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the Wisconsin

Sciences,
Arts o

TRANSACTIONS

OF THE

WISCONSIN ACADEMY
OF SCIENCES, ARTS
AND LETTERS

Volume 71, Part I, 1983

OCT 4 19g3

viffiRARlES.

Co-editors

PHILIP WHITFORD
KATHRYN WHITFORD

Copyright © 1983

Wisconsin Academy of Science, Arts and Letters.
Manufactured in United States of America.

All Rights Reserved.

TRANSACTIONS OF THE
WISCONSIN ACADEMY

Established 1870
Volume 71
Part I, 1983

KATHERINE GREACEN NELSON 1

MILWAUKEE’S GENTLEMEN PALEONTOLOGISTS 5

Donald G. Mikulic

SILURIAN BENTHIC INVERTEBRATE ASSOCIATIONS OF
EASTERN IOWA AND THEIR PALEOENVIRONMENTAL
SIGNIFICANCE 21

Brian J. Witzke

OBSERVATIONS ON THE COMMENSAL RELATIONSHIPS
BETWEEN PLATYCERATID GASTROPODS AND STALKED
ECHINODERMS 48

Joanne L. Kluessendorf

MICROFAUNA OF THE SILURIAN WALDRON SHALE,

SOUTHEASTERN INDIANA 56

Susan M. Siemann-Gartmann

EVOLUTION OF A BIOSTRATIGRAPHIC ZONATION: LESSONS
FROM LOWER TRIASSIC CONODONTS, U.S. CORDILLERA 68

Rachel Krebs Pauli

CONODONTS AND BIOSTRATIGRAPHY OF THE MUSCATATUCK
GROUP (MIDDLE DEVONIAN), SOUTH-CENTRAL INDIANA
AND NORTH-CENTRAL KENTUCKY 79

Curtis R. Klug

WISCONSIN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, ARTS AND LETTERS

The Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters was chartered by the State Legislature on
March 16, 1870 as an incorporated society serving the people of the State of Wisconsin by
encouraging investigation and dissemination of knowledge in the sciences, arts and letters.

OFFICERS

PRESIDENT

Martha Peterson , Madison

PRESIDENT-ELECT
Kenneth Dowling

IMMEDIATE PAST PRESIDENT
Theodore N. Savides

VICE-PRESIDENTS
Koby T. Crabtree (Sciences), Wausau
William H. Tishler (Arts), Madison
Michael Sherman (Letters), Madison

SECRETARY-TREASURER
Robert E. Najem, Madison

COUNCILORS-AT-LARGE

TERM EXPIRES 1987
Joyce M. Erdman, Madison
Daniel O. Trainer, Stevens Point

TERM EXPIRES 1986
Margaret Fish Rahill, Milwaukee
Gerald Viste, Wausau

TERM EXPIRES 1985
Nancy Noeske, Milwaukee
F. Chandler Young, Madison

TERM EXPIRES 1984
Charles C. Bradley, Baraboo
Robert Ragotzkie, Madison

COUNCIL-APPOINTED POSITIONS

LIBRARIAN

Jack A. Clarke, Madison

DIRECTOR— W.A.S.A.L.

DIRECTOR— JUNIOR ACADEMY
LeRoy R. Lee, Madison

EDITORS

Kay and Philip Whitford, Transactions
Patricia Powell, Review

EDITORIAL POLICY

The TRANSACTIONS of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Let¬
ters is an annual publication devoted to original papers, preference being given to
the works of Academy members. Sound manuscripts dealing with features of the
State of Wisconsin and its people are especially welcome; papers on more general
topics are occasionally published. Subject matter experts review each manuscript
submitted.

Contributors are asked to submit two copies of their manuscripts. Manuscripts
should be typed double-spaced on 8 Vi x 11 inch bond paper. The title of the paper
should be centered at the top of the first page. The author’s name and brief address
should appear below the title. Each page of the manuscript beyond the first should
bear the page number and author’s name for identification, e.g. Brown-2, Brown-3,
etc. Identify on a separate page, the author with his institution, if appropriate, or
with his personal address to be used in Authors’ Addresses at the end of the printed
volume.

The style of the text may be that of scholarly writing in the field of the author.
To expedite editing and minimize printing costs the Editor suggests that the general
form of the current volume of TRANSACTIONS be examined and followed when¬
ever possible. For Science papers, an abstract is requested. Documentary notations
may be useful, especially for the Arts and Letters papers, and should be numbered
for identification in the text. Such notations as a group, should be separate from the
text pages and may occupy one or more pages as needed. Literature Cited should be
listed alphabetically at the end of the manuscript unless included in notations. The
style of the references will be standardized as in the current volume to promote ac¬
curacy and reduce printing costs.

Figures should be prepared to permit reduction. Lettering should be large
enough to form characters at least 1 mm high after reduction. Only high contrast
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second copy, but are not sharp enough for printing.)

Printing is expensive. Each paper will be subject to a per page charge to the
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Each author will receive one complimentary copy of the volume of Transactions in
which his work appears.

Papers received after July 1 will be considered for the next annual volume.
Manuscripts should be sent to:

Philip & Kathryn Whitford
Co-Editors: TRANSACTIONS

2647 Booth St.

Milwaukee, WI 53212

DEDICATION

This memorial volume presents the results of a paleonto¬
logical symposium sponsored by colleagues, alumni and
students of The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, De¬
partment of Geological and Geophysical Sciences as a
tribute to the productive life of Dr. Katherine Greacen
Nelson. This symposium was held on the old Milwaukee
Downer Campus in Milwaukee on January i; 1983, and all
participants were Katherine’s students.

It is appropriate that this memorial volume, sponsored
by contributions from former students and industries that
employ her students, be published in the Transactions of
the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. She
worked for many years in a variety of capacities for the
Academy, and was the first woman elected as President.

To Katherine Greacen Nelson, geologist, educator, and
friend, we dedicate this volume with love for enriching the
lives of so many people.

1

Katherine Greacen Nelson

KATHERINE GREACEN NELSON

Katherine Greacen was born in Sierra
Madre, California on December 9, 1913. She
was married to Attorney Frank H. Nelson of
Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She died on Decem¬
ber 29, 1982 in Milwaukee after a short but
valiant fight against cancer.

After receiving the first Ph.D. in geology
from Rutgers University in 1938, Katherine
began her distinguished career of service at
Milwaukee Downer College. After World
War II duty in the oil fields of Texas, she
returned to Milwaukee and made contribu¬
tions at Milwaukee Downer Seminary, the
Y.W.C.A., and Wisconsin State College
before joining The University of Wisconsin-
Milwaukee Faculty in 1956.

Although Katherine’s professional accom¬
plishments include numerous scholarly
papers, she is best known for her devotion to
teaching others about the earth. Most uni¬
versity professors restrict their teaching to
college-level courses and the supervision of
graduate students, but not Katherine. She
was always generous in her educational en¬
deavors, and was equally available to, and
comfortable with, a bus load of school
children visiting the Greene Museum or
congressmen contemplating the potential for
the Ice Age Scientific Reserve. She never
undertook any assignment with thought of
personal reward or recognition. All she ever
cared about was helping an individual, a
group, or an organization. Such selfless
people are rare in our society.

In addition to being the first chairperson
of the Department of Geological and Geo¬
physical Sciences at UWM, Katherine found
time to serve the University on dozens of
committees, including two terms on the
Faculty Senate. She was a Fellow of the

Geological Society of America, and a
member of the Paleontological Society and
the American Association of Petroleum
Geologists.

Katherine held offices in a score of
service-oriented organizations. For special
contributions toward the establishment of a
Sigma Xi Club at UWM, she was elected
President. In recognition of assistance to the
Milwaukee Public Museum, she was ap¬
pointed an Honorary Curator. For long¬
term service to the Wisconsin Geological
Society, including a term as President, she
was appointed an Honorary Member. She
was President of Phi Kappa Phi, and was a
nominee for President of the Earth Science
Section of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science at the time of her
death. The Midwest Federation of Mineral-
ogical and Geological Societies honored
Katherine as Educator of the Year in 1982.
She was an active contributor to programs of
the National Association of Geology Teach¬
ers, and served as President of the Central
Section. In 1978, this organization selected
her as the first woman recipient of the
prestigious Neil Miner Award for dis¬
tinguished contributions to earth science
education.

There is much more one could record
about Katherine the doer, but what about
Katherine the person? She was tranquil and
energetic with a kind word and helping hand
to all; and always with a beautiful smile. To
her, the earth was a remarkable place — to be
understood, appreciated and enjoyed. She
labored tirelessly for this belief while
imparting warmth, enthusiasm and joy to
everyone with whom she came in contact.

3

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The Katherine G. Nelson Symposium and
Memorial Program presented at The Univer¬
sity of Wisconsin-Milwaukee on January 15,
1983 was coordinated by Richard A. Pauli,
and arrangements were facilitated by Frank
J. Charnon, Gregory Mursky, Rachel K.
Pauli and Robert W. Taylor; all of the
Department of Geological and Geophysical
Sciences at The University of Wisconsin-
Milwaukee. The other faculty, staff, and
students in the department generously
assisted in many aspects of the program.
Dennis D. Bollmann, Marmik Oil Company,
Denver, Colorado and Charles W. Gart-
mann, Placid Oil Company, New Orleans,
Louisiana acted as session chairpersons.

The memorial program was conducted by
L. Joseph Lukowicz, Ladd & Lukowicz,
Denver, Colorado; Frank E. Horton,
Chancellor, The University of Wisconsin-
Milwaukee; Douglas S. Cherkauer, The
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; Robert
E. Behling, West Virginia University; and
Rachel K. Pauli, The University of Wiscon¬
sin-Milwaukee.

Rachel K. and Richard A. Pauli directed
the preparation and critical review of the
manuscripts contained in this volume. How¬
ever, the encouragement and assistance of
LeRoy R. Lee, Executive Director of the
Wisconsin Academy of Science, Arts and
Letters; and Philip B. and Kathryn D. Whit-
ford, Co-Editors of the Transactions were
critical factors in making this publication
possible.

The papers included in this volume were
critically reviewed by: Dr. Timothy R. Carr,
Arco Oil and Gas Company (Texas); Dr.
James W. Collinson, The Ohio State Univer¬
sity; Dr. Robert E. Gernant, The University
of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; Dr. Markes E.
Johnson, Williams College (Massachusetts);
Dr. Bradford Macurda, Jr., The Energists
(Texas); Dr. Rachel K. Pauli, The University

of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; Dr. Dietmar Schu¬
macher, Pennzoil Exploration and Pro¬
ducing Company (Texas); Dr. Peter M.
Sheehan, Milwaukee Public Museum and
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee;
and Dr. Dale R. Sparling, Southwest State
University (Minnesota).

Financial support for publication of this
memorial volume of the Transactions
dedicated to Katherine Greacen Nelson was
provided by The Amoco Foundation
through the efforts of many geologists and
geophysicists employed by Amoco Pro¬
duction Company; Richard W. and Julie S.
Behling, Tulsa, Oklahoma; Conoco Incor¬
porated through the efforts of William E.
Laing; Cotton Petroleum Corporation
through the efforts of Arthur L. Paquette
and Donald E. Pauli; Exploration Logging
U.S.A. through the efforts of Robert J.
Rose and Howard Greene; Exxon Company
USA through the efforts of Robert L.
Sunde; Jeffrey C. Gruetzmacher, Leaf River
Group, Houston, Texas; The InterNorth
Foundation through the efforts of Julie S.
Behling; Dietmar Schumacher, Pennzoil
Exploration and Production Company,
Houston, Texas; Sohio Alaska Petroleum
Company through the efforts of M. J.
Marfleet and Edward A. Frankovic; Robert
L. Sunde, Kingsville, Texas; Union Oil
Company of California through the efforts
of Charles W. King, Larry H. Smith and
David E. Willis.

The generosity of the individuals and
organizations listed above is gratefully ack¬
nowledged by all of Katherine's students,
friends and colleagues.

In addition, thanks are offered to present
and future contributors to the Katherine G.
Nelson Scholarship fund established by the
Department of Geological and Geophysical
Sciences at The University of Wisconsin-Mil¬
waukee.

4

MILWAUKEE’S GENTLEMEN PALEONTOLOGISTS

Donald G. Mikulic

Illinois State Geological Survey , Champaign , IL 61820

Abstract

During the last half of the nineteenth century several large fossil collections
were assembled from Silurian and Devonian rocks quarried in the vicinity of
Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Conditions for collecting were favorable at that time
because the quarries were small, low volume, hand-operated and more numerous
compared to present-day operations. Low paid quarry workers were able to signif¬
icantly supplement their incomes by selling fossils which insured a continual supply
of specimens.

These collections were assembled by a few moderately wealthy, self-educated
naturalists, who had the time, money and interest to secure large numbers of
specimens. The most prominent of these gentlemen paleontologists were Increase A.
Lapham (collection destroyed by fire in 1884), Fisk Holbrook Day (collection now
at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology), Thomas A. Greene (collection at
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee), and Edgar E. Teller (collection at the
National Museum of Natural History).

By assembling collections and publishing a few papers, these individuals stimu¬
lated paleontologic and stratigraphic research in the area by such notable geologists
as James Hall, Robert Whitfield, Stuart Weller, and many others. Since most
quarries in the area are abandoned, and because of the mechanized nature of large-
scale quarrying at those remaining, it is impossible to assemble comparable
collections of new material. These old collections, therefore, are of critical
importance to future geologic work in the area, particularly in the fields of taxo¬
nomy, biogeography, biostratigraphy, taphonomy, paleoecology, and stratigraphy.

Introduction

During the last half of the nineteenth
century, several important collections of
Silurian and Devonian fossils were made in
the vicinity of Milwaukee, Wisconsin by
local naturalists, including I. A. Lapham,
F. H. Day, T. A. Greene, E. E. Teller, and
C. E. Monroe. These collections, which
represented a great expenditure of time and
money, stimulated the interest of many
prominent scientists in the geology and
paleontology of southeastern Wisconsin.
The most important result of the subsequent
research was the discovery and correct inter¬
pretation of Silurian reefs in the area — the
first Paleozoic reefs to be identified in North
America (Fig. 1).

Two primary factors influenced the as¬
sembly of these collections. Most important
was the availability of fossil specimens, due
to the methods and intensity of quarrying
for lime and building stone. Also important,
however, was the role of the naturalist in
nineteenth century science and his moti¬
vation for an interest in natural history.
Both of these factors have changed greatly,
and the decline of the local stone industry
has made it impossible to assemble compar¬
able material. Because the older collections
are irreplaceable, they remain a key element
in geological research of the Milwaukee area
and in Silurian and Devonian paleontology
in general.

This paper discusses the conditions under

5

6

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 71, Part I,

Fig. 1. Reef structure in the west wall of the Schoonmaker quarry, Wauwatosa,
Wisconsin, 1899. This Silurian reef was the first Paleozoic reef described in North
America (Hall, 1862). This quarry was also the locality from which Day, Greene,
and Teller, as well as others, made extensive fossil collections. The area illustrated is
near the present intersection of 68th and State Streets in Wauwatosa. Photo by
W. C. Alden, Photo No. 115, U.S. Geological Survey Photo Library, Denver.

Fig. 2. Lithograph demonstrating typical nineteenth century quarrying methods. Quarry depicted was in Devonian
rocks at Mill No. 1 of the Milwaukee Cement Company shortly after the company began operations, ca. 1876. The area
shown in the lithograph is on the east bank of the Milwaukee River, near the old swimming beach in Estabrook Park,
Milwaukee. From Chamberlin (1877); drawn from a photo taken by J. C. Miller.

1983]

Mikulic— Milwaukee’s Gentlemen Paleontologists

1

which the collections were made, the prom¬
inent individuals who assembled them, and
the way in which this collecting activity has
contributed to geological research of south¬
eastern Wisconsin.

Milwaukee’s Stone Industry

Silurian and Devonian dolomite underlies
much of southeastern Wisconsin and was an
important source of building materials
throughout the 1800s. The development of
the local stone industry and the methods of
operation were important factors in the for¬
mation of the nineteenth century Milwaukee
area fossil collections. Because a fairly thick
cover of Pleistocene and Recent sediments
limits natural bedrock exposures in south¬
eastern Wisconsin, quarries were critical to
extensive collecting and the rate of fossil
discoveries was closely related to the growth
of the stone industry. Local quarrying
reached its peak in the late 1800s with the
development of the natural cement industy,
which utilized Devonian rock (Fig. 2).

Nineteenth century quarries were quite
different from the large mechanized oper¬
ations of today. Most were small, shallow,
and the rate of rock extraction was slow.
Due to the lack of mechanization, large
numbers of low-paid laborers were em¬
ployed. After blasting, blocks too big to be
handled were broken with sledge hammers.
All rock was picked up by hand and placed
in carts or wagons, and building stone was
trimmed with hammer and chisel (Fig. 2).

Probably most quarry workers had little
desire to start personal fossil collections
during their ten hour workdays. However,
the opportunity to supplement their incomes
was a compelling reason to develop an inter¬
est in paleontology. Milwaukee’s gentlemen
paleontologists supplied the financial in¬
centive by regularly purchasing fossils from
the workers. A single good specimen could
fetch a dollar or two, a sum which doubled
the daily wages of most quarry employees.
Thus, the methods of quarrying and the
active fossil market insured that few im¬

portant fossils would escape the notice of the
quarrymen.

Since the later 1800s, the number of
quarries in the Milwaukee area has decreased
from over thirty sites to only one. Most of
the former sites are completely filled and
covered, and the active quarries are un¬
favorable for collecting because of high
vertical walls and large-scale operations.
Also, quarry workers are no longer a de¬
pendable source of specimens since they
have little direct contact with the rock and to
double their daily wages through fossil pur¬
chases would be prohibitive. These changes
have all contributed to a significant decrease
in the availability of fossils, as well as rock
exposures, which severely limits modern
geological and paleontological research in
southeastern Wisconsin.

Gentlemen Paleontologists

Fossil collecting was greatly influenced by
the presence of several well motivated and
competent naturalists who lived in the Mil¬
waukee area during the time that quarrying
activities were at their peak. These individ¬
uals were typical of the self-educated and
self-supported researchers who were respon¬
sible for much of the advancement of science
throughout the nineteenth century.

In the 1800s, scientific research and edu¬
cation took place sporadically and the qual¬
ity was irregular. It was difficult to obtain
advanced education in new specialized scien¬
tific areas such as geology, and it was even
more difficult to find employment in these
fields. However, these constraints did not
prevent an increase in the popularity of all
aspects of natural history throughout the
nineteenth century.

Studying and collecting natural history
specimens for one’s “cabinet” became a
socially acceptable and popular pastime. The
quality of naturalist activities ranged from
mindless collecting of everything and any¬
thing to some of the best research of the
time. Milwaukee’s gentlemen paleontolo¬
gists fit into the middle of this range. While

8

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

Fig. 3. Portrait of Increase A. Lapham (from
Sherman, 1876).

men like I. A. Lapham did make substantial
contributions to many fields of natural his¬
tory, others were not as diversified in their
interests nor did they publish as many schol¬
arly papers. All were interested in several
different branches of natural history, and
these lifelong interests developed early.
None of these individuals had advanced
training in geology or other science, and
were generally self-taught. They all enjoyed
fairly high social standing and were success¬
ful enough in their chosen careers to have the
time and money to devote to paleontological
pursuits. The major contributions of these
naturalists were the professional interest
they stimulated in others and the compre¬
hensive collections they diligently assembled.
The following biographical sketches describe
Milwaukee’s best known gentlemen paleon¬
tologists and their activities.

Increase A lien Lapham

Increase Allen Lapham is well known as
Wisconsin’s first scientist and one of the

state’s most distinguished early citizens (Fig.
3). His numerous accomplishments in other
fields of natural history may overshadow his
paleontological contributions. However, he
was the first to collect fossils in the Milwau¬
kee area, and undoubtedly influenced the
activities of his contemporaries.

Lapham was born at Palmyra, New York,
on March 7, 181 1 . As a youth he worked as a
stone cutter during construction of the Erie
Canal at Lockport, New York (Sherman,
1876), and this work with fossiliferous
Silurian rocks stimulated a lifelong interest
in geology. He wrote his first scientific
article at the age of 17, a short paper pub¬
lished in the American Journal of Science
dealing with the geology around Louisville,
Kentucky (Lapham, 1828). After spending
several years as an engineer in Ohio, he
moved to Milwaukee in 1836 at the request
of Byron Kilbourn, and became chief
engineer and secretary of the Milwaukee and
Rock River Canal Company (Sherman,
1876). Soon after his arrival, he and Kil¬
bourn began to seach the area for econom¬
ically important rock and mineral deposits.
Lapham also began to make observations on
a variety of natural history subjects, which
he continued to do throughout his life.

In 1846 Lapham sent a collection of Mil¬
waukee area fossils to James Hall for identi¬
fication. With the help of Hall’s fossil
identifications, Lapham determined the cor¬
rect stratigraphic succession of rock units in
Milwaukee. By the time his 1851 paper was
published, he had defined the general Paleo¬
zoic stratigraphic section for eastern Wis¬
consin, established correlation with the New
York section, and recognized the eastward
dip of the rocks into the Michigan Basin.

In 1853 Lapham sent a manuscript entitled
“American Paleontology’’ containing over
2000 fossil descriptions to Hall for comple¬
tion and co-authorship (Winchell, 1894).
Collaboration with Hall would have greatly
elevated Lapham’s stature as a geologist and
paleontologist. Although Hall agreed to
complete the project, he apparently did

1983]

Mikulic— Milwaukee’s Gentlemen Paleontologists

9

nothing with it and it was returned in 1860 at
Lapham’s request (Bean, 1936).

In 1873 Lapham was appointed head of
the new state geological survey, and in this
capacity he assembled a noteworthy group
of young geological assistants, including
T. C. Chamberlin (Beloit College) and
Roland Irving (The University of Wiscon¬
sin). In 1875 he was replaced by a political
crony of the new governor, but his early
planning was in no small way responsible for
the later success of the survey. He died on
September 14, 1875, a few months after his
removal from office.

Lapham’s natural history collection,
which included “10,000 fossils, minerals,
shells, meteorites, and Indian relics” ( State
Journal, Dec. 16, 1884) was purchased by
the state for The University of Wisconsin.
Unfortunately, his entire collection was
destroyed in the Science Hall fire of De¬
cember 1, 1884 {Milwaukee Sentinel, Dec. 2,
1884). Only a partial list of Lapham’s mate¬
rial exists in the published catalogue of the
Wisconsin state mineral exhibit from the
Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia in
1876, which consisted predominantly of
specimens from his collection (Sweet, 1876).
Lapham was generous with his specimens
and many were given to, or exchanged with,
other scientists. Some of James Hall’s type
specimens from Wisconsin, now in the
American Museum of Natural History, are
probably Lapham’s specimens, although
they are not so labelled. The Worthen
Collection at the Illinois State Geological
Survey contains at least one Lapham
specimen and others are reported to be
located at the Milwaukee Public Museum
(Teller, 1912) and in the Greene Museum at
The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Fisk Holbrook Day

Fisk Holbrook Day, the son of Reverend
Warren Day and Lydia Holbrook Day, was
born at Richmond, New York, on March 11,
1826 (Fig. 4). He attended Jefferson Medical
College in Philadelphia, graduating in 1849

Fig. 4. Portrait of Fisk Holbrook Day (from Zimmer-
mann, 1979).

{Lansing Journal, 1903). Day moved to
Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, in 1854, and was a
prominent physician in Milwaukee County
for almost 40 years. Besides having a private
practice, Day was a physician for Milwaukee
County hospital and poor farm for many
years (Zimmermann, 1979).

Day was a naturalist with a wide variety of
interests, including geology, botany, and
archeology (Fig. 5). His paleontologic inter¬
ests probably stemmed from his father’s
acquaintance with James Hall while in New
York. Reverend Day had collected fossils
and occasionally corresponded with Hall
during the 1840s, and Hall visited the Day
household to examine his collections. Hall
later made several visits to Wauwatosa to
study the fossils in F. H. Day’s cabinet, and
a few specimens figured by Hall in 1867 and
1870 were from the Day collection.

Day published one paper on Milwaukee
area geology in 1877. This paper demon¬
strates that Day was very observant and an
original thinker, confident enough in his

10

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Voh 71, Part I,

Fig. 5. F. H. Day in his study, ca. 1870s. Photo
courtesy of Mary Dawson.

observations to dispute established geo¬
logical authorities such as James Hall and
Charles Doolittle Walcott. Day (1877) men¬
tioned working on another paper about the
general characteristics of trilobites that
apparently was never published. However,
he did supply a detailed faunal list from local
quarries to T. C. Chamberlin, which was
published in Volume 2 of The Geology of
Wisconsin.

Day specialized in collecting local Silurian
fossils, and by 1880 he had assembled a
collection of the best quality ever made in
southeastern Wisconsin. His cabinet con¬
tained may spectacular specimens, primarily
from the Schoonmaker quarry. These in¬
cluded an orthoconic cephalopod over seven
feet long, and a spectacular specimen of the
trilobite Bumastus dayi (named in his honor)
(Fig. 6).

In 1880 Day decided to sell his collection,
and offered it to The University of Wis¬
consin (through T. C. Chamberlin) and to
Harvard University. Most of the collection,
including the best specimens, was purchased
by Alexander Agassiz and donated to the
Museum of Comparative Zoology at Har¬
vard in 1881 (Raymond, 1916). While it may
seem unfortunate that Day’s collection was

Fig. 6. Two specimens of the trilo¬
bite Bumastus dayi collected from the
Silurian reef at the Schoonmaker
quarry by Day, named in his honor by
Raymond (1916). This was Day’s most
valued specimen, for which he was
offered $100. This specimen is now
No. 647 in the Museum of Compara¬
tive Zoology at Harvard.

1983]

Mikulie— Milwaukee’s Gentlemen Paleontologists

11

sent out of the state, had it been sold to The
University of Wisconsin probably it too
would have been destroyed in the 1884
Science Hall fire. Even after Day shipped
8265 pounds of material to Harvard (Mil¬
waukee Sentinel, Jan. 9, 1881), he still
retained over 5000 fossils. In 1884 he sold a
large number of the remaining specimens to
Thomas Greene and much of his library to
Edgar Teller. Day retired in 1893 and moved
to Lansing, Michigan, where he died on May
31, 1904. At the time of his death he had
several thousand specimens in his posses¬
sion, which were later sold to The University
of Michigan.

Day’s material at Harvard was placed in
the general collections and cannot be studied
as a comprehensive unit. Much of it has not
been catalogued, but it is in reasonably good
shape. Besides containing most of Day’s best
specimens, the Harvard collection has
material from Milwaukee area localities that
is not represented elsewhere. Day’s material
in the Greene collection cannot be identified,
but, based on the purchase price, it probably
represents a large part of Greene’s Wauwa¬
tosa material. The labels for many of Day’s
specimens at The University of Michigan
have been lost, and little of his collection has
been unpacked.

Thomas Arnold Greene

Thanks to the foresight of his family,
T. A. Greene’s correspondence, library,
and, more importantly, his collections have
been preserved in Milwaukee. This material,
including several biographical studies (Buck,
1884; Conrad, 1895; Nehrling, 1895; Grea-
cen and Ball, 1946a, b; Thomas, 1928) pro¬
vides the most detailed information available
for any of Milwaukee’s gentlemen paleontol¬
ogists.

Greene was born on November 2, 1827 in
Providence, Rhode Island (Conrad, 1895)
(Fig. 7). At the age of 16 he began training in
a drug store, and five years later he moved to
Milwaukee. Greene purchased a retail drug
store, and shortly afterward went into

Fig. 7. Portrait of Thomas A. Greene (from Thomas,
1928).

partnership with Henry H. Button. Their
firm became one of the largest wholesale
drug businesses in the city, making Greene a
wealthy man (Greacen and Ball, 1946a).

Greene was very interested in botany and
geology in his youth, and brought a collec¬
tion of Rhode Island minerals with him to
Milwaukee (Nehrling, 1895). During his first
thirty years in Milwaukee, Greene devoted a
little time to collecting and purchasing
minerals, but there was no apparent interest
in fossils. While he sustained an interest in
botany and mineralogy, in subsequent years
paleontology became his major concern.
Because of poor health in 1878, he was
advised by his physician to seek relief from
the pressures of business. As a means of
relaxing he began to collect and purchase
fossils, and continued to do so until his
death in the fall of 1893. Greene collected
primarily at the cement quarries, the 26th
Street quarry, and quarries at Racine and
Wauwatosa. He corresponded with fossil
collectors around the country to arrange

12

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

exchanges or purchases. He also corres¬
ponded with many scientists and loaned
specimens to them. James Hall, C. Wach-
smuth, and J. Newberry all illustrated a
number of Greene’s specimens.

Although Greene acquired a thorough
knowledge of Silurian and Devonian fossil
identification, he apparently had no interest
in writing scientific papers. His corres¬
pondence does reveal some geological data,
and it also contains information on how he
assembled his collection and gives insight
into his personality.

Greene was quite serious and methodical
in his efforts (Buck, 1884), and his goal was
to obtain a comprehensive collection of both
minerals and Silurian and Devonian fossils.
Although he wanted the best possible speci¬
mens for his collection, he also purchased as
many common specimens as possible. He
was aggressive in his quest for specimens, and
collecting soon became an obsession — cer¬
tainly not the type of relaxation his doctor
had prescribed. Greene’s persistence in
trying to convince other collectors to trade
or sell specimens to him often resulted in
their complete disinterest in further dealings
with him. Greene seldom revealed informa¬

tion on the availability of fossils to other
collectors, and in most letters he states that
collecting had been better a few years before
at all of his localities.

In addition to the large number of fossils
purchased from quarry workers in Wis¬
consin, Greene also dealt with collectors
and quarrymen in the Chicago area, and
obtained Waldron (Indiana) fossils from
J. Doty. His main supplier of Chicago area
fossils from 1884 to 1893 was A. G. Warner.
Warner appears to have earned a fair income
by selling fossils to a small group of wealthy
collectors, including Dr. J. Kennicott and
W. Van Horne of Chicago. When Greene
purchased Kennicott’s collection in 1885 he
also became Warner’s main, and possibly
only, customer. For the remainder of his life
Greene purchased specimens from Warner
on a regular basis, often receiving several
boxes of fossils a month during the summer.
It is interesting to note that Greene invari¬
ably paid Warner less than his asking price
for the fossils. There was seldom any bar¬
gaining over the price, and it is difficult to
determine whether Greene was always
underpaying or Warner was always over¬
charging. As a result of these transactions

Fig. 8. Mill No. 1 of the Milwaukee Cement Company, ca. 1885 (from Barton, 1886).

1983] Mikulic— Milwaukee’s Gentlemen Paleontologists 13

Fig. 9. Thomas Greene’s collection at his home, probably taken after his death in 1894 and before the dedication of
the Greene Museum in 1913. Photos courtesy of the late Katherine G. Nelson.

Fig. 10. Another view of Thomas Greene’s collection at his home. Photo courtesy of the late Katherine G. Nelson.

14

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

with Warner, Greene acquired the best col¬
lection of Chicago area Silurian reef fossils.

Greene’s interest in Devonian fossils led
him to purchase stock in the Milwaukee
Cement Company (Fig. 8). Greene possibly
made this investment more to .insure a
constant supply of fossils than to realize
financial gains, but he later became a mem¬
ber of the board of directors and vice pres¬
ident of the company (Greene and Berthelet,
1949).

He also had interesting and unusual deal¬
ings with the Horlick Lime and Stone Com¬
pany in Racine. At most quarries he ar¬
ranged to have workers and owners save
fossils for him to purchase, but at this
quarry he also paid to have workers break
rocks for him while he was on the premises.
He eventually arranged to have charges set in
specific parts of the quarry ready to go off
when he arrived. Anyone who has collected
fossils in recent years knows this type of
cooperation is unheard of in modern quar¬
ries, even if one could afford it.

Greene was a member of the Board of
Trustees of the Milwaukee Public Museum
from 1883 until his death in 1894. He
arranged fossil purchases for the museum
while on the board, but he also outbid the
museum for specimens he wanted in his own
collection (Greacen and Ball, 1946a).

Greene spent over $16,000 on his entire
collection, including many of the wooden
cases in which it is still housed. Of that
amount, over $5000 was spent on fossils
between 1878 and 1893. Greene’s collection
(Figs. 9 and 10) was kept by his family until
1911 when it was donated to Milwaukee-
Downer College (Greacen and Ball, 1946a).
The family also provided a fireproof build¬
ing for the collection. In 1964 the collection
was sold to The University of Wisconsin-
Milwaukee for the bargain price of $20,000,
and is now worth more than ten times that
amount.

The Greene collection is the sole major
nineteenth century Milwaukee area fossil
collection to remain intact and in the area.

Not only is it the largest collection of local
Silurian and Devonian fossils, but it is also
the largest single collection of Silurian reef
fossils from the Chicago area. Although the
Greene collection is undoubtedly the most
important paleontologic research collection
in the state, it has been only partially
examined by specialists. However, it will
remain a key element in any future geologic
research in the area.

Edgar Eugene Teller

Edgar E. Teller was born on August 3,
1845 in Buffalo, New York (Fig. 11). In 1875
he moved to Milwaukee where he worked as
a buyer for Plankinton and Armour (and its
successor firms) until his retirement (Teller,
1924). He became interested in paleontology
by stopping in at the Moody quarry (26th
Street quarry) on his way to and from work
in the early 1880s. Teller devoted most of his
time to collecting Devonian fossils from the
Milwaukee Cement Company quarries, but
he also collected a large amount of Silurian

Fig. 11. Portrait of Edgar E. Teller, ca. 1895. Photo
courtesy of Kathryn Teller.

1983]

Mikulic— Milwaukee’s Gentlemen Paleontologists

15

material from the Moody quarry and lesser
amounts from the Schoonmaker quarry and
the Horlick quarry in Racine (Fig. 12), as
well as some of the few complete trilobites
known from the Cambrian Lodi Shale of
Wisconsin.

Teller corresponded with, and loaned
specimens to, a number of professional
paleontologists, including James Hall,
Robert Whitfield, Stuart Weller, Charles
Eastman, Charles Walcott, and H. F. Cle-
land. Because of these associations, his
collection contained, or supplied, more
figured specimens than any other local
naturalist’s. He also wrote more scientific
papers than other local collectors (Teller,
1900; 1906; 1910; 1912; Monroe and Teller,
1899), providing some of the most detailed
descriptions of Wisconsin Devonian geology
ever published (also see discussion about
Monroe).

Teller was a major participant in the

Wisconsin Natural History Society. He
joined the society in 1885, serving as its
president on several occasions, and as an
editor and director until he returned to
Buffalo in 1915. The demise of the society at
this time was probably due in part to his
departure. Teller was also interested in
archaeology, and helped to establish the
Wisconsin Archaeological Society as a separ¬
ate organization from the Wisconsin Natural
History Society in 1901 (Teller, 1924).

In 1908 Teller gave a large part of his
collection to the Walker Museum at The
University of Chicago (now part of the
present-day Field Museum). Few of these
specimens can now be identified as collected
by Teller, but many of the Wisconsin Sil¬
urian and Devonian fossils in this collection
undoubtedly were his.

Teller died in Buffalo on July 19, 1923.
Both the National Museum of Natural
History and Yale University were interested

Fig. 12. Main quarry of the Horlick Lime and Stone Company located along the Root River near Racine, Wisconsin,
ca. 1888. The Silurian reef rock at this quarry supplied most of the fossils collected in the Racine area (from Art
Publishing Co., 1888).

16

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

in his collection, and on April 3, 1924 his
wife, Marie, gave the entire collection of
100,000 specimens and a library of several
thousand volumes to the National Museum.
This donation included nearly all of the type
specimens described from his collection.
Teller’s material was assimilated into the
National Museum’s general collections and
can no longer be examined intact. Several
drawers of his Silurian specimens remain
unsorted and uncatalogued. His books were
incorporated into the museum library.

Charles Edwin Monroe

Charles Monroe was born in 1857, and
later graduated from Oberlin College and
The University of Michigan Law School
(Milwaukee Journal, May 13, 1931) (Fig.
13). He moved to Milwaukee in 1884, and
began a long career as a prominent attorney.
He was apparently interested in several fields
of natural history, of which botany was fore¬
most.

Fig. 13. Portrait of Charles E. Monroe, ca. 1920s.
Photo courtesy of the Milwaukee Public Museum, Neg.
No. 417133.

In the 1890s and early 1900s, Monroe
spent a considerable amount of time collect¬
ing and studying the Devonian fossils of
Wisconsin. He was a close friend of Edgar
Teller, and the two of them share credit for
stimulating research on the Devonian rocks
of the area. Together they made comprehen¬
sive collections of all the localities and
stratigraphic units of the Wisconsin
Devonian. They were the first to publish
detailed descriptions of the stratigraphic
occurrence of Devonian fossils and to sub¬
divide Devonian strata. They published an
important report on Devonian rocks and
fossils encountered during excavation for
water intake tunnels at North Point in
Milwaukee. They also discovered the phyllo-
carid bed in the Silurian Waubakee Dolo¬
mite and supplied the phyllocarid specimens
described by Whitfield (1896). In 1900
Monroe published a description of the De¬
vonian rocks, which he discovered, at what
is now Harrington Beach State Park near
Lake Church, Ozaukee County, Wisconsin.
He contacted several individuals, including
Charles Schuchert and Stuart Weller, in an
attempt to have this new fauna described,
and it was probably a result of his efforts
that one of Schuchert’s students, H. F.
Cleland, began his work on the Wisconsin
Devonian.

Monroe was associated with the Milwau¬
kee Public Museum for many years. He held
the position of honorary curator of paleon¬
tology from 1897 until at least 1922, and was
the only person to work on the museum’s
fossil collections until Ira Edwards was hired
in 1916. A generous donor to the museum,
he gave nearly all of his Wisconsin Devonian
fossil collection to the museum between 1898
and 1900, including the spectacular jaw of
Eastmanosteus figured by Eastman (1900)
and Cleland (191 1) (Fig. 14). Other fossils he
collected became type and figured specimens
in papers by Cleland, Pohl, Penhallow, and
others.

After 1905 Monroe devoted almost all of
his spare time to botany, and he made

1983]

Mikulic — Milwaukee's Gentlemen Paleontologists

17

i

Fig. 14. Jaw of the Devonian fish Eastmanosteus
pustulosus collected in 1899 by C. E. Monroe in the
Milwaukee Cement Company quarries. The specimen is
approximately 10 inches long and is now in the
collection of the Milwaukee Public Museum (from
Cleland, 1911).

several donations of botanical material to
the Milwaukee Public Museum, including a
collection of over 15,000 specimens in 1924.
He moved to Oberlin, Ohio, in 1929, where
he died in May, 193 1 , at the age of 74.

Other Local Collectors

Several other individuals are known to
have made fossil collections in southeastern
Wisconsin during the nineteenth century,
but little specific information is known
about their activities. For the most part,
these collections have disappeared.

Professor Samuel S. Sherman, who taught
at Milwaukee Female College in the 1860s
and 1870s, collected and purchased fossils
from quarrymen in the 1860s. Sherman
moved to Chicago in 1879 where he worked
for Sherman Brothers, a family business.

Walter Rankin of Carroll College col¬
lected fossils in the Waukesha area and some
of his specimens are thought to be in the Day
and Greene collections.

Philo Romayne Hoy was a general natur¬
alist like Lapham, who confined his studies
to the Racine area. Hoy was born in Mans¬
field, Ohio, in 1816, and was trained as a
medical doctor. In 1846 Hoy moved to
Racine (McMynn, 1893) and later that same
year he and Lapham collected fossils to¬
gether in the quarries north of Racine. Hoy
also knew Day and Greene and accompanied

them to Racine area quarries on many occa¬
sions. James Hall also received specimens
from Hoy. Hoy’s collection was divided be¬
tween Day and the now defunct Racine
College (Teller, 1912). Ornithology and
botany are the fields of natural history for
which Hoy is most often remembered.

F. L. Horneffer collected fossils from the
cement quarries and the 26th Street quarry in
Milwaukee during the 1890s (Teller, 1912).
His fossils became part of Teller’s collection,
and included some of the type material in
that collection. Horneffer continued collect¬
ing into the early 1900s, and accompanied
Gilbert Raasch into the field on occasion
(G. Raasch, 1973, pers. comm.).

After the turn of the century, quarrying
activity in the area declined, and methods of
operation changed. Social values, education,
and employment opportunities also
changed, and the gentlemen paleontologists
faded from the scene. The only important
local collections made since that time were
assembled by Gilbert Raasch and Joseph
Emielity. Both these men are Milwaukee
natives who started collecting fossils as
children, and went on to become profes¬
sional geologists. Nearly all of their
collections are now located in the Milwaukee
Public Museum.

The Collections
Research Value

The four major surviving collections are
of primary importance to paleontological
research on the Paleozoic geology of south¬
eastern Wisconsin. The Day, Greene, Teller,
and Monroe collections are a source of
unique and unstudied fossils and contain
many type specimens. They cannot be dupli¬
cated in quantity, quality, or comprehensive¬
ness, because most of the bedrock outcrops
and quarries have disappeared and quar¬
rying methods have changed. In addition,
they are the only source of fossils and rock
samples for many of the vanished localities.
The later collections made by Raasch and
Emielity supplement the older collections by

18

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

covering more recent exposures, but do not
replace them.

Although many of the fossils were col¬
lected more than one hundred years ago,
they have not lost their usefulness for
paleontologic research. Locality information
accompanies most specimens, and by study¬
ing old geologic reports and the lithology of
the specimens, it is possible to determine the
exact geographic location and stratigraphic
horizon in which the fossils were collected. It
is also possible to determine reef or interreef
origins for most of the Silurian material.

These collections are invaluable for taxo¬
nomic studies because they include many
type specimens and numerous individuals of
single taxa which are necessary for popula¬
tion studies. While the Day, Teller, and
Monroe collections are no longer readily
available for comprehensive faunal studies
of specific localities, the Greene collection is
ideal. It contains the most complete collec¬
tion of North American Silurian reef fossils
found in any museum. These historic collec¬
tions are also important for research in
biogeography, paleoecology, biostratigra¬
phy, taphonomy, rates of evolution, and for
general and local stratigraphic studies.

Preservation of the Collections

Many other nineteenth century fossil
collections in the state, and throughout the
country, have virtually disappeared through
accident or neglect. Over 20,000 fossils were
collected by the Wisconsin Geological Sur¬
vey during the 1870s, and were equally
divided among twelve different educational
institutions in the state (Chamberlin, 1880).
Approximately 1200 specimens were de¬
stroyed along with Lapham’s collection in
the Science Hall fire in 1884, but the fate of
most of the others has not yet been deter¬
mined. Only a few hundred of these speci¬
mens are known to exist.

Even in recent years, important collections
have been seriously damaged by neglect. The
W. C. Egan collection of Chicago area fos¬
sils in the Chicago Academy of Science is a

good example. This collection was well
organized as late as 1946 (Ball and Greacen,
1946), but by 1967 it was in disarray and
many specimens, including types, cannot be
located. The University of Wisconsin-
Madison Geology Museum has also suffered
long periods of neglect during which fossils
disappeared and uncatalogued material was
rendered useless because of missing locality
information.

The Greene, Day, and Teller collections
are all vulnerable in varying degrees to the
same problems. Above all, a collection must
be completely catalogued to prevent the loss
of locality data. Once this is accomplished,
the Day and Teller collections will be in little
danger (although the Museum of Compara¬
tive Zoology is not exactly fireproof).
Greene’s collection is, and probably always
will be, vulnerable to the type of neglect that
small university collections often face. As
long as a dedicated individual, like the late
Dr. Katherine G. Nelson, took care of the
collection there was a little danger of this
happening. However, with her passing, the
awareness of the importance of the Greene
collection may fade. The University of Wis-
consin-Milwaukee faces an important obli¬
gation in preserving the Greene collection
and insuring its usefulness in the future.

Summary

The collecting activity of Milwaukee’s
gentlemen paleontologists continues to be a
major factor in geological research in the
Milwaukee area. They made important ob¬
servations, published papers, distributed
specimens, and assembled comprehensive
collections, all of which stimulated interest
in the geology and paleontology of the area.
They spent more time and money assembling
their collections than would have been
possible for any professional geologists of
that time. Their fossils were studied by some
of the most prominent paleontologists of the
nineteenth century, including James Hall,
F. B. Meek, J. S. Newberry, C. D. Walcott,
C. Wachsmuth, R. P. Whitfield, P. E. Ray-

1983]

Mikulic — Milwaukee's Gentlemen Paleontologists

19

mond, H. F. Cleland, C. R. Eastman, J. M.
Clarke, Stuart Weller, A. F. Foerste, E. O.
Ulrich, C. E. Resser, E. R. Pohl, and Frank
Springer. Most of these collections focused
attention on classic Silurian reefs in the area
with their abundant and diverse faunas. On
a local level, these collectors promoted and
actively participated in natural history soci¬
eties and museums.

It is no longer possible to assemble com¬
parable collections on the Milwaukee area
because of the change in quarrying methods,
the general decline of that industry, and the
lack of people willing to devote large
amounts of both time and money to this
pursuit. For these reasons the Day, Greene,
Teller, and Monroe collections are more im¬
portant than ever before.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Mary Dawson,
Samuel Riggs, Jr., and Mary Riggs for sup¬
plying information on F. H. Day; Kathryn
Teller, the late Edgar Teller, and the late
Eugene Richardson for information on E. E.
Teller; and the late Katherine G. Nelson for
information on T. A. Greene. Joseph Emiel-
ity, Gilbert Raasch, and Christine Beaure¬
gard supplied general information. Special
thanks are extended to Douglas Dewey and
Waukesha Lime and Stone Company for re¬
search support. Joanne Kluessendorf helped
gather information, provided suggestions,
and critically read the manuscript. Richard
A. Pauli and Rachel K. Pauli reviewed the
manuscript. This work is based, in part, on
doctoral research conducted under A. J.
Boucot of Oregon State University.

Literature Cited

Art Publishing Co. 1888. Racine. Picturesque
and Descriptive. George B. Pratt, Neenah.

Ball, J. R. and K. F. Greacen. 1946. Catalog of
the Egan Collection of Silurian invertebrate
fossils at the Chicago Academy of Sciences.
Chicago Acad. Sci. Spec. Pub. 7, 55 p.

Barton, E. E. 1886. Industrial history of Mil¬
waukee. E. E. Barton, Milwaukee.

Bean, E. F. 1936. Increase A. Lapham, geologist.
Wisconsin Archeologist 16: 79-96.

Buck, J. S. 1884. Milwaukee under the charter,
volume III. Symes, Swain and Co., Milwau¬
kee.

Chamberlin, T. C. 1877. Geology of eastern
Wisconsin. In T. C. Chamberlin (ed) Geology
of Wisconsin, volume 2, pt. 2: 91-405.

_ . 1880. Annual report of the Wisconsin

Geological Survey for the year 1879. Madison,
72 p.

Cleland, H. F. 1911. The fossils and stratigraphy
of the Middle Devonic of Wisconsin. Wiscon¬
sin Geol. and Nat. Hist. Surv. Bull. 21 , 232 p.

Conrad, H. L. 1895. History of Milwaukee
County from its first settlement to the year
1895. Volume 1. American Biographical Pub¬
lishing Co., Chicago and New York.

Day, F. H. 1877. On the fauna of the Niagara
and upper Silurian rocks as exhibited in
Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, and in counties
contiguous thereto. Trans. Wisconsin Acad.
Sci., Arts, and Letters 4: 1 13-125.

Eastman, C. R. 1900. Dentition of some
Devonian fishes. J. Geol. 8: 32-41.

Greacen, K. F. and J. R. Ball. 1946a. Studies of
Silurian fossils in the Thomas A. Greene Col¬
lection at Milwaukee-Downer College. Trans.
Wisconsin Acad. Sci., Arts, Letters 36: 415-
419(1944).

_ _ and _ . 1946b. Silurian invertebrate

fossils from Illinois in the Thomas A. Greene
Memorial Museum at Milwaukee-Downer Col¬
lege. Milwaukee-Downer College Bull., 61 p.

Greene, H. and W. T. Berthelet. 1949. The Mil¬
waukee Cement Company. Wisconsin Maga¬
zine of History 33: 28-39.

Hall, James. 1862. Physical geography and gen¬
eral geology. In J. Hall and J. D. Whitney,
Report of the Geological Survey of the State of
Wisconsin, volume 1. Madison, p. 1-72.

_ . 1867. Account of some new or little

known species of fossils from rocks of the age
of the Niagara group. 20th Ann. Rept. of the
Regents of the Univ. of the State of New York
on the conditions of the State Cabinet of
Natural History: 305-401.

_ . 1870. Descriptions of some new or little

known species of fossils from rocks of the age
of the Niagara group. 20th Ann. Rept. of the
Regents of the State of New York on the con¬
dition of the State Cabinet of Natural History
(revised ed.): 347-438.

20

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

Lapham, I. A. 1828. Notice of the Louisville and
Shippingsport canal and of the geology of the
vicinity. Amer. J. Sci. 14: 65-69.

_ . 1851. On the geology of the south¬
eastern portion of the State of Wisconsin being
the part not surveyed by the United States geol¬
ogists, in a letter to J. W. Foster by I. A.
Lapham of Milwaukee: In J. W. Foster and
J. D. Whitney. Report on the geology of the
Lake Superior land district, Pt. 2. U.S. 32nd
Congress, Spec. Session, Senate Executive
Document No. 4: 167-177.

McMynn, J. G. 1893. Philo Romayne Hoy,
M. D. Trans. Wisconsin Acad. Sci., Arts, and
Letters 9: 75-78.

Monroe, C. E. 1900. A notice of a new area of
Devonian rocks in Wisconsin. J. Geol. 8:
313-314.

_ and E. E. Teller. 1899. The fauna of the

Devonian formation at Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
J. Geol. 7:272-283.

Nehrling, H. 1895. In memoriam, Thomas A.
Greene. 13th Ann. Rept., Board of Trustees of
the Public Museum of the City of Milwaukee:
45-48.

Raymond, P. E. 1916. New and old Silurian trilo-
bites from southeastern Wisconsin, with notes
on the genera of the Illaenidae. Mus. Comp.
Zool. Bull. 60: 1-41.

Sherman, S. S. 1876. Increase A. Lapham,
LL.D., A biographical sketch read before the
Old Settlers’ Club. Milwaukee News Company
Printers, Milwaukee, 80 p.

Sweet, E. T. 1876. Catalogue of the Wisconsin
State Mineral Exhibit at Philadelphia, 1876.

State of Wisconsin, embracing brief sketches
of the history, position, resources, industries,
and a catalogue of the exhibits at the Cen¬
tennial at Philadelphia, 1876.

Teller, E. E. 1900. The Hamilton Formation at
Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Wisconsin Nat. Hist.
Soc. Bull. 1:47-56.

_ 1906. Notes on the fossil fish-spine

Phlyctaenacanthus telleri (Eastman). Wis¬
consin Nat. Hist. Soc. Bull. 4: 162-167.

_ 1910. An operculated gastropod from

the Niagara formation of Wisconsin. Trans.
Wisconsin Acad. Sci., Arts and Leters 16:
1286-1288.

_ 1912. A synopsis of the type specimens

of fossils from the Phanerozoic formations of
Wisconsin. Wisconsin Nat. Hist. Soc. Bull. 9:
170-271.

Teller, M. 1924. Memorial of Edgar E. Teller.
15th Ann. Mtg. Paleontol. Soc. Proc., Geol.
Soc. Amer. Bull. 35: 182-184.

Thomas, O. J. 1928. The Greene Collection of
fossils and minerals. Milwaukee-Downer Col¬
lege Bull., ser. 10, no. 3, 1 1 p.

Whitfield, R. P. 1896. Notice and description of
new species and a new genus of Phyllocaridae.
Amer. Mus. Nat. Hist. Bull. 8: 299-304.

Winchell, N. H. 1894. Increase Allen Lapham.
The Amer. Geologist 8: 1-38.

Zimmermann, H. R. 1979. The Dr. Fisk Hol¬
brook Day residence. In Dedication of the his¬
torical marker plaque on the Fisk Holbrook
Day residence by the Wauwatosa Landmark
Commission: 3-16.

SILURIAN BENTHIC INVERTEBRATE ASSOCIATIONS OF EASTERN
IOWA AND THEIR PALEOENVIRONMENTAL SIGNIFICANCE

Brian J. Witzke
Iowa Geological Survey
Iowa City , Iowa 55242

Abstract

The vertical and lateral distributions of benthic invertebrate associations in the
Silurian carbonate sequence of eastern Iowa are interpreted in terms of widespread
environmental changes created by relative changes in sea level and general water
circulation patterns. Previous studies (especially Johnson, 1975, 1980) delineated
three broadly-defined benthic invertebrate associations within the middle
Llandoverian-lower Wenlockian sequence of eastern Iowa, and similar associations
are recognized in younger Wenlockian strata in this study. The middle Llandoverian
through middle Wenlockian interval in eastern Iowa includes three recurrent benthic
associations characteristic of open-marine carbonate shelf environments: 1) coral-
stromatoporoid, 2) pentamerid brachiopod, and 3) stricklandiid brachiopod. Petro¬
graphic, sedimentologic, and stratigraphic information evaluated for this study is
consistent with the earlier suggestion that these associations respectively inhabited
different depth-related benthic carbonate environments: 1) at or near fair-weather
wave base, 2) generally below fair-weather wave base with episodic impingement of
storm wave base on the bottom, and 3) below effective reach of fair-weather and
storm wave base. However, the development of carbonate mounds (reefs) during
Silurian deposition in eastern Iowa adds additional complexity to the paleotologic
and sedimentologic framework. In addition, lateral biofacies variations suggest that
basinal geometry influenced the geographic distribution of specific benthic
associations.

The middle Wenlockian through Ludlovian interval in eastern Iowa is marked
by a change from open-marine to restricted-marine carbonate deposition. A general
offlap of the epeiric sea during that interval probably left eastern Iowa as a restricted
embayment, in part hypersaline. When compared to the Llandoverian through
middle Wenlockian interval, the younger Silurian benthic associations show a
marked decline in diversity, and several major taxonomic groups are commonly
absent. Abundant low-diversity brachiopod and coral-dominated faunas are well
developed in the younger Silurian carbonate mound facies, but benthic invertebrate
associations are characteristically sparsely developed to absent in the laminated
inter-mound facies. However, Upper Silurian mound and inter-mound benthic
associations generally increase in diversity eastward within the East-Central Iowa
Basin. The stratigraphic distribution of these younger Silurian benthic associations
is interpreted to be a joint response to relative changes in water depth and salinity
stresses on the carbonate shelf.

Introduction and Comments

150 years. My personal interest in Silurian
rocks was heightened during my teen and
college years in Milwaukee, and Katherine
Nelson played a significant role in cultivat-

Silurian rocks of the central midcontinent
region have been the subject of geologic and
paleontologic investigations during the past

21

22

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 71, Part I,

ing that interest. Milwaukee is conveniently
located in the Silurian outcrop belt, and
Katherine took advantage of that fact by en¬
couraging class field trips to nearby quarries.
The Greene Museum collections (Univ.
Wise. -Milwaukee), tended by Katherine for
many years, were the envy of local fossil
collectors, like myself, and these collections
certainly helped kindle student interest in
Silurian paleontology.

While still living in Milwaukee, Don
Mikulic and I first visited Silurian outcrops
in eastern Iowa. These visits ultimately led to
further study and graduate research on the
Silurian rocks and fossils of Iowa (Witzke,
1976, 1981c; Mikulic, 1979). Although most
of the Iowa Silurian rocks are extensively
dolomitized, the contained fossils are
commonly abundant and diverse. Paleonto-
logic data obtained from the Iowa exposures
and subsurface cores, when utilized with
additional geologic information, form an
essential basis for the interpretations of
Silurian stratigraphy and depositional envi¬
ronments outlined in this report.

