THURE KUMLIEN. 953 
thorough familiarity with so many branches of botany seem 
more remarkable, more unmistakably indicative of uncommon 
natural gifts, is that fact that, even from boyhood, his specialty 
appears to have been ornithology. It was to the birds, yet 
not so as to exclude other branches of zoological study with 
which he was also very familiar, that he gave most of his 
time. On his vacation tours in college days, he had pene- 
irated to some remoter parts of the Scandinavian peninsula, 
and had visited the islands in the Baltie; and, although he 
gave us charming word pictures of the flora of those more 
secluded places, it was plain that what had pleased him most 
had been the new gains thus made in the knowledge of his 
partieular favorites, the birds. Even the fame, which he 
would not seek, but which was thrust upon him at last, in no 
small measure, was that of an ornithologist. It was with 
reference to its probable facilities for ornithological work 
that, under the guidance of a map only, and from afar, he 
made choice of the locality in Wisconsin where he would 
build his cottage and consecrate his home. 
It was on the twentieth of August and, if I mistake not, in 
the year 1843, that Mr. Kumlien, then but twenty-four years 
of age, reached the shores of America,’ accompanied by his 
young wife; their faces set for the Wisconsin frontier. The 
part of the country which had been determined upon, as I 
have said, from a map-study of the whole region while they 
were yet more than a thousand miles away from it, was the 
vicinity of Lake Koshkonong, in Jefferson County. The spot 
when reached must fully have answered every expectation of 
the young naturalist. The lake, some eight or nine miles 
long and three in breadth, as I remember it, is but an expan- 
sion of Rock River, its sinuous shore line touching the bases 
of a hundred low hills covered with oaks or overrun with 
hazel, with many a fair interval of open grassy slope, or wide- 
spread lowland meadows. The larger estuaries, sheltered by 
Remo us d qa HC ue if cuc c f T E 
! Mr. Wheeler has given 1844 as the year of arrival ; but I have excel- 
lent reason for thinking that he came a year earlier than t at. 
