 5 Marshfield
Times, Nov. 8, 29, 1895. 6 Grand Rapids Reporter , Oct. 29, 1896. 7 Marshfield Times,
Nov. 5, 19, 26, 1897. 8 Ibid., Nov. 4, 18, 1898.
References
1. Radisson, Pierre. Fourth voyage. Wis. Hist . Colls., 11 (1888) 82.
2. Allouez, Claude J. Relation of 1669-70. Jesuit Relations, 54 (1899)
219.
3. Marquette, Jacques. First voyage, 1673. Jesuit Relations, 59 (1900)
107.
4. Kellogg, Louise P. Early narratives of the Northwest. N. Y., (1917)
263-64.
5. Hubbard, Bela. Memorials of a half-century. N. Y., (1887) 356.
6. Shiras, George. The wild life of Lake Superior, past and present.
Nat. Geog. Mag., 40 (Aug., 1921) 130-34.
7. Henry, Alexander. Travels, 1760-1776. Chicago, (1921) 188, 190.
8. Foster, J. W. and Whitney, J. D. Report on the geology and topog¬
raphy of a portion of the Lake Superior Land District. Part I
(1850) 29, 158, 161.
9. Allen, Lt. J. Journal of an expedition into the Indian country . . .
in 1832. Doc. 323, House of Rep. 23rd Congress. Washington, (1834)
12, 15, 17.
10. McKenney, Thomas L. Sketches of a tour of the Lakes. Baltimore,
(1827) 255.
11. Pitezel, J. H. Lights and shades of missionary life. Cincinnati, (1860)
69.
12. Kohl, J. G. Kitchi-Gami. Wanderings round Lake Superior. London,
(1860) 134.
13. Marquette (Mich.) Mining Journal: Janesville (Wis.) (d) Gazette, Feb.
4, 1862.
14. Cartwright, David W. Natural history of western wild animals.
Toledo, (1875) 239-41, 273, 274, 280.
15. Oshkosh (Wis.) Times, Jan. 14, 1874.
16. Woodcock, E. N. Fifty years a hunter and trapper. Columbus, [c. 1913]
131.
17. Andrews, I. D. Report on trade and commerce of British . . . Colonies
and of Great Lakes. Senate Doc. 112, 32d Congress. Washington,
(1853) 234.
18. Doty, James D. Northern Wisconsin in 1820. Wis. Hist. Colls., 7 (1876)
201; cf. C. C. Trowbridge, Minn. Hist., 23 (1942) 329.
19. Ely, Rev. Edmund F. Journals, 1833-54. Typed copy, Wis. Hist. Soc.
20. Peyton, John L. Over the Alleghanies and across the prairies. 2nd ed.,
London, (1870) 221.
21. Schoolcraft, Henry R. Narrative of an expedition through the Upper
Mississippi to Itasca Lake . . . in 1832. N. Y., (1834) 138.
246 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
22. Malhiot, Francois V. Journal, 1804-05. Wis. Hist. Colls., 19 (1910)
225.
23. Cram, Capt. T. J. Report on the survey of the boundary between the
(State of Michigan and the Territory of Wiskonsin. Senate Doc. 151,
26th Congress, 2nd Session. Washington, (1841) 10, 12, 14, 15.
24. Curot, Michel. Journal, 1803-04. Wis. Hist. Colls., 20 (1911) 448.
25. Schoolcraft, H. R. Personal memoirs. Philadelphia, (1851) 370.
26. Brunson, Rev. Alfred. Lancaster Herald, July 15, 1843.
27. Schoolcraft, H. R. Summary narrative of an exploratory expedition
to the sources of the Mississippi River in 1820: Resumed ... in
1832. Philadelphia, (1855), 543.
28. De Lignery, Constant M. Wis. Hist. Colls., 5 (1868) 89.
29. Long, John. Voyages and travels in the years 1768-1788. Chicago,
,(1922) 186.
30. Lahontan, Baron De. New voyages to North America. Chicago, 1
(1905) 174-75.
31. Marry at, F. Diary in America. Philadelphia, 1 (1839) 186.
32. Fonda, John H. Wis. Hist. Colls., 5 (1868) 229, 231.
33. Le Claire, Antoine. Wis. Hist. Colls., 11 (1888) 240.
34. Keating, W. H. Narrative of an expedition to the source of St. Peter’s
River . . . 1823. Philadelphia,! (1824) 193,233.
35. Prairie du Chien Patriot, Dec. 6, 1848.
36. McLeod, D. History of Wiskonsan. Buffalo, (1846) 143.
37. Hoffman, C. F. A winter in the far west. London, 2 (1835) 39.
38. [Smith, W. R.]. Observations on the Wisconsin Territory. Philadel¬
phia, (1838) 23.
39. Grignon, Augustin. Wis. Hist. Colls., 3 (1857) 255, 267.
40. Le Sueur, Pierre. In Pierre Margry, Decouvertes et etablissements
des francais (1614-1754). Paris, 6 (1886) 74.
41. Guignas, Father Michel. In Margry, 6 (1886) 557.
42. Copway, George. The traditional history of the O jibway nation. Lon¬
don, (1850) 26-28.
43. Lockwood, James H. Wis. Hist. Colls., 2 (1856) 159.
44. Neenah (d) News, April 11, 1922.
45. Morgan, Lewis H. League of the . . . Iroquois. Rochester, (1851) 345.
46. Phillips Badger, Sept. 5, 1883.
47. Marinette Star, Sept. 14, 1883, 8.
48. Beloit Free Press, Jan. 24, 1878.
49. Muir, John. The story of my boyhood and youth. Boston, (1913) 169-
74.
50. “Pioneer”. Menomonie News, March 1, 1884, 5.
51. Hudson Star: Madison State Journal, Sept. 5, 1865.
52. “Atticus”. Racine Advocate, Jan. 23, 1844.
53. Baird, Elizabeth. Wis. Hist. Colls., 15 (1900) 205.
54. Park, W. J. Madison, Dane County and surrounding towns. Madison,
(1877) 354.
55. Oconto Reporter, Nov. 28, 1874.
56. Medford Star and News, Oct. 31, 1885.
57. Ibid., Nov. 19, 1892.
58. Dart, Richard. Proc. Wis. Hist. Soc. for 1909. (1910) 260, 268.
59. B., C. M. American Field, 16 (Oct. 22, 1881) 265.
60. Phillips Badger, July 6, 1881; Nov. 7, 1885.
61. Glidden Pioneer, Oct. 22, Nov. 12, 1885.
62. Hayward News, Oct. 24, 1885.
1953]
Schorger — White-Tailed Deer
247
63. “Julian”. Forest and Stream , 45 (Dec. 21, 1895) 535.
64. Black River Falls Banner, Dec. 20, 1873.
65. Hough, E. Forest and Stream, 45 (Dec. 28, 1895) 558.
66. Bartlett, W. W. History, tradition and adventure in the Chippewa
Valley. Chippewa Falls, [1929] 207.
67. Milwaukee (d) Democrat, Dec. 30, 1850.
68. Milwaukee (d) Advertiser, Dec. 5, 1874.
69. Eau Claire Free Press: Milwaukee (d) Wisconsin, Jan. 20, 1866.
70. Colby Phonograph, Jan. 7, 1880.
71. Marinette and Peshtigo Eagle, Jan. 6, 1883.
72. Sansquartier Inventory, June 10, 1709; photostat from Quebec.
73. M’Kenney, T. L. Wis. Hist. Colls., 20 (1911) 187.
74. Green Bay and Prairie du Chien Papers. Wis. Hist. Soc.
75. American Fur Co. Papers; New-York Hist. Soc.
76. Sparta Democrat, Jan. 14, 1882.
77. Grantsburg Sentinel, Aug. 3, 1883.
78. Schoonmaker, W. J. Jour. Mam. 17 (1936) 67-68.
79. Scott, W. E. Wis. Cons. Bull. 3 (11), (Nov., 1938) 3-4.
80. Lancaster Herald: Milwaukee (w) Wisconsin, Nov. 5, 1851.
81. Neillsville Republican: Madison State Journal, Dec. 12, 1867.
82. La Crosse Republican: Madison State Journal, Dec. 27, 1867.
83. Hudson Star and Times, Oct. 25, 1878.
84. Sturgeon Bay Advocate, Nov. 27, 1884.
85. Grantsburg Sentinel, Oct. 31, 1890.
86. Florence Mining News, Dec. 13, 1890.
87. Marinette North Star: Florence Mining News, Oct. 21, 1893.
88. Sturgeon Bay Democrat, Nov. 29, 1902.
89. Anderson, T. G. Wis. Hist. Colls., 9 (1882) 159.
90. Durand News, March 15, 1905.
91. Lancaster Herald: Madison Argus and Democrat, Feb. 6, 1857.
92. Richland Center Observer, Nov. 3, 1857.
93. Prairie du Chien Courier: Madison State Journal, Jan. 6, 1857.
94. Brown, Harvey. Wis. Cons. Bull., 8 (5), (May, 1943) 19.
95. New London Times, Feb. 27, 1857.
96. Appleton Crescent, Feb. 21, 1857.
97. Sturgeon Bay Advocate, Feb. 25, March 25, 1869.
98. Green Bay Advocate, Oct. 28, 1869.
99. Madison State Journal, April 13, 1888.
100. Florence Mining News, May 5, 1888, p. 5.
101. Green Bay Advocate, Jan. 4, 1872.
102. Marinette and Peshtigo Eagle, July 20, 1872.
103. Baraboo Republic, Sept. 5, 1894, 2.
104. Thompson, D. Q. Travel, range and food habits of timber wolves in
Wisconsin. Jour. Mam., 33 (1952) 429-42.
105. Jackson, H. H. T. Bull. Wis. Nat. Hist. Soc., 6 (1908) 14.
106. Cory, C. B. The mammals of Illinois and Wisconsin. Chicago, (1912)
65. 1
MEMORY AND DESIRE AND TENNESSEE
WILLIAMS' PLAYS
John Jacob Enck
Against not particularly keen competition, Tennessee Wil¬
liams incites and sustains more comment in the United States
than any other writer largely unknown a decade ago. Interim
reports must always qualify their generalizations, but a few
notes may point up what his achievements are and, incidentally,
why others accomplish less. Williams' fame derives from his
plays. The first acclaimed success, The Glass Menagerie,
appeared on Broadway in 1945 ; earlier ones had folded in Boston
or gone begging for attention when produced by little theatre
groups. Since then three more, A Streetcar Named Desire,
Summer and Smoke, and The Rose Tattoo, have boosted his repu¬
tation. London, Paris, Vienna, and other European capitals have
seen A Streetcar Named Desire . When intimate reviews parody
the contemporary stage, they turn to Williams as automatically
as they once did to O’Neill, e.g. Touch and Go (1950) in New
York and London and The Globe Review (1952) in London.
Although he has published in a variety of genres: poetry, short
stories, one-act plays, and a novel, the professional theatre re¬
mains the area where his talents flourish. Flourish may exag¬
gerate the condition.
That the four hits resemble each other strikingly has been
observed. Their extensive similarities have eluded precise defini¬
tion. Williams, a peculiarly honest writer, himself supplies the
key. In prefaces and postscripts tacked on to editions he explains
the circumstances under which he composed and his reactions to
the results. A discussion of the road fiasco, Battle of Angels, in¬
cludes a childhood scene when he accompanied his grandfather,
a clergyman, on visits :
I remember a lady named Laura Young. She was dressed
in checkered silk. She had a high, clear voice : a cataract of
water. Something about her made me think of cherries and
she was very beautiful. She was something cool and green
in a sulphurous landscape. But there was a shadow upon
her. There was something the matter with her. For that
reason we called upon her more frequently than anyone else.
She loved me. I adored her. She lived in a white house near
an orchard and in an arch between two rooms were hung
249
250 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
some pendants of glass that were a thousand colors. “This
is a prism,” she said. She lifted me and told me to shake
them. When I did they made a delicate music.
This prism became a play.1
Crucial events, experienced or dreamed, frequently fuse primal
images so neatly that no detail is accidental and all is charged
with meaning. To consider the four plays as emanations from
the matrix of this passage illustrates their affinities.
All the leading characters are women who are not well and
who, withdrawn from society, seek variegated illusions of happi¬
ness. The cripple Laura in The Glass Menagerie collects glass
figurines over the protests of her mother, Amanda, who in the
St. Louis slum nourishes herself on phantasies from romantic
southern flirtations. Laura’s animals, of which she prefers a
unicorn distinguished by its prismatic single horn, receive all her
affections. Once a “gentleman caller” is lured to the house, but
he already is engaged. Amanda and Laura are left with the
transparent zoo. A Streetcar Named Desire opens when Blanche
DuBois arrives for a vacation with her sister, Stella, in the New
Orleans Vieux Carre. Blanche has been a high school teacher, of
English inevitably, who, after her young husband killed himself,
finds satisfaction only by giving herself to, presumably, any man
passing by. She also seeks a delicate beauty: “I bought this ador¬
able little colored paper lantern at a Chinese shop on Bourbon.
Put it over the light bulb. ... I can’t stand a naked light bulb,
any more than I can a rude remark or a vulgar action.”2 Her
sister’s aggressively vulgar husband rudely forces himself on
her. The violence precipitates a breakdown, and she is led away
to an asylum. Summer and Smoke opposes Alma, a minister’s
daughter identified with the purity of the soul, and John, a doc¬
tor’s son whose nature is projected by an anatomy chart of the
human body in his father’s office. A heavily ironic twist ex¬
changes their views. He marries a younger girl while Alma, em¬
barking on the route whose terminus Blanche reaches, strikes up
an acquaintance with a travelling salesman. All the action occurs
near the statue of an angel named Eternity. If ponderously
gauche to regard so trivial an event sub specie aeternitatis, it is
moderately indicative to remember, “Life, like a dome of many-
coloured glass, /Stains the white radiance of Eternity.” The Rose
Tattoo promised innovations, but it merely turns the others up¬
side down or, to keep the prism metaphor, concentrates on the
red band of the spectrum, to which its symbols refer. The death
of Serafina’s husband, a truck driver, ends an ecstatic marriage.
She retires in mourning and attempts to sequester her daughter :
1953]
Enck — Tennessee Williams ’ Plays
251
the familiar configuration. When Serafina meets another truck
driver who has another tattooed rose, she accepts life again for
herself and allows her daughter, Rosa, to marry a sailor.
All these women, then, are exiles in the world which they in¬
habit, but their heritages drape them, like a Byronic hero, with
a superiority to their milieu: the landed southern families of
Amanda and Blanche, Alma’s father who was a Rhodes scholar,
a trifling anachronism for she was born at least five years before
the scholarships were endowed, and Serafina’s husband, a Sicilian
baron, a dubious pedigree which, nevertheless, bases her pride in
the actual. Their names as well, with the emphases upon the soft
a sound, imply distinction. Just as the prism held by Laura
tinkled, so mood music, a blue piano or the “Varsouviana,” off
stage moans their isolation.
The decor of the plays differs, but a formal resemblance links
the four. Parts of the settings may be blacked out, but the initial
scene never changes. In both The Glass Menagerie and A Street¬
car Named Desire action drifts inside from an alley on the right,
and scrims further expose the surrounding neighborhood.
Summer and Smoke, the most contrived, reveals the minister’s
parlor on the right and the doctor’s office on the left. Between
these two is a park with the statue of the angel. The Rose Tattoo
shows the porch, front rooms, and the yard of Serafina’s home ;
at the rear is an embankment on which the highway runs. Such
devices do not root the women in any context, but, on the con¬
trary, make more graphic their separation. For realistic plays
one conventionally assumes one sees a space somewhat related
to the world as one knows it; here, by bringing a piece of that
world onto the stage and by stressing its remoteness, the space
behind the proscenium arch loses intensity. The Hollywood ver¬
sions of both The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named
Desire are revealing contrasts with the theatre. When in the film
the trolley becomes literal as well as figurative, it is crude and
clumsy. (The pun translates more neatly into German, where the
actual title is Endstation Sehnsucht, but the Viennese refer to it
as Der Triebwagen.) Outside the houses the camera moves awk¬
wardly. These women have no friends; they go to only public
places. Laura Young also stood alone and green in a sultry land¬
scape.
Each of the settings has at least two rooms, dramatically a
sound practice ; action so constrained demands the possibility of
movement back and forth for the fluidity to prevent the passions’
becoming uncomfortably claustrophobic. If this effect undercuts,
it also dissipates the forcefulness of the conflicts when compared
252 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
with the writhings of alienation which Ibsen can unleash in con¬
fined quarters. It is perhaps not necessary to mention that the
prisms hung in an arch between rooms of the remembered house.
Granted, then, a rigidity so repetitious, what merits have these
plays which enjoy profitable runs, have foreign productions, win
prizes, and become seemingly permanent contributions to the
theatre? Primarily, in a period of sloppy dramaturgy which
settles for momentary impacts, William is a careful craftsman.
Quite apart from subject, his talent can immediately initiate the
muted struggle of tranquility recalled in emotion and accelerate
the pace steadily. Constant application must have taught him this
skill; one has only to compare the disjointed Battle of Angels
with any of the four later works to be convinced of the increas¬
ing technical virtuosity he commands. He keeps revising, not
just during the pre-Broadway tours, as expected, but after the
New York openings as well. Indeed, the texts of The Glass
Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire have been printed in
several versions.3 In the basic, but theatrically essential, quality
of narrative rhythm they possess a certain merit always at a
premium on Broadway, and anywhere, for the stage needs an
economical construction, however nebulous thought and language
may be. Williams has also been uniformly fortunate in his pro¬
ducers, directors, casts, and translators. Both in the United
States and abroad the performances have enhanced his scripts.
Competent technique, anything this side of prestidigitation, can¬
not satisfy, especially where a lack of wit argues that the author
is trying to communicate what, for want of a more precise word,
may be termed ideas. Three fundamental explorations lend Wil¬
liams' plays substance.
The Glass Menagerie is classified as a memory play, and,
although not so designated, the rest are cloaked in a similar
atmosphere, the name of the DuBois plantation being, for ex¬
ample, Belle Reve. Memory, perhaps more accurately reverie,
implies for Williams that small events, of no intrinsic impor¬
tance, are resurrected and treasured because through their the¬
atrical magic they illuminate basic experiences.4 In the introduc¬
tion to The Glass Menagerie he says that originally a number of
non-realistic motifs scored the tones of reminiscence,5 but a scat¬
tered few of these were retained, notably a narrator, Amanda's
son, who introduces, then joins, the action. Touches of the cut
whimsey now and then intrude: the father’s flickering picture,
Laura's final pantomime, the scrims, and the music. In the main
their full impact cannot be divorced from that of realistic drama.
Through this manner he claims a double effect. He can drag out
1953]
Enck — Tennessee Williams' Plays
253
his eclectic devices from old experiments in expressionism and
constructionism, which destroy the stage as a representation of
life, but he does not have to beg the predisposed tolerance which
imaginative drama frequently asks. Twentieth-century literature
at its most impressive always impinges upon reverie, to range
through genres and languages at random: Proust searches the
devious disappearances of lost time; Pirandello exploits discrep¬
ancies between the interpretations of the present and the am¬
biguity of the past; Joyce concentrates all history as a night’s
dream in Dublin; and Faulkner’s ante-bellum ghosts spin the
southern fabric of an imaginary Yoknapatawpha county. For
these writers the paths of the past do not twist a maze in a
vacuum, but their symbolic resemblances culminate in the central
design. Williams, perhaps unintentionally, though by his com¬
promises inescapably, sentences his dreamers to live on a dead
end street. The narrator dismisses The Glass Menagerie audi¬
ence, a line deleted from some texts, with, “And there my
memory ends and your imagination begins.”6 Anyone not already
pursuing his after theatre plans might well wonder what fare
the imagination has been provided and, such are the standards of
entertainment, conclude gratefully, none at all.
