1872II Leaving Cornell 



interests were primarily geographical and descriptive. 

 I wished to know plants as plants, and in their 

 relations to environment. And while, as time went 

 on, I acquired more confidence in my own capacity, 

 and came to feel that I wanted to be a teacher of 

 science, I was by no means sure that my chosen 

 field for research would continue to lie in Botany. 

 My Commencement essay (printed in the Cornell 

 Era as "The Colors of Vegetation") had little 

 importance as an original contribution. My Master's 

 thesis dealing with the Flora of Wyoming County 

 contained considerable new matter of local value, 

 though it was never published. Toward Geology 

 and Ornithology I had meanwhile felt a growing 

 attraction; but Vertebrate Zoology was to claim 

 my final allegiance. 



Upon graduation in 1872 I decided not to remain Professor- 

 as instructor in Botany at ^750 a year, accepting ^^''P^^ 

 instead the ^1300 professorship of Natural Science 

 at Lombard University — now Lombard College — 

 an institution under the direction of the Universalist 

 Church, located at Galesburg, Illinois. The months 

 of July and August I spent with Herbert Copeland 

 at his father's home in Monroe, Wisconsin. Going 

 West by way of the Great Lakes, I reached Chicago 

 just after the great fire which left scarcely anything 

 of that once enterprising frontier town. For the 

 whole city had been made up of wooden structures, 

 and the conflagration, starting in the overturn of a 

 lantern by a reckless cow, obliterated everything 

 from what is now the southern edge of the business 

 district to Lincoln Park in the north. 



While in Chicago I went out to see for the first 



n loi 3 



