40 Kansas Academy of Sciefice. 



he ever collected and saved was a snake. He put the snake in a 

 jar of alcohol and placed it on the mantel. He said that his father, 

 referring to it, facetiously called him a professor of one snake. He 

 said further that a prairie-chicken hunt that he and Professor Rob- 

 inson took in the fall of 1866, while waiting for the first term of 

 the University to open, gave him his first ideas about collecting 

 and studying birds. 



The oldest specimen I have been able to find in the University 

 natural history museum, collected by Doctor Snow himself, is a 

 snow goose, taken in April, 1870. In 1871, 1872 and 1873 a consid- 

 erable number of bird-skin specimens were collected by Doctor 

 Snow and his student assistants. While he was a keen student of 

 birds, he never saved but a few skins, and mounted no specimens 

 with his own hands. 



Among his earliest collections were insects. These, as well as 

 other natural history specimens, were first collected to illustrate 

 lectures in the classroom. As he taught classes in nearly every 

 branch of natural history, he thus laid the foundation for the 

 magnificent collections the University now possesses. As his work 

 progressed he made many reports to this Academy, and its pages 

 are full of lists of specimens (especially of insects) which he 

 secured on his various expeditions. However, his first paper was 

 on " The Fishes of Kansas River," and was read before the Academy 

 September 6, 1870. 



In 1871 he read his first paper on " The Birds of Kansas," and 

 in September, 1873, he read his first paper on insects, entitled "The 

 Lepidoptera of Kansas." 



SCIENTIFIC EXPEDITIONS. 



We will now give a brief account of the twenty-six scientific 

 expeditions which Doctor Snow made during the forty-two years 

 he was connected with the University. More or less complete^ 

 records of fourteen of these expeditions have been published in 

 the proceedings of this Society. They extended over parts of 

 western Kansas, Colorado, southwestern Texas, New Mexico and 

 Arizona. The chief object of these excursions was to make collec- 

 tions of insects, though he was interested in nearly every branch 

 of natural history, and encouraged his assistants and students to 

 collect birds, mammals, reptiles, fishes and plants, as well as speci- 

 mens of rocks, minerals and fossils. 



1. The first collecting trip that Doctor Snow made, outside of 

 the vicinity of Lawrence and Douglas county, was in 1876, to 

 Colorado Springs and Pike's Peak. Five members of the gradua- 