If the nimbus enveloping the plays is memory, the force driv¬
ing the characters through them is desire for love or sex. This
subject also has been widely exploited by twentieth-century
writers, but seldom with such dogged, yet polite, insistence as
Williams. Much descends from D. H. Lawrence, one of whose
stories he dramatized and who is the hero of the short play,
I Rise in Flame, Cried the Phoenix.7 The sole standard guiding
these women is not the wish to be loved but the desire to know
a man, or indeed object, who wants their love. Within the cocoon
of memory this bent, which might become engrossing, disturbing,
terrifying, or ludicrous, looks instead almost pretty. The charac¬
ters themselves are too special, and, were they not, in their lives
they are already buried. They are not made credible in them¬
selves, a minor blemish, and, more damaging, they exist on no
formulated level. Their desire thrashes around in a second soli¬
tary cell: no moral judgment can be made of it, for it is inevi¬
table, if at times a little silly. Overtones of the Lawrence credo
resound fitfully, but none of Lawrence’s puritanical moral bias
injects strength or coherence into the rationale. The waifs float
by as pitiful specimens of what women can suffer.
The third distinctive attribute rests on the diction, which has
been called poetic. If audiences were enchanted by The Cocktail
254 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
Party because, since they knew a major poet wrote it, its lan¬
guage sounded like prose, then Williams’ vocabulary is decked
out in affectations vague enough to be popularly associated with
“poetry,” while it traffics strictly with a prosaic idiom. The hero¬
ines, granted their pretensions and propensities, can without
strain on probability indulge themselves in a fancy rhetoric
which further sets them off from their surroundings. To stress
the authenticity of language, in every play cumbersome exposi¬
tion pointedly catalogues the formal education each major char¬
acter has had, and school stories keep intruding with a frequency
rarely encountered outside class reunions. The men, generally
less trained, sullenly speak a cadenced slang which passes at
present for sensitive realism. Williams has elsewhere experi¬
mented to shape folk argot as poetry; a group of lyrics set to
music by Paul Bowles succeeds moderately. So far he has failed
to sustain a single authentic style, the sort which distinguishes
the poetic dramas of Eliot or Christopher Fry.
These observations are not to imply that Williams ought to
obey standards continuing the dreary realistic stage. The objec¬
tions are that he bases his chief assumptions on its familiar
picture-frame and that other efforts are injected for decoration
or relief, not for the main substapce. One wishes to be sympa¬
thetic with him because, after a generation of great literary inno¬
vators, to consolidate and refine is a tedious task. Also, he spo¬
radically strives to attain what any future drama nearly de¬
mands: new techniques for exploiting the stage, less rigorous
concepts of character, and a language to draw upon all modern
resources. His repetitious theme might in itself serve a purpose,
if he could relate it to a centrally controlled mythos. Unfortu¬
nately, the genuinely creative elements crop up erratically; so
far they have not fused organically. They remain glancing
touches, like blobs of color from a gyrating spectrum which no
informing line controls or defines.
The problems confronting Williams are identical with those
every intelligent young author in the United States must wrestle
against. For a variety of sociological factors, the writer’s posi¬
tion has grown more marginal. The present climate of opinion,
which condones when it does not encourage a rampant limiting
of expression, denies the romantic ideal of freedom still dominant
in creative literature. Any appeal, therefore, to mass standards is
rendered hypocritical. During the period of comparative naivete
shortly after World War II Williams linked urban bohemian
groups with any quest for independence,8 but the plea made tan-
1958]
Enck — Tennessee Williams’ Plays
255
gential associations which are now quite unsupportable. On the
other hand, if resolute negation is not to claim all, the writer
must address himself to some faith. Today that belief assumes
the guise of love : the memory of having been loved and the desire
to love someone. The drive to relive or experience the emotion
becomes so dominant that its direction toward any object and its
outlet in any physical expression are celebrated. This subject
and its treatment project the writer’s divided loyalties. A mate¬
rialistic society counts love as a means to another end or as one
possession among many. In the writer’s world, where nothing is
stable, it can easily, and logically, head all values. In proclaiming
its worth the manifestations have become so special that the
more conservative critics berate new writers for ignoring love,
but, nevertheless, its rites pushed even to perversions link talents
otherwise as distinctive as Carson McCullers, Flannery O’Con¬
nor, Frederick Buechner, Truman Capote, Paul Griffith, William
Goyen, John Hawkes, Wright Morris, and Williams. The poten¬
tial achievements of this credo lie beyond profitable speculation.
It may be observed that almost all interesting titles invoke a
sentimentalism which five years ago would have been dismissed
as Saroyanesque.
Williams, then, faces a triple hazard : his own tendency to vary
one theme, the practical demands of a commercial theatre, and
the time in which he is writing. Because he is an industrious
craftsman, he may be able to extricate himself. To his credit he
anticipated the turn post war literature has taken and skirted
its greater excesses. An indicative sign of his own awareness is
the conclusion of The Rose Tattoo , where the red shirt Serafina
aas sewn for the truck driver is snatched by a group of women.
A stage direction depicts :
Peppina flourishes the shirt in the air like a banner and
tosses it to Giuseppina, who is now on the embankment.
Giuseppina tosses it on to Mariella, and she in her turn to
Violetta, who is above her, so that the brilliantly colored
shirt moves in a zig-zag course through the pampas grass
to the very top of the embankment, like a streak of flame
shooting up a dry hill.9
Serafina, alone of these women, escapes from her house of
memory into the outside, the symbolic highway, where desire can
be fulfilled. The metaphor of the flame is important. A prism
refracts the sun’s rays, but a burning glass concentrates them.
If Williams can bend his talents into the lens which will focus
256 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
his not inconsiderable perceptions, then from the same materials
a new drama may emerge which will, in spite of being
composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
Notes
1. Tennessee Williams, Battle of Angels, Pharos I & II (1945), p. 112.
Acknowledgment is gratefully made to Liebling-Wood, the agents of
Tennessee Williams, for their kind permission to quote from his works.
2. Tennessee Williams, A Streetcar Named Desire (New Directions, New
York, 1947), p. 62.
3. An attempt at a full bibliographical compilation here would be pom¬
pously disproportionate. Williams' future editors, if there are any,
will not lack variants. According to Barrett H. Clark and William H.
Davenport, edd., Nine Modern American Plays (Appleton-Century-
Crofts, Inc., New York, 1951), p. 341, three copyrights are held by
Williams on The Glass Menagerie , two in 1945 and one in 1948. One
1945 draft remains in manuscript, presumably. The other 1945 version
appears under the imprint Random House, New York, 1945, and re¬
published later by New Directions, New York, 1949, in the New
Classics Series, but with added prefatory matter. The 1948 copy has
been widely anthologized, such as the Clark and Davenport volume.
Their text cuts some directions included in the otherwise similar ver¬
sion given by Harlan Hatcher, ed., Modern American Dramas (Har-
court, Brace & Co., New York, 1949). On the other hand, Paul M.
Cubeta, ed., Modern Drama for Analysis (William Sloane Associates,
Inc., New York, 1950) prints the 1945 text. A Streetcar Named Desire
has been published not only by New Directions but also by the New
American Library, New York, 1951, as a Signet Book. Although the
blurb on the paper binding of the latter claims it is “complete and
unabridged,” considerable cuts have abbreviated the script, and a
preface has been added. One is not reassured about future works by a
note in The Rose Tattoo (New Directions, New York, 1951), [p. iv] :
“ The Author and Publisher express their thanks to Mr. Paul Bigelow
for valuable assistance in organizing the script of the play for book
publication.”
4. “The Timeless World of a Play,” in The Rose Tattoo, pp. vi-xi.
5. “Production Notes,” in The Glass Menagerie (Random House, the 1945
text), pp. ix-xii.
6. Not in the 1945 version. See Clark and Davenport, op. cit., p. 379.
7. Until recently this play was available only in a deluxe edition. The text
appears in New World Writing (The New American Library, New
York, 1952), pp. 46-67.
8. “ ‘Something wild . . . [sic]’,” in Tennessee Williams, 27 Wagons Full of
Cotton (New Directions, New York, 1945), unpaginated.
9. The Rose Tattoo, p. 142.
ARTHUR MILLER : AN ATTEMPT AT MODERN TRAGEDY
Alvin Whitley
The two highly successful plays of Arthur Miller, All My Sons
(1947) and Death of a Salesman (1949), have been frequently
characterized as “unforgettable/' “shattering/’ “devastating,”
“overpowering,” “poignant,” but reviewers have rarely consid¬
ered them, as I propose to do, as examples of one of the oldest
and most respected of literary forms — dramatic tragedy. Nor is
this approach a novel critical fetish. The plays themselves have
in them certain elements which demand that they be judged as
studies in the tragic mode — that is to say, as something more
than realistic reproductions, however searching, of a gloomier
side of modern American life — and Miller himself has written an
informal critical manifesto, propounding his own particular
theory of tragedy and asking that his plays be referred to it. To
fail to do so is to rob the plays of their intended and, I think,
essential meaning.
But before analyzing Miller’s view of tragedy one must recon¬
sider the traditional view, originally formulated by Aristotle and
his critics, which Miller has adapted and reinterpreted. In the
very broadest terms, then, the Aristotelian tradition defined
tragedy as the imitation in prescribed dramatic form of a seri¬
ous, complete human action, of great enough significance to be
worthy of representation, which will strike the audience with
pity and fear, two emotions far removed from sentimental tears.
The hero of such a piece must be neither perfectly virtuous nor
completely base but rather a man, great yet humanly fallible,
who is preordained to suffer because of the fate of his inward
character and a catastrophic series of events in the outward
world. Also, he must never die ignorant of the circumstances of
his fall; at some point in the course of the action, usually just
before his death, he must undergo the painful process of discov¬
ery or revelation through which he will come to understand the
reasons for and the significance of his role and thus may make
the so-called “tragic reconciliation” with life. Tragedy must
always, Aristotle specified, be idealized, both in the sense that the
poet as philosopher deals with ideal and universal truth and also
in the sense that he portrays his characters as men far above the
average in social standing and intellectual and spiritual power.
257
258 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
This last point hints at a basis of tragedy which Aristotle
doubtless considered too obvious to elaborate — that classical
tragedy embodied a fundamental belief in the dignity and in¬
herent nobility of man. Only if man was great and his moral
choices and ethical convictions of vast importance to the universe
as a whole, could the story of his fall be made marvelous and
arouse the requisite emotions of pity and fear. The fall of a noble
man was worthy of the highest forms of poetry and was calcu¬
lated, through its very magnitude, to strike the audience dumb
not to reduce it to tears of maudlin sympathy. The classical
tragedian was at heart an optimist, his ultimate exclamation
being not the pity but the wonder of it all, and it was not empty
literary convention which led him to conceive of man as most
fittingly portrayed as a king whose crowns and robes were sym¬
bolic of inward greatness.
Accepting these standards, some modern writers have claimed
that tragedy can no longer be written and, indeed, only imper¬
fectly understood because the one absolute requirement, a belief
in the dignity of man, is no longer possible.1 The reasons usually
given for this decline (a general loss of religious faith, the ques¬
tioning skepticism of the scientific spirit, and so on) need not
concern us, only the end result: if man does not believe in an
ordered universe, he cannot assign himself a fixed place; if he
has no faith in himself, he cannot echo Hamlet’s description of
man, “in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a
god!” Amid the growing political and economic complexities of
our time, few have been able to proclaim that man is the master
of things but rather their pitiful victim, and tragedy has become
sentimentality. Again, it is symptomatic that the hero of a mod¬
ern “tragedy” is not pictured as a king but as an average person,
more often than not as a man well below average both in social
and economic status and intelligence.
Miller, however, has in turn rejected this modern denial of the
possibility of tragedy. In a careful article entitled “Tragedy and
the Common Man,” published in the New York Times, February
27, 1949, he has reinterpreted the traditional view. Tragedy, he
begins, is not an archaic form; current ideas do not forbid it.
Indeed, the common man is as proper a subject for tragedy as a
king; external evidence of greatness is unimportant, for both
share, after all, the same mental processes and emotional pat¬
terns. Whether the hero be king or commoner, “the tragic feeling
1 See the suggestive chapter, “The Tragic Fallacy,” in Joseph Wood Krutch’s
The Modern Temper (1929), to which I am greatly indebted. Quotations from the
works of Arthur Miller are made with the kind permission of the publishers. The
Viking Press.
1953] Whitley— Arthur Miller and Modern Tragedy 259
is evoked in us when we are in the presence of a character who
is ready to lay down his life, if need be, to secure one thing — his
sense of personal dignity.” The tragic struggle is one of a man
attempting to assert his place in the sun and to affirm his impor¬
tance, whether for the first time or to recapture something once
possessed and lost. Few will rebel in such a manner, and we, the
more passive onlookers, are struck with pity and fear because we
so far identify ourselves with the hero to be afraid of “being
torn away from our chosen image of what and who we are in
this world.” Some kind of enlightenment or revelation remains
essential (whether on the part of the hero or the audience, Miller
does not specify) ; otherwise we are left with mere pathos, the
meaningless destruction of an unconscious animal.
In more modern times, Miller continues, tragedy is not possible
if our view of life is completely psychiatric or sociological — the
one posits that our indignities are all internal and thus invali¬
dates external action; the other so far shifts our interest from
individual to mass man that the tragedy of one is unbelievable
and irrelevant. Miller agrees that tragedy is essentially opti¬
mistic. A creative struggle for self-realization inspires the high¬
est opinions of mankind not the lowest. Furthermore, tragedy
must always contain the possibility of success; it is only pathos
when a man fights a battle lost before begun. All of this is true
of the king as of the common man, and since we no longer believe
in the former, the latter is the only suitable subject for tragedy
in our time. Miller’s own two plays are based on his precepts.
All My Sons is a remarkably successful attempt to portray the
typical American : the setting, a middle class suburban home in
the midwest, the characters, a selfmade business man and his
unpretentious family, the moral background, belief in material
success and in the immediate family as the ultimate social and
moral unit — all distill the essence from many American lives.
Joe Keller, the tragic hero, has attempted to assert his impor¬
tance by the achievement of material success which is largely
unselfish: his struggles, leading from boyhood poverty to pros¬
perity in the ownership of a small factory, have been guided by
love of his family and a desire to see his sons better off than him¬
self. In the process, however, he has committed a crime. During
the war he had deliberately permitted faulty aeronautical equip¬
ment to leave his factory, and twenty-one fliers were killed. A
meek partner has been allowed to take the blame and go to
prison, while he himself has gone on to greater success with
peacetime conversion, the only flaw being the death of his son, a
pilot in the war.
260 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
His other son, Chris, has returned from the war with a moral
viewpoint as universal as his father’s is provincial: the fate of
mankind as a whole is the ultimate consideration, not the good
of one individual and his family. The action plays itself out in
the tense struggle between father and son, as the latter makes
the inevitable, terrible discovery that his father stands for every¬
thing he has fought. Keller remains for a time morally unen¬
lightened. He had merely countenanced an irregularity to keep
the attainments of a lifetime, and he defends himself by an
appeal to general American conduct: “It’s dollars and cents,
nickels and dimes ; war and peace, it’s nickels and dimes, what’s
clean?” When he tells his son that it was done for him, Chris
replies :
For me! Where do you live, where have you come from?
For me! — I was dying every day and you were killing my
boys and you did it for me? I was so proud you were helping
us win and you did it for me? What the hell do you think I
was thinking of, the goddam business? Is that as far as your
mind can see, the business? What is that, the world — the
business ? What are you made of, dollar bills ? What the hell
do you mean, you did it for me? Don’t you have a country?
Don’t you live in the world ?
Enlightenment comes, however, with the discovery of a long-
concealed letter from his dead son, saying that he is going to
commit suicide to avoid the disgrace of being the son of such a
father. At last Keller understands and is willing to go to prison
to atone. When his wife says that their dead son would never tell
him to suffer needlessly, he answers : “What is this [the letter]
if it isn’t telling me? Sure, he was my son. But I think to him
they were all my sons. And I guess they were, kid ... I guess
they were.” And his living son drives the lesson home, that in
striving to better himself he had committed a crime against
humanity: “You can be better! Once and for all you can know
now that the whole earth comes in through those fences ; there’s
a universe outside and you’re responsible to it, and if you’re not,
you threw your son away, because that’s why he died !” But his
father, his life gone with the illusion that governed it, has also
killed himself.
Death of a Salesman follows a remarkably similar pattern.
Willy Loman has also lived by a success illusion : he has
attempted to assert himself by applying a Rotarian philosophy
of personality. A man is a “big shot” if he is liked by his asso¬
ciates (“not liked but well liked”) because of his ability to talk,
to joke, to know people and to have contacts, to possess a breezy,
1953] Whitley — Arthur Miller and Modern Tragedy 261
assured manner — to sell himself, in short, through surface man¬
ner and not innate worth. His belief is far less substantial than
Joe Keller’s, for, as a salesman not a manufacturer, he has fewer
material possessions to sustain it — <he can only evaluate himself
through the smiles on other people’s faces, and as he grows older
and business methods change, the smiles are beginning to fade.
His attempt to realize his own idea of his importance has been
illusory, and he is beginning, partially, to recognize it. He con¬
fesses to his wife that he talks too much, that people laugh at him
and call him “the walrus.” But one of his sons sees the situation
more clearly, for Willy has not only lived by his philosophy him¬
self but has also inculcated it into his sons with disastrous re¬
sults — one is like his father, the other, Biff, a hopeless drifter
and even a petty thief. Biff explains to his father and the audi¬
ence, telling Willy that his philosophy is “hot air,” that he is “a
dime a dozen,” “a dollar an hour,” and advising, “Will you take
that phony dream and burn it before something happens?” We
never know whether or not this understanding extends beyond
Biff and the audience to Willy. With the collapse of his illusion
his mind is failing and his ability to see himself objectively seri¬
ously impaired. But he must have glimpses of the truth, for he
seeks to atone for his miscomprehension of essentials by com¬
mitting suicide to leave the insurance money to his sons that they
may be better.
Both plays, then, are similar and represent a working out of
Miller’s theories : common men proclaiming their dignity by de¬
votion to success “myths” and being cast down by the moral
order of the universe (speaking through their sons) against
which they have sinned, one definitely, the other perhaps realiz¬
ing the significance of his story.
But has Miller been consistent to his own theory? The problem
of discovery or comprehension of significance is not convincingly
solved. Joe Keller seems to understand at the end, but one doubts
that he is really intelligent enough to grasp the complete truth ;
Willy Loman’s mind is at times unbalanced, a condition which
surely negates the possibility of convincing enlightenment. It is
strange that Miller, who warned against psychiatrics in tragedy,
should have poached on his own forbidden territory. One may
well ask if enlightenment on the part of the audience is an effec¬
tive substitute for enlightenment on the part of the hero. Surely
part of the terrible power of tragedy is sacrificed when the hero
must die without understanding.
But Miller has also, it seems to me, left unheeded his own
warning concerning sociological inference. In both plays there
262 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
are bold hints that the system is responsible for the plight of the
man. Joe Keller says that he only did what everyone did. What
is individual guilt? he asks, but his question remains unan¬
swered. Willy Loman is certainly as much the victim of an eco¬
nomic system as of a self-created illusion ; his wife makes to her
sons a speech which rings suspiciously like an indictment of
society :
I don’t say he’s a great man. Willy Loman never made a lot
of money. His name was never in the paper. He’s not the
finest character that ever lived. But he’s a human being, and
a terrible thing is happening to him. So attention must be
paid. He’s not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old
dog. Attention, attention must be finally paid to such a
person.
Any attempt to ascribe importance to environment must pro¬
portionally detract from the importance of the individual, and
tragedy will become a pathetic case study of preordained failure.