The general purpose of this report is to
evaluate the vertical and lateral distributions
of recurrent associations of benthic inverte¬
brates within the Silurian sequence of
eastern Iowa in terms of possible controlling
paleoenvironmental parameters. Previously
published paleocommunity models are re¬
viewed and supplemented with new informa¬
tion, and models relating the various benthic
associations to paleo-depth are indepen¬
dently tested utilizing petrographic and strat¬
igraphic data. The study was approached
through an analysis of paleontologic, sedi-
mentologic, petrographic, stratigraphic, and
structural information. Iowa Llandoverian
stratigraphic data was geographically ex¬
panded over previous studies by utilizing
subsurface cores (2 inch diameter). A first
attempt at synthesizing Iowa Wenlockian-
Ludlovian data in terms of regional sedimen¬
tation and benthic associations is presented
in this report.

This report is intended to summarize some

of the major conclusions of my dissertation
research and to compare these results with
some previous ideas. Because of the sum-
mary-and-review character of this paper,
complete details of stratigraphic, petro¬
graphic, and paleontologic documentation
cannot be presented in this volume. Further
documentation is presented in Witzke
(1981c).

Stratigraphy

The sequence of Silurian carbonate rocks
is exceptionally well exposed in the outcrop
belt of eastern Iowa, and supplementary ex¬
posures were examined in adjacent Illinois
and Wisconsin. Integration of surface and
subsurface (core) sections in Iowa has neces¬
sitated revision of previous stratigraphic in¬
terpretations. Following the lead of Wilson
(1895) and Calvin and Bain (1900), Iowa
Silurian lithostratigraphic relationships have
recently been delineated (Johnson, 1975,
1977a; Witzke, 1981a, 1981c; Bunker et al.,
1983). A generalized interpretation of the
composite eastern Iowa Silurian strati¬
graphic sequence is schematically illustrated
in Figure 1 . Units within the Hopkinton For¬
mation are informally labelled Hopkinton
A, B, and C which correspond, respectively,
to the “ Syringopora ” and “ Pentamerus
beds,” “ Cyclocrinites beds,” and
“ Favosites beds” of Johnson (1975).
Member names within the Hopkinton For¬
mation were recently proposed by Johnson
(1983), which in ascending order include the
Sweeney, Marcus, Farmers Creek, and Pic¬
ture Rock Members.

The Scotch Grove Formation has been
recently proposed as a stratigraphic unit by
Bunker et al. (1983) to include the interval
above the originally defined top of the
Hopkinton and below the laminated and
mounded carbonates of the Gower Forma¬
tion. The Scotch Grove is characterized by a
complex series of mounded (reef) and flat-
lying carbonate facies that have been given
informal facies names (see Fig. 1). The lower
Scotch Grove interval of this report was in-

1983]

Witzke — Silurian Benthic Invertebrate Associations

23

eluded within the upper Hopkinton Forma¬
tion by Johnson (1975, 1983). Johnson
(1983) recognized members within this inter¬
val which he assigned, in ascending order, to
the Johns Creek Quarry, Welton (“Emeline

facies” of this report), and Buck Creek
Quarry Members. Because of the recent
status of Johnson’s (1983) stratigraphic
classification, time did not permit complete
incorporation of the new terminology into

regressive

transgressive

ROCK

Benthic Assemblages

° °,\ very crinoidal dolomite

laminated dolomite

[ z ~ | shaly dolomite and shale

P large pentamerid brachiopods

S stricklandid brachiopods

B brachiopod-rich Brady Facies

Fig. 1. Generalized Silurian stratigraphic sequence in east-central Iowa. Formal and informal stratigraphic
terminology largely adapted from Johnson (1980), Witzke (1981c), and Bunker et al. (1983). Facies illustrated within
the Scotch Grove and Gower Formations are highly schematic; the distribution of very crinoidal dolomites is shown for
the Scotch Grove Fm. only. The sequence of Benthic Assemblages shown at left is generalized and adapted from
Johnson (1980) and Witzke (1981c). Vertical scale is time. CGMf-Castle Grove Mound facies.

DATUM (base Devonian)

24

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Witzke — Silurian Benthic Invertebrate Associations

25

this report, although union of informal ter¬
minology with the formal stratigraphic
schemes is recommended for future publica¬
tions. The Gower Formation includes three
general facies: 1) flat-lying laminated dolo¬
mites of the Anamosa facies, 2) mounded
(reef) brachiopod- and coral-rich rocks of
the Brady facies (Philcox, 1970a), and 3)
mounded to flat-lying crinoidal and brachio-
pod-rich rocks of the LeClaire facies. Many
mounded (reef) carbonate exposures previ¬
ously assigned to the LeClaire facies are now
assigned to the Palisades-Kepler Mound
facies of the Scotch Grove Formation.

The eastern Iowa Silurian sequence is
composed primarily of dolomite and cherty
dolomite. However, the dolomite sequences
are replaced, in part, to the west and north
by limestones and cherty limestones assigned
to the LaPorte City and Waucoma forma¬
tions (Witzke, 1981c). The fortuitous preser¬
vation of Silurian limestone facies in Iowa
allows direct comparison of limestone petro¬
graphic fabrics with their dolomitized
equivalents.

The thickest known sequence of Iowa
Silurian rocks (146 m) occurs within the
Silurian outcrop belt of east-central Iowa,
and the Silurian sequence thins beneath the
Devonian cover to the north, west, and
south. Recent investigations in Iowa identi¬
fied a Silurian structural and stratigraphic
basin centered in eastern Iowa (Bunker,
1981; Bunker et al„ 1983; Witzke, 1981c).
This paleobasin is termed the East-Central
Iowa Basin. Although the central basin area
was uplifted prior to Pennsylvanian deposi¬
tion (ibid.), and the area has been subjected
to extensive erosional truncation, thickening
of individual Silurian stratigraphic units
towards the center of the East-Central Iowa
Basin is clearly evident in cross-section (Fig.
2). Erosional remnants of Silurian strata
preserved in southwestern Wisconsin outliers
compare closely with Lower Silurian se¬
quences in the central basin area of eastern
Iowa (Bunker et at., 1983).

Brachiopod and conodont biostrati-

graphic studies in the eastern Iowa Silurian
sequence provided a basis for inter-regional
chronostratigraphic correlation (Johnson,
1975, 1979; Witzke, 1978, 1981c). The age
relationships of the Iowa Silurian sequence
are shown on Figure 1 .

BENTHIC FOSSIL ASSOCIATIONS
AND PALEOENVIRONMENTAL
INTERPRETATIONS
Benthic Associations

Recurring associations of fossils (com¬
monly termed communities) in the eastern
Iowa Silurian sequence, when supplemented
with stratigraphic, sedimentologic, and
petrographic information, provide a basis
for interpreting environmental changes
through time. Ziegler (1965) and Ziegler et
al. (1968) pioneered studies in Silurian com¬
munity paleoecology and documented recur¬
rent associations of brachiopods and other
fossils in the Llandovery Series of the Welsh
Borderland. They interpreted the distribu¬
tion of these fossil associations to be envi¬
ronmentally controlled, and they correlated
the controlling environmental parameters
with water depth. Later studies, most of
which are not enumerated here, identified
other supposed depth-related Silurian fossil
associations at other localities in Europe and
North America. Johnson (1975, 1977a,
1980) identified five basic and recurrent
fossil associations (or communities) in the
Iowa Llandoverian sequence that, in part,
paralleled Ziegler’s in the Welsh Borderland.
Johnson listed these in order of increasing
water depth: 1) Lingula, 2) coral-algal, 3)
pentamerid, 4) stricklandiid, and 5)
“Clorinda-Q quivalent.” Although some
brachiopod taxa are shared between the
Iowa and Welsh Borderland Llandoverian,
many important differences in taxonomic
composition between the two areas are
noted, in part because of contrasting sub¬
strates (carbonate vs. terrigenous clastic).
Most marine ecologists recognize modern
marine communities as unique congrega¬
tions of organisms, recognizable at the

26

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

species level (“Peterson Animal Commu¬
nity’’ concept of Watkins et al, 1973). In
this context, the recurrent associations of
fossils in the Iowa Silurian are not members
of the same communities present in the
Welsh Borderland. A broader community
concept, the “parallel community,’’ has also
been defined which includes “a grouping of
separate, related Peterson animal commu¬
nities, describing an ecologic unit of great
areal and temporal’’ extent recognized by
similar associations of “characteristic
genera’’ or “families” (ibid., p. 56).

In this study, the term “community” is
not utilized, primarily to avoid confusion
between the various community definitions,
and the general term, “association,” is
preferred. As utilized here, a benthic asso¬
ciation is defined to include a combination
of taxa (usually at the generic or family level)
that occur together in a specific stratigraphic
interval and collectively form a discrete
grouping unique from other associations.
Although benthic associations could be
defined and analyzed at any taxonomic level,
including species level, the stratigraphic
representation of the various associations is
dependent on the hierarchic level employed
by the observer (Anderson, 1973a). In a gen¬
eral sense, the benthic association definition
utilized in this report roughly coincides with
the “parallel community” concept.

The recognition and establishment of dis¬
crete benthic association types is, in part, an
artificial procedure, and a certain degree of
overlap in taxonomic composition between
some associations is noted. There may be a
degree of variation in the relative abundance
of individual taxa within single benthic asso¬
ciation types at different localities and in
different collections. Nevertheless, the
benthic association approach affords a
reasonably consistent way of categorizing a
mass of paleontologic information into envi¬
ronmentally and paleoecologically signif¬
icant entities. In this study, most benthic
associations are recognized and defined by
the co-occurrence of two or three prominent

key taxa in a single collection, and, although
additional taxa are usually noted within a
particular association, the full complement
of additional taxa may not be recovered in
all collections. The key taxa that define a
particular association must be relatively
abundant, although the name-bearing mem¬
bers of each association are not necessarily
the most abundant fossil types present. For
example, the skeletal volume of echinoderm
grains in many of the Iowa Silurian benthic
associations far exceeds that of the name¬
bearing members of the association. The
benthic association concept utilized in this
study is a broadly defined one that is suited
for field observations as well as numerical
assessment of dolomite block collections in
the laboratory. In addition, rock core from
Iowa subsurface Silurian intervals has
yielded macrofossil collections that provide
important data on the stratigraphic and geo¬
graphic extent of various benthic associa¬
tions, even though collection sample sizes
are comparatively small and the sampling
interval is generally thicker than in block
collections derived from surface exposures.
Rock core descriptions and fossil lists are
recorded in Witzke (1981c).

An abbreviated review of the various
benthic associations represented in the Iowa
Silurian sequence and their environmental
significance is presented later in this report.
To a large extent, the Iowa Llandoverian
associations used here closely parallel the
community definitions of Johnson (1975,
1980). The reader is referred to the studies of
Johnson (ibid.), Witzke (1976, 1981c),

Witzke and Strimple (1981), and Mikulic
(1979) for a more complete listing of the
taxonomic composition and diversity of the
various Iowa Llandoverian and early Wen-
lockian associations. In addition, valuable
information on community evenness, diver¬
sity, and lateral homogeneity (as determined
from block collection counts and “stretch¬
line” fossil censuses taken from Lower
Silurian strata in the Iowa outcrop belt) is
given by Johnson (1977a, 1980). A partial

1983]

Wiizke . Silurian Benthic Invertebrate Associations

27

taxonomic listing of the various mid Wen-
lockian through Ludlovian benthic associa¬
tions is given by Witzke (1981a, 1981c).

Benthic Assemblages

Boucot (1975, p. 11) introduced the term
“Benthic Assemblage” for “a group of
communities that occur repeatedly in dif¬
ferent parts of a region (during some times
even worldwide) in the same position relative
to shoreline,” and further suggested that
“Benthic Assemblages are probably temper¬
ature-controlled as well as highly correlated
with depth.” Because community structures
changed through time and individual taxa
evolved, the Benthic Assemblage approach
affords a method to compare the taxonomic
and environmental similarities of various
benthic associations on a broad temporal
and geographic scale. Boucot (1975) pro¬
posed a simple numerical listing of Benthic
Assemblages (B.A.), which increase in
number moving away from the shoreline
into progressively deepening water (e.g.,
B.A. 1 — near shore, B.A. 6 — farthest off¬
shore). Boucot and others have categorized a
great variety of Silurian fossil associations
from around the world according to their
general Benthic Assemblage position, and I
have utilized Boucot’s B.A. categories for
the various Iowa Silurian associations.
However, I have not uncritically utilized the
B.A. categories, but have attempted to
define the environmental parameters affect¬
ing each benthic association from sediment-
ologic, stratigraphic, petrographic, and
other criteria. “Meaningful paleoecologic
analysis of fossil assemblages is impossible
without using environmental data which are
independent of the paleontologic record,” as
stressed by Makurath (1977, p. 251). As
such, the assertion that Benthic Assemblages
are depth-related can be independently eval¬
uated for specific Iowa Silurian benthic asso¬
ciations.

In general, the Iowa Silurian sequence was
deposited in carbonate shelf environments
within a “dear-water” epeiric sea, and

terrigenous clastic influx was extremely low.
The temporal and geographic distribution of
the various benthic associations was related
to environmental and biotic influences
operating within the epeiric sea. Environ¬
mental factors that may have influenced the
distribution of the various Iowa associations
include water circulation patterns, salinity,
relation to wave base, water turbulence,
turbidity, light penetration, temperature,
substratum, and nutrient availability. Most
of these factors are strongly related to water
depth and shelf physiography in areas of
“clear water” carbonate shelf deposition
(Irwin, 1965). Irwin (1965) stressed the
importance of relative sea level change as a
major controlling factor on the temporal
sequence of environments on “clear water”
carbonate shelves, and Anderson (1971, p.
301) suggested that recurrent benthic inver¬
tebrate associations are directly correlated
with depth-related environmental zones in
the epeiric seas.

If the distribution of Benthic Assemblages
is depth-related, then the sequence of
assemblages can be locally used to charac¬
terize relative changes in sea level, as
previous workers have done for the Silurian
of North America and Europe. Although
some workers have criticized this approach
(e.g., Makurath, 1977; Watkins, 1979), as
will be shown, the stratigraphic and petro¬
graphic evidence from the Iowa Silurian
generally supports relative differences in
water depth for the various benthic assem¬
blage types. However, the sequence of ben¬
thic assemblages in the Iowa Silurian is not
necessarily a reflection of absolute changes
in water depth since there is no assurance
that each benthic assemblage maintained the
same absolute depth range through time in a
specific region. Sheehan (1980, p. 21) further
suggested: “Benthic Assemblages are depth
related in that, from shallow to deep, a
consistent pattern of communities is main¬
tained. But B.A.’s are not depth specific
since the actual depth a given community
inhabited probably varied significantly.”

Table 1. Thin section point-count data averages from LaPorte City Formation limestones. General stratigraphic positions listed according to dolomite
facies equivalents in the Hopkinton and Scotch Grove formations, (n = number of thin sections point-counted).

28

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

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Hopkinton C

Tete des Morts

1983]

Witzke — Silurian Benthic Invertebrate Associations

29

Depth-related environmental factors that
influenced carbonate depositional patterns,
in particular those related to wave current
activity, can be interpreted from petro¬
graphic and sedimentologic evidence. Such
independent lines of evidence provide in¬
formation critical for evaluating the relative
depth positions of the various Iowa Silurian
benthic associations.

Although the distribution of many Iowa
Silurian benthic associations was apparently
depth related, evaluation of additional non¬
depth-related environmental factors is also
needed for adequate classification. In this
report, all Iowa Silurian carbonate environ¬
ments and their contained benthic associa¬
tions are categorized into two general group¬
ings: 1) open-marine, and 2) restricted-
marine (varying degrees of elevated salinity).

Open-Marine Benthic Associations
General Characteristics

Iowa middle Llandoverian through middle
Wenlockian rocks contain paleontologic and
sedimentologic features suggestive of open-
marine (stable marine salinity) carbonate
depositional environments. 1) The contained
faunas are characteristically diverse and
include a number of biotic groups commonly
regarded as stenohaline (see Heckel, 1972).
In particular, echinoderm debris, commonly
in great abundance, is present in all benthic
associations here assigned to open-marine
environments. 2) Iowa Silurian open-marine
environments were generally characterized
by the deposition of skeletal wackestone and
packstone textures. All sedimentologic
evidence suggestive of elevated salinites
during deposition is absent. Unlike the
restricted-marine environments discussed
later, evaporite crystal molds, laminated
carbonates, and oolites are conspicuously
lacking.

Coral-Stromatoporoid Associations

Coral-stromatoporoid associations are
noted in the Tete des Morts and Blanding

formations, the Hopkinton A, B, and C
intervals, and the lower La Porte City
Formation. These associations are character¬
ized by conspicuous tabulate corals (Haly-
sites, Favosites, Syringopora) and disc¬
shaped stromatoporoids on outcrop. Other
macrofossils commonly encountered include
rugose corals ( Heliolites , Arachnophyllum,
solitary rugosans), brachiopods (Hesperor-
this , Leptaena ), nautiloids, and trilobites
(Stenopareia) . The brachiopod Cryptothy-
rella has also been recovered from the
Blanding Formation (Johnson, 1977a). This
recurrent coral-stromatoporoid association
is assigned a B.A. 2 position following
Boucot (1975). Although corals and stroma¬
toporoids are conspicuous on outcrop,
petrographic analysis reveals that the
dominant skeletal constituent of these asso¬
ciations is disarticulated echinoderm debris
(primarily crinoid with minor cystoid) less
than 2 mm in diameter (Witzke, 1981c).
Dolomitization has hampered recognition of
the crinoidal component, although petro¬
graphic study reveals that moldic or
dolomite-replaced crinoidal wackestone and
packstone fabrics predominate in these asso¬
ciations (ibid.). Strata equivalent to
Hopkinton C in the LaPorte City limestone
contain a conspicuous coral-stromatoporoid
fauna. However, petrographic study of these
limestones reveals skeletal wackestone and
packstone textures containing a great
abundance of small echinoderm debris (see
Table 1). Data in Table 1, due to thin section
size limitations, is only for the rock matrix
between the conspicuous coral and stroma-
toporoid colonies. Grid measurements (m2)
on vertical exposure faces indicate that
corals and stromatoporoids, on the average,
comprise less than 2% of the total rock
volume in limestone strata containing coral-
stromatoporoid associations (Table 2).
Cross-sectional dimensions of all
macroskeletal constituents within the m2 grid
whose long dimension exceeded 3 mm were
recorded. However, this data tended to over¬
estimate coralline skeletal volume since

30

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

corallite spar fillings were included in the
volumetric measurements.

Johnson (1975, 1977a, 1980) interpreted
the flat disc-shaped fossils in these asso¬
ciations as blue green algal stromatolites,
and labelled this benthic association the
“coral-algal community” accordingly.
However, Johnson (1980, p. 200) acknowl¬
edged that some stromatoporoids “were
undoubtedly included under this classifica¬
tion.” All these disc-shaped fossils are
herein interpreted as stromatoporoids and
not algal stromatolites for two reasons.
First, although the dolomitized or silicified
specimens are typically poorly preserved,
better preserved specimens bearing monti¬
cules and pillars are clearly stromatoporoids.
Where identical benthic associations were
examined in the LaPorte City and Waucoma
limestones, no stromatolites were observed,
and all laminar disc-shaped fossils were
consistently recognizable as stromato¬
poroids. Second, there are no modern or
ancient examples of isolated stromatolitic
discs occurring within a groundmass of
skeletal wackestone and packstone. Al¬
though normal-marine subtidal stromato¬
lites have been identified in modern oolitic
sand environments in the Bahamas (Dravis,
1983), the crudely laminated columnar heads
and the surrounding sediment differ signif¬
icantly from the Iowa Silurian examples. In
general, most post-Lower Ordovician stro¬
matolites are typically associated with envi¬
ronments of increased salinity or restricted
circulation, whereas the Iowa examples
occur in normal-marine associations.

Additional petrographic observations pro¬
vide useful information for evaluating envi¬
ronmental parameters during deposition.
Limestone fabrics include abraded skeletal
grains, and the grains are, in part, moder¬
ately well sorted, suggesting relatively high-
energy conditions in the B.A. 2 environ¬
ments. However, skeletal wackestone and
packstone textures indicate that carbonate
mud was not completely winnowed out dur¬
ing deposition. Micrite envelopes occur

around some skeletal grains in these associa¬
tions. Moderate to strongly agitated open-
marine conditions apparently prevailed in
the B.A. 2 environments, and bottom con¬
ditions were apparently within the photic
zone. Johnson (1980, p. 208) interpreted the
flat, disc-shaped morphology of the corals
and stromatoporoids as a probable response
to the hydrographic factors, and further
suggested that “effective wave base” may
have reached the bottom during deposition
of these intervals bearing such associations.

Pentamerid Brachiopod
and Related Associations

Associations of large-shelled pentamerid
brachiopods have been assigned a B.A. 3
position by Boucot (1975) and others. A
variety of large pentamerid taxa are repre¬
sented within the eastern Iowa sequence in
the following stratigraphic positions: 1)
Pentamerus oblongus, upper Hopkinton A,
basal Hopkinton C; 2) Harpidium (Isovella)
maquoketa (see Boucot and Johnson, 1979),
Hopkinton B; 3) Pentameroides subrectus,
basal and middle Scotch Grove (Johns Creek
and Buck Creek Quarry facies); 4) Penta¬
meroides (Callipentamerus) corrugatus,
middle Scotch Grove (Emeline and Buck
Creek Quarry facies); 5) Rhipidium sp.,
upper Scotch Grove (Waubeek facies). Due
to incomplete recovery or poor preservation,
H. maquoketa was not consistently dis¬
tinguishable from P. oblongus in subsurface
rock cores. Although all Hopkinton B
pentamerids are tentatively listed as
Pentamerus on the Figure 2 subsurface
cross-section, many of the Hopkinton B
specimens probably belong to H. maquoketa
(which was assigned to Pentamerus maquo¬
keta in earlier reports). In general,
Pentamerus and Harpidium associations are
spatially homogeneous and geographically
widespread within specific stratigraphic
intervals (Johnson, 1980). However, Penta¬
meroides, Callipentamerus, and Rhipidium
associations are not ubiquitous in specific
stratigraphic intervals, but occur in spatially

1983]

Witzke — Silurian Benthic Invertebrate Associations

31

disjunct facies accumulations or “banks”
(Witzke, 1981c). Although lacking large pen-
tamerids, additional benthic associations
laterally equivalent to the Rhipidium asso¬
ciation in the upper Scotch Grove Formation
(Buck Creek Quarry and Waubeek facies)
are recognized and tentatively assigned a
B.A. 3 position (Witzke, 1981a, b,c).

In general, the Iowa B.A. 3 associations
are taxonomically more diverse than the
B.A. 2 associations, although the brachio-
pod component is typically dominated by a
single species. Additional biotic elements,
not necessarily present in all pentamerid
associations, include corals (primarily tabu¬
lates and solitary rugosans, some colonial
rugosans), bryozoans, brachiopods (orthids,
strophomenids, spiriferids), gastropods,
nautiloids, trilobites, ostracodes, crinoids
(rare articulated cups), and calcareous algae.
Ecologic succession in the Hopkinton
pentamerid associations is discussed by
Johnson (1977b). Coralline developments or
biostromes (highest diversity coral faunas
noted in the Iowa Silurian) are evident in
portions of the middle Scotch Grove For¬
mation associated with abundant Pen-
tamer oides (Witzke, 1981c). Coralline
biostromes associated with Pentameroides
also occur within the basal Scotch Grove
(Johnson, 1977a). Upper Scotch Grove B.A.
3 associations that lack large pentamerids
are faunally varied and, although not
enumerated here, include scattered small
pentamerid (gypidulinid) brachiopods
(ibid.).

Pentamerus, Harpidium, and Pentamer¬
oides associations in portions of the
Hopkinton and Scotch Grove formations
include small numbers of stricklandiid
brachiopods, forms generally characteristic
of B.A. 4 stricklandiid associations. The
intermixing of pentamerid and stricklandiid
faunas may suggest a degree of gradational
overlap between B.A. 3 and B.A. 4 associa¬
tions at times during deposition of the Iowa
Silurian carbonates.

Pentamerid accumulations in the Iowa

Silurian are preserved in two general ways
with “a complete preservational spectrum”
between the two extremes: 1) articulated
brachiopod shells in life position with
scattered truncated “submarine erosion”
surfaces, and 2) “disarticulated shells
accumulated as coquinas” (Johnson, 1977b,
p. 86, 92). Johnson (ibid.) suggested periodic
“scouring of the sea bottom” as a mechan¬
ism for the origin of the truncation surfaces.
Many disarticulated pentamerid accumula¬
tions sampled by Johnson (1977a) showed a
preservational bias of pedicle valves over
brachial valves, suggesting a degree of cur¬
rent sorting. Bridges (1975, p. 89) described
“storm-generated coquinas of Pentamerus ”
from the Welsh Borderland, and Anderson
(1973b) suggested that pentamerid associa¬
tions in the Appalachian Basin area
inhabited skeletal sand substrates that were
“occasionally wave reworked.” Some
pentamerid accumulations in the Iowa
Silurian may represent storm lags. Iowa
pentamerid associations occur within rocks
displaying skeletal wackestone to packstone
textures, both in dolomite and limestone
facies. Echinoderm debris (most less than 2
mm diameter) is considerably more impor¬
tant volumetrically than macrofossil block
counts would suggest, and the echinoderm
component of the pentamerid associations
can only be adequately evaluated petro-
graphically (see Table 1; Pentamerus-
bearing limestones, Hopkinton B equiva¬
lents). Moldic and dolomite-replaced echino¬
derm grains are also abundantly evident
petrographically in the dolomite facies
(Witzke, 1981c). Pentamerus- bearing
limestones in the LaPorte City Formation
contain some abraded grains, and agitated
conditions were apparently present at times
during the deposition of the B.A. 3 associa¬
tions. However, abraded grains and current
sorting are not pervasive throughout the
pentamerid-bearing sequences, and agitated
high-energy conditions were probably pres¬
ent in the B.A. 3 environments only at
irregular intervals. Overall, the sedimentary

32

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

evidence in the B.A. 3 pentamerid associa¬
tions is consistent with a depositional
environment generally below wave base.
Johnson (1980, p. 208) also suggested that
the pentamerid associations generally
occupied a position “at or below effective
wave base.” The abundance of micrite and
articulated fossils generally supports this
interpretation. However, periodic turbulent
conditions produced truncation surfaces,
shell transport and sorting, and abraded
grains, perhaps as a result of periodic storms
in which storm wave base impinged on the
bottom.

Carbonate Mound (Reef)
and Related Associations

Open-marine carbonate mound (reef)
facies are noted at two positions in the
Scotch Grove Formation: 1) small-scale
mounds (about 5-10 m high, 30-70 m across)
informally included in the Castle Grove
Mound facies, and 2) large-scale mounds
(forming coalesced mounded complexes to
2.5 km across; single mounds up to 1 km
across, 45 m thick) informally included in
the Palisades-Kepler Mound facies (Witzke,
1981a, c). Both mound facies are laterally
replaced, in part, by flat-lying intermound
strata containing probable B.A. 3 associa¬
tions. Stratigraphic relations indicate that,
during deposition, the mound facies were
elevated on the sea floor relative to the
intermound facies. Since the B.A. 3 associa¬
tions in the Palisades-Kepler mounds lived in
shallower water than equivalent B.A. 3 asso¬
ciations in the intermound areas, the conten¬
tion that each benthic assemblage occupied a
distinct bathymetric zone characterized by a
specific absolute depth range is probably
incorrect. Mounds within the Castle Grove
Mound facies contain central “cores” of
dense dolomite with mudstone and wacke-
stone textures containing scattered large
colonies (to 3 m) of rugose and tabulate
corals and crinoid debris. “Flank” beds
(crinoid and fenestellid bryozoan packstone
textures) bury the central mounds and

contain a diverse assemblage of fossils.
Philcox (1970b), Johnson (1980), and Witzke
(1981c) noted a variety of brachiopods, cri-
noids, and other fossils in the “flank” beds
that are characteristic of B.A. 4-5 associa¬
tions. The “flank” beds post-date the
development of the mounds that they
enclose, and probably correlate with similar
faunas in the lower Emeline facies. Devel¬
opment of the Castle Grove mounds was
coincident with deposition of the flat-lying
Johns Creek facies containing a B.A. 3
pentamerid association. However, active
mound development apparently ceased
during C6 late Llandoverian as environments
changed and B.A. 4-5 associations became
established in eastern Iowa.

The benthic associations in the carbonate
mounds of the Palisades-Kepler Mound
facies are varied and diverse, although
crinoids are volumetrically the dominant
benthic invertebrate present in most of the
mounds. Echinoderm debris is characteris¬
tically large (more than 3 mm diameter), and
where identifiable echinoderms are present,
the fauna is dominated by a variety of
camerate crinoids (especially Eucalypto-
crinites, Siphonocrinus) with lesser numbers
of flexible and inadunate crinoids (especially
Crotalocrinites) and cystoids (Caryocri-
nites). The carbonate mounds are primarily
constructed of carbonate mud and crinoid
debris with lesser quantities of other fossils,
most notably corals and stromatoporoids.
“The distribution and orientation of
colonial coelenterates shows that in Iowa
they did not construct rigid, wave-resistant
frames, but were subordinate to crinoids in
the reef-building role” (Philcox, 1971, p.
338). Relict isopachous fibrous submarine
cements are observed petrographically, and
the mounds apparently became rigid features
on the sea floor primarily through sub¬
marine cementation processes (Witzke,
1981c). Favosites is the commonest coral in
the facies, and a variety of other tabulates
and solitary and colonial rugosans are also
present. Branching and fenestellid bryo-

1983]

Witzke— Silurian Benthic Invertebrate Associations

33

zoans are locally significant within the
mounds, especially in possible grain flow
deposits in the flanking beds. Nautiloid and
trilobite predators and scavengers in the
mound environments were commonly con¬
centrated by currents into fractures and
depressions (“pockets”) within the mound.
A variety of brachiopods are present in the
Palisades-Kepler mounds, but usually none
is abundant. Within crinoidal and bryozoan-
rich beds, the brachiopod fauna is primarily
characterized by A try pa, rhynchonellids,
and strophomenids. Large pentamerid
(' Conchidium , Lissocoelina) and trimerellid
brachiopods are locally present in the
mounds; these brachiopods are included in a
B.A. 3 position by Boucot (1975). In addi¬
tion, sponge spicules, gastropods, bivalves,
and calcareous green algae ( Ischadites ) are
noted in the mounds.

Faunas within the Palisades-Kepler
mounds are generally characterized by a
greater abundance of large and more robust
benthic invertebrates than contemporaneous
faunas in the intermound position. The
mound facies include an abundance of large
camerate crinoids, rugose and tabulate
corals (to 65 cm), and stromatoporoids,
whereas the intermound Waubeek and Buck
Creek Quarry facies associations are charac¬
terized by smaller crinoids and corals (rarely
exceeding 8 cm). Colonial tabulates are the
most abundant corals in the mound facies,
whereas small solitary rugosans dominate
the coral faunas in the intermound facies.
Large, relatively smooth-shelled trilobites
(e.g., Bumastus) were most successful in the
mound facies, whereas smaller, more ornate
trilobites (e.g,, Encrinurus) achieved greater
success in the intermound facies. Rhyncho-
nellid, large pentamerid, and trimerellid
brachiopods fared best in the mound facies,
whereas generally small and thinner-shelled
brachiopods (e.g., orthids, meristellids)
achieved a higher level of success in the
intermound facies. The general abundance
of benthic invertebrates was considerably
greater in the mound facies than in equiv¬

alent intermound facies, possibly reflecting
the greater availability of nutrient-rich
currents in the shallower water mound envi¬
ronments and greater habitat complexity.

The upper Scotch Grove Fawn Creek
facies faunas and lithologies are similar to
those in the mound facies, although the
volume of skeletal grains in the non-
mounded Fawn Creek facies is proportion¬
ately slightly less than in the mound facies,
and the coralline fauna is of generally
smaller size than in the mounds. The Fawn
Creek facies probably represents a skeletal
bank facies that occupied an intermound
environmental position intermediate be¬
tween the mound facies and the more distal
intermound Buck Creek Quarry and Wau¬
beek facies.

Stratigraphic relations clearly indicate that
the carbonate mound environments occu¬
pied a shallower water position than the
adjacent flat-lying intermound facies.
Correspondingly, evidence of wave and
current activity is more pronounced in the
mound facies. The abundance of skeletal
packstone and grainstone textures in the
Palisades-Kepler mounds suggests that
carbonate muds were partially to completely
winnowed during deposition of some beds.
Some beds with packstone-grainstone tex¬
tures consist of crinoidal debris of relatively
uniform size, which implies possible current
sorting. In addition, some packstones con¬
tain possible current-oriented crinoid stems.
Wedge-shaped grain flow deposits, some of
which exhibit graded bedding, flank some of
the mounds, suggesting periodic downslope
mass movements. Overturned and trans¬
ported corals are commonly observed, which
were probably moved during periodic in¬
fluxes of turbulent conditions across the
mounds.

Philcox (1971, p. 345) studied coral
growth forms and their relationship to the
surrounding sediment in the Palisades-
Kepler Mound facies, and suggested that
“reef sedimentation was an irregular
process” with “marked fluctuations in

34

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

sediment rates” across the mounds. He also
found “evidence for periodic local removal
of sediment.” These observations indicate
that periodic water turbulence, possibly
generated during storm events, played an
important role in mound sedimentation.
Less turbulent water currents were probably
present across the mounds on a more regular
basis. The abundant and diverse biota that
inhabited the mounds required a continual
influx of nutrients. The pervasive submarine
cementation that occurred in the mounds
probably required movement of large quan¬
tities of water through the mounds. Accu¬
mulations of nautiloids and trilobites within
the mounds are also indicative of current
activity (Mikulic, 1979). However, the lack
of a rigid skeletal framework suggests that
the mounds were not continuously exposed
to high-energy environments. Philcox (ibid.)
also concluded that “turbulence was nor¬
mally limited” during the growth of the
Palisades-Kepler mounds, although the
mounds apparently grew upward into more
agitated environments through time. The
vertical limits to mound growth may have
been controlled by normal fair-weather wave
base, since the lack of a skeletal framework
may have precluded further mound growth
into the highly agitated wave-washed envi¬
ronments. Corals are most abundant in the
upper portions of the mounds (Philcox,
1971), where presumably the greatest degree
of current activity would have been operat¬
ing during mound deposition. In summary,
all evidence indicates that current activity
and storm events exerted considerably more
influence on sedimentation in the mound
environments than in the laterally equivalent
and deeper-water B.A. 3 environments in the
intermound position.

Stricklandiid Brachiopod
and Related Associations

Stricklandiid brachiopod and related
associations occur at several positions in the
eastern Iowa Silurian sequence (stricklandiid
taxonomy after Johnson, 1979, 1983: 1)

middle portion of Hopkinton A (Strick¬
land ia lens progressa ), 2) lower to middle
Hopkinton B (S. laevis ), 3) lower Scotch
Grove Formation, Emeline and Buck Creek
Quarry facies (Costistricklandia castellana ),
and 4) mid Scotch Grove Formation, Eme¬
line, Buck Creek Quarry, and basal Fawn
Creek facies (C. castellana, C. multiliratd) .
Overall, the stricklandiid associations con¬
tain the most diverse benthic faunas re¬
covered in the entire Iowa Silurian sequence.
However, Stricklandia associations are inter-
bedded with coral-stromatoporoid associa¬
tions in one to several thin bands in the
middle portion of the Hopkinton A in the
eastern and northeastern Iowa outcrop belt,
and these stricklandiid associations, typic¬
ally characterized by corals and one to two
species of brachiopods (Johnson, 1977a), are
of generally lower diversity than younger
Iowa stricklandiid associations. Although
stricklandiid associations are usually
assigned a B.A. 4 position (Boucot, 1975),
interbedding of Hopkinton A stricklandiid
associations with B.A. 2 coral-stroma¬
toporoid associations suggests that the
Hopkinton A stricklandiids may have occu¬
pied a position more closely analogous to
B.A. 3 pentamerid associations. Johnson
(1980, p. 206) further suggested that “there
is very little difference” in general paleo-
community structure between the Hopkin¬
ton A “ Stricklandia community” and typi¬
cal Hopkinton “pentamerid communities,”
perhaps due to similarities in shell packing
(Johnson, 1979). Stricklandiids occur as a
minor component of pentamerid-dominated
brachiopod associations in younger intervals
of the Hopkinton and Scotch Grove forma¬
tions, suggesting that stricklandiids were
apparently adapted for life in some B.A. 3
environments.

On the other hand, stricklandiid and
related associations in the Hopkinton B and
lower Scotch Grove (Emeline and Buck
Creek Quarry facies) are very diverse and
include faunal elements, excluding the
stricklandiids, that are generally charac-

1983]

Witzke . Silurian Benthic Invertebrate Associations

35

teristic of B.A. 4 to B.A. 5 positions
(Boucot, 1975). These associations com¬
monly include: 1) sponge spicules, 2)
stromatoporoids, 3) tabulate and rugose
corals (most less than 10 cm diameter), 4)
inarticulate, orthid, strophomenid, rhyncho-
nellid, pentamerid, and spiriferid brachio-
pods, 5) bryozoans (abundant branching and
fenestellid forms), 6) gastropods, bivalves,
and nautiloids, 7) trilobites, and 8)
echinoderms. The echinoderm faunas are
dominated by a highly diverse assemblage of
camerate crinoids (Witzke and Strimple,
1981), although inadunate and flexible
crinoids, blastoids, paracrinoids, and
rhombiferan cystoids also occur (Witzke,
1976). Johnson (1977a, p. 38-91) recognized
additional stricklandiid-related associations
in the lower Emeline facies: 1) “a unique
bryozoan and trilobite fauna” and 2) “a
high diversity fauna comparable to a
cloridan community” (cloridan brachiopod
communities assigned B.A. 5 position by
Boucot, 1975). A similar bryozoan-rich
association containing brachiopods ( Atrypa ,
Protomegastrophia, Dicoelosia ), solitary
rugosans (including Palaeocyclus), crinoid
debris (including abundant Petalocrinus'),
and trilobites occurs above Pentameroides-
bearing beds in the middle Scotch Grove
Formation (Buck Creek Quarry facies).

Closely similar stricklandiid associations
occur within both the Buck Creek Quarry
and Emeline facies in the lower Scotch
Grove Formation, although the highly
crinoidal Emeline facies contains proportion¬
ately more skeletal material. Wackestone
and packstone textures are characteristic,
and crinoidal debris is the dominant skeletal
constituent in both facies (see Table 1 point-
count data for a limestone interval equiva¬
lent to the lower Buck Creek Quarry facies).
Petrographic and sedimentologic observa¬
tions pertinent to environmental interpreta¬
tions include: 1) skeletal grain abrasion/
breakage not observed, 2) absence of current
sorting or graded bedding, and 3) micrite
envelopes around grains not observed. These

features suggest relatively quiet depositional
conditions in deeper-water environments
than the B.A. 2 and 3 associations. In addi¬
tion, the benthic faunas that thrived in the
stricklandiid associations include forms
whose delicate or thin-shelled morphology
seems poorly suited for survival in agitated
environments (Johnson, 1980). The presence
of articulated echinoderms is consistent with
a quiet depositional environment. Johnson
(1980) proposed a relatively calm water
depositional environment for the strick¬
landiid associations, “well below effective
wave base.” Although effective wave base
can be substantially lowered during periodic
storm events, the B.A. 4-5 associations in the
Iowa Silurian lack sedimentologic evidence
of episodic turbulence and thus are reason¬
ably inferred to have occupied environments
generally below maximum storm wave base.
However, B.A. 4-5 environments in Iowa
occupied a position partially or wholly
within the photic zone (contrary to Boucot,
1981, p. 247), inasmuch as calcareous green
algae have been recovered in stricklandiid
associations in the Hopkinton and lower
Scotch Grove formations.

Conclusions and Geologic Implications

The distribution of open-marine benthic
associations in the Iowa Silurian was strong¬
ly controlled by depth-related environmental
factors, primarily general position with
respect to effective fair-weather and storm
wave bases. As such, the temporal changes
from one benthic association type to another
can be reasonably correlated with depth-
related environmental changes. The spatial
distribution of various associations within
specific stratigraphic intervals can also be
evaluated in terms of depth-related facies
changes over a geographic expanse. John¬
son’s studies within the eastern Iowa Lower
Silurian outcrop belt led him to conclude
several things about that region: 1) “the
generally flat, Iowa sea bottom supported
only a single spatially monotonous commu¬
nity at a time” (1977a, p. 118); 2) “their

36

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

lateral uniformity in composition and
structure was pervasive” (1980, p. 213); and
3) “contemporaneous facies, if present,
existed in such widely spaced belts as not to
be obvious in this particular region” (1975,
p. 130). However, comparisons of the Hop-
kinton benthic associations in the subsurface
west of the outcrop belt (Linn-Benton
counties; see map Fig. 2) with those in the
outcrop belt suggest lateral variations in the
distribution of benthic associations and
facies on a slightly broader geographic scale.

The Hopkinton Formation doubles in
thickness as one proceeds from the Benton
County subsurface to the central area of the
East-Central Iowa Basin (see Fig. 1), and the
interpreted distribution of the contained

benthic associations displays a pattern that is
consistent with the basinal geometry (Fig. 3).
Figure 3 is presented as a generalized and
interpretive model that attempts to rectify
the fossil distributions recognized in the
western subsurface cores with those known
in the Iowa Silurian outcrop belt. Subsurface
data cannot be elaborated here, although
core data recorded by Witzke (1981c, p.
486-544) forms the primary basis for the
illustrated interpretations. Although Strick-
landia associations occur in the middle Hop¬
kinton A in the outcrop belt, the thinned
Hopkinton A in the western subsurface has
yielded no elements of this association (Fig.
3). The most dramatic lateral change in
benthic associations apparently occurs in

I stricklandid o io 20 30 mi.

j association 1 . — ' 1 - d

O 10 20 30 40 50 km.

Fig. 3. Generalized interpretation of the vertical and lateral variation in the distribution of benthic associations in the
Hopkinton Formation of east-central Iowa. Cross-section line is essentially the same as that used in Figure 2. The
sequence of associations in the eastern outcrop belt is derived, in part, from Johnson (1975, 1977a). Subsurface
paleotologic data in western subsurface sections generalized from Witzke (1981c). Distribution of Hopkinton A
stricklandiid association is schematic, and is represented by several thin zones in the middle to upper “ Syringopora
beds.” The interpreted distribution illustrates an “Israelsky Wedge,” suggesting that Iowa Hopkinton deposition
occurred during a major transgressive-regressive bathymetric cycle.

1983]

Witzke — Silurian Benthic Invertebrate Associations

37

Hopkinton B. In the outcrop belt the
Hopkinton B is characterized by a lower
interval with a Stricklandia association and
an upper interval with a pentamerid associa¬
tion (Johnson, 1980). However, the western
subsurface Hopkinton B interval character¬
istically contains pentamerid associations in
the lower portion, and the upper portion
contains an abundant tabulate coral fauna
with additional fossils (cup corals, stroma-
toporoids, crinoids, bryozoans, orthids,
gastropods). The fauna in the upper interval
is tentatively assigned to the coral-stroma-
toporoid association, although it contains a
slightly more diverse fauna than that noted
in similar associations in Hopkinton A and
C. This association lacks the pentamerid and
stricklandiid brachiopods present in the
deeper water Hopkinton associations toward
the east (Fig. 3). These observations suggest
the following interpretations: 1) the lower
Hopkinton B Stricklandia association in the
central portion of the East-Central Iowa
Basin is replaced westward by pentamerid
associations, and 2) upper Hopkinton B
pentamerid associations in the central area
of this basin are replaced westward by a
coral-stromatoporoid association.

As illustrated in Figure 3, the interpreted
spatial distribution of the various Hopkin¬
ton benthic associations forms an “Israelsky
Wedge” (Israelsky, 1949) in which, at any
given time, deeper-water associations occu¬
pied the central basin area with stratigraph-
ically equivalent shallower-water associa¬

tions developed toward the basin margin.
These observations offer independent evi¬
dence of the depth significance of each
association type, since an “Israelsky
Wedge” records the “deepening and shal¬
lowing phases of a bathymetric cycle” as
determined by the relative positions of
“bathymetrically controlled” benthic asso¬
ciations (Krumbein and Sloss, 1963, p. 386).

A sequence of probable depth-related
open-marine benthic assemblages is identi¬
fied in the Iowa Silurian, and these assem¬
blages can be correlated with general depth-
related environmental zones of Irwin (1965)
and Anderson (1971). However, at any given
time during the Silurian, only one or two
benthic assemblage positions were repre¬
sented in eastern Iowa. The full complement
of onshore to offshore environments (B.A.
1-B.A. 6) at any one time, if developed,
probably spread over a much broader geo¬
graphic area in the epeiric sea. A hypo¬
thetical onshore-offshore transect depicts
the position of B.A. 1 to 5 environments
over a broad geographic area in the central
midcontinent (Fig. 4), presumably many
hundreds of kilometers across. The farthest
offshore environments (B.A. 4-5) are shown
in a position well below wave base. How¬
ever, in Iowa, these environments were
characterized by a diverse benthic biota that
would have required a degree of current
activity to replenish nutrients and maintain
stable salinities. B.A. 3 associations inhab¬
ited two general carbonate environments in

wave currents
damped

Fig. 4. Hypothetical onshore to offshore transect depicting environmental zones in the Early Silurian epeiric sea in the
central midcontinent. Transect is presumably many hundreds of kilometers across. Relative positions of Benthic
Assemblages 1 to 5 are shown in relation to fair-weather and storm wave bases. Stable open-marine salinities are
maintained across the area occupied by B.A. 2-5, but wind-generated currents are damped in the B.A. 1 position where
elevated salinities may be developed. The various environmental zones would migrate across the bottom during relative
changes in sea level.

38

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

the Iowa Silurian: 1) flat-lying substrate
(commonly pentamerid-bearing), and 2)
carbonate mound (reef) environments. The
flat-lying associations are positioned
generally below fair-weather wave base,
although periodic turbulent conditions
suggest that storm wave base occasionally
reached the bottom. On the other hand, car¬
bonate mound environments were subjected
to a greater degree of wave and current
activity than the flat-lying environments and
are placed in a position on Figure 4 where
they would have been recurrently subjected
to storm events but, in general, immediately
below normal fair-weather wave base. B.A.
2 environments are positioned near wave
base in the clear water epeiric sea, in part
above and in part immediately below wave
base (Fig. 4). B.A. 1 associations in Iowa
display evidence of restricted circulation and
elevated salinities and are discussed in the
next section.

Restricted-Marine Benthic Associations
General Characteristics

Restricted-marine benthic associations in¬
habited environments of elevated or fluctu¬
ating salinity. During portions of the Iowa
Silurian (early Llandoverian, late Wenlock-
ian-Ludlovian) these environments encom¬
passed a broad range of salinity variations
constrained between two general extremes:
1) salinities close to normal-marine, and 2)
hypersaline environments in which solutions
were occasionally concentrated high enough
to precipitate gypsum or halite. This spec¬
trum of environmental conditions influenced
sedimentation in a variety of ways, and a
variety of distinctive rock types occur in
intervals bearing restricted-marine associa¬
tions. General rock types include: 1) dolo¬
mites with skeletal wackstone, packstone, or
grainstone textures, 2) unfossiliferous or
sparsely fossiliferous dolomites with mud¬
stone textures, 3) domal and sheet-like
stromatolitic carbonates, 4) thinly-bedded
dolomites and shaly dolomites, 5) laminated
dolomites, and 6) dolomites containing

evaporite crystal molds. In addition, the
contained faunas are characteristically of
lower diversity than the open-marine faunas,
and several invertebrate groups commonly
regarded as stenohaline (see Heckel, 1972)
are absent in many of the associations.

Lingulid Brachiopod
and Related Associations

Deposition of the Mosalem Formation in
eastern Iowa occurred above an irregular
Ordovician shale surface along the margin of
the transgressing Early Silurian epeiric sea.
The surrounding shale hills supplied clays to
the Mosalem environments, where argil¬
laceous carbonate deposition prevailed.
Mosalem deposition in Iowa was restricted
to the eastern part of the state, apparently
within isolated cul-de-sacs and embayments
in a nearshore position. The Ordovician
shale hills were progressively buried by
Silurian sediments as the Silurian trans¬
gression progressed, and authochthonous
open-marine carbonate depositional patterns
became established across much of Iowa by
the middle Llandoverian (Blanding Forma¬
tion).

The benthic associations contained in the
Mosalem Formation are assigned a near¬
shore B.A. 1 position. Unlike the younger
Iowa Llandoverian environments where
normal-marine faunas are well represented,
the Mosalem biota is a low-diversity assem¬
blage locally dominated by lingulid brach-
iopods. Rhynchonellid and strophomenid
brachiopods and gastropods are also locally
noted (Johnson, 1975, 1977a). Corals,

stromatoporoids, echinoderms, and trilo-
bites are characteristically absent in the
Mosalem. Where the Mosalem Formation is
thin, a basal zone of stromatolitic algal mats
is observed (ibid.). Skeletal grains in the
Mosalem are non-abraded, suggesting gener¬
ally quiet depositional conditions. The
thinly-bedded argillaceous dolomites and
shales and horizontally-laminated stroma¬
tolites in the Mosalem are also consistent
with relatively quiet depositional environ-

1983]

Witzke — Silurian Benthic Invertebrate Associations

39

ments. The preservation of organic matter in
the Mosalem, including plant filaments
(ibid.), graptolites, and soft-bodied worms
(T. Frest, 1982, personal comm.), also sug¬
gests a non-agitated depositional setting.

The restricted fauna and low-energy B.A.
1 environment of the Mosalem Formation in
Iowa are characteristic of the “low-energy
zone” of Irwin (1965) and “restricted sub-
tidal” environment of Anderson (1971).
Wave current activity was probably damped
somewhere offshore (B.A. 2 position), re¬
stricting circulation in the nearshore zone
(see Fig. 4). The discovery of possible halite
pseudomorphs in the Iowa Mosalem sug¬
gests that elevated salinities may have been
present at times during Mosalem deposition.
However, some currents were occasionally
present in the nearshore Mosalem environ¬
ments, as evidenced by rare ripple marks low
in the sequence.

Stegerhynchus Association

The uppermost portion of the Scotch
Grove Formation (upper Waubeek and Buck
Creek Quarry facies) and basal Gower
Formation (Anamosa facies) in Linn and
Jones Counties, Iowa (Fig. 2 map) contain
benthic associations of considerably
different composition from those in under¬
lying Scotch Grove strata. Block collections
have produced a relatively low diversity
assemblage characterized by brachiopods
and, locally, small tabulate and solitary
rugose corals. This assemblage is termed the
Stegerhynchus association. In addition to
Stegerhynchus, other brachiopods, com¬
monly Protathyris, Spirinella, and Meris -
tina, are prominent members of this associa¬
tion. Of special interest is the absence of
bryozoans and trilobites and general absence
of echinoderms, which renders the associa¬
tion considerably different from the under¬
lying Scotch Grove associations. Protathyris
is known only from a B.A. 2 position (Bou-
cot, 1975), and the presence of Protathyris in
the Stegerhynchus association suggests the
same position.

The lowest occurrence of the Steger¬
hynchus association in the upper Scotch
Grove Formation is interbedded with strata
containing scattered small echinoderm
debris. Collections recovered from this
position contain a slightly more diverse
assemblage than Stegerhynchus association
collections identified a few meters higher
stratigraphically, and small colonial rugo-
sans (Heliolites), gastropods, bivalves, and
additional brachiopod taxa are present
(Witzke, 1981c, p. 409). However, Prota¬
thyris is absent in these collections. Higher in
the sequence, the uppermost Scotch Grove
Stegerhynchus association is further reduced
in diversity, contains fewer brachiopod taxa,
and completely lacks echinoderm debris.
Brachiopods are the only benthic group
represented in some uppermost Scotch
Grove collections. This general change in
benthic association diversity in the upper¬
most Scotch Grove is also marked by the
appearance of two brachiopod genera,
Protathyris and INalivkinia, not represented
lower in the sequence. The presence of an
atrypid tentatively identified by Boucot
(1981, personal comm.) as INalivkinia is
noteworthy, as the genus has previously been
identified only in central Asia. Elements of
the uppermost Scotch Grove Stegerhynchus
association survived past the close of Scotch
Grove deposition, and Protathyris and
rhynchonellids are prominent throughout
much of the Gower Formation.

The disappearance of several probable
stenohaline groups (most notably the bryo¬
zoans, trilobites, echinoderms) in the upper¬
most Scotch Grove Formation in the western
portion of the East-Central Iowa Basin
(Linn- Jones counties) suggests that elevated
salinities may be, in part, responsible for the
biotic changes. The major changes in benthic
association structure evident in the
uppermost Scotch Grove Formation imme¬
diately preceded, or were coincident with,
the appearance of laminated Gower carbo¬
nate deposition in eastern Iowa, and there
appears to be a close link between the

40

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

appearance of the Stegerhynchus association
and major changes in the patterns of carbo¬
nate deposition in Iowa. As will be discussed
later, the appearance of laminated carbonate
deposition in eastern Iowa probably marked
a significant change in the patterns of water
circulation that led to elevated salinities.
Uppermost Scotch Grove Stegerhynchus
associations, assigned a B.A. 2 position,
overlie normal-marine B.A. 3 associations,
and a relative drop in sea level towards the
close of Scotch Grove deposition in Iowa is
inferred. Unlike relative sea level drops
earlier in the Silurian, the probable drop in
sea level at the close of Scotch Grove deposi¬
tion created physiographic conditions that
led to the restriction of normal-marine
epeiric circulation in eastern Iowa. This
change is not only reflected in the patterns of
carbonate deposition, but also by a general
reorganization of benthic community struc¬
ture.

Laminated Carbonate Environments
and Associations

The onset of Gower deposition was
marked by the widespread appearance of
laminated carbonate sediments over much of
east-central Iowa. Although three general
facies are recognized in the Gower Forma¬
tion of Iowa, flat-lying sequences containing
laminated dolomites (Anamosa facies) typify
much of the formation. The bulk of the
Anamosa facies is comprised of laminated
dolomites; individual laminae generally
range between about 0.3 and 3 mm thick,
and laminae as thin as 30 microns are noted.
The laminated rocks include three general
lithologies: 1) wavy- or crinkly-laminated
rocks interpreted as subtidal algal stromato-
litic mats (Philcox, 1972; Henry, 1972); 2)
planar-laminated rocks, possibly represent¬
ing varved carbonate accumulations depos¬
ited by episodic or seasonal carbonate
precipitation (Witzke, 1981c); and 3) faintly-
laminated dolomites. In addition, the
Anamosa facies includes a variety of sec¬
ondary rock types: thinly-bedded dolomites,

dense to porous non-laminated dolomite
mudstones, intraclastic dolomites, dolomites
with evaporite crystal molds, and fossilifer-
ous dolomites with skeletal wackestone to
packstone textures. Individual laminae and
dolomite mudstone beds are laterally persis¬
tent on outcrop (up to distances of 3 km or
more), suggesting widespread quiet-water
depositional environments. The rare pres¬
ence of evaporite crystal molds (Henry,
1972), probably gypsum, along with the
general absence of benthic faunas, indicates
that the Anamosa facies was, at least in part,
deposited under conditions of elevated salin¬
ity. Similar laminated carbonate intervals
are present in evaporitic sequences in the
Salina Group of the Michigan Basin. Al¬
though the bulk of the Anamosa facies was
probably deposited under quiet conditions,
the occasional presence of truncated laminae
and intraclast beds in the sequence suggests
that periodic turbulent conditions, perhaps
generated during storm events, occurred
during deposition.

