128 



Illinois Natural History Survey Bulletin 



Vol. 27, Art. 2 



Illinois birds by Henry Pratten (1855), 

 one on the Mollusca of southern Illinois 

 by H. A. Ulffers (1855), and another 

 (solicited by the Society's secretary) on 

 the animals of Cook County by Robert 

 Kennicott (1855). It is interesting that 

 in this last article Kennicott recorded 

 "buffalo" and elk for Cook County and 

 noted that the "wild pigeon" (passenger 

 pigeon) was "very abundant" and the 

 magpie "not uncommon in winter." 



For a few years after the first corpo- 

 rate form of the Illinois Natural History 

 Survey had come into being as the Illi- 

 nois Natural History Society, the Agri- 

 cultural Society published the proceed- 

 ings of the infant organization. 



In Illinois the faunistic worker of 1858 

 had few of the work aids which we en- 

 joy today. The only Midwestern institu- 

 tional reference collection was that at 

 Northwestern University, built up by 

 Robert Kennicott and considered out- 

 standing in its day, although small and 

 limited in group representation compared 

 with collections now available. 



Most zoologists accumulated their own 

 private collections, identifying their speci- 

 mens with the aid of the few books avail- 

 able and through consultation with other 

 naturalists. Few libraries existed in the 

 area. The reference shelves of the best 

 zoologists contained comprehensive treat- 

 ments covering the eastern North Ameri- 

 can fauna for most of the vertebrates and 

 the Mollusca. For the insects Say's vol- 

 umes were available, but for many orders 

 his treatment was fragmentary. For most 

 insect groups and many other inverte- 

 brates, extremely helpful world synopses 

 had just been written by European au- 

 thors, and some of them contained sepa- 

 rate keys for the North American spe- 

 cies. Aside from these basic references, 

 there existed a number of journals carry- 

 ing short papers, some of them published 

 by the scientific societies of the Atlantic 

 seaboard states, where such societies had 

 been organized a century before their 

 Midwestern counterparts. 



This period, the 1850's, was a stirring 

 one scientifically. Europe had just wit- 

 nessed the successive development of com- 

 parative anatomy and physiology, the cell 

 theory, embryology, histology, and the 

 theory of evolution. These basic concepts 



did not immediately influence faunistic 

 work in North America but they did so 

 later to a greater and greater degree. In 

 North America prior to the 1850's, the 

 great bulk of the invertebrate material, 

 including insects, had been sent to Euro- 

 pean specialists for description. Follow- 

 ing the pioneer examples of Frederick 

 Melsheimer and Thomas Say with in- 

 sects and mollusks, American zoologists 

 w^ere beginning to describe more and 

 more species of the native American 

 fauna. In the invertebrate groups they 

 had virtually a virgin field, for in 1858 

 great numbers of species were still un- 

 known, and workable synopses were avail- 

 able for only a small proportion of the 

 native American fauna. 



CHANGING HABITATS 



Originally Illinois was chiefly a com- 

 bination of forested hilly country and flat 

 mesic prairies of a marshy nature. Inter- 

 spersed with these main types were sand 

 areas, bogs, river and stream habitats, 

 and other local areas of diverse kinds. 

 The rapid rise in the population of Illi- 

 nois in the mid-nineteenth century initi- 

 ated in the native vegetation drastic 

 changes which have progressed steadily 

 to the present time; these changes have 

 had a marked effect on the distribution 

 and composition of the animal life of 

 the state. 



By 1858, towns or farms or logged- 

 over areas had broken up large tracts of 

 forest. Plowing had made great inroads 

 into the prairies. Large area drainage op- 

 erations in the marsh country had started 

 about 1850, had gained great momentum 

 by 1880, and by 1900 had turned the 

 great bulk of the marshland into farms. 

 The resultant changing ecology is a back- 

 ground feature important to keep in mind 

 when viewing the faunistic developments 

 outlined in this chapter. 



PERIODS OF FAUNISTIC 

 ACTIVITIES 



The faunistic activities of the Illinois 

 Natural History Survey and its prede- 

 cessors may be divided into three fairly 

 distinct periods, the initial, chiefly vol- 

 untary, period of roughly 1858-1869, the 



