Proceedings of the Academy. 
695 
such a toughening of physical and mental fiber as one would not 
wish to have escaped. It brought its hard lessons of self-dependence, 
of adaptation, of courage and of tenacity. It would be a pleasure 
to dwell at length upon the primitive aspects of Wisconsin clothed in 
the charm of its untouched nativity, but I must confine myself to that 
one phase which stimulated some of the special intellectual activities 
which led up to the event we celebrate. 
Virgin Wisconsin was a paradise for the naturalist. Its situation 
gave it rare advantages. Its latitude placed it in the mid-zone of 
the teeming life that migrated annually between the high north and 
the genial south, while its longitude placed it in a peculiarly rich 
tract of that zone. The great lake on its eastern border served as a 
broad blunt wedge which parted the migrating host into two great 
divisions: on the one hand, the forest lovers who sought the wooded 
regions of the northeast in summer and the like regions of the south¬ 
east in winter; on the other hand, the prairie lovers that preferred 
the great open plains. Between these there was a middle zone and 
a middle host formed in part of the overlap of the two other hosts, 
but in part also of those species which distinctly preferred the border 
tract of “openings,” the parks of interspersed prairie, meadow and 
woodland, lying between the great forests and the great plains. The 
southern and western part of Wisconsin was one of the most charm¬ 
ing sections of this great border tract of natural parks. Thru this 
parkway there swept northward each spring and southward each fall 
a mixed multitude of winged life that now, in its depleted state, seems 
really incredible. The great woods of the north and northeast, with 
Lake Superior in their rear, tended to shunt this host to the northwest 
and caused congestion of their front. If I were to try to tell you 
in specific terms of the richness and variety of life in springtime, as 
I remember it, I fear you would feel impelled to call into service 
the famous mot of Von Buch: “I am glad you saw that; for if I had 
seen it, I would not have believed it.” 
Out of the irresistible attractions of the native life of the air, the 
woodlands, the grove-encircled prairies, the meadows, the marshes, 
the limpid streams, and the charming lakes of Wisconsin, there grew 
the first notable stage of spontaneous scientific activity, the stage of 
the enthusiastic naturalist. It was quite in the natural order of 
things that where personal conditions favored, as among surveyors 
like Lapham and amony doctors of wide country practice like Hoy, 
there should arise enthusiastic students of the rich fauna and the 
flora of the region as also of the land that lay beneath and of the 
sky that hung overhead. This stage of naturalistic enthusiasm 
reached its climax somewhat before the general conditions in the 
state were ripe for the founding of the Academy; and so the pioneer 
naturalists of Wisconsin, particularly Lapham and Hoy, may be re¬ 
garded as the forefathers of the Academy quite as truly as its found¬ 
ers. Though the naturalistic stage had already somwhat declined 
when the time for the inauguration of the Academy had come, it was 
a very essential preliminary to the founding of the Academy. 