The Anamosa facies is characterized by a
general absence of benthic invertebrates
(including burrowers), although a few low-
diversity associations are scattered within
some Anamosa sequences. The beds contain¬
ing benthic faunas are typically quite thin,
indicating that benthic faunas lived in the
Anamosa environments for relatively short
periods of time. Benthic faunas are most
commonly encountered in the Anamosa
facies in the general vicinity of the Brady
facies mounds, where abundant brachiopod
and coral faunas thrived in the shallower
mound environments. These faunas are
included in the Prota//zj77S'-rhynchonellid
association, an association best developed in
the mound facies. This association inter¬
fingers with laminated Anamosa dolomites
near the mound margins. However, thin
beds bearing the Protathyris-vhynchoneWxd
associations are occasionally present within
the Anamosa facies at localities removed
from areas of Brady facies mound devel¬
opments; thus at times when laminated

1983]

Witzke — Silurian Benthic Invertebrate Associations

41

Anamosa deposition was interrupted, this
association may have briefly lived in the
intermound environments. In general, the
Protathyris- rhynchonellid association
typically includes an abundance of few taxa,
most notably athyrid {Protathyris, Hyat-
tidina) and indeterminate rhynchonellid
brachiopods and small tabulate and solitary
rugose corals. Gastropods, bivalves
( Pterinea ), and ostracodes have also been
observed. Echinoderm debris is character¬
istically absent throughout the Anamosa
facies, although some small echinoderm
debris has been locally noted, most com¬
monly near the contact with the underlying
Scotch Grove Formation.

A second benthic association, termed the
“rod”-algal mat association, is also iden¬
tified in the Anamosa facies. This associa¬
tion is not only noted at a position where the
Brady and Anamosa facies interfinger, but
also at localities far removed from any car¬
bonate mounds. The “rods” are enigmatic
cylindrical fossils generally about 1 cm by 2
mm in size, but occasionally reaching lengths
of up to 4 cm. They are usually associated
with algal-laminated beds. The “rods” were
apparently soft when deposited, as indicated
by draping of individual “rods” to conform
to bedding surface undulations (Henry,
1972). The “rods” have been variably inter¬
preted as fecal pellets or dwelling tubes of an
unknown benthic invertebrate. However, the
“rods” are exceptionally large for most
known fecal pellets. Gill (1977) illustrated
“rods” from algal-laminated dolomites of
the A-l carbonate in the Michigan Basin
which he interpreted as being of “fecal
origin,” probably produced by unknown
“mat-grazing organisms.” However, if the
abundant “rods” were produced by burrow¬
ing or grazing organisms, there should be
evidence of burrowing within the laminated
dolomites or truncated grazed surfaces on
individual algal laminae adjacent to the
“rod”-bearing beds. Such features have not
been observed in the laminated Gower dolo¬
mites. In addition, well-preserved “rods”

have a hollow central chamber, a feature not
easily explained if they are of fecal origin.
Henry (1972) alternatively suggested that the
“rods” were soft, gelatinous dwelling tubes
of an unknown “worm”-like organism. The
organisms that lived in these tubes may have
been filter feeders. The general exclusion of
a benthic fauna in most laminated Anamosa
environments suggests that benthic condi¬
tions were hostile to most invertebrates,
probably due to elevated salinities. How¬
ever, the “rod” organisms were apparently
uniquely adapted for survival in some of the
subtidal organic-mat environments.

Carbonate Mound ( Reef)
and Related Associations

Carbonate mound facies interfinger with
laminated dolomites of the Anamosa facies
within the Gower Formation of eastern
Iowa. Two mound facies are recognized,
each generally occupying a distinct geo¬
graphic region of eastern Iowa. The Brady
facies includes coral- and brachiopod-rich
mounds typically developed in the western
and central portions of the East-Central
Iowa Basin. Stratigraphic relations indicate
that the Brady mounds were deposited in
shallower-water environments than the
adjacent flat-lying Anamosa beds (Witzke,
1981a). Brady facies mounds and mound
complexes vary in size from about 150 m to 1
km in diameter; maximum vertical dimen¬
sions are unclear due to post-Silurian erosion
(up to 25 m preserved). Dips average about
20 to 50° in the mounds, and slump-folds
locally achieve dips up to 90° (Hinman,
1968).

The Brady facies is characterized by fossil-
iferous dolomite with skeletal wackestone-
packstone (some grainstone and bound-
stone) textures. Dense non-laminated to
laminated dolomites, in part with prominent
stromatolites, are interbedded with the
fossil-rich beds. Although, in a general
sense, Brady rock types resemble those of
the Anamosa facies, the Brady facies is
markedly more skeletal rich. The Brady

42

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

mounds lack a rigid skeletal framework,
and, as evidenced by abundant relict fibrous
isopachous cements, the mounds apparently
became rigid features on the sea floor
primarily through submarine cementation
processes.

A profusion of fossils is evident in the
Brady facies, but the faunas are of relatively
low diversity. As previously discussed, dense
brachiopod accumulations of the Prota-
t/2yr/s-rhynchonellid association comprise
much of the Brady facies. The abundant
small brachiopods are normally articulated,
and dolomite-replacement of delicate athy-
rid spiralia is not uncommon. The Fletcheria
association is well developed within some
Brady facies mounds, commonly intimately
associated with Protathyris-rhynchoneWxd
beds. This association is dominated by clus¬
ters of the solitary rugose coral, Fletcheria
sp., and small colonies (usually less than 20
corallites) of an indeterminate tabulate coral
are commonly encountered. Small solitary
rugosans, Haly sites, and Favosites are
locally present. The coral-rich Fletcheria
association intergrades with the Protathyris-
rhynchonellid association in the Brady
facies, and Fletcheria and small tabulates are
locally represented in the brachiopod-rich
beds. The abundance of corals and Prota-
thyris in these associations suggests a B.A. 2
position. Toward the edges of the Brady fa¬
cies mounds, the Protathyris-x\xynchoxxe\\\d
association interfingers with laminated dolo¬
mites of the Anamosa facies. At this general
position, algal-laminated dolomites, in part
containing “rods,” become prominent, and
domal stromatolites are locally observed.
“Rod” packstones are noted near the
mound edges.

A distinct benthic association is locally
present in the central mound areas of the
Brady facies, stratigraphically below
Fletcheria and Protathyris- rhynchonellid
associations. Large pentamerid ( Harpidium )
and trimerellid brachiopods are conspicuous
in this association, forms generally charac¬
teristic of a B.A. 3 position (Boucot, 1975).

In addition, spiriferid, strophomenid, and
rhynchonellid brachiopods are also repre¬
sented, although athyrids are absent.
Gastropods, bivalves, and nautiloids are
present, but corals are generally rare. The
F[arpidium-lnmerQ\\\(\ association locally
contains rare echinoderm debris, but trilo-
bites, bryozoans, and stromatoporoids have
not been observed.

The LeClaire facies occupies a position
near the southeast margin of the East-Central
Iowa Basin, and is best developed in Scott
County, Iowa (see Fig. 2 map) and adjacent
areas of Illinois. The LeClaire facies includes
mounded and flat-lying strata that inter¬
finger with the Anamosa facies in a complex
manner. The LeClaire facies contains several
different benthic associations. Unlike
benthic associations in the Brady facies, the
LeClaire facies locally includes associations
with an abundance of crinoidal debris, both
in flat-lying and mounded sequences. Large
crinoid debris, including identifiable cups
(especially Eucalyptocrinites, Crotalocri-
nites), is locally common in some LeClaire
mounds, and small indeterminate crinoid
debris is present in some flat-lying LeClaire
sequences. Trilobites also occur in some
LeClaire mounds. The presence of crinoid
debris and trilobites in the LeClaire facies
(these groups commonly regarded as steno-
haline) suggests that LeClaire environments
were developed, in part, in water of gener¬
ally normal-marine salinity. Crinoidal rocks
in the LeClaire facies resemble typical
lithologies in the Palisades-Kepler Mound
facies, although, unlike the Palisades-Kepler
mounds, the LeClaire facies occurs higher
stratigraphically and is laterally equivalent
to laminated dolomites. However, the
LeClaire facies also includes lithologies and
benthic associations that closely resemble
those in the Brady-Anamosa facies.

Fletcheria associations are well developed
in the LeClaire facies, both in flatlying and
mounded sequences, and are locally inter-
bedded with crinoidal or laminated dolo¬
mites. The LeClaire Fletcheria associations

1983]

Witzke — Silurian Benthic Invertebrate Associations

43

contain rugose and tabulate corals, brachio-
pods (rhynchonellids, atrypids), and rare
gastropods, but echinoderm debris is absent.
Additional brachiopod-dominated associa¬
tions, commonly containing rhynchonellids
and atrypids (aff. INalivkinia ), occur in the
facies. The LeClaire mounds also locally
contain a brachiopod association character¬
ized by large pentamerids ( Conchidium ) and
trimerellids; large bivalves (“ Megalomus ”),
gastropods, and solitary rugose corals also
occur. The LeClaire rhynchonellid-atrypid
and Conchidium- trimerellid faunas re¬
semble, in a general sense, the Protathyris-
rhynchonellid and Harpidium-tnmQveWid
associations, respectively, in the Brady
facies. A degree of faunal similarity between
the Brady and LeClaire mounds is apparent,
although important faunal differences, par¬
ticularly with respect to the crinoidal
component, need to be stressed.

As with the upper Scotch Grove mounds,
mound facies in the Gower Formation were
subjected to water currents during
deposition to varying degrees. These
currents brought a continuing supply of
nutrients to the abundant suspension¬
feeding invertebrates that lived on the
mounds, and also facilitated the movement
of water through the mound promoting sub¬
marine cementation. However, the charac¬
teristic preservation of abundant artic¬
ulated brachiopods implies that agitated
wave-washed conditions were not contin¬
ually present in the mound environments.
Although the LeClaire mounds, in part, con¬
tain crinoidal faunas suggestive of open-
marine conditions, more Gower mound
faunas, especially those in the Brady facies,
are characterized by low-diversity associa¬
tions lacking several biotic groups
commonly interpreted as having stenohaline
normal-marine environmental requirements
(most notably echinoderms, trilobites,
bryozoans). In addition, the Gower mound
facies interfinger with laminated Anamosa
carbonates that were probably deposited in
environments of elevated salinity. It is

consistent with those observations to suggest
that the Gower mound environments were
also subjected to conditions of fluctuating or
elevated salinities during their deposition.

Upper Gower Faunas and Environments

The final phases of Silurian sedimentation
in Iowa have been largely erased by pre-
Middle Devonian erosion. However, the
uppermost Gower rocks examined contain
faunal and lithologic characteristics distinct
from those in underlying strata. The upper¬
most portion of the Anamosa facies at one
locality in Jones County (see Fig. 2 map)
includes non-laminated to faintly-laminated
dolomites that are locally intraclastic.
Specimens of a large ostracode, Leperditia
sp., were found in this interval. No other
fossils were recovered, and the fauna was
undoubtedly one of very low diversity. The
presence of intraclastic rocks suggests the
development of shallower water conditions
during upper Gower deposition. Intraclasts
may have been incorporated into the enclos¬
ing fine-grained carbonate sediments during
episodic incursions of agitated conditions.
This shallowing trend evident in the upper
Gower led to eventual offlap of the Silurian
sea from eastern Iowa.

Gower Depositional Model

The progression of normal-marine benthic
associations in the middle Llandoverian
through middle Wenlockian sequence in
Iowa bespeaks long-term maintenance of
stable salinities and effective circulation in
the Iowa portion of the epeiric sea. How¬
ever, a profound change in benthic associa¬
tion structure and carbonate depositional
patterns occurred during the middle to late
Wenlockian. Epeiric water circulation pat¬
terns in Iowa were apparently disrupted at
that time. Diverse marine B.A. 3 associa¬
tions in the upper Scotch Grove are replaced
by relatively low-diversity restricted-marine
B.A. 2 associations near the contact with the
Gower Formation. A relative drop in sea
level may have contributed to these changes.

44

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

What other factors contributed to the
restriction of water circulation in eastern
Iowa during the late Wenlockian? I previ¬
ously suggested that the late Wenlockian
drop in sea level “left central Iowa emergent
at the beginning of the Gower deposition,
and open circulation across the carbonate
shelf was thereby cut off’’ leaving “east-
central Iowa as a restricted embayment of
the Silurian sea’’ (Witzke, 1981a, p. 17).
During marine regression, the seas would
retreat first from the structurally elevated
areas and be retained longest within the
basinal areas (in this case, the East-Central
Iowa Basin). A tentative model of Gower de¬
position is proposed in which a restricted
embayment of the Silurian sea in east-central
Iowa opened eastward into Illinois where
better circulation and more normal marine
salinities prevailed.

The onset of Gower deposition was
marked by the widespread appearance of
laminated carbonate sediments (Anamosa
facies) over much of east-central Iowa. I
concur with Henry (1972, p. 78) and Philcox
(1972, p. 701) in interpreting the deposi-
tional environment of the laminated Gower
carbonates as one of quiet conditions of
restricted circulation and high salinities.
However, equivalent carbonate mound fa¬
cies developed in waters that were generally
shallower than the laminated Anamosa
facies. The nearer-surface water conditions
in the mound environments were apparently
more favorable for the flourishing of benthic
organisms than the slightly deeper environ¬
ments where subtidal organic mats and
“evaporitic’’ carbonates were deposited.
These interpretations suggest that a vertical
stratification of the water column was devel¬
oped during Gower depositional in eastern
Iowa. The probability of hypersaline condi¬
tions in the Gower environments further sug¬
gests that the water column may have been
divided into two water masses by a halocline.
The halocline marked the boundary between
the denser, more saline bottom waters and
an upper surface layer of less saline and
better aerated waters. The Brady facies

mounds apparently developed in the shal¬
lower and more hospitable surface waters,
whereas deposition of the Anamosa facies
predominated beneath a halocline (Witzke,
1981a, p. 21). Because the Brady faunas,
while extremely abundant, are generally of
low diversity and characteristically lack
several normally stenohaline groups, the
waters of the upper surface layer apparently
still posed stresses that tended to exclude
several groups of marine organisms, and
somewhat elevated salinities are suggested.
Skeletal-rich Brady facies beds may have
spread laterally into the flat-lying Anamosa
facies at times when the halocline became
depressed or disrupted.

The LeClaire facies includes a more
diverse benthic fauna compared to the more
restricted faunas of the Brady facies,
suggesting that surface water conditions
were more favorable for marine faunas in
the eastern portion of East-Central Iowa
Basin than farther west. This can be ex¬
plained if surface water salinities increased
westward within the basin. Carbonate build¬
ups and skeletal/mud banks of the LeClaire
facies in the eastern portion of the basin may
have served to attentuate open marine cir¬
culation between Illinois and eastern Iowa.
The LeClaire facies may thereby have
formed an effective circulation barrier, pro¬
moting the development of a stratified water
column in the East-Central Iowa Basin. The
halocline must have vanished eastward into
Illinois, where saline bottom waters pre¬
sumably mixed with more open-marine wa¬
ters. The LeClaire-Anamosa facies belt lies
at a position transitional between the
western Brady-Anamosa facies belt, where a
relatively stable and long-lived halocline was
apparently developed, and an open-marine
facies belt in Illinois. The LeClaire facies,
occupying this intermediate environmental
position, contains both open-marine and
restricted-marine benthic associations.

Conclusions

The central objective of this report was to
evaluate the distribution of the Iowa Silurian

1983]

Witzke— Silurian Benthic Invertebrate Associations

45

benthic associations in terms of possible con¬
trolling paleonvironmental parameters. The
Iowa Llandoverian depth-related benthic
paleocommunity model of Johnson (1975,
1980) was tested using additional petro¬
graphic and stratigraphic information. In
general, the distribution of the three basic
level-bottom open-marine benthic associa¬
tions (coral-stromatoporoid, pentamerid,
stricklandiid) was found to be highly
correlated to depth-related paleoenviron-
mental parameters, in particular the relative
position of effective wave base. Open-
marine epeiric circulation patterns were
maintained across the carbonate shelf in
Iowa during the middle Llandoverian
through middle Wenlockian, and the tem¬
poral sequence of benthic asociations and
facies is linked to widespread depth-related
environmental changes. Open-marine
environments and faunas are correlated to
general Benthic Assemblage positions within
the epeiric sea, and the change from one
B.A. type to another in the Iowa strati¬
graphic sequence can be consistently inter¬
preted in terms of relative changes in sea
level. As illustrated in Figure 1, several
transgressive (deepening) and regressive
(shallowing) trends are evident. However,
the change from one B.A. type to another
only documents relative changes in sea level,
and absolute changes in water depth may not
be accurately reflected. This is particularly
evident in the open-marine mound facies.
Although the mounds typically contain B.A.
3 associations, water depths and environ¬
mental conditions in the mound facies were
considerably different than in the inter¬
mound environments where B.A. 3 associa¬
tions also occur. In many respects, the
environmental factors operating during
mound deposition share more similarities
with flat-lying B.A. 2 environments than
with the B.A 3 intermound environments.

The disruption of open-marine epeiric cir¬
culation patterns during the late Wenlockian
and Ludlovian resulted in a dramatic reorga¬
nization of benthic association structure and
carbonate depositional patterns. The tem¬

poral and geographic distribution of the
Late Silurian benthic assemblages was re¬
lated, not only to relative changes in sea
level, but more importantly, to salinity
stresses within the restricted eastern Iowa
sea. As salinity stresses increased within the
eastern Iowa seaway, several stenohaline
groups, notably the echinoderms, trilobites,
and bryozoans, were excluded from the
benthic associations. Although Benthic
Assemblage analysis, when utilized with
additional stratigraphic and sedimentologic
evidence, provides a basis for evaluating
relative changes in sea level, a strict
correlation of Benthic Assemblages with
specific water depths is overly simplistic.
Additional environmental parameters oper¬
ating on epeiric carbonate shelves, especially
those related to salinity, also exerted
significant influence on the distribution of
Benthic Assemblages and their contained
biotic associations. In general, relative
changes in sea level affected carbonate
deposition by modifying the position of
storm and fair-weather wave base and, in
combination with physiographic and cli¬
matic factors, water circulation patterns.

Acknowledgments

Many people freely offered assistance
during the course of this study, and the
efforts of J. Barrick, A. Boucot, M. Bounk,
B. Bunker, M. Carlson, T. Frest, W.
Furnish, B. Glenister, R. Heathcote, P.
Heckel, G. Klapper, J. Kluessendorf, G.
Ludvigson, D. Mikulic, and J. Swade are
especially appreciated. Review comments by
M. Johnson, P. Sheehan, and R. Pauli are
acknowledged. P. Lohmann prepared the
illustrations, and L. Comstock, typed the
manuscript.

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Witzke— Silurian Benthic Invertebrate Associations

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OBSERVATIONS ON THE COMMENSALISM OF SILURIAN
PLATYCERATID GASTROPODS AND STALKED ECHINODERMS

Joanne Kluessendorf

Illinois State Geological Survey , Champaign , IL 61820

Abstract

Commensalism of coprophagous platyceratid gastropods and stalked echino-
derms persisted from the Ordovician through the Permian. Reported examples from
the Silurian are few although this association was well established by that time.

Among Silurian crinoids only camerates are involved in this commensalism.
These taxa comprise only nine genera from seven families among the 57 genera
represented by 21 Silurian camerate families. Four of these genera ( Dimer ocrinites ,
Lyriocrinus, Macrostylocrinus, Saccocrinus) are found in the Rochester Shale of
New York and Ontario. Other host crinoid genera include Ptychocrinus (Power
Glen Shale, New York and Ontario), Periechocrinus (Waldron Shale, Indiana),
Scyphocrinites (Silurian-Devonian boundary, Morroco), and Marsupiocrinus and
Clematocrinus (Wenlock Limestone, England). Dimer ocrinites with attached platy-
ceratids are also known from the Hogklint beds at Haftingsklint, Gotland, Sweden.

The cystoid Caryocrinites from the Rochester Shale is also found as a platy¬
ceratid host. This is the only cystoid known as a host in the Silurian. Caryocrinites is
unique among cystoids because of its morphologic similarity to crinoids, par¬
ticularly camerates.

The non-camerate host crinoids (six genera of poteriocrinine inadunates and
one taxocrinid flexible) in the geologic record bear morphologic and behavioral
similarities to camerates, and these characteristics may influence host selectivity.
The tegmen and anus morphologies of host crinoids are variable, and the degree of
control which these features exert on host selectivity is uncertain.

Introduction

Platyceratid gastropods are found
attached to the tegminal area of certain
Paleozoic stalked echinoderms, primarily
crinoids and rarely cystoids and blastoids.
Presumably, the platyceratid settled during
its larval stage onto a young host echino-
derm and led a sedentary life situated over
the echinoderm’s anal opening where it fed
on discharged fecal material. This commen¬
salism was apparently successful since it
persisted from the Ordovician, when platy-
ceratids first appeared, through the Per¬
mian, when both platyceratids and the
echinoderms which served as hosts became
extinct (Bowsher, 1955). This platyceratid-

echinoderm relationship has been reviewed
in general by several authors (Keyes, 1888;
Clarke, 1921; Bowsher, 1955; Lane, 1978)
but little has been previously published
about Silurian occurrences even though this
association was well established by that
period. This paper will relate the known
Silurian commensal occurrences, describe
the types of echinoderms that serve as hosts,
and suggest some possible factors in host
selectivity by platyceratids.

Silurian Occurrences

The existence of this commensalism in
Silurian time has been known at least since
1851 when Hall figured (1851), PI. 49, fig.

48

1983]

Kluessendorf— Commensalism of Gastropods and Echinoderms

49

Id) the cystoid Caryocrinites ornatus from
the Rochester Shale of Lockport, New York,
with a platyceratid firmly attached to it. Hall
did not attempt an interpretation of this
relationship, but he concluded that it repre¬
sented an association in life and was not just
a fortuitous occurrence. The earliest report
of a Silurian crinoid host was provided by
Murchison (1854) who figured a specimen of
Marsupiocrinus caelatus with attached platy¬
ceratid from the Wenlock Limestone of
Dudley, England. Murchison believed that
this crinoid was carnivorous and the gastro¬
pod was its prey.

The oldest Silurian occurrence of the
platyceratid-echinoderm relationship is
known from the Llandoverian Power Glen
Shale of New York and Ontario (Brett,
1978a). Brett reported a high density of
platyceratids at one locality where Nati-
conema niagarense was found attached to
many of the more than 100 crowns of the
crinoid Ptychocrinus medinensis present.

Additional Silurian examples of this com¬
mensalism were found in the Wenlockian
Rochester Shale of New York and Ontario.
Bowsher (1955) and Brett (1978b) reported
Naticonema niagarense attached to the
crinoid Macrostylocrinus ornatus from this
unit. Naticonema was also found attached to
the cystoid Caryocrinites ornatus (Hall,
1851); Bowsher, 1955; Brett, 1978b) and to
the crinoids Lyriocrinus, Saccocrinus, and
Dimer ocrinites { C. Brett, 1977, pers. comm.)
in the Rochester Shale. The Wenlockian
HOgklint beds at Haftingsklint, Gotland,
Sweden, have also yielded Dimer ocrinites
with attached platyceratids (C. Franzen,
1978, pers. comm.). Saccocrinus and Cary¬
ocrinites from the Rochester Shale are illus¬
trated as playceratid hosts in figures 1 and 2,
respectively.

Platyceras haliotis has long been known as
a commensal on the crinoid Marsupiocrinus
caelatus from the Wenlock Limestone of
Dudley, England (Murchison, 1854);
Springer, 1926; Bowsher, 1955; Watkins and
Hurst, 1977). The crinoid Clematocrinus

Fig. 1 Naticonema in place on the crinoid Saccocrinus
(ROM 35797, Royal Ontario Museum) from the Roches¬
ter Shale of Ontario. Photo courtesy of C. E. Brett. (x2)

Fig. 2. Platyceras on the theca of the cystoid Cary¬
ocrinites ornatus (E25477, Buffalo Museum of Science)
from the Rochester Shale of New York. Photo courtesy
of C. E. Brett. (x2)

50

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

Fig. 3. Slab of abundant
well-preserved Clematoc-
rinus retiarius showing two
crowns with attached
platyceratids. This slab
(A 12749, Fletcher Collec¬
tion, Cambridge Univer¬
sity) is from the Wenlock
Limestone of Dudley,
England. (x2)

retiarius (figs. 3 and 4), previously
unreported as a host, also occurs with
attached platyceratids in the Wenlock Lime¬
stone at Dudley. Watkins and Hurst (1977)
described this monotaxic crinoid assemblage

Fig. 4. Crown of the crinoid Clematocrinus retiarius
(A12743, Fletcher Collection, Cambridge University)
with attached platyceratid, also from Wenlock Lime¬
stone at Dudley, England. (x4)

in detail (under the name Hapalocrinus) but
did not report the presence of platyceratids.
Several slabs of abundant well-preserved C.
retiarius from Dudley in the Fletcher Collec¬
tion (Cambridge University) show a rather
common occurrence of small commensal
platyceratids. The incomplete preparation of
the slabs and the small size of the gastropods
make it difficult to observe the relationship,
therefore, an even higher density of platy¬
ceratids possibly exists here.

Another previously unreported Silurian
example of this commensal behavior was
found in the Wenlockian Waldron Shale
near Waldron, Indiana, and was brought to
my attention by Jeff Aubrey and Kenneth
Sever. In this unit platyceratids are found in
situ on the crinoid Periechocrinus christyi.
Both the platyceratid and Periechocrinus
individuals are unusually large for Silurian
occurrences of this relationship. One unique
specimen of Periechocrinus, collected by
Kenneth Sever and loaned to me for this
study, bears two platyceratids (figs. 5-7).
The larger of the two gastropods has an
irregular apertural margin corresponding to
the distribution of the crinoid arm facets,

1983]

Kluessendorf— Commensalism of Gastropods and Echinoderms

51

Fig. 5. Large Periechocrinus christy i aboral cup
associated with two platyceratid gastropods, from the
Waldron Shale, near Waldron, Indiana. Specimen in
figs. 5-7 is in the collection of Kenneth Sever. Figs. 5
and 6 are x 0.8.

Fig. 6. Another view of the Periechocrinus specimen
in fig. 5.

Fig. 7. Close-up of the attachment
area on the Periechocrinus specimen
in figs. 5 and 6. Note the irregular
growth lines and apertural margin of
the larger gastropod and also the epi-
faunal organisms which are present on
both platyceratid shells, (xl.2)

52

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 71, Part I,

and its aperture is oriented over the crinoid
tegmen. The smaller gastropod is displaced
with its aperture partly facing the other
gastropod. The apertural margin of the
smaller gastropod shows no modification to
accommodate the larger shell, but a portion
of its margin is irregular in outline, suggest¬
ing it may once have been attached to this or
another crinoid, but dislodged at the time of
burial. Several rhynchonellid brachiopods
are associated with the gastropods, three of
which are oriented with their pedicles
towards the smaller gastropod, suggesting
that they may have been attached to it in life.
The platyceratid shells are heavily encrusted
by ectoproct bryozoans, however, and the
brachiopod attachment site is concealed.
Several cornulitids are also attached to the
gastropod shells. The presence of the same
epifaunal organisms on both shells suggests
a living association may have existed be¬
tween the two platyceratids; however, it is
also possible that the presence of the smaller
gastropod is only fortuitous.

Examples of this commensalism have also
been found at the Silurian-Devonian bound¬
ary in southeastern Morocco. Lierl (1982)
reported both Platyceras (Orthonychia) ele-
gans and Ptychospirina sp. attached to
specimens of the crinoid Scyphocrinites
elegans there.

No examples of this commensal behavior
are known from the diverse North American
Silurian reef echinoderm faunas. Many of
the camerate host crinoids (Dimer ocrinites,
Lyriocrinus, Macrostylocrinus, Marsupio-
crinus, Periechocrinus) and the cystoid
Caryocrinites commonly occur in Silurian
reefs, as do platyceratids. The absence of
this relationship from the reef environment
appears to be an artifact of preservation
because the high energy and low sedimenta¬
tion rates characteristic of reefs are not
conducive to the type of rapid burial needed
to preserve articulated echinoderms. Once
an echinoderm begins to disarticulate any
attached platyceratids could be mechanically
detached from it, destroying evidence of the
original association. A brief survey of the

Greene Museum collections (University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee) has revealed several
loose platyceratid specimens from the
Hawthorne and Bridgeport Silurian reefs
(Chicago, Illinois) with irregular apertural
margins suggesting that they may have been
attached to crinoids or cystoids.

Relation of Commensalism to Crinoid
Morphology and Behavior

Several of the Silurian crinoid taxa which
serve as hosts to platyceratids are not
anchored by holdfasts or roots and are
capable of some mobility. Some, such as
Dimer ocrinites, had prehensile distally-
coiling stalks to provide limited mobility.
One of the host crinoids, Scyphocrinites,
was eleutherozoic and drifted by means of
an air- filled, bulbous float (Strimple, 1963;
Lierl, 1982). Clematocrinus had nodal rings
of cirri on its stem suggesting it had the
ability to reorient itself on the soft sediments
on which it lived (Watkins and Hurst, 1977).
The lack of direct contact with the substrate
and the mobile lifestyles of some of the
Silurian host crinoids lend support to the
idea that platyceratids settled on their hosts
as free-swimming larvae.

Evidence for the sedentary lifestyle of
platyceratids is provided by several Silurian
examples in which the attached gastropod
has an irregular apertural margin which
conforms to irregularities on the host at the
attachment site. The large platyceratid
attached to the Periechocrinus specimen in
figure 7 provides a fine example of this
apertural modification.

The presence of a large, smooth, flat
tegmen has been proposed as the principal
factor in host selectivity by platyceratids
(Bowsher, 1955; Lane, 1978). The Silurian
crinoids which serve as hosts, however,
exhibit a variety of tegmen morphologies
ranging from flat to conical to depressed.
The type of anal area also varies among
these crinoids. The anus may be a simple
opening on the tegmen (e.g., Marsupioc-
rinus) or marginal to the tegmen (e.g.,
Macrostylocrinus ). In some taxa an anal

1983]

Kluessendorf —Commensalism of Gastropods and Echinoderms

53

ridge (e.g., Ptychocrinus ) or anal tube (e.g.,
Periechocrinus ) exists. The length of the anal
tube increases dramatically in some later
hosts, particularly in Carboniferous taxa
such as Stellar ocrinus. No matter what the
structure of the anus or the morphology of
the tegmen the platyceratid is always
associated with the anal opening. In those
taxa with a long anal tube or marginal anus
the platyceratid may have had no contact
with the tegmen at all. Factors other than
tegmen morphology apparently are signif¬
icant in controlling host selectivity.

Camerate crinoids and feeding adaptations

All of the Silurian crinoids to which
platyceratids are found attached belong to
the subclass Camerata. Among 57 genera (21
families) of known Silurian camerates nine
genera (seven families) are involved in this
commensalism (Table 1). The earliest known
example in the Ordovician also involved a
camerate host (Glypt ocrinus) (Bowsher,
1955), and of the numerous post-Silurian
host crinoid genera all are camerates except
for six genera in the inadunate suborder
Poteriocrinina and one genus ( Taxocrinus j
from the subclass Flexibilia. This relation¬
ship occurs rarely in the fossil record among

Table 1. Classification of Silurian crinoids serving as
platyceratid hosts.

Subclass Camerata
Order Monobathrida
Family Hapalocrinidae
Clematocrinus
Family Marsupiocrinidae
Marsupiocrinus
Family Patellocrinidae
Macrostyiocrinus
Family Scyphocrinitidae
Scyphocrinites
Family Periechocrinidae
Periechocrinus
Saccocrinus
Order Diplobathrida
Family Rhodocrinitidae
Lyriocrinus

Family Dimerocrinitidae
Dimerocrinites
Ptychocrinus

known host taxa; however, many other cam¬
erates were possible platyceratid hosts, but
specimens exhibiting this commensal associ¬
ation have yet to be found.

The three groups of crinoids which were
hosts to platyceratids shared similar
morphologic and behavioral adaptations.
Most camerate and some flexible crinoids,
particularly taxocrinids, are considered to
have been rheophilic, filtration-fan feeders
(Breimer, 1978). These crinoids maintained a
passive feeding posture with their highly
pinnulated or ramulated arms forming a fil¬
tration net oriented normal to the horizontal
current (Macurda and Meyer, 1974). This
feeding method provided an efficient means
of capturing plankton and other detritus. In
this orientation the crinoid had to have some
means of supporting its heavy crown. This
balance control necessitated a stalk which
was flexible enough to bend in the feeding
posture but rigid enough to provide ele¬
vation and anchorage. Most camerates pos¬
sessed a stalk capable of considerable flexure
in the middle while rigidity at the proximal
and distal ends provided maximum leverage.
The distally-coiling stalks of dimerocrinitids
(e.g., Dimerocrinites) and rhodocrinitids
(e.g., Lyriocrinus ) may have been very
useful in balance control because they were
able to yield somewhat to prevent too much
longitudinal stress in the stalk (Breimer,
1978). Movement of the pinnules provided
additional control. This passive rheophilic
feeding method did not require complicated
movements and was well suited to camerates
which lacked muscular contacts between
brachials (Breimer, 1978). Breimer (1978)
has also suggested that advanced inadunate
crinoids possessed pinnulate arms capable of
muscular control and could actively orient
their crowns into the current at a specific
angle in a rheophilic posture in order to
derive lift from the current. Although not all
poteriocrinine inadunates (the only inadu-
nates known as platyceratid hosts) had
developed muscular articulation, they had
earlier evolved pinnulate arms and were
capable of the rheophilic feeding posture

54

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 71, Part I,

(Lane and Breimer, 1974; Breimer and
Webster, 1975).

Crinoids adapted to the alternative, rheo-
phobic feeding posture either rested directly
on the substrate or were supported by a
short, rigid stalk. Rheophobes are thought
to have lived in areas with very slight
currents, or none, where they fed on plank¬
ton and other detritus which settled gravita¬
tionally through the water column onto their
outstretched non-pinnulated arms (Breimer,
1978). No rheophobes have been reported as
platyceratid hosts.

What in particular made rheophiles attrac¬
tive, or rheophobes unattractive, to platy-
ceratids as hosts is unknown. Platyceratids
may have selected rheophilic hosts because
these crinoids could effect some balance
control and were capable of supporting a
gastropod while maintaining their feeding
postures. The most effective rheophiles may
have been camerates such as dimerocrinitids
and rhodocrinitids with prehensile stalks,
and several of the Silurian host crinoids are
of this type. The sessile rheophobic crinoids
may have possessed some chemical or
mechanical means of preventing organisms
from settling on them in order to keep their
feeding surfaces clear. Utilizing different
feeding methods at different feeding levels
rheophobes and rheophiles may have had
different food sources. Rheophiles may have
fed on smaller sized plankton and detritus
than rheophobes (Meyer and Lane, 1976;
Watkins and Hurst, 1977). The difference in
food source may have been reflected in the
crinoid’s fecal contents. Rheophobes were
probably less efficient feeders than rheo¬
philes. Also they may have had a lower
metabolic rate resulting in lower feces
production than rheophiles (D. B. Macurda,
1983, pers. comm.).

Morphology of Caryocrinites

The rhombiferan cystoid Caryocrinites
ornatus is the only Silurian cystoid known to
host platyceratids. Caryocrinites is an
unusual cystoid having many morphologic

similarities to crinoids, particularly camer¬
ates. A “legmen” of specialized plates
covers the mouth of Caryocrinites and bears
a morphologic similarity, but is not homol¬
ogous, to the tegmen of crinoids (Kesling,
1967). The long flexible stalk of Caryocrin¬
ites is also very crinoid-like and dissimilar to
most other cystoids which are eleutherozoic
or possess very short rigid columns. Brett
(1978b) compared the radix-type root of
Caryocrinites to that of some camerate
crinoids. The biserial arrangement and
pinnulation of Caryocrinites arms is unlike
most other cystoids, which have simple
unbranched brachioles, but is reminiscent of
camerate crinoid arm structure. Sprinkle
(1975) suggested that the development of
such arms in Caryocrinites increased its
food-gathering capacity. Also, the theca of
Caryocrinites is similar in appearance to
many camerate crinoid calices (Kesling,
1967). The commensal platyceratid is com¬
monly situated on the upper surface of the
Caryocrinites theca in a position correspond¬
ing to that occupied on many crinoids. Based
on its general morphology Sprinkle (1975)
believed that Caryocrinites was a top layer
rheophilic filter-feeder.

Caryocrinites is the only Silurian cystoid
known to be involved in this commensalism,
and it is the only one to possess numerous
camerate crinoid morphologic character¬
istics. This morphologic similarity to
camerates (which are the only Silurian
crinoids that host platyceratids) may have
been the reason that Caryocrinites was a
suitable host for these gastropods.

Summary

All Ordovician and Silurian host crinoids
as well as the majority of post-Silurian
hosts are camerates. The non-camerate hosts
comprise only six genera of poteriocrinine
inadunates and one flexible. These inadu-
nate and flexible crinoids bear resemblance
to camerates, and all three groups are
thought to have been rheophilic filter-
feeders. The only Silurian cystoid (Caryoc-

1983]

Kluessendorf '—Commensalism of Gastropods and Echinoderms

55

rinites) known to be a platyceratid host
mimics many camerate crinoid traits. This
evidence suggests that echinoderms possess¬
ing certain morphologic or behavioral
characteristics of camerate crinoids were
selected as hosts by platyceratids. What
specific characteristics possessed by these
echinoderms influenced host selectivity is
uncertain, but possibly this selectivity was
related to particular morphologic or be¬
havioral adaptations associated with rheo-
philic feeding. The variety of tegmen and
anus types exhibited by Silurian and later
crinoid hosts suggests that factors other than
the morphology of these features were crit¬
ical in host selection.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank C. E. Brett, A. J.
Boucot, C. Franzen, and D. G. Mikulic for
kindly providing me with unpublished data.

C. E. Brett also generously provided photos
used in figures 1 and 2. J. Aubrey and K.
Sever kindly drew my attention to the exis¬
tence of this relationship in the Waldron
Shale, and special thanks are extended to
Mr. Sever for his patience and gracious loan
of the Periechocrinus specimen illustrated in
figure 4. I would also like to express my
appreciation to R. E. Gernant, D. R. Kolata,

D. B. Macurda, and D, G. Mikulic for criti¬
cally reviewing the manuscript.

Literature Cited

Breimer, A. 1978. Autecology. In R. C. Moore
and C. Teichert (eds) Treatise on Invertebrate
Paleontology, Part T, Echinodermata 2. 1:
T331-T343.

_ and G. D. Webster. 1975. A further con¬
tribution to the paleoecology of fossil stalked
crinoids. Koninkl. Nederl. Akad. Wetenschap-
pen- Amsterdam, Proc., Ser. B, 78: 149-167.
Brett, C. E. 1978a. Description and paleoecology
of a new lower Silurian camerate crinoid. J.
Paleontol. 52:91-103.

_ _ _ . 1978b. Systematics and paleoecology of

late Silurian (Wenlockian) pelmatozoan
echinoderms from western New York and
Ontario. Ph.D. thesis (Geology) Univ. of
Michigan, Ann Arbor, 595 p.

Bowsher, A. L. 1955. Origin and adaptation of
platyceratid gastropods. Univ. Kansas
Paleontol. Contrib., Art, 5 (Mollusca), 11 p.

Clarke, J. M. 1921. Organic dependence and
disease. New York State Museum Bull. Nos.
221,222: 113 p.

Hall, J. 1851. Paleontology of New York, Vol¬
ume 2, Albany, 362 p.

Kesling, R. V. 1967. Cystoids. In R. C. Moore
(ed) Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology,
Part S, Echinodermata 1. 1: S85-S267.

Keyes, C. P. 1888. On the attachment of Platy-
ceras to paleocrinoids and its effect on modify¬
ing the form of the shell. Amer. Phil. Soc.
Proc. 25:231-243.

Lane, N. G. 1978. Mutualistic relations of fossil
crinoids. In R. C. Moore and C. Teichert (eds)
Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontology, Part T,
Echinodermata 2. 1: T345-T347.

_ and A. Breimer. 1974. Arm types and

feeding habits of Paleozoic crinoids. Konikl.
Nederl. Akad. Wetenschappen Amsterdam,
Proc., Ser. B, 77: 32-39.

Lierl, H.-J. 1982. Pseudoparasitare Schnecken
auf Kelchen der Seelilie Schyphocri n ites
elegans Zenker aus dem Obersilur-Unterdevon
Stidostmarokkos. Aufschluss 33: 285-290.

Macurda, D. B. and D. L. Meyer. 1974. Feeding
posture of modern stalked crinoids. Nature
247: 394-396.

Meyer, D. L. and N. G. Lane. 1976. The feeding
behavior of some Paleozoic crinoids and recent
basketstars. J. Paleontol. 50: 472-480.

Murchison, R. I. 1854. Siluria. John Murray,
London, 523 p.

Springer, F. 1926. American Silurian crinoids.
Smithsonian Institution Pub. 2871, 239 p.

Sprinkle, J. 1975. The “arms” of Caryocrinites,
a rhombiferan cystoid convergent on crinoids.
J. Paleontol. 49: 1062-1073.

Strimple, H. L. 1963. Crinoids of the Hunton
Group. Okla. Geol. Surv. Bull. 100, 169 p.

Watkins, R. and J. M. Hurst. 1977. Community
relations of Silurian crinoids at Dudley,
England. Paleobiol. 3: 207-217.

MICROFAUNA OF THE MIDDLE SILURIAN WALDRON SHALE,

SOUTHEASTERN INDIANA

Susan M. Siemann-Gartmann
Amoco Production Company
1340 Poydras Street
New Orleans , Louisiana 70150

Abstract

A distinctive microfauna developed around crinoid holdfasts on the soft-
bottomed environment of the Middle Silurian Waldron Shale of southeastern
Indiana. This microfauna was less diverse than the microfauna outside of the
crinoid meadows. The echinoderms exerted an unknown control on the microfauna,
that permitted selected foraminiferid (Psammosphaera and Saccamina) and
ostracode ( ICyrtocyprus and Leperditia) genera to monopolize the micro¬
environment. Scolecodonts were the faunal group least affected by the presence of
crinoids.

Introduction

This study examines the influence of
crinoids upon the distribution of micro¬
fossils in the Middle Silurian (Wenlockian)
Waldron Shale of southeastern Indiana.

Fig. 1. Diagrammatic sketch of Eucalyptocrinites
illustrating the basic structured parts of the animal.

Most crinoids inhabiting the shallow sea
during deposition of the Waldron muds pos¬
sessed root systems (holdfasts) that attached
to the sea bottom. The attachment device
was composed of cirri and radial rootlets
located at the base of the stem (Fig. 1). The
animals anchored themselves by wrapping
the roots around firm objects, such as
brachiopods, or by attaching directly to the
sea bottom. Because two species of Eucalyp¬
tocrinites, E. crassus (Hall) and E. tuber-
culatus (Miller and Dyer), are the most
abundant crinoids in the Waldron Shale, the
root systems examined in this study are
assumed to be of these species (Macurda,
1968; Halleck, 1973) (Fig. 2).

According to Halleck (1973, p. 239),
Eucalyptocrinites was so abundant locally
during Waldron deposition that they formed
crinoid “meadows,” which, along with algal
growths, acted as sediment traps. This
unique environment could have a micro¬
fauna distinctive from that of adjacent areas
without major crinoid beds. Furthermore,
because the crinoids acted as sediment traps,
the microfossils recovered from sediment
around the root systems should provide a
good record of the forms that existed in the

56

1983]

Siemann-Gartmann — Microfauna of the Waldron Shale

57

Fig. 2. Eucalyptocrinites holdfast or root system from the Middle Silurian Waldron Shale in southeastern Indiana.
Greene Museum specimen G27371 .

crinoid “meadows” at time of deposition.
This study was designed to evaluate these as¬
sumptions.

Previous Investigations

The celebrated invertebrate fauna in the
Waldron Shale of southeastern Indiana was
first detailed in the literature by James Hall
(1864). Elrod (1883) applied the name
Waldron Shale to the upper part of the Mid¬
dle Silurian (Wenlockian) calcareous shales
cropping out in southeastern Indiana, in
order to distinguish it from the underlying
Laurel Limestone. Reports on the Waldron
Shale during the early 1900s were completed
by Price (1900), Cumings (1900), and Kindle
and Barnett (1909).

Studies of ostracodes from the Waldron
Shale include the work of Berry (1931),
Coryell and Williamson (1936), and Morris

and Hill (1951, 1952). Other paleontological
work on the Waldron included foraminiferal
studies by Hattin (1960) and McClellan
(1966), and a study of acritarchs by Krebs
(1972).

Evolution and paleoecology of the Wald¬
ron fauna were evaluated by Tillman (1962),
McClellan (1966), Macurda (1968), and Hal-
leck (1973). Macurda (1968) described the
ontogenetic development of the crinoid
Eucalyptocrinites, while Halleck (1973)
studied the relations of crinoids to the
existence of a hardground at the Laurel-
Waldron contact.

Stratigraphy

The Waldron Shale crops out along a dis¬
continuous, elongated strip extending from
northern Indiana to western Tennessee,
where it was originally called the Newsom

58

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

Fig. 3. Part of the Middle Silurian stratigraphic sec¬
tion for southeastern Indiana. The relative position of
Middle Devonian Geneva, which unconformably over-
lies Silurian rocks, is also shown. The thickness of all
units is given in meters. Modified from McClellan
(1966, p. 451).

Shale. In the study area of southeastern
Indiana, the Waldron Shale is generally
underlain by the Laurel Limestone, and
overlain by the Louisville Limestone (Fig. 3).
However, at several localities, the Waldron
Shale is unconformably overlain by the
Middle Devonian Geneva Dolomite due to
erosion during Early Devonian time. The
Laurel, Waldron, and Louisville formations
are all of Middle Silurian (Wenlockian) age,
as established by the presence of ostracodes
of the Drepannellina clarki zone in both the
Laurel and the Waldron formations, and the
presence of the brachiopod Rhipidium in the
Louisville Limestone (Berry and Boucot,
1970).

The Waldron consists of nonresistant,
blue-gray, silty shale, which is easily
differentiated from resistant carbonates of
the underlying Laurel or the overlying Louis¬
ville or Geneva formations (Fig. 4). The
blue-gray shale pales to a buff-gray where it
is weathered or more calcareous, as at San¬
dusky, Indiana. The parting changes from
blocky to very fissile, depending on the
amount of carbonate present. The Waldron
is locally fossiliferous, especially where it is

Fig. 4. Waldron Shale at Tunnel Mill near Vernon, Indiana.

1983]

Siemann-Gartmann— Microfauna of the Waldron Shale

59

highly calcareous. According to Heele
(1963), the shale is composed of calcite and
dolomite, with lesser amounts of feldspar,
illite, kaolinite, pyrite and quartz.

The Waldron varies in total thickness
from 0 to 4 m, and thins to the north and
east. In western exposures, the formation is
about 2.5 m thick, and it reaches a maximum
of 4 m near Louisville, Kentucky (McClel¬
lan, 1966).

Paleogeographic Setting

During Wenlockian time, present-day
Indiana was covered by a tropical epicon¬
tinental sea with an extensive reef system.
These reefs developed in the southeastern
Trade Wind belt of the southern latitudes,
and formed around the margins of the
proto-Michigan basin and the Vincennes
basin in southern Illinois and Indiana
(Shaver, 1977) (Fig. 5). The Waldron muds
were deposited in shallow water on the

i i 1 i r

0 100 200 300 km

Fig. 5. Major reef systems (dotted lines) and paleo¬
geographic features in the central Great Lakes region
during the Silurian. Adapted from Shaver (1977, p.
1409 and p. 1422).

Wabash platform between the developing
basins (Shaver, 1977).

Methods

Samples

Twenty-eight of the 36 crinoid holdfasts
used in this study came from the Greene
Memorial Museum Collection at the Univer¬
sity of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. These samples
were purchased by Thomas A. Greene, a
Milwaukee pharmacist and amateur paleon¬
tologist, from J. T. Doty, a fossil collector
from Waldron, Indiana in the early 1880s.
Other samples were collected from 4 expo-

Fig. 6. Location of field localities discussed in the text.

60

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

sures of Waldron Shale in southeastern
Indiana. The 4 field localities were: Tunnel
Mill, Anderson Falls, Sandusky quarry, and
St. Paul quarry (Fig. 6). The only 2 crinoid
holdfasts found in place were collected at
Tunnel Mill, although 6 displaced specimens
were collected at the St. Paul quarry. Other

localities provided control samples from
areas where holdfasts were not present.

Laboratory Work

In order to recover microfossils, samples
were crushed to approximately 3 cm prior to
chemical treatment. The most satisfactory

Table 1. Summary of samples utilized in this study.

Holdfast Samples from Greene Museum

Weight in Grams

GM-1 (17744, 17745, 17750, 17754)

97

GM-2 (1162, 17743, 17751, 17755)

95

GM-3 (17746, 17747, 17748, 17753)

96

GM-4 (17741, 17749, 17752)

97

GM-5 (1008, 1660)

123

GM-6 (17758, 17762)

116

GM-7 (1630, 17756, 17757, 17759, 17760, 17761)

119

GM-8 (17740)

130

GM-9 (17742)

122

TOTAL OF 9 HOLDFAST SAMPLES FROM GREENE MUSEUM

743

Holdfast Samples Collected in the Field

TM-4

122

SPQ-5

188

SPQ-6

56

SPQ-7

251

SPQ-8

82

SPQ-9

91

SPQ-10

33

TOTAL OF 7 HOLDFAST SAMPLES COLLECTED IN THE FIELD

823

TOTAL OF ALL 16 HOLDFAST SAMPLES

1566

Nonholdfast Samples Collected in the Field

TM-1

300

TM-2

300

TM-3

300

AF-1

100

AF-2

300

AF-3

300

AF-4

200

SQ-1

300

SQ-2

300

SQ-3

300

SPQ-1

300

SPQ-2

300

SPQ-3&4

300

TOTAL OF 13 NONHOLDFAST SAMPLES COLLECTED IN THE FIELD

3600

Explanation for Table 1: GM numbers 1 through 7 are composite samples of the Greene Museum
cataloged specimens listed in parentheses. There was sufficient material of Greene Museum samples
17740 and 17742 to run them separately. Indiana field sites are shown on Fig. 5. Sample locations are:
TM-Tunnel Mill, AF-Anderson Falls, SQ-Sandusky quarry, and SPQ-St. Paul quarry.

1983]

Siemann-Gartmann— Microfauna of the Waldron Shale

61

disaggregation technique utilized Quater¬
nary 0, a detergent with a good wetting
character. Although Zingula (1968, p. 102)
recommended a 20% solution of Quaternary
0, a concentration of 33% produced better
results for samples used in this study. The
disaggregated material was washed through
nested sieves of 35, 60, 120, and 170 mesh.
The 35 mesh fraction represented rock
material that did not break down, and it was
discarded. The other 3 fractions were
manually picked for microfossils, although
the 170-mesh fraction proved to be unfos-
siliferous. Over 1500 microfossils were
recovered, and 1328 of these could be iden¬
tified to generic level.

The size of the samples processed was de¬
pendent upon availability of material. Hold¬
fast samples were generally limited to about
100 gm, while 300 gm of non-holdfast field
samples were used. To have sufficient
material to process most of the Greene
Museum holdfast specimens, samples of
similar lithology from the same locality were
combined (Table 1).

As shown in Table 1, a total of 16 holdfast
samples totaling 1566 gm was processed. Of
these, 7 were composite samples. A total of
3600 gm from 13 field samples not asso¬
ciated with holdfasts was also processed.
This disparity in sample number and amount
created some problems in interpreting the
results of microfauna analysis. Furthermore,
the stratigraphic position of Greene Museum
samples within the Waldron was unknown.
Hence, the microfauna recovered must be
considered to be “time averaged” in that
they probably represent the accumulation of
fossils throughout the time represented by
deposition of the Waldron Shale.

Micropaleontology

Analysis

The microfossils recovered included 656
foraminifera, 443 ostracodes, 181 brachio-
pod fragments, 35 scolecodonts, 13 gastro¬
pods, and lesser numbers of echinoid spines,
bryozoan fragments, and crinoid parts.

Sources used in the identification of the
microfossils included: Coryell and Wil¬
liamson, 1936; Stewart and Priddy, 1941;
Morris and Hill, 1951, 1952; Hattin, 1960;
Moore, 1961, 1962, 1964; McClellan, 1966;
Lundin and Newton, 1970; and Glaessner,
1972. Generic identification was difficult in
many cases, because a majority of the
brachiopods, gastropods and ostracodes
were internal casts.

Because the gastropod casts probably
represent juvenile forms, no attempt was
made to classify them to genera. However,
the coiling pattern and shell shape were
distinctive enough to infer that at least 3
genera were present. The three gastropod
“form genera” were identified as “Bellero-
phontiform,” “Conispiral,” and “Plani-
spiral” (Fig. 7).

The brachipods presented the same prob¬
lem as the gastropods. Although distinctive
variations in the valves were evident, the
internal casts were not definitive enough to
identify genera. Based on valve shape and
the presence or absence of ribbing, at least
three “form genera” were inferred to be
present. These were designated as
“Ribbed,” “Spatulate,” and “Sulcate”
(Fig. 7).

For each sample studied, the 60 and 120
mesh fractions were analyzed individually.
In general, the 120 mesh yielded relatively
few microfossils and the forms were similar
to those present in the 60 mesh fraction.

Fig. 7. “Form genera” for microbrachiopods and
microgastropods described in this study.

62

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

Siemann-Gartmann (1979, p. 33-34) pro¬
vided detailed counts of the microfauna for
each sieve size and for each sample pro¬
cessed. However, this information only
served to establish that all the samples
processed could be combined into holdfast

samples and nonholdfast samples. Table 2
provides this summary.

Abundance and Diversity

Table 2 lists the individual genera
identified from the two basic lithogenetic

Table 2. Summary of the number of microfauna genera (“form genera’’ of brachiopods and gastroods)
and individuals recovered from 16 holdfast samples totaling 1566 gm and 13 nonholdfast samples totaling
3600 gm. The difference in the number and weight of samples in each category must be considered in this
comparison.

Holdfast Microfauna Nonholdfast Microfauna

(Genera) - Individuals (Genera) - Individuals

Brachiopods (3)

61

Brachiopods (3)

120

Ribbed

9

Ribbed

9

Spatulate

6

Spatulate

11

Sulcate

46

Sulcate

100

Foraminifera (6)

356

Foraminifera (9)

300

Metamorphina

2

Hemisphaeramina

2

Psammosphaera

128

Metamorphina

7

Saccammina

222

Psammonyx

1

Sorosphaera

1

Psammosphaera

108

Sorostomasphaera

2

Saccammina

156

Webbinelloidea

1

Sorosphaera

14

Sorostomasphaera

8

Thurammina

2

Webbinelloidea

2

Gastropods (2)

2

Gastropods (3)

11

Bellerophontiform

1

Bellerophontiform

1

Planispiral

1

Conispiral

6

Planispiral

4

Ostracodes ( 1 0)

213

Ostracodes (14)

228

Bairdia

26

Bairdia

20

Beyrichia

4

Beyrichia

3

Buthocyrus

11

Bythocyrus

20

?Cyrtocyprus

97

?Cyrtocyprus

84

Entomozoe

4

Entomozoe

4

Eridochoncha

13

Eridochoncha

2

Euprimitia

4

Euprimitia

15

Halliella

2

Halliella

4

Leperditia

48

Hemiaechminoides

2

Primitia

4

Leperditia

43

Primitia

22

Schmidtella

3

Thlipsuroides

3

Waldronites

3

Scolecodonts (2)

17

Scolecodonts (4)

18

Arabellites

4

Arabellites

3

Nereidavus

13

Nereidavus

13

Staurocephalites

1

Ungulites

1

TOTAL GENERA: (23)

649

TOTAL GENERA: (33)

677

1983]

Siemann-Gartmann— -Micro fauna of the Waldron Shale

63

associations described above. The total
genera present is also provided in this table.
The holdfast samples yielded 23 genera,
while 33 genera were present in nonholdfast
samples. In spite of a large bias in the weight
of nonholdfast samples, it seems that they
contain a more diversified microfossil
assemblage than the holdfast samples.

All three brachiopod “form genera” are
present in the grouping of microfossil forms
from both primary lithologic associations.
Since more than twice as much nonholdfast
material was processed, it seems that micro-
brachiopods were present in essentially equal
numbers in the two groups under study. In
both instances, the most common brachio¬
pod form was the “Sulcate.”

All six genera of foraminifera which are
present in the holdfast samples are also pres¬
ent in the nonholdfast samples. Although 3
more genera are present in the latter
lithologic association, they are represented
by only 5 specimens. Although the foramini-
feral fauna is dominated by Psammosphaera
sp. and Saccammina sp. in both associa¬
tions, it is more abundant with holdfasts.
When one considers the biased sampling
against holdfast lithologies, this difference is
given more significance. Other foraminiferal
genera common to both lithologic associa¬
tions are lower in total number of
individuals per genus in the holdfast
samples. However, the total number of
foraminifera individuals is still higher in
holdfast samples (356) than in nonholdfast
rocks (300). This indicates that the holdfasts
contain more foraminifera, although the
fauna was less diverse, than the samples
without holdfasts.

Only two of the gastropod “form genera”
were found in association with holdfasts,
and these were each represented by only one
specimen. Eleven gastropods representing 3
“form genera” were identified from non¬
holdfast samples.

Holdfast samples contained only 10 of the
14 ostracode genera recovered during this
study. Of these 10 genera, 5 ( Bairdia ,
Beyrichia, ?Cyrtocyprus, Eridochoncha and

Leperditia) occurred in greater numbers than
in the nonholdfast control samples, and one
(Entomozoe) was represented by 4 specimens
in each rock type. The total number of
individual ostracodes recovered was 213
from holdfast samples and 230 from non¬
holdfast rocks. However, these numbers are
misleading if one does not consider that
approximately 2.3 times more nonholdfast
rock was processed.

Two genera of scolecodonts were found in
holdfast material, whereas four genera were
recovered from nonholdfast samples. How¬
ever, the 2 unique genera were each repre¬
sented by a single specimen. The two
scolecodont genera, Arabellites and
Nereidavus, that occur in both sample types
are present in almost equal numbers. Fur¬
thermore, the total number of scolecodonts
is similar in both associations (17 in holdfast
samples and 18 in nonholdfast rocks). Once
again, if sample bias is considered, the
holdfast samples are characterized by more
individual scolecodonts, but fewer genera.

The holdfast and nonholdfast faunas de¬
scribed above were tested with the Shannon
index, which provides a measure of diversity
for nominal scale data. The Shannon index
for each group was then utilized to deter¬
mine relative diversity of each group (Zar,
1974, p. 35). These tests verified the
apparent diversity differences noted in a
visual examination of Table 2. Although
both faunas have a moderately high diver¬
sity, the holdfast fauna is relatively less
diverse.

Interpretation

When I began this study, I presupposed
that the microfauna associated with crinoid
holdfasts would be more diverse and abun¬
dant than the control fauna. This assump¬
tion was based on the view that the Waldron
crinoids supposedly lived in well-circulated
marine waters with a constant supply of
food. Such an environment should also
allow a diverse microfauna to flourish.
Furthermore, I visualized effective entomb¬
ment of these organisms upon death because

64

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

the crinoids, along with algal mats, would
act as effective sediment traps (Halleck,
1973; Abbott, 1975). My conceptual model
was only half right. As previously described,
the microfauna associated with the crinoid
holdfasts is more abundant, than with non¬
holdfast rocks, but it is less diverse.

The percentage of each faunal group pres¬
ent in the total microfossil assemblage in the
holdfast and nonholdfast samples is sum¬
marized in Table 3. Based on these figures, it
is evident that brachiopods are relatively less
abundant in association with holdfasts than
they are in nonholdfast rocks. More than
half (54.9%) of the microfauna associated
with holdfasts consists of foraminifera,

Table 3. Percentage of microfaunal groups in

holdfast and
study.

nonholdfast samples

utilized in this

Holdfast

Nonholdfast

Brachiopods

9.4%

17.7%

Foraminifera

54.9%

44. 1 %

Gastropods

.3%

1.6%

Ostracodes

32.8%

33.9%

Scolecodonts

2.6%

2.7 %

Total

100.0

100.0

Fig. 8. Percent of genera for the foraminifera and
ostracode faunal groups.

while they comprise only 44.1% of the
microfauna in nonholdfast rocks. Gastro¬
pods are a minor element in both micro¬
faunas, but they are more abundant in
nonholdfast samples. Ostracodes made up
approximately one third of all the micro¬
organisms in both holdfast and nonholdfast
groups. Scolecodonts are present in equal
percentages in both rock types.

As described above, the foraminifera con¬
stitute 54.9% of holdfast samples, and
98.2% of this fauna is composed of two
genera, Psammosphaera (35.9%) and
Saccammina (62.3%) (Fig. 8). The
remaining 1.8% includes four genera
( Metamorphina , Sorosphaera, Sorostomas-
phaera, and Webbinelloidea). Foraminifera
make up 44.1% of the microfauna of non¬
holdfast samples, with five genera con¬
stituting 97.5% of the fauna. These genera
are Psammosphaera (36%), Saccammina
(52%), Sorosphaera (4.7%), Sorostomas-
phaera (2.7%) and Metamorphina (2.3%)
(Fig. 8). The remaining 2.4% consist of the
following genera: Hemisphaeramina, Psam-
monyx, Thurammina and Webbinelloidea.

Although the percentage of ostracodes in
both groups is similar, the relative amounts
of the genera represented are different.
Genera present in holdfast samples consist
of ?Cyrtocyprus (45.5%), Leperditia
(22.5%), Bairdia (12.2%), Eridochoncha
(6.1%), and Bythocyrus (5.2%) (Fig. 8).
These 5 genera represent 91.5% of the
ostracode fauna, while the remaining 8.5%
consists of Beyrichia, Entomozoe, Euprim-
itia, Halliella, and Primitia.

In nonholdfast samples, 88.7% of the
ostracode fauna is composed of six genera.
These are: ICyrtocyprus (36.5%), Leperditia
(18.7%), Primitia (9.6%), Bairdia (8.7%),
Bythocyrus (8.7%), and Euprimitia (6.5%)
(Fig. 8). The remaining 11.3% consists of
the following nine ostracode genera:
Beyrichia, Entomozoe, Eridochoncha, Hal¬
liella, Hemiaechminoides, Schmidtella, Thli-
puroides, and Waldronites. The two most
abundant ostracode genera, ICyrtocyprus

1983]

Siemann-Gartmann— Micro fauna of the Waldron Shale

65

and Leperditia , comprise 68% of the total
ostracode fauna in the holdfast samples
compared with only 55% in nonholdfast
rocks (Fig. 8).

Two foraminifera genera (Psammos-
phaera and Saccammina) and two ostracode
genera (ICyrtocyprus and Leperditia )
dominate the microfauna. These forms may
have been generalists, who occupied an
environment that was not highly specialized.
Since the 4 taxa listed above comprise 76.3%
of the total population of microorganisms
present in the holdfast assemblage, this
might indicate the environment associated
with the crinoid roots was not partitioned
into narrow ecological niches which would
have favored a wider range of micro¬
organisms. Once established in this non-
specialized environment, generalists would
flourish and probably crowd out other
genera. Hence, environmental factors
favoring a large population of nonselective
microorganisms could explain the lower
diversity previously described. However, it
may be that the most abundant taxa were
merely better adapted to the environment
associated with the holdfasts.

It is also possible the crinoids themselves
were responsible for lower diversity in the
microfauna associated with the holdfasts.
Watkins and Hurst (1977) constructed a
model of crinoid ecology for the Middle
Silurian Wenlock Limestone of Dudley,
England. These workers concluded that
crinoids affected the associated fauna by
their high-level suspension feeding habits. A
dominance of crinoids resulted in “high
crinoid species diversity, partitioning of
planktonic resources, and maintenance of
suspension feeding height over other fauna’’
(Watkins and Hurst, 1977, p. 216). Lane
(1973), who reported on Carboniferous
crinoids from Crawfordsville, Indiana,
arrived at similar conclusions in a study that
focused on a depositional environmental
receiving terrigenous sediment.

According to Watkins and Hurst (1977),
one key to the successful dominance of the

crinoids was their diversity, which allowed
for stratified feeding heights. Although
species diversity in crinoids of the Waldron
Shale was probably inhibited by the soft
bottom environment, they may have exerted
some control on the associated microfauna.

Size comparisons between the holdfast
and nonholdfast foraminifera and ostra-
codes do not indicate that crinoids selectively
filtered out some forms for food. Further¬
more, the rooted crinoids would feed well
above the level of the substrate where the
microfauna lived (Fig. 1).

The scolecodonts were the faunal group
that appears to be least affected by the
presence of crinoids. These microfossils are
the jaws of worms that inhabited the
substrate at least part of the time, and this
would minimize any influence by crinoids.

Based on the discussion above, there is a
difference between the microfaunas asso¬
ciated with holdfast and nonholdfast sam¬
ples. However, my work does not establish
what caused this difference. Certainly the
controls are somehow related to the presence
of crinoids, or crinoid holdfasts.

Conclusions

This study establishes that the microfauna
associated with crinoid holdfasts in the
Middle Silurian Waldron Shale of south¬
eastern Indiana is distinctive from control
samples not associated with holdfasts. The
crinoid holdfast microfauna is characterized
by a large percentage of foraminifera and
ostracodes. A small percentage of the micro¬
fauna is composed of brachiopods, scoleco¬
donts and gastropods. A total of only 23
genera represents the five faunal groups
present in the crinoidal microfauna, whereas
33 genera are present in the same 5 faunal
groups in nonholdfast samples. Thus, the
holdfast faunal assemblage is characterized
by a relatively abundant microfauna with
lower diversity than that recovered from the
control samples.

Crinoids, or crinoid holdfasts, exerted an
unknown controlling influence over the

66

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

microfauna, although several possibilities
are discussed. The genera that make up
76.5% of the crinoidal microfauna were
Psammosphaera and Saccammina (foramin-
ifera), and ? Cyrtocyprus and Leperditia
(ostracodes). The only faunal group that was
not significantly affected by the rooted
crinoids were the scolecodonts. These con¬
clusions support the findings of Watkins and
Hurst (1977), who also concluded that cri¬
noids exerted a control on the associated
fauna.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Dr. Katherine
Nelson for suggesting and guiding this study.
I also wish to acknowledge the following
individuals for professional assistance: J. M.
Berdan, U.S. Geological Survey, Frank J.
Charnon and Dr. Robert E. Gernant of The
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Mr.
Kenneth Hodginson, a paleontologist with
Exxon Company U.S. A., Dr. Gary Lane of
The University of Indiana-Bloomington,
Drs. Richard A. and Rachel K. Pauli of The
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and
Dr. Peter Sheehan, The Milwaukee Public
Museum. On a more personal note, I would
like to thank my parents for moral and
financial support, and my husband, Chuck,
for continual encouragement.

Literature Cited

Abbott, B. M. 1975. Implications for the fossil
record of modern carbonate bank corals. Geol.
Soc. Am. Bull. 86: 203-204.

Berry, W. 1931. Micro-organisms from the
Waldron Shale of Clifty Creek, Indiana. Proc.
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Berry, W. B. N. and A. J. Boucot. 1970.
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Geol. Soc. Am. Special Paper 102. 289 p.
Coryell, H. N. and M. Williamson. 1936. A study
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Flat Rock Creek, St. Paul, Indiana. Am. Mus.
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Cumings, E. R. 1900. On the Waldron fauna at
Tarr Hole, Indiana: Proc. Indiana Acad. Sci.
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Elrod, M. N. 1883. Geology of Decatur County.
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Glaessner, M. F. 1972. Principles of Micro¬
palaeontology. Hafner Publishing Co., New
York. 297 p.

Hall, James. 1864. Notice of some new species of
fossils from a locality of the Niagara Group in
Indiana, with a list of identified species from
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Halleck, M. S. 1973. Crinoids, hardgrounds, and
community succession; The Silurian Laurel-
Waldron contact in southern Indiana. Lethaia
6: 239-251.

Hattin, D. E. 1960. Waldron (Niagaran) Fora-
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Heele, G. L. 1963. A study of the lateral textural,
mineralogical and chemical variations in the
Waldron Shale (Silurian: Niagaran) in
southern Indiana, western Kentucky, and
western Tennessee. Oxford, Ohio, Miami
Univ., Master’s thesis. 48 p.

Kindle, E. M. and V. H. Barnett. 1909. The
stratigraphic and faunal relations of the
Waldron fauna in southern Indiana. Indiana
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393-416.

Krebs, E. A. 1972. Arcitarchs of the Waldron
Shale (Middle Silurian) of southeastern
Indiana: Cincinnati, Ohio, Univ. Cincinnati,
Master’s thesis. 161 p.

Lane, N. G. 1973. Paleontology and paleo-
ecology of the Crawfordsville fossil site (Upper
Osagian: Indiana). Univ. Calif. Pub. Geol.
Sci. 99: 1-141.

Lundin, R. F. and G. D. Newton. 1970. Ostra-
coda and the Silurian stratigraphy of north¬
western Alabama. Geol. Survey of Ala. Bull.
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Macurda, D. B. 1968. Ontogeny of the crinoid
Eucalyptocrinites. Jour. Paleo. 42: 99-118.

McClellan, W. A. 1966. Arenaceous foramini-
fera from the Waldron Shale (Niagaran) of
southeastern Indiana. Bull. Am. Paleo. 50, no.
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Moore, R. C. (editor). 1961. Treatise on In¬
vertebrate Paleontology: Part Q Arthropoda,
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Kansas Press. 442 p.

_ . 1962. Treatise on Invertebrate Paleontol¬
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1983]

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67

_ . 1964. Treatise on Invertebrate Pal¬
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EVOLUTION OF A BIOSTRATIGRAPHIC ZONATION;
LESSONS FROM LOWER TRIASSIC CONODONTS, U.S. CORDILLERA

Rachel Krebs Paull

Dept . of Geological and Geophysical Sciences
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Milwaukee , Wisconsin 53201

Abstract

Condonts have exceptional value as biostratigraphic tools, and more than 100
conodont biozones are recognized in Ordovician through Triassic rock. They facili¬
tate correlation in Triassic strata where stratigraphically significant ammonoids are
rare or absent. A biostratigraphic zonation for the entire Triassic System was first
developed in 1971 by integrating parts of a Lower Triassic zonation developed in
West Pakistan with zonations from the Cordillera of the western United States.

Conodonts were considered to be ‘facies breakers,” and paleoecologic influ¬
ences were not recognized in the Great Basin and Middle Rocky Mountains by many
earlier workers. This resulted in a number of proposed modifications for the
Smithian Stage. Additional conodont biostratigraphic studies extended the total
ranges of some conodont species and eliminated the utility of several overlapped
biozones. As regional biostratigraphic work on Lower Triassic conodonts con¬
tinued, it became apparent that simplification of the zonal scheme would make it
more useful in a variety of marine depositional environments on a worldwide basis,
if the spirit of Albert Oppel’s ‘‘ideal profile” were followed.

Lower Triassic conodont biozones are based on: Hindeodus typicalis for the
Griesbachian Stage, Neospathodus kummeli and Neospathodus dieneri for the
Dienerian Stage, and Neospathodus waageni for the Smithian Stage. The uppermost
Early Triassic Spathian Stage biozones are based on: Neospathodus triangularis,
Neospathodus collinsoni, Neogondolella jubata, and Neospathodus timorensis.

The refined Lower Triassic zonation presented here is a progress report that
extends the generic ranges of Gladigondolella and Platyvillosus downward into the
Smithian. Further biostratigraphic studies will modify this contemporary effort, as
total ranges of zone diagnostic conodonts are ultimately defined.

Introduction

Conodonts were widespread in early
oceans for a span of 400 million years, from
the latest Precambrian or earliest Cambrian
into the latest Triassic (Sweet and Berg¬
strom, 1981). Their resistant, phosphatic,
microskeletal components, while providing
very limited clues as to the biologic nature of
the conodont animal, possess exceptional
value as biostratigraphic tools.

Conodonts were probably small (up to
several centimeters in greatest dimension),

bilaterally symmetrical, free-moving orga¬
nisms which occupied pelagic to benthic
marine environments. A recently described,
elongate, soft-bodied animal with an ap¬
paratus of conodont elements, apparently in
place, shows similarities to both chordates
and chaetognath marine worms (Briggs and
others, 1983). The microscopic elements
served as teeth or as supports for respiration
or feeding activities, and were embedded in,
or covered by, fleshy tissue (Bengston, 1976;
Jeppsson, 1979; Clark, 1981a). After death,

68

1983]

Pauli— Evolution of a Biostratigraphic Zonation

69

these carbonate-apatite structures became
dissociated, so natural assemblages of hard
parts are rare. Crushing and processing rock
for recovery of conodonts further isolate
individual elements.

Within the past 35 years, coincident with
the use of the acetic acid method for dis¬
solution of carbonate rocks, conodont study
accelerated and the literature burgeoned.
Work during this period focused primarily
upon the stratigraphic distribution of diag¬
nostic forms. As a result, more than 100
conodont biostratigraphic units are recog¬
nized from Ordovician through Triassic rock
(Sweet and Bergstrom, 1981).

The widespread occurrence of conodonts
in diverse lithologies led to the general belief
that they were largely independent of envi¬
ronmental influences, and stratigraphers en¬
visioned a universal spread of individual
taxa in marine environments. The same spe¬
cies were observed, for example, in Ordovi¬
cian lithofacies that included shelly shelf
limestone, black graptolitic shale, and deep
water chert-shale sequences containing
sponge spicules and radiolaria. The ubi¬
quitous nature of some forms prompted an
unnamed geologist to remark that “Cono¬
donts are like God— they are everywhere”
(Lindstrom, 1976).

By 1950, conodont faunas from Ordo¬
vician through Permian rocks were described
for the United States. Muller (1956)
described the first fully-documented North
American Lower Triassic conodont fauna
from strata in Nevada. Clark (1957) pio¬
neered the use of conodonts to establish the
Triassic age for marine strata in the eastern
Great Basin. However, documentation of
Triassic conodonts lagged behind Paleozoic
efforts. Factors contributing to this situation
include the limited areal extent of marine
Triassic rocks, the remote, often desolate,
character of the Great Basin outcrop area,
the limited abundance of most Lower Tri¬
assic conodont faunas, and a small number
of persistent workers. Apparently, the
paucity of knowledge about the Triassic in

the western United States is only part of a
worldwide problem, for Derek Ager states,
“Much is hidden in the mists of the early
Triassic, which is probably the least known
episode in the long history of Phanerozoic
time” (1981, p. 99).

Conodont faunas of both the Late
Permian and Early Triassic lack diversity,
but include distinctive forms. An evolution¬
ary crisis in Early Permian time eliminated
many long-ranging Paleozoic taxa, and only
four or fewer major superfamilies survived
(Clark, 1972; Sweet, 1973; Sweet and
Bergstrom, 1981). The cosmopolitan nature
of Lower Triassic marine faunas reflects the
assembly of a single supercontinent, with the
Pacific and Tethyan oceans forming a con¬
tinuous water body around the shores of
Pangaea (Valentine and Moores, 1973).

Biozones and Correlation

Worldwide biostratigraphic zonation and
correlation of Permian and Triassic marine
rocks are historically based on ammonoid
faunas, which are arranged in a standard
succession. In North America, at least 35
ammonoid zonal units provide a biostrati¬
graphic framework for the marine Triassic
(Silberling and Tozer, 1968). Although
ammonoids were widely distributed in late
Paleozoic and Mesozoic seas, they are rare
fossils in many geographic areas. More
recently, conodonts were used to facilitate or
refine correlation where ammonoids are
scarce or absent (Clark and Behnken, 1971;
Sweet and others, 1971).

Regardless of the fossil content utilized,
the purpose of biostratigraphic zonation is
to provide a means by which the relative
timing of biologic and geologic events can be
determined and correlated on a worldwide
basis. These biozones must necessarily have
time significance, and may involve evolu¬
tionary changes, migrations, and extinctions
(Eicher, 1968).

Three principal categories of biostrati¬
graphic units are used, depending upon cir¬
cumstances and available fauna (North

70

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I

American Commission on Stratigraphic
Nomenclature, 1983). However, range
(interval) zones of various types are the most
widely employed. Interval zones are defined
by the lowest and/or highest, documented
occurrences of less than three taxa (Fig. 1).
They include: the interval between the lowest
and highest occurrences of a single taxon
(taxon range zone), the interval between the
lowest occurrence of one taxon and the high¬

est occurrence of another taxon (concurrent
range zone or partial range zone), or the
interval between successive lowest or highest
occurrences of two taxa (lineage zone or
interval zone). Unfossiliferous intervals are
also recognized between or within biozones
(barren interzones and intrazones).

An assemblage zone is characterized by
the association of three or more taxa, and in
practice, two different concepts are used

BIOSTRATIGRAPHIC
INTERVAL ZONES

Fig. 1 . Biostratigraphic interval zones, as defined by the North American Commission on Stratigraphic Nomenclature
(1983). Examples include: A) taxon range zone, Bl) concurrent range zone, B2) partial range zone, Cl) lineage zone,
C2) interval zone.

ASSEMBLAGE ZONE

OPPEL ZONE

Fig. 2. Assemblage zones, as defined by the North American Commission on Stratigraphic Nomenclature (1983).
Examples include: Left) assemblage zone, not based upon the ranges of the included species; Right) Oppel zone, a con¬
current range zone defined by more than two taxa.

1983]

Pauli — Evolution of a Biostratigraphic Zonation

71

(Fig. 2). One, the assemblage zone, is
characterized by a certain association of taxa
without regard to their range limits. The
second type is an Oppel zone, with bounda¬
ries based on two or more documented, first
and/or last occurrences of the taxa charac¬
terizing the zone. This is also a form of
concurrent range zone.

The third category, or abundance zone, is
characterized by quantitatively distinctive
maxima of relative abundance of one or
more taxa (Fig. 3). This is the acme zone of
the International Subcommission on Strati¬
graphic Classification (Hedberg, 1976).

Although all fossils, in a general sense,
may be considered “facies fossils” (Ager,
1981), some assemblage and abundance bio¬
zones may reflect strong local ecologic
control, and are not necessarily time
significant. The appearance of the included

ABUNDANCE ZONE

Fig. 3. Abundance zone, as defined by the North
American Commission on Stratigraphic Nomenclature
(1983). This biozone is based on a marked increase in
abundance of the defining taxon or taxa.

taxa in these cases may be due to the shift or
return of favorable, or optimal environ¬
mental conditions within a geographic area.

Whether based on the range of a single
taxon or of a specific combination of taxa, a
biozone conceptually includes all the rocks
deposited anywhere during the entire time
the defining taxon or taxa existed (total
range), whether their remains are recognized
or not. Most local range zones (teilzones) are
only fragments of the total taxon/taxa
record. The development and application of
biozones were elegantly detailed in 1856 by
young Albert Oppel during his study of
Jurassic biostratigraphy. Oppel visualized
the general succession of fossils as indepen¬
dent of the actual paleontologic or lithic
succession at any one place (Hancock, 1977).
In discussing correlation based on fossil
content, Oppel observed:

“This task is admittedly a hard one, but it is
only by carrying it out that an accurate corre¬
lation of a whole system can be assured. It
necessarily involves exploring the vertical
range of each separate species in the most
diverse localities, while ignoring the
lithological development of the beds; by this
means will be brought into prominence those
zones which, through the constant and exclu¬
sive occurrence of certain species, mark them¬
selves off from their neighbours as distinct
horizons. In this way is obtained an ideal
profile, of which the component parts of the
same age in the various districts are character¬
ised always by the same species” (translation
in Hancock, 1977, p. 12).

The search for the “ideal profile” became
the aim of all biostratigraphers who fol¬
lowed.

Lower Triassic Conodont Zonation
Early Zonations

Muller (1956) first suggested the possibil¬
ity of establishing a time-significant, cono¬
dont biostratigraphic succession within the
Triassic, and Clark (1960), Mosher and
Clark (1965), and Mosher (1968) identified
preliminary sequences. The first extensive
Lower Triassic zonal scheme based on

72

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

SPATHIAN

9 Neospathodus timorensis

8 Neogondolella jubata

SMITHIAN

7 Neospathodus waageni

6 Neospathodus pakistanensis

DIENERIAN

5 Neospathodus cristagalli

4 Neospathodus dieneri

3 Neospathodus kummeli

GRIESBACHIAN

2 Neogondolella carinata

1 Anchignathodus typicalis

Fig. 4. Lower Triassic conodont zonation of Sweet
(1970), based on specimens from the Salt and Trans-
Indus ranges of West Pakistan.

SERIES

STAGE

LOWER

TRIASSIC

SCYTHIAN

SPATHIAN

SMITHIAN

DIENERIAN i

GRIESBACHIAN

Fig. 5. Lower Triassic stage names for North
America.

13 Neospathodus timorensis

SPATHIAN

12 Neogondolella jubata

Z

rr\

11 Neospathodus n. sp. G

UJ

<

CD

1-

o

10 Platyvillosus

CO

CO

9 Neogondolella milleri

<

LLI

<

rr

SMITHIAN

8 Neospathodus conservativus

QC

0

LL

h-

7 Parachirognathus-Furnishius

oc

6 Neospathodus pakistanensis

LLI

o

DIENERIAN

5 Neospathodus cristagalli

z

_l

4 Neospathodus dieneri

<
(—
c n

3 Neospathodus kummeli

GRIESBACHIAN

2 Neogondolella carinata

<

CL

1 Anchignathodus typicalis

Fig. 6. Lower Triassic conodont zonation of Sweet
and others (1971), combining data from West Pakistan
and the Great Basin of the western United States.

conodonts was provided by Sweet (1970)
from the uppermost Permian and Lower
Triassic of West Pakistan (Fig. 4). The
Lower Triassic was divided into nine zones
based on the vertical distribution of six
genera, with the oldest zone spanning the
Permian-Triassic boundary (Sweet, 1970).
Five of the zones were also represented in
Triassic collections from Europe and North
America, but four were of utility only in
West Pakistan. Figure 5 provides series and
stage names for the Lower Triassic.

A cooperative effort by North American
conodont workers led to the development of
a biostratigraphic zonation for the entire
Triassic System (Sweet and others, 1971)
(Fig. 6). Thirteen Lower Triassic conodont
zones were established, and correlated with
the ten North American ammonoid zones of
Silberling and Tozer (1968). The type strata
for the lower Scythian zones are in the Salt
and Trans-Indus ranges of West Pakistan.
Type localities for all but the topmost upper
Scythian zones are in the Great Basin of the
western United States (Sweet and others,
1971).

Continuity between the Pakistan and
Great Basin portions was not immediately
confirmed, although some conodont species
were common to both regions. Diagnostic
Salt Range forms, such as Neospathodus
pakistanensis of zone 6, underlying the
suture, had not been found in the Great
Basin, while Neospathodus waageni of zone
7 was not yet reported from the Parachirog-
nathus-Furnishius Zone of North America
(Figs. 4 and 6) (Sweet and others, 1971).

The Parachirognathus-Furnishius interval
of Sweet and others (1971) was based on
work in Utah and Nevada, and it forms the
lowest zone of the North American part of
the combined zonation (Fig. 6). This dual
assignment was based on the suspicion that,
“there may be a facies relationship between
Furnishius- and Parachirognathus- bearing
strata” (Sweet and others, 1971, p. 452). To
evaluate this concern, Parachirognathus-
Furnishius ratio studies were conducted
along the margin of the Lower Triassic

1983]

Pauli — Evolution of a Biostratigraphic Zonation

73

seaway. The paleoecologic work of Clark
and Rosser (1976) assumed a basin to shelf
transect from the deeper parts of the
Cordilleran geosyncline on the west to
progressively shallower marine environ¬
ments to the east, where terrigenous red beds
intertongue with marine sediments. Regional
stratigraphic work (Koch, 1976; Collinson
and Hasenmueller, 1978; Pauli, 1980; Carr
and Pauli, 1983), however, established that
the geographic distribution of sections
sampled by Clark and Rosser (1976) was
biased toward the shelf (shallow transitional)
environment (Fig. 7). Although their western
sections are thicker than those to the east,
this did not mean deeper water, and a true
basin to shelf survey was not made.

The upper Scythian conodont biostratig¬
raphy reported by Solien (1979) from Fort
Douglas, Utah, was in the same relative
basin to shelf position and had a deposi-
tional environment similar to the sections
used by Clark and Rosser (1976). Progres¬
sive changes in the vertical distribution of
Furnishius and Parachirognathus in this
single section were included in a modified
zonation proposed by Clark and others
(1979) (Fig. 8).

Solien (1979) recovered Neospathodus
pakistanensis from the lower part of his

sequence, finally forging the link between
Pakistan and the Great Basin. N. pakis¬
tanensis was also conditionally reported by
Clark and others (1979) from southern
Idaho. Solien’s study, was well as the work
of Collinson and Hasenmueller (1978), also
confirmed the occurrence of Neospathodus
waageni with the Parachirognathus-
Furnishius fauna of western North America
(Fig. 4 and 6).

Fig. 7. Lithofacies map of the Lower Triassic during
the Smithian Stage. Dots represent study localities of
Clark and Rosser (1976) and Solien (1979).

COMPARISON OF LOWER AND MIDDLE SCYTHIAN CONODONT ZONATIONS

STAGE

FROM: SWEET,

FROM: SWEET AND

FROM: CLARK AND

FROM: COLLINSON AND

THIS PAPER

1970

OTHERS, 1971

OTHERS, 1979

HASENMUELLER. 1978

NEOGONDOLELLA

NEOGONDOLELLA

MILLERI

MILLERI

NEOSPATHODUS

PARACHIROGNATHUS

WAAGENI

SMITHIAN

NEOSPATHODUS

NEOSPATHODUS

ETHINGTONI

NEOSPATHODUS

WAAGENI

CONSERVATIVUS

PARACHIROGNATHUS -

FURNISHIUS

WAAGENI

PARACHIROGNATHUS -

FURNISHIUS

TRISERRATUS

FURNISHIUS

FURNISHIUS

NEOSPATHODUS

TRISERRATUS

NEOSPATHODUS

PAKISTANENSIS

PAKISTANENSIS

NEOSPATHODUS

NEOSPATHODUS

NEOSPATHODUS

DIENERIAN

N. CRISTAGALLI

N. CRISTAGALLI

SPP.

DIENERI

DIENERI

N. DIENERI

N. DIENERI

NEOSPATHODUS

NEOSPATHODUS

NEOSPATHODUS

N. KUMMELI

N. KUMMELI

PECULIARS

KUMMELI

KUMMELI

NEOGONDOLELLA

NEOGONDOLELLA

NEOGONDOLELLA

GARINATA

CARINATA

CARINATA

HINDEODUS

HINDEODUS

GRSESBACHIAN

ANCHIGNATHODUS

ANCHIGNATHODUS

ANCHIGNATHODUS

TYPICALIS

TYPICALIS

TYPICALIS

TYPICALIS

TYPICALIS

Fig. 8. Comparison of Lower and Middle Scythian conodont zonations.

74

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

It is instructive to compare the three
zonations at this point (Fig. 8). The initial
scheme of Sweet (1970) utilizes a single
Smithian zone, and six lower Scythian
intervals. With the compilation of the 1971
biostratigraphy, the lower zones were re¬
tained. However, the Smithian was sub¬
divided and tailored to the Great Basin,
where the stratigraphic value of Neospath -
odus waageni had not yet been realized.

The zonation of Clark and others (1979)
reflects Smithian conodont distributions in
transitional despositional environments (Fig.
8). Dienerian biozones, although still based
on neospathodids, were reduced in number,
when compared to the scheme of Sweet and
others (1971). This change reflects the
limited abundances and diversity of cono¬
dont faunas from the Lower Triassic Din-
woody Formation.

Paleoecologic Influences

Most early workers believed that the
conodont animal was nearly independent of
depositional facies. Yet, as additional
distributional data were collected, it became
apparent that at least some conodont taxa
were prone to ecologic control. Recognition
of paleoecologic patterns led to a symposium
focused on conodont paleoecology, and two
opposing models of marine lifestyle were
proposed. Seddon and Sweet (1971) envi¬
sioned a depth-stratified, pelagic existence,
while Barnes and Fahraeus (1975) suggested
lateral variation of biofacies reflected a
nektobenthic or benthic habit. However, a
cautionary note was introduced by Klapper
and Barrick (1978), who found that distribu¬
tional data alone were not definitive of a
pelagic or a benthic habit for these extinct
organisms. Development of parallel zona¬
tions for major Triassic facies was suggested
as a way to avoid some paleoecologic pitfalls
(Sweet and Bergstrom, 1981; Clark, 1981b).
This would allow the use of two or more
semi-“ideal profiles.”

The sedimentological history of the upper,
or Dienerian, part of the Dinwoody Forma¬

tion was one of progressive progradation
from a shelf region to the east (McKee and
others, 1959). As terrigenous sediments
encroached basinward, the environment was
not favorable to the conodont animal. Also,
the rate of Dienerian sedimentation was
probably rapid. Observations indicate that
conodont numbers, as well as general faunal
abundance, decrease with increasing rates of
sedimentation (Lindstrom, 1964; Kidwell,
1981). Other factors adversely affecting the
presence and diversity of conodonts during
this time include evolution, extinction, and
migration. All of these items influence
current attempts to refine the zonation of the
Dienerian Stage in the western United States.

Paleoenvironmental work supported by
quantitative efforts continues. Two recent
studies of the spatial distribution of cono¬
donts in the Lower Triassic Thaynes Forma¬
tion of the western Cordillera distinguished
three discrete biofacies (Carr, 1981; Carr,
Pauli, and Clark, 1983). As a result, cono¬
dont species with little facies dependence,
and more temporal significance, were identi¬
fied. Amalgamation of this type of research
with stratigraphic distribution studies should
enhance the biostratigraphic utility of cono¬
donts, and improve further zonal subdivi¬
sions.

Proposed Zonation

Continued biostratigraphic and petro¬
graphic work in the western Cordillera
resulted in increased understanding of Early
Triassic depositional history and paleo-
geography, and the conodont biozonation
was again modified. Collinson and Hasen-
mueller (1978) suggested a zonation reminis¬
cent of Sweet’s original (1970) version (Fig.
8). Additional regional studies (Pauli, 1980;
Carr and Pauli, 1980; Carr, 1981; Pauli,
1982; Carr and Pauli, 1983) established a
workable zonation from basin to shelf that
resulted in additional reduction in biozones
(Fig. 8).

With this simplified zonation, what was
done in the name of refinement? The

1983]

Pauli— Evolution of a Biostratigraphic Zonation

75

philosophy behind Shaw’s (1964) graphic
method, which has the potential for a
detailed and more quantitative correlation,
may provide some insight. In order to arrive
at a composite standard reference section,
the technique seeks the maximum strati¬
graphic range for each taxon used, despite
local environmental influence or poor
preservation (Miller, 1977).

Refinements in correlation may proceed in
one of two directions as additional studies
are conducted. If the fauna is large and
diverse, the result should be a sequence with
greater resolving power and a corresponding
increase in significant biozones. If the fauna
is modest and of limited diversity, biostrati¬
graphic refinement consists of extending the
local stratigraphic ranges of faunal elements
toward their maximum values. As a result,
zonal units may be eliminated (Fig. 9).

4

\

V

3

V

2

\

/

)

A

1

Fig. 9. Extension of range, depicted by dotted line,
results in deletion of zone 2, previously a partial range

zone.

This latter situation describes the evolu¬
tion of Lower Triassic conodont zonation.
Extension of the local ranges of species
resulted in the deletion of the Neogondolella

Lower Triassic

GRIESBACHIAN

N>

CO

Ul

O)

00

oj n

n

05

SUBZONES

ISARC

HINDEODUS TYPICALIS
CELLA IsARCI(!a
NEOgAnDOlJlLA CAR I NAT A

NEOSPATHODUS KuAlMELI

neAspatkodus DlENERI

US ETH NGTON

PARACHIROGNATH

furnishiu! trise Bratus
neospathAdus conservativus

I I I

NEOSPATHODUS WAAGENI

I I I

NEOSPATHODUS BICUSPIDATUS

I

GLADIGONDOLELLA MEEKI

NEOGONDOLELLA MILLERI
I I I

NEOGONDOLELLA SP A -
I I I

NEOSPATHODUS TRIANGULARIS

NEOSPATHODUS HOMERI

PLATYVILLOSUS

NEOSPATHODUS COLLINSONI

I I I I

NEOGONDOLELLA JUBATA -

NEOSPATHODUS TIMORENSIS

J _ I _ -L I _

Fig. 10. Lower Triassic conodont zonation of Carr and Pauli (1983).

76

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

carinata Zone (Sweet, 1973, 1979; Collinson
and Hasenmueller, 1978), the Neospa thodus
conservations Zone (Collinson and Hasen¬
mueller, 1978; Solien, 1979), the Parachir-
ognathus ethingtoni Zone (Collinson and
Hasenmueller, 1978), and the Furnishius
triserratus Zone (Pauli, 1980, 1982) (Fig. 8).
Solien (1979) and Clark and others (1979)
recommended expansion of the Parachirog-
nathus-Furnishius Zone of Sweet and others
(1971), but retained these conodonts as zonal
indicators (Fig. 8).

In conclusion, the zonation proposed in
Figure 10 is a progress report, and the
following facts suggest that the biozones will
change again.

1) Gladigondolella, a stranger to North
America, makes a Smithian appear¬
ance. This genus was previously
known only from the Middle and
Upper Triassic of Europe and Asia
(Pauli, 1982, 1983) (Fig. 10).

2) Platyvillosus costatus, a lower
Spathian indicator, is reported with
Smithian forms (Goel, 1979; Wang,
1980; Pauli, in prep.) (Fig. 10).

With these observations in mind, and
others that undoubtedly will be made, one is
impressed with the wisdom often attributed
to Mark Twain, when he noted: “Research¬
ers have already cast much darkness on the
subject, and if they continue their investi¬
gations, we shall soon know nothing at all
about it.” Nevertheless, the search for the
ultimate Lower Triassic zonation goes on.

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78

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

Solien, Mark A. 1979. Conodont biostratigraphy
of the Lower Triassic Thaynes Formation,
Utah. Jour. Paleontology 53:276-306.

Sweet, W. C. 1970. Uppermost Permian and
Lower Triassic conodonts of the Salt Range
and Trans-Indus Ranges, West Pakistan. In
Kummel, B. and C. Teichert (editors), Strati¬
graphic Boundary Problems: Permian and
Triassic of West Pakistan. Univ. of Kansas
Dept. Geol. Spec. Pub. 4, p. 207-275.

_ . 1973. Late Permian and Early Triassic

conodont faunas. In Logan, A. and L. V. Mills
(editors), The Permian and Triassic Systems
and Their Mutual Boundary. Canadian Soc.
Petroleum Geologists Mem. 2, p. 630-646.

. 1979. Graphic correlation of Permo-
Triassic rocks in Kashmir, Pakistan and Iran.
Geologica et Palaeontologica Abh. 13:239-247.

Sweet, Walter C., L. Cameron Mosher, David L.
Clark, James W. Collinson, and Walter A.
Hasenmueller. 1971. Conodont biostra¬

tigraphy of the Triassic. In Sweet, W. C. and
Stig M. Bergstrom (editors), Symposium on
Conodont Biostratigraphy. Geol. Soc. Amer¬
ica Mem. 127, p. 441-465.

Sweet, Walter C. and Stig M. Bergstrom. 1981.
Biostratigraphy and evolution. In Clark,
David L. and others, Treatise on Invertebrate
Paleontology, Part W Miscellanea, Supple¬
ment 2 Conodonta. Geol. Soc. America and
Univ. of Kansas, W92-W101.

Valentine, J. W. and E. M. Moores. 1973. Pro¬
vinciality and diversity across the Permian-
Triassic boundary. In Logan, A. and L. V.
Hills (editors), The Permian and Triassic
Systems and Their Mutual Boundary. Cana¬
dian Soc. Petroleum Geologists Mem. 2, p.
759-766.

Wang Zhi-hao. 1980. Outline of Triassic cono¬
donts in China. Riv. Italiana Paleont. 85:
1221-1226.

CONODONTS AND BIOSTRATIGRAPHY OF THE MUSCATATUCK
GROUP (MIDDLE DEVONIAN), SOUTH-CENTRAL
INDIANA AND NORTH-CENTRAL KENTUCKY

Curtis R. Klug
Dept, of Geology
University of Iowa
Iowa City , Iowa 52242

Abstract

Eighty-two samples were collected and processed for conodonts from strata of
the Middle Devonian Muscatatuck Group of south-central Indiana and north-
central Kentucky. In this region, the Muscatatuck Group consists of two
formations, the Jeffersonville Limestone and the overlying North Vernon
Limestone. Although conodonts are abundant (over 20,000 specimens were
recovered), diversity is relatively low. Icriodus and Polygnathus are the dominant
faunal elements. Nineteen conodont species and subspecies are recognized including
one new subspecies, Icriodus angustus obliquus. Few of the recognized species are
diagnostic of the standard Middle Devonian conodont zones, making long-distance
correlations uncertain. Consequently, a zonation consisting of three local zones and
one standard subzone is adopted. These are, in ascending order, the Icriodus
latericrescens robustus Zone, the Icriodus angustus angustus Zone, the Polygnathus
pseudofoliatus Zone, and the Lower Polygnathus varcus Subzone. Examination of
the conodont faunas suggests an Eifelian age for the lower part of the Muscatatuck
Group and a Givetian age for the upper part.

Acknowledgments

The author very gratefully acknowledges
the invaluable assistance of Gilbert Klapper
during all phases of this study. Thanks are
also extended to Dale Sparling for making
available unpublished information on cono¬
dont faunas from the Columbus and Dela¬
ware Limestones of Ohio. The Graduate
College of The University of Iowa provided
funding and access to the JEOL JSM-35C
Scanning Electron Microscope with which
the photographs for the conodont figures
were made. The Department of Geology at
The University of Iowa provided access to
darkroom facilities, and thin-section and
conodont-processing laboratories.

Introduction

Since 1820, over 175 papers have been
published on the Devonian stratigraphy and

paleontology of the Falls of the Ohio and
surrounding area. Relatively few publica¬
tions, however, have included a detailed dis¬
cussion of the conodont faunas and bio¬
stratigraphy. One of the earliest papers to
report Middle Devonian conodonts from the
Falls of the Ohio was that of Branson and
Mehl (1938), which included the description
of a new species, Icriodus latericrescens. A
number of other papers (e.g., Rexroad and
Orr, 1967; Orr and Pollock, 1968; Klapper et
al., 1971) mention the occurrence of cono¬
donts in these strata but do not include
illustrations of specimens. Only a few
publications include both discussion and
illustrations of the Middle Devonian
conodonts of south-central Indiana and
north-central Kentucky (e.g., Orr and
Klapper, 1968; Klapper, Philip and Jackson,
1970; Klapper and Johnson, 1980). By far
the most important paper on this subject is

79

80

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

Orr’s (1946b) unpublished M.A. thesis.
Although the stress of this thesis is on the
Middle Devonian conodonts of southern
Illinois, four sections in south-central
Indiana were also included. Conodont
faunas are well illustrated, and a local zonal
scheme of six conodont zones was estab¬
lished. Since the writing of Orr’s thesis, the
understanding of Middle Devonian cono¬
dont faunas and biostratigraphy has been
considerably refined. The main purpose of
the present paper is to examine, in greater
detail, the conodont faunas of the Middle
Devonian Muscatatuck Group of south-
central Indiana and north-central Kentucky
and to provide an updated biostratigraphy
based on these faunas.

Procedures

Eighty-three samples were collected from
eight Middle Devonian sections in south-
central Indiana and north-central Kentucky.
The eight localities lie along a nearly north-
south trending line from Jennings County,
Indiana to Jefferson County, Kentucky (see
Figs. 1 & 2). An effort was made to visit type
localities of the lithostratigraphic units
under consideration; when not possible,
nearby alternate localities were substituted.
See the Appendix for detailed location of
sections. Samples were generally collected
from major beds with spacing no more than
1 meter apart, and with individual samples
including no more than 10 cm of vertical
section. When possible, one kilogram of
each sample was processed for conodonts
using standard acidizing procedures with
formic acid. In the case of particularly
argillaceous samples, the acidizing proce¬
dure was supplemented with Stoddard’s
solvent treatment as described by Collinson
(1963). Residues were washed through three
nested sieves of 20, 120, and 230 U.S.
standard mesh. Only the residue retained on
the 120 mesh sieve was picked for cono¬
donts. All specimens that retained the basal
cavity were picked to guarantee that only
individual elements were collected. In the

case of some particularly large samples, only
part of the residue was picked. The cono¬
donts illustrated in this paper were
photographed on the JEOL JSM-35C scan¬
ning electron microscope at The University
of Iowa, Iowa City. Lithologic nature of the
samples was determined by examination of
hand samples, polished slabs, insoluble resi¬
dues, and, in most instances, thin sections.

Lithostratigraphy

The stratigraphic terminology employed
herein is primarily that in use by the Indiana
Geological Survey as set forth by Shaver et
al. (1970) and modified by Perkins (1963),
Shaver (1974), and Droste and Shaver
(1975). The Muscatatuck Group, proposed
by Shaver (1974, p. 3), in south-central
Indiana and north-central Kentucky includes
two formations, the Jeffersonville Lime¬
stone and the overlying North Vernon
Limestone.

The Jeffersonville Limestone was named
by Kindle (1899, p. 8) for the “limestone
lying between the Sellersburg beds and the
Catenipora beds of the Niagara’’ as exposed
at the Falls of the Ohio between Jefferson¬
ville, Indiana, and the mouth of Silver Creek.
Droste and Shaver (1975) considered the
Jeffersonville Limestone to include three
members in generally ascending order: the
Dutch Creek Sandstone, Geneva Dolomite,
and Vernon Fork Members. They con¬
sidered the Dutch Creek Sandstone Member
to be equivalent to the basal Jeffersonville of
the southern Indiana outcrop. This sand¬
stone has a discontinuous distribution and
was not encountered in any of the sections
examined in this study.

The Geneva and Vernon Fork Members
are considered to be northern facies equiva¬
lents of the type Jeffersonville Limestone.
Of these two members, only the Vernon
Fork was sampled for conodonts in this
study. Orr (1964b), however, examined
samples from the Geneva Member for cono¬
donts, but found them to be nonproductive.

The Vernon Fork Member was examined,

1983]

Klug — Conodonts and Biostratigraphy

81

for this paper, only at its principal reference
section, the Berry Materials Corp. Quarry
(BMQ) (see Droste and Shaver, 1975, p.
405). The sampled strata consist of light
yellowish- to brownish-gray, slightly calcitic,
sandy, “dolomicrite.” Birdseye structures,
laminations, and intraclasts also occur in
this unit. The term “dolomicrite,” as used
above, refers only to the fine-grained nature
of these dolostones and does not necessarily
imply a primary origin for the dolomite.

Of greater concern to this study is the
southern facies of the Jeffersonville Lime¬
stone. This formation, as exposed at its type
locality at the Falls of the Ohio, has not been
subdivided into members, as it has in its
more northerly occurrences. Several
schemes, however, have been proposed to
subdivide the formation based on faunal
content (see, e.g., Kindle, 1901; Patton and
Dawson, 1955; Perkins, 1963; Conkin and
Conkin, 1976). To facilitate the discussion
of the Jeffersonville Limestone, the zonal
scheme as proposed by Perkins (1963, p.
1338) has been adopted. He recognized five
zones which are, in ascending order: (1)
coral zone; (2) Amphipora Zone; (3) Brevis-
pirifer gregarius Zone; (4) fenestrate
bryozoan-brachiopod zone; (5) Paraspirifer
acuminatus Zone (Fig. 2). A detailed de¬
scription of each of these zones and the
associated lithologies can be found in
Perkins (1963).

The Jeffersonville Limestone is overlain
by the North Vernon Limestone (= Sellers-
burg Limestone of authors). This unit was
named by Borden (1876, p. 160-161) for
strata occurring at North Vernon, Jennings
County, Indiana, and lying “at the horizon
of the hydraulic limestone” (Silver Creek
Member) of Clark County, Indiana. In
Borden’s concept, the North Vernon Lime¬
stone was overlain by gray, crystalline,
commonly crinoidal limestone (= Beech-
wood Member of present usage). Kindle
(1899, p. 8, 20) proposed the name Sellers-
burg beds for the strata underlying the New
Albany Shale down to the lowest beds

worked by the cement quarries. As used in
this sense, the Sellersburg beds include the
Beechwood and Silver Creek Members only.
More detailed discussions of the nomen-
clatural history of these strata can be found
in papers by Patton and Dawson (1955, p.
39-43) and Burger and Patton, in Shaver et
al. (1970, p. 120-122). Through time, usage
of the names North Vernon Limestone and
Sellersburg Limestone has come to be nearly
synonymous, referring to the strata under¬
lying the New Albany Shale and overlying
the Jeffersonville Limestone. In this paper,
North Vernon Limestone is used in this
sense. Three members are recognized in the
North Vernon Limestone. These are, in
ascending order: the Speeds, Silver Creek,
and Beechwood Members.

Sutton and Sutton (1937, p. 326) proposed
the name Speeds Member for an 18-inch
thick, shaly limestone below the cement rock
( = Silver Creek Member) in the Speeds
Quarry, near Sellersburg, Indiana. In thin
section, the Speeds is a slightly- to highly-
dolomitic, packed biomicrosparrudite.

Campbell (1942, p. 1060) considered the
Speeds to be of formational status, overlain
by the Deputy Formation, a blue to gray
limestone weathering light gray. He desig¬
nated the quarry 3/4 mile south of Deputy,
Jefferson County, Indiana, as the type local¬
ity. According to Campbell, the Deputy is
difficult to distinguish from the Speeds in
fresh material, except by the fossil content.
In thin section, the Deputy at the type
locality is a slightly- to moderately-dolomitic
biomicrosparite to biosparite. The Deputy is
only locally developed and is considered
herein as a facies of the Speeds Member.

The overlying Silver Creek Member was
originally proposed by Siebenthal (1901, p.
345-346) for “a homogeneous, fine-grained,
bluish to drab, argillaceous, magnesian
limestone, the calcined form of which has
the property of hydraulicity.” This unit is
typically exposed in the vicinity of Silver
Creek in Clark County, Indiana. Siebenthal
originally considered the Silver Creek to be

82

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

of formational status. Butts (1915, p. 118)
reduced it to the rank of member, as it is
considered herein. Thin section examination
shows the Silver Creek to vary from highly
dolomitic, argillaceous biomicrite to fossil-
iferous, argillaceous “dolomicrite.” The
Silver Creek Member thins northward from
its maximum thickness in Clark County,
Indiana. At the same time, the underlying
Speeds Member shows a corresponding
thickening. Based on stratigraphic position
and the inclusion of lentils or tongues of one
lithology in the other, the two members have
been considered to be contemporaneous
facies (see e.g., Patton and Dawson, 1955, p.
42).

The Beechwood Member is the youngest
member of the North Vernon Limestone.
The name was proposed by Butts (1915, p.
120) for a gray, thick-bedded, coarsely
crystalline crinoidal limestone containing
black phosphatic pebbles in the basal few
inches. Butts named this unit for exposures
near Beechwood Station, Jefferson County,
Kentucky, but did not establish a type
section. Orr and Pollock (1968, p. 2258)
proposed a principal reference section for
the Beechwood Member, about 4.5 miles
west of the old Beechwood Station in
Louisville, Jefferson County, Kentucky. In
thin section, the Beechwood varies from
echinoderm biosparite to biosparrudite.
Dolomitization is generally minimal to
moderate but may be extensive in some beds.
Phosphate pebbles and flattened, phosphatic
ooids(?) are frequently encountered at the
base of the unit.

Biostratigraphy

The conodont faunas of the Muscatatuck
Group in south-central Indiana and north-
central Kentucky include few diagnostic
species common to the standard zonation,
which is reviewed, for example, by Klapper
and Johnson (1980). The local zonal scheme
proposed by Orr (1964b) and modified by
Orr (1971) is further modified and used in
this paper (Fig. 3).

Conodonts were not recovered from the

Jeffersonville Limestone below the Brevis -
pirifer gregarius Zone. Oliver (1976, Fig. 3)
considered these lower strata to be of late
Emsian to early Eifelian age, as determined
from the coral faunas.

Icriodus latericrescens
robustus Zone

This, the lowest conodont zone recognized
in the study area, corresponds to the Icri-
odux latericrescens n. subsp. Zone of Orr
(1964b, p. 36-37). The lower limit of this
zone is defined by the lowest occurrence of /.
/. robustus, and the upper limit by the lowest
occurrence of /. a. angustus. Polygnathus cf .
P. angusticostatus, /. sp. A, and /. n. sp. E
of Weddige first occur near the top of the
Brevispirifer gregarius Zone below the low¬
est occurrence of P. c. costatus (see Fig. 4).
This association suggests that the /. /.
robustus Zone, of the study area, may be
equivalent, in part, to the P. costatus patulus
Zone of the standard zonation. For ranges
of the above-mentioned forms in the stan¬
dard zonation, the reader is referred to
Klapper and Johnson (1980, p. 420-422).

Icriodus angustus
angustus Zone

The lower boundary of this zone is defined
by the lowest occurrence of /. a. angustus.
The upper boundary is defined by the lowest
occurrence of Polygnathus pseudofoliatus.
Polygnathus c. costatus and P. /. lingui-
formis first occur in the /. a. angustus Zone.
In the examined sections, the /. a. angustus
Zone is recognized in the fenestrate bryo-
zoan-brachiopod zone and the Paraspirifer
acuminatus Zone of the Jeffersonville Lime¬
stone. Correlation of the I. a. angustus Zone
with the P. c. costatus Zone of the standard
zonation is suggested.

Polygnathus pseudofoliatus Zone

The base of the P. pseudofoliatus Zone is
defined by the lowest occurrence of the
nominal species. The top is defined, in the
study area, by the lowest occurrence of P.
timorensis. Icriodus n. sp. E of Weddige

1983]

Klug—Conodonts and Biostratigraphy

83

(1977), /. sp. A, and I. retrodepressus show
their maximum development in this zone.
Below this zone /. retrodepressus is
represented only by tentatively identified
specimens. Icriodus angustus obliquus first
occurs at the base of the P. pseudo foliatus
Zone. Faunas characteristic of the P.
pseudofoliatus Zone were recovered from
the Speeds (including the Deputy facies) and
Silver Creek Members of the North Vernon
Limestone.

A single, apparently weathered specimen
of Polygnathus timorensis was recovered
from a sample (SSQ-5) at the top of the
Silver Creek Member. In another sample
(OGQ-4), from the top of this member,
several fragmentary specimens of Icriodus /.
latericrescens were recovered below the first
occurrence of P. timorensis in the overlying
Beechwood Member. Also recovered from
this sample were a number of flattened
phosphatic ooids(?) like those typical of the
basal part of the Beechwood Member. The
presence of these ooids(?) and the weathered
appearance of the specimen of P. timorensis
suggest the possibility of stratigraphic leak.
Orr and Pollock (1968, p. 2261) also
reported I. /. latericrescens from a fauna
without “P. varcus ” from the top of the
Silver Creek Member at the Atkins Quarry,
in Clark County, Indiana. On evidence of
that occurrence, Orr (1971, p. 17) considered
the upper part of the Silver Creek Member to
belong to his I. L latericrescens Zone. This
zone, however, cannot be recognized with
any confidence in the present study.

The relationships of the Polygnathus
pseudofoliatus Zone with the standard
conodont zonation are far from straight-
forward. Correlation of this zone with part
or all of the sequence from the Tortodus
kockelianus australis Zone (Eifelian)
through the Polygnathus xylus ensensis Zone
(Eifelian-Givetian, Weddige, 1977) is possi¬
ble.

