Edward H. Taylor : recollections of an herpetologist / Edward H. Taylor ... [et al.]
[book]
Edward Harrison Taylor
1975
unpublished
Perhaps to accompany this bit of family history, I should present some idea of the local environment. The house in Maysville, Missouri had very ample surroundings, perhaps a block square, with garden space, a croquet ground, an icehouse, a smokehouse, and what are, perhaps, now called comfort stations. Directly across the street were buildings, stables, grain bins and the like. And immediately west of the house and its environs were fields and a splendid orchard. Occupying a lot to the north
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... our nearest neighbor Zack Savage, and across the street from him was a Mr. Ransome. This area might be regarded as my early home range. The house had been built by Grandfather and it incorporated part of an old semi-log house that contained a large fireplace in which 6-foot logs could be accommodated and where a great copper kettle might spread the rich aroma of boiling apple butter. This was our living room. A kitchen and a parlor and various and a single poisonous water moccasin found despite the fact that they are not uncommon in northern Oklahoma and Arkansas. Our leader was a veritable slave driver. My job, since I was a relatively good swimmer, was to follow our seine and remove logs, brush, and debris from it. It would be exaggerating only a RECOLLECTIONS OF AN HERPETOLOGIST 7 bit to say the job was continuous, and I practically learned to breathe under water. One morning, while trying to detach the seine from some object, I complained of illness; but our "leader" said "unloosen the seine." I tried, but I had to be taken out of the water. I was indeed ill, from what I later learned was malaria! In Kansas! We started back at once for Lawrence but the movement of our covered wagon was too much for me, so we stopped at a farm, and I was bedded down in a manger in the bam. A doctor was sent for. After he diagnosed the illness as malaria, he assured my companions that I wouldn't shuffle off, and prescribed medicine for me. After three days we again started for Lawrence, this time with interruptions of only an hour or two at a time when I needed relief from the eternal shaking of the old wagon. This case of malaria lasted about a month. Seemingly, once was enough; for despite some twenty-two years spent outside of the U.S.A.twenty-one of them in the subtropics or tropics -I have escaped contracting malaria again, even though its presence was almost universal wherever I journeyed. My second winter in the university I began fraternity life. Although my funds were small I eked them out by working in the library under the supervision of Carrie Watson and Mary Maud Smeltzer. I even waited tables at the old Hiawatha Restaurant for a time. The following summer I joined the paleontological group from the Museum of Natural History in exploring the chalk beds of Kansas. These beds are lying at the bottom of what was an ancient Cretaceous sea in central Kansas. One of my professors, Dr. Clarence McClung, accompanied the group and I had my first experience in looking for fossilsnot that I found many. I did, however, get a fair variety of the live reptiles and amphibians that inhabited Trego and Gove counties. We had a bit of excitement when Dr. McClung, after finding a likely looking gully filled to the top with "tumbling tumble weeds," set fire to them. The blaze destroyed the weeds but, to our dismay, it escaped the confines of the gully walls (twenty-five feet high) and started prairie fires in the short buffalo grass on both sides of the gully. We finally were able to put them out after getting assistance from the other members of the party. It was the most strenuous task of our summer, the sun giving no respite and the clouds offering no shade. One day while we were in the field, a rainstorm threatened and Dr. McClung suggested we return to camp with our team and cart. The storm broke; the team balked and, frightened by the ubiquitous thunder and lightning, refused to go on. So much rain fell that Dr. McClung knew the tiny waterway at the edge of 8 SPECIAL PUBLICATION MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY our tent would be filled to overflowing and thus could destroy much of the summer's work. He urged me to run to camp a mileand-a-half away; I got there in time to move our prize finds back from the encroaching stream which later covered the area. That evening, after supper, we heard a great chorus of toads which the downpour had brought up out of the prairie. It was a large species, Bufo cognatus. I collected fifty specimens but could have tripled this number had it been desirable. None of us had seen any of this species in the preceding weeks. The fact was that I had devoted more time to collecting reptiles and amphibians than fossils. This was good training for my work in foreign countries. When we returned to the university, my specimens were identified, catalogued, and placed in the collection in the museum. Trips such as these afforded opportunities for closer associations
doi:10.5962/bhl.title.4250
fatcat:iis4dhsbxzdxldf36ni47vmmua