And, finally, is Miller’s theory of tragedy feasible? Surely
there is a fallacy in its logic. A search for dignity cannot have
the same stirring power as the use of dignity already achieved
to play a great part in a significant universe. A man who pos¬
sesses nobility is, in Willy’s terms, “big”; a man struggling to
attain it, no matter how courageous his fight or how justified his
desire, will remain little in comparison. His struggles may well
be affecting, but they cannot inspire in us the pity, fear, and
strange exaltation which are the tragic emotions. Whether or not
one wishes to broaden his definition of tragedy to include Miller’s
plays is a matter for personal critical canons, but I think he
should realize that he is extending the traditional interpretation
to embrace demonstrably different emotional effects and that, in
the basic matter of personal dignity, Willy Loman may have
ended where Hamlet unquestionably began.
THE ROLE OF SCIENCE IN THE THOUGHT OF
W. D. HOWELLS
Harry Hayden Clark*
Although William Dean Howells (1837-1920) is generally re¬
garded as the most comprehensive literary recorder of normal
American life in the latter part of the nineteenth and early part
of the twentieth centuries when the influence of science and tech¬
nology were revolutionizing forces, there has been little exten¬
sive study of Howells’ use of and reaction to science. Some com¬
mentators have even argued that he “hates science, or shuts his
eyes to it.”* 1 In view of this situation it would seem that an in¬
ductive investigation of what he actually said about science
might be illuminating in regard to how the implications of sci¬
ence were interpreted on the popular level, and how they helped
to cross-fertilize ideas about literature and social criticism.
Needless to say, Howells had no technical knowledge of science
and he once even said that in so far as a man “is very much of an
artist he has not much philosophy”2 in the tightly systematic
sense. And as a practising journalist (editor of The Atlantic
Monthly from 1871 to 1881 and with Harper’s from 1886 to 1920
with an interval), Howells did not always find it necessary to
make his early and his later book reviews entirely consistent.
One must reconstruct his ideas from many sources, balancing
one against the other when necessary, and using his non-fictional
utterances as yardsticks with which to interpret the comments
of his fictional characters. For obviously, if a given plot of a
novel requires a character to be a villain and another a hero, one
must distinguish as to which is more likely to be expressing the
author’s own ideas. With these considerations in mind, then, let
us see to what extent Howells was indebted to science (1) in his
literary theory and practice as a realistic novelist and literary
critic, and (2) in his social and political attitudes which culmi¬
nated in something approaching a mild socialism predominantly
Christian.
* Grateful acknowledgment is made of the fact that I have been greatly aided
in getting this study into its present form through several versions by Louis Budd
and Clinton Burhans, two successive Research Assistants generously provided for
this purpose by The Graduate School of the University of Wisconsin. They deserve
much credit.
1 J. C. Underwood, Literature and Insurgency , (1914), pp. 100, 122.
12 “Recent Russian Fiction,” North American Review, CXCVI, 94.
263
264 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
I
Darwin “changed the thougths of the world"
Before surveying these two major topics, let us ascertain the
extent of the familiarity with scientific ideas and developments
which Howells apparently derived both from his reviews of sci¬
entific books and from his acquaintance with contemporary pop¬
ularizes of science. As early as 1869, Howells met the theory of
natural selection directly in his reading of A. R. Wallace's The
Malay Archipelago. Implying at least a general familiarity with
Darwin's evolutionary theories, he acknowledges this book's
“vast amount of information", and finds that “the author is a
Darwinist, and meets everywhere abundant evidence to sustain
the famous theory."3 Thirty-five years later, referring to Wal¬
lace's Man's Place in the Universe, he remarks that “Dr. Wallace
restores those who accept his gospel to a possible belief in the
brotherhood of man."4 Howell's interest in the scientific develop¬
ments of his day and their implications is illustrated in his tena¬
cious concern with the question treated in Wallace's book of
whether the earth alone is a habitable planet. His opinion on this
question varied through the years ; in 1889 he remarked that “the
planet Mars is known to be adapted to human life."5 Yet in
March, 1904, he devoted the “Editor’s Easy Chair" to Wallace’s
Man's Place in the Universe, which contends that the earth is the
only body in the solar system which is populated; such a dis¬
covery, feels Howells, will bring a new era of moral responsi¬
bility, when man realizes that “the universe, so far as it has been
of any imaginable use, has been created for the behoof of his
home and himself."6 Howells returned to his earlier opinion in
1913 when E. Walter Maunder's Are the Planets Inhabited
agreed strongly with Wallace. Discussing the question again in
the “Editor’s Easy Chair", he decides that “the Soul revolts
against the notion that the Creator works with no more economy
of means than his Creature in a universe one part life to a billion
parts death."7 Such continual and speculative interest in con¬
temporary scientific trends was characteristic of a Howells who
never lost his intellectual inquisitiveness and open-mindedness.
Howells' chief potential source of Darwinism was John Fiske,
the American prophet of Darwinism and disciple of Spencer.
Fiske and Howells met in 1867, and, before long, Howells “was
3 Atlantic Monthly, XXIV, 256-57 (August, 1869).
4 “Editor’s Easy Chair,” Harper’s, CVIII, 641 (March, 1904).
5 “Editor’s Study,” Harper’s, LXXIX, 481 (August, 1889).
6 “Editor’s Easy Chair,” Harper’s, CVIII, 640-44 (March, 1904).
7 Ibid., CXXVIII, 151 (December, 1918).
1953] Clark — Science in Thought of W. D. Howells
265
in raptures” (reported Fiske) over his article on popular mythol¬
ogy and superstition. In 1871, Fiske took over for a while “super¬
intending the proof-reading” of the Atlantic; and when Howells
organized an Atlantic department of science in 1872, Fiske was
asked to be its editor. Fiske himself gives ample illustration of
his intimate relationship with Howells; when considering the
purchase of Howells’ Cambridge house, he confided to his
mother: “I am very intimate with Howells. . . . The house is a
kind of old friend, and it would be pleasant to live in it for the
sweet associations.”8 Howells naturally reviewed Fiske’s writ¬
ings with glowing approval, finding him “one of the most thor¬
ough, sincere, and cautious of inquirers”; he calls attention to
“all the charm of Mr. Fiske’s clear style, vast knowledge, and
right perspective.”9 From him as well as from his reading,
Howells acquired the main ideas of evolutionary science, and
could glibly write that “the forked tail is no more to be found in
the demons of our time than the like appendage which in our own
race, marked a stage of progress from the Ascidian.”10
Howells also praised and encouraged the literary efforts of
Nathaniel Southgate Shaler, a Harvard geologist who broke with
his teacher, Agassiz, over evolution and who taught evolution
“when the dominant scientific influence in Cambridge was antag¬
onistic to it.”11 Shaler, who met Darwin, Tyndall, and Galton
while abroad, mixed socially with Howells in Cambridge and con¬
tributed liberally to the Atlantic Monthly during his editorship ;
for example, Shaler’s essay in the Atlantic Monthly of March,
1879, attempted to analyze human civilization from the premises
of evolutionary science.
The names of many great contemporary scientists are sprin¬
kled throughout Howells’ works. He writes that “Agassiz may be
said to have led that movement towards the new position of sci¬
ence in matters of mystery which is now characteristic of it ... .
he became, by opening a summer-school of science with prayer,
nearly as consolatory to the unscientific who wished to believe
they had souls, as Mr. John Fiske himself.”12 Again, in The Un¬
discovered Country, Boynton, a disillusioned spiritualist, says:
“ T have heard a story of Agassiz . to the effect that
when he had read some book wholly upsetting a theory he
8 The Letters of John Fiske, pp. 165, 199, 205, 364, 459 ; for other references to
Howells see pp. 197, 200, 204, 210, 214, 222, 232, 357, 362-64, 368, 372, 374, 437, 450,
460, 466, 468, 514-15.
9 See the Atlantic Monthly, XXXI, 241-42 (February, 1873) and Harper’s
LXXII, 808 (April, 1886) and LXXIX, 802 (October, 1889) ; also see Harper’s,
CXL, 279 (January, 1920).
10 Atlantic Monthly, XXXIII, 370 (March, 1874).
u See N. S. Shaler, Autobiography (1909), p. 216.
12 Howells, Literary Friends and Acquaintances, Edition of 1911, p. 272.
266 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
had labored many years to establish, he was so glad of the
truth that his personal defeat was nothing to him. He ex¬
ulted in his loss, because it was the gain of science.’ ”13
Referring to his friend Fiske, Howells states that “he evolved
from the agnosticism of the whole contemporary thinking world
a deistic belief, and established our civilization in the comfort of
a credence unknown outside of his following.”14 Howells calls him
“the arch-apostle of Darwinism.”15 Of Darwin himself, Howells
writes that “the imagination which does not rest its hopes on
faulty cords, but follows carefully on the sure and firm-set earth,
in the steps of fact and then flies forward in most inspired con¬
jecture, has its abiding in the memory of the great Darwin
. ”16 “It is the statue of Darwin,” writes Howells, “to which
the devotees of evolution will bend their steps in Shrewsbury.”17
In Shrewsbury himself, Howells visited the building in which
Darwin attended school and writes that it was the “mild, wise
face”18 of Darwin which welcomed him up the way to the build¬
ing. If Howells does not consider Darwin “ ‘the first of those who
know’ ”19, he does believe that it was the studies of Darwin
“which changed the thoughts of the world.”20 Howells also refers
to other contemporary scientists. He remarks of Huxley that his
“famous reproach of poetry . that it was mostly ‘sensual
caterwauling’ . had a justice in it that must have stung,
and made the lyrist wish to be an atomic theorist at any cost.”21
Referring to Metchnikoff as “ ‘the successor of Pasteur in the
Pasteur Institute at Paris’ ”22 Howells writes that The Nature of
Man, which discusses the question of immortality, is “ ‘certainly
a very important book, and it produces a reaction which may be
wholesome or unwholesome as you choose to think. And no
matter what we believe, we must respect the honesty of the sci¬
entific attitude in regard to a matter that has been too much
abandoned to the emotions, perhaps.’ ”23
In addition to the names of great contemporary scientists,
Howells’ works contain numerous references to the major devel¬
opments and movements of contemporary science. The tenets of
13 Howells, The Undiscovered Country , p. 358.
“Editor’s Easy Chair,” Harper’s Monthly, CXL, 279, (January, 1920).
15 Howells, Literary Friends and Acquaintances, p. 273.
16 Howells, Certain Delightful English Towns, p. 269.
17 Ibid.
18 Ibid., p. 270.
19 Ibid., p. 269.
20 Ibid. See also Howells’ “Minor Topics,” Nation, II, 293 (March 8, 1866) on
Dai*win.
21 Howells, Imaginary Interviews, (New York, 1910), p. 212.
22 Ibid., p. 196.
23 Ibid., p. 202.
1953] Clark — Science in Thought of W. D. Howells
267
his literary realism are based in a large measure on his knowl¬
edge of scientific methodology. He commends Thorstein Veblen’s
“methods and habits of scientific inquiry” and feels that “to
translate these into dramatic terms would form the unparalleled
triumph of the novelist who had the seeing eye and the thinking
mind, not to mention the feeling heart.”24 He acknowledges
directly the value of the scientific method, stating that “better
than science seems the scientific spirit, and after many theories
and hypotheses have fallen to ruin this will remain.”25 Howells
had a semi-scientific conception of the function of natural laws
in the affairs of men ; his Altrurian traveler gives expression to
this conception:
“ '. . . we profit, now and then, by the advances ... in sci¬
ence, for we are passionately devoted to the study of the
natural laws, open or occult, under which all men have their
being.’ ”26
In Dr, Breen's Practice, Howells’ knowledge of the movements
in contemporary medical science is demonstrated in his descrip¬
tion and satire of the internecine dispute between the allopathists
and the homeopathists. He has Dr. Mulbridge say to Dr. Grace
Breen :
“ 'Surely, Miss — I mean Doctor Breen — you must know why
I can’t consult with you! We belong to two diametrically
opposite schools — theories — of medicine. It would be im¬
practicable — impossible for us to consult. We could find no
common ground. Have you — never heard that the — ah —
regular practice cannot meet homeopathists in this way? If
you had told me — -if I had known — you were a homeopathist,
I couldn’t have considered the matter at all.’ ”27
Howells was also aware of the development and implications of
electrical science ; and in the evolution of his Utopian state, “ 'it
was with the telegraphs that the rebellion against the Accumula¬
tion began.’ ”28 A close friend of William James whose Psychol¬
ogy (1890) he read and regarded as “most important,”28"1 he
writes of “the superior interest of the psychology”29 of the char¬
acters of Henry James. And, meditating on the historical ex¬
cesses of the Medici during a visit to Florence, he indicates his
knowledge of contemporary developments in the science of psy-
24 “An Opportunity for American Fiction,” Literature, IV, 580, (June 3, 1889).
25 “Editor’s Study,” Harpers, LXXXI, 966 (November, 1890).
26 Howells, A Traveler from Altruria, (New York, 1894), p. 288.
^Howells, Dr. Breen’s Practice, p. 99.
28 Howells, A Traveler from Altruria, pp. 270-71.
28a Life in Letters of W. D. Howells, (New York, 1928), II, 14.
29 Howells, Heroines of Fiction, II, 170.
268 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
chology by concluding that “the Medici, a family of princes and
criminals, may come to be studied like the Jukes, a family of
paupers and criminals.”30 Throughout Howells’ later works espe¬
cially, one finds great interest in heredity, especially as it relates
to the question of responsibility for supposed wrongdoing.
Of course the most important, and certainly the most influen¬
tial, scientific development during the period in which Howells
wrote was the impetus given the theory of evolution by the re¬
searches and conclusions of Charles Darwin. Howells’ familiarity
with the general concept of evolutionary science is illustrated in
a variety of passages. Referring again to the Medici, he states
that “it is hard to understand through what law of development
from lower to higher, the Providence which rules the affairs of
men permitted them supremacy.”31 During a visit to England,
he reflects on “the slow evolution of the race out of devoted sub¬
jects into devoted citizens.”32 Howells’ Utopian state would be
reached by a quiet social evolution or gradualism : “it must be a
natural growth from indigenous stocks, which will gradually
displace individual and corporate enterprises by pushing its roots
and its branches out under and over them, till they have no
longer earth or air to live in.”33 This material progress would be
matched by a spiritual progress : Howells, in an important pas¬
sage indicating his adherence to “soft” evolution departing from
mere anatomy, asserts that “there is an evolution . in the
moral as well as in the material world, and good unfolds in
greater good.”'34 It is significant that the final development in
the creation of his Utopian state is termed “the Evolution.”135
Howells’ comments on the Italians during a visit to Rome
reflect his acquaintance with Darwin’s theory of natural selec¬
tion. Finding the contemporary Italians quite like their racial
counterparts of the gladiatorial days, Howells feels “the process
of the generations to be a sort of impertinence; and if Nature
had been present, I might very well have asked her why, when
she had once arrived at a given expression of humanity, she must
go on repeating it indefinitely?”36 His discussion of George Eliot’s
Middlemarch also reflects the principle of natural selection. Re¬
ferring to Dorothea Brooke, Howells writes that “in her case, as
in the case of Lydgate, we see a meaner nature making a noble
30 Howells, Tuscan Cities, p. 87.
31 Ibid., p. 49.
32 Howells, Certain Delightful English Towns, p. 277.
33 Howells, The World of Chance, pp. 121-22.
34 Part of the sermon by Rev. Peck in Annie Kilburn (New York, 1889). For evi¬
dence that Howells spoke through Rev. Peck see Life in Letters, I, 419.
35 Howells, A Traveler from Altruria, p. 288.
36 Howells, Literature and Life, pp. 188—89.
1953] Clark — Science in Thought of W. D. Howells 269
nature its prey, but Dorothea is more enduringly built than
Lydgate, or else she is more favored by chance. Perhaps it is sci¬
entifically accurate to say this rather than the other thing
. ”37 Again, in Howells’ The World of Chance , (1893) the
radical Hughes states:
“ ‘It is Nature that I accuse; not the divine nature, or even
human nature, but brute nature, that commits a million
blunders, and destroys myriads of types, in order to arrive
at such an imperfect creature as man still physically is,
after untold ages of her blind empiricism.’ ”38
In his later years, his faith in intuitive religion partially re¬
stored, Howells finds “Natural Selection entering the twilight
into which the elder pagan deities have vanished,” and the soul
“newly warranted in claiming existence.”39 In reviewing Isaac
Taylor’s The Origin of the Aryans, part of which refuted the
hypothesis (which Fiske and others held) that Aryan religious
myths evolved “vertically” from an ancient race in Central Asia,
Howells in 1890 took comfort in this apparent proof that scien¬
tists and “Sanskristists” could make mistakes. “The atomic
theory is still a theory,” he concluded, “the nebular hypothesis
still a hypothesis; the missing link in the Darwinian chain is
missing still.”39a Therefore science is not infallible (at least
anthropology, in which Howells had much interest as suggested
by his study of D. G. Brinton’s Myths of the New World and
Edward Tylor’s Primitive Culture) and man may well be re¬
luctant to abandon a comforting belief because of the latest scien¬
tific hypothesis which may soon be supplanted by another.
References to the evolutionary principle of the survival of the
fittest in a struggle for existence, corollary to the theory of
natural selection, are found throughout Howells’ works. Char¬
acters in his novels are often advised to “gather strength for the
battle of life,”40 and he deplores the condition of the “feeble
nature, constantly pushed to the wall in the struggle.”41 Again,
in A Hazard of New Fortunes, the reaction of Basil March to
New York City embodies the theory of the survival of the fittest:
“Accident and then exigency seemed the forces at work to
this extraordinary effect; the play of energies as free and
planless as those that force the forest from the soil to the
37 Howells, Heroines of Fiction, II, 75.
^Howells, The World of \Chance, p. 99.
39 Howells, Imaginary Interviews, p. 315.
39a Howells, “Editor’s Study,” Harpet’s Monthly, LXXXI, 966 (November, 1890).
40 Howells, The Quality of Mercy, p. 393.
41 Howells, A Woman’s Reason, p. 427.
270 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
sky; and then the fierce struggle for survival, with the
stronger life persisting over the deformity, the mutilation,
the destruction, the decay of the weaker.”42
Howells’ familiarity with the evolutionary theory that man is
determined by the conditions of his heredity and environment is
constantly reflected in his writings. During a visit to England,
he remarks that an American of English descent “has that sense
of having been there before . His English ancestors who
really were once there stir within him, and his American fore¬
fathers, who were nourished on the history and literature of
England, and were therefore intellectually English, join forces in
creating an English consciousness in him.”43 English women are
“wholly unlike American women. They are of the same stock
racially, but ours are of a graft upon the parent stem so different
that the two varieties of fruit are as little related as plums and
apricots. “In the Hardy lower-class heroines we see the primitive
Englishwoman before she was touched by Puritanism, and in his
middle and upper-class heroines the same woman as she has
grown into modern civilization unaffected by the tremendous
force which has permeated and moulded the nature of the Amer¬
ican great-great-grandnieces of that original Englishwoman.”44
In the course of “that wonderful adaptation of the human soul
to any circumstances,”45 character is formed (as Howells inter¬
prets Hardy) “by those influences from without — religious and
moral — which we anxiously enough mistake for impulses.”46
Associated with the evolutionary principle of hereditary and
environmental determinism is the concept of atavism — the re¬
version to an earlier type or quality. His familiarity with this
concept is apparent in Howells’ works ; he writes that “the return
to barbarism is easy for human nature. The man of a race which
has toiled up to civilization through ages of culture runs wild
and degenerates into a savage in a single generation.”47 Again,
he supposes “that the North American conscience was evolved
from the rudimental European conscience during the first cen¬
turies of struggle here . The eternal-womanly continues
along the old lines of housekeeping from an atavistic impulse.
”48
^Howells, A Hazard of New Fortunes , (Library Edition), p. 211. See also p. 259.