Lower Polygnathus varcus Subzone

The Lower Polygnathus varcus Subzone
of Ziegler, Klapper and Johnson (1976, p.

1 13) is recognized in the Beechwood Member
of the North Vernon Limestone. Polyg¬
nathus timorensis , P. linguiformis weddigei
and P. linguiformis klapperi make their first
appearance at the base of this member.
Several species, for example Icriodus
angustus angustus, Icriodus angustus
obliquus and Icriodus retrodepressus, range
upward into the lower P. varcus Subzone
(see Fig. 4). These forms are not known to
occur at this level outside of the study area
and many represent reworked elements in
the present collections.

One sample (SSQ-1) from the thin lime¬
stone at the base of the New Albany Shale
Group was also processed for conodonts. A
diverse fauna including Polygnathus crista -
tus was recovered from this sample but, be¬
cause of stratigraphic position, is considered
beyond the scope of this paper and will not
be discussed further herein. For a detailed
description of this fauna, the reader is
referred to the paper by Orr and Klapper
(1968).

Conodont-based correlations of the Mus-
catatuck Group with Middle Devonian strata
in surrounding areas are shown in Fig. 5.

Systematic Paleontology

Nineteen conodont species and subspecies
were recognized from among the 22,154
specimens recovered in this study. For
distribution of species see Figs. 6 and 7.
Emphasis is placed on platform and some
coniform elements. Multielement recon¬
structions have generally not been attempted
owing to the poor preservation of most non¬
platform elements. General associations,
however, are noted. Figured specimens are
reposited at the University of Iowa (SUI).

Belodella cf . B. resima (Philip, 1965)

Fig. 12 G,L

cf. Belodus resimus Philip, 1965, p. 98, PI.

8, Figs. 15-17, 19.

Remarks. — Proclined to erect, denticulate
coniform elements have been recovered from
several samples in south-central Indiana and
north-central Kentucky. These forms are

84

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 71, Part I,

comparable in shape, denticulation, and the
development of anterolateral flanges, to
Belodella resima (Philip, 1965). In B.
resima, however, the cross-sectional shape is
a narrow isosceles triangle whereas in the
present material it is a narrow right triangle.
Also, the anterolateral flanges of B. resima
appear to be smooth whereas in the material
at hand they are made up of minute, con¬
fluent denticles similar to those of the
posterior keel. Uyeno, in Uyeno, Telford,
and Sanford (1982, PI. 5, Figs. 30-32) illus¬
trated three specimens of Belodella sp. which
also appear to have denticulated antero¬
lateral flanges.

Material. — 39 specimens
Occurrence. — Fenestrate bryozoan-brach-
iopod zone and Paraspirifer acuminatus
Zone of the Jeffersonville Limestone and
upper Speeds, Silver Creek and Beechwood
Members of the North Vernon Limestone.

Coelocerodontus cf. C. biconvexus
Bultynck, 1970
Fig. 12H-K, M-O

cf. Coelocerodontus biconvexus Bultynck,
1970, p. 94, PI. 27, Figs. 13-15.

Remarks. — Erect to slightly recurved
coniform elements comparable to Coelo¬
cerodontus biconvexus are common in the
Middle Devonian strata of south-central
Indiana and north-central Kentucky. The
present material differs, however, from
Bultynck’s specimens in that the cross-
sectional outline of the Indiana and
Kentucky specimens varies from biconvex to
triangular to concavo-convex, and none of
these specimens has a denticulated posterior
keel, although denticulation of the antero¬
lateral costa is commonly well-developed.
Paltodus sp. of Orr (1964a, p. 13, PI. 2,
Figs. 4, 7) and Coelocerodontus sp. of
Uyeno, in Uyeno, Telford, and Sanford
(1982, p. 34, PI. 5, Figs. 25-29) are
apparently conspecific with the present
form.

Material. — 686 specimens.

Occurrence. — Brevispirifer gregarius

Zone, fenestrate bryozoan-brachiopod zone,
Paraspirifer acuminatus Zone, and Vernon
Fork Member of the Jeffersonville Lime¬
stone; Speeds, Silver Creek, and Beechwood
Members and Deputy facies of the North
Vernon Limestone.

Icriodus angustus angustus
Stewart and Sweet, 1956
Fig. 8 A-F

Icriodus angustus Stewart and Sweet, 1956,
p. 267, PI. 33, Figs. 4, 5, 11, 15; Klapper
and Ziegler, 1967, PL 10, Figs. 1,?2, 3;
Klapper, in Ziegler, 1975, p. 75-76,
Icriodus — PI. 2, Figs. 6, 7; Klapper and
Johnson, 1980, p. 447, PI. 3, Figs. 3-6;
Uyeno, in Uyeno, Telford, and Sanford,
1982, p. 31, PI. 3, Figs. 1-4.

Remarks. — The specimens herein assigned
to Icriodus angustus angustus agree well
with those described by Stewart and Sweet
(1956, p. 267, PI. 33, Figs. 4, 5, 11, 15). See
also Klapper, in Ziegler (1975, p. 75-76) for
additional comments and relations. For
comparison with Icriodus angustus
obliquus, see remarks for that taxon.
Material. — 280 specimens.

Occurrence. — Fenestrate bryozoan-brach¬
iopod zone and Paraspirifer acuminatus
Zone of the Jeffersonville Limestone;
Speeds, Silver Creek, and Beechwood Mem¬
bers of the North Vernon Limestone. For
further discussion of occurrence, see section
on Biostratigraphy.

Icriodus angustus obliquus n. subsp.

Fig. 8 G-L

Derivation of name. —obliquus, Latin,
sloping; referring to the upper margin of the
bladelike extension.

Holotype. — SUI 49334, the specimen
illustrated on Fig. 8 J-L; from the Sellers-
burg Stone Company Quarry, sample
SSQ-14, 0-10 cm above the base of the
Speeds Member.

Diagnosis. — A subspecies of Icriodus
angustus with a segminiscaphate element in
which the posterior extension of the middle

1983]

King — Conod on ts and Biostratigraphy

85

row of denticles is bladelike and is made up
of about four to six laterally compressed
bluntly to acutely pointed denticles. Of
these, the anterior two to four denticles are
relatively slender and subequal to gradually
increasing in height posteriorly. The
posteriormost one or two denticles are
larger and gradually to distinctly higher than
the preceding denticles of the bladelike
extension. This extension begins near mid¬
length of the element.

Remarks. — Icriodus angustus angustus is
distinguished from the new subspecies by a
segminiscaphate element in which the poste¬
rior extension of the middle row of denticles
is made up of one to four subequal denticles
which, in most specimens, are abruptly
higher than all other denticles on the
platform. In some specimens, however, the
denticles of the posterior extension increase
gradually in height posteriorly as in one of
the paratypes (Stewart and Sweet, 1956, PI.
33, Fig. 4; also illustrated by Klapper, in
Ziegler, 1975, Icriodus — PI. 2, Fig. 6). In
such specimens, however, the denticles of
the posterior extension of the middle row are
subequal in the anteroposterior dimension
and are fewer in number than in the new
subspecies.

Elements of Icriodus obliquimarginatus
have posterior bladelike extension of the
middle row of denticles similar to that of /.
angustus obliquus. They can be dis¬
tinguished from the new subspecies,
however, by the outline of the basal cavity.
In I. angustus obliquus the outline is like
that of I. angustus angustus, in which the
inner margin extends farther posteriorly
than the outer margin and the two are con¬
nected by a diagonally oriented posterior
margin. The outline of the basal cavity of I.
obliquimarginatus is rounder and more ex¬
panded posteriorly than in the new sub¬
species. In addition, the posterior margin of
elements of I. angustus obliquus is not
inclined as strongly posteriorly, in lateral
view, as in I. obliquimarginatus, and it may
be vertical to inclined anteriorly as well.

One specimen assigned to the new sub¬
species from a sample from the Sellersburg
Stone Company Quarry (SSQ-14) shows
characteristics intermediate between Icrio¬
dus angustus obliquus and the nominal sub¬
species. It possesses a posterior extension of
the middle row of denticles in which the
anterior two dentiles are slender and sub¬
equal, as in I. angustus obliquus, but are
followed by four abruptly larger denticles
similar to those of I. a. angustus. Most of
the other specimens of /. angustus recovered
from this sample, however, clearly belong to
the new subspecies.

Material. — 23 specimens.

Occurrence. — North Vernon Limestone
(all members). For further discussion of
occurrence, see section on Biostratigraphy.

Icriodus brevis Stauffer, 1940
Fig. 12P-R

Icriodus brevis Stauffer, 1940, p. 424, PL
60, Figs. 36, 43, 44, 52; Klapper, in
Ziegler, 1975, p. 89-90, Icriodus — PI. 3,
Figs. 1-3; Uyeno, in Uyeno, Telford, and
Sanford, 1982, p. 31-32, PI. 5, Figs. 10-16,
21, 22 [see further synonymy].

Icriodus cymbiformis Branson and Mehl.
Orr, 1964b, p. 70-71, PI. 2, Fig. 5; Orr,
1971, p. 33-34, PI. 2, Figs. 1-6.

Icriodus eslaensis Adrichem Boogaert, 1967,
PI. 1, Figs. 9-12; Norris and Uyeno, 1972,
PL 3. Fig. 9; Huddle, 1981, p. B22, PL 4,
Figs. 1-29 [see further synonymy].
Remarks. — Segminiscaphate elements
assigned to Icriodus brevis are characterized
by an extension of the middle row of denti¬
cles posteriorly beyond the lateral rows. The
denticles of this extension stand at approx¬
imately the same height as the other denticles
on the platform. Some specimens in the
present collections have a longitudinal axis
that is apparently more curved than that of
the type material (Fig. 12 P-R) but are
similar in other respects. See Klapper, in
Ziegler (1975, p. 89) for further discussion of
this species.

Material. — 5 specimens.

86

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

Occurrence. — Beechwood Member, North
Vernon Limestone.

Icriodus latericrescens latericrescens
Branson and Mehl, 1938
Fig. 8 V-AD

Icriodus latericrescens Branson and Mehl,
1938, p. 164-165, PI. 26, Figs. 30-32, 34,
35 (only).

Icriodus latericrescens latericrescens
Branson and Mehl. Klapper and Ziegler,
1967, p. 74-75, PI. 10, Figs. 4-9, PI. 11,
Figs. 1-5 [see further synonymy]; Huddle,
1981, p. B22-B23, PI. 5, Figs. 1-6; Uyeno,
in Uyeno, Telford, and Sanford, 1982, p.
32, PI. 4, Figs. 27-30 [see further
synonymy].

Remarks. — This subspecies includes a
scaphate pectiniform element, the diagnostic
characteristics of which were given by
Klapper and Ziegler (1967, p. 75). It is
distinguished from the comparable element
of I. 1. robustus in that the main process
tends to be slightly bowed with a more or less
concave inner side and convex outer side.
In /. /. robustus, the main process is
generally straighter with a straight to convex
inner side and convex outer side. The
denticulation of the main process in the
nominal subspecies consists of three longi¬
tudinal rows. The lateral rows are composed
of discrete, round nodes, whereas the middle
row nodes vary from subround to elongate
to an irregular, discontinuous ridge. In I. 1.
robustus, the middle row nodes tend to be
more nearly round, although in some speci¬
mens they are slightly elongate longitudin¬
ally. The lateral row nodes of I. 1. robustus
are generally round but tend to be more
robust than those of the nominal subspecies.
In some specimens, they appear crowded to¬
gether, commonly becoming somewhat lat¬
erally elongate. In some large specimens of
both subspecies, the middle row denticles
may be much reduced or absent, in which
case the distinction between the two sub¬
species is more difficult and must be based
on the shape of the main process and the
lateral row nodes.

Material. — 1 5 1 specimens .

Occurrence. —Beechwood and upper part
of the Silver Creek Members of the North
Vernon Limestone.

Icriodus latericrescens robustus Orr, 1971
Fig. 8 M-U

Icriodus latericrescens robustus Orr, 1971,
p. 37-38, PI. 2, Figs. 14-17 [see further
synonymy]; Uyeno, in Uyeno, Telford
and Sanford, 1982, p. 32, PI. 4, Figs. 1-6,
8-15, 19-22, 25, 26 31-38 (I elements) [see
further synonymy].

Remarks — For diagnosis and description
see Orr (1971, p. 37-38) and remarks for
Icriodus l. latericrescens herein. Some of the
specimens from the Brevispirifer gregarius
Zone from the Falls of the Ohio (FOS) and
Oak and Vine (OVS) localities have middle
row denticles that are longitudinally elongate
(e.g., Fig. 8 T). Although this feature is most
characteristic of I. 1. latericrescens, other
features of these specimens are typical of /. /.
robustus, and they are assigned to the latter
subspecies. One specimen, which is complete
except for the anterior tip, is typical of I. 1.
robustus but occurs in the highest sample of
the Beechwood Member from the Sellers-
burg Stone Company Quarry (SSQ-2). Other
latericrescid Icriodus from this sample
belong to I. 1. latericrescens.

Material. — 530 specimens.

Occurrence. — Brevispirifer gregarius
Zone, fenestrate bryozoan-brachiopod zone,
Paraspirifer acuminatus Zone of the
Jeffersonville Limestone and ?Beechwood
Member of the North Vernon Limestone.

Icriodus retrodepressus Bultynck, 1970
Fig. 9 A-F

Icriodus retrodepressus Bultynck, 1970, p.
110-111, PI. 30, Figs. 1-6; Ziegler, in
Ziegler, 1975, p. 143-144, Icriodus— PI. 8,
Figs. 4, 5.

Icriodus nodosus (Huddle). Schumacher,
1971, p. 93-95, PI. 9, Figs. 4-6 (only).
Icriodus corniger retrodepressus Bultynck.
Weddige, 1977, p. 290-291, PI. 1, Figs. 10,
11, ? 1 2.

1983]

Klug — Conodonts and Biostratigraphy

87

Icriodus aff. I. retrodepressus Bultynck.

Uyeno, in Uyeno, Telford and Sanford,

1982, p. 33, PI. 3, Figs. 16-18, 25-27

(only).

Remarks. — Icriodus retrodepressus is
characterized by a segminiscaphate element
with reduced or absent middle row denticles
in the posterior part of the main process
resulting in a distinct depression immediately
anterior to the posteriormost middle row
denticle. For further remarks and diagnosis
see Bultynck (1970) and Ziegler, in Ziegler
(1975). Uyeno, in Uyeno, Telford, and
Sanford (1982), reported specimens of
Icriodus with a posterior depression of the
middle row denticles. He referred to these
specimens as /. aff. I. retrodepressus and
distinguished his material from I. retro¬
depressus sensu stricto by the more uniform
longitudinal spacing of the lateral row nodes
in the latter species. According to Klapper
and Barrick (MS), some specimens of /.
retrodepressus from the Couvinian Eau
Noire sequence above and below the type
stratum show greater longitudinal spacing of
the lateral row denticles anteriorly than
posteriorly. Specimens in the present
collection may also show this feature and are
considered within the range of variation of /.
retrodepressus. See also I. sp. A, herein, for
the distinction from I. retrodepressus.

Material. -—46 specimens, (mature forms
only.)

Occurrence. — North Vernon Limestone
(all members). For further discussion of
occurrence, see section on Biostratigraphy.

Icriodus n. sp. E. ofWeddige, 1977
Fig. 9 G-I, cf. J-L

Icriodus n. sp. E Weddige, 1977, p. 299-300,

PI. 2, Figs. 23-25 [see further synonymy].

Remarks. — For diagnosis and remarks,
see Weddige (1977). See also remarks for
Icriodus sp. A, herein, for comparison of I.
n. sp. E and I. retrodepressus.

Material. — 280 specimens (mature forms
only).

Occurrence. — Upper part of the Brevis-
pirifer gregarius Zone of the Jeffersonville

Limestone and all members of the North
Vernon Limestone.

Icriodus sp. A
Fig. 9cf. M-O, S-X

Icriodus nodosus (Huddle). Orr, 1964b, p.
77-78, PI. 2, Fig. 16?, 24-26; Orr, 1971, p.
38-39, PI. 2, Figs. 20-23; Schumacher,
1971, p. 93-95, PI. 9, Figs. 1-3, 7-9?,
10-13, 15, 16 (only).

Icriodus sp. aff. I. retrodepressus Bultynck.
Klapper and Johnson, 1980, p. 448, PI. 3,
Figs. 19-21, 22?, 23?

Icriodus aff. I. retrodepressus Bultynck.
Uyeno, in Uyeno, Telford, and Sanford,
1982, p. 33, PI. 3, Figs. 19?, 23.

Remarks. — This species is to be described
and named by Klapper and Barrick (MS). In
upper view, the segminiscaphate element of
this species is similar to that of I. n. sp. E of
Weddige (1977), and I. retrodepressus. I. sp.
A includes two morphotypes; one has a
posterior depression of the middle row
denticles as in I. retrodepressus; the other
lacks such a depression and is similar to I. n.
sp. E. I. sp. A, however, possesses a broader
basal cavity posteriorly than either I. n. sp. E
or I. retrodepressus. In the present collec¬
tions, specimens considered intermediate
between the three species have also been
recognized. In addition, specimens have
been recovered that have lateral row denti¬
cles that are rounder than is apparently
typical of the above-mentioned species.
These forms may also have two or three
more or less well-developed middle row
denticles posterior to the lateral rows, as
opposed to the more typical, single, large,
triangular denticle of the other forms. In
other respects, these specimens are compar¬
able to the three species discussed above (see
Fig. 9 J-O). The rounder lateral row denti¬
cles and the two to three posterior middle
row denticles are generally best developed in
the smaller, possibly juvenile forms. If these
are juvenile, it is often difficult or impossible
to determine with which of the three mature
forms they are associated. Faunas made up
entirely of these smaller forms are common

88

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

in the study material and have a stratigraphic
range greater than that of the larger
specimens. For the distribution of these
“juvenile” forms relative to that of the
mature forms, refer to Figs. 6 and 7.

Material. — 347 specimens (mature forms
only).

Occurrence. — Upper part of the Brevis-
pirifer gregarius Zone of the Jeffersonville
Limestone and all members of the North
Vernon Limestone.

Icriodus1. sp. B
Fig. 12S-X

Remarks. — The specimens treated here in
open nomenclature include scaphate
elements with a narrow anterior primary
process consisting of a single row of
denticles that are round to laterally
compressed in upper view. The denticles are
numerous, subequal, discrete to fused, and
bluntly pointed to round in lateral view. An
outer lateral process extends at right angles
to or is directed slightly posteriorly to the
posterior end of the anterior primary
process. The outer lateral process may have
a narrow ridge running along its upper
surface or may be weakly denticulate. A less
well-developed inner lateral process or spur
is also present. In lower view, the basal
cavity is broadly flared posteriorly, becom¬
ing narrower anteriorly and pinching out
slightly posterior of the anterior tip of the
element.

The specimens considered herein are mor¬
phologically intermediate between Icriodus
and Pelekysgnathus. Unfortunately, few
specimens were recovered and all are
fragmentary. A tentative assignment to
Icriodus is based on the following con¬
siderations: (1) specimens of Icriodus1. sp. B
are notably similar in lower view to Icriodus
latericrescens latericrescens with which this
form co-occurs; (2) no specimens definitely
assignable to Pelekysgnathus were recovered
from any of the samples in this study; (3)

Bultynck (1970, p. 111-112) reported a
similar situation for Icriodus regular i-
crescens. In his faunas, he found specimens
with well-developed lateral rows, with
reduced lateral rows, and with only the
middle row of nodes. In the present study,
however, no forms were found showing any
development of lateral rows of nodes. In
addition, the denticulation of the anterior
primary process of Icriodus1 sp. B is unlike
that of Icriodus I. latericrescens in both the
shape and number of denticles. Definitive
treatment of the form in question must await
recovery of larger and better preserved
faunas.

Material. — 7 specimens.

Occurrence. — Beechwood Member of the
North Vernon Limestone.

Polygnathus cf . P. angusticostatus
Wittekindt, 1966
Fig. 10A-C, G-I

cf. Polygnathus angusticostatus Wittekindt,

1966, p.631, PI. 1, Figs. 15-18.

Remarks. — The specimens under consid¬
eration are all fragmentary carminiplanate
elements, which are missing part or all of the
free blade. Although platform development
and ornamentation is apparently not as well
developed as in the type specimen of P.
angusticostatus, the present material appears
closer to that species than to the similar and
probably intergradational P. angustipen-
natus. Smaller specimens (see Fig. 10 A-C)
tend to have more restricted platforms and
appear to be closer to P. angustipennatus.
For more detailed discussions on the similar¬
ities and differences between P. angusti¬
costatus and P. angustipennatus the reader is
referred to the papers by Klapper (1971, p.
65), Weddige (1977, p. 307), and Sparling
(1981, p. 309-312).

Material. — 21 specimens.

Occurrence. — Brevispirifer gregarius and
Paraspirifer acuminatus Zones of the Jeffer¬
sonville Limestone and the Speeds and basal

1983]

King — Conodonts and Biostratigraphy

89

Silver Creek Members of the North Vernon
Limestone.

Polygnathus? caelatus Bryant, 1921
Fig. 10S-U, cf. V, W

Polygnathus caelatus Bryant, 1921, p. 27,
PI. 13, Figs. 1-6, 8, 12, 13 (not Figs. 7,
9-1 1 = Polygnathus collieri Huddle,

1981).

not Polygnathus caelata Bryant. Bischoff
and Ziegler, 1957, p. 86, PI. 18, Figs. 18,
19.

Polygnathus beckmanni Bischoff and
Ziegler, 1957, p. 86, PI. 15, Fig. 25;
Ziegler and Klapper, in Ziegler, Klapper,
and Johnson, 1976, PI. 4, Figs. 22, 23;
Bultynck and Hollard, 1981, p. 42, PI. 8,
Fig. 9.

Polygnathus aff. P. beckmanni Bischoff and
Ziegler, Bultynck and Hollard, 1981, p.
42, PI. 8, Fig. 1.

Polygnathus? caelatus Bryant. Huddle,
1981, p. B27, PI. 11, Figs. 15-18, PI. 12,
Figs. 12-18, 22-24 (only), PI. 13, Figs. 1-6,
12, 13.

Remarks.— Huddle (1981, p. B27)
considered Bryant’s original concept of
Polygnathus caelatus to include two species.
Specimens with an elongate, asymmetrical
platform, ornamented by irregular ridges,
and with little or no free blade, were referred
to Polygnathus? caelatus, whereas the re¬
mainder of Bryant’s specimens, character¬
ized by a large free blade and smaller basal
pit, were included in Polygnathus collieri.
Huddle (1981, PI. 13, Figs. 1-6, 12, 13) re¬
illustrated several of Bryant’s original speci¬
mens and designated the specimen illustrated
on PL 13, Figs. 6, 12, 13 (= Bryant, 1921,
PL 13, Fig. 2) to be lectotype of P. ? caelatus.
In addition, he considered P. beckmanni and
P. ? variabilis, both of Bischoff and Ziegler,
as junior synonyms of P. ? caelatus.

Bischoff and Ziegler (1957, PL 15, Fig. 25
a,b) illustrated only an upper and lateral
view of the holotype of P. beckmanni. P. ?

caelatus shows considerable variation in
nature and strength of ornamentation and in
shape of the platform in upper and lateral
views. In this respect, the holotype of P.
beckmanni, as well as the material in the
present study, appears to be within this
range of variation and assignment to P. ?
caelatus sensu Huddle, 1981, is adopted
herein.

Material. — 1 nearly complete and 10 frag¬
mentary specimens.

Occurrence. — Beechwood and upper part
of the Silver Creek Members of the North
Vernon Limestone.

Polygnathus costatus costatus Klapper, 197 1
Fig. 10D-F, J-L

Polygnathus sp. nov. B Philip, 1967, p.

158-159, PL 2, Figs. 4, ?5, 8.

Polygnathus costatus costatus Klapper,
1971, p. 63, PL 1, Figs. 30-36, PL 2, Figs.
1-7; Klapper, in Ziegler, 1973, p. 347-348,
Polygnathus — PI . 1, Fig. 3 [see further
synonymy]; Bultynck and Hollard, 1981,
p. 42, PL 3, Figs. 7, 8; Klapper, in
Johnson, Klapper, and Trojan, 1980, PL
4, Figs. 14, 15, 17; Sparling, 1981, p.
312-313, PL 1, Figs. 25-27 [P element] [see
further synonymy]; Uyeno, in Uyeno,
Telford, and Sanford, 1982, p. 28-29, PL
1, Figs. 11-13, 24, 25 [Pa element] [see
further synonymy].

Remarks. —The specimens considered
herein agree well with typical specimens of
Polygnathus costatus costatus. For diagnosis
and relations of P. c. costatus, see Klapper
(1971, p. 63) and Klapper, in Ziegler (1973,
p. 347-348).

Material. — 79 specimens.

Occurrence. — Specimens confidently
identified as P. c. costatus have been
recovered, in this study, only from the Para-
spirifer acuminatus Zone of the Jefferson¬
ville Limestone at the Sellersburg Stone
Company Quarry (SSQ) and from the Berry
Materials Corporation Quarry (BMQ).

90

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

Polygnathus linguiformis klapperi
Clausen, Leuteritz, and Ziegler, 1979
Fig. 11 R-T

Polygnathus linguiformis linguiformis
Hinde, epsilon morphotype Ziegler and
Klapper, in Ziegler, Klapper, and
Johnson, 1976, p. 123-124, PL 4, Figs. 3,
12, 14, 24; Klapper, in Ziegler, 1977, p.
465, Polygnathus — PI. 10, Figs. 5, 9, 10
[see further synonymy]; Bultynck and
Hollard, 1981, p. 44, PI. 7, Figs. 2-7, 9.
Polygnathus linguiformis klapperi Clausen,
Leuteritz, and Ziegler, 1979, p. 32, PI. 1,
Figs. 7, 8.

Remarks. — Polygnathus linguiformis
klapperi has a carminiplanate element with a
flatter outer platform margin than that of
the nominal subspecies. It can also be
distinguished from P. 1. weddigei by the
poorer development of the tongue in the
carminiplanate element of the latter
subspecies. For a complete diagnosis and
remarks, see Clausen, Leuteritz, and Ziegler
(1979) or Ziegler and Klapper, in Ziegler,
Klapper, and Johnson (1976).

Material.— 9 specimens.

Occurrence. — Basal Beechwood Member
of North Vernon Limestone.

Polygnathus linguiformis linguiformis
Hinde, 1879
Fig. 1 1 O-Q

Polygnathus linguiformis Hinde, 1879, p.
367, PI. 17, Fig. 15.

Polygnathus linguiformis linguiformis
Hinde gamma forma nova Bultynck,
1970, p. 126-127, PI. 11, Figs. 1-6, PL 12,
Figs. 1-6.

Polygnathus linguiformis linguiformis
Hinde. Weddige, 1977, p. 315-316, PL 5,
Figs. 80-82; Uyeno, in Uyeno, Telford,
and Sanford, 1982, p. 29-30, PL 2, Figs.
26-31 (Pa elements) [see further
synonymy].

Polygnathus linguiformis linguiformis
Hinde gamma morphotype Bultynck.
Klapper, in Ziegler, 1977, p. 463-464, Pol¬
ygnathus — PL 10, Fig. 2, Polygnathus—
PL 11, Figs. 4, 7 (P element) [see further

synonymy]; Bultynck and Hollard, 1981,
p. 43-44, PL 7, Fig. 1.

Remarks. — Polygnathus linguiformis
linguiformis has been divided into several
morphotypes (Bultynck, 1970; Ziegler and
Klapper, in Ziegler, Klapper, and Johnson,
1976, p. 122-124; Klapper, in Johnson,
Klapper, and Trojan, 1980, p. 102; Huddle,
1981, p. B30-B31). Most of these have since
been treated as subspecies of Polygnathus
linguiformis (Weddige, 1977, p. 312-316;
Clausen, Leuteritz, and Ziegler, 1979, p.
30-33). Weddige (1977, p. 312-316) con¬
sidered the gamma morphotype synonymous
with the nominal subspecies and this opinion
is followed in the present paper. Detailed
diagnoses and descriptions of this form can
be found in Weddige (1977); Klapper in
Ziegler (1977), and Bultynck (1970).

Material. — 943 specimens.

Occurrence. — Fenestrate bryozoan-brach-
iopod zone and Paraspirifer acuminatus
Zone of the Jeffersonville Limestone and all
members of the North Vernon Limestone.

Polygnathus linguiformis weddigei Clausen
Leuteritz, and Ziegler, 1979
Fig. 1 1 L-N

Polygnathus linguiformis linguiformis
Hinde. Wittekindt, 1966, p. 635-636, PL
2, Fig. 11.

Polygnathus linguiformis linguiformis
Hinde, delta morphotype, Ziegler and
Klapper, in Ziegler, Klapper, and
Johnson, 1976, p. 123, PL 4, Figs. 4-8;
Klapper, in Ziegler, 1977, p. 464-465,
Polygnathus— PL 10, Figs. 1, 3; Bultynck
and Hollard, 1981, p. 44, PL 7, Fig. 8.
Polygnathus linguiformis Hinde, delta
morphotype, Ziegler and Klapper.
Orchard, 1978, p. 944, PL 110, Figs. ?9,
?10,21,23,?28, ?30.

Polygnathus linguiformis weddigei Clausen,
Leuteritz, and Ziegler, 1979, p. 30-32, PL
1, Figs. 4, 9-12.

not Polygnathus linguiformis linguiformis
Hinde, form delta Huddle, 1981, p.
B30-B31, PL 15, Figs. 1-8.

(Text continues on page 108)

1983]

King — Conodonts and Biostratigraphy

91

0 5 10 20 miles c| SAMPLE LOCALITIES

iiilli-JLXi 1

0 5 10 20 30 kilometers ” COUNTY BOUNDARIES

llinl I I I

Fig. 1 . Locality map for measured sections (see Appendix of Localities for precise locations).

92

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I

Stratigraphy and conodont sample locations (numbered black rectangles) in the Muscatatuck Group, south-central Indiana and north-central Kentucky.

1983]

Klug—Conodonts and Biostratigraphy

93

ORR

(1964b)

ORR

(1971)

THIS

ST U DY

tcrio dus

/ a tericrescens
tatericrescens
ZONE

tcriodus

angustus

ZONE

/ criodus
tatericrescens
n subsp

ZONE

Pol y gnat has
v a r cus

ZONE

LOWER
Po lygnathus

v a rcu s
SUBZONE

tcriodus

tatericrescens

tatericrescens

ZONE

tcriodus

angustus

ZONE

— 7 -

Polygnathus

p seu dofot iatus
ZONE

Polygnathus

H , , . //

webbi

ZONE

“ - - ? -

i c r 10 Jus
angustus

angustus

ZONE

t criodus
tatericrescens

r opus f us
ZONE

tcriodus
tote ricr escens

robustus

ZONE

Fig. 3. Comparison of the conodont zonations of Orr (1964b), Orr (1971), and that of the present study.

94

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I

■ udddo /if s/ujj oj.;n 6 w / s nq / ou 6 A/ o <-/

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sn/snbuo d snpouo/

U 261 ‘aBippaM) 3 ds u snpouo/
sn/o/sooi/snbuo d P snq/oubA/Od — -

sn/snqoj su 90 S9 j o/ j 9 / d / snpouo/

snx9 Auoo/q j p sn/uo po j 900 / 90 j

cr

UJ

UJ

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£

c:

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Ranges of important conodont taxa in the Muscatatuck Group of south-central Indiana and north-central Kentucky.

1983]

Klug—Conodonts and Biostratigraphy

95

Biostratigraphic correlations of Middle Devonian conodont zones in south-central Indiana, north-central Kentucky and surrounding areas.

96

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I

SAMPLE

— - — ^^ONODONT S

1 Be! ode II a cf. B resima

Coe/ocerodontus cf. C biconvexus

Icriodus angustus angustus

1 angustus obhquus

<o

£

<b

/. laterlcrescens /atericrescens

/. laterlcrescens robust us

/. refrodepressus

/. n. sp. E of Weddige (1977)

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's;

/.? sp. B

Polygnathus cf. P angust/costatus

P ? caelatus

P costatus costatus

P Unguiformis klapperi

P Unguiformis Unguiformis

P Unguiformis weddigei

P pseudofo/iatus

P timorensis |

Icriodus "juveniles"

Icriodus sp. indeterminate

Polygnathus sp. indeterminate

genus 8 species indeterminate 1

alate elements

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bipennafe elements

cones (circular)

cones (compressed)

dolabrate elements

indeterminate ramiforms

SSQ - 2

5

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35

let

4

2

25

76

3

2

3

3

2

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6

158

SSQ -5

17

let.

9

1

22

6

3

1

3

i

7

SSQ-6

24

9

36

6

8

2

6

3

18

5

1 1

SSQ-7

6

1

5

1

1

1

2

4

SSQ -8

1

1

1

SSO-9

2

2

2

1

SSQ- 10

SSQ— 1 1

1

2

1

1

SSQ- 12

8

17

7

i

2

33

83

i

118

8

705

642

2 40

2

9

33

161

286

9

266

SSQ-13

6

10

let

i

i

13

14

3

17

18

*SSQ- 14

!

1 1

2

I 5

8

20

94

115

452

184

57

3

7

48

47

4

47

“SSQ- 15

2

7

1 cf

8

27

78

42

II

401

373

64

2

4

5

29

2

36

SSQ- 16

14

37

20

90

18

1 7

2

12

20

47

7

30

SSQ- 17

2

4 1

18

23

1 1

33

37

25

2

3

15

58

131

3

59

SSQ-18

2

51

9

147

34

72

186

146

14

9

228

182

7

75

SSQ- 19

1

7

1 6

2

20

22

2

8

40

1

6

SSQ-20

1

I

1

1 1

1

SSQ-21

I

2

2

10

SSQ-22

1

5

let

1 3

15

1

7

SSQ-23

3

8

2

5

1

8

SSQ-24

1 cf.

9

10

1 6

2

6

SSQ-25

2

6

3

5

1

SSQ-26

SSQ-27

SSQ-28

OGQ- 1

1

| |

2

1

4

25

93

10

no

289

5

18

3

13

55

320

OGQ- 2

1

6

16

2

6

37

1

8

OGQ- 3

2

3

1

1

OGQ- 4

3

I

4

lef.

15

1 1

6

6

4

!

2

7

OGQ- 5

6

2

6

15

4

3

2

5

4

3

4

6

OGQ- 6

2

1 4

5

2 7

1 9

4

7

4

1 1

1 8

1

1

9

18

OVS- 1

1

5

OVS — 2

1

1

OVS- 3

4

2

3

4

3

1

1

1

OVS — 4

26

1 1

9

23

f 2

8

1

4

9

22

7

13

OVS- 5

1 5

1

30

32

83

58

5

1

1

9

2

1 5

4

1 2

OVS - 6

19

45

19

46

1 7

5

3

7

1

25

2

8

OVS — 7

5

27

9

1 2

1

8

1

OVS —8

1

let

5

2

4

14

3

3

Fig. 6. Distribution of conodonts in the Sellersburg Stone Company Quarry (SSQ), Old Gheen’s Quarry (OGQ) and
Oak and Vine Streets (OVS) sections. For discussion of Icriodus “juveniles,” refer to remarks on Icriodus sp. A.
Sample numbers preceded by an asterisk (*) indicate partial picking.

1983]

King — Conodonts and Biostratigraphy

97

\ 00
\ H
\ z

\ o

\ Q
o

m \ Z

CD \q

2 \o

3 \

Z \

u \

-J \
a, \

2 \

< \

CO \

Be! ode It a cf. B. resima

to

I

§

*#»■

o

to

!

V.

£

tb

Q

Icriodus ongustus an gust us

/. ongustus ob/iquus

£

4)

£

q>

§

M

S

$

to

2

1

to

1

!

<4

to

£

.u

$

/. retrodepressus

/. n. sp. E of Weddige (197 7)

/ sp. A

00

Cl

CO

Polygnathus cf. P angusf/costatus

P ? caelatus

P costatus costatus

P Unguiformis ktapperi

1

1

.<0

i

&

P Unguiformis weddigei

P pseudofo/iatus

P timorensis

Icriodus "juveniles”

Icriodus sp. indeterminate

Polygnathus sp. indeterminate

genus 8 species indeterminate

alate elements

anguiate elements

bipennate elements

cones (circular)

cones (compressed)

dolabrate elements

indeterminate ram1 for ms

BMQ — 1

5

5

3

10

3c f.

9

2cf

40

260

50

5

i

i

12

3

52

*BMQ — 2

2

1 8

1

19

5

6

10

A

38

2cf.

3

263

803

149

2

3

2

3

41

3

135

BMQ -3

3

9

2

5

3

177

29

2

48

61

6

BMQ -4

17

68

10

5

13

5

4

543

330

21

4

3

5

56

175

4

50

BMQ — 5

10

21

7

2

1 2

4

136

85

13

2

1

20

42

19

BMQ -6

16

let

4

108

44

4

9

9

BMQ — 7

31

1 1

17

i

15

231

199

8

2

1

6

17

34

I

30

BMQ - 8

36

3

18

3

2ef.

136

97

2

2

23

52

1 4

*BMQ — 9

39

2 7

36

21

13

645

639

32

1

2

4

83

46

4

35

BMQ-I 0

BMQ-I 1

BMQ-I 2

TDQ- 1

63

1

6

10

31

1

39

34

9

TDQ-2

13

1

6

1 0

9

9

i

1 6

TDQ — 3

1 6

7

5

1

8

1 2

2

TDQ— 4

1 7

2cf

32

1 7

2 1

35

2

TDQ — 5

1 1

83

2

1

26

15

68

4

476

289

42

1

3

22

1 2

109

8

40

HAS- 1

2

1

HAS ~ 2

1

HAS -3

8

2 3

139

2

5c f.

A

132

4

12

18

120

927

452

7

2

29

28

38

129

HAS —4

3

3

4

2

2

1

2

l

2

8

HAS — 5

3

1 3

19

2

1

4

7

2

2

13

HAS — 6

16

42

67

19

1 2

2 1

2

5

1 6

45

HAS —7

1

HAS — 8

1

2

1

3

1

F OS-1 1

i

5

25

10

58

42

1

7

2

20

1

1 1

F OS-1 0

15

3

28

5

55

1 9

1

2

3

2 4

2

FOS- 9

1

5

1 cf

1

7

1

5

FOS- 8

3

5

2

7

2

F OS— 7

1

2

1

3

4

1

1

2

FOS -6

2

13

6

4

1

FOS — 5

10

15

2ef.

4

5

3

FOS-4

FOS- . 3

FOS — 2

FOS- 1

BRS— 5

5

,

3

4

4

6

BRS- 4

—

BRS- 3

BRS-2

1

9

! 5

lef

31

1

2cf

1

3cf

38

4 7

l

3

7

3

1 6

2

3 7

4

BRS- 1

2

'

1

Fig. 7. Distribution of conodonts in the Berry Materials Corporation Quarry (BMQ), Type Deputy Quarry (TDQ),
Harrison Avenue (HAS), Falls of the Ohio (FOS) and Beechwood Reference (BRS) sections. For discussion of Icriodus
“juveniles,” refer to remarks on Icriodus sp. A. Sample numbers preceded by an asterisk (*) indicate partial picking.

98

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 71, Part I,

Fig. 8. Conodonts from the Muscatatuck Group of south-central Indiana and
north-central Kentucky. All figures approximately X40.

A-F Icriodus angustus angustus Stewart and Sweet, 1956. A, B, C, upper,
lower and lateral views of SUI 49331, TDQ-5. D, E. F, upper, lower,
and lateral views of SUI 49332, BMQ-4.

G-L Icriodus angustus obliquus n. subsp. G, H, I, upper, lower, and lateral
views of paratype SUI 49333, TDQ-5. J, K, L, upper, lower, and lateral
views of holotype SUI 49334, SSQ-14.

M-U Icriodus latericrescens robustus Orr, 1971. M, N, O, lower, upper, and
lateral views of SUI 49335, FOS-6. P, Q, R, upper, lower and lateral
views of SUI 49336, OVS-6. S, T, U, lower, upper, and lateral views of
SUI 49337, OVS-6.

V-AD Icriodus latericrescens latericrescens Branson and Mehl, 1938. V, W, X,
lower, upper, and lateral views of SUI 49338, BRS-2, Y, Z, AA, upper,
lower, and lateral views of SUI 49339, OGQ-2. AB, AC, AD, lower,
upper, and lateral views of SUI 49340, BRS-2.

1983]

Klug—Conodonts and Biostratigraphy

99

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 71, Part I,

Fig. 9 Conodonts from the Muscatatuck Group of south-central Indiana and
north-central Kentucky. All figures approximately X40.

A-F Icriodus retrodepressus Bultynck, 1970. A, B, C, upper, lower, and
lateral views of SUI 49341, BMQ-4. D, E, F, upper, lower, and lateral
views of SUI 49342, BMQ-4.

G-I Icriodus n. sp. E of Weddige, 1977. Upper, lower, and lateral views of
SUI 49343, BMQ-2.

J-L Icriodus cl. /. n. sp. E of Weddige, 1977. Upper, lower, and lateral views
of SUI 49344, OVS-6.

M-O Icriodus cf. /. sp. A. Upper, lower, and lateral views of SUI 49345,
FOS-5.

P-R Icriodus n. sp. E of Weddige, 1977 — Icriodus sp. A. Upper, lower, and
lateral views of SUI 49346, BMQ-4.

S-X Icriodus sp. A. S, T, U, upper, lower, and lateral views of SUI 49347,
TDQ-5. V, W, X, upper, lower, and lateral views of SUI 49348, BMQ-4.

1983]

Kiug—Conodonts and Biostratigraphy

101

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 71, Part I,

Fig. 10. Conodonts from the Muscatatuck Group of south-central Indiana and
north-central Kentucky. All figures approximately X40.

A-C Polygnathus cf. P. angusticostatus Wittekindt, 1966. Upper, lower, and
lateral views of SUI 49349, BMQ-1 . Specimen missing most of free
blade.

D-F Polygnathus costatus costatus Klapper, 1971. Upper, lower, and lateral
views of SUI 49350, SSQ-17.

G-I Polygnathus cf. P. angusticostatus Wittekindt, 1966. Upper, lower, and
lateral views of SUI 49351, SSQ-15. Specimen missing free blade.

J-L Polygnathus costatus costatus Klapper, 1971. Upper, lower, and lateral
views of SUI 49352, SSQ-18.

M-R Polygnathus pseudofoliatus Wittekindt, 1966. M, N, O, upper, lower,
and laterial views of SUI 49353, SSQ-15. P, Q, R, upper, lower, and
lateral views of SUI 49354, SSQ-15. Specimen missing most of free
blade.

S-U Polygnathus? caelatus Bryant, 1921. Upper, lower, and lateral views of
SUI 49355, OGQ-1 . Specimen missing anterior tip.

V,W Polygnathus? cf. P. ? caelatus Bryant, 1921. Upper and lower views of
SUI 49356, HAS-3. Fragmentary specimen missing anterior portion
and posterior tip.

1983]

Klug—Conodonts and Biostratigraphy

103

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 71, Part I,

Fig. 1 1 Conodonts from the Muscatatuck Group of South-central Indiana and
north-central Kentucky. All figures approximately X40.

A Bipennate element. Inner lateral view of fragmentary specimen, SUI
49357, FOS-10.

B-E Dolabrate elements. B, inner lateral view of SUI 49358, OGQ-1 . C, D,
E, inner lateral, outer lateral, and lower views of SUI 49359, HAS-5.

F-H Angulate element. Inner lateral, outer lateral, and lower views of SUI
49360, TDQ-5.

I-K Polygnathus timorensis Klapper, Philip, and Jackson, 1970. Upper,
lower, and lateral views of SUI 49361 , OGQ-1 .

L-N Polygnathus linguiformis weddigei Clausen, Leuteritz, and Ziegler,
1979. Upper, lower, and lateral views of SUI 49362, BRS-2.

O-Q Polygnathus linguiformis linguiformis Hinde, 1879. Upper, lower, and
lateral views of SUI 49363, SSQ-4.

R-T Polygnathus linguiformis klapperi Clausen, Leuteritz, and Ziegler,
1979. Lower, upper, and lateral views of SUI 49364, BMQ-2.

1983]

Klug—Conodonts and Biostratigraphy

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

1983]

Klug — Conod onts and Biostratigraphy

107

Fig. 12 Conodonts from the Muscatatuck Group of south-central Indiana and
north-central Kentucky. All figures approximately X40.

A-D Coniform elements. A, SUI 49365, OGQ-1; B, SUI 49366, TDQ-5; C,
SUI 49367, BRS-2; D, SUI 49368, SSQ-3.

E,F Genus and species indeterminate. Upper and lateral views of SUI 49369,
SSQ-4.

G Belodella cf. B. resima (Philip, 1965). Lateral view of SUI 49370.
OVS-3.

H-K Coelocerodontus cf. C. biconvexus Bultynck, 1970. H, posterolateral
view of SUI 49371, SSQ-3; I, J, K, inner lateral, outer lateral, and pos¬
terolateral view of SUI 49372, TDQ-5.

L Belodella cf. B. resima (Philip, 1965). Lateral view of SUI 49373, SSQ-4.

M-O Coelocerodontus cf. C. biconvexus Bultynck, 1970. M, N, posterior and
lateral views of SUI 49374, SSQ-3. O, lateral view of SUI 49375,
OGQ-1.

P-R Icriodus brevis Stauffer, 1940. Upper, lower, and lateral views of SUI
49376, OGQ-1.

S-X Icriodus? sp. B. S, T, U, upper, lower, and lateral views of SUI 49377,
SSQ-2. V, W, X, upper, lower, and lateral views of SUI 49378, GHE-2.

108

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

Remarks . —Polygnathus linguiformis
weddigei is distinguished from the nominal
subspecies by the flatter platform, the poorly
developed tongue, and a carina that extends
to, or nearly to, the posterior tip in the
former. For a detailed diagnosis, see
Clausen, Leuteritz, and Ziegler (1979) or
Ziegler and Klapper, in Ziegler, Klapper,
and Johnson (1976). P. 1. weddigei is a rare
form in the present faunas and was re¬
covered from only two samples.

Material.— 5 specimens.

Occurrence. — Basal part of the Beech-
wood Member of the North Vernon Lime¬
stone.

Polygnathus pseudof oliatus
Wittekindt, 1966
Fig. 10M-R

Polygnathus n. sp. Ziegler. Flajs, 1966, p.

232-233, PI. 23, Figs. 5-7.

Polygnathus pseudofoliata Wittekindt,
1966, p. 637-638, PI. 2, Figs. 20-23 [non
Fig. 19 = P. eiflius].

Polygnathus pseudof oliatus Wittekindt.
Klapper, 1971, p. 63-64, PI. 2, Figs. 8-13
[see further synomymy]; Klapper, in
Ziegler, 1973, p. 375-376, Polygnathus —
PI. 1, Figs. 8, 9 [see further synonymy];
Ziegler and Klapper, in Ziegler, Klapper,
and Johnson, 1976, PI. 3, Figs. 2, 3, 12,
13; Weddige, 1977, p. 317-318, PI. 4, Figs.
68-70 [see further synonymy]; Bultynck
and Hollard, 1981, p. 45, PL 5, Figs. 13,
14.

Polygnathus cf. P. pseudof oliatus Witte¬
kindt. Pedder, Jackson, and Ellenor,
1970, PI. 15, Fig. 26.

Remarks. — For diagnosis and description
of Polygnathus pseudof oliatus, see Witte¬
kindt (1966, p. 637-638). For amended diag¬
nosis see Klapper, in Ziegler (1973, p. 375).
P. pseudof oliatus includes a carminiplanate
element that may have a platform outline
similar to that of P. c. costatus. In P.
pseudof oliatus, however, the platform tends
to be shallower with shallower adcarinal
troughs, especially in the posterior part of

the platform. The ornamentation of P.
pseudof oliatus is less strongly developed
than in P. c. costatus and consists of
transverse rows of nodes to weakly devel¬
oped to broken transverse ridges. Rare speci¬
mens in the present study have unusually
elongate platforms (see Fig. 10, M-O) but
otherwise agree with specimens considered
herein as P. pseudof oliatus.

Material.— 44 specimens.

Occurrence. —North Vernon Limestone
(all members).

Polygnathus timorensis
Klapper, Philip, and Jackson, 1970
Fig. 11 I-K

Polygnathus varca Stauffer. Bischoff and
Ziegler, 1957, PI. 18, Fig. 34 (only).
Polygnathus varcus Stauffer. Kirchgasser,

1970, p. 351-352, PI. 66, Figs. 9-11; Orr,

1971, p. 53-54, PI. 5, Figs. 4-8.
Polygnathus cf. decorosa Stauffer.

Matthews, 1970, PI. 1, Fig. 10.
Polygnathus timorensis Klapper, Philip, and
Jackson, 1970, p. 655-656, PI. 1, Figs. 1-3,
7-10; Klapper, in Ziegler, 1973, p.
385-386, Polygnathus — PI. 2, Fig. 3;
Ziegler and Klapper, in Ziegler, Klapper,
and Johnson, 1976, p. 125, PI. 2, Figs.
27-32; Orchard, 1978, p. 949, PI. 112,
Figs. 13-15, 17, 18, 25, 28, 32, 35; Bultynck
and Hollard, 1981, p. 45, PI. 6, Figs. 8-14;
Uyeno, in Uyeno, Telford, and Sanford,
1982, p. 30, PI. 2, Figs. 7, 8, 13-16 (Pa
elements).

Polygnathus rhenanus marijae Huddle,
1981, p. B32, PI. 17, Figs. 10-12, 19-27
(only), PI. 18, Figs. 1, 2, 5 (only).

Remarks. — For diagnosis and remarks,
see Klapper, Philip, and Jackson (1970) and
Ziegler and Klapper, in Ziegler, Klapper,
and Johnson (1976).

Material. — 1 6 1 specimens.

Occurrence. — Uppermost part of the
Silver Creek Member, and the Beechwood
Member of the North Vernon Limestone.
See section on Biostratigraphy for comments
on occurrence in the Silver Creek Member.

1983]

Klug— Conodonts and Biostratigraphy

109

Genus and species indeterminate
Fig. 12 E, F

Remarks. . Three, slightly asymmetrical,

nongeniculate coniform elements of uncer¬
tain affinities have been recovered from two
of the examined samples. These elements
have a broad, circular to elliptical basal
margin. The thin-walled base occupies the
lower three-fourths to four-fifths of the
specimen. The cusp is proclined, oval in
cross-section, and bluntly pointed apically.
A low, narrow keel runs along the anterior
margin from the apex to the basal margin;
otherwise, the elements are smooth. These
specimens bear some resemblance to Coelo -
cerodontus cf. C. biconvexus in the develop¬
ment of the deep, thin-walled base. Paucity
of material and restricted distribution,
however, obscure the relationship, if any,
with that species.

Material.— 3 specimens

Occurrence. — Beechwood Member, North
Vernon Limestone.

Coniform Elements
Fig. 12A-D

Remarks. — Proclined coniform elements
that are generally either compressed or
nearly circular in cross-section are common
to abundant in many of the examined sam¬
ples. Similar coniform elements have been
included in multielement reconstructions of
species of Icriodus (see, e.g., Klapper and
Philip, 1971, p. 446; Johnson and Klapper,

1981, p. 1242; Clark et al., 1981, p. W125;
Uyeno, in Uyeno, Telford, and Sanford,

1982, p. 32). The comparable distributions
of the segminiscaphate elements of Icriodus
and of the simple cones, in the present study,
support those reconstructions (refer to Figs.
6 and 7). No similar reconstructions are
attempted in this paper, however, because of
the diversity of the simple cones and of
species of Icriodus.

Material. - -Compressed: 1,955; circular:
978.

Occurrence. —Brevispirifer gregarius

Zone; fenestrate bryozoan-brachiopod zone;
Paraspirifer acuminatus Zone and Vernon
Fork Member of the Jeffersonville Lime¬
stone; Speeds, Silver Creek and Beechwood
Members and Deputy facies of the North
Vernon Limestone.

Ramiform and Angulate Elements
Fig. 1 1 A-H

Remarks. —Ramiform and angulate
elements are common constituents of many
of the conodont faunas examined. Preser¬
vation tends to be poor, however, with most
specimens being fragmentary. Whenever
possible, specimens were placed into the
various shape categories (alate, bipennate,
dolabrate, and angulate). Elements belong¬
ing to these shape categories have been
included in reconstruction of species of
Polygnathus (see, e.g., Klapper and Philip,
1971, p. 431-433; Sparling, 1981, p. 308-309;
Clark et al., 1981, p. W162-W164; Uyeno, in
Uyeno, Telford, and Sanford, 1982, PI. 2).
The comparable distribution of the carmini-
planate elements of Polygnathus and the
ramiform and angulate elements in the pres¬
ent study support these reconstructions.

Material. — Alate elements: 51; bipennate
elements: 367; dolabrate elements: 235;
angulate elements: 117.

Occurrence. —Brevispirifer gregarius
Zone; fenestrate bryozoan-brachiopod zone;
Paraspirifer acuminatus Zone and Vernon
Fork Member of the Jeffersonville Lime¬
stone; Speeds, Silver Creek and Beechwood
Members and Deputy facies of the North
Vernon Limestone.

Conclusions

Conodont faunas from the Middle
Devonian Muscatatuck Group of south-
central Indiana and north-central Kentucky
contain few species diagnostic of the
standard conodont zonation. Consequently,
a zonation consisting of three local zones
and one standard subzone has been adopted.
By means of this local zonal scheme, a corre¬
lation of the Middle Devonian strata of the

110

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

study area and surrounding areas can be
established. A late Emsian to early Givetian
age is suggested for the Muscatatuck Group

Literature Cited

Adrichem Boogaert, H. A. van. 1967. Devonian
and Lower Carboniferous conodonts of the
Cantabrian Mountains (Spain) and their
stratigraphic application. Leidse Geol. Meded.
39:129-192.

Bischoff, G. and W. Ziegler. 1957. Die Cono-
dontenchronologie des Mitteldevons und des
tiefsten Oberdevons. Abh. Hess. Landesamtes
Bodenforsch. 22, 136 p.

Borden, W. W. 1876. Report of a geological
survey of Jennings and Ripley Counties,
Indiana. Indiana Geol. Surv., 7th Ann. Rept.
p. 146-180.

Branson, E. G. and M. G. Mehl. 1938. The con-
odont genus Icriodus and its stratigraphic
distribution. J. Paleontol. 12:156-166.

Bryant, W. L. 1921. The Genesee conodonts.
Bull. Buffalo Soc. Nat. Sci. 13(2): 1-59.

Bultynck, P. 1970. Revision stratigraphique et
paleontologique (Brachiopodes et Conodontes)
de la coupe type du Couvinien. Mem. Inst.
Geol. Univ. Louvain 26, 152 p.

_ and H. Hollard. 1981. Distribution

comparee de Conodontes et Goniatites
devoniens des plaines du Dra, du Ma’der et du
Tafilalt (Maroc). Aardkundige Meded. 1:1-73.

Butts, C. 1915. Geology and mineral resources of
Jefferson County, Kentucky. Kentucky Geol.
Surv. 4th Ser. 3(2): 1-270.

Campbell, G. 1942. Middle Devonian stratig¬
raphy of Indiana. Geol. Soc. Am. Bull. 53:
1055-1072.

Clark, D. L. et al. 1981. Supplement 2 Cono-
donta. In R. A. Robison (ed.) Treatise on
Invertebrate Paleontology, Part W, Miscel¬
lanea.

Clausen, C.-D., K. Leuteritz, and W. Ziegler.
1979. Biostratigraphie und Lithofazies am
Siidrand der Elsper Mulde (hohes Mittelund
tiefes Oberdevon, Sauerland, Rheinisches
Schiefergebirge). Geol. Jahrb. 51(A):3-37.

