1SSo. | Notes and News. 205 
Museum of Milwaukee, published in the Sixth Annual Report of that In- 
stitution, and the other by Mr. Edward L. Greene, published in ‘Pittonia’ 
(Vol. I, pp.250-260),—from which we condense the following sketch. 
Thure Ludwig Theodor Kumlien was born in Herrlunda Parish, Wester- 
gothland, Sweden, Nov. 9, 1819,and died in Milwaukee. Wisc., where he 
had long lived, August 5, 1888, in his seventieth year. He was graduated 
from the University of Upsala in 1843, and the following year immigrated 
with his young wife to America, settling near Lake Koshkonong, in Jef- 
ferson County, Wisconsin. For the next twenty years he devoted much 
of his time to gathering natural history collections for the Stockholm, 
Leyden and British Museums, and for the Smithsonian and various other 
museums in this country. From 1844 he was in constant communication 
with Dr. Thomas M. Brewer till the death of Dr. Brewer in 1879, through 
whom most of his ornithological observations were published. He was 
also in frequent correspondence with the late Prof. S. F. Baird, and 
with such eminent foreign naturalists as Fries, Sundeval, Nielson, and 
von Eylen of Sweden, Steenstrup, Sars, and Loven of Norway, Peters 
of Berlin, Schlegel of Leyden, J. E. Gray, Alfred Newton and H. E. 
Dresser of England. For three years (1867-1870) he was a teacher in 
Albion Academy, and later was in the employ of the State Normal 
Schools and the Wisconsin University, for which he formed collections 
in natural history. From 1881 to 1883 he was employed by the Wis- 
consin Natural History Society, and for the last five years of his life 
was Conservator to the Milwaukee Public Museum. He was a zealous 
collector and acute observer, a man of high intellectual culture, and 
most amiable and unassuming in character. His youthful love for scien- 
tific pursuits persisted through life, but in consequence of his untoward 
surroundings and isolation from large museums and libraries his in- 
vestigations were necessarily limited to the products of the woods 
and prairies of his immediate vicinity. His early pioneer life was 
thus unfavorable to the spirit of research, and he has consequently left 
no published works or papers of any great importance. His influence, 
however, upon the rising generation of naturalists with whom he came 
in contact was most efficient and encouraging. Ornithology and botany 
were his favorite fields of study, and he is said to have early made himself 
familiar with all of the species of birds and plants found about his wil- 
derness home. To quote from Mr. Greene’s tribute, ‘* A purer, nobler 
type of the naturalist of the reserved and quiet, non-advertising class, 
there probably was not in his day, in America,” than Mr. Kumlien; and, 
he adds, ‘‘there will be more than one botanist arnong us, with whom the 
name and memory of Thure Kumlien will forever be held in deep and 
loving veneration.” Dr. Brewer made copious extracts from Mr. Kum- 
lien’s ornithological notes in the ‘ History of North American Birds,’ 
by Baird, Brewer, and Ridgway, and also published many of his records 
in the ‘ Proceedings’ of the Boston Society of Natural History. An 
almost abnormal dislike of placing himself before the public is said to 
have prevented his publishing the results of his researches. 
o 