43 Howells, Certain Delightful English Towns, p. 1.
^Howells, Heroines of Fiction, II, 179.
46 Howells, A Pair of Patient Lovers, p. 54.
46 Howells, Heroines of Fiction, II, 193-94.
47 Howells, “Minor Topics,” Nation, II, (January 18, 1866).
48 Howells, Literature and Life, 241-42.
1953] Clark — Science in Thought of W. D. Howells
271
II
Having shown that Howells was familiar with many of the
important developments and trends of contemporary science, let
us now consider his reaction to them. In general, the development
of Howells’ interest in science was itself evolutionary ; minimiz¬
ing the importance of science in his youth, he became progres¬
sively more familiar with its developments and increasingly more
aware of its implications, acclaiming it finally as “sovereign” in
the “realm of thought.” Having recently returned from Venice
in 1865, Howells accounts science “the coldest element in our
civilization,”49 and in reviewing a book about the North Pole, he
suggests that the ordinary reader “lacks perfect sympathy with
the scientific purpose, and doubts if a geographical fact, as yet
barren and without apparent promise of fruitfulness, be worth
the sacrifices made to ascertain it.”50 Yet, in 1904, exulting over
Alfred R. Wallace’s Man’s Place in the Universe, he concludes
that “in the realm of thought, which is spiritual as well as
mental, science is sovereign, and will probably always be so.”51
During the years between, Howells’ increasing interest in the
trends of contemporary science and their implications is reflected
in his writings, and it will be seen that this developing interest
in science parallels and influences the developments in his liter¬
ary theory and practice and in his social attitudes.
Howells’ belief in “natural laws . under which all men
have their being,”52 led him in The Undiscovered Country to ex¬
plain naturally an apparently unnatural condition. Dr. Boynton,
a disillusioned spiritualist whose hopes are now “futile as those
of the seekers for the philosopher’s stone,” tells his friend that a
magazine article has explained by a parallel case his daughter’s
temporary psychic state to which he had given spiritualistic im¬
plications. The writer “ ‘was not blinded by the fool’s faith that
lured me on. He sought a natural cause for these unnatural
effects,” and he found them in the use of electricity. In this story
unravelling the doings of a spiritualist Howells cites and draws
on the work of a British authority on that subject, William
Crooks, who published several semi-scientific treatises in the
Quarterly Journal of Science from 1870 to 1874.53 Howells’ in¬
terest in electrical science finds expression again in a humorous
description of the manner in which a woman falls in love. He
writes :
49 Atlantic Monthly, XVIII, 128 (July, 1866).
Ibid., XIX, 511 (April, 1867).
“Editor’s Easy Chair,” Harper’s Magazine, CVIII, 642 (March, 1904).
33 Howells, A Traveler from Altruria, p. 288.
53 Howells, The Undiscovered Country, p. 360 and p. 57.
272 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
“ ‘She is sailing through time, through useful space, with
her electrical lures, the natural equipment of every charm¬
ing woman, all out, and suddenly, somewhere from the un¬
known, she feels the shock of a response in the gulfs of air
where there had been no life before.’ ”54
Again Howells regards Jane Eyre as “an epochal book, assem¬
bling in itself the elements of that electrical disturbance which
had been gathering in the minds of women for a generation, and
discharging them in a type, a character, which expressed their
discontent with their helplessness, their protest against their
conditions, their longing for equality with men, as from time to
time some real or imaginary personality will.”55
Howells refers to the natural and physical sciences for much
of his most effective imagery. On a visit to England he uses
geological analogies and finds municipal Oxford a setting for the
beauty of the colleges “as a mass of common rock may shape¬
lessly enclose a cluster of precious stones, crystals which some¬
thing next to conscious life has deposited through the course of
the slow ages in the rude matrix.”56 Again, despite its “prevailing
impersonality,” Oxford is an “incandescent mass from which
nevertheless from time to time a name detaches itself and flames
a separate star in the zenith.”57 In America, Howells sees the
magnificence of Niagara Falls as like “a fall of lightest snow,
with movement in all its atoms, and scarce so much cohesion as
would hold them together.”58
Howells’ interest in the science of medicine is evident not only
in his whole novel Dr. Breen’s Practice, but also in occasional
similes and metaphors. Describing the financial collapse of Silas
Lapham, Howells writes:
“The process of Lapham’s financial disintegration was like
the course of some chronic disorder, which has fastened
itself upon the constitution, but advances with continual re¬
liefs, with apparent ameliorations, and at times seems not to
advance at all, when it gives hope of final recovery not only
to the sufferer, but to the eye of science itself.”59
Rev. Peck, in Annie Kilburn (1888), praises the searching
scepticism of science as God-given and God-directed, and he
points out the good it has done in “contemplating the disparity
between the Church’s profession and her performance.”60 In The
5i Howells, Between the Dark and the Daylight , p. 152.
"Howells, Heroines of Fiction , I, 228.
59 Howells, Certain Delightful English Towns, p. 207.
™ Ibid., p. 202.
"Howells, Their Wedding Journey, p. 126.
69 Howells, The Rise of Silas Lapham, p. 319.
"Howells, Annie Kilburn , p. 242.
1953] Clark — Science in Thought of W. D. Howells
273
Minister's Charge, Bellingham calls Barker “ancestral” and
states that “ ‘he makes me feel like a degenerate posterity. I’ve
had the same sensation with Tom ; but Barker seems to go a little
further back. I suppose there's such a thing as getting too far
back in these Origin of Species days . . .’ ”61 Again, Barker’s
friend, Mr. Evans, with considerable irony, suggests that “ ‘if
you should happen to prove to Barker that his ignominy is in
accordance with the Development Theory, and is a necessary
Survival . don’t you see what a card it would be for us
with the better classes?’ ”62 Kinney, the lumber-camp cook in
A Modern Instance, describing the French and Germans, re¬
marks that “they’re a kind of a missing link, as old Darwin
says.’ ”63 And Kinney remarks that hating a man whose clothes
are good is “a kind of survival, as old [Edward] Tylor calls
it,”63a suggesting Howells’ interest in the latter’s anthropological
Primitive Culture.
Howells’ familiarity with the evolutionary doctrines of the
struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest led him to
equate it with the evils of economic competition in society.
“Wherever there is competition,” he writes in 1898 “there will
be the oppression of the weaker by the stronger.”64 Howells feels
that “the selfish motives which underlie our economic life” and
“social inequality” automatically produce “men who bully and
truckle, and women who snub and crawl.”65 He declares that
evolutionary science “in allying us with the brute and imbuing
us, subtly and pitilessly, with the conviction that might was right
through the survival of the physically fittest . . . had, in the
belief of some of the wisest and best, measurably bereft us of
the humanity which the ages had slowly and painfully evolved
as an ideal of conduct.”66
Recognizing the truth of the evolutionary principle of hered¬
ity and environmental determinism, Howells refers to it fre¬
quently. In Chance Acquaintance, even after deciding that he
loves Kitty, Arbuton “could not undo his whole inherited and
educated being.”67 Commenting on the differences between the
American and the English personality and art, Howells remarks
that “our [American] personality is the consequence of our his-
61 Howells, The Minister’s Charge , p. 387.
62 Ibid., p. 276.
^Howells, A Modern Instance, p. 122.
Howells, Ibid., p. 124.
64 Life in Letters, II, 86, (February 14, 1898).
65 Howells, My Literary Passions, p. 98.
66 “Editor’s Easy Chair,” Harper’s, CVIII, 641 (March, 1904); see a similar
statement in Harper’s, LXXXI, 966-67 (November, 1890).
67 Howells, A Chance Acquaintance, edition of 1887, p. 184.
274 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
toric sparsity.”68 He feels that “our depth was the inevitable
implication of our civic and social conditions . our life is too
large for our art to be broad.”69 In The Kentons, he writes that
“Mrs. Kenton could have answered . . . that daughters, like sons,
were not what their mothers but what their environment made
them, and that the same environment sometimes made them dif¬
ferent.”70 Howells most extensive treatment of heredity and
racism appears in his novel An Imperative Duty, 1893, in which
he has a young physician discuss the problem as it involves the
heroine, who has a small trace of Negro blood and whom he
eventually marries and takes to Italy. Her gaiety and impetuous¬
ness are traced to heredity, and Howells as a liberal blames her
aunt for becoming morbid about her “duty” to reveal the hero¬
ine's background. In Lapham Howells explains young Corey's
unexpected success in joining Silas’ paint business by the fact
that Corey inherits his grandfather’s business sharpness as sym¬
bolized by their both having Roman noses, a feature not having
been left to Corey's father who was devoted to “sterile elegance.”
Howells also refers frequently to the evolutionary principle
of atavism. In The Minister’s Charge, he writes :
“There seemed a sort of reversion in Barker’s whole pres¬
ence to the time when Sewell first found him in that room ;
and in whatever trouble he now was, the effect was that of
his original rustic constraint.”71
Howells' attitude in 1881 towards the idea of natural goodness
was apparently influenced by this evolutionary principle of the
reversion to a former type or quality. It is not the natural but
the acquired goodness which is important, Howells feels; he be¬
lieves that “the savage lurks so near the surface in every man
that a constant watch must be kept upon the passions and im¬
pulses, or he leaps out in his war-paint, and the poor integument
of civilization that held him is flung aside like a useless gar¬
ment.”72 Atherton, in A Modern Instance, states :
“ ‘The natural goodness doesn’t count. The natural man is a
wild beast, and his natural goodness is the amiability of a
beast basking in the sun when his stomach is full. The Hub¬
bards were full of natural goodness, I dare say, when they
didn’t happen to cross each other’s wishes. No, it’s the im¬
planted goodness that saves — the seed of righteousness
treasured from generation to generation, and carefully
68 Howells, Heroines of Fiction, II, 264.
™Ihid., p. 261.
70 Howells, The Kentons } p. 154.
71 Howells, The Minister’s Charge, p. 437.
72 Howells, Tuscan Cities, p. 43.
1953] Clark — Science in Thought of W. D. Howells
275
watched and tended by disciplined fathers and mothers in
the hearts where they have dropped it. The flower of this
goodness is what we call civilization . . ”73
Later, Howells came to believe that the bestiality as well as
the goodness in human nature is implanted and determined by
conditions ; the savage lurking in human nature is the result of
competitive conditions, Howells feels in 1895, and “when the
fear, and even the imagination, of want is taken away, it is
human nature to give and to help generously.”74
An important result of Howells’ familiarity with the prin¬
ciples of evolutionary science, which involved a transition from
design to the fortuitous, was his belief in “a world of chance and
change.”75 “One must hedge one’s position,” he contends, “with
many perhapses ; nothing can be affirmed with certainty . ”76
Describing P. B. S. Ray, in the novel very significantly titled
The World of Chance, Howells writes:
“He began to wonder if life had not all been a chance with
him. Nothing, not even the success of his book, in the light
he now looked at it in, was the result of reasoned cause. That
success had happened; it had not followed . . .”77
Whatever law is operative in the moral world, Howells believes,
(in treating the inexplicable evil of Royal Langbrith in 1903)
“is of such cosmical vastness in its operations that it is only
once or twice sensible to any man’s experience.”78
Science was, almost unquestionably, an influence of major pro¬
portions on Howells. Its influence was perhaps most marked in
the development of his literary theory and criticism and of his
social attitudes. To these two topics we now turn.
Ill
The evolution of Howells’ literary theory and criticism from
an early romanticism to realism and objective criticism parallels
and reflects to a considerable degree the development of his
familiarity with the trends of contemporary science. Howells’
early romanticism (based on living) which produced “the first
and last historical romance I ever wrote,”79 soon gave way before
the vitality of a realism which asserted that “fidelity to experi-
73 HqAvells, A Modern Instance , p. 472.
74 Howells, A Traveler from Altruria, p. 296.
75 Howells, A Woman’s Reason, p. 466.
76 Howells, Heroines of Fiction, I, 40.
77 Howells, The World of Chance, p. 374.
78 Howells, The Son of Royal Langbrith, p. 282. 1
79 Howells, My Literary Passions and Criticism and Fiction, (Library Edition),
p. 24.
276 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
ence and probability of motive are essential conditions of a great
imaginative literature/’80 It is true that science was not alone
responsible for this repudiation of romanticism and enthusiastic
allegiance to realism; much of Howells’ enthusiasm was gener¬
ated by his reading of the English and Russian realists. Although
his “literary liberation began with almost the earliest word
from”81 Heine, he found most that was both admirable and in¬
structive in the works of Jane Austen, George Eliot, Tolstoy,
Turgeniev and Thomas Hardy. In addition, Lowell, T. W. Higgin-
son and other members of the Atlantic Monthly group encour¬
aged Howells toward realism. His Middle-Western background
and early journalistic experiences must also be recognized as
important influences on his theories of realism and objective
literary criticism. A further influence of major importance was
his concept of American democracy, based not on illusion but the
quest of truth, which was also the god of science ; “democracy in
literature,” he writes, “wishes to know and to tell the truth, con¬
fident that consolation and delight are there . . .”82 He insists
that “the arts must become democratic, and then we shall have
the expression of America in art.”83 “Truth ... is the highest
beauty,” but truth includes Fiske’s evolutionary view that
“morality penetrates all things” and that “the beast-man will be
. . . subdued.”
In expounding his idea of literary realism for the working
novelist, Howells also drew upon science for confirmation and
illustration. He asserts that scientific discussion was primarily
responsible for overcoming Victorian reticence,84 and that the
test of fiction should be “is it true — true to the motives, the im¬
pulses, the principles that shape the life of actual men and
women?”85 In returning to the “world of actualities,” the novelist
must obey “the principle which has vitalized the later realists”
and “leave a faithful study of life, in cause and effect, to enforce
its own lesson,” without too much moralizing or subjective eval¬
uation.86 The true realist, Howells declares, must portray all ex¬
perience ; “he cannot look upon human life and declare this thing
or that thing unworthy of notice, any more than the scientist can
declare a fact of the material world beneath the dignity of his
inquiry.”87 And the realist, like the scientist, must recognize that
Ibid., p. 200.
^■Ibid., p. 128.
to Ibid., p. 282.
83 Ibid., p. 258.
^Howells, Heroines of Fiction, I, 40.
85 Editor’s Study,” Harper’s, LXXIV, 826, (April, 1887).
86 Howells, Heroines of Fiction, I, 117.
87 Howells, My Literary Passions and « Criticism and Fiction, p. 201.
1953] Clark — Science in Thought of W. D. Howells 277
this desired truth is non-qualitative, for (as Valdes says) “he
turns the objective of a powerful equatorial towards the heavenly
spaces where gravitates the infinitude of the stars, just as he
applies the microscope to the infinitude of the smallest insects;
for their laws are identical.” “In nature there is neither great
nor small; all is equal.” Howells quotes with approval Valdes’
statement that “all is equally grand, all is equally just, all is
equally beautiful, because all is equally divine.”88 Thus, the realist
recognizes the value of the habitual, the normal, and the common¬
place. To strive artistically for the Platonic “ideal” would be
analogous to offering the scientist a “cardboard grasshopper”
when a “real grasshopper”89 is available.
In this context of a realism based on unqualified observation
in a “world of actualities,” it is important to notice what is an
apparent limitation on the scientific basis of Howells’ literary
realism. Having equated the methods of the scientist and the
novelist in the accomplishment of their ends, he implies in dis¬
cussing Zola that a limitation of the scientific method exists for
the novelist:
“As to his methods, they by no means reflected his inten¬
tions. He fancied himself working like a scientist who has
collected a vast number of specimens, and is deducing prin¬
ciples from them. But the fact is, he was always working
like an artist . piecing it [experience] out by his own
invention . He supposed that he was recording and
classifying, but he was creating and vivifying.”90
Thus, Howells feels, whatever similarity exists in their methods
of observation, the scientist concludes by deducing and classify¬
ing and the novelist by imagining and creating. Howells subse¬
quently declares however, that even this limitation on the nov¬
elist’s use of scientific method is unnecessary; he questions
“whether the imaginative author were not rather to blame for
not having gone far enough in the right scientific fashion than
for having taken that course at all.”91 He remarks that science
has “as it were, caught the bread out of fiction’s mouth and
usurped the highest functions of imagination . science no
longer waited for the apple to fall before inferring a law of grav¬
itation, but went about with a stick knocking fruit off every
bough in the hope that something suggestive would come of it.”92
88 Ibid., p. 223 ; quoted by Howells from Armando Palacio Valdds.
89 Ibid., p. 198; see also “Editor’s Study,” Harper’s , LXXVI, 155 (December,
1887).
90 “Emile Zola,” North American Review , CLXXV, 594 (1902).
91 Howells, Imaginary Interviews , p. 212.
92 Ibid.
278 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
Howells feels that perhaps “the mistake of fiction, when it re¬
fused longer to be called an art and wished to be known as a
science, was in taking up the obsolescent scientific methods, and
in accumulating facts, or human documents, and deducing a case
from them, instead of boldly supposing a case, as the new sci¬
ence did, and looking about for occurrences to verify it.”93 The
function of imagination, Howells feels, is thus as justifiable sci¬
entifically for the novelist as for the scientist, and the limitation
of the scientific method for the novelist implied in his discussion
of Zola is consequently eliminated in his later thought.
Consistent with his belief in objective observation of the actual
phenomena of experience and in the function of scientific imagi¬
nation, Howells demands a logical approach to fictional charac¬
terization. “Let fiction cease to lie about life,” he writes, “let it
portray men and women as they are, actuated by the motives and
the passions in the measure we all know.”94 The characters of a
novel must “have . a genuine function, and . contribute
to the evolution of the plot by fulfilling their function.”95 In
accordance with his belief in the evolutionary principle, Howells
feels that fictional characterization must be true to its conditions
of heredity and environment. Much as he admires George Eliot,
he thinks that she fails “to account largely enough for motive
from social environment.”96 “Differentiation by environment,”
Howells asserts, “is one of the subtle triumphs of the author’s
art,”97 especially in dealing with women who were not, he thinks,
adequately presented until biology and psychology were part of
the novelist’s equipment. He praises J. W. DeForest, whose Nellie
Armitage “is a great little creature, quite true to herself and her
circumstances.”98 Henry James’ Daisy Miller “is destined by
innate and acquired indiscipline to do the things she does.”99
Bathsheba Everdene as “a Hardy heroine, had a degree of con¬
trol over her destiny which might almost be called free-will; at
least she was not so much the prey of determination as most of
the others . she is, upon the whole, the least wrought upon
by her environment.”100 Howells observes that “in fact most of
the women of Mr. Hardy could urge that they had to do the
things they did, even when they wished to do them.”101 Realistic
93 Ibid., p. 213.
94 Howells, My Literary Passions and Criticism and Fiction, p. 244.
95 Howells, Heroines of Fiction, I, 114.
90 Howells, My Literary Passions and Criticism and Fiction, p. 138—39.
97 Howells, Heroines of Fiction, I, 75.
98 Ibid., II, 154.
99 Ibid., II, p. 171.
100 Ibid., II, p. 178.
101 Ibid., II, p. 177-8.
1953] Clark — Science in Thought of W. D. Howells 279
characterization, Howells feels, must take into account the scien¬
tific concern with hereditary and environmental determinism.
The style of Howells’ novels suggests, in at least one respect,
the influence of scientific methodology. In keeping with his belief
that the realistic102 novelist must portray actual phenomena,
Howells seldom intrudes on the factual development of his story.
He projects several characters with definite backgrounds in par¬
ticular conditions and, in calm and rational language, describes,
rather than directs, the resultant action. His style is thus gen¬
erally less an example of decorative art than it is a vehicle of
creative reportage.