Collinson, C. 1963. Collection and preparation
of conodonts through mass production tech¬
niques. Illinois State Geol. Surv. Circ. 343, 16
P-

Conkin, J. E. and B. M. Conkin. 1976. Guide to
the rocks and fossils of Jefferson County,
Kentucky, southern Indiana, and adjacent
areas. Univ. Louisville Reproduction Services,
Louisville, 249 p.

Droste, J. B. and R. H. Shaver. 1975. Jefferson¬
ville Limestone (Middle Devonian) of Indiana:
stratigraphy, sedimentation, and relation to
Silurian reef-bearing rocks. Am. Assoc. Pet.
Geol. Bull. 59(3):393-412.

Flajs, G. 1966. Die Mitteldevon/Oberdevon
Grenze im Palaozoikum von Graz. Neues
Jahrb. Geol. Palaontol. Abh. 124:
221-240.

Hinde, G. J. 1879. On conodonts from the Chazy
and Cincinnati Group of the Cambro-Silurian,
and from the Hamilton and Genesee-Shale
divisions of the Devonian, in Canada and the
United States. Q. J. Geol. Soc. London 35:
351-369.

Huddle, J. W. 1981. Conodonts form the Gen¬
esee Formation in western New York, assisted
by J. E. Repetski. U.S. Geol. Surv. Prof. Pap.
1032-B, 66 p.

Johnson, D. B. and G. Klapper. 1981. New Early
Devonian conodont species of central Nevada.
J. Paleontol. 55:1237-1250.

Johnson, J. G., G. Klapper, and W. R. Trojan.
1980. Brachiopod and conodont successions in
the Devonian of the northern Antelope Range,
central Nevada. Geol. et Palaeontol. 14:
77-116.

Kindle, E. M. 1899. The Devonian and Lower
Carboniferous faunas of southern Indiana and
central Kentucky. Bull. Am. Paleont. 3(12),

111 p.

_ 1901. The Devonian fossils and stratig¬
raphy of Indiana. Ind. Dept. Geol. Nat. Res.,
25th Ann. Rept.:529-758.

Kirchgasser, W. T. 1970. Conodonts from near
the Middle/Upper Devonian boundary in
North Cornwall. Palaeontology, 13:335-354.

Klapper, G. 1971. Sequence within the conodont
genus Polygnathus in the New York lower
Middle Devonian. Geol. et Palaeontol. 5:
59-79.

_ and J. G. Johnson. 1980. Endemism and

dispersal of Devonian conodonts. J. Paleontol.
54:400-455.

_ and G. M. Philip. 1971. Devonian

conodont apparatuses and their vicarious
skeletal elements. Lethaia 4:429-452.

1983]

Klug—Conodonts and Biostratigraphy

111

_ , _ , and J. H. Jackson. 1970.

Revision of the Polygnathus varcus Group
(Conodonta Middle Devonian). Neues Jahrb.
Geol. Palaontol. Monatsh. 1970 (1 1):650-667.

_ , et al. 1971. North American Devonian

conodont biostratigraphy. Geol. Soc. Am.
Mem. 127:285-316.

_ and W. Ziegler. 1967. Evolutionary devel¬
opment of the Icriodus latericrescens group
(Conodonta) in the Devonian of Europe and
North America. Palaeontographica, Abt. A,
127:68-83.

Matthews, S. C. 1970. Conodonts from the Lum-
maton Shell Bed (Middle Devonian, Torquay).
Proc. Ussher. Soc. 2:170-172.

Norris, A. W. and T. T. Uyeno. 1972. Stratig¬
raphy and conodont faunas of Devonian
outcrop belts, Manitoba. Geol. Assoc. Can.
Spec. Pap. 9:209-223 [imprint 1971].

Oliver, W. A. Jr. 1976. Noncystimorph colonial
rugose corals of the Onesquethaw and lower
Cazenovia stages (Lower and Middle Devon¬
ian) in New York and adjacent areas. U.S.
Geol. Surv. Prof. Pap. 869.

Orchard, M. J. 1978. The conodont biostratig¬
raphy of the Devonian Plymouth Limestone,
south Devon. Palaeontology 21:907-955.

Orr, R. W. 1964a. Conodonts form the Devonian
Lingle and Alto Formations of southern Illi¬
nois. Ill. State Geol. Surv. Circ. 361 , 28 p.

_ .1964b. Biostratigraphic zonation and

correlations based on conodonts of Middle
Devonian strata of southern Illinois and
adjacent states. Unpubl. M. A. Thesis, Univ.
Texas, Austin, 123 p.

_ . 1971. Conodonts from Middle Devonian

strata of the Michigan Basin. Indiana Geol.
Surv. Bull. 45, llOp.

_ and G. Klapper. 1968. Two new conodont

species from Middle-Upper Devonian bound¬
ary beds of Indiana and New York. J. Pale-
ontol. 42:1066-1075.

_ and C. A. Pollock. 1968. Reference sec¬
tions and correlations of Beechwood Member
(North Vernon Limestone, Middle Devonian)
of southern Indiana and northern Kentucky.
Am. Assoc. Pet. Geol. Bull., 52:2257-2262.

Patton, J. B. and T. A. Dawson. 1955. Stratig¬
raphy, p. 37-43. In H. H. Murray (compiler)
Sedimentation and stratigraphy of the Devon¬
ian rocks of southeastern Indiana. Ind. Dept.
Conserv. Geol. Surv. Field Conf. Guidebook
8.

Pedder, A. E. FL, J. H. Jackson and D. W.
Ellenor. 1970. An interim account of the
Middle Devonian Timor Limestone of north¬
eastern New South Wales. Proc. Linnean Soc.
N. S. W. 94:242-272.

Perkins, R. D. 1963. Petrology of the Jefferson¬
ville Limestone (Middle Devonian) of south¬
eastern Indiana. Geol. Soc. Am. Bull. 74:1335-
1354.

Philip, G. M. 1965. Lower Devonian conodonts
from the Tyers area, Gippsland, Victoria.
Proc. R. Soc. Victoria 79:95-117.

_ . 1967. Middle Devonian conodonts from

the Moore Creek Limestone, northern New
South Wales. J. Proc. R. Soc. N. S. W. 100:
151-161 [imprint 1966].

Rexroad, C. B. and R. W. Orr. 1967. Silurian
and Devonian stratigraphy of southeastern
Indiana. Geol. Soc. Am. Field Trip Guide¬
book, Bloomington Meeting 1967:41-74.
Schumacher, D. 1971. Conodonts from the Mid¬
dle Devonian Lake Church and Milwaukee
Formations, p. 55-67, 90-99. In D. L. Clark
(ed.) Conodonts and biostratigraphy of the
Wisconsin Paleozoic. Wis. Geol. Nat. Hist.
Surv. Inf. Circ. 19.

Shaver, R. H. 1974. The Muscatatuck Group
(New Middle Devonian name) in Indiana. Ind.
Dept. Nat. Res. Geol. Surv. Occas. Pap. 3, 7 p.

_ , et al. 1970. Compendium of rock- unit

stratigraphy in Indiana. Ind. Geol. Surv. Bull.
43, 229 p.

Siebenthal, C. E. 1901. The Silver Creek hy¬
draulic limestone of southeastern Indiana. Ind.
Dept. Geol. Nat. Res., 25th Ann. Rept.:
331-389.

Sparling, D. R. 1981. Middle Devonian conodont
apparatuses with seven types of elements. J.
Paleontol. 55:295-316.

Stauffer, C. R. 1940. Conodonts from the
Devonian and associated clays of Minnesota.
J. Paleontol. 14:417-435.

Stewart, G. A. and W. C. Sweet. 1956. Cono¬
donts from the Middle Devonian bone beds of
central and west-central Ohio. J. Paleontol.
30:261-273.

Sutton, D. G. and A. H. Sutton. 1937. Middle
Devonian of southern Indiana. J. Geol. 45:
320-331.

Uyeno, T. T., P. G. Telford, and B. V. Sanford.
1982. Devonian conodonts and stratigraphy of
southwestern Ontario. Can. Geol. Surv. Bull.
332,55 p.

112

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part I,

Weddige, K. 1977. Die Conodonten der Eifel-
Stufe im Typusgebiet und in benachbarten
Faziesgebieten. Senckenbergiana lethaea 58:
271-419.

Wittekindt, H. 1966. Zur Conodontenchronol-
ogie des Mitteldevons. Fortscher. Geol. Rheinl.
Westfalen 9:621-646 [imprint 1965].

Ziegler, W. (ed.). 1973. Catalogue of conodonts.
E. Schweizerbart’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung,
Stuttgart, I, 504 p.

_ (ed). 1975. Catalogue of conodonts. E.

Schweizberbart’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung,
Stuttgart, II, 404 p.

_ (ed.). 1977. Catalogue of conodonts. E.

Schweizerbart’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung,
Stuttgart, III, 574 p.

_ , G. Klapper, and J. G. Johnson. 1976.

Redefinition and subdivision of the varcus-
Zone (conodonts, Middle-?Upper Devonian) in
Europe and North America. Geol. et Palaeon-
tol. 10:109-140.

APPENDIX

Localities

Three distinct methods (Federal System of
Rectangular Surveys, Clark Military Grants,
and Carter Coordinates) have been used to
survey the land in the study area. For the
sake of consistency, locations are given in
terms of latitude and longitude.

1) Berry Materials Corporation Quarry
(BMQ), Lat. 39°00'53 " N, Long.
85°37'07" W, Butlerville 7.5' Quad¬
rangle, Jennings County, Indiana (type
locality of North Vernon Limestone).

2) Deputy Quarry (TDQ), Lat. 38°46'50"
N, Long. 85°38 ' 18 " W, Deputy 7.5'
Quadrangle, Jefferson County, Indiana
(type locality of Deputy Limestone of
Campbell, 1942).

3) Sellersburg Stone Company Quarry
(SSQ), Lat. 38°23'24"N, 85°46'54" W,
Charlestown 7.5' Quadrangle, Clark
County, Indiana.

4) Old Gheen’s Quarry (OGQ), Lat. 38°

21' 27 " N, Long. 85°44'30'' W, Jeffer¬
sonville 7.5' Quadrangle, Clark County,
Indiana (type area of Silver Creek Mem¬
ber).

5) Harrison Avenue Section (HAS), Lat.
38° 17 ' 17 " N, Long. 85°46'39'' W, New
Albany 7.5' Quadrangle, Clark County,
Indiana.

6) Falls of the Ohio Section (FOS), Lat. 38°
16 '20'' N, Long. 85°45'45'' W, New
Albany 7.5' Quadrangle, Clark County,
Indiana (type locality of Jeffersonville
Limestone).

7) Beechwood Reference Section (BRS),
Lat. 38°15 ' 13 " N, Long. 85°42'53'' W,
Jeffersonville 7.5' Quadrangle, Jeffer¬
son County, Kentucky (reference section
of Beechwood Member).

8) Oak and Vine Streets Section (OVS),
Lat. 38° 14 '08'' N, Long. 85°43'46'' W,
Louisville East 7.5' Quadrangle, Jeffer¬
son County, Kentucky.

ADDRESSES OF CONTRIBUTORS TO
K. G. NELSON MEMORIAL VOLUME OF THE TRANSACTIONS
WISCONSIN ACADEMY, 1983

Dr. Rachel K. Pauli

Department of Geology and Geophysics
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Milwaukee, WI 53201

Ms. Joanne L. Kluessendorf
Illinois State Geological Survey
615 E. Peabody Dr.

Champaign, IL 61820

Dr. Brian Witzke
Iowa Geological Survey
123 N. Capitol St.

Iowa City, Iowa 52242

Dr. Donald Mikulic

Illinois State Geological Survey

615 E. Peabody Dr.

Champaign, IL 61820

Mrs. Susan M. Siemann-Gartmann
Route 1, Box 152A
Bush, LA 70481

Mr. Curtis R. Klug
Department of Geology
University of Iowa
Iowa City, IA 52242

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#1

- of -

the Wisconsin
Academy of
Sciences,

Arts &
Letters

Volume 71
Part 2
1983

TRANSACTIONS

OF THE

WISCONSIN ACADEMY
OF SCIENCES, ARTS
AND LETTERS

Volume 71, Part 2, 1983

Co-editors

PHILIP WHITFORD
KATHRYN WHITFORD

TRANSACTIONS OF THE
WISCONSIN ACADEMY

Established 1870
Volume 71, Part 2, 1983

LORINE NIEDECKER: A LIFE BY WATER 1

Wayne Meyer

THE VILLAGE REVISITED:

THE SPIRIT OF PLAY IN AMERICAN FICTION 13

Marjorie P. Piechowski

INCREASE A. LAPHAM’S PIONEER OBSERVATIONS AND

MAPS OF LAND FORMS AND NATURAL DISTURBANCES 25

John R. Dorney

THE GEOMETRIC STYLE IN ART: A BRIEF SURVEY

FROM THE PALEOLITHIC TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY 31

Sally Hutchison-Ceely

COLOR MIXTURE IN COMPUTER GRAPHICS 41

Kenneth Paul Fishkin

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND THE THREE FACES OF WOMEN 45

Elizabeth Williams

POTENTIAL VERSUS ACTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF

IRRIGATED AGRICULTURE IN CENTRAL WISCONSIN 51

Donald Last

GADWALL DUCK INTRODUCTION

IN NORTHWESTERN WISCONSIN 57

James O. Evrard

THESES ON CHRISTIAN VIOLENCE 60

Kent Shifferd

THE LOSS OF AN ENTIRE WETLAND HABITAT

AND ITS WILD BIRD POPULATIONS 78

Robert A. McCabe

ASPEN UTILIZATION BY BEAVER (CASTOR

CANADENSIS) IN NORTHERN WISCONSIN 82

Reed B. Johnson

THE REVEGETATION OF A SMALL

YAHARA VALLEY PRAIRIE FEN 87

James H. Zimmerman

STORED-PRODUCT INSECT PESTS IN FEED MILLS

IN SOUTHERN WISCONSIN 103

Philip Pellitteri and G. Mallory Boush

FIRST REPORT OF A SAMSON GREY FOX 113

David A. Root and Neil F. Payne

BURBANK WITH A BAEDECKER 114

Meredith Ackley

TWO WISCONSIN LIBRARIES: 1854-1954 122

Louis Kaplan

THEME AND SPEAKERS IN SHUMWAY’S

“SONG OF THE ARCHER” 131

Jim Missey

FISHES OF POOL NUMBER 7,

UPPER MISSIPPI RIVER, I: LAKE ONALASKA 136

John W. Held

FISHES OF POOL NUMBER 7,

UPPER MISSISSIPPI RIVER, II: THE RIVERINE PORTION 144

John W. Held

MAMMALS OF FORT McCOY, MONROE COUNTY, WISCONSIN 151
Major Richard M. Pitts

FLORA OF WINNEBAGO COUNTY, WISCONSIN 155

Katherine D. Rill

ADDRESSES OF AUTHORS

181

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LORINE NIEDECKER: A LIFE BY WATER

Wayne Meyer

Department of Library Service
Ball State University
Muncie , Indiana

The Wisconsin poet Lorine Niedecker
(1903-1970) is easily overlooked, and usually
has been overlooked. The short entry in
Contemporary Authors, the only standard
reference work in the libary in which I could
find her listed, seems, as I expected, quite
unremarkable, especially in the sections for
“Education” and “Career”: “Beloit Col¬
lege, student for 2Vi years” and “formerly
employed in a library and hospital and at
Radio Station WHA, Madison.”1 According
to hometown sources in Fort Atkinson,
Wis.,2 Niedecker’s mother became deaf and
a virtual invalid during Lorine’s stay at
Beloit, and so the daughter, an only child,
felt needed at home and thus left college. She
was called “assistant librarian” for a few
years during the late 1920’s at the Dwight
Foster Public Library in Fort Atkinson.
Some sort of script writing job for WHA
radio in Madison evidently lasted just a brief
time during the early 1940’s. During the
period 1944-50 she worked in Fort Atkinson
as a stenographer and proof reader at
Hoard’s where the well-known journal
Hoard’s Dairyman is published & printed.
Her working life outside the home, as we
now say, ended with a stint at the Fort
Atkinson Memorial Hospital from 1957 to
1962, the year of her marriage (which was
actually her second marriage) to A1 Millen, a
housepainter from Milwaukee. Her job de¬
scription at the hospital was “dietary posi¬
tion, cleaning.”

Her style of life would not have attracted
much attention, except perhaps— if anyone
had cared to notice— by virtue of its extreme

This essay is based upon a presentation to the
Conference on Wisconsin Writers, held at Lawrence
University, Appleton, Wisconsin, September 12, 1980.

simplicity. The meager living conditions that
were hers during most of her life are referred
to quite often in the poetry. But when I
looked around in the two-room cabin that
she lived in alone during many years before
her 1962 marriage, I was still impressed by
how gaunt and cramped it seemed. The privy
and hand pump close by the cabin were still
there, too. I especially noticed them because
the arrival of indoor plumbing is specifically
mentioned in a couple of poems, including
the following:

Now in one year
a book published
and plumbing —
took a lifetime
to weep
a deep
trickle

(Incidentally, that book of poems, which
arrived along with the plumbing, was most
likely a collection dated 1961 .)

This typically short, terse poem reveals
several qualities that are typical of Niedecker
and that will be important for this essay.
First, note how the poet’s life and art are
described in water imagery. Also, there are
rather typical attitudes expressed of humil¬
ity, and some humorous self-deprecation,
combined with strict honesty, in regard to
her hard life and work— with the result of
reinforcing the emotional impact of that
honesty. Alliteratively juxtaposed to plumb¬
ing, her poetic output, so modest in quan¬
tity, is a mere “trickle.” But there is indeed
real depth to it, and the price paid for it was
high — a whole “lifetime” and with consider¬
able weeping involved.

In regard to material comfort, her child¬
hood, too, evidently fit into this pattern.

1

2

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

According to some of Niedecker’s own
words, in Paean to Place:

Seven years the one
dress

for town once a week
One for home
faded blue-striped
as she piped
her cry

In adulthood her attitude towards the mate¬
rial was quite firm and expressed again in
water imagery:

O my floating life
Do not save love
for things
Throw things
to the flood

ruined
by the flood

Nor did this woman attract any attention
by “getting around’’ much. She spent the
great majority of her days in a few different
dwellings on Blackhawk Island, which is
actually a small spur of land jutting out
toward Lake Koshkonong between marsh¬
land on one side and the Rock River on the
other (close to where the Rock empties into
the lake). The previously mentioned cabin is
thirty or so yards from the river shore.
Maybe a quarter mile down the single black¬
top road heading toward the tip of the Island
is her parents’ former home, where Nie-
decker was born and spent much of her time
as a child (with some stints at relatives’
homes in town which were closer to school)
and, just across the road and right on the
river bank, a rambling frame building which
was a kind of combination tavern and bait
shop operated originally by her maternal
grandfather and then by her father, who was
also a commercial fisherman. Finally, back
on Niedecker’s own cabin lot is the more
comfortable ranch-style house, right on the
river bank again and thus with a nice view of
the Rock and Lake Koshkonong beyond,
where she lived with her husband after her
1962 marriage. So she was always somewhat

removed, even in a geographical sense, from
the community of Fort Atkinson a couple of
miles away.

Only rarely during her life did she venture
out of her native Fort Atkinson region. The
chief exceptions, it seems, were those years
in Beloit and Madison and then, after her
marriage in 1962, some winters spent in Mil¬
waukee. But in “Fort,’’ today a town of
about 9,000, very few people could claim to
know her well. Most never heard of her. To
put it mildly, Lorine Niedecker did not cut a
large figure in the world.

As already mentioned, her poetry is small
in volume. The “Writings” section of Con¬
temporary Authors lists six different book
titles, which actually turn out to be five suc¬
cessive new editions of the slowly growing
body of poems, plus one posthumous collec¬
tion called Blue Chicory — all from a few
small presses.3 In all, her poetry fills about
200 pages. The first two books, both quite
small (and, almost needless to say, almost
entirely overlooked by the literary world)
were published in 1946 and 1961, when the
poet was, respectively, 43 and 58 years old.
The next three books, larger collections of
her work, were published during the last
three years of her life, 1968-1970. The
posthumous collection came out in 1976. As
I have noted, few people in her home town
knew her at all; fewer still knew of her
poetry. But her poetic reputation, though
not large, was international, and her
acquaintance among poets, very select.
Louis Zukofsky she called her mentor over
the years, dating back to 1931. She also had
some correspondence with William Carlos
Williams, Basil Bunting, Jonathan Williams,
and especially Cid Corman, her literary
executor, a few of whom sought her out for
a rare personal visit in Wisconsin. The
striking thing is that, although to a very large
degree isolated from and neglected by the
literary world, she so devotedly kept at her
task of writing poems that in form and style
were among the more progressive— perhaps
even the avant garde — of their day. Most

1983]

Meyer—. Lorine Niedecker

3

significant of all, much of her poetry is
simply excellent.

The title given to the most nearly complete
collection of Niedecker’s poems is My Life
By Water: Collected Poems 1936-68. The
title My Life By Water has a perfectly
obvious, literal meaning that I have already
discussed: Niedecker spent almost her whole
life on Blackhawk Island. (For that matter,
even those few periods away from her native
place were also spent by water: a few miles
downstream on the Rock River in Beloit, in
the so-called City of the Four Lakes,
Madison, and in the Lake Michigan port of
Milwaukee. As Niedecker wrote in a letter to
a friend, “I love ... all water.”4) But it is in
perfect keeping with her style of writing that
upon closer inspection, other and deeper
meanings can be added to the obvious mean¬
ing of the terribly simple words of that title.
Because as with Lorine Niedecker, the plain¬
looking and plain-living person, so her
poetry, to repeat, is and has been easily over¬
looked; but careful study and attentiveness
can reveal its true and estimable worth. So in
this essay I want to explicate that title and
explore its implications.

Clearly suggested by living by water is the
importance of nature in Niedecker’s poetry,
which indeed is full of natural sights and
sounds, plants and animals (especially
birds), of lake and river, marsh and shore.
Delving a little deeper, one notices how often
and how easily— -almost, it seems, automat¬
ically— the poet speaks of herself in the
poems in natural and particularly in water
imagery. And further exploration of that
title, My Life By Water , will reveal, or will
suggest at least, certain circumstances that
exerted great influence upon this poet and
certain important choices she made during
her life. These circumstances and choices are
reflected in key themes in the poetry, and
they also bear directly upon the question of
why and how this poet, with so little en¬
couragement, and at very significant per¬
sonal sacrifice, kept at her work. To clarify,
I am not claiming that all the meanings that I

Fig. 1. Lorine Niedecker beside Rock River near her
home. Photo taken by Gail H. Roub of Fort Atkinson
in summer of 1967.

discern in the title My Life By Water are
intended by the poet. But concentrating on
that title and its implications will help us
understand the poems and will also help us
appreciate the high price paid for this
particular life of poetry as well as the rare
and precious benefits gained from it.

To preview this discussion with a bit of
very colloquial figurative language,
Niedecker was not “high and dry” during
much of her life. Rather, the one practical
everyday concern that seems most often
mentioned in her poems and also in letters to
her friends is the recurrent spring flooding
on the Island. According to one concise
autobiographical image,

My life is hung up
on the flood
a wave-blurred
portrait

Again, flooding was important enough to
warrant quite a few lines in Paean to Place,

4

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

the rather long poem which Niedecker re¬
ferred to as her autobiography. (The he and
she in these lines refer to her father and
mother.)

River rising — flood
Now melt and leave home
Return — broom wet
naturally wet

Under

soak-heavy rug
water bugs hatched —
no snake in the house
Where were they? —
she

who knew how to clean up
after floods

he who bailed boats, houses
Water endows us
with buckled floors

Repeated flooding was hard on buildings
and people on Blackhawk Island. This
unreliability of nature, this business of not
being able to take your next step on
“buckled floors” for granted, was just one
way in which Niedecker’s life was separated
from the ordinary, and one form of loss
that, I submit, she in her circumstances
chose to incur, more or less willingly, but
with self-awareness and sometimes doubt
and sometimes with a real sense of loss. Why
did she make this choice? Because of a deep,
strong attachment to that place, is the be¬
ginning of the answer — and because of other
values also implied in living by water. That is
what I want to explore.

In part, then, this paper will be an exercise
in how biographical knowledge can enrich
our understanding of the poetry. But I do
agree, incidentally, with the standard New
Critical viewpoint that literary works must
stand alone with regard to their basic mean¬
ing and worth. The excellence of Niedecker’s
poems is our primary reason for being inter¬
ested in her life in the first place. For these
reasons, I’ll take a detailed look at some of
the poems as I go along.

Niedecker valued her deep roots in her
native place and also took an interest in the
history of that region, an interest expounded
in several early poems. The waterways of
Wisconsin were of course very important to
the Indians and traders and early settlers,
and probably no historical figure is more
closely associated with the Rock River than
the famous Sauk chief Black Hawk. One of
the last great Indian uprisings in the old
Northwest Territory is known now as the
Black Hawk War of 1832. The cause of the
uprising was, predictably, property or terri¬
tory, as set forth in Niedecker’s poem on the
subject.

Black Hawk held: In reason
land cannot be sold,
only things to be carried away,
and I am old.

Young Lincoln’s general moved,
pawpaw in bloom,
and to this day, Black Hawk,
reason has small room.

It is typical of a Niedecker poem to demand
a lot of the reader. In this case some knowl¬
edge of this chapter in regional history is
required.5

In 1804 a Fox chief and an earlier Sauk
chief had ceded their lands east of the
Mississippi, in what is now Illinois and
Wisconsin, to the United States. Black
Hawk, then a rising war chief, always
claimed that this treaty had been made with
no tribal authority and that the two chiefs
were in fact induced to sign it while drunk.
In 1816 Black Hawk himself actually signed
a document confirming the treaty of 1804,
but afterward he claimed he was ignorant of
the terms of the agreement. The Black Hawk
of Niedecker’s poem explains his philosophy
of property in the first three lines; perhaps it
could be called a philosophy of stewardship
of the earth, as maintained by a minority of
Christians in European and American his¬
tory. In another Niedecker poem called

1983]

Meyer— Lorine Niedecker

5

“Pioneers,” a somewhat similar claim is
made upon some other Indians’ behalf:

Winnebagoes knew nothing
of government purchase of their land,
agency men got chiefs drunk
then let them stand.

Historians tell us that it was after many
years of brooding over the loss of Sauk and
Fox lands east of the Mississippi that Black
Hawk in 1831 and again in 1832 led a band
of warriors and their families back across the
river in a determined but ultimately futile
attempt to regain their ancestral lands. His
increasingly pathetic struggle to rally sup¬
port from other Indians and to keep evading
the white men’s armies took him as far east
as “the widening of the Rock River known
as Lake Koshkonong.”6 His band paused
there but still escaped, for a while longer, the
pursuing U.S. Army regulars led by General
Henry Atkinson. Hence the name “Black-
hawk Island.” (This historical event is now
annually commemorated in the town of Fort
Atkinson with a Fort Festival and Black
Hawk Pageant.)

In the first line of the poem, “Black Hawk
held”— -with its strong, delayed stress on the
third word, further emphasized through
alliteration— means, primarily, that Black
Hawk reasoned or argued in this manner on
the question of land ownership, but with a
suggestion, too, of “held” in the sense of
“took a stand” and refused to be pushed
around any longer. Thus, it is not surprising
that this particular word is not found in
Niedecker’s source for the rest of these first
three lines, namely, Black Hawk’s autobiog¬
raphy, which he dictated a few years after his
capture. The key passage follows:

My reason teaches me that land cannot be
sold. The Great Spirit gave it to his children to
live upon, and cultivate, as far as is necessary
for their subsistence; and so long as they
occupy and cultivate it, they have the right to
the soil — but if they voluntarily leave it then
any other people have a right to settle upon it.

Nothing can be sold, but such things as can be
carried away.7

The characteristic simplicity of Niedecker’s
diction does not lead us to suspect that her
lines are a kind of borrowing. Of course the
extreme conciseness and paring things down
to their minimum essentials are also typically
Niedecker. Next, Black Hawk himself does
not make mention of his age at this point in
his story, and we should look closely at that
extremely, deceptively simple line, “and I
am old.” So what? one may ask. First of all,
perhaps the beliefs and arguments of an
older person, and an experienced and wise
leader, should be given special attention,
should indeed be listened to and heeded — or
such is the practice, anyway, among many
so-called primitive societies. Similarly, Black
Hawk might also be asking straightfor¬
wardly for a bit of sympathy, since, in the
opinion of some again, the elderly deserve it.
Also, I think that Black Hawk means that he
has grown too old and weary to keep on flee¬
ing the white men and their army and too old
to endure further deracination, and thus he
intends to “hold,” to take his stand, here
and now.

Finally, there is a meaning to his words
not intended by Black Hawk, most likely: he
is part of and, as it turns out, one of the very
last truly notable representatives in this
territory of an old and dying way of life, a
civilization that is steadily and irretrievably
being pushed out by a new one.8 Thus, the
youth of Lincoln and the identity of Lincoln
himself as a famous representative — and,
note, a sympathetic figure — of the new civili¬
zation are important in the next line, in
addition to the historic fact that young Abe
was among the volunteer Illinois militiamen
who joined with the U.S. Army regulars to
pursue Black Hawk and crush the rebellion
during the spring and summer of 1832. Fur¬
thermore, the springtime of the year is
associated with the advance of white civili¬
zation, again in contrast to the age of Black
Hawk.

Follow Hwy. 106 to Fort Atkinson

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

Fig. 2. Dust jacket of My Life by Water showing fishermen’s map of Lake Koshkonong. From original loaned by Gail H. Roub.

1983]

Meyer— Lorine Niedecker

7

But the way springtime is identified in the
poem, in the line ‘‘pawpaw in bloom,” re¬
lates to the question of title to the land. Here
is one example, the tree called pawpaw,
among many that could be cited, of Amer¬
ican Indian names for plants and animals
being adopted by the newcomers, the white
men. Whose land, indeed, is this? Well,
never mind the reasonable answer, because
“to this day . . . reason has”— as Black
Hawk in 1832 had— “small room.”

It’s not hard to understand that a person
who composed lines such as these would not
leave, easily or for very long, her native
place. Niedecker was also concerned with
maintaining the roots of her family in their
life by water. Her father’s occupation— or
that particular occupation, among the sev¬
eral that he followed, which the daughter
preferred to recall and which gets mentioned
in one context or another many times in the
poetry— was that of commercial fisherman
—“he seined for carp to be sold.” Notable,
too, is the dust jacket of My Life By Water
which shows a fisherman’s map of Lake
Koshkonong (Fig. 2), a map, one former
neighbor of Niedecker told me, that used to
be posted on the wall of her father’s tavern
on Blackhawk Island. Just listen to the
opening lines of “Paean to Place”:

Fish

fowl

flood

Water lily mud
My life

in the leaves and on water
My mother and I
born

in swale and swamp and sworn
to water

Her attachment to river and lake, marsh and
shore, and the plants and animals there is
hard to overestimate and simply permeates
the poetry. The two closest friends of the late
poet that I had a chance to talk to in Fort
Atkinson could be categorized as one person
interested in art and poetry and another with

whom Lorine took long walks on the Island
in order to watch the birds. As with her
parents, so the daughter, too — albeit in a
different way— took much of her living from
the water.

But what about Niedecker’s life on land,
which we’ve already previewed as to some
degree out of the ordinary? What about,
first of all, her place not in the natural but
the local human community? A couple of
her best poems directly address this subject.
Here is my favorite:

The clothesline post is set
yet no totem-carvings distinguish the
Niedecker tribe

from the rest; every seventh day they wash:
worship sun; fear rain, their neighbors eyes;
raise their hands from ground to sky,
and hang or fall by the whiteness of their all.

As with many of the nature poems, the poet
finds her material in the middle of her
humble surroundings and its most ordinary
details, and then, as distanced observer and
critic (in addition to, it’s made clear, a par¬
ticipant), works an artistic transformation
upon it. In this poem the poet’s identity and
roots in the local community are acknowl¬
edged — the “post is set” and the Niedeckers
are definitely there as one among the other
tribes — and then a bit of weekly routine is
solemnly mythologized, and simultaneously
of course the whole business is rather gently,
playfully undercut.

In place of real tribal identity there is con¬
formity. There is, from the highly original
perspective of this poetic observer, the ap¬
pearance of watery ritual and elemental
sacrament in the behavior and particularly
the physical movements of the villagers. And
note how the terse parallel phrases and their
abrupt rhythm very effectively suggest this:
“worship sun; fear rain.” But these are not
totem poles, and in reality there is only
human interaction, of the most petty and
trivial kind. In a very characteristic play
upon words, a little pivotal pun, the literal
hanging up of the laundry becomes, when

8

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

juxtaposed to “fall,” the figurative main¬
taining of face among the neighbors, being
able to hold up one’s head, thereby very
quickly alluding to “ring around the collar”
and all such TV commercial idiocy aimed at
the contemporary housewife. The ironic
undercutting is also conveyed in the same
verb “hang” when it is applied to the
victorious launderers — or, more likely, laun¬
dresses — almost as if to say, “Give them
enough clothesline and white laundry and
they will successfully hang themselves.” This
compactness is indeed typical of Niedecker
at her best. Note, too, how the phrase “their
all” at the very end playfully alludes, I
think, to the white underwear included
among all the other laundry and thus, again,
to the villagers’ inane washday rivalry and
fear of “exposure.” Lorine Niedecker was in
this same community, as we know, almost
all her life, but she was definitely not entirely
of it.

In another poem jobs and the workaday
world form the context for exploring the
poet’s place in the community, and again her
distance from it. Though containing an
element of admiration, the portrait of the
community has grown more harsh, just as
the poet’s detachment from it now seems
greater. Incidentally, the poem clearly
alludes to Niedecker’s job at Hoard’s during
1944-50, which is in accord with the refer¬
ence to “the bomb” in the first line.

In the great snowfall before the bomb
colored yule tree lights
windows, the only glow for contemplation
along this road

I worked the print shop

right down among em

the folk from whom all poetry flows

and dreadfully much else.

I was Blondie

I carried my bundles of hog feeder price lists
down by Larry the Lug,

I’d never get anywhere
because I’d never had suction,
pull, you know, favor, drag,
well-oiled protection.

I heard their rehashed radio barbs—
more barbarous among hirelings
as higher-ups grow more corrupt.

But what vitality! The women hold jobs —
clean house, cook, raise children, bowl
and go to church.

What would they say if they knew
I sit for two months on six lines
of poetry?

The “folk” of the community, as they’re
called, are associated with the mundane and
gauche commercialism and, in turn, with the
militarism of their society, which are in such
contrast to the meaning of Christmas, the
holiday which these people publicly try to
celebrate.

The first stanza merely alludes, it seems,
to the glare or “glow” of an atomic bomb
explosion because the reality of it is too
awful to contemplate. At least there is a
gesture toward peace in the observance of
Christmas. Christianity — specifically the old
hymn called the Doxology — is also alluded
to in the second stanza: blessings, in the
form of poetry, flow from the folk — “and
dreadfuly much else.” Note how the rhythm
and stress and colloquial diction capture so
simply, but so precisely, both the speech of
the folk and the poet’s feelings in regard to
working “right down among em.”

The rhythm and diction of the third
section get rougher to convey the poet’s
feeling of being defiled, it almost seems, as
well as embittered by contact with that
society, although some of the bitterness
seems to reflect back upon the poet herself.
Then, in contrast to the ordinary women’s
vitality, she sits “for two months on six
lines/of poetry.” So the poet does acknowl¬
edge how much of ordinary life she is miss¬
ing out on for the sake of these lines of
poetry, and she doesn’t seem altogether
confident or pleased about her choice. And
the poet knows — or definitely thinks she
knows — the unfavorable kind of thing
“they” would say if “they” knew, and so,
it’s quite clear, she ends the poem more

1983]

Meyer — Lorine Niedecker

9

resolute in her distance and even isolation
from her community.

In a third poem dealing with the poet’s
relationshp to her community, some of the
earlier humor returns, for a while, but the
judgement of that community and its way of
life remains harsh.

I rose from marsh mud,
algae, equisetum, willows,
sweet green, noisy
birds and frogs

to see her wed in the rich
rich silence of the church,
the little white slave-girl
in her diamond fronds.

In aisle and arch
the satin secret collects
United for life to serve
silver. Possessed.

The poet starts out on a mock self-deprecat¬
ing note, picturing herself almost as some
kind of muddy monster rising from the deep.
But the poem soon turns, in effect, into a
defense of her life by water, by attacking the
life of the town at one of its key points, the
honorable institution of marriage. The poet
is in touch, literally, with some of the most
basic elements of her natural surroundings,
such as the simple plants, algae and equise¬
tum, whereas the young bride is surrounded
with richness, with diamonds and satin.
Vitality in the form of water, earth, green¬
ness and noise is located this time in the
poet’s realm, contrasting to the silence and
whiteness around the bride. Note how the
simple alliterative patterns — the d and thick
ch sounds of the second stanza, the t and
hissing 5 sounds of the third stanza — re¬
inforce a sinister and stealthy atmosphere
surrounding the wedding. The suggestion of
white slavery with reference to the bride
actually seems, to me, more harsh and
unsubtle than is characteristic of Niedecker.
And the “satin secret” is the unpleasant
truth about marriage commonly known (es¬
pecially by the women, perhaps) but not
confessed. That is, the innocent bride is not

forewarned. She will serve from silver,
maybe. But more important, she will be a
lifelong servant to silver, she will be
dominated by domestic routine and social
convention and be possessed by her posses¬
sions — with maybe even a hint of madness in
the forecast for her future. “Possessed.”

This poem and its discussion of marriage
brings us again to the subject of Niedecker’s
personal life — which turns out to be quite a
sensitive area indeed. First let us go back to
Niedecker’s parents and the model of
domestic life that they provided. It’s her
parents’ lives in the out-of-doors, you’ll
recall, that Niedecker liked to remember and
celebrate in the poems. Their life indoors
was simply not very happy, not at least
during those many years when the mother
was an invalid, a pitiable figure, deaf and
finally blind. Several poems express the
sometimes nagging burden felt by the only
child in caring for her mother. A couple of
poems allude to the drunkenness and phi¬
landering that are known to be part of her
father’s reaction to the situation. In an early
poem the mother, speaking of course
through the poet, gives a kind of mournful
summation of her own version of a life by
water, and an important final line helps to
define the daughter’s status in this family.

Well, spring overflows the land,

floods floor, pump, wash machine

of the woman moored to this low shore by deafness.

Good-bye to lilacs by the door
and all I planted for the eye.

If I could hear — too much talk in the world,
too much wind washing, washing
good black dirt away.

Her hair is high.

Big blind ears.

I’ve wasted my whole life in water.

My man’s got nothing but leaky boats.

My daughter, writer, sits and floats.

Note that terse but unmistakable note of
scorn and accusation in the last line: in the
mother’s opinion, the daughter doesn’t
really do much, she is not involved enough,

10

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

her calm is interpreted as cool, distant de¬
tachment. But more than this is conveyed in
the brief watery metaphor for the poet’s way
of life — “floats.” In reality, the quiet
floating is a kind of victory of survival for
the daughter and in sharp contrast to the
mother, who is “moored to this low shore by
deafness.” The mother was both right and
wrong about her daughter: in order to write
so powerfully and yet so subtly about this
relationship, she had to feel, intensely, along
with the mother, as well as distance herself,
deliberately, to compose delicate lines such
as these.

And what of Niedecker’s own experience
with marriage? Her first marriage to Frank
Hartwig, described as a “road contractor”
in the local weekly, the Jefferson County
Union , took place in 1928 when Lorine was
twenty-five years old.9 After just four years
they agreed to separate. According to the
records in the Jefferson County courthouse,
Niedecker eventually filed for divorce in
1942. Let us turn at this point to the poem
called “Wild Man.”

You are the man

You are my other country

and I find it hard going

You are the prickly pear

You are the sudden violent storm

the torrent

to raise the river
to float

the wounded doe

The usual kind of subtle artistry seems
lacking in this poem. Still, form follows
content in a straightforward, unrestrained
rush of feeling. To repeat, her life by water
— or in the terms of the last section, in
water — was not always nice. Some people
seem to think that Niedecker’s late marriage
(from 1962 till her death in 1970) to A1
Millen was the personal basis for this and a
few other grim poems on marriage published
posthumously in the volume called Blue
Chicory. I strongly suspect that a basis might
be found as well in the first marriage, not to
mention the backdrop of the senior Nie-

deckers’ marriage. In any case, following her
mother’s death in 1951 and her father’s
death in 1954 came the long period of near
isolation in that gaunt, green-painted two-
room cabin on Blackhawk Island.

Property, community life, marriage and
family — an awful lot of the ordinary sources
of satisfaction were, evidently, not very
available to her. She did have her poetry.

I wish, now, to look at another deceptively
simple poem, which is also the title poem of
Niedecker’s second collection.

My friend tree
I sawed you down
but I must attend
an older friend
the sun

I recall my reaction upon first reading this
poem. It seemed a rather clear statement,
incidental yet arresting, about the necessity
of making choices and of suffering losses.
Simple devices of rhyme, diction, and
rhythm give that impression some force. But
so concisely, in just sixteen words. Typically
Niedecker. After studying the other poetry
more and especially after learning more
about her life, my impression after re¬
reading the poem much later I would have to
describe as shock.

My friend tree
I sawed you down
but I must attend
an older friend
the sun

How much indeed did this woman have to
give up — or anyway decide that she had to
give up — in order to live her life by water
and to practice her craft and art, so carefully
and so devotedly, over those many decades?
But she simply had to get down to the real
essentials of her life, and note how the image
of the sun and its associations with vision
and illumination and the source of all vitality
can suggest poetry, of course, among many
other meanings. Further, when a bit of liter¬
ary success and a bit of material comfort did
come to her, they evidently did not always

1983]

Meyer— Lorine Niedecker

11

seem commensurate with the personal prices
that she had paid.

Now in one year
a book published
and plumbing —

took a lifetime
to weep
a deep
trickle

Reflecting upon her life and work, one is
drawn powerfully to the conclusion that here
was a life of great integrity. The spare and
lean, hard yet delicate quality of her style of
life that formed a simple, polished case for
character of great depth is matched by the
identical quality of her polished verses that
release profound meaning and impact to the
attentive reader.

Almost all commentators on Lorine Nie¬
decker have drawn a comparison with Emily
Dickinson. Certainly there are ample
grounds for such comparisons, including the
shy sensitivity of the women’s personalities,
their suspicion of, and relative seclusion
from, their contemporary societies, some
personal and family misfortunes, and, of
course, the starting point of such compari¬
sons — their concise, delicate, complex
though seemingly simple, and often power¬
ful poetry. In both cases, I think, there is a
temptation to create a kind of legend of a
victim-heroine poetess driven to — or forced
rather reluctantly into — a higher dedication
to poetry and personal release through art.10
I submit, though, that there is a strong like¬
lihood that both of these women deliberately
and knowingly chose and accepted their
ways of life as the very conditions which
made their poetry possible. Look at this
excerpt from Niedecker’s long poem called
“Wintergreen Ridge”:

Nobody, nothing
ever gave me
greater thing

than time
unless light

and silence

which if intense
makes sound

Here we have a kind of personal com¬
mentary, I believe, on the so-called quiet
life. It’s not that the poet must be satisfied
with just the simplest gifts in life — time,
light, and silence. Rather, seclusion and
quietude and alert attentiveness, raised to a
high enough “intensity,” become the very
conditions for a precious, magical trans¬
formation into “sound.” And certainly
there is an implied identification of this
sound with the poet’s own voice speaking,
her very special poetry. According to the
review of her work by the critic Michael
Heller, “what Miss Niedecker has achieved,
and this is what makes her work distin¬
guished, is not to become the poet-victim of
her condition but its agency, singing the song
of her world and herself through herself. ” 1 1
Surely, then, Lorine Niedecker did finally,
confidently, realize the great benefits that
she had reaped from her life by water. And
surely we are now all her beneficiaries.

Notes

1 Contemporary Authors, Permanent Series: A Bio-
bibliographical Guide to Current Authors and Their
Works, Vol. 2 (Detroit: Gale Research Co., 1978),
p. 389.

2 For most of the biographical data in this paragraph
I am relying on Jane Knox, “Biographical Notes:
Lorine,’’ Origin, 4th Series, no. 16 (July, 1981), pp.
3-23. Mrs. Knox is the wife of William D. Knox,
President of W. D. Hoard and Sons Co., Niedecker’s
former employer.

Also in regard to hometown soures of information,
this seems a good time to acknowledge my debt to Mr.
Gail Roub of Fort Atkinson, former neighbor and close
friend of the late poet, who generously gave me a couple
days of his time in August 1980— very memorable days
for me. Mr. Roub shared with me many recollections of
and much information about Niedecker along with
some manuscripts, letters and other material of hers,
showed me Niedecker’s former residences and the
environs of Blackhawk Island, and introduced me to
Mr. A1 Millen, husband of LN, and also some of her
former neighbors on the Island.

3 The following comprise the published collections of
Niedecker’s poetry:

New Goose (Prairie City, Ill.: Decker Press, 1946);

My Friend Tree (Edinburgh, Scotland: Wild Haw¬
thorn Press, 1962);

North Central ( London: Fulcrum Press, 1968);

12

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

T & G: The Collected Poems (1936-1968) (Penland,
North Carolina: Jargon Society, 1968);

My Life By Water: Collected Poems 1936-1968
(London: Fulcrum Press, 1970);

Blue Chicory (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Elizabeth
Press, 1976).

All quotations from her work in this essay are based on
the text of My Life By Water, with the exceptions of a
poem quoted from Blue Chicory and an excerpt quoted
from the poem “Pioneers” in New Goose.

4 Quoted in Knox, p. 7.

5 A good, brief account of the Black Hawk War that
I’ve relied on here is Odie B. Faulk, “Black Hawk,”
The McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of World Biography,
1973.

6 Alice E. Smith, From Exploration to Statehood,
The History of Wisconsin, Vol. 1 (Madison: State His¬
torical Society of Wisconsin, 1973), p. 137.

7 Black Hawk: An Autobiography, Donald Jackson,
ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1955), p. 1 14.

8 It is interesting in this connection to note one
authority’s estimation of Black Hawk’s autobiography
as “a unique document, for it narrated from an Indian
point of view the tale of frustration, bewilderment, and
desperation of a dispossessed people, striving to retain
the only way of life they knew against the oncoming
rush of a different civilization.” Smith, From Explora¬
tion to Statehood, p. 140.

9 Jefferson County Union, 7 December 1928, p. 1 1 .

10 For a discussion of this tendency in the criticism
and biography of Dickinson, see chapter 1, “Legend
and Life,” of Paul J. Ferlazzo, Emily Dickinson (Bos¬
ton: Twayne Publishers, 1976).

11 Michael Heller, “I’ve Seen It There,” Nation,
April 13, 1970, p. 444. This review is reprinted in truck,
no. 16 (Summer 1975), edited by David Wilk. This
special issue of the little magazine is devoted in its
entirety to LN: a selection of her poems and letters;
reviews, reminiscences, and appreciations; and thirteen
poems dedicated to LN by fellow poets.

THE VILLAGE REVISITED:

THE SPIRIT OF PLAY IN AMERICAN FICTION

Marjorie P. Piechowski
Marquette University

A number of fictional works appearing
early in the twentieth century seriously
scrutinized life in small-town America. In
general, the books were written by natives of
these towns who examined the mores and in¬
habitants of the villages with the double
vision of the provincial who has escaped to a
more sophisticated urban existence. From
Hamlin Garland’s Main-Travelled Roads to
Sinclair Lewis’s Main Street , these books
depicted life in the provinces as barren, ugly
and boring, a situation in which the only real
future for a sensitive, creative individual lay
in escape of some sort. Hence the phrase
“revolt from the village,” often used to
describe these writings, referred to an atti¬
tude as well as a physical journey. Usually
the portrayal of village life in these books
suggested that small American towns were
built from a master plan of calculated archi¬
tectural mediocrity and populated with
dour, hardworking inarticulates. The heroes
of these works escaped the village principally
because it offered no scope for creative
interests. Usually the initial discontent began
with the hero’s awareness that recreation,
spontaneity, fun, a spirit of play, were of
little importance in small-town America
compared with the serious business of
making a living.

Many causes exist for the growth of such
an attitude, particularly in rural America.
The Puritan tradition encouraged hard work
while at the same time repressing festivity.
Furthermore, the simple necessity for physi¬
cal labor in expanding the American nation
certainly contributed to this attitude. But
recognition of the equal necessity of play as
a human activity has seldom been absent
from any civilization, primitive or sophis¬
ticated. Plato in his Laws points out the vital

role of play, and philosophers of every ideol¬
ogy have included play as a necessary ele¬
ment of humanity ever since. In an influen¬
tial modern study of this subject, Johan
Huizinga observes, “. . . genuine, pure play
is one of the main bases of civilization.” 1

The term one uses — play, leisure or cele¬
bration — is not as important as the attitude
itself. In Leisure the Basis of Culture Joseph
Pieper defines this attitude: “Leisure, it
must be clearly understood, is a mental and
spiritual attitude ... it is not the inevitable
result of spare time, a holiday, a weekend or
a vacation.”2 Huizinga further defines the
importance of the play element for humans:

As a regularly recurring relaxation, however,
it becomes the accompaniment, the comple¬
ment, in fact an integral part of life in general.
It adorns life, amplifies it and is to that extent
a necessity both for the individual — as a life
function — and for society by reason of the
meaning it contains, its significance, its ex¬
pressive value, its spiritual and social associ¬
ations, in short, as a culture function. The ex¬
pression of it satisfies all kinds of communal
ideals.3

Closely related to an individual’s play
spirit is the relationship with the community.
Every human being has moments of private
play when celebrating a personal relation¬
ship with the world. Appreciation of nature,
physical exercise, musical performance, in
fact, most esthetic creations, necessarily
comprise individual acts of play. Richard
Rupp describes them as moments of “mys¬
tery and wonder, a silent celebration of one’s
own unique identity.”4 But it is in shared
leisure that most human bonds are defined,
“revealing significant shared social and per¬
sonal values, uniting separate individuals
into a momentary but transcendent iden-

13

14

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

tity.”5 It is to commemorate the important
moments of human existence that most so¬
cial events have evolved. Such communal
celebration “organizes patterns of private
and public behavior in conformity to an
image of personal and corporate identity.’’6

The presence of a spirit of play and fes¬
tivity “links us to a world of memories,
gestures, values, and hopes that we share
with a much larger community.”7 The
absence of this spirit “as an essential
ingredient in human life,” Harvey Cox ob¬
serves, “severs man’s roots in the past and
clips back his reach toward the future. It
dulls his psychic and spiritual sensibilities.”8
Cox could well be describing the Village
Virus which afflicted Lewis’s Main Street or
explaining George Willard’s reasons for
leaving Winesburg, Ohio, or Ethan Frome’s
unexpressed despair over his bleak future.
Significantly, the lack of play and festivity
appears as an underlying motif in a number
of fictional works which describe the revolt
from the village. A comparative study of the
significance of play in village life might
provide fresh illumination on motives for
this revolt and also illustrate differences in
scope and stance of the five authors on this
theme.

The choices for this study include Main-
Travelled Roads (1891, revised 1922), by
Hamlin Garland; Ethan Frome (1911) by
Edith Wharton; My Antonia (1918) by Willa
Cat her; Winesburg, Ohio (1919) by Sher¬
wood Anderson; and Main Street (1920) by
Sinclair Lewis. Spanning thirty years and
five states, these books provide ample
opportunity to examine Richard Rupp’s con¬
tention, “Celebration is an ingrained quality
in American literature.”9

Evidence of the spirit of play or festivity in
these books assumes many forms, both pub¬
lic and private. These include meals,
weddings, courtship rituals, parties, holiday
observations, funerals, games and contests,
jokes, initiation rites, clubs, sports, hunting,
travel, theater, concerts, lectures, movies,
even religious services — whatever activities

pleasurably fill leisure hours. It is important
to recognize that play is not always frivolous
or superficial. It can be solemn, even pro¬
found: for example, George Willard’s mo¬
ment of illumination, Ethan and Mattie’s
single shared dinner, and Jim Burden’s
reunion with Antonia. Much of the joy of
the moment, in fact, is its release or
culmination of earlier strain or insecurity:
“To dare, to take risks, to bear uncertainty,
to endure tension — these are the essence of
the play spirit,” Huizinga notes.10 As a
consequence, however, “The play-mood is
one of rapture and enthusiasm, and is sacred
or festive in accordance with the occasion. A
feeling of exaltation and tension accom¬
panies the action, mirth and relaxation
follow.”11

Of the eleven stories collected in Main-
Travelled Roads, seven deal specifically with
leisure and play — or their absence. The
reader is warned by Garland’s preface, how¬
ever, that “the main-travelled road of life”
is “long and wearyful.”12 Two stories, “Up
the Coulee” and Mrs. Ripley’s Trip,” both
from 1891, illustrate Garland’s handling of
this theme. In common with other revolt
from the village stories, “Up the Coulee”
shows a young ex-farmer, Howard, who “had
been wonderfully successful” (p. 59) as a
New York actor. But he “retained through it
all a certain freshness of enjoyment that
made him one of the best companions in the
profession” (p. 60). His sentimental re¬
sponse as he drives through his former vil¬
lage is “sweet and stirring somehow, though
it had little of aesthetic charm at the time”
of his youth (p. 58).

Similar ironic juxtaposition is developed
through the story as Garland describes the
elegantly dressed Howard, “a man associat¬
ing with poets, artists, sought after by
brilliant women” (p. 72). The more he con¬
templates the grimness of his brother’s farm,
“with all its sordidness, dullness, triviality,
and its endless drudgeries, the lower his
heart sank. All the joy of the homecoming
was gone” (p. 61).

1983]

Piechowski — The Village Revisited

15

At the welcoming party given by neigh¬
bors of Grant (the brother), Garland illus¬
trates profusely the role of festivity and play
in this country setting. Detailed descriptions
of the party’s activity and guests reveal the
rarity of celebration in this village. Unsure
how to act, the people “were all very ill at
ease. Most of them were in compromise
dress — something between working ‘rig’ and
Sunday dress’’ (p. 83). Instinctively segre¬
gated by sex, the men discussed crops and
farms, while the women

forced Howard more and more into talking of
life in the city. As he told of the theater and
the concerts, a sudden change fell upon them;
they grew sober, and he felt deep down in the
hearts of these people a melancholy which was
expressed only elusively with little tones or
sighs. Their gaiety was fitful (p. 85).

A few more examples document the
almost atrophied play spirit in these people.
Inspired by Howard’s description of city rev¬
elry, a woman guest proposes dancing: “By
an incredible exertion she got a set on the
floor, and William got the fiddle in tune. . . .
After two or three sets had been danced, the
company took seats and could not be stirred
again’’ (p. 87). To Howard’s chagrin, the
party evokes a bitter confession from his sis¬
ter-in-law: “‘I hate farm life. . . . It’s
nothing but fret, fret and work the whole
time, never going any place, never seeing
anybody but a lot of neighbors just as big
fools as you are. I’m sick of it all’” (p. 89).
To Howard, the dreary lack of ornament in
the house contributes further to this attitude.
He was disturbed that there “were no books,
no music, and only a few newspapers in sight
— a bare, bleak, cold, drab-colored shelter
from the rain, not a home” (p. 92). Along¬
side such vignettes Garland continually con¬
trasts Howard, who appears hedonistic and
over-indulgent to the dour villagers.

Both Garland’s comments and Howard’s
reflections restate almost to excess the
impossibility of change for this community.
In a vain attempt to placate his farmer
brother, Howard explains, “Circumstances

made me and crushed you. That’s all there is
about that. Luck made me and crushed you”
(p. 96). The last words are given to Grant,
who expresses a resignation about his pro¬
vincial existence which would probably be
shared by his entire community: ‘“I’m a
dead failure. I’ve come to the conclusion
that life’s a failure for ninety-nine per cent
of us. You can’t help me now. It’s too late’”
(p. 97). Though Garland provides ample de¬
scription and justification for the lack of
festivity in these rural lives, he overstates his
case in this story. Occasionally sentimental,
sometimes ironic, always profuse, Garland
points out repeatedly the contrast between
Howard’s abundance of play (even making
his living at play-acting) and its dearth in the
lives of the community he left behind.

