4 The American Geologist. January, 1804 
on the subject.* He did not, however, remain in Ohio long 
enough to become identified with it, ;is doubtless he would 
had he continued a citi/en of that State. His lot was to be 
cast with a new common.wealth, where his manhood and his 
mental vigor were to expand as the manifold exigencies of ;i 
new State might call for them. Wisconsin was still a portion 
of the "Territory of Michigan," when, in July, 1836, he ar- 
rived at Milwaukee, then a village of 1,200 inhabitants, where 
"the red man still lingered and exchanged his furs for the 
products of civilization." 
Thenceforward the life and public acts of Laphaiii are 
interwoven with the history of Wisconsin, and constitute 
some of the important threads of its warp. Although he was 
without the initial advantages of a liberal education, was 
averse to appearance in public, naturally retiring in manner 
and wholly unselfish in his scientific work, he accumulated a 
fund of knowledge and acquired a fluency of expression 
that made him the first authority in the Northwest 
on the varied questions of either natural or physical sci- 
ence that concerned his commonwealth. The exactness 
and multiplicity of his observations and the carefulness of his 
deductions, based on the engineering training of his early 
years combined to render his writings both detailed and com- 
prehensive, and to give him a rank among the first scientists 
of his day in several of the scientific fields in which he la- 
bored. Most American scientists, fifty or sixty years ago, 
embraced all natural science. Lapham neglected none. Be- 
ginning with the record of weather observations at Louisville, 
and the publication of them in the local newspapers, he pushed 
his meteorological studies so vigorously and judiciously that, 
through his efforts largely, the government was induced to 
organize the "Signal Service" observations and predictions of 
the weather. The collection of arrow-points in Ohio was 
continued in Wisconsin, and was extended to the completion 
of a survey of the aboriginal mounds of Wisconsin, which was 
published as a quarto volume by the Smithsonian institution. 
From the amateur in botany, collecting for himself, he organ- 
ized a grand scheme for the thorough study and illustration 
*Ohio State Docs., 1837, p. 31 (Sherman). See Am. Jour. Sci., (1), 
xxxn, p. 190, for a notice of the report rendered by this committee. 