Although Howells rejected, with a few exceptions, the unex¬
pected and fortuitous type of plot development frequently relied
on by many novelists, his familiarity with the principles of evolu¬
tionary science led him to question whether the world was not
one of chance and moral relativism. In a world of natural selec¬
tion and hereditary and environmental determinism, moral judg¬
ments are inconclusive, and it is this which explains in large
measure Howells’ tendency to withhold moral judgment in his
novels. He seldom blames or praises; in general, he places his
characters in definite conditions and lets them interact.
IV
Howells’ principles of literary criticism103 were influenced by
science as considerably as were his theories of literary realism.
Indeed, the intimate connection between literary theory and lit¬
erary criticism rendered science an interrelated influence; act¬
ing upon one, it reacted proportionately upon the other. Reject¬
ing intuitional or personalized104 criticism, he insists upon a criti¬
cism based largely upon scientific methodology. Literature is like
a plant that cannot be otherwise than it is, and rather than
evaluating, the critic is to proceed as a botanist examining new
plants and is 4 To place a book in such a light that the reader shall
know its class, its function, its character.”105 The true critic will
be a “gentle, dispassionate, scientific student of current litera¬
ture” who will “classify and analyze the fruits of the human
mind very much as the naturalist classifies the objects of his
study.”106 Judicial criticism must “altogether reconceive its office”
102 See G. W. Allen and H. H. Clark, Literary Criticism from Pope to Croce
(New York, 1941), pp. 562ff.
103 The best discussions are in D. G. Cooke, Howells, 1922, Oscar Firkins, Howells,
1924, and Rudolf and Clara Kirk’s Introduction to Howells in the “American
Writers Series” with an annotated bibliography by George Arms.
10* See Firkins on this matter, p. 264ff.
405 Howells, My Literary Passions and Criticism and Fiction, p. 209.
™Ibid., p. 208.
280 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
and “reduce this to the business of observing, recording, and
comparing; to analyzing the material before it, and then syn¬
thesizing its impressions.”107 “There is a measure of the same
absurdity,” Howells reasons, in the critic’s “trampling on a poem,
a novel, or an essay that does not please him as in the botanist’s
grinding a plant underfoot because he does not find it pretty
.... it is his business to identify the species and then explain
how and where the specimen is imperfect and irregular.”108
More influential than scientific methodology on Howells’ theo¬
ries of literary criticism was evolutionary science, particularly
as it was interpreted for him by a select group of literary histo¬
rians like J. A. Symonds, T. S. Perry, and H. M. Posnett, as well
as by minor critics like H. H. Boyesen, and possibly, George
Pellew. Under the guidance of these men, Howells came to view
literature as determined by the social and historical environment
in which it was produced, and, desirably, as reflecting that envi¬
ronment in a realistic and truthful manner. Although he never
moved to a monistic philosophy, Howells contends that literature
obeyed the same law as all other human activity — the law of evo¬
lution. In the opening pages of Criticism and Fiction, he con¬
siders the question of “a final criterion for the appreciation of
art” and finds a conclusion of J. A. Symonds in The Renaissance
in Italy “applicable to literature as to the other arts” :
“Our hope with regard to unity of taste in the future then
is, that all sentimental or academic seekings after the ideal
having been abandoned, momentary theories founded upon
the idiosyncratic or temporary partialities exploded, and
nothing accepted but what is solid and positive, the scien¬
tific spirit shall make men progressively more and more con¬
scious of these bleibende V erhdltnisse, more and more
capable of living in the whole. . . . The perception of the
enlightened man will then be the task of a healthy person
who has made himself acquainted with the laws of evolution
in art and in society.”109
In this context, criticism which cried for a national literature
wasted its fallacious breath ; writers could only create “what the
nation likes, involuntarily following the law of environment.”110
Howells expresses this idea of literary determinism again in
analyzing the differences between English and American fiction ;
by tracing these differences to their sources, he writes, “some-
107 Ibid., p. 216.
108 Ibid., p. 208.
109 “Editor’s Study,” Harper’s, L XXV, 964-65 (Nov. 1887), and LXXVI, 153;
also My Literary Passions . . ., pp. 193—94.
“Editor’s Study,” Harper’s, LXXXIII, 964 (Nov. 1891).
1953] Clark — Science in Thought of W. D. Howells 281
thing will have been done toward explaining American novelists
to themselves, and reconciling them to their performances as the
necessary outcome of their conditions.”111 Also, discussing Haw¬
thorne, to whom (with James) Howells traced the modern
realists’ concern with psychology, he states :
“Men may invent anything but themselves, and it was not
because Hawthorne made himself psychological, but because
he was so, that in the American environment he bent his
vision inward. His theory was that our life was too level and
too open and too sunnily prosperous for his art, but it was
an instinct far subtler than this belief that he obeyed in
seeking the subliminal drama. Hawthorne was romantic, but
our realists who have followed him have been of the same
instinct, and have dealt mainly with the subliminal drama,
too.”112
Another evolutionary principle which influenced Howells’
ideas of literary criticism was that of atavism — the reversion to
a former type, or quality. “Personality resides rather in the
motives than in the actions of men,” but “there is another law,”
he writes, “Rather of the author’s nature than his art, to which
his allegiance is involuntary and insensible, and this is the law
of recurrence in the type he treats.”113 Thus, George Eliot’s
Romola “is spiritually a reversion to Dinah Morris . as
Tessa, her husband’s ignorant little paramour, is a reversion to
Hetty Sorel.”114
Howells’ contemplation of a world scientist, regarded as de¬
terministic and relativistic, and the consequent tendency to with¬
hold moral judgment in his novels, which has been previously
considered in connection with his literary realism, is reflected
as well in his ideas of literary criticism. His attitude towards
moral judgment in a deterministic world is clearly expressed in
his discussion of Vanity Fair. Describing Becky Sharp, Howells
writes of Thackeray:
“Pie is boisterously sarcastic at her expense, as if she were
responsible for the defects of her nature and must be pun¬
ished for her sins as well as by them. His morality regard¬
ing her is the old conventional morality which we are now
a little ashamed of, but in his time and place he could
scarcely have any other ; after all, he was a simple soul and
strictly of his epoch. A later and subtler time must do finer
justice to a woman born and reared in dependence and re-
111 Howells, Heroines of Fiction , II, 260.
1112 Ibid., II, p. 261-62.
xuibid., II, p. 62.
114 Ibid., II, p. 63.
282 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
pression . It is difficult to know what may be the lesson
of a character so evilly conditioned that its evil was in¬
evitable, but possibly it may be to move the spectator less
to ‘justice' than to mercy."115
Although Howells as a liberal disliked notions of “The Brahmin
Caste" with which Dr. 0. W. Holmes was associated, it seems
probable that, as his neighbor, Howells must have been stimu¬
lated by this Dean of the Harvard Medical School who in his
“medicated fiction" such as Elsie Venner (1861) and in scien¬
tific essays such as “Mechanism and Morals" and “Crime and
Automatism" had developed advanced ideas about determinism
and heredity and the view that if wrong-doers have little free¬
will they are not responsible and therefore deserve pity and sci¬
entific treatment rather than punishment. But Howells' non-
commital essay on Holmes in Literary Friends provides no con¬
clusive proof of any direct influence by Holmes. In his discussion
of Scott’s Effie and Jeanie Deans, Howells again condemns the
application of an absolute standard of morality to a world in
which character is relative to heredity and environment. He
states :
“We judge one another so inadequately and unfairly in the
actual world . the light nature will be condemned for
the deeds done in it as if they were done in a serious nature,
and a serious nature will be honored for truth to itself as
if it had overcome in this the weakness of a light nature.
Especially among all peoples of Anglo-Saxon birth and
breeding will the same inflexible measure of morality be
applied, and the characterization of one who has done nobly
will be thought greater than that of one who has not done
nobly."116
Howells’ faith in democracy influenced his ideas of literary
criticism as it did his theories of literary realism. In a statement
which reflects not only his democratic sentiments but also the
influence of Darwin's evolutionary principles, Howells vigorously
rejects personalized, qualitative criticism:
“Literature is the whole world; it is the expression of the
gross, the fatuous, and the foolish, and it is the pleasure of
the gross, the fatuous, and the foolish, as well as the expres¬
sion and the pleasure of the wise, the fine, the elect. Let the
multitude have their truck, their rubbish, their rot; it may
not be the truck, the rubbish, the rot that it would be to us,
or may slowly and by natural selection become to certain of
usibid., I, 194-95.
™lbid., I, p. 104.
1953] Clark — Science in Thought of W . D. Howells
283
them. But let there be no artificial selection, no survival of
the fittest by main force — the force of the spectator, who
thinks he knows better than the creator of the ugly and the
beautiful, the fair and the foul, the evil and the good.”117
Howells’ widening familiarity with the principles of evolu¬
tionary science directed his admiration for many contemporary
critics. Most important was his long friendship with Thomas
Sargent Perry, much interested in the relation of science and
realism, whom he credits with teaching him “the new and true
way of looking at literature.”118 When Howells edited the North
American Review for one issue (October, 1872), an article by
Perry on “American Novels” appeared, presumably accepted by
Howells, and Perry contributed heavily to the Atlantic Monthly
during Howells’ editorship.119 The two friends co-edited the
Library of Universal Adventure by Sea and Land (1888) ; as late
as July, 1912, they collaborated on “Recent Russian Fiction,”
which appeared in the North American Review. Also, Howells
reviewed Perry’s Evolution of the Snob and praises it for the
“wide knowledge and the scientific methods that distinguish his
work in criticism from the ad captandum expression of likes and
dislikes.”120 He commends Perry’s essay, “The Progress of Lit¬
erature,” for its “vast scope and effective grasp” and character¬
izes it as regarding literature “as the reflection, sometimes con¬
scious and sometimes unconscious, of several periods and peoples
among whom it rose.”121 In 1886, Howells, who had opened in
earnest the battle for realism, wrote Perry, “but isn’t it strange
that in all this vast land there should not be one intelligent voice
besides yours on the right side?”122
When Howells, in 1886, reviewed the work of Hutcheson
Macaulay Posnett, who based his literary history almost entirely
on evolution, he strongly approved of the method but thought
his friend Perry had already well illustrated it. “We cannot see,”
he writes, “that his [Posnett’s] method is different or that his
application of scientific theories to literature is different.”123
“Many flourishing critics,” comments Howells, “will have to go
out of business altogether if the scientific method comes in.”
117 Howells, Daughter of the Storage , (New York, 1915), p. 223.
118 Life in Letters of William Dean Howells (edited by Mildred Howells; New
York, 1928. 2 vols. ), I, 379. See Virginia Harlowe’s Thomas Sargent Perry (Dur¬
ham, N. C., 1950) for Derry’s interest in science and his relation to Howells.
119 See The Atlantic Index (1851-1888), (Boston, 1889), pp. 165-170.
120 “Editor’s Study,” Harper's , LXXIV, 160 (December, 1886).
121 Ibid., 161. See also Howells’ very favorable review of Perry’s History of Greek
Literature, in Harper’s, LXXXII, 802-04 (April, 1891).
122 Life in Letters, I, 378. See the index to Vol. II for letters to Perry.
123 “Editor’s Study,” Harper’s , LXXIII, 318 (July, 1886); see also LXXX, 322
(December, 1889).
284 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
“'Critics will have to know something of the laws of [the] mind,
and of its generic history” and “the example lately set” by Pos¬
nett is “calculated to make many complacent authorities' heads
ache and hearts fail them.”124
Howells' recognition of the central influence of evolution is
certainly evident in his praise of Perry and Posnett, who based
their work on analogies between literature and biology and who
held, Howells states, “that literature is from life, and that it is
under the law as every part of life is.”125 This approval of
Symonds, Perry and Posnett contrasts sharply with his earlier
(1872) “friendly distrust”126 of H. Taine’s “distorted philoso¬
phy”127 and of the “sparkling errors” of a “too inflexible and
exclusive application of his theory.” This is a bit misleading,
however, for Howells in his later critical views did come close
to Taine’s theory of literature as determined by time, place, and
race; and Taine in 1888 recognized Howells as a kindred spirit
and was instrumental in getting The Rise of Silas Lapham trans¬
lated and published in France.128
Howells' admiration for writers influenced by evolutionary
thought strengthened a steady interest in “my friend Boye¬
sen,”129 his frequent house-guest, whose poem, “Evolution,”
appeared in the Atlantic Monthly in May, 1878. Boyesen’s pio¬
neer writings, especially his critical essays, explicitly invoked
evolution as the main agent in ousting Romanticism and in
inspiring realism. Fitly enough, Howells' judges Boyesen's de¬
velopment in fiction by the latter's own evolutionary principles,
remarking that it has been “so strictly obedient to the laws of
his origin and environment.”130 Allied to his respect for Boyesen
was his interest in Bjornsterne Bjornson, whom Boyesen praises
as being, “in the front rank of scientific radicalism.”131 Less well
remembered than Boyesen, George Pellew also receives Howells'
approval as “the most complete democrat, esthetically and men¬
tally, that I ever knew,” who “took one of the first steps in the
direction of the new criticism — the criticism which studies,
which classifies and registers.”132 Pellew, who had won the Bow-
Ibid,, LXXIII, 317-18.
125 Ibid., 318.
126 Atlantic Monthly, XXVII, 396 (March, 1871).
127 Ibid., XXX, 240 (August, 1872).
128 Ibid., XXIX, 241 (February, 1872) ; and Life in Letters, I, 411-12.
129 Life in Letters , I, 172 ; see also 414 and 423-24.
130 “Editor’s Study,” Harper’s, LXXIX, 477 (August, 1889).
131 See Life in Letters, I, 289-90 and Howells’ review of Bjornson’s early work in
the Atlantic Monthly, XXV, 504-12 (April, 1871). For Boyesen’s remark on Bjorn¬
son, see his “Scandinavian Literature,” The Ghautauquan, VIII, 283 (February,
1888).
132 Howells’ “George Pellew,” Cosmopolitan, XIII, 527 (September, 1892). See
also Howells’ favorable review of Pellew’s Life of John Jay in Harper’s, LXXXI,
642-43 (October, 1890).
1953] Clark — Science in Thought of W. D. Howells 285
doin prize at Harvard for his essay on Jane Austen and who
defended Howells’ realistic literary criticism,133 was a friend of
T. S. Perry and also of John Fiske, to whom he dedicated his
manuscript work on metaphysics containing a chapter on litera¬
ture which pleased Howells.134 After Pellew’s early death, the
“Introduction” to a volume of his poems was written by Howells.
Like Pellew, Henry Mills Alden, who was editor of Harper's
Monthly from 1869 to 1919, became closely associated with
Howells after the latter had formulated his final principles.
Alden, however, with whom Howells edited a series of Harper’s
Novelettes, quite possibly confirmed some of his beliefs. Cer¬
tainly, Alden’s policy of favoring the reticence necessary in a
“family magazine” reinforced the reservations of Howells’
realism. Alden also contends explicitly that “science in its quest
of reality has registered the general progress toward emancipa¬
tion from unreal fancies” and that “the abstract ideal to which
we fly, escaping reality, ceases to have those virtues which we
hoped to find in its tenuous atmosphere, and which, after all, are
sensibly apparent to us only as we dwell in the real.”1'35 Yet, most
relevant to the present discussion, Alden applied the concept of
evolution to his literary theory; he accepted gradual, material
progress but cited creative evolution as the source of genius in
art and literature; he writes that progress “afforded permissive
conditions for new species in the creative evolution of life and
literature.”136 Howells, it will be remembered, remained closely
associated with Harper's from 1886 to 1892 and from 1900 to
his death in 1920.
Finally, it should be carefully noted that Howells takes his
opening quotations (which serve as a sort of “text” for his ser¬
mon) in Criticism and Fiction from the British J. A. Symonds,
many of whose ideas in his essay “On the Application of Evolu¬
tionary Principles to Art and Literature” (1890) Howells para¬
phrases. Symonds states his thesis as follows: “A type of art,
once started, must, according to my view, fulfill itself, and bring
to light the structure which its germ contained potentially. As
this structure is progressively evolved, it becomes impossible to
return to the past . To create a new type, while the old one
is existent, baffles human ingenuity, because the type is an ex¬
pression of the people’s mind, and has its roots deep down in the
stuff of national character . After meridian accomplishment,
133 See Life in Letters, I, 412—14, 388.
134 See The Letters of John Fiske edited by Ethel F. Fisk (New York, 1940), p.
532 ; also, Howells, “Pellew,” Cosmopolitan, XIII, 529-30.
135 See Alden’s chapter, “What is Reality,” pp. 43-53 of Magazine Writing and
the New Literature (New York, 1908).
188 Alden, Magazine Writing and the New Literature , pp. 163—64.
286 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
a progressive deterioration of the type becomes inevitable and
cannot be arrested.”
In his own specific literary criticisms, Howells favorably re¬
viewed the work of Garland, Norris, Crane, and other novelists
who showed the influence of contemporary scientific develop¬
ments. He commends Frank Norris’s Octopus:
“The play of an imagination fed by a rich consciousness of
the mystical relations of nature and human nature, the body
and the soul of earthly life, steeps the whole theme in an
odor of common growth . ”137
The friendship of Howells and Garland, the admitted devotee
of Taine and Spencer, is well known, and Howells wrote favor¬
ably on Garland’s literary work.138 Howells also championed the
frank naturalism of Stephen Crane and, despite the lack of
“smiling aspects,” remained convinced that Maggie was a worth¬
while novel.139 Crane had explicitly written that he strove to
teach that Maggie’s becoming a prostitute was determined by
her environment .and therefore that she deserved pity. Discuss¬
ing Zola’s La Terre, Howells warns that it “is certainly not a
book for young people” or for anyone “who finds himself the
worse for witnessing in literature the naked realities of lust and
crime”; however, he continues, “this said, it is but fair to add
that it legitimately addresses itself to scientific curiosity and
humane interest.”140
Howells’ literary criticism in practice exhibits an interesting
dualism which contrasts with his expressed theories of criticism.
On occasion, however, he does combine evolutionary science and
literary criticism with impressive results ; concerning the
theater, he writes:
“The fact is, the two kinds do not mingle well, but for a
while yet we must have the romantic and the realistic mixed
in the theatre. That is quite inevitable ; and it is strictly in
accordance with the law of evolution. The stage, in working
free of romanticism, must carry some rags and tags of it
forward in the true way; that has been the case always in
the rise from a lower to a higher form ; the man on a trapeze
recalls the ancestral monkey who swung by his tail from the
forest tree; and the realist cannot all at once forget the
romanticist.”141
i3T “Frank Norris,” North American Review, CLXXV, 775 (Dec., 1902).
138 See Howells’ preface to Garland’s Main-Travelled Roads (Chicago, 1893) and
‘‘Mr. Garland’s Books,” North American Review, CXCI, 523-28 (Oct., 1912).
139 See Herbert Edward’s “Howells and the Controversy over Realism in Amer¬
ican Fiction,” American Literature, III, 247 (1931), for proof that Howells con¬
tinued to defend Crane’s Maggie.
149 “Editor’s Study,” Harper’s, LXXVI, 642 (April, 1888).
141 “Editor's Study,” Harper’s, LXXXIII, 478 (Sept., 1891).
1958] Clark — Science in Thought of W. D. Howells 287
Thackeray’s Ethel Newcome, Howells asserts, “does not finally
change her mind so much as have it changed for her by events
and circumstances ; and in this she, even more than Laura Bell,
is like girls in life, and justifies herself as a work of the author’s
highest art.”142 He writes that “a truer art than Dickens’s, or
Dickens’s time (these things are apparently chronical, rather
than personal, in great measure) would have recognized a higher
duty than the reader’s comfort in the situation.”143 Despite his
occasional application of this “new and true way of looking at
literature,” however, the bulk of Howells’ later critical writing
is personalized and qualitative appraisal, notably in Literary
Friends and Acquaintances. But his theory of criticism was in
a large measure evolutionary.
Howells was himself dissatisfied with his critical efforts; “in
all this reviewing,” he writes, “he had not once satisfied himself
with his work. Never once had he written a criticism which
seemed to him adequate, or more than an approximation to jus¬
tice.”144 He felt himself bound in a convention of criticism whose
nature “assumes to be and to do more than it can. Its convention
is that it is an examination of a book and a report upon its quali¬
ties. But it is not such a report.”145 In place, then, of “the con¬
ventional verdicts and sentences of the courts of criticism,”
Howells would substitute “something stated and organized in the
way of intelligent talk about books.”146 This non-qualitative sci¬
entific method of discussion rather than personal value-judgment
would be consistent with his expressed principles of literary
criticism but would include as well a large measure of the sym¬
pathetic recognition of an author’s efforts which Howells was
unable to avoid. “The sympathetic critics,” he writes, are “the
only real critics,”147 and a reader’s recognition of the author’s
meanings is “always more precious than the reports of the con¬
ventional critics.” Since an author writes “for his readers and
not for his critics, for pleasure and not for judgment,” why
should there not be “a critical journal embodying in a species of
fragrant bouquet the flowers of thought and emotion springing
up in the brains and bosoms of readers responsive to the influ¬
ence of a new book?”148 This, then, is the “something stated and
organized in the way of intelligent talk” with which Howells
would replace the conventional criticism of judgment and per-
1412 Howells, Heroines of Fiction, I, 214.
143 Ibid., p.147.
144 Howells, Imaginary Interviews , p. 3 OS.
145 Ibid., p. 302.
146 Ibid., p. 303.
147 Ibid., p. 223.
148 Ibid., p. 304.
288 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
sonalized evaluation. By thus combining the scientific method
advocated in his principles of literary criticism with the sympa¬
thetic appreciation revealed in the bulk of his critical writings,
Howells would reconcile the evident dualism in his profession
and practice. Although in his critical work he could never wholly
escape a sympathetic recognition of an author’s personal quality,
Howells’ own preference for realism and his theories of literary
criticism and its intellectual bases for the interpretation of lit¬
erary history were rooted in and nurtured by the developments
of contemporary science.
V
Since Howells insisted upon the intimate relationship between
literature and life, it is not surprising that many of the forces
which influenced his literary ideas also conditioned his attitude
towards political and social problems. Although his increasing
concern with the problems of social evil and his search for their
solution paralleled and in large measure was directed by his
widening familiaritv with the trends of contemporary science,
the important influence of other forces must also be recognized.
Howells’ father had read “the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg,
and had embraced the doctrine of that philosopher with a con¬
tent that . lasted him all the days of his many years.”149
This atmosphere in his early years and home life was an influ¬
ence which permeated Howells’ thought and actions throughout
the course of his life. It was an important element in his later
insistence on the collective rather than the individual reform;
he writes that Swedenborg maintained that “the regeneration
which is to take place will be a social, not a personal effect; not
so far as a man obeys God, but as far as he loves his fellow, is
he saved.”150 Swedenborg had been in part a scientist and his
insistence on the doctrine of the correspondence of the laws of
physics and ethics is paralleled by Howells’ insistence that the
evolution of bodily structure will lead to the evolution (and
improvement) of morals and ethical ideals.
Closely related to Howells’ Swedenborgian emphasis on collec¬
tive action to control the operation in society of the law of nat¬
ural selection was his unending stress on the necessity of a
Christian brotherhood. Recently returned from his consulship,
he declared that Christianity is “the life of our political sys¬
tem.”151 The equalitarian brotherhood, which Howells believes
149 Howells, My Literary Passions and > Criticism and Fiction , p. 5.
150 See Howells’ review of Henry James Sr.’s, The Secrets of Swedenborg, in the
Atlantic Monthly, XXIV, 762-63 (December, 1869).
The Atlantic Monthly, XVIII, 253 (August, 1866).
1953] Clark— Science in Thought of W. D. Howells
289
essential to the survival of that democracy, is based largely on
“a conception of fraternity such as Christ meant.”152 His great
interest in Tolstoi also did much to reinforce Howells’ Christian
view of mankind’s interdependence.
Howells was also influenced in his conception of a collectivism
based on Christian brotherhood and social complicity by the
Haymarket Riot of 1886. The repercussions of this unfortunate
affair aroused Howells’ social conscience to vigorous action, and,
with Annie Kilburn in 1888, his major economic novels began to
appear. In the preceding year, he had become interested in the
speeches and writings of Laurence Gronlund and in the Socialist
Labor Party.153 (Gronlund drew on the Evolutionists consider¬
ably.) The importance of this influence on Howells’ social atti¬
tudes is evident in the fact that he was a contributor in 1906 to
the campaign fund of the Socialist Party to [whom] which he
sent “a warm letter of encouragement.”154
Having duly recognized the importance of these factors, one
can affirm without danger of distorted emphasis that contempo¬
rary science was an influence of major proportions on Howells’
attitude towards social evil and its remedy. Although inclined to
regard himself as “the unscientific reader,” Howells had “a
fondness for books of popular science, perhaps because they too
are part of the human story,” and he especially liked books on
medicine155 and, after his friendship with John Fiske began in
1867, he became increasingly interested in the contemporary
trends of evolutionary science. In this context, the development
of Howells’ concern with social problems was itself evolutionary,
from a generally casual regard of social evil and the opinion that
its solution lay within the existing social structure, his concern
with the problems of society expanded and led him not only to
criticize the existing social framework based on laissez-faire and
ruthless competition, but to evolve the idea of a Utopian society
to replace it.
In picturing this Utopian state, which he significantly names
“the Evolution,”156 Howells emphasizes the fact that each stage
in its development is evolved from a previous and a lower one.
The final stage in the development of his ideal state of Altruria
is evolved from “the discipline of competitive conditions.”157 A
similar evolutionary concept governs his attitude towards the
152 ‘Who Are Our Brethren,” Century, XXIX, 932 (1895).
153 George Arms, ‘‘The Literary Background of Howells Social Criticism,” Amer¬
ican Literature, XIV, 261 (November, 1942).
154 Hillquit, Morris, Loose Leaves from a Busy Life , (1934), pp. 115-16.
155 Howells, My Literary Passions and Criticism and Fiction , p. 174.
^Howells, The Traveler from Altruria, p. 266.
157 Ibid., p. 291.
290 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
past and the concept of progress. Howells sees the past in a dual
light; he admits the charm of some ancient institutions and
usages which have lived on into a new and different world, yet
he never allows this charm to blind him to the hideous conditions
of a bloody and pitiless past. “It’s because we have so many new
and square things,” he writes, “that we like the old, crooked
ones.”158 Quebec “had the charm of those ancient streets, dear to
Old-World travel, in which the past and the present, decay and
repair, peace and war, have made friends in an effect that not
only wins the eye, but, however illogically, touches the heart.”159
When he visited Pompeii, however, it led him “back into the dead
past — the past which, with all its sensuous beauty and grace, and
all its intellectual power, I am not sorry to have dead, and, for
the most part, buried.”160 He loves Florence, “not because of that
past which, however heroic and aspiring, was so wrong-headed
and bloody and pitiless, but because of the present, safe, free,
kindly, full of possibilities of prosperity and fraternity.”161 He
does not regret that “we can never return to the past on the old
terms,”162 yet he recognizes that “the past is part of us ; it can't
be ignored any more than it can be destroyed.”163 It is necessary
rather to recognize the past and to grow out of it than to attempt
to ignore it or to destroy it. Howells remarks on “the slow
progress from epoch to epoch,”164 and feels that “we have only
to evolve a little further.”165 He laments that Tolstoi “gropes for
a hopeless reversion to innocence through individual renuncia¬
tion of society instead of pressing forward to social redemp¬
tion ; . . ,166 the freed soul and the freed mind of man are working
together for the elevation of the race through conscience illu¬
mined by science.”167 To carry out his idea of a Christian broth¬
erhood, Howells advocates a socialism defined as the “gradual
extension of the popular ownership to the things they [the
people] believe naturally common to all.”168 “If some such con¬
ception of society could possess the entire State,” he writes, “a
higher type of civilization would undoubtedly eventuate.”169
From the mistakes of the past, through the efforts of the present,
^Howells, A Chance Acquaintance, (Boston, 1873), p. 187.
159 Ibid., p. 161.
i«o Howells, Italian Journeys, (Boston, 1867, 1890), p. 90.
161 Howells, Tuscan Cities, (Boston, 1886), p. 122.
1613 Howells, Literature and Life, p. 302.
163 Howells, The Ragged Lady, (New York, 1899), p. 356.
The Atlantic Monthly, XXIV, p. 640 (November, 1869).
165 Howells, Literature and Life, p. 246.
we “Lyof N. Tolstoy,” The North American Review, CLXXXVIII, p. 857 (Decem¬
ber, 1908).
i67 “Editor’s Study,” Harper’s Magazine, LXXV, 964 (November, 1887).
108 Howells, “Life and Letters,” Harper’s Weekly, XXXIX, p. 820, (August 31,
1895).
I®9 Howells, New Leaf Mills, (New York, 1913, 1913), p. 154.
1953] Clark — Science in Thought of W. D. Howells 291
to realization in the future is the evolutionary development of
Howells' Utopia. The past is a link and progress a transition in
this evolutionary development; “there is an evolution in the
moral, as well as the material world,” his Reverend Mr. Peck
says, “and good unfolds in greater good.”170
The development of Howells’ concern with social problems and
their solution paralleled and, in large measure, was influenced by
the development of his familiarity with evolutionary science.
During the years immediately following his return to America
in 1865, Howells’ criticism of social conditions was confined
within a general belief that the existing structure of society was
fundamentally a good one. After a visit to New York in 1866,
he attacks the New York street-car system, lack of sanitation,
and lack of adequate housing and health facilities and concludes
that “if we are better provided with ways and means for mate¬
rial comfort, have we gained also in self-reliant and industrious
and simple habits?”171 Howells feels at this time that a certain
standard of civic responsibility is necessary, but that self-reli¬
ance and industrious and simple habits of the individual are
more important in the solution of social problems. Discussing in
1869 Horace Greeley’s autobiography, detailing his rise from
“poverty and obscurity to distinction,” Howells terms it the
“perpetual romance” which “delights and touches all, for in this
nation it is in some degree the story of every man’s life or the
vision of his desires.”172 In 1874, he not only glorifies free enter¬
prise but ardently supports laissez-faire government; “the state
which persistently meddles with the religious, domestic, and com¬
mercial affairs of its people,” he writes, “dooms itself to extinc¬
tion.”1712
During Howells’ editorship of The Atlantic (1871-1881) he
solicited and published a multitude of articles (averaging about
two in each issue) dealing with social improvement and with the
causes of depression. It is note-worthy, however, that none of
these articles is by a spokesman of socialism, and the most rad¬
ical of the articles merely advocates cooperatives. Howells ex¬
pressed most admiration for Jonathon B. Harrison’s articles,
eight of which appeared in The Atlantic between October 1878
and 1879 and were collected in 1880 in a book entitled Certain
Dangerous Tendencies in American Life . In Howells’ review of
the book, he agrees with Harrison that the “relief which may
170 Howells, Annie Kilburn (New York, 1889), p. 239-40.
ra “Minor Topics,” Nation, II, 133 (February 1, 1866).
172 The Atlantic Monthly, XXIII, 260 (February, 1869),
173 Howells, “Mr. Parkman’s Histories,” The Atlantic Monthly, XXXIV, 603
(November, 1874).
292 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
come from better times is temporary and delusive,” but he ob¬
jects to the charge that Harrison’s point of view is pessimistic:
“ . certainly nothing could be more inexact, unless pes¬
simism consists in the recognition of needlessly deplorable
conditions, and the expression of a belief that the sufferers
have the cure in their own hands. If it is pessimism to show
the rich what excellent types of character exist among
working-men and their wives, and to teach the poor how a
capitalist may necessarily be their friend, by all means let
us have nothing but pessimism hereafter.”174
Howells reflects his belief at this time that social improvement
and progress result from self-reform and toleration between
classes within the existing social and economic structure; he
sums up Harrison’s prescription for progress as the condition of
all classes living “a simpler and honester life, resulting from the
diffusion of real intelligence concerning its problems, from
habits of frugality in spending and closeness in thinking, from
home-training in unselfishness and benevolence, from a better
understanding between the different stations and conditions of
society.”175
During the period of his association with The Atlantic
Monthly (1866-1881) Howells was essentially a poet, a minor
playwright, a writer of travel sketches, and the author of five
novels such as Their Wedding Journey and A Foregone Conclu¬
sion in which he developed his descriptive abilities, plotting
techniques, and characterization. By 1885, as his familiarity
with the contemporary developments of evolutionary science
widened, his novels had become studies of the interaction of
character and environment. The evolutionary principle of hered¬
itary and environmental determinism led him to believe in 1895
that “we are always mistaking our conditions for our natures,
and saying that human nature is greedy and mean and false and
cruel, when only its conditions are so.”176 Howells’ Altrurian
traveler observes that American competitive economic conditions
“ ‘establish insuperable inequalities among you, and ..... forbid
the hope of brotherhood which your polity proclaims.’ ”177 In The
Quality of Mercy, Howells describes the effect on Maxwell, the
journalist, of his early environment:
17*; Howells, “A New Observer,” The Atlantic Monthly , XLV, 849 (June, 1880),
(See L. J. Budd’s excellent “Howells, the Atlantic Monthly , and Republicanism,”
American Literature , XXIV, 139—156, May, 1952.)
175 Ibid. See also his praise of Harrison in Life in Letters , II, 34.
176 “Equality as the Basis of Good Society,” Century , m.s. XXIX, 67 (November,
1895).
177 Howells, A Traveler from Altruria, p. 98. See also ibid. , p. 56—57, 61-62, and
“Letters of an Altrurian Traveler,” Cosmopolitan, XVI, p. 268 (January, 1894).
1953] Clark — Science in Thought of W. D. Howells
293
“ . as for his hardness, that probably comes from his
having had to make such a hard fight for what he wants to
be in life. That hardens people and brutalizes them .
If we had a true civilization a man wouldn’t have to fight
for the chance to do the thing he is fittest for, that is, to be
himself.”178
Criminals, too, he feels, are produced by evil environments;
visiting a criminal court, he remarks that “these bad boys and
girls came up and had their thrashing or their rap over the
knuckles, and were practically bidden by the conditions of our
civilization to go and sin some more.”179 “Almost any honest ex¬
pression,” he writes, “concerning the monotonous endeavor and
failure of society to repress the monotonous evolution of the
criminal in conditions that render his evolution inevitable, must
seem pessimistic.”180 To expect people to rise above the condi¬
tions that produce them, he feels, would be as futile as to expect
them “to overcome the attraction of gravitation.”181 Further¬
more, Howells feels that just as long as evil circumstances are
permitted to exist and warp human nature, moral condemnation
is meaningless, for, “if a man is in conditions which hinder him
from doing what he will, he can no more have honor than he can
have shame.”182
Howells’ familiarity with the evolutionary principle of natural
selection and its corollary principle of the survival of the fittest
in a struggle for existence led him to believe that their parallels
in the conditions of free enterprise and laissez-faire government,
which he had formerly advocated, were responsible for most of
the problems of social evil. He faces the realization with sturdy
honesty; “it is not ill,” he writes, “but it is very well to be con¬
fronted with the ugly realities, the surviving savageries, that the
smug hypocrisy of civilization denies ; for till we recognize them
we shall not abate them, or even try to do so.”183 Free enterprise
is delusive, he feels in 1894 ; “we had hugged so long the delusion
of each man for himself, that we had suffered all reality to be
taken from us.”184 In a competitive society, he states, a man “can¬
not be nobly unselfish without being a fool.”185 The struggle for
existence in a competitive society is “pushing and pulling, climb-
178 Howells, The Quality of Mercy , p. 334.
179 Howells, Impressions and Experiences, p. 91.
^Ibid., p. 92-93.
181 “The Nature of Liberty,” Forum, XX, 407 (December, 1895).
Ibid.
183 Howells, Heroines of Fiction, II, 92.
184 Howells, The Traveler from Altruria, p. 267.
185 Howells, Through the Eye of the Needle, (New York, 1907), p. 4. See also
Traveler from Altruria, p. 201—2, The Quality of Mercy, p. 368, Impressions and
Experiences , p. 234-35.
294 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
in g and crawling, thrusting aside and trampling underfoot,
lying, cheating, stealing . covered with blood and dirt and
sin and shame ..... to a palace of our own or the poor-house,
which is about the only possession we can claim in common with
our brothermen” ;186 we should be, feels Howells, “heartily
ashamed of our competitive conditions.”187 The economy of free
enterprise which he had formerly glorified has become for him
in 1900 “an ill-contrived economy, where it is vainly imagined
that the material struggle forms a high incentive and inspira¬
tion.”188
The material development of America following the Civil War
must have been a consistent source of proof to Howells that
natural selection and survival of the fittest lead to corruption
and wide-spread misery and that conditions ought to be con¬
trolled for the higher good of society as a whole. The Haymarket
Riot “indefinitely widened” his horizons and prompted him to
“reading and thinking about questions that carry me beyond
myself and my miserable literary idolatries of the past.”189 He
became increasingly concerned with the problem of counteract¬
ing the operation in society of the evolutionary principles of
natural selection and survival of the fittest; even literature, he
felt, must be pressed into the service of evolving (through propa¬
ganda) other conditions than those which turn human nature
into brute nature. “What literature was to do,” he writes, “was
to join political economy in making men so equal in fortune that
there could be no deformity, no vulgarity in them which sprang
from the pressure of need or the struggle of hiding or escaping
its effects.”190 As a “soft” evolutionist, he looks forward to the
time “when the beast-man will be so far subdued and tamed in
us that the memory of him in literature shall be left to perish.”191
He praises Bjornson, whose “political radicalism (after light
idylls) has assumed the social and economic phase, apparently
inevitable in the * evolution of those who sympathize with the
people.”192 With Annie Kilburn in 1888, Howells’ own novels
assumed a “social and economic phase” and developed his belief
that the reform of social evil lies not in the self-reform of the
individual within accepted social classes, but rather in the outer
reform of the conditions which produce the evil.
186 Howells, A Hazard of New Fortunes, p. 507.
187 “Editor’s Study,” Harper’s Monthly, LXXVII, 154 (June, 1888).
188 Howells, Literary Friends and Acquaintances, p. 287.
189 Life in Letters, I, 407—408.
190 Howells, Seen and TJneeen at Stratford on Avon, p. 74.
191 Howells, My Literary Passions and Criticism and Fiction, p. 43.
103 “Editor’s Study,” Harper’s Monthly, LXXVIII, 491 (February, 1889).
1953] Clark — Science in Thought of W. D. Howells 295
It has been previously observed that Howells’ familiarity with
the evolutionary principle of natural selection led him to view
the world as one of chance and moral relativism. He could not,
however, as a Swedenborgian and a Christian socialist, wholly
accept the idea of a world so disorganized. With P. B. S. Ray in
The World of Chance , Howells finally decides :
“ . somehow we felt, we knew, that justice ruled the ;
world. Nothing, then, that seemed chance was really chance.
It was the operation of a law so large that we caught a
glimpse of its vast orbit once or twice in a lifetime. It was
Providence.”193
Earlier Basil March concludes that life is ‘daw, though it seems
chance.”194 The Altrurian traveler reports that his common¬
wealth has “eliminated chance.”195 Although natural selection
leads to moral relativism and a fortuitous world, there is a
higher law, Howells feels, to which man can make social forces
conform. “If the human intelligence could be put in possession
of the human body,” he writes, “we should have altruism at
once.”196 Through the operation of intelligence, human nature
can control and change the conditions which produce the brute
nature in man ; moral law will reassert itself when natural selec¬
tion is controlled by social cooperation. It is significant that
Howells paid repeated homage to the co-discoverer of Darwin¬
ism, A. R. Wallace, because he became an ardent apostle of
socialism and cooperation.