The pattern is reversed in “Mrs. Ripley’s
Trip,” with a country woman traveling to an
Eastern city for a nostalgic visit. Here
Garland portrays a lighter, more credible
situation, though a sixty-year old woman
who “ain’t been away t’stay overnight for
thirteen years” (p. 183) has clearly had little
leisure in her life. The home, as small and
barren as that described in “Up the
Coulee,” nevertheless resounds with Uncle
Ripley’s violin and his affectionate though
gruff jesting. Further manifestations of a
play spirit emerge in Mrs. Ripley’s dry
humor with a gossiping neighbor and her
dramatic revelation of a mitten full of
carefully hoarded coins. Furthermore, Mr.
Ripley has a “kindly visage. Life had laid
hard lines on his brown skin, but it had not
entirely soured a naturally kind and simple
nature” (p. 188). Thus he can understand
that “the old woman needed a play spell. . . .
‘I calc’late I c’n get enough out o’ them
shoats to send her” (p. 187).

In their mutual surprises the Ripleys
acknowledge the importance and rarity of
this trip. But it satisfies Mrs. Ripley’s need
for play: “‘I’ve had my spree, an’ now I’ve
got to get back to work. They ain’t no rest
for such as we are’” (p. 193). Her final
analysis of the trip reveals a keen insight into

16

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

the nature of the play spirit: “‘Them folks in
the big houses have Thanksgivin’ dinners
every day uv their lives, and men an’ women
in splendid clo’s to wait on ’em, so’t Thanks¬
givin’ don’t mean anything to ’em’” (p.
193). As Harvey Cox observes, in a more
eloquent restatement of Mrs. Ripley’s
words, “. . . the reality of festivity depends
on an alternation with the everyday schedule
of work, convention, and moderation.”13

The balance of Garland’s stories describe
further uses and misuses of leisure, on farms
and in villages. None of the remaining works
repeats the extreme of “Up the Coulee,” al¬
though “A Day’s Pleasure” and “A Branch
Road” show young married women almost
dead from overwork and no recreation. In
both stories Garland illustrates the
restorative power of play. Agnes in “A
Branch Road” leaves the rigorous farm life
to marry her former lover, enticed by his
promise to “have a piano and books, and go
to the theater and concerts” (p. 50). Less
dramatically, Delia Markham spends an
afternoon in town, entertained by tea, piano
music and refined conversation with a young
lawyer’s wife, who “. . . through it all . . .
conveyed the impression that she, too, was
having a good time” (p. 181). Celebration
and festivity occur in Garland’s stories but
more often in the breech than in the obser¬
vance. It is accurate to conclude that a
healthy spirit of play is not a consistent trait
in his characters. In some it has never been
developed, while in others it is nearly atro¬
phied.

In the case of Ethan Frome, Edith Whar¬
ton traces a newly developed spirit of play
into its eventual distortion and loss. Stark-
field, Ethan’s New England village, offers
little opportunity for recreation except a
coasting-ground and infrequent church
dances. When Mattie Silver enters Ethan’s
life, recreation assumes a new importance
for Frome as he begins escorting her home
“on the rare evenings when some chance of
amusement drew her to the village.”14 Dur¬
ing these walks with Mattie he learns that

“one other spirit had trembled with the same
touch of wonder” (p. 34). Their growing
love occurs almost totally during a few
buggy rides and the walks, where they dis¬
cover a mutual love of nature. Ethan pon¬
ders the miracle of these new feelings of joy:

The fact that admiration for his learning
mingled with Mattie’s wonder at what he
taught was not the least part of his pleasure.
And there were other sensations, less definable
but more exquisite, which drew them together
with a shock of silent joy: the cold red of
sunset behind winter hills, the flight of cloud-
flocks over slopes of golden stubble, or the in¬
tensely blue shadows of hemlocks on sunlight
snow (p. 34).

Other than their shared attitude of joy,
Ethan and Mattie have few chances to in¬
dulge in a spirit of play until the end. Their
brief courtship has only one festive event,
the dinner Mattie prepares on Zeena
Frome’s overnight absence. This shared
meal produces in Ethan a “sense of being in
another world, where all was warmth and
harmony and time could bring no change”
(p. 88). Their celebration, more implied in
ritualistic gestures than spoken, is marred by
the accidental breaking of Zeena’s pickle
dish. This red dish serves as an ironic re¬
minder of Zeena’s own distorted spirit of
play. Considering the dish too good to use,
she keeps it hidden away until there will be a
suitable festive occasion. Such an event, of
course, has never occurred in her life.

Zeena’s discovery of the broken dish and
her determination to send Mattie away inten¬
sify Ethan’s brief taste of happiness with
Mattie: “The inexorable facts closed in on
him like prison-warders handcuffing a con¬
vict. There was no way out — none. He was a
prisoner for life, and now his one ray of light
was to be extinguished” (p. 134). The final
irony of the book is that Ethan’s most
intense experience of play leads to his own
destruction. Driving Mattie to the station, he
laughs and holds her hand, “passing the site
of a summer picnic, one of the few that they
had taken part in together: a ‘church picnic’

1983]

Piechowski — The Village Revisited

17

which, on a long afternoon of the preceeding
summer had filled the retired place with
merry making” (p. 153). For both, this last
ride is a reminder of their earlier shared
pleasures. “. . . That was all; but all their
intercourse had been made up of just such
inarticulate flashes, when they seemed to
come suddenly upon happiness as if they had
surprised a butterfly in the winter weeds.
...” (p.154).

The sound of passing sleigh bells and the
sight of an abandoned sled inspire Ethan’s
final, but ultimately tragic, act of real play.
Flying down the hill with Mattie arouses in
him a ‘‘strange exaltation of his mood” (p.
163). For the first and last time in Ethan’s
life he experiences true play as Hugo Rahner
defines it:

To play is to yield oneself to a kind of magic,
to enact to oneself the absolute other, to pre¬
empt the future, to give the life to the incon¬
venient world of fact. In play earthly realities
become, of a sudden, things of the transient
moment, presently left behind, then disposed
of and buried in the past; the mind is prepared
to accept the unimagined and incredible, to
enter a world where different laws apply, to be
relieved of all the weights that bear it down, to
be free, kingly, unfettered and divine. 15

The intensity of the sled ride ‘‘made the
other vision more abhorrent, the other life
more intolerable to return to” (p. 166). Thus
Ethan’s decision to use the instrument of
happiness as a death weapon is initially
shocking but becomes natural and appro¬
priate to his purpose. What the sled ride
kills, ironically, is love, happiness and the
nascent spirit of splay in Ethan and Mattie.
Ethan’s attempt to misuse a form of play
produces only physical crippling and perma¬
nent stifling of the play spirit, rather than
the release Ethan sought in their attempted
deaths. The end result is a whining, crippled
Mattie, an embittered Ethan, and an almost
smug Zeena comtemplating the results of
Ethan’s aborted death-wish.

Thus the characters in Wharton’s bleak
narrative effectively contrast natural and

unnatural attitudes toward play. Starkfield,
an aptly named village, offers only slight
chances for festivity, whether public or
private. Zeena enjoys only housework and
her hypochondria, rejecting any social life
not directly related to these concerns. Until
Ethan meets Mattie, his own life is similarly
devoid of pleasure. But Mattie’s natural zest
for life and her aesthetic interests (‘‘She
could trim a hat, make molasses candy, re¬
cite ‘Curfew shall not ring tonight,’ and play
‘The Lost Chord’ and a pot-pourri from
‘Carmen’”) (p. 59), meager though they are,
inspire Ethan to revive his own lost spirit of
play. His attempts, too feeble and too late to
have any lasting effect on his life, suggest
that a sense of play must grow naturally and
continually throughout life. It is as impossi¬
ble to impose as to stifle, without serious
consequences.

Willa Cather’s My Antonia offers among
its many characters several otherwise
creative indivduals who find difficulty in
expressing their spirit of play. In various
ways Mr. Shimerda, Jim Burden and Lena
Lingard find Black Hawk too confining for
their aesthetic fulfillment. Most pathetic is
Shimerda, Antonia’s father. Antonia at¬
tempts to explain her father’s discontent and
sadness:

My papa sad for the old country. He not look
good. He never make music any more. At
home he play violin all the time; for weddings
and for to dance. Here never. When I beg him
for play, he shake his head no. Some days he
take his violin out of his box and make with
his fingers on the strings, like this, but never
he make the music. He don’t like this kawn-
tree.16

It is not only this country but country life
itself which is distasteful to Shimerda. A
city-bred tailor, he is totally unfit for
Nebraska homesteading. White, well-shaped
hands and a silk scarf, ‘‘carefully crossed
and held together by a red coral pin” (p. 27),
along with his violin, are poignant reminders
of the sophisticated life he left behind in
Bohemia. His suicide is no surprise. Over-

18

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

whelmed by the reality and grimness of a
Nebraska winter, he characteristically plans
a ceremonial, almost festive, death. Shaving
and dressing carefully, . . he was always
sort of fixy, and fixy he was to the last” (p.
110).

Lena Lingard, equally fixy and unsuited
for homesteading, is driven rather than
destroyed by these qualities. The difference
lies in Lena’s ability to turn her frustrated
spirit of play into aesthetic fulfillment and
financial security. As a successful dress¬
maker, first in Lincoln and later in San Fran¬
cisco, Lena delights in having the money to
dress well, attend plays, and provide luxuries
for her family. It is tempting to accept Jim
Burden’s uncritical response to Lena’s
apparent spirit of play: “Lena had left
something warm and friendly in the lamp¬
light. How I loved to hear her laugh again! It
was so soft and unexcited and appreciative —
gave a favorable interpretation to every¬
thing” (p. 306).

What Jim does not perceive is Lena makes
no distinction between her work and her
play. She rather calculatedly uses her stylish
appearance and attendance at social events
to advertise her professional dressmaking
skills. Although Jim believes that Lena’s
passionate interest in good clothes and good
times arises from childhood deprivation, he
is unaware that her resolution never to marry
arises from the same source: “She remem¬
bered home as a place where there were
always too many children, a cross man, and
work piling up around a sick woman” (p.
330). Thus, a strain of hardness and self-
interest permeates much of Lena Lingard’s
approach toward life, revealing an attitude
inimical to a true spirit of play and festivity.

For Jim Burden the spirit of play assumes
many forms, which are periodically rede¬
fined during phases of his maturation. As a
boy living in the country, he finds immense
joy in the prairie itself. Lyrical passages
describe his response to the change of sea¬
sons: “There was only — spring itself; the
throb of it, the light restlessness, the vital

essence of it everywhere; in the sky, in the
swift clouds, in the pale sunshine, and in the
warm, high wind — rising suddenly, sinking
suddenly, impulsive and playful like a big
puppy that pawed you and then lay down to
be petted” (p. 137).

During his adolescence in Black Hawk he
first is satisfied, then stifled, by the local
recreational opportunities. Finally, like
George Willard in Winesburg, Ohio and
Carol Kennicott in Main Street , he begins
“to prowl about, hunting for diversion” (p.
247). These diversions, in a prairie town
abundant in social activity, are carefully
described by Cather. Maxwell Geismar notes
that

in the daily patterns of pioneer activity — the
colorful weddings, dances, and costume par¬
ties, the all-night gatherings to the tune of a
dragharmonika or a fiddle, the games, choral
societies, and family readings that accom¬
panied the axe, the plow and the Bible, — Miss
Cather very early suggested the resources of
that frontier life which was to seem so harsh
and sterile to a subsequent generation of
western rebels and expatriates. 17

Listing the saloon, drug store, cigar
factory and depot as his available distrac¬
tions, Jim Burden finds these “resources”
insufficient for satisfying his newly emerging
needs. Seeking a wider source of satis¬
faction, he leaves Black Hawk for Lincoln.
In Black Hawk Jim feels repressed and
bored:

This guarded mode of existence was like living
under a tyranny. People’s speech, their voices,
their very glances, became furtive and re¬
pressed. Every individual taste, every natural
appetite, was bridled by caution. The people
asleep in these houses, I thought, tried to live
like the mice in their own kitchens; to make no
noise, to leave no trace, to slip over the surface
of things in the dark. The growing piles of
ashes and cinders in the back yards were the
only evidence that the wasteful consuming
process of life went on at all (p. 250).

Like Lena, Jim thrives at Lincoln. Tennis,
reading, and long walks with a Latin teacher

1983]

Piechowski — The Village Revisited

19

add to the richness of his life: “I shall always
look back on that time of mental awakening
as one of the happiest in my life. Gaston
Cleric introduced me to the world of ideas;
when one first enters that world everything
else fades for a time, and all that went before
is as if it had not been” (pp. 291-2). Jim
Burden’s scope of play is further widened
when James O’Neill’s touring Count of
Monte Cristo “introduced the most brilliant,
worldly, the most enchantingly gay scene I
had ever looked upon” (p. 309). After this
experience Jim presumably continues to ex¬
plore these same pleasures, first at Harvard
and then as a New York attorney. Gather
omits description of twenty years of Jim
Burden’s life, ending the book with a re¬
union between him and Antonia.

Finally, there is Antonia: in her exuber¬
ance, enjoyment, her healthy acceptance of
the light and shadow of life, Antonia has
perhaps the finest realization of a true spirit
of play and festivity of any in this study.
Describing the harmonious relationship be¬
tween Antonia and her employer, Gather
writes, “Deep down in each of them was a
kind of hearty joviality, a relish of life, not
over-delicate, but very invigorating” (p.
205).

Antonia endures a life of almost melo¬
dramatic hard work and emotional pain,
aging her almost beyond Jim’s recognition.
Misinterpreting Antonia’s physical deteri¬
oration as a sign of similar emotional weari¬
ness, Jim muses, “If, instead of going to the
end of the railroad, old Mr. Shimerda had
stayed in New York and picked up a living
with his fiddle, how different Antonia’s life
might have been!” (p. 254). But Jim fails to
grasp Antonia’s innate satisfaction and
delight in her life. Not only has Antonia suc¬
cessfully maintained her healthy acceptance
of the fullness of life, but she has reproduced
in her dozen children “a veritable explosion
of life out of the dark cave into the sunlight”
(p. 382). Meeting the exuberant family, Jim
is overwhelmed: “It made me dizzy for a
moment” (p. 382). Antonia’s instinctive

awareness of a play spirit has caused her to
marry “a humorous philosopher who had
hitched up one shoulder under the burdens
of life, and gone on his way having a good
time when he could” (p. 402). A wonderful
complement to Antonia, Anton Cuzak
“seemed to think it a joke that all these
children should belong to him” (p. 404).

Jim Burden’s eventual recognition of
Antonia and Anton Cuzak’s capacity for
enjoying life occurs in separate observations:
“I knew so many women who have kept all
the things that she had lost, but whose inner
glow has faded. Whatever else was gone,
Antonia had not lost the fire of life” (p.
379). Jim’s final comment on the Cuzaks
aptly illustrates his recognition of the real
play spirit engendered and represented by
Anton: “There were enough Cuzaks to play
with for a long while yet. Even after the boys
grew up, there would always be Cuzak him¬
self! I meant to tramp along a few miles of
lighted streets with Cuzak” (pp. 417-418).
Thus, in Antonia and Anton Cuzak one sees
a mature and developed spirit of play which
has also been communicated to their chil¬
dren. Even the worldly, sophisticated Jim
Burden recognizes that he can benefit from a
man like Cuzak who has so fully integrated
his spirit of play into his entire life.

The miles of lighted streets which Jim
Burden hopes to walk with Anton Cuzak
represent a similar enticement for George
Willard to leave Winesburg, Ohio, as a
youth. With George’s escape, however,
Sherwood Anderson leaves little opportunity
for play and celebration by the town’s inar¬
ticulate “grotesques,” for whom George
was often the only social contact. Each of
these characters is presented in a social rela¬
tionship with George Willard in separate
short stories. Generally these characters
have a distorted or unfulfilled sense of play,
finding the community unable or unwilling
to meet these needs. Though Winesburg,
Ohio begins and ends with a note of celebra¬
tion, Anderson juxtaposes a solitary non¬
participant in both stories.

20

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

The story “Hands” continually contrasts
Wing Biddlebaum’s solitary life with the
conviviality of the berry pickers he hears.
Sounds and detailed setting skillfully illus¬
trate Wing’s social isolation: “Across a long
field that had been seeded for clover but that
had produced only a dense crop of yellow
mustard weeds, he could see the public high¬
way along which went a wagon filled with
berry pickers returning from the fields. The
berry pickers, youths and maidens, laughed
and shouted boisterously.” 18 A man socially
isolated from the town for twenty years,
Biddlebaum once possessed a rare power “to
carry a dream into the young minds” (p. 32)
of his students. When one recalls that the
Latin ludus means both play and school,
Biddlebaum’s intensity and joy in teaching
can validly be seen as still another manifes¬
tation of a sprit of play. To Biddlebaum,
teaching was his life, and his students his
only pleasure. Such a delicate, pure interest
in his students can never be restored after his
brutal lynching for a false accusation of
homosexuality, but his later attempt to in¬
spire George Willard’s ambition indicates
that the spirit has not been totally killed.

Another teacher in Winesburg, Kate
Swift, has almost too much spirit of play for
the town to understand: “She became in¬
spired as she sometimes did in the presence
of the children in school. A great eagerness
to open the door of life to the boy, who had
been her pupil and who she thought might
possess a talent for the understanding of life,
had possession of her” (p. 164). So intense is
her zeal to encourage George’s interest in
writing and participating fully in life that she
soars right over his head. After their conver¬
sation, George dimly realizes, “I have
missed something. I have missed something
Kate Swift was trying to tell me” (p. 166).
The incident illustrates the impossibility of
giving one’s own spirit of play or joy to
another, no matter how keenly felt. Even¬
tually George Willard will be ready for such
revelations, but Kate Swift’s use of him as an
outlet for her own suppressed zeal blinds her

to George’s incapacity to benefit from her
insight.

Alice Hindman in “Adventure” has more
self-knowledge than Kate Swift but an equal
intensity in her responses to life. Again,
however, Anderson pictures a character who
attempts desperately and futilely to share
this awareness: “Not for years had she felt
so full of youth and courage. She wanted to
leap and run, to cry out, to find some other
lonely human and embrace him” (p. 119).
To Alice’s credit, although she began
“trying to force herself to face bravely the
fact that many people must live and die
alone, even in Winesburg,” (p. 120), she
determines to fight her loneliness, participat¬
ing in Winesburg’s available social life.

Other stories explore the participation of
the “grotesques” in village play and cele¬
bration, usually revealing their failure or
ineptness. Joe Welling in “A Man of Ideas”
cannot converse normally. Only when he es¬
tablishes a winning baseball team and courts
Sarah King does the town begin to respect
him, although his verbosity is still out of
control. But the town perceives his play
activities as normal or at least as a balance to
his conversational eccentricity.

Louise Hardy in “Godliness” also tries
too hard and uses the wrong means to break
out of her unhappiness:

It seemed to her that between herself and all
the other people in the world, a wall had been
built up and that she was living just on the
edge of some warm inner circle of life that
must be quite open and understandable to
others. She became obsessed with the thought
that it wanted but a courageous act on her part
to make all of her association with people
something quite different, and that it was pos¬
sible by such an act to pass into a new life as
one opens a door and goes into a room (p. 91).

Unfortunately she chooses studying as her
courageous act, never really learning that
play would have served better to enhance her
social acceptance. Turning to sex as another
potential solution, she learns that it is
equally ineffective without love. Both acts,

1983]

Piechowski — The Village Revisited

21

studying and sex, are aspects of a private
kind of play, exhilarating when they are
performed with a positive attitude and genu¬
ine interest, but destructive when performed
in Louise’s pattern.

Elizabeth Willard also expect marriage to
supply “something she sought blindly, pas¬
sionately, some hidden wonder in life” (p.
224). Anderson pictures a girl full of zest,
stage-struck and restless. Finding no real
outlet for her energy in Winesburg, she
hopes that sexual fulfilment and marriage
can replace her unsatisfied spirit of play. In
George she relives her hopes and dreams, ec¬
static when he announced his decision “to go
away and look at people and think” (p. 48).
George never shares her delight: “she
wanted to cry out with joy, because of the
words that had come from the lips of her
son, but the expression of joy had become
impossible to her” (p. 48).

One of the final scenes shows George wan¬
dering alone at the Winesburg County Fair,
as “an American town worked terribly at the
task of amusing itself” (p. 233). Anderson
skillfully parallels George’s solitary reflec¬
tions with the frivolity of the crowd. Unlike
that in “Hands,” this pairing of isolation
and festivity is positive and desired.
George’s decision to leave Winesburg,
shared with Helen White at the now-empty
fairgrounds, produces a spontaneous out¬
burst of genuine play. “In some ways
chastened and purified by the mood they had
been in, they became, not man and woman,
not boy and girl, but excited little animals. It
was so they went down the hill. In the dark¬
ness they played like two splendid young
things in a young world” (p. 242). This inci¬
dent clearly bears out Huizinga’s observa¬
tion, “The play-mood is one of rapture and
enthusiasm, and is sacred or festive in
accordance with the occasion. A feeling of
exaltation and tension accompanies the ac¬
tion, mirth and relaxation follow.” 19

Throughout Winesburg, Ohio Anderson
illustrates the crippling effects of a stunted
spirit of play but offers little remedy. The

grotesques, deficient in a personal sense of
play, fail to participate in public play and
celebration as well. George Willard, their
only social contact, leaves Winesburg. The
grotesques remain, inarticulate and alone.

No such loose ends occur in Main Street, a
highly complex illustration of the American
spirit of play, public and private, rural and
urban, thwarted and successful. Packing the
book with enough detail for a sociology
study, Sinclair Lewis examines Carol Kenni-
cott’s movement toward a genuine and ma¬
ture spirit of play. Her inward growth is
both caused and illustrated by physical
movement from St. Paul to Gopher Prairie to
Washington, D.C. and back again to
Gopher Prairie. Reared in a family “self-
sufficient in their inventive life, with
Christmas a rite full of surprises and tender¬
ness, and ‘dressing-up parties’ spontaneous
and joyously absurd,” Carol assumes the
universality of that particular spirit of
play.20 Her uncritical acceptance of this
belief is occasionally threatened in college
but “credulous, plastic, young, drinking the
air as she longed to drink life,” (p. 7) Carol
is finally forced to examine her assumptions
when she marries Will Kennicott and moves
to Gopher Prairie.

The book is structured by Carol’s varied
attempts to reconcile her concept of the play
spirit with Gopher Prairie’s theory and prac¬
tice of play. Though Will has courted her
with play and promises of continued oppor¬
tunity for fun in Gopher Prairie, Carol fails
to note his stress on work and progress. As a
result, her famous walk through Main Street
reveals the overwhelming dominance of
work in Gopher Prairie. Only a small movie
theater, a few saloons, a tobacco shop, a
pool room and several lodges even suggest
the possibility of play opportunities. Intro¬
ducing the first of many parallel scenes,
Lewis uses another newly arrived resident,
the cleaning woman Bea Sorenson, to re¬
verse the perspective. To Bea, Gopher
Prairie fulfills all her emotional and recrea¬
tional needs: “What did she care if she got

22

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

six dollars a week? Or two! It was worth¬
while working for nothing, to be allowed to
stay here” (p. 43).

Four specific stages emerge in Carol’s
attempt to realize her spirit of play in
Gopher Prairie. Eventually recognizing that
the community has a highly structured social
life, she struggles to fit. But a welcoming
party makes Carol “embarrassed by the
heartiness of the cheering group” (p. 31).
Her own social offering produces equal dis¬
comfort for the guests as she plans a profu¬
sion of activity in place of the traditional
gossip and stunts. Failure is almost guaran¬
teed by her attitude: “‘I don’t know that I
can make them happy, but I’ll make them
hectic’” (p. 76). In describing the nature and
significance of play, Huizinga cautions
against an attitude such as Carol’s: “First
and foremost, then, all play is a voluntary
activity. Play to order is no longer play: it
could at best be but a forcible imitation of
it.”21 It takes Vida Sherwin’s blunt but
accurate observations to begin Carol’s re¬
assessment of the meaning of play: ‘“After
all, Gopher Prairie standards are as reason¬
able to Gopher Prairie as Lake Shore Drive
standards are to Chicago. And there’s more
Gopher Prairies than there are are Chicagos.
Or Londons’” (p. 96). Still, Carol suspects
that “in their debauches of respectability
they had lost the power of play as well as the
power of impersonal thought’ (p. 77). Vida’s
balancing perspective gives Carol further
insight: ‘“They think you’re too frivolous.
Life’s so serious to them that they can’t
imagine any kind of laughter except
Juanita’s snorting’” (p. 96).

Temporarily abandoning her attempts to
reform Gopher Prairie’s established patterns
of play, Carol enters her second stage. “She
had tripped into the meadow to teach the
lambs a pretty educational dance and found
the lambs were wolves” (p. 100). Carol then
begins the dual process of redefining her
own spirit of play and establishing individual
but genuine social relationships. Finally she
has perceived that she has been “taking her¬

self too seriously” (p. 101). In this effort
Carol is more successful. Vida Sherwin, Bea
Soderstrom, Miles Bjornstam, Erik Valborg,
Guy Pollock and several elderly couples give
Carol some experiences of real shared plea¬
sure. She also begins to delight in solitary
country walks.

Still, she cannot suppress her zeal in bring¬
ing more communal play to Gopher Prairie.
She organizes skating, swimming, tobog¬
ganing, amateur theater parties for the
community, which politely samples and then
abandons Carol’s offerings. In an attempt to
define Gopher Prairie’s apparent resistance
to play, Carol speculates,

It is contentment ... the contentment of the
quiet dead, who are scornful of the living for
their restless walking. It is negation canonized
as the one positive virtue. It is the prohibition
of happiness. It is slavery self-taught and self-
defended. It is dullness made God. A savorless
people, gulping tasteless food, and sitting af¬
terward, coatless and thoughtless, in rocking
chairs prickly with inane decorations, listening
to mechanical music, saying mechanical things
about the excellence of Ford automobiles, and
viewing themselves as the greatest race in the
world (pp. 257-8).

Will Kennicott offers an equally blunt
assessment of Carol’s attempts: “‘Carrie,
you always talk so much about getting all
you can out of life, and not letting the years
slip by, and here you deliberately go and
deprive yourself of a lot of real good home
pleasure by not enjoying people unless they
wear frock coats and trot out — to a lot of tea
parties’” (p. 171). Of Kennicott’s own spirit
of play Lewis writes, “Kennicott had five
hobbies: medicine, land-investment, Carol,
motoring, and hunting. It is not certain in
what order he preferred them” (p. 191).
Adding the movies and his card club, Will
finds Gopher Prairie more than fills his
needs. Carol, however, begins to look be¬
yond the personal and local implications of
an attitude toward play: “There are two
races of people, only two, and they live side
by side. His calls mine ‘neurotic;’ mine calls

1983]

Piechowski— The Village Revisited

23

his ‘stupid.’ We’ll never understand each
other, never; and it’s madness for us to
debate” (p. 284).

This stand-off with Will and Gopher
Prairie produces Carol’s third stage in
redefining her concept of play. Because she
now feels “alone, in a stale pool” (p. 275),
Carol widens her examination, first in a trip
to Minneapolis, then in extensive travel in
the west, and finally, in a move to Washing¬
ton, D.C. Despite Will’s pledge that “every¬
thing’ll be different when we come back” (p.
387) and his giving “promise of learning to
play” (p. 389), Carol “could discover no
more pictures nor interesting food nor gra¬
cious voices nor amusing conversations nor
questing minds” (p. 401) on her return to
Gopher Prairie. Hence she decides that her
moving to Washington would give her the
necessary perspective to define herself and
her relationship to Gopher Prairie: “‘Do
you realize how big a world there is beyond
Gopher Prairie where you’d keep me all my
life? It may be that some day I’ll come back,
but not till I can bring something more than
I have now’” (p. 405).

And the move is salutary. In “a Washing¬
ton which did not cleave to Main Street” (p.
410) Carol learns and changes. “Her days
were swift, and she knew that in her folly of
running away she had found the courage to
be wise” (p. 409).

What is Carol’s newly acquired wisdom?
For the first time she recognizes that “the
only defense ... is unembittered laughter”
(p. 413). For the first time, too, Carol
recognizes that it is she who must change. To
Will, visiting Washington to woo her home,
she confesses, “‘I know it must have been
pretty tiresome to have to live with anybody
as perfect as I was’” (p. 419). Carol has
finally synthesized her outward play activity
with a genuine sense of humor and propor¬
tion, vital to the play spirit. Until Washing¬
ton showed Carol how to play naturally and
freely, she was just as deficient in a real play
spirit as those Gopher Prairie inhabitants
whom she once scorned. “‘I can laugh now

and be serene ... I think I can,’” (p. 424) a
confident, relaxed Carol muses, on her way
home. But change is not so easily or quickly
accomplished. “She laughed at herself when
she saw that she had expected to be at once a
heretic and a returned hero; she was very
reasonable and merry about it; and it hurt
just as much as ever” (p. 429).

Varied though the five books are in
defining and illustrating a spirit of play in
rural America, several strains reappear. Play
or festivity, if it has any meaning, must be
totally integrated into a person’s and a
community’s life. Ideally there must be a
private commitment as well as a public mani¬
festation of festivity and celebration. Real
play will grow out of its environment spon¬
taneously and naturally. It cannot success¬
fully be imposed or forced. At the same
time, however, it cannot become obsessive
or exaggerated. In both cases it ceases to be
play. Further deadening of the play spirit
occurs when play becomes rigid and stylized
instead of spontaneous.

Does a spirit of play exist in these fictional
villages? Certainly. Sometimes natural,
more often forced, stifled, or feeble, seldom
as spontaneous, free and developed as it
should be, this spirit of play, both negatively
and positively, is a strong influence on the
revolt from the village.

Notes

1 Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the
Play Element in Culture (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955),
p.5.

2 Josef Pieper, Leisure the Basis of Culture, trans.
Alexander Dru (New York: Pantheon Books Inc.,
1952), pp. 51-2.

3 Huizinga, p. 9.

4 Richard H. Rupp, Celebration in Postwar American
Fiction 1945-1967 (Coral Gables: University of Miami
Press, 1970), p. 66.

5 Rupp, p. 159.

6 Rupp, pp. 27-8.

7 Harvey Cox, The Feast of Fools: A Theological
Essay on Festivity and Fantasy (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1969), p. 26.

8 Cox, p. 1 10.

24

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

9 Rupp, p. 21 1.

10 Huizinga, p. 51.

1 1 Huizinga, p. 132.

12 Hamlin Garland, Main-Travelled Roads (New
York: New American Library Inc., 1962), p. 12. Further
references are indicated by page numbers in the text.

13 Cox, p. 23.

14 Edith Wharton, Ethan Frome (New York: Charles
Scribner’s Sons, 1911), p. 31. Further references are
indicated by page numbers in the text.

15 Hugh Rahner, Man at Play (New York: Herder &
Herder, 1967), p. 65.

16 Willa Cather, My Antonia (Boston: Houghton

Mifflin Co., 1918), p. 102. Further references are indi¬
cated by page numbers in the text.

17 Maxwell Geismar, The Last of the Provincials: The
American Novel, 1915-1925 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Co., 1947), p. 161.

18 Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio (New York:
The Viking Press, 1958), p. 27. Further references are
indicated by page numbers in the text.

19 Huizinga, p. 132.

20 Sinclair Lewis, Main Street (New York: New
American Library, Inc., 1961), p. 12. Further references
are indicated by page numbers in the text.

21 Huizinga, p. 7.

INCREASE A. LAPHAM’S PIONEER OBSERVATIONS AND MAPS
OF LAND FORMS AND NATURAL DISTURBANCES

John R, Dorney
Department of Botany
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Increase Allen Lapham, Wisconsin’s first
natural historian, lived in Wisconsin from
1836 until his death in 1875 and traveled ex¬
tensively throughout the state, recording his
observations about Indian mounds, vegeta¬
tion, weather, mineral resources, water and
other natural phenomena. He was a prolific
writer and, in 1846, published the earliest
book on Wisconsin geography, geology, and
natural history. Lapham’ s extensive obser¬
vations of wind and fire in Wisconsin vegeta¬
tion provide valuable historical evidence of
natural disturbance before European settle¬
ment caused large-scale environmental alter¬
ation.

Disturbance has long been recognized as
an important factor in ecosystem dynamics.
Recent studies include Lorimer (1977) on fire
and wind in the presettlement forests of
northeastern Maine, Zackrisson (1977) on
forest fires in the Swedish boreal forest,
Brewer and Merritt (1978) on windthrow and
tree replacement in a beech-maple woods in
Michigan, and Forman and Boerner (1981)
on fire in the New Jersey Pine Barrens.
Earlier studies include those of succession in
canopy gaps created by windthrown trees
(Bray 1956), windfalls in northern Wisconsin
(Stearns 1949) and effects of hurricanes on
northern hardwood forests in the north¬
eastern U.S. (Stephens 1955). Lorimer
(1977) in Maine, Canham (1978) in Northern
Wisconsin, Dorney (1981) in southeastern
Wisconsin and Lindsey (1973) in Indiana all
used notes made by early land surveyors to
construct vegetation maps showing areas of
wind and/or fire damage. White (1979), in a
comprehensive review of the subject, con¬
cluded that disturbance and cyclic succession
are recurrent events affecting vegetation

structure; whereas traditional succession (the
sequential replacement of tree species) oc¬
curred without disturbance. Ecologists gen¬
erally agree that disturbance is important in
determining species dispersal, community
structure, and the rate of community
change.

Historical documentation of disturbance
has received less attention. White (1979)
mentions Raup as an early proponent of the
subject with publications dating from 1941.
Interest in disturbance in Wisconsin vegeta¬
tion dates from Norman Fassett, John T.
Curtis and their students at UW-Madison
from the 1930’s to 1950’s. While settlers and
travelers often noted the effect of fire on
Wisconsin vegetation, especially in prairie
and savanna (e.g., Beltami 1828, Haight
1907), less attention was given to the effect
of wind.

Lapham in an undated note (probably
from the 1850’s) in his collected work at the
Wisconsin State Historical Library, stated:

“The condition of the country now entraced
within the limits of Wisconsin, five hundred
years ago may have been quite different from
the present. It is quite certain that the prairies
then covered a much larger portion of the state
than at present. The largest trees are probably
not more than 500 years old. Large tracts are
now covered with forests of young trees, where
there are no traces of an antecedent growth.
The state is subject to sudden gusts of wind
sweeping through the forest, turning up the
trees by the roots. The earth turned up with the
roots falls upon the decay of the roots forming
an elongated mound by the side of the depres¬
sion at the place where the tree stood. Now as
there has been no change of climate, it is clear
that this process must have been repeated from
time to time and in course of ages the whole

25

26

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

'7

Pl^ry/Z: C

yC %

M

r

T2f

72/

L31 Sheet 6P.

1983]

Dorney — Increase Lapham ys Observations

27

surface would be dotted with these small
hillocks. The paucity of the ‘tree mounds’ may
be deemed evidence of the recent origin of the
forests.”

Further, in a letter from Mayville, Wiscon¬
sin, dated October 18, 1851, Lapham stated
that:

‘‘Every year the high winds prostrate a great
number of forest trees, and the earth adhering
to the roots form upon their decay a little
mound. Now if this process had been con¬
tinued from a very early period, it is to be
presumed that these mounds, made by suc¬
cessive growths of trees, would be very
numerous.”

In 1855, Lapham published his survey of
Indian mounds in “The Antiquities of
Wisconsin.” After describing the mounds
and their location in the state, he discussed
the issue of windfalls and restated his earlier
views about the presence of tree mounds,
fire and the age of southern Wisconsin
forests. He said “Whether the greater extent
of treeless country in former times was
owing to natural or artificial causes, it is now
difficult to determine . . . but the country
was at least kept free from trees by the
agency of man.” Lapham referred directly
to Indian-caused fires when he stated that
the annual fires in oak savanna were “often
kindled on purpose by the Indians on their
hunting excursions.” He also mentioned the
“. . . deep shady woods where fires do not so
often penetrate . . .” (1846). Lapham
described a first-hand experience near
Pewaukee in 1850. He was visiting an oak
savanna and said “At the time of our visit, a
fire was raging through the woods about us,
consuming the dry leaves and brush and fill¬
ing the air with smoke. . . . The peculiar
noise made by the fire as it entered the marsh
. . . was very great.” Lapham’s speculation
that fire had maintained prairie in southern
Wisconsin was corroborated when Curtis
(1959), after examining the accumulated evi¬
dence, concluded that Indian fires were the

major reason for the persistence of prairie
and savanna in Wisconsin.

Lapham also seems to have been the first
naturalist to employ the General Land Of¬
fice (GLO) surveyors’ notes for the construc¬
tion of detailed maps of land forms and
vegetation. Such maps were made possible
because, in addition to establishing section
and township lines, the GLO surveyors were
required to note the agricultural value of the
land and locations of streams, rivers,
prairies, rough land, swamps and windfalls.
A portion of one of Lapham’s maps based
on surveyors’ notes was published in his
1855 report but the map is reproduced here
in its entirety for the first time (Fig. 1). A
century after Lapham had drawn his maps
Bourdo (1956) reviewed the use of the GLO
notes to prepare vegetation maps and sug¬
gested that they be widely used for this pur¬
pose.

Lapham’s first map (Fig. 1) was a prelim¬
inary sketch of the area from the Fox River
and Green Bay to the Wolf River and Lake
Butte des Morts. It covers about 1000 square
miles including portions of the present
Brown, Outagamie, Winnebago, Oconto
and Shawano counties. The lots along the
Fox River were notable. These lots, laid out
by the early French settlers in the 1700’s lay
perpendicular to the river with narrow river
frontages. This pattern, largely lost with the
imposition of the GLO grid system, is still
observable along parts of the Fox River in
the City of Green Bay.

Lapham’s map presented detail on
streams and rivers in the region. Swamps
and wet marshes tended to be parallel to
rivers or to occur in isolated patches.
Lapham also noted stone ledges along the
Wolf River and its tributaries. Several
sawmills are shown on the Wolf, and Little
and Big Suamico Rivers as well as a tannery
on the Big Suamico River, but the chief area
of settlement on the Wolf was at Oshkosh.
The major rapids on the Fox River were
noted as was the Oneida Indian Reservation
west of Green Bay.

28

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

Prairies and an oak opening were mapped
near Lake Butte des Morts and Oshkosh.
Prairie was unusual this far north in Wiscon¬
sin (Finley 1976). On the east side of Green
Bay, the surveyors also noted areas of oak
savanna that were associated with Potawa-
tomi Indian village sites and were probably
maintained by fire.

Of special interest are the eight windfalls
shown on the map. They occurred at various
places throughout the region but were con¬
centrated mostly west and north of the city

of Green Bay. These windfalls appear to be
of two types. Narrow windfalls, such as the
one south of the Big Suamico River, were
about one-quarter mile wide and several
miles long and appear to be tornado tracks
similar to those reported by Lindsey (1973)
in Indiana. Larger areas tend to be about
one mile wide and several miles long like
those west of the Oneida Reservation. These
may have been caused by downbursts such as
those that occurred in northern Wisconsin
on July 4, 1977 (Fujita 1977). In northern

Fig. 2. Door and Kewaunee Counties and parts of Brown, Calumet, Manitowoc, Winnebago,
Waushara and Outagamie Counties showing marshes ( ), and stone ledges ( )• State

Historical Library-Map Collection Number GX 902 L31 Sheet 15.

1983]

Dorney-— Increase Lapham ’s Observations

29

Wisconsin, other large windfalls were shown
in the GLO notes (Canham 1978). Winds
associated with downbursts may flatten trees
in large patches.

Lapham also prepared a map of the area
east of the Fox River from Lake Winnebago
to Door County (Fig. 2). On this map, he
showed swamps, rivers, stone ledges and set¬
tlements but for some unknown reason, ig¬
nored the oak openings and prairies along
the east shore of Green Bay (Finley 1976).

Lapham speculated on the age of forests
in southern Wisconsin which he estimated to
be less than 500 years old and occupying
land which previously had been prairie. It is
certainly true, as Lapham noted, that wind¬
falls create pit and mound relief. Stone
(1975) examined the effect of windfalls on
microrelief in forests in New York state.
Estimates of the area affected by uprooted
trees in his stands varied from 14 to 48% of
the land surface. In Pennsylvania, Denny
and Goodlett (1965) found that this micro¬
relief was common in old growth forests and
concluded that 250 to 300 years of erosion
could reduce the height of these mounds to
one foot. Stephens (1955) used tip-up
mounds in the Harvard Forest to date the
windfalls and describe the effect of hurri¬
canes on the vegetation. Such mound and pit
microtopography is characteristic of for¬
ested landscapes and Lapham was correct in
noting that their absence from a forested site
suggests recent invasion by trees.

Other evidence also indicated that prairies
were more widespread before settlement.
Based on pollen stratigraphy, Bryson and
Wendland (1967) decided that Wisconsin’s
climate was drier and cooler around 1200
a.d., which was a period of prairie invasion
into central Wisconsin. A gradual change to
a wetter climate had occurred by 1850. Also,
King (1981) points to pollen evidence from
northern Illinois which indicated a trend
toward cooler temperatures that began be¬
tween 900 and 400 years ago. Thus, Lap-
ham’s observation that forests in southern
Wisconsin were young and occupied sites

which previously had been prairie appears
well founded.

Lapham was aware of the impact of
natural events on vegetation, particularly
wind and fire. In his pioneering observa¬
tions, he commented mostly on the physical
damage caused by wind on trees and soil but
apparently did not describe the effect of
wind on tree species or plant succession. This
is not surprising since plant succession as a
process was not well defined in the United
States until the work of Cowles and
Clements about 50 years later (Costing
1950). Lapham’s observations and records
of wind and fire disturbance, and his
pioneering use of GLO surveyors’ records
for mapping original vegetation and early
settlement patterns, are important to both
historians and ecologists.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank F. W. Stearns, R. S.
Dorney and L. C. Dorney for their helpful
editorial suggestions.

References Cited

Beltami, J. C. 1828. A Pilgrimage in Europe and
America Leading to the Discovery of the
Sources of the Mississippi and Bloody Rivers.
Volume II. Hunt and Clarke. London.

Bourdo, E. A. Jr. 1956. A review of the General
Land Office Survey and of its use in quan¬
titative studies of former forests. Ecology
37(4):754-768.

Bray, J. R. 1956. Gap phase replacement in a
maple-basswood forest. Ecology 37(3):
598-600.

Brewer, R. and P. G. Merritt. 1978. Windthrow
and tree replacement in a climax beech-maple
forest. Oikos 30:149-152.

Bryson, R. A. and W. M. Wendland. 1967. Ten¬
tative climatic patterns for some Late Glacial
and Post-Glacial episodes in central North
America. Technical Report No. 34. U.W.
Dept, of Meterology. Madison, WI.

Canham, C. D. 1978. Catastrophic windthrow in
the hemlock-hardwood forests of Wisconsin.
M.S. Thesis. University of Wisconsin-Madi-
son.

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Curtis, J. T. 1959. The Vegetation of Wisconsin
— An Ordination of Plant Communities. Uni¬
versity of Wisconsin Press. Madison, WI.

Denny, C. S. and J. C. Goodlett. 1965. Micro¬
relief resulting from fallen trees, in Surficial
Geology and Geomorphology of Potter Coun¬
ty, Pennsylvania. U.S.G.S. Professional Paper
288. Washington, D.C.

Dorney, J. R. 1981 . The impact of Native Amer¬
icans on presettlement vegetation in South¬
eastern Wisconsin. Trans. Wis. Acad. 69:
26-36.

Finley, R. W. 1976. The Original Vegetation
Cover of Wisconsin. USDA Forest Service.
North Central Forest Experiment Station.

Forman, R. T. T. and R. E. Boerner. 1981. Fire
frequency and the Pine Barrens of New Jersey.
Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club 108(1):
34-50.

Fujita, T. T. 1977. Independence Day down-
bursts: map and accompanying text. University
of Chicago Press.

Haight, T. W. 1907. Memoirs of Waukesha
County. West Historical Association. Chicago,
IL.

King, J. E. 1981. Late Quaternary vegetational
history of Illinois. Ecological Monographs
51(l):43-62.

Lapham, I. A. undated. Manuscript in Box 32 of
Lapham Collection Material. State Historical
Library. Madison, WI.

Lapham, I. A. 1846. Wisconsin: Its Geography
and Topography, History, Geology and
Mineralogy, Second Edition. I. A. Hopkins.
Milwaukee, WI.

Lapham, I. A. 1850. Letter from near Pewaukee.

May, 1850. Lapham Collection. State His¬
torical Library. Madison, WI.

Lapham, I. A. 1851. Letter from Mayville,
Wisconsin. October 18, 1851. Lapham Collec¬
tion. State Historical Library. Madison, WI.

Lapham, I. A. 1855. The Antiquities of Wiscon¬
sin, As Surveyed and Described. Smithsonian
Institution. Washington, D.C.

Lindsey, A. A. 1973. Tornado tracks in the pre¬
settlement forests of Indiana. (Abstract) In¬
diana Academy of Sciences, Annual Meeting
for 1973.

Lorimer, C. G. 1977. The presettlement forest
and natural disturbance cycle of Northeastern
Maine. Ecology 58:139-148.

Oosting, H. J. 1956. The Study of Plant Com¬
munities — An Introduction to Plant Ecology.
Second Edition. W. H. Freeman and Com¬
pany. San Francisco, CA.

Stearns, F. W. 1949. Ninety years of change in a
northern hardwood forest in Wisconsin. Ecol¬
ogy 30(3):350-358.

Stephens, E. P. 1955. The historical-develop¬
mental method of determining forest trends.
Ph.D. Thesis. Biology Dept., Harvard Univer¬
sity. Cambridge, MA.

Stone, E. L. 1975. Windthrow as an influence on
spatial heterogenity in a forest soil. Eidgenos-
sische Ansalt Fur Das Forstliche Versuchwesen
Mitteilingen 5 1 :77-87.

White, P. S. 1979. Pattern, process and natural
disturbance in vegetation. The Botanical
Review 45(3):230-299.

Zackrisson, O. 1977. Influence of forest fires on
the North Swedish boreal forests. Oikos
29:22-32.

THE GEOMETRIC STYLE IN ART: A BRIEF SURVEY FROM THE
PALEOLITHIC TO THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Sally Hutchison Ceely
Madison , Wisconsin

The geometric style is perhaps the oldest in
history. Beginning in the Upper Paleolithic,
the geometric style is still vital in the twen¬
tieth century. This brief survey attempts to
show how the geometric style may have
originated, how it has contributed to the
evolution of new art forms, and most impor¬
tant, how it has been an essential instrument
in the development of human consciousness.

The geometric style began during the
Paleolithic era, about 20,000 years ago. We
find it expressed both in mobiliary art
(portable art) and in parietal, or cave art.
Next to the paintings or engravings of deer,
bison, and other animals found in caves or
rock shelters from Spain to Southern Russia
are painted squares, rectangles, circles, dots,
and tectiforms (shapes composed of these
geometric elements). Some scholars believe
that since these geometric forms are not
found in nature they must have a religious
meaning. Others feel that these geometric
shapes may depict elementary forms of
architecture such as the trap, pitfall, or hut.
But it is in the mobiliary art that we gain a
clearer insight into the meaning and function
of the geometric in the Upper Paleolithic
era. Some of the carved mobiliary pieces
represent animals and fertility goddesses.
Others, animal bones and stones, bear
incised carvings of plants and animals as well
as geometric repeated motifs. Such carved
repeated motifs range from simple straight
lines to triangles to more complex arrange¬
ments of geometric shapes. These incised
bones and stones were transported about for
long periods of time, as is shown by evidence
of wear. The goddesses and incised animals
were probably used in fertility cults, and
may also have been appreciated as art
objects. The same may be said of the small

bones with almost decorative geometric
designs. These have been found in large
numbers and must have occupied a place of
great importance in the Upper Paleolithic,
from about 20,000 to 10,000 b.c.

In his book The Roots of Civilization
(McGraw-Hill, 1972), Alexander Marshack
states that mobiliary art with geometric
markings may have had an important func¬
tion in the lives of the Cro-Magnon, the
inhabitants of Europe during Upper Paleo¬
lithic times. He believes these objects to be
notational. They originated, he says, out of
a necessity to record time and sequence, so
that the Cro-Magnon hunters could survive
the Ice Age in Europe. They were not merely
curious objects with geometric repeat de¬
signs. On the contrary, Marshack’s innova¬
tive analysis of these mobiliary pieces points
toward a lunar notational function. Under a
powerful microscope, it can be seen that the
carving or incising was done at different
intervals using different tools, which means
they must have been done over a definite
time period for a particular reason, perhaps
having to do with gestational or seasonal or
migrational patterns. Further, Marshack
writes, “In order to record and act upon his
lunar observations, he (Cro-Magnon-Ice
Age) must have had a spoken language of
great range and expressiveness. His nota¬
tions on stone and bone clearly foreshadow
writing. He was becoming a master of art
and symbol.” Clearly, the geometric may
have its origins in basic intellectual develop¬
ment, and in basic perceptual development
as well. (Fig. 1)

That geometrical markings on mobiliary
art may have been notational, calendrical,
and a prelude to writing, removes it from the
realm of the merely decorative. And yet, the

31

32

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

Fig. 1 . Three faces of an engraved eagle bone, 4 Vi " or
11 cm., from the site of Le Placard. Middle
Magdalenian. Adapted from a photo by Alexander
Marshack in The Roots of Civilization.

geometric as a purely decorative device con¬
stitutes an important visual development in
the history of art. Mobiliary art with geo¬
metric incising or with naturalistic seasonal
imagery (animal and plant forms) represents
an entirely new schema, or visual concept in
art. This schema was presented on the lim¬
ited surface that the stone or bone provided.
For the first time we encounter the portable
surface in art. This feature of mobiliary art
separated it conceptually from the cave
paintings. Cave art was neither centered or
framed and certainly not portable, and in
many cases, it was almost inaccessible. The
schema of the small, portable surface utiliz¬
ing naturalistic and geometric motifs first
developed during the Upper Paleolithic.
However, beginning in the European Meso¬
lithic era, the schema finds new surfaces, or
a new surface will effect the schema in a new
way.

During the Mesolithic (roughly 10,000 to
5,000 b.c.) the ice receded in Europe. Forests

Fig. 2. Ceremonial axe or “antler mattock,” engraved
in a “geometric pattern,” 16" to 20 "in length. Adapted
from photo by Alexander Marshack in The Roots of
Civilization.

spread over much of the continent, elim¬
inating the vast grasslands and causing the
great herds to disappear. The Cro-Magnon
peoples dispersed into small groups of
hunters and gatherers. It is perhaps because
of this scattering that fewer of their artifacts
have been found. Or perhaps, because more
time was spent in food aquisition, less time
was available for the production of art.
Fortunately, however, small, portable,
carved artifacts and tools of amber, stone,
bone, and antler have been found well
preserved in Denmark from the Mesolithic
Maglemose Culture. Of great interest is a
ceremonial axe made from a reindeer antler
which bears organized, variegated rows of
repeated geometric shapes incised into the
surface of the bone. Alexander Marshack
has subjected this ceremonial axe to lunar
notational analysis and found the incisions
on the axe could be notational for a time
span of a year and a half. This could be a
seasonal span or perhaps a religious or cere¬
monial cycle. Whatever its notational func¬
tion, the geometric schema on the surface
has become more organized and sophisti-

Fig. 3. Engraved amber from the Maglemose culture
(North Sea Region) with two bands of birds riding on
schematized water angles. 23A" long. Adapted from an
illustration by Alexander Marshack in The Roots of
Civilization.

1983]

Hutchison-Ceely— Geometric Style in Art

33

cated. The antler axe has a particular, well
integrated and pleasing geometric design
which has been transferred directly from the
Upper Paleolithic. This same design will be
transferred again to a new surface in the
Neolithic era in Europe. (Figs. 2, 3) Another
artifact found in the Maglemose Culture that
is evidence of direct transference of decora-
tive schema is an amber piece incised with
water angles (triangles) and bands of geo-
metricized waterbirds. This is a seasonal
image, according to Marshack. This image
would be directly transferred to a new
surface, pottery: on a Neolithic pot found in
Russian Carelia near Finland, Marshack
points out that the same imagery is incised in
the surface, an example of the fact that
mobiliary art pieces were definitely an early
source for the decorative impulse on utili¬
tarian and ceremonial objects. (Figs. 4, 5)
Because of its durability and plentiful
supply, pottery or ceramics, the “master
fossil,” enables prehistorians to follow
migrations and discover origins of cultures
all over the world. The Neolithic period in
Europe (roughly 5,000 to 3,000 b.c.) was the
agrarian “settling-down” time, during
which pottery became the impermeable and

Fig. 4. Comb and pit marked pot with a frieze of
swimming water birds from Carelia. (6" high) Adapted
from an illustration in The Stone Age Hunters,
Grahame Clark.

rodent-proof container for water and grains,
and a receptacle for ashes of the dead. Here
was a surface that invited a painted or
incised decoration. Weaving and basketry
shared pottery’s practical and artistic func¬
tions using geometric motifs to organize and
“measure” surface areas into bands and
units of rectilinear as well as curvilinear
design. It is possible that weaving, with its
basic grid form influenced land organization
in early agriculture. Land tended to be
divided into grids and units of enclosure to
accommodate crop and stock-raising. The
geometric provides a measuring not only of
time, but now in the Neolithic, a measuring
of space (land).

During the Neolithic, different styles of
the geometric were evolving in different
areas of Europe. One style was curvilinear
(spirals, whorls, circles); the other was
rectilinear and severe (squares, triangles,
rectangles). The geometric curvilinear ap¬
pears ubiquitously, first in southeastern
Europe, where it later disappeared only to
re-emerge in Crete during the Bronze Age
after 2000b. c. The geometric rectilinear ap-

Fig. 5. Pottery from bell beaker culture (6 " or 7 " high)
adapted from a photo in Prehistoric European Art by
Walter Torbrugge.

34

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 71, Part 2,

parently originated in southwestern Europe
and expanded eastward toward Northern
Italy, to the Balkans, and eventually into
Greece, effecting the art forms of that area,
which in turn profoundly influenced all of
European art. Even now, folk arts in Europe
perpetuate this same rectilinear geometric
tradition that originated in Neolithic times.
We can see this especially in folk weaving
and pottery. Although the two types of geo¬
metric traveled in different directions, there
was a constant overlapping and alternation
of the two forms in pottery decoration as
well as in other art forms.

The Neolithic settlements in Thessaly,
north of mainland Greece, provide examples
of this overlap of the curvilinear and
rectilinear. During the 4th millenium b.c. the
early Sesklo peoples and the later Dimini
painted and incised pottery with both recti¬
linear and curvilinear decoration. The
curvilinear was composed of spirals and
whorls. (This form of the curvilinear
traveled from the Balkans to Crete via the
Dimini culture).

Because the island of Crete and the other
Aegean settlements were open to all areas of
Europe and the Mediterranean, it becomes
important in this survey to focus on these
areas, especially Greece. We must trace the
influences bearing upon these areas which
stimulated the production of pottery, in
many ways became the most prominent art
form.

