THE 



AMERICAN NATURALIST 



Vol. LI. January, 1917 No. 601 



THE PERSONALITY, HEREDITY AND WORK OF 

 CHARLES OTIS WHITMAN, 1843-1910 



DR. CHARLES B. DAVENPORT 

 Cold Spring Harbor 



At Pinhook, in the town of Woodstock, Maine, was 

 bom December 12, 1843,^ a male child named bv his par- 

 ents, Joseph and Marcia Whitman, Charles Otis. Some 

 time thereafter the parents and their children removed to 

 Waterford (where they were in the '50s) and in 1861 to 

 Bryant's Pond (Fig. 1). All of these places are in the 

 sonthern part of Oxford County, 50 miles or so from the 

 coast at Portland, in about the latitude of the Presidential 

 Range of the White Mountains— a country of high hills 

 and small mountains, covered with pine and hardwood 

 forests, abounding in lakes with some fertile plains be- 

 tween ; a country affording a stimulating environment to 

 a boy with an inherent love of nature. And a love of na- 

 ture was widespread in the boys of this country and in 

 their fathers. Take, for example, Jacob Whitman. Born 

 in Easton, Mass., twenty miles south of Boston and ten 

 miles north of Taunton it would appear that his lines had 

 been pleasantly cast. But^ he had an adventurous spirit 

 and was perhaps " very wilful." He was with the '*min- 



1 The date is given as December 14, 1842, by Lillie, 1911, and Morse, 

 1912; also National Cyclopedia of American Biography, XI, p. 73. The 

 date given above is that of the Whitman Genealogy. It also agrees with 

 that remembered by Mrs. II. D. Smith (Mary Whitman) because her sister 

 Sarah was born September 10, 1843, and Charles O. was born the December 