By 1894 Howells had come to believe that the competitive con¬
ditions which are the result of the operation in society of the
evolutionary principles of natural selection and survival of the
fittest must be changed if the social evils which they produce are
to be remedied. He is convinced that “the economic solution of
the ‘riddle of the painful earth’ is to be by emulation, not by
competition.”197 Howells does not believe that “there is freedom
where the caprice of one citizen can interfere with the comfort
or pleasure of the rest.”198 Since character is conditioned by
heredity and environment, he feels, human selection must evolve
other conditions for the determination of character than those
of “each successive personality crushing out and oversloughing
some other, without that regard for proportion and propriety
103 Howells, The World of Chance, p. 375.
104 Howells, A Hazard of New Fortunes, p. 507.
195 Howells, A Traveler from Altruria.
196 Howells, The World of Chance, p. 99.
197 “Howells’ Unpublished Prefaces,” Arms, George, (ed. ) The New England
Quarterly, XVII, 589-90 (December, 1944).
198 Howells, Impressions and Experiences , p. 281.
296 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
which only the sense of a superior collective right can inspire.”199
The weak, threatened by natural selection, must be protected by
human selection; “it is a law which must be divine,” he writes,
“though we find it embodied in human justice nowhere out of
fiction, that the weak and slight nature has a paramount right
to our sympathy when it suffers.”200 The conditions of a com¬
petitive economy which create an artificial class structure must
be changed if the effects of natural selection in society are to be
circumvented; between the rich and the poor, he argues, there
can be “no common ground . even in the work of reform”
despite “all stooping from above or straining from below.”201
To those who would maintain the idea that rich and poor, strong
and weak, and the competition between them are fundamental
factors of human nature, Howells replies in 1907 :
“the capitalistic world believes human nature cannot be
changed, though cannibalism and slavery and polygamy
have all been extirpated in the so-called Christian countries,
and these things were once human nature, which is always
changing, while brute nature remains the same.”202
To those others who agree that the problems of social evil are
the results of natural selection operating in society but who
pessimistically argue that the hope of changing these conditions
is idle and Utopian, Howells answers that “every fruitful and
hopeful scheme of modern civilization is based upon what were
once Utopian dreams.”203
It must be emphasized that Howells wished to change the con¬
ditions of competitive society rather by evolutionary than by
revolutionary means. He does not advocate the destruction of
civilization and the return to a primitivistic state of nature
based on the concept of natural goodness ; Howells felt that only
civilization and a democratically organized government could
control the brute nature in man. When man “sacrifices himself
to the community,” he writes, he then “ceases to be wholly sav¬
age.”204 Only the inherited wisdom of society, Howells believed,
could preserve man from wasting himself in an animal-like
struggle for existence. He advocates a change in the competitive
conditions of society by the evolutionary growth of a Christian
socialism within the structure of civilization rather than by its
revolutionary destruction. Howells felt that man is not inher-
109 Howells, Roman Holidays , (New York, 1908), p. 120.
200 Howells, Heroines of Fiction, II, 55.
201 Howells, “American Civic Life,” Literature, III, 475 (November 19, 1898).
202 Howells, Through the Eye of the Needle, p. 219.
^Howells, “Diversions of the Higher Journalist,” Harper’s Weekly, XL VII, 1220
(July 25, 1903).
201 “Who Are Our Brethern?” Century, m.s. XXIX, 932 (1895).
1953] Clark — Science in Thought of W. D. Howells
297
ently and ineradicably evil in mind or character; he is only the
sum of his experience :
“Experience, the whole of what we have known up to a cer¬
tain time, not the process of logic, is what prepares us. for
the reception or rejection of this postulate or that . ”205
Therefore, he writes, “to have human brotherhood . you
must change human conditions,” or the social contexture which
contains and constitutes experience, “and this is quite
feasible.”206
Howells believed that such a change is necessary because evil
involves the innocent in its consequences. It is not enough merely
to punish evil; it must be eliminated by changing the environ¬
ment which produces it, because, “there’s really no measuring
the sinuous reach of a disaster . it strikes from a coil then
seems to involve everything.”207 “You can’t strike at it,” Howells
writes of evil, “without wounding the best and gentlest.”208
Atherton, in A Modern Instance, states :
“ ‘We’re all bound together. No one sins or suffers to him¬
self in a civilized state — or religious state; it’s the same
thing. Every link in the chain feels the effect of violence,
more or less intimately. We rise or fall together in a Chris¬
tian Society.’ ”209
Evil, therefore, must be eliminated, not punished, and Howells
looks forward to the time when “that military ideal of duty
which is so much nobler than the civil ideal of self-interest .
will yet become the civil ideal, when the peoples shall have
learned to live for the common good, and are united for the oper¬
ation of industries as they are now for the hostilities.”210
To achieve this goal by changing the competitive conditions
of society, Howells would evolve a social brotherhood and an
economic collectivism to complete the promise of political democ¬
racy. He asks his readers “to consider whether a public man¬
agement of public affairs is not as well in economics as in poli¬
tics,”211 and, although the “world . is not yet so sternly col-
lectivistic as I could wish,”212 he hopes that there is “a growing
205 “Editor’s Study,” Harper's, L XXX, 806 (April, 1890).
206 “Equality as the Basis of a Good Society,” Century, XXIX, 67 (Nov., 1895).
^Howells, The Quality of Mercy, p. 88.
298 Howells, The Son of Royal Langbrith, p. 112.
209 Howells, A Modern Instance, p. 474. This doctrine of social “complicity” was
first consciously elaborated in The Minister's Charge (Boston, 1887) ; see pp. 29,
240. It also underlies the basic judgments of The Quality of Mercy.
210 Howells, Literature and Life, p. 151.
211 Howells, “Letters of an Altrurian Traveler,” Cosmopolitan, XVI, 261 (Janu¬
ary, 1894).
2112 Howells, Roman Holidays, p. 287.
298 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
sense in Americans that what is common is the personal charge
of every one in the community.”2'13 Howells considers himself “a
collectivist, with a firm belief in the government ownership of
railroads.”2114 Thus the problems of industrialism as well as the
implications of evolution helped inspire his revolt from the com¬
petitive struggle for existence. He feels that only public control
of housing is adequate protection against the self-interest of
landlords :
“Upon the present terms of leaving the poor to be housed
by private landlords, whose interest it is to get the greatest
return of money for the money invested, the very poorest
must always be housed as they are now. Nothing but public
control in some form or other can secure them a shelter fit
for human beings.”215
The concept of social brotherhood with which Howells would
augment his economic collectivism and political democracy has
been previously described. He advocates a social structure based
on the equalitarian principles of Christ, “whose doctrine we seek
to make our life as He made it His.”216 “In his responsibility for
his weaker brethren,” writes Howells, “he was Godlike, for God
was but the impersonation of loving responsibility, of infinite
and never-ceasing care for us all.”217
Howells’ religious views also reflect the influence of his
familiarity with the developments of contemporary science.
Reared in the home atmosphere of his father’s Swedenborgian-
ism, he also “read somewhat of the theology of the Sweden-
borgian faith I was brought up in.”2118 It was perhaps from this
background that he acquired the tendency towards super-ration¬
alism and mysticism which never completely left him through¬
out his life. In his youth Howells was grateful for a touch of the
sort of wisdom which we are losing sight of in these hard days
of science and fact, and he reviewed Farrer’s Life of Christ sym¬
pathetically and regarded Jesus and His Biographers as epoch-
making.2119 He continued to retain “fond dreams of a future life
. despite the hard skeptic air of our science-smitten age.”220
Although his faith in the existence of a human soul and his hope
of immortality was never wholly destroyed, his expanding
familiarity with the principles of evolutionary science did cause
213 Howells, Impressions and Experiences , p. 224.
2U Howells, Roman Holidays, p. 273.
215 Howells, Impressions and Experiences, p. 149.
216 Howells, A Traveler from Altruria, pp. 299-300.
217 Howells, The Ministers • Charge , p. 459.
218 Howells, My Literary Passions and Criticism and Fiction, p. 174.
219 Howells, Atlantic Monthly, XXXIV, 492 (October, 1874).
229 Atlantic Monthly, XXXV, 105 (Jan., 1875); XXXIV, 492 (October, 1874).
1953] Clark — Science in Thought of W. D. Howells
299
him to turn temporarily to agnosticism and an emphasis on the
methods of science rather than on super-rationalism. Looking
back in 1918 over his life, he states that “the [scientific] methods
of the inquiry . turned us from believers to agnostics when
Evolution cut the ground of our faith from under us.”221 “I got
caught,” Howells writes in 1915, “in the wave of agnosticism in
the survival-of-the-fittest times, and found I couldn’t put up a
prayer in the old gospel terms. So I left off.”222
He never wholly lost, however, his basic faith in the existence
of a human soul and its immortality ; after his temporary agnos¬
ticism, he turned to the hope that science and its methods would
find a rational substantiation for his belief. Miss Hannah Belcher
states :
“For a while in the years near the turn of the century he
almost persuaded himself that he had the final solution in
the scientists’ exploration of the supernatural. Then he saw
limits and returned to intuitive faith.”223
In this return to intuitive faith, Howells never reconciled his
belief in scientific methodology with its inability to determine
truth in psychical and spiritual realms. “His loss of confidence,”
Miss Belcher feels, “made it impossible for him to share con¬
sistently the happy calm of Fiske.”2'24 Howells was able, how¬
ever, to derive “immense consolation” from “a paper by a man
of that science which deals with life on strictly physical lines
. because it reaffirmed that the soul has not only its old
excuse for being in the unthinkability of an automatic universe
and the necessity of an intentional first cause, but with Evolu¬
tion, in the regard of some scientists, tottering on its throne,
and Natural Selection entering the twilight into which the older
pagan deities have vanished, is newly warranted in claiming ex¬
istence as that indestructible life-property or organizing power
which characterizes kind through kind from everlasting to ever¬
lasting.”2125
In 1902, Howells used the outcome of the Boer War to rein¬
force his religious optimism; “once more,” he writes, “we have
reason to doubt if God is altogether on the side of the strongest
battalions.”226 He continues:
221 “Editor’s Easy Chair,” Harper’s Monthly, CXXXV, 884, (November, 1917).
Cf. ibid., CXXXVI, 608 (March, 1918).
232 “Editor’s Easy Chair,” Harper’s Monthly, CXXX, 309 (January, 1915).
223 Belcher, Hannah, “Howells’ Opinion on the Religious Conflicts of his Age as
Exhibited in Magazine Articles,” American Literature, XV, 262-78 (Nov., 1943).
2(24 Ibid.
225 Howells, Imaginary Interviews, pp. 314-15.
226 “A Suggestion from the Boer War,” Harper’s Weekly, Part I, XLVI, p. 747
(June 14, 1902).
300 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
“It would be interesting to trace the rise of that atheistic
superstition back to the science which recently felt itself
authorized to affirm, when it was never authorized to do
more than inquire. The brutalization of the civilized world,
within the last three or four decades, undoubtedly began
with the misinterpretation of evolution, when the strongest
read itself into the doctrine of the survival of the fittest.
This gross delusion took practical form in the armament of
nations [cf. Admiral Mahan’s work] and each vied with the
other in maintaining hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and
in floating the mightiest navies .
“Those who wish the world well, in fact, have the consola¬
tion . of reasonably concluding that God is not yet
sleeping, or gone on a journey, but is looking after human
affairs in the way we used to believe before the survival of
the fittest seemed to displace His ancient Providence.”227
Much evidence has been presented to show the influence of
science on Howells’ literary and social thought. But it must also
be recognized that Howells did not completely and systematically
adopt a scientific approach to life. In his intellectual maturity,
he still felt that many of the sciences might be “useless informa¬
tion because they so rapidly denied and superseded themselves,”
and that “till science has ceased to change her mind,” men “need
not hastily surrender any long cherished beliefs at the behest of
science.”228
Throughout his life, Howells retained a basic religious core
which was never wholly relinquished or eradicated. In his period
of social and political rationalism, he never lost a working dual¬
ism of mind and soul which refused to surrender the hope of
immortality, “those fond hopes of eternal life which most of us
cherish.”229 He lauds his friend, John Fiske, for buttressing this
hope of immortality with Evolution, and continues :
“ Till some other scientist, or philosopher of science, came
to prove the contrary, that hope could not be taken from
men, and as yet that hope remains to us. Indeed the general
trend of science, in recognizing the unity of the universe, is
to the support and lasting establishment of that hope.”230
227 Ibid.
228 “Editor’s Easy Chair,” Harper’s , OIX, 481 (August, 1904) ; “Editor’s Study,”
Harper’s, LXXVIII, 158 (December, 1888) ; Ibid., LXXXI, 967 (November, 1890).
229 Atlantic Monthly, XXXII, 105 (July, 1873). See Hannah G. Belcher, “Howells’
Opinions on the Religious Conflicts of His Age as Exhibited in Magazine Articles,”
American Literature, XV, 262-78 (November, 1943), for a summary of Howells’
changing attitude toward* religion. Mr. and Mrs. Rudolf Kirk have uncovered an
unpublished letter written when Howells was eighty years of age to Mrs. John
Piatt; he speaks of the dreams of his dead wife and declares that “after long
unbelief I am getting back some hope again.”
230 “Editor’s Easy Chair,” Harper’s, CVIII, 642 (March, 1904).
1953] Clark — Science in Thought of W. D. Howells 301
“But we should still hold with the Soul a little, ”231 he remarks,
and confesses that “where I cannot believe, there I often trust;
and as all faith is mystical, I would have the bereaved trust their
mystical experiences.”232 But even this trend in Howells' later
thought is not completely out of accord with the trend of scien¬
tific thinkers of the age, for Howells had in 1891 praised the
pragmatic William James as “one of the few scientific men who
do not seem to snub one's poor humble hopes of a hereafter,”233
and James' Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), while
treating religion from the scientific and psychological point of
view, argued that even mysticism may for certain individuals
have value “from the biological point of view” and that the sig¬
nificance of religious states of mind “must be tested not by their
origin but by the value of their fruits.” And of course Fiske had
reconciled his faith in science and theistic immortality.
In conclusion, the evidence presented should make it clear that,
while Howells never became a complete rationalist or materialist,
science did in one way or another help to inspire much of his
thought. In literary theory and practice, as well as in criticism,
his passion for truth, for freedom of discussion, and for a real¬
ism based not on the exceptional or the erratic but on the law
of averages owed much to science. For example, he argues that
before the rise of the evolutionary age “a tendency towards a
more scrupulous tone seems to have been the effect of the gen¬
eral revival of religion at the close of the last century, which per¬
sisted down to that time in our own century when the rise of
scientific agnosticism [cf. Robert Ingersoll] loosed the bonds of
expression. Now again of late years men and women in the best
company talk together of things which would not have been dis¬
cussed during the second and third quarters of the century.”234
Howells' later recognition of scientific theories of the determin¬
ism of heredity and environment reinforced his native Christian
charity of heart and led him to advocate sympathetic and appre¬
ciative literary criticism (as opposed to the harshly judicial)
and to advocate a more understanding and constructive attitude
toward wrong-doers regarded as not entirely responsible. He
urged changing the bad social and environmental conditions
which he thought encouraged wrong-doing. Science helped
Howells maintain a logical frame of reference for his analysis
of social evils and strengthened his tendency to search for the
231 Ibid., CXXVIII, 151 (December, 1913).
232 In After Days (a collection of essays by many authors; New York, 1910), p. 5.
Howells’ essay is entitled “A Counsel of Consolation.”
233 Life in Letters of W. D. Howells, I, 14.
234 Howells, Heroines of Fiction, I, 40.
302 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
cure of the ills of society in cooperative social action and a mild
collectivism inspired in part by evolutionary ideas of interde¬
pendence and the “complicity” of all mankind. He realized that
science and technology were creating a new and complicated in¬
dustrial environment and that a fruitfully human adaptation to
this new environment could be achieved only by modifying our
traditional laissez-faire habit of free competition in the direc¬
tion of governmental regulation for the good of all. While some
conservative thinkers such as W. G. Sumner235 insisted that the
evolutionary struggle for existence sanctioned ruthless competi¬
tion, Howells concluded after 1890 that evolution had merely
proved how ruthless and rapacious completely unrestrained men
can be if merely left to follow what even the scientific Huxley
attacked as a natural “gladitorial” theory of ethics. To that ex¬
tent he reacted against science, or rather wished to be realistic
in recognizing that competitive men need ethical and govern¬
mental control. It should be clear that he has little in common,
in his socialism, with Marxian ideas of harsh materialism and
class-hatred; his socialism owed much of its positive ideal of
brotherhood and sympathy to the broad tradition of Christian
charity and his middle-western nurture in Swedenborgian and
Quaker ideas of fellowship and social solidarity. His Traveler
from Altruria, embodying his later Christian socialism, attacks
the complacent view that the class “divisions among us are
rather a process of natural selection” as, for example, in his
story about meritorious teachers who are supposed to rely
supinely on “the process of natural selection to determine
whether they shall finally be teachers or waiters.”236 And finally
along with Howells’ faith in Christian brotherhood, science —
especially as interpreted by his friends Fiske and William James
— provided a reassuring foundation, beyond despair and indi¬
vidualistic retreat, on which to build hopes of a growing mastery
of a distinctively social and humane life on earth and some de¬
gree of hope in a non-materialistic destiny. While many of
Howells’ contemporaries such as Mark Twain and Henry James
eventually approached defeatism, Howells appears to have been
a pathfinder and in his serene constructiveness he appears to
have been distinctive in having been in pioneer accord with the
way the United States actually has in the twentieth century man¬
aged, gradually and without internal violence, to supplement
1235 Although Richard Hofstadter’s Social Darwinism in American Thought (Phila¬
delphia, 1944) does not deal at length with Howells since novelists are excluded,
the book is relevant for purposes of orientation brilliantly handled.
236 Traveler from Altruria , (New York, 1894), pp. 12—13.
1953] Clark — Science in Thought of W. D. Howells
303
competition with cooperation and some degree of governmental
regulation for the good of all. His views of science are not en¬
tirely consistent, as we have seen, but one can hardly account
for his development as a novelist, critic, and social commentator
if one ignores the role of science in his thought. And of course
his reactions to science take on much greater significance when
one remembers his vast articulateness (in forty novels, twenty-
three plays, eleven travel books, eight volumes of literary criti¬
cism, and nearly seventeen hundred book reviews in which he
served as the arbiter of American taste) and the fact that more
than any other writer of his time he is generally regarded as our
representative spokesman.2'37
237 In the Introduction to Howells’ Rise of Silas Lap ham (1951) I have treated
the representative quality of this book, partly, in relation to ideas associated with
evolution.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY
1951
The 81st Annual Meeting of the Academy was held April 13 and 14, 1951
at Milwaukee-Downer College with headquarters at Pillsbury Hall in Sabin
Hall. Approximately 120 members and guests were registered. The follow¬
ing program was presented.
Academy Section
April 13, 1951
The meeting was called to order by President William C. McKern fol¬
lowed by an address of welcome by Dr. Lucia R. Briggs, President of the
Milwaukee-Downer College. Papers were presented as follows: Howard K.
Suzuki, Marquette University, Geographic variations in the wood frog
(Rana sylvatica) in North America; Albert Fuller, Milwaukee Public
Museum, Natural areas in Wisconsin ; Raymond H. Reis and Frank
DiPierro, Marquette University, Spontaneous change of form of the green
hydra, Chlorohydra viridissima; Floyd E. Morbeck and John W. Saunders,
Jr., Marquette University, The amino acid, tyrosine, as chromogen in the
synthesis of melanin pigments in the skin of the fowl ; Dorothy R. Jutton
and Helen T. Parsons, University of Wisconsin, Vitamin Bm activity in
feces of normal human subjects; Mary E. Pankou (introduced by James C.
Perry), Marquette University, The study of the possible recovery of the
testis and related organs of the golden hamster from damage produced by
estrogen; Irene M. Serafin (introduced by James C. Perry), Marquette Uni¬
versity, Observations on the possible recovery of the testis and related
endocrine glands of the vasectomized male golden hamster following pro¬
longed estrinization; John P. O’Brien and Maureen J. Tobin, Marquette
University, Some factors influencing tissue responses to X-radiation; Quen¬
tin LaHam and John P. O’Brien, Marquette University, Radiosensitivity
of larval urodele tissues in relation to metabolic rate obtaining at the time
of exposure; James E. Hackett (introduced by E. F. Bean), University of
Wisconsin, The birth and development of ground-water hydrology — a his¬
torical summary; Hugo W. Rohde, Oconomowoc, A history of Milwaukee
breweries; H. A. Schuette, University of Wisconsin, Butler’s (iThe Feminine
Monarchie” ; Robert H. Irrmann, Beloit College, Work-diaries of Ohio farm
hands, 18^-18^5 ; Berenice Cooper, Wisconsin State College, Superior, The
Abbe Prevost and the modern reader; Donald B. King, Beloit College, The
appeal to religion in Greek rhetoric.
Academy Section
April 14, 1951
Katherine G. Nelson, Milwaukee-Downer College, One hundred years of
earth science at Milwaukee-Downer College; Cyril C. O’Brien, Marquette
University, Recent trends in educational psychology with some implications
for teacher training; Nick J. Topitzes, Marquette University, A program
for the selection of trainees in physical medicine in Wisconsin; Pauline
Tepe and Raymond H. Reis, Marquette University, A comparative study of
the renal vascular patterns and their relation to the vena cava posterior
805
306 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
and the dorsal aorta; Clifford J. Dennis, University of Wisconsin, The
Membracidae of Wisconsin; John P. Eastwood, University of Wisconsin,
The biology and taxonomy of Wisconsin blowflies.
Junior Academy Section
April 14, 1951
Audrey Hardiman, Aquinas Science Club, Aquinas High School, La
Crosse and John Bloxdorf, Seminar Club, Mary D. Bradford High School,
Kenosha, Co-presidents of the Wisconsin Junior Academy of Science, pre¬
siding. Thomas Koerber, Science & Camera Club, Messmer High School,
Milwaukee, Experiments in entomology and hibernation of small animals;
Larry Horwitz, Waukesha High School, Waukesha, The electromagnetic
balance; Marjorie Call, Nature Club, Appleton Senior High School, Apple-
ton, Analyses of milk; Lee T. Rozelle, Central High School Science Club,
La Crosse, Eggs-ray; Patrick McKeough, Science Club, Wausau Senior
High School, Electrochemistry ; Ted Olson, Chemistry Club, Lincoln High
School, Wisconsin Rapids, Induced radioactivity; Audrey Hardiman,
Aquinas Science Club, Aquinas High School, La Crosse, The effect of two
hormones from the adrenal gland on rats; Willard Bruss, Biology Club,
Washington High School, New London, Care of hamsters; Don Schlafke,
Nature Club, Appleton Senior High School, Appleton, Experiments with
Drosophila; Alice Engelhard, Aquinas Science Club, Aquinas High School,
La Crosse, The familiar ferment-yeast; Edward Oakes, Chemistry Club,
Lincoln High School, Wisconsin Rapids, Chromatography; Myron A.
Schroeder, Science & Camera Club, Messmer High School, Milwaukee,
Extraction of caffeine.
Annual Academy Lecture
The annual Academy dinner was held on April 13, 1951 at Kimberly
Union. President William C. McKern of the Milwaukee Public Museum gave
the presidential address on Prehistoric Pioneers in Wisconsin.
Academy Business Meeting
The annual business meeting was held in Sabin Hall with President
W. C. McKern presiding.
The following members were elected to Life Membership for long and
meritorious service to the Academy: W. H. Barber, Ripon College;- B. 0.
Dodge, New York City; Michael F. Guyer, University of Wisconsin; and
Warren J. Mead, Belmont, Massachusetts.
A resolution was adopted by the unanimous vote of the Academy as
follows :
Whereas: The Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters has
suffered a great loss in the deaths of five outstanding members during the
year 1950-51, and
Whereas: the Academy wishes to recognize its indebtedness for their
inspiring interest and leadership,
Be It Resolved: that the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and
Letters herewith express its lasting appreciation for the long, intelligent
and faithful service given throughout their membership by Professor
Emeritus Edward E. Bennett, President Emeritus Edward A. Birge, Pro¬
fessor Emeritus Philo M. Buck, Jr., Dean Emeritus Frederick E. Turneaure
307
1953] Proceedings of the Academy
and its long-time and devoted Secretary Professor Banner Bill Morgan,
and, further,
Be It Resolved : that a copy of this Resolution be inscribed in the official
minutes of the organization.
H. A. SCHUETTE
Carl Welty
A committee on nominations composed of 0. L. Kowalke, E. S. Mc¬
Donough, L. E. Noland, Chmn., R. K. Richardson, and H. A. Schuette pre¬
sented the following slate of officers which were unanimously elected for
the next Academy year:
President : E. L. Bolender, Wisconsin State College, Superior
Vice-President in Science: Alfred M. Fuller, Milwaukee Public Museum
Vice-President in Arts : Roger C. Kirchhoff, State Architect
Vice-President in Letters: Lester W. J. Seifert, University of Wis¬
consin
Secretary -Treasurer : Robert J. Dicke, University of Wisconsin
Librarian : H. 0. Teisberg, University of Wisconsin
Publications Committee : Robert Irrmann, Beloit College
WISCONSIN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, ARTS AND LETTERS
ENDOWMENTS AND ASSETS
April 1, 1951
1. U. S. Treasury Coupon Bond 1692B.. . .....$1,000
2. U. S. Treasury Coupon Bond 12894D . 500
3. U. S. Savings Bond Registered Series G-M1696059G. . 1,000
4. U. S. Savings Bond Registered Series G-C1563347G. . 100
5. U. S. Savings Bond Registered Series G-C1563348G. . 100
6. U. S. Savings Bond Series F-D494206F . 500
7. U. S. Savings Bond Series F-M989457F . 1,000
8. U. S. Savings Bond Series G-C3389339G . 100
9. U. S. Savings Bond Series G-C3457898G . 100
10. U. S. Savings Bond Series G-C3512841G . 100
11. U. S. Savings Bond Series G-C3560656G . 100
•12. U. S. Savings Bond Series G-C3564110G . 100
13. U. S. Savings Bond Series G-C4154481G . 100
14. U. S. Savings Bond Series G-C5044011G . 100
15. U. S. Savings Bond Series G-C5044012G . 100
16. U. S. Savings Bond Series G-C5074307G . 100
17. U. S. Savings Bond Series G-C5074308G . 100
18. U. S. Savings Bond Series G-C5463975G . 100
Total Amount of Endowment . . . $5,300
19. U. S. Savings Bond Series G-C2386504G . $ 100
20. U. S. Savings Bond Series G-C2386505G . 100
21. U. S. Savings Bond Series G-C2386506G ............ 100
22. U. S. Savings Bond Series G-C2386507G . 100
Current Assets Invested in U. S. Bonds . 400
23. Savings Account No. 3262 (4/1/51) . 270.11
24. Savings Account No. 498 (Vol. 39 sales) . . . 51.00
Grand Total . . . . $6,021.11
Aaron J. Ihde
Secretary-Treasurer
308 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
The contents of the safe deposit box and the savings account were found
in order as reported above for the date April 1, 1951.
Auditing Committee
E. F. Bean
Harold R. Wolfe
WISCONSIN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, ARTS AND LETTERS
TREASURER’S REPORT
April 1, 1951
Receipts
Carried forward in Treasury March 31, 1950 . $1,144.64
Dues received from April 1, 1950 to March 31, 1951 . 849.00
Sale of reprints of Volume 40, Part 1 . . . 337.00
Sale of publications . . . . 167.65
Interest on endowment and other investments . 112.04
Grant-in-aid for research from A.A.A.S . 108.00
Receipts from Junior Academy . 54.46
Express collected . 3.04
Donation (A. L. Schlaeger) . . 2.00
State of Wisconsin (for publication of Transactions) . . . 2,681.38
Total Receipts . $5,459.21
Disbursements
Junior Academy expenses . $ 69.69
A.A.A.S. grant-in-aid to C. C. O’Brien . 108.00
Cost of reprints from Volume 40, Part 1 . 337.00
Transfer to savings account No. 3262 . . 65.79
Transfer to savings account No. 498 (Vol. 39 income) . . . 6.00
Operating expenses
Envelopes, labels, etc . 49.75
Annual meeting expenses . . 148.96
Postage and incidentals . 89.66
Safety deposit box rental . . . 4.80
Secretarial allowance — B. B. Morgan . 200.00
Secretarial allowance — A. J. Ihde . 100.00
Publication expenses
Printing and binding, 1,500 copies Vol. 40,
Part 1 . . . . $2,348.50
Engravings for Vol. 40, Part 1 . 150.36
Engravings for Vol. 40, Part 2 . 182.52
2,681.38
Total Disbursements . . . . . $3,861.03
Balance, April 1, 1951 . . . . 1,598.18
Aaron J. Ihde
S e ere tary- Treasurer
The Auditing Committee has examined the accounts of the Treasurer and
has found them in order.
Auditing Committee
E. F. Bean
Harold R. Wolfe
1953]
Proceedings of the Academy
309
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ACADEMY
1952
The 82nd Annual Meeting of the Academy was held April 25 and 26,
1952 at Ripon College with headquarters at Ingram Hall. Registration was
121 members and guests representing 15 Wisconsin communities. The fol¬
lowing program was presented.
Academy Section
April 25, 1952
The meeting was called to order by President E. L. Bolender followed by
an address of welcome by Dr. Clark G. Kuebler, President of Ripon College.
Papers were presented as follows: Ernest F. Bean, Wisconsin Geological
and Natural History Survey, Oil exploration in Wisconsin; Merritt Y.
Hughes, University of Wisconsin, Edmund Spenser, 1552-1952 ; Robert J.
McGray and E. S. McDonough, Marquette University, Investigations into
the fungistatic activity of an alcohol-soluble extractive of Catalpa heart-
wood; Berenice Cooper, Wisconsin State College, Superior, The Abbe Pre-
vost and the Jesuits; F. R. Whitesell, University of Wisconsin, Corista,
or the fireproof bird; Emil P. Kruschke, Milwaukee Public Museum, Report
on Wisconsin Crataegus — collecting and preparing of complete herbarium
specimens; Raymond F. Shumard, University of Wisconsin, Some effects
of mineral supplement on sheep infected with stomach worms; Charles L.
Fluke, University of Wisconsin, The Syrphidae of the Great Lakes Region;
J. A. Belli, J. P. O'Brien and J. W. Saunders, Jr., Marquette University,
Exposure to X-radiation of localized areas of mammalian skin conditioned
to different levels of metabolic activity ; Walter Gojmerac and J. P. O'Brien,
Marquette University, Preliminary observations on the influence of tem¬
perature on the response of Anuran larvae to X-radiation.
Academy Section
April 26, 1952
Raymond H. Reis and Frank DiPierro, Marquette University, Spontane¬
ous change of form of the green hydra, Chlorohydra viridissima, under con¬
trolled conditions of temperature, light and pH; R. S. Pierce, University
of Wisconsin, Determination of electrometric properties of ground water by
a field method; Juanita S. Sorenson (introduced by C. L. Fluke), Univer¬
sity of Wisconsin, The Stratiomyidae of Wisconsin; John J. Enck, Univer¬
sity of Wisconsin, Memory and Desire: Tennessee Williams’ plays; Lester
W. J. Seifert, University of Wisconsin, The R-sounds of the Koelsch dialect
spoken in Dane County, Wisconsin; Alvin Whitley, University of Wiscon¬
sin, (read by John J. Enck), Arthur Miller: an attempt at modern tragedy;
C. B. Davey, University of Wisconsin, Decomposition of hard maple saw¬
dust by treatment of anhydrous ammonia and inoculation with Coprinus
ephemerus. Read by title: George H. Conant, Ripon, The evolution of Tri¬
arch products; K. L. Hatch, Madison, Ancient Babylon, meeting place of
science and history.
310 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
Junior Academy Section
April 26, 1952
Alice Engelhard, Aquinas Science Club, La Crosse, and Don Schlafke,
Appleton High School Nature Club, Co-presidents of the Wisconsin Junior
Academy of Science, presiding. Ted Olson, Chemistry Club, Lincoln High
School, Wisconsin Rapids, A working model of a cyclotron; Dick Schulze,
Nature Club, Appleton High School, Television interference from amateur
radio stations; Don Schlafke, Nature Club, Appleton High School, Elec-
trets; Philip Yunker, Science Club, Aquinas High School, La Crosse, The
use of instruments in procuring and graphing weather data; John Chapel,
Seminar Club, Mary D. Bradford High School, Kenosha, Meteorology ;
Jerome I. Hanley, Science Club, Marquette University High School, Mil¬
waukee, Study of the magnetic properties of certain non-ferrous alloys;
Ted Guzie, Science Club, Marquette University High School, Milwaukee,
Problems of the one shot color camera; Arthur Cook, Science Club, Aquinas
High School, La Crosse, Chromotography ; Marlene Olson, Chemistry Club,
Wausau Senior High School, Cosmetics and chemistry; Marjorie Call,
Nature Club, Appleton High School, Hom-eze cheese making ; Mark Weigel,
Science and Camera Club, Columbus High School, Marshfield, Colchicine;
Audrey Hardiman, Science Club, Aquinas High School, La Crosse, Experi¬
ments on rats with closely related steroids.
Annual Academy Lecture
The annual Academy dinner was held on April 25, 1952 at the Frank J.
Harwood Student Building on the Ripon College campus. President E. L.
Bolender of Wisconsin State College, Superior, gave the presidential address
on Some Problems of Science Teaching and Science Education in This
Modern Age.
Academy Business Meeting
The annual business meeting was held in Ingram Hall with President
E. L. Bolender presiding.
Resolutions presented were adopted by the unanimous vote of the
Academy as follows:
Whereas: The Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters has
lost in death four of its distinguished members during the year 1951-52,
and
Whereas: the Academy wishes to recognize its indebtedness for their
inspiration, devotion and leadership
Be It Resolved: that the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and
Letters herewith expresses its lasting appreciation given throughout the
years by Professor William H. Kiekhofer, Doctor Regina S. Riker, Pro¬
fessor Walter Rogers, Reverend Claude P. Zens and, further,
Be It Resolved: that a copy of this Resolution be inscribed in the official
minutes of the organization, and
Be It Resolved Further: that the Academy express its appreciation to
the trustees of Ripon College, its President, Dr. Clarke Kuebler, and his
faculty for their hospitality, interest, and cooperation in making its annual
meeting of 1952 a success.
C. A. Herrick
Ruth Walker
April 25, 1952
1953]
Proceedings of the Academy
311
A committee on nominations composed of G. H. Conant, B. Cooper,
A. Hornigold, 0. L. Kowalke, Chmn., and A. L. Throne presented the fol¬
lowing slate of officers which were unanimously elected for the Academy
year 1952-53:
President: Katherine G. Nelson, Milwaukee-Downer College
Vice-President in Science: W. H. Barber, Ripon College
Vice-President in Arts: Ella M. Martin, Wisconsin State College,
Platteville
Vice-President in Letters: Berenice Cooper, Wisconsin State College,
Superior
Secretary-Treasurer : Robert J. Dicke, University of Wisconsin
Librarian: H. 0. Teisberg, University of Wisconsin
Publications Committee : A. W. Schorger, University of Wisconsin
The following amendment was made to Section 1 of the Academy By-
Laws reading as follows: “The annual dues shall be three dollars for each
active member, to be charged to his account on the first day of January of
each year. Membership shall be available to a husband or wife of active
members for an annual dues of one dollar , providing that only one copy of
the Transactions shall be received by the family group.”
WISCONSIN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, ARTS AND LETTERS
ENDOWMENTS AND ASSETS
April 1, 1952
1. U. S. Treasury Coupon Bond 1692B . $1,000
2. U. S. Treasury Coupon Bond 12894D . 500
3. U. S. Savings Bond Registered Series G-M1696059G. . 1,000
4. U. S. Savings Bond Registered Series G-C1563347G. . 100
5. U. S. Savings Bond Registered Series G-C1563348G. . 100
6. U. S. Savings Bond Series F-D494206F . . 500
7. U. S. Savings Bond Series F-M989457F . 1,000
8. U. S. Savings Bond Series G-C3389339G . 100
9. U. S. Savings Bond Series G-C3457898G . 100
10. U. S. Savings Bond Series G-C3512841G . 100
11. U. S. Savings Bond Series G-C3560656G . 100
12. U. S. Savings Bond Series G-C3564110G . 100
13. U. S. Savings Bond Series G-C4154481G . 100
14. U. S. Savings Bond Series G-C5044011G . 100
15. U. S. Savings Bond Series G-C5044012G . 100
16. U. S. Savings Bond Series G-C5074307G . 100
17. U. S. Savings Bond Series G-C5074308G . 100
18. U. S. Savings Bond Series G-C5463975G . 100
Total Amount of Endowment . $5,300
19. U. S. Savings Bond Series G-C2386504G . .....$ 100
20. U. S. Savings Bond Series G-C2386505G . 100
21. U. S. Savings Bond Series G-C2386506G . 100
22. U. S. Savings Bond Series G-C2386507G . 100
Current Assets Invested in U. S. Bonds . 400
23. Savings Account No. 3262 (4/1/52) . 361.54
Grand Total . $6,061.54
Robert J. Dicke
Secretary-Treasurer
312 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 42
The contents of the safe deposit box and the savings account were found
in order as reported above for the date April 1, 1952.
Auditing Committee
L. E. Noland
H. A. Schuette
WISCONSIN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, ARTS AND LETTERS
TREASURER’S REPORT
April 1, 1952
Receipts
Carried forward in Treasury March 31, 1951 . . . .$1,598.18
Dues received from April 1, 1951 to March 31, 1952 .... 987.00
Sale of reprints of Volume 40, Pt. 2 . 337.50
Sale of Academy publications . 315.10
Interest on endowment and other investments . 91.43
Grant-in-aid for research from A.A.A.S . 94.00
Receipts from Junior Academy . 44.25
State of Wisconsin (for publication of Transactions) . . . 2,318.62
Donations :
Anonymous to Junior Academy prizes . 25.00
F. Zirrer to publication of Transactions . . 5.00
Sale of Volume 39 retained in Savings Account No. 498 51.00
Total Receipts . $5,867.08
Disbursements
Cost of reprints of Volume 40, Pts. 2 . $ 362.00
A.A.A.S. Grant-in-aid to L. W. Seifert . 94.00
Transfer to Savings Account 3262 . 91.43
Operating expenses:
Envelopes, stationery, etc . 55.15
Annual meeting, programs, etc . 101.18
Postage and incidentals . . . 55.63
Safety deposit box . 4.80
Junior Academy expenses . 99.93
Secretarial allowance to Robert J. Dicke . 300.00
Publication expenses:
Printing and binding, 1,500 copies Vol. 40, Pt. 2 . 2,514.25
Engraving costs . 13.65
Milwaukee Public Museum (closing out Savings Account
No. 498 for sale of Volume 39) . . . 51.00
Total Disbursements . . . $3,743.02
Balance on hand April 1, 1952 . . . 2,124.06
$5,867.08
Robert J. Dicke
Secre tary- Treasurer
The Auditing Committee has examined the accounts of the Treasurer and
has found them in order.
Auditing Committee
L. E. Noland
H. A. Schuette