During the Bronze Age, which lasted until
about the 12th century b.c., the Helladic
culture on the Greek mainland developed a
so-called Matt-painting technique for ce¬
ramic vessels, in which the painted motifs
were of a rectilinear geometric nature. This
development was the result of an integration
of the Balkan and eastern Mediterranean
traditions of rectilinear geometric. However,
this style was suppressed as the Mycenaean
civilization, overcoming the Greek Helladic
civilization, asserted itself. The Mycenaeans
differed from their conquered subjects in
that they had adapted the Cretan style of

naturalistic and curvilinear design. (And in
an unsuccessful manner according to some
investigators.) The Mycenaean civilization
collapsed around the 11th century, as a
consequence of internal dissensions within
the Mediterranean sea-trading civilizations,
combined with invasions from the north by
less civilized peoples looking for land and
plunder. During this period Central and
Northern Europe were asserting themselves
with the new weapons, and they were carry¬
ing off art and artisans to the north where
their skills were most needed. In Mycenaean
Greece the time known as the “Dark Ages”
began; little is known of the events of this
period.

From the “Dark Ages” emerged Geo¬
metric Greece, a period which lasted from
about 1075 to 700 b.c. A visual and
intellectual evolution took place, especially
in Athens, during which decoration on pot¬
tery or vases paved the way for a new con¬
cept in art. Eventually the geometric was to
yield some of its dominance of surface area,
to make room for a figurative, naturalistic,
and narrative presentation of art. The geo¬
metric, in effect, became a frame for a
naturalistic picture.

In Bernhard Schweitzer’s book Greek
Geometric Art (Phaidon Press, 1969), the
author states, “The post-Mycenaean Greeks
were the first and only people to develop a
Geometric art which spread through all art
forms.” And, “For the first time artists are
seeking the real nature of Geometric form
. . . out of the basic elements of geometry.”
The curvilinear naturalistic Creto-Mycen-
aean style is gradually replaced by a recti¬
linear geometric style. Although some
scholars disagree, it is thought that the
Greek Geometric style of vase and utensil
decoration evolved gradually through the
stylistic elements of Helladic, Balkan, and
post-Mycenaean. Even the Dorian invaders,
themselves Greek, settling on the Greek
mainland contributed to the re-emergence of
the rectilinear.

The rectilinear did not emerge and dom-

1983]

Hutchison-Ceely— Geometric Style in Art

35

inate immediately, however. In Athens, in
the 10th century b.c., it was preceded by the
Protogeometric vase style. This was a style
of concentric circles accurately painted
which evolved from the post-Mycenaean
curvilinear spiral vase decorations. Located
on the belly or shoulder of the vases,
depending upon the location of the handles,
these concentric circles floating on the vase
surface became like icons or mandalas to
guide the people of Greece from the poverty
of the “Dark Ages” to prosperity. These
concentric circles and sometimes half circles
were painted on the vase surface with the aid
of a compass. The compass and later, the
ruler, became the new instruments used to
articulate geometric development. The
circle, a primary geometric shape like the
sun, and completely symmetrical from all
directions, was the form that most chal¬
lenged the Greek vase painters of the Proto¬
geometric era.

About 900 b.c. a geometric rectilinear
decorative style of triangles, chequers, and
meanders began to dominate. These ele¬
ments were organized in rows of separate
bands, encircling the vase. During this
period in Geometric Greece, the meander
became the dominating motif on the vases.
From its origin in the Paleolithic onward the
meander, a rectilinear geometric design, was
symbolic of water, perhaps because of its
resemblance to waves, lightening, and rivers.
The meander was adapted, or perhaps re¬
invented and made more complex by the
vase painters of Athens. Rectilinear decora¬
tions of meanders, triangles, and rectangles,
soon covered the vase, like a mesh or mosaic
design, becoming one with the vase itself.
The shape of the vase was influenced by the
design and became more sculptural and
architectonic.

During the 8th century b.c. in Athens, the
neck and shoulder of the vases were areas of
special interest. Here, panels containing
geometric elements such as solitary circles,
diamonds, and zigzags, were enclosed, or
framed, by other geometric elements, often a

small meander band. The panel was thus
framed in the area between the handles of
the vases, resulting in an almost anthropo¬
morphic effect of back and front. Another
development during this time was the Dipy¬
lon style funeral amphoras. These vases were
sometimes over 5 feet tall. They were set up
as memorials on tombs. The panel of special
geometric motifs was replaced by a panel
framed by geometric designs, leaving the
panel itself free for the depiction of a special
scene. This was often a funerary scene of
mourners. Although the figures of the
mourners and dead person were geometri-
cized and although the compositions still
resembled the panels of the ornamental com¬
positions of the earlier vases, the funeral
scene was a pictorial innovation that opened

Fig. 6. Amphora adapted from Kerameikos Museum,
Athens. (1,55 M. high) Photo found in Greek Geo¬
metric Art by Bernhard Schweitzer.

36

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

the way for the narrative, figurative por¬
trayal of the heroes of Greek mythology.
The shape and very large size of the funerary
vase also contributed to the development of
the “picture,” presenting the vase painter
with a larger, flatter, and framed rectangular
surface. This new planar surface brought
about new aesthetic considerations for the
Athenian artist. (Fig. 6)

From the 6th century b.c. onwards, first
in the Black-Figure amphoras, and then in
the Red-Figure amphoras, Athenian vase
painters depicted the Gods and legendary
heroes of Homer and other epic poets. The
geometric was reduced to a framing band
around the narrative scene, which now dom¬
inated the surface of the vase. Because the
pictures were placed in areas between the

handles on the front and on the back, the
result was that in certain ways the vase
became conceptually a two-dimensional
object, a portable vehicle for a composed,
planar, framed narrative picture. This was
an object which every Athenian citizen could
possess. The geometric had made space for
the picture on the vase surface. Soon the
picture would be released to a new non-utili¬
tarian surface emerging as a free picture
without a connection to any utensil, vase or
building architecture.

Although in Greece the geometric was on
the wane in vase painting it continued to
function and develop in another realm,
architecture. In his book Greek Geometric
Art, Bernhard Schweitzer writes, “All the
sources of Greek temple architecture are to

Fig. 7. Russion Icon, Our Lady of the Sign. " x 34-3/4".
Courtesy of the Elvehjem Museum, Madison, WI.

1983]

Hutchison-Ceely — Geometric Style in Art

37

be found in the Geometric period.” This
may be true of all architecture to follow.

After the artistic explosion the geometric
caused in Greece, from 1075 to 800 b.c., the
geometric as a primary visual form receded
for many centuries into other forms relating
to decoration and ornamentation. European
peasant art, for example, stressed geometric
motifs of triangles, meanders, and circles. In
religious art the geometric retained its
primary forms of rectangles, squares and
circles in the shapes of the icons, within
which saints and dieties were portrayed,
Europe thus retained the geometric, but in a
subtler form. The dormant geometric was to
erupt again in Europe, especially in Russia, a
“backward” country ripe for both political
and artistic revolution.

At the turn of the century in 1900 a.d.,
Russia was a place of great artistic freedom.
The constricting bonds of the French and
German schools of art, established in Russia
since the 18th century, were being shattered.
The patrons of the arts were no longer the
nobility, but wealthy industrialists eager to
sponsor new and innovative Russian cultural
movements in theatre, dance, opera, poetry
and the visual arts. This movement looked
toward many sources in its attempt to iden¬
tify the true Russian culture.

In the early 1800’s with the help of the
wealthy Stroganoff family, Russian scholars
had begun to study the history of Russian
icon painting. These small medieval paint¬
ings with their religious subject matter,
having been overpainted for centuries, began
to be restored to their original brilliant
colors and purity of line. Finally, in 1913, an
exhibition of these restored icons in Moscow
entitled “Ancient Russian Painting,” influ¬
enced many of the leading Russian artists of
the day, profoundly impressing them by the
richness of color and the geometric “flat¬
ness” of composition. The image that this
portable little painting liberated was to join
with certain artistic forces already afoot in
Russia in the early 1900’s. (Fig. 7)

Another vehicle for artistic liberation in

Russian was the peasant art. Almost intact in
some rural areas since the Neolithic, these
peasant cultures became the source of a new
‘Primativistic’ style of painting in the early
years of the 20th century in Russia. With the
Russian peasant recognized as the new na¬
tional hero, the popular arts of weaving,
woodcarving, and embroidery became a
source of inspiration for this primativistic
movement in Russian culture. Although a
great many artists as well as poets and
musicians participated, the painters Natalia
Goncharova, Vladimir Tatlin, and Kasimir
Malevich emerged as the most important
innovators during the early 20th century.
The folk arts with their schematized and
geometricized figures and designs influenced
these painters towards flatness, directness
and simplicity of composition, opposing the
naturalism prevalent in Europe. The icon
painting and the folk arts promoted and
nurtured this artistic direction, but there
were other forces as well which influenced
this development. (Fig. 8)

Not only did the artists look to the past for
inspiration, but developments in mathe¬
matics and science also stimulated the
formulation of new artistic concepts and
new visual materials. Einstein’s “theory of
relativity” published in 1905 had a pro¬
found effect on concepts of imagery. It
denied the existence of “absolute space” and
“absolute time.” It proposed that measure-

Fig. 8. Russian folk embroidery on end of towel in
design known as “Cavaliers and Ladies.” Adapted
from illustration in Camilla Gray’s, The Russian
Experiment in Art.

38

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

ments of space and time were “relative” to
some arbitrarily chosen frame of reference.
From this moment on, the universe was to be
viewed in a different way. Artists such as
Kasimir Malevich set about creating an
appropriate image to reflect this new
concept. Images could no longer exist in 19th
century time and space.

The scientific discoveries opened new
avenues of thought but also brought about a
crisis in religion, not only in Russia but in
Europe. Spiritual movements emerged to
ease the void and replace the traditional
religions. The Theosophical movement was
one such movement that inspired many
artists toward a non-objective image: God
was no longer conceived in Man’s image but
as an idea or a transcendental spiritual force.
The spiritual movements stimulated the
search for a new 20th century image. Male-

Fig. 9. Primary forms including The Black Square .
Adapted from illustrations of Malevich’s book,
Suprematizm, 34 Drawings , Unovis Vitebsk, 1920.
These were found in Kasimir Malewitsch by Antonina
Gmurzynska.

vich, like his countryman Kandinsky and the
Dutch artist Mondrian, believed that the
function of art was to serve as a reflection of
cosmic order. Artists turned toward the
abstract, toward the non-objective, and with
Malevich, toward the geometric.

Lifting the primary geometric shapes of
the circle, square, and rectangle directly

Fig. 10. Painting by Sally
Hutchison Ceely (48" x
48") untitled. Made of our
identical units, which form
an image of an enlarged
weaving segment.

1983]

Hutchison-Ceely — Geometric Style in Art

39

from the Medieval Russian religious icons,
and from peasant decoration, Malevich
offered a new modern concept of painting to
artists all over the world. The Suprematist
Movement had begun. The Black Square ,
one of Malevich’s first Suprematist paint¬
ings, was hung in a corner of his room, the
corner being the place reserved for religious
icons. This 1913 painting of a black square
on a white ground was what it was. It was
not related to, or imitative of nature.
Though he received much opposition and
criticism for his stance, Malevich revitalized
the geometric in art. (Fig. 9)

The Russian poet, Khlebnikov, a close
friend of Malevich, sums up the feelings of
the time in his essay, ’To the Painters of the
World.” In it he writes about a common
language, accessible to all through “mute
geometric signs” as the fundamental units of
comprehension. Thus, the Russian artists
attempted to re-establish the geometric
which had begun in the Paleolithic. They
attempted to offer concepts which would
bring about stability and universality in a
time of great upheaval and change.

Malevich in his Suprematist system not
only proposed new artistic concepts to the
visual artist, he influenced industrial design
and architecture as well. His series of three-
dimensional idealized architectural drawings
done in 1915 were a forecast of what would
become the International Style of architec¬
ture of the mid-century. As the geometric
created the architecture of Greece in 700
b.c., so too the geometric artists of the 20th
century paved the way for the modern archi¬
tecture of today.

The geometric concept of abstraction con¬
tinues to evolve in contemporary art. The
simple primary shapes, alone or combined in
repeated forms, provide an untiring and
effective imagery. Just as Malevich resur¬
rected the geometric from its subservient
decorative function and gave it new life, I
hope to find new ways to present the geo¬
metric in art. The geometric served ad¬
mirably during Paleolithic times. It is

waiting to be reclaimed by the artist of

today. (Fig. 10)

Bibliography

Clarke, Grahame. The Stone Age Hunters (New
York, 1967).

Cooper, Emmanuel. A History of Pottery (New
York, 1972).

Huyghe, Rene. LaRousse Encyclopedia of Pre¬
historic and Ancient Art (New York, 1972).

Marshack, Alexander. The Roots of Civilization
(New York, 1972).

Marshack, Alexander. “Exploring the Mind of
Ice Age Man” National Geographic (Wash¬
ington D.C., 1975).

Sandars, N. K. Prehistoric Art in Europe (Mary¬
land, 1968).

Tomkins, Calvin. “A Reporter at Large (Cave
Art)” New Yorker Magazine (New York,
1974).

Torbrugge, Walter, Prehistoric European Art
(New York, 1968).

Beazley, J. D. The Development of Attic Black
Figure (London, 1951).

Boardman, John. Pre-Classical (Middlesex,
1967).

Burr, Dorothy. ”A Geometric House and a
Proto-Votive Deposit” Hesperia (Vol. #4,
1933).

Coldstream, J. N. Geometric Greece (London,
1977).

Cook, R. M. Greek Painted Pottery (London,
1960).

Demargne, Pierre The Birth of Greek Art (New
York, 1964).

Desborough, V.R.d’A. Protogeometric Pottery
(Oxford, 1952).

Desborough, V.R.d’A. The Last Mycenaeans &
Their Successors (Oxford, 1964).

Desborough, V.R.d’A. The Greek Dark Ages
(London, 1972).

Higgins, Reynold. Minoan and Mycenaean Art
(New York, 1967).

Matz, Friedrich. Art of Crete and Early Greece
(New York, 1962).

Schweitzer, Bernhard. Greek Geometric Art
(London, 1969).

Westheim, Paul. The Art of Ancient Mexico
(New York, 1965).

Zevi, Bruno. Architecture as Space (New York,
1957).

40

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

Crone, Ranier. “Malevich and Khlebnikov:
Suprematism Reinterpreted” Art Forum (New
York, 1978).

Gmurzynska, Antonina. Kasimir Malewitsch
(West-Germany, 1978).

Gray, Camilla. The Russian Experiment in Art:

1863-1922 (New York, 1970).

McEvilley, Thomas. “Heads it’s Form, Tails it’s
not Content ” Art Forum (New York, 1982).

Robb, David. The Harper History of Painting
(New York, 1951)

Rose, Barbara. “Art as Icon” Vogue Magazine
(New York, 1979).

Rose, Barbara. American Art Since 1900 (New
York, 1967).

Vallier, Dora. Abstract Art (New York, 1970).

COLOR MIXTURE IN COMPUTER GRAPHICS

Kenneth Paul Fishkin
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Abstract

Digital control of color television monitors has added precise control of a large
subset of human colorspace to the capabilities of computer graphics. This subset is
the set of colors spanned by the red, green, and blue electron guns exciting their
respective phosphors. A color can be represented as a triple of numbers between
zero and one, representing the excitement levels of the respective guns. This
capability allows the creation of new and the testing of old mathematical formulae
regarding color mixture.

This paper presents the three basic models of color mixture (additive, sub¬
tractive, and pigmentary), as well as algorithms for computation of color resulting
from mixture of arbitrary amounts of two colors under either of the three methods.
Guidelines for extension of the algorithms to deal with simultaneous mixture of
more than two colors are provided. Particular emphasis is placed on pigmentary
mixture, with a discussion of a new geometric model, in which the hexagon is
presented as a shape more consistent for modeling the pigmentary color gamut than
the canonical circle.

Introduction

The human visual system analyzes color
according to the levels of three primary com¬
ponents (red, green, and blue). Color tele¬
vision monitors thus span human colorspace
by varying the amounts of red, green, and
blue (rgb) phosphor excitement. Since
computer graphics programs normally inter¬
face with these monitors, a color is often
defined as an rgb triple of numbers repre¬
senting the excitement levels [17, 20].

Computer graphics have been defined as
“the creation and manipulation of pictures
with the aid of a computer’5 [17]. This
definition connects the artistic topics of
color and color theory to computer science.

This paper is concerned with computer
graphics applied to one aspect of color
theory, that of color mixture. Three dif¬
ferent models of color mixture are com¬
monly discussed: additive, subtractive, and
pigmentary.

Additive Mixture

When colored lights are combined, the
color of the resultant light is determined by
the rules of additive mixture. The color of
that light is the sum of the colors of the input
lights [7,13,14,15,21].

Since the rgb values represent the amount
of light to be physically displayed in each of
the primaries, the additive system is easily
and naturally applied:

If the colors (rl,gl,bl) and (r2,g2,b2) are
mixed in amounts ml, m2, the output color
(r3,g3,b3) will be equal to their vector addi¬
tion:

r3 = ml*rl + m2*r2
g3 = ml*gl + m2*g2
b3 = ml*bl + m2*b2

If any one of the terms of the output pos¬
sesses a value greater than one, the output
color has luminance greater than can be dis¬
played on the television monitor. In this

41

42

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

case, corrective action must be taken (see
Cook [4] for details).

This algorithm is easily extended to an
arbitrary number of colors. The output will
be equal to the vector addition of all input
colors, within the same provision for cor¬
rection.

Subtractive Mixture

When white light is shone through a series
of colored filters, the color of the resultant
light is derived according to the laws of sub¬
tractive mixture. Each filter “subtracts”
from the white light the portion of the spec¬
trum which it does not reflect. The final light
will consist of only those portions of the
spectrum which all the filters reflect [1,5,7,
13,15,16]. This process corresponds to
mathematical multiplication:

r3 = (rlw/) * (r2m2)
g3 = (gl"') * (g2m2)
b3 = (blw/) * (b2w2)

This algorithm can be extended to the mix¬
ture of an arbitrary number of colored filters
by simply extending the number of terms in¬
volved in the multiplication. The exponen¬
tiation on the components reflects the fact
that as the thickness of the filter increases,
reflectance decreases proportionally.

Pigmentary Mixture

When pigments or dyes are mixed, the
color of the resultant surface is determined
by pigmentary mixture. This is the model
intuitively used by a computer user. The
intuitive mixture of blue with yellow is
neither white (additive mixture) nor black
(subtractive mixture), but rather green, the
pigmentary mixture.

A model of pigmentary mixture is pro¬
posed which deals in terms of a color’s hue,
its saturation, and its lightness (hsl). The hue
of a color reflects its basic nature, the satura¬
tion its paleness, and lightness the amount of
white present in it. Well-defined algorithms

for translation between rgb and hsl exist

[12,20].

The hue of a number can be defined ac¬
cording to a variety of differing color wheels
[2,6,8,10,14,18,19,21]. For example, the rgb
to hsl translations commonly provided [12,
20], use a circular color wheel with red,
green, and blue primaries. Pigmentary mix¬
ture, based on a red, yellow, blue primary
system, requires a wheel in which those three
colors form primaries (i.e. are equally
spaced around the wheel at 120 degree
angles) [8,18,21]. Translations between these
two wheels can be made by simple mathe¬
matical mappings.

Each color can be uniquely mapped to a
point in a hexagonal cylinder. As hue is
essentially a modular quantity, the hue of a
color corresponds to an angle of location.
Saturation represents the proportional
length of a line drawn at that angle from the
center of a hexagon plane. For example,
colors with saturations of 0 and 1 would be
located at the center and edge, respectively,
of the hexagon. The lightness of the color
determines its height in the third dimension
of the cylinder. The unique point so con¬
structed will be called that color’s color
point.

Varying the hue changes the angle of loca¬
tion of the color point within the hexagon.
Varying the saturation changes the distance
of the color point from the center. Varying
lightness changes the height of the color
point in the cylinder.

After two color points have been con¬
structed, one for each color in the mixture, a
line can be drawn between them. This line
describes all the mixtures of these two colors
as their concentrations vary. The color point
of the mixture is the point on the line located
such that the ratio of the lengths of the two
line segments formed is equivalent to the
ratio of the amounts of the colors being
mixed. For example, if there are equal
amounts of color being mixed, the color
point of the result will lie at the midpoint of

1983]

Fishkin— Color Mixture in Computer Graphics

43

the line. Once the color point of the mixture
has been determined, its rgb value can be
determined by inverting the operations
described above.

Extension to more than two pigments can
be accomplished by regarding the location of
the mixture as the center of gravity of the
color points of the colors being mixed, where
each colorant is given a weight correspond¬
ing to its proportional presence in the mix¬
ture.

The above model contains many of the
same rules as those of Sargent [18] and Von
Bezold [1], with two major changes: light¬
ness, not value, is used for the third dimen¬
sion, and the hexagon, not the circle, is used
for the planar figure.

A fundamental property of pigment mix¬
tures is that complementary pigments, in
equal proportion, mix to grey [3,8,9,15,20].
In the hue, saturation, and value (hsv) sys¬
tem used by Sargent [17] and Von Bezold
[1], all colors of maximum intensity (value)
lie on the same plane. For example, red,
blue, green, orange, and white all are of full
value. If the complementary colors of red
and green or blue and orange are mixed, the
color point that lies at the center of the plane
is that of white, as it possesses no saturation
and equivalent value. Thus, mixture in the
hsv system fails to account for mixture of
complementary pigments.

In the hsl system, all colors of equivalent
brightness (1) lie on the same plane. Specif¬
ically, grey lies in the center of the primary
(red, blue, green, orange) plane, rather than
white, as grey possesses the same brightness
as the primaries. Mixture of complemen-
taries is thus perfectly simulated, grey lying
at the center of the primary plane.

Justification of Hexagonal Geometry

Some previous studies of color [1,5,6,
12,18] have used the circle as the planar geo¬
metric figure within which to locate colors.
However, the circle is not a suitable figure
for pigmentary mixture. The mixture of two

adjacent fully saturated colors should
produce a mixture of full saturation. The
midpoint of a line drawn between the color
points of those colors will be displaced
towards the center of the circle. Therefore,
the mixture predicted by a circular model
will be abnormally desaturated, because the
midpoint of a chord of a circle will never lie
on the edge of the circle. Thus, abnormal de¬
saturation will occur in all but comple¬
mentary mixtures using a circular model.

That problem can be minimized by using a
regular n-gon instead of a circle. The mid¬
point of a line drawn between two points on
the edge of an n-gon will often lie on the
edge as well.

Note that this will also predict abnormal
desaturation on occasion, as when the color
points lie on the center of adjacent faces.
However, it does this far less often than the
circular model. The precise mechanism of
computing resultant saturation is still under
investigation. Curved lines connecting the
color points fare no better than straight
ones, as they predict abnormally high satura¬
tions for near-complementary mixtures.
Straight line mixtures are easily computable
for arbitrary color points, and were main¬
tained for this reason.

What value should n take? N must be a
multiple of two, so that every color is located
symmetrically with respect to its comple¬
ment. It must be a multiple of three, due to
the presence of the three primaries. It should
be as small as possible, because as n
approaches infinity, a regular n-gon ap¬
proaches a circle, a figure whose short¬
comings have been discussed. Thus, the
geometry of the situation implies that a
hexagon will best approximate pigmentary
mixture.

This geometric conclusion is supported by
the findings of Smith [20] that the rgb system
lends itself naturally to hexagonal color
space, and of Kuppers [14] that the hexagon
represents pure color more logically than the
circle.

44

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

While the model will not predict the pre¬
cisely correct solution in every case, it is
generally believed that no model can [1,5,7,

13.19.21] . In nearly every case, however, it
provides an excellent approximation.

Specifically, it satisfies each of the three
basic principles of pigmentary mixture [3,9,

10.16.21] : a color mixed with black will
lower its lightness, mixed with white will
lower its saturation, and mixed with its com¬
plement will produce grey.

Implementation

These algorithms have been implemented
as part of an interactive color mixing/
matching/making database program written
in the C programming language. This pro¬
gram is presently running at the University
of Wisconsin Image Processing and Graph¬
ics Laboratory on a PDP- 11/45 computer
with an STC-70 graphics terminal.

Further Research

Currently, research is being performed to
test the applicability and usability of old
(e.g. C.I.E. and Kuppers [14]) and new color
solids, and the “integrated mixture’’ algo¬
rithm of Kuppers [14].

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to thank Pat Hanrahan
(presently at NYIT) and Karl Anderson
(presently at Atari) for their assistance in this
project.

References

1. Von Bezold, Wilhelm. 1876. The Theory of
Color in its relation to Art and Art-Industry .
L. Prang and Company.

2. Birren, Faber. 1969. Principles of Color.
Von Nostrand Reinhold Company.

3. Cheskin, Louis. 1947. Colors: What they can
do for you. Liveright Publishing Corpora¬
tion.

4. Cook, Robert L., and Torrance, Kenneth.
1981. “A Reflectance Model for Computer
Graphics.” Computer Graphics, 15 (3):
37-316.

5. Evans, R. M. 1948. An Introduction to
Color. John Wiley & Sons.

6. Gerritsen, Frans. 1975. Theory and Practice
of Color. Van Nostrand Reinhold Com¬
pany.

7. Graves, Maitland. 1952. Color Funda¬
mentals. McGraw-Hill.

8. Itten, Johannes. 1961. The Art of Color.
Van Nostrand Reinhold Company.

9. Jacobs, Michel. 1924. The Art of Colour.
Doubleday, Page and Company.

10. Jacobs, Michel. 1927. The Study of Colour.
Doubleday, Page and Company.

11. Jacobson, Egbert. 1948. Basic Color. Paul
Theobald.

12. Joblove, George H., and Greenberg,
Donald. 1978. Color Spaces for Computer
Graphics. Computer Graphics, 12 (3): 20-25.

13. Judd, Deane B. 1952. Color in Business,
Science, and Industry. John Wiley and Sons.

14. Kuppers, Harald. 1973. Color Origin, Sys¬
tems, Uses. Van Nostrand Reinhold Com¬
pany.

15. Letouzey, Victor. 1957. Colour and Colour
measurement in the Graphic Industries. Pit¬
man and Sons.

16. Luckiesh, M. 1927. Color and its Appli¬
cations. Van Nostrand Company.

17. Newman, William M., and Sproull, Robert F.
1979. Principles of Interactive Computer
Graphics. McGraw-Hill.

18. Sargent, Walter. 1923. The Enjoyment and
Use of Color. Scribner’s Sons.

19. Sloane, Patricia. Colour: Basic Principles
and New Directions. Studio Vista.

20. Smith, Alvy Ray. 1978. Color Gamut Trans¬
form Pairs. Computer Graphics, 12 (3): 12-
19.

21. Weinberg, Louis. 1922. Color in Everyday
Life. Moffat, Yard and Company.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND THE THREE FACES OF WOMEN

Elizabeth Williams
English 783 : Proseminar
in Intellectual Backgrounds
to the American Revolution

Three categories of woman appear in Ben¬
jamin Franklin’s works: the “painted
Woman,” the “good Wife,” and the
“Woman of Wit.” The painted woman cor¬
responds to the feminine daimon found in
mythology, and to the harlots in the Bible.
She emerges in the eighteenth century as a
woman of low life, the strumpet, embodying
ungoverned sensuality, disease, corruption,
and deceit, as evidenced by her “mask of
paint.” The good wife corresponds to the
Sarahs, Rebekahs, Rachaels, Marthas, and
Marys of the Bible; she inherits, up through
the nineteenth century, the guardianship of
moral and social values. The woman of wit,
rarely surfacing in ancient literature —
Sappho and Queen Esther are possible
candidates — emerges as a kind of welcomed
aberration, who, in the eighteenth and suc¬
ceeding centuries, offers intellectual diver¬
sion and a less rigid morality. She is more
trustworthy than the painted woman, less
reliable than the good wife. This typology of
women parallels the feminine images in three
distinct stages of Franklin’s life: youth, early
adulthood, and maturity.

Before the eighteenth century there had
been but two categories of woman fixed in
the collective consciousness, the painted and
the untainted. While hints of a mysterious
and more complicated blend of feminity
cropped up here and there, as in Leonardo’s
“Mona Lisa” (intellectualized earthiness
bathed in spirituality), theological condition¬
ing largely plowed that image under. Exam¬
ine St. Paul’s instructions to women:

... to be discreet, chaste, keepers at home,
good, obedient to their husbands, that the
word of God be not blasphemed.

(Titus 2:5)

Wives, submit yourselves unto your own hus¬
bands, as unto the Lord.

(Ephesians 4:21-24)

. . . that women should adorn themselves in
modest apparel, with shamefacedness and
sobriety;

. . . Let the woman learn in silence with all sub¬
jection.

(Timothy 2:9)'

Although those directives may have held
some merit, such passivity imposed on
women by the patriarchy from St. Paul to
the Puritan fathers, denied more or less half
of the world’s talent. Suppression can be a
form of mutilation, producing some kind of
un-wholesomeness, e.g., muteness leading to
ultimate rage as in the works of Margaret
Cavendish, a seventeenth century intellectual
who wrote “. . . poetry, plays, orations,
biography, autobiography, letters, philo¬
sophical works, and scientific treatises,” and
“. . . struggled to get her works accepted by
the universities.”2

Despite her enraged voice, Margaret
Cavendish was a good wife and is largely
remembered for the biography she wrote of
her husband.

However, not all women felt type-cast.
Across the channel, one century later, Mme.
de Pompadour exerted tremendous influence
at Versailles with diplomacy and dimples for
King Louis XV and witty conversation for
Montesquieu and for Voltaire, who charac¬
terized the Age of Enlightenment as some¬
what more schizoid than we like to believe:
“We live in curious times,” he said, “and
amid astonishing contrasts: reason on the
one hand, the most absurd fanaticism on the
other . . . ”3 If the traditional dualistic view
of women was now passing through a prism

45

46

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

(the light of reason) and becoming triadic,
those women who dared to surface with wit
and intellect were no less subject to ridicule
than the women of paint had been. Mary
Manley, the first Englishwoman to be called
a political journalist, successor to Jonathan
Swift as editor of the Examiner, was arrested
for publishing her satirical work Secret
Memoirs and Manners of Several Persons of
Quality of Both Sexes From the New Atlan¬
tis, an Island in the Mediterranean. 4

The good Wife was still the most revered
woman in the Neo-classic mind. Further, she
gained more respect as the century pro¬
gressed, as the pursuit of Virtue became
mandated by the great thinkers of the Age.
With lyrical flourish Diderot remarked:
<(Rendre la vertu aimable, le vice odieux, le
ridicule saillant voila le projet de tout hon-
nete homme qui prend la plume, le pinceau,
ou le ciseau. ”5 Lord Shaftesbury, whose
writings had created religious doubts in
young Franklin’s mind and carried him far
away from the clutches of Bostonian Cal¬
vinism, wrote: “. . . the knowledge and prac¬
tice of the social virtues, the familiarity and
fervour of the moral graces are essential to
the character of a deserving artist and just
favorite of the Muses.”6 The genre of Con¬
duct Literature was ascending: Novels,
diaries, memoirs, poems, plays, autobiog¬
raphies, and personal letters tended to
concentrate on moral issues, restraints and
controls. “One recorded one’s daily life in
order to evaluate one’s conduct, and also to
find evidence of God’s will in the pattern of
events.”7

Right conduct was emphasized in Ben¬
jamin Franklin’s young life by his father,
Josiah: “At his Table he [Josiah] lik’d to
have as often as he could, some sensible
Friend or Neighbour, to converse with, and
always took care to start some ingenious or
useful Topic for Discourse, which might
tend to improve the Minds of his Children.
By this means he turn’d our Attention to
what was good, just, and prudent in the
Conduct of Life:”8 Though little can be

gleaned from Franklin’s writings concerning
his mother Abiah, evidence suggests that she
fostered Franklin’s belief in the power of vir¬
tue and the value of leading a discreet life.

Always an independent thinker, Franklin
preferred to choose his own religious beliefs.
Although he read “Books of polemic Divin¬
ity,” from his father’s library, he later
regretted the time spent on them. Works of
practical morality such as Plutarch’s Lives,
Defoe’s Essay on Projects and Mather’s
Bonifacius, An Essay upon the Good . . .
gave him such “. . . a Turn of Thinking that
[they] had an Influence on some of the prin¬
cipal future Events” of his life.9 Of the
three, Mather seemed to wield the most in¬
fluence.

As Franklin began to feel the temptations
of sex, he gradually succumbed to the
Painted Woman. His only confession of this
occurs when he recalls his London sojourn in
the A utobiography:

. . . that hard-to-be govern’d Passion of Youth,
had hurried me frequently into Intrigues with
low Women that fell in my Way, which were
attended with some Expence and great In¬
convenience, besides a continual Risque to my
Health by a Distemper which of all Things I
dreaded, tho’ by great good Luck I escap’d it. 10

If Franklin had lived in the early twentieth
century would he have been more explicit
about his sexual adventures? Would we
discover, for instance, that he really had had
“an intrigue with a girl of bad character”
before he left Boston for good? Or that he
had been somewhat more involved with the
“two women travelling together” on his way
to New York, and ultimately London, than
his memoirs reveal?

Franklin’s neglect of Deborah Read dur¬
ing his eighteen-month stay in London, was
the “erratum” he claims to have felt most
guilty about; he sent only one letter to her
during his stay abroad." The need to correct
his errant ways may have been predicated
upon his growing understanding of what
constituted a good relationship with a

1983]

Williams — Franklin and Women

47

woman and the ultimate costs of being in¬
volved with a bad woman. London, for
Franklin, was a laboratory for sexual experi¬
mentation; during his first English resi¬
dency, far way from familial restraints and
no longer influenced by ’‘Religious re¬
straints,” he fell into a certain licentious
style of life. Hogarth attempted to show how
the very atmosphere of London was condu¬
cive to corruption. One cannot easily im¬
agine Franklin, back in Boston, or even
Philadelphia, making the kind of seductive
proposal he did to “Mrs. T.” She was the
millener who had previously lived “together
some time” with his friend James Ralph.
Ralph had gone away to “a small Village in
Berkshire” to teach, “recommending Mrs.
T.” to Franklin’s “care”;12

It was through his exposure in London to
all sorts and conditions of women that
Franklin began to formulate, at some point
between his return voyage to America and
his marriage to Miss Read, what I call his
“theory of the open countenance” regarding
women. The painted woman is a creature of
false allurement whose bodily adornment
and cosmetic coverings represent a mask.
Her superficial beauty may disguise a
deeply-flawed nature. When he later
composed verses for the Poor Richard Al¬
manacs, he extolled the supremacy of virtue
over beauty:

‘Tis not the Face with a delightful Air,

A rosy Cheek and lovely flowing Hair;

Nor sparkling Eyes to best Advantage set,

Nor all the Members rang’d in Alphabet,

Sweet in Proportion as the lovely Dies,

Which bring th’ etherial Bow before our Eyes,
That can with Wisdom Approbation find,

Like pious Morals and an honest Mind;

By Virtue’s living Laws from every Vice
refin’d.18

In 1744 Franklin reprinted Samuel
Richardson’s Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded;
it was the first novel published in America.
Richardson expressed views similar to
Franklin’s on what constitutes virtue:
“Beauty, without goodnes, is but skin-deep

perfection” and “Virtue only is the true
Beauty.”14

Unlike the painted Woman, “the good
Wife” possesses an inner beauty that does
not fade. The implication in Franklin’s con¬
cept of male/female relationship is that
while men are responsible for the various
vices of women, men need the rope of
woman’s virtue to pull them into shape.
Poor Richard Saunders indicates as much:

The plain Truth of the Matter is, I am excessive
poor, and my Wife, good Woman, is, I tell her,
excessive proud; she cannot bear, she says, to
sit spinning in her Shift of Tow, while I do
nothing but gaze at the Stars; and has threat¬
ened more than once to burn all my Books and
Rattling-Traps (as she calls my Instruments) if
I do not make some profitable Use of them for
the good of my Family. The Printer has offer’d
me some considerable share of the Profits, and
I have thus begun to comply with my Dame’s
desire.15

The Richard/Bridget Saunders union is a
comic parody of the Benjamin/Deborah
Franklin marriage. Franklin offers a similar
tribute to his wife in the Autobiography:
“. . . it was lucky for me that I had one
[wife] as much dispos’d to Industry and
Frugality as my self. She assisted me chear-
fully in my Business, folding and stitching
Pamphlets, tending Shop, purchasing old
Linen Rags for the Papermakers, &c. &c.”16
There are constant warnings, however, in
Franklin’s writings, against marrying a
termagent. Perhaps this was Franklin’s sub¬
tle way of keeping Deborah “chearful.”
Both Lopez and Van Doren, the principal
Franklin biographers, allude to Deborah
Franklin’s quick temper. Nevertheless, she
earned the longest poem ever written by
Franklin to a woman. It begins this way:

Song

Of their Chloes and Phillisses Poets may prate
I sing my plain Country Joan
Now twelve Years my Wife, still the Joy of my Life
Blest Day that I made her my own,

My dear Friends

Blest Day that I made her my own.

48

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

2

Not a Word of her Face, her Shape, or her Eyes,

Of Flames or of Darts shall you hear;

Tho’ I Beauty admire ’ tis Virtue I prize,

That fades not in seventy Years,

My dear Friends17

Virtue, it would seem, is not natural but
acquired. One needs a boost of some sort,
either a strong tie with a virtuous person, or
the practice of virtue through systematic
moral exercise. Franklin invented a system
as simple and as complicated as St. Ignatius
Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises to arrive at
“moral Perfection.’’ Understanding that
“contrary Habits must be broken and good
ones acquired and established, before we can
have any Dependence on a steady uniform
Rectitude of Conduct,’’ 18 he drew up a list of
Thirteen Names of Virtue: TEMPERANCE,
SILENCE, ORDER, RESOLUTION, FRU¬
GALITY, INDUSTRY, SINCERITY,
JUSTICE, MODERATION, CLEANLI¬
NESS, TRANQUILITY, CHASTITY,
HUMILITY.19

Each of these virtues was tranformed into
any number of epigrammatic lines in the
Poor Richard Almanacs. Through the in¬
genuity and industry of Benjamin Franklin,
the “wisdom’’ literature of the ancients was
transformed into homely practical knowl¬
edge for the right conduct of Americans. We
should look to the Almanacs to determine
and understand subconscious attitudes
toward women in America: “She that paints
her face, thinks of her tail”; “Three things
are men most liable to be cheated in, a
Horse, a Wig, and a Wife.”20

Once he had passed the dangerous shoals
of youth, a very large dimension of Ben¬
jamin Franklin’s character was govern’d by
sobriety, high moral purpose, self-discipline
and self-denial. After conceiving a plan to
(a) practice each virtue for one week, (b)
record his progress in a booklet, and (c) start
over again when the thirteen-week cycle
ended, he carried out the regimen diligently
for a time.

Franklin’s “Project in Virtue” establishes
the tone for our introduction to the Woman
of Wit and Franklin’s mature years. Some
observers would have us believe that he was
a rake and a bounder who romped up and
down the New England coast and the Conti¬
nent, leaving a trail of bastards in his wake.
To suggest such a hedonistic enterprise is ab¬
surd. Whether Franklin was guilty of infi¬
delity cannot be verified. What is known is
that in his mature years, Franklin was at¬
tracted to several women of wit and in¬
telligence, that he formed close relationships
with them, epistolary and otherwise, and
that his life and theirs were enriched through
these associations. One such relationship
was established with Catharine Ray Greene.

Before considering the Frankin-Greene
liaison, we must understand the pedagogical
role Franklin often assumed with women. It
probably stemmed from a relationship
formed in childhood with his sister Jane,
ever his “peculiar favorite.” In one of his
youthful disputations with his friend John
Collins, Franklin argued for the education
of women:

He was of Opinion that it was improper; and
that they were naturally unequal to it. I took
the contrary Side, perhaps a little for Dispute
sake.21

Despite the motive he claims, Franklin ap¬
pears elsewhere in his writings to believe that
a more enlightened education should be pro¬
vided for the eighteenth-century woman of
intelligence. Silence Dogood relates how her
“Master,” a “Country Minister,” en¬
deavored to raise her consciousness:

. . . observing that I took a more than ordinary
Delight in reading ingenious Books, he gave me
the free Use of his Library, which tho’ it was
small, yet it was well chose, to inform the
Understanding rightly, and enable the Mind to
frame great and noble Ideas.22

Franklin was most likely influenced but not
likely convinced by Daniel Defoe’s An Essay
on Projects. Defoe’s proposal for “An

1983]

Williams — Franklin and Women

49

Academy for Women” sounds two centuries
ahead of the time:

The capacities of women are supposed to be
greater and their senses quicker than those of
the men; and what they might be capable of be¬
ing bred to is plain from some instances of
female wit, which this age is not without;
which upbraids us with injustice, and looks as
if we denied women the advantages of educa¬
tion for fear they should vie with the men in
their improvements.

To remove this objection, and that women
might have at least a needful opportunity of
education in all sorts of useful learning, I pro¬
pose the draught of an Academy for that pur¬
pose.23

Although no such women’s academy was
proposed for the meritous female population
of Philadelphia, Franklin in principle, was
not against educating women beyond the
homely arts. Nevertheless, the woman must
never be educated to the point where she
would desire to be anyone other than the
“good Wife,” for hers is the highest achieve¬
ment of womanhood. In educating his own
daughter Sally “[H]e did not intend to open
up to her the full Pandora’s box of knowl¬
edge, but mainly the useful, the functional
skills: reading and writing . . . arithmetic and
some bookkeeping.24 He believed a woman
should receive enough education to be able
to take care of herself in the event of possible
widowhood. That goal was far short of what
Defoe proposed for the pedagogy of woman,
but Franklin was at least more open-minded
than Hawthorne, who had little use for an
intellectual woman, particularly a literary
one.

Franklin conducted a kind of “academy-
by-mail” in the numerous letters he wrote to
innumerable people to educate them in scien¬
tific and political matters. Polly Stevenson,
the daughter of Mrs. Margaret Stevenson
with whom Franklin boarded in London,
was one such fortunate pupil. Their cor¬
respondence continues from 1758 to 1786,
undergoing many transformations. Polly
was one “woman of Wit” to whom he could

write highly technical letters. Theirs was an
intelligent epistolary dialogue. James Stifler
says of the friendship:

It would have been an exceedingly dull man,
which Franklin never was, not to have re¬
sponded to the keen sparkle of this young
woman’s letters. All his life Franklin liked
good company and clever conversation. He
warmed up and uncovered the most delightful
aspects of his amazing versatility under just
such stimulus. Polly Stevenson gave it to him.25

Another such lady of genius in Franklin’s
life was Georgiana Shipley, the fourth
daughter of Bishop Jonathan Shipley of
Twyford, the small but famous site where
the Autobiography , Part I, was written.
Franklin met her in 1771 when he first visited
Twyford; she was a scant fifteen years old
when their correspondence began, but

[i]n the course of time Georgiana wrote and
read Latin and Greek as readily as English. She
was equally at home in all Continental
languages so that her friendship and corres¬
pondence was sought after by eminent persons
throughout Europe.

Her affections were strong and generous and
to no one outside her family was she so devoted
as to Dr. Franklin.26

But the most unguarded, playful, yet at
the same time, highly educative cor¬
respondence was the one Franklin shared
with Catharine Ray Greene. It carried under¬
tones of

... a romance in the Franklinian manner,
somewhat risque, somewhat avuncular, taking
a bold step forward and an ironic step
backward, implying that he is tempted as a
man but respectful as a friend. Of all shades of
feeling, this one, the one the French call a mi tie
amoureuse — a little beyond the platonic but
short of the grand passion — is perhaps the
most exquisite.27

Catharine met Franklin in Boston about
1754. They corresponded until just short of
his death in 1790. Her husband was William
Greene, a surveyor and minor statesman,
later Governor of Rhode Island (1778-1786).

50

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

Better known as “Caty,” she was a woman
of finely-wrought intelligence and . a
keen sense of humor and always had a house
full of guests.” Mother of six children she
ran both house and farm and was “a model
eighteenth-century housewife.28 Although
she had no formal education, she was known
for her wit. One of the most famous letters
of the Greene-Franklin portfolio, sent to
Caty on October 16, 1755, embodies Frank¬
lin’s expectations of an exemplary wife:

Let me give you some fatherly Advice. Kill no
more Pigeons than you can eat. — Be a good
Girl, and don’t forget your Catechise. — Go
constantly to Meeting — or Church — till you get
a good Husband; then stay at home, & nurse
the Children, and live like a Christian. — Spend
your spare Hours, in sober Whisk, Prayers, or
learning to cypher. — You must practise Addi¬
tion to your Husband’s Estate, by Industry &
Frugality; Subtraction of all unnecessary Ex-
pences; Multiplication (I would gladly have
taught you that myself, but you thought it was
time enough & woud’n’t learn) he will soon
make you a Mistress of it. As to Division, I
say with Brother Paul, Let there be no Divi¬
sion among ye.29

We have, in the end, come full circle —
back to Pauline Christianity. Although
Franklin, in his youth, was attracted to the
“painted Woman,” he most likely, in his
later years, came to admire most the woman
who combined the faces of the “good Wife”
and the “Woman of Wit.” Most significant¬
ly, that composite — Franklin’s ideal woman
— remains, a paradigm whose wit serves only
the causes of virtue.

Notes

1 The Holy Bible, Authorized King James Version
(London: Collins’ Clear-Type Press, 1943).

2 Joan Goulianoa, ed. “Margaret Cavendish,
Duchess of Newcastle,’’ by a Woman writt: Literature
from Six Centuries By and About Women (Baltimore:
Penguin, 1974), p. 55.

3 Alfred Cobban, ed. The Eighteenth Century:

Europe in the Age of Enlightenment (New York:
McGraw-Hill, 1969), p. 260.

4 Goulianoa, “Mary Manley,” by a Woman writt, p.
103.

5 Cobban, p. 245. (To show virtue as pleasing, vice as
odious, to expose what is ridiculous, that is the aim of
every honest man who takes up the pen, the brush or the
chisel.)

6 Ibid.

7 David Levin, “ The Autobiography of Benjamin
Frankin: The Puritan Experimenter in Life and Art,” In
Defense of Historical Literature: Essays on American
History, Autobiography, Drama, and Fiction (New
York: Hill and Wang, 1967), p. 62.

8 Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Ben¬
jamin Franklin, Leonard W. Labaree, et al., eds. (New
Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1964), p. 55. Hereafter cited
as Autobiography.

9 Autobiography, p. 58.

10 Autobiography, p. 128.

11 Ibid., 96.

12 Ibid., 99.

13 The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Leonard W.

Labaree and Whitfield J. Bell, Jr., eds. (New Haven:
Yale Univ. Press, 1959- ), II, 10. Hereafter cited as

The Papers.

14 Samuel Richardson, A Collection of the Moral and
Instructive Sentiments (Delmar, N.Y.: Scholars’ Fac¬
similes & Reprints, 1980), p. 7.

15 The Papers, I, 311.

16 Autobiography, 145.

17 The Papers, II, 353-54.

18 Au tobiography, p . 148.

19 Ibid., 149-50.

20 The Papers, II, 142 (from Poor Richard’s
Almanac, 1736).

21 Autobiography, 60.

22 Silence Dogood Letter No. 1 (Printed in The New
England Cour ant, April 2, 1722), The Papers, I, 10.

23 Daniel Defoe, The Earlier Life and The Chief
Earlier Works of Daniel Defoe, Henry Morley, ed.
(New York: Burt Franklin, 1970, pp. 144-45.

24 Claude-Anne Lopaz and Eugenia W. Herbert, The
Private Franklin: The Man and His Family (New York:
W. W. Norton, 1975), p. 71.

25 James Madison Stifler, “My Dear Girl”: The Cor¬
respondence of Benjamin Franklin with Polly Steven¬
son, Georgiana and Catharine Shipley. (New York:
George H. Doran, 1927), p. 38.

26 Ibid., 231.

27 Lopes and Herbert, p. 56.

28 William Greene Roelker, ed. Benjamin Franklin
and Catharine Ray Greene: Their Correspondence
1755-1790. (Phil.: American Philosophical Society,
1949), pp. 2-3.

29 Ibid., p. 5.

POTENTIAL VERSUS ACTUAL DEVELOPMENT OF
IRRIGATED AGRICULTURE IN CENTRAL WISCONSIN

Donald Last

UWEX Department of Environmental Resources
Stevens Point , Wisconsin

A hs tract

Only 5 percent of the ten-county central sands area of Wisconsin having condi¬
tions suitable for irrigated agriculture is now actually being used for that purpose.
Nearly 3 million acres in the region have an underground water supply great enough
to sustain high capacity irrigation wells. Yet only 133,000 acres of cropland are
presently being irrigated. A doubling or tripling of the irrigated cropland in the area
is possible by 1990. Development of irrigated agriculture has had an impact on the
economy and the natural resources of the area. Careful planning and decision¬
making is needed now so that the irrigation potential of central Wisconsin is realized
by anticipation and not by accident.

In the past 20 years, there has been a
seven-fold increase in the total amount of
cropland being irrigated in Adams, Jackson,
Juneau, Marathon, Marquette, Monroe,
Portage, Waupaca, Waushara, and Wood
Counties (Census of Agriculture, 1978). The
reason for this rapid growth is self-evident.
Yields on the sandy soils in the area are
increased considerably with the addition of
an artificial water supply. For example,
Russet Burbank potatoes grown without irri¬
gation may yield from 100-200 cwt/acre.
Irrigation can increase this yield to 500
cwt/acre. The quality of the product is
enhanced as well. For example, the percent¬
age of higher value U.S. No. 1 potatoes is
19% greater on irrigated versus non-
irrigated farmland (Vegetable and Fruit: Po¬
tential for Production and Processing in
Central Wisconsin, 1964).

Actual Development Less Than Potential
Plentiful irrigation water is readily avail¬
able in the vast aquifer underlying Wiscon¬
sin’s central sands. As shown on Table 1,
nearly three million acres in central Wiscon¬
sin have a subsurface water supply suitable
for intensive irrigated agriculture. Five
hundred gallons per minute is generally con¬

sidered to be the minimum amount necessary
for wells supplying smaller irrigation sys¬
tems. One thousand gallons per minute is
more desirable for the center-pivot irrigation
units, which cover 160 acres in one revo¬
lution (Berge, 1964). As shown on Figure 1,
there are about 2 million acres in central
Wisconsin where wells could be expected to
yield from 500-1,000 gallons of water per
minute. An additional 1 million acres of the
ten-county area could produce 1,000 or more
gallons per minute (Lippelt, 1981).

Yet the latest agricultural census figures
indicate that only 132,985 acres are being
irrigated. This is just 4.6% of the total land
area where ground water conditions would
permit pumpage rates high enough to justify
the use of irrigation equipment. Thirty-five
percent of the ten-county area is cropland.
Only about 7% of the existing cropland is
being irrigated (Irrigable Lands Inventory
Plan of Work, 1980).

Within the region, Portage County leads
all others in the number of acres being
irrigated (49,494). It is also the county which
has realized the greatest amount of develop¬
ment. Nearly fourteen percent of the land
area having irrigation potential is now being
used for that purpose. Waushara County has

51

52

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

10.7% of its irrigation potential developed.
None of the other eight counties in the
region have realized even a 5% development
level. Of these, Jackson and Monroe Coun¬
ties have had less than 1% of the land area
with potential actually developed (Table 1).

Future Development:

How Much and Where?

There is the potential for an even faster
rate of growth. A doubling or tripling of the
amount of agricultural land being irrigated
in central Wisconsin seems probable by the
end of the decade. There is somewhat less
certainty about where this additional irri¬
gated acreage will be developed. Portage and
Waushara Counties will, no doubt, see a
continuation of the existing growth pattern.

It is possible that counties such as Adams,
Juneau, and Marquette will experience the
sharpest absolute as well as percentage
increases in irrigated cropland in the next
few years. For it is in these three counties
that the largest share of underdeveloped
1,000+ gallon per minute well potential
exists. It is also that area which has geo¬
graphic conditions most similar to Portage
and Waushara Counties.

Geographic conditions other than ground
water supply and well yield potential also
help to determine whether or not an area is
suitable for irrigation development. Soil
properties, length of growing season, depth
to ground water, and the steepness of the
slope are factors which need to be consid¬
ered. Rough terrain in Monroe County, for

1983]

Last — Irrigated Agriculture

53

Table 1. Central Wisconsin Agricultural Irrigation: Actual Versus Potential

COUNTY

Water use in
millions of
gallons
per year'
(1979)

IRRIGATION FOR AGRICULTURAL USE

Potential acres

A dual acres under irrigation 3

under Maximum yields of wells

irrigation2 in gallons per minute

(1978) (500-1000) (1000 + ) (Total)

Actual acres as
percentage of
potential acres
Yields >500
gallons per
minute)

Amount Rank

Amount Rank

A

M O U N

T

Rank

Percent

Rank

Adams

4,180

3

20,646

3

122,125

297,952

420,007

3

4.9

3

Jackson

19

10

1,570

10

247,521

—

247,521

7

0.6

9

Juneau

731

4

5,388

4

328,619

111,766

440,385

2

1.2

8

Marathon

123

8

3,792

6

77,418

—

77,418

10

4.9

3

Marquette

240

6

3,774

7

33,530

263,195

296,725

6

1,3

7

Monroe

41

9

2,006

9

534,705

534,705

1

0.4

10

Portage

10,000

1

49,494

1

209,357

147J49

357,106

5

13.9

1

Waupaca

516

5

4,009

5

113,947

7,224

121,171

8

3.3

6

Waushara

5,340

2

39,143

2

265,104

100,044

365,148

4

10.7

2

Wood

166

7

3,163

8

48,932

20,309

69,241

9

4.6

5

Area

Total

21,356

132,985

1,981,258

948,239

2,929,497

—

4.6

—

State

Total

30,600

234,557

?

7

7

Area as

% of State

69.8

56.7

?

7

7

1 Interim Report Statewide Water Conservation, Part II, Agricultural and Industrial, Wisconsin DNR, December
1981, p. 6.

2 United States Census of Agriculture, 1978.

3 Irrigable Lands Inventory — Phase I, Groundwater and Related Information, Wisconsin Geological and Natural
History Survey, September, 1981 (aquifer potential maps).

example, limits the development potential.
Summer frosts are a threat to crops grown in
the lowlands of Wood and Portage Coun¬
ties. Wetlands occupy large areas of
Waushara County. Poorly-drained soils are
found in eastern Marquette County. In addi¬
tion, the existing vegetation (native jack pine
or scrub oak) may pose somewhat of a bar¬
rier to expanded agricultural land uses
(Collins, 1968).

No estimate has been made of the amount
of land in the 5,394,560-acre region which
has its irrigation potential reduced because
of the presence of unsuitable geographic
conditions of the kind discussed above.
However, estimates are available of the

amount of land in the ten-county area where
the existing land use precludes the develop¬
ment of irrigated agriculture. Homes, com¬
mercial or industrial enterprises, and public
facilities have been built on land which was
equally well-suited for agriculture. A net¬
work of roads, highways, and railway lines
connects the many cities and villages, which
further reduces the amount of land on which
irrigated agriculture crops might have been
produced. According to figures compiled by
the Golden Sands RC&D office, these urban
or built-up areas occupy 4% (215,782 acres)
of the region. The federal government con¬
trols the ownership of large tracts of land
with agricultural potential (e.g., Fort

54

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

McCoy). State parks, waysides, and wildlife
areas may, in part, be located on lands of
agricultural opportunity. Public lands, con¬
sidered collectively with the area covered
over with streams or lakes, account for 10%
(539,456 acres) of the ten counties. Wood¬
lands cover 42% of the landscape (2,265,715
acres). Large, wooded holdings are corpora¬
tion-owned (paper companies) while smaller
parcels are held by individuals or public
bodies (school system, county). Agricultural
use of the land for pasture and cropland
(2,373,606 acres) constitutes 9% and 35% of
the area, respectively.

From the foregoing, it can be concluded
that aquifer potential is but one of many
factors to be weighed when determining the
development potential for irrigated agricul¬
ture in central Wisconsin. One must subtract
from the 3 million acres where ground water
conditions are suitable for intensive agri¬
culture the land area where other physical
characteristics make it difficult, if not
impossible, to develop the potential