4 JOEL ASAPH ALLEN— CHAPMAN lMEM0 ™ vft?xxi L , 



Utah, which became his base for the ensuing 7 weeks. In October he worked at Green 

 River and Fort Fred Steele, and from October 20 to December 18 at Percy. Here he secured 

 the assistance of two native hunters, and the collections, chiefly of big game, shipped from this 

 point nearly filled a freight car. December 19 he started eastward and, after a short stop in 

 Kansas to secure buffalo, reached Cambridge on January 22, 1872. The collection made 

 on this expedition included 200 skins, 60 skeletons, and 240 additional skulls of mammals 

 (mostly large species), 1,500 birds' skins, over 100 birds in alcohol, a large number of birds' 

 nests and eggs, recent and fossil fishes, mollusks, insects, and crustaceans. 



The following year Doctor Allen, representing both the Cambridge Museum and the 

 Smithsonian Institution, again went to our western frontier, on this occasion as chief of the 

 scientific staff attached to the survey of the Northern Pacific Railroad. Railhead on this road 

 was then at Fargo, N. Dak., beyond which construction trains ran as far as Bismarck. 



The work of the expedition lay in the country between Bismarck and a point on the 

 Mussellshell River, about 50 miles northwest of Pompey's Pillar on the Yellowstone, a distance 

 of about 550 miles. The journey occupied some three months from June 20. 



The region was infested by actively hostile Indians who had so interfered with the survey 

 for the railroad route that an escort of 1,400 troops under General Custer accompanied the 

 expedition. It was only three years later that this officer and his entire command were killed 

 some 60 miles south of the most western point reached by Doctor Allen. 



After passing the mouth of the Powder River the expedition was in daily contact with 

 Indians and twice was attacked in force; orders were given forbidding the naturalists to use 

 firearms or to leave the line of march, and, Doctor Allen writes, " The opportunities for natural- 

 history collecting and field research on this expedition were far from ideal," but some specimens 

 and much valuable data were secured which later formed the basis of a report of some 60 pages. 

 With the exception of a visit to Colorado with William Brewster, in 1882, made chiefly to 

 regain his greatly impaired health, Doctor Allen did not again enter the field. His collecting 

 days, therefore, were ended before those of most of his colleagues were well under way, and 

 few who knew him only in the study realized the extent of his travels, the dangers on sea and 

 land to which he had been exposed, and the amount of material he had secured. The present- 

 day naturalist, who travels in palatial steamers or follows well-worn trails, has but faint con- 

 ception of the discomforts of a 90-day voyage in a small sailing vessel and has perhaps never 

 experienced the risk of being himself collected. 



From 1876 to 1882 Doctor Allen gave his time wholly to research, producing his mono- 

 graphs on the American Bison, Living and Extinct, and North American Pinnipeds, the latter 

 a volume of 800 pages. The intensity with which he applied himself to these and other tasks 

 during this period overtaxed his always limited reserve powers and for long periods he waa 

 able to do little or no work. 



ASSOCIATION WITH THE MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY 



Doctor Allen's association with the Museum of Comparative Zoology began when as a 

 student under Agassiz, he acted as an assistant in routine work, and received a monthly allow- 

 ance sufficient for his living expenses, together with a furnished room in the museum dormitory. 



He was not, however, made a member of the museum's scientific staff until 1871, when he 

 became "assistant in ornithology." He continued to act as curator of birds and mammals 

 until 1885, when he resigned to accept a similar position in the American Museum of Natural 

 History. 



Practically all Doctor Allen's field work after boyhood was done for or under the auspices 

 of the Museum of Comparative Zoology, and he thus laid the foundation for the valuable col- 

 lections of birds and mammals contained in that institution. The care of this material for- 

 tunately did not prevent Doctor Allen from making the philosophical researches which soon 

 distinguished him, and some of his most important contributions to science were produced 

 while he was associated with the Museum of Comparative Zoology. Chiefly through his 

 influence and that of William Brewster, Cambridge became the center of ornithological activity 



