AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NOTES. 



19 



and returned to the farm. Vith this change of occupation my health 

 improved, and with it my old love strengthened. During the winter of 

 1866-1867, the point of non-resistance was reached, and I planned a natural 

 history collecting trip to the Middle West, in parts of which several of my 

 mother's brothers and sisters had settled as pioneers, thus affording me 

 convenient bases from which to prosecute my work. I was successful in 

 securing orders in advance for specimens of both animals and plants, and 

 so successful in filling the orders that after thousands of miles of travel and 

 the acquisition of a most valuable experience I returned home free of debt, 

 and therefore perfectly satisfied with the results. This trip furnished 

 material for several faunal papers, published in the 'Proceedings' and 

 'Memoirs' of the Boston Society of Natural History. 



The month of May was spent near Sodus Bay, on Lake Ontario. Dur- 

 ing June the Chicago Academy of Sciences was the point from which 

 excursions were made into the adjoining country, including a trip to Rich- 

 mond, Indiana, where as a guest of a fellow naturalist, I passed one of the 

 most enjoyable weeks of my life, collecting fossils as well as birds, insects 

 and shells. Several weeks were spent in north-central Illinois, and also in 

 the vicinity of Des Moines, Iowa. During most of July and August I was 

 a guest of the Iowa Geological Survey, through the kindness of the State 

 Geologist, Dr. Charles A. White, and of his field assistant, my friend 

 Orestes H. St. John, who had been a fellow-student with me at the Cambridge 

 Museum and my companion on the Brazil expedition. I accompanied 

 him during his reconnaissance of an area about sixty miles square in south- 

 west-central Iowa (mainly the nine counties of Dallas, Guthrie, Boone, 

 Greene, Carroll, Crawford, Sac, Calhoun and Audubon), the greater part 

 of which region, and thence westward to the Missouri River, was still 

 practically an unsettled wilderness. Our camp wagon was our sole shelter 

 and our immediate source of supply, and our teamster-cook our only human 

 associate for many days together. Here I made general collections, but 

 for the most part found plants and insects the most profitable, securing 

 during the trip several species of each that proved to be new to science. 

 On my return I spent a few weeks in southern Michigan, and made another 

 short stay at Sodus, N. Y. 



This out of door life proved of great benefit to my health, and while 

 still in the West I wrote to Professor Agassiz that I felt again equal to 

 resuming my duties at the Museum of Comparative Zoology. His response 

 was a most cordial invitation to return, and in October I resumed my post, 

 where I remained uninterruptedly for the next eighteen years, except when 

 in the field on Museum expeditions, as noted in the following narrative. I 

 had already been placed in charge of the departments of mammals and birds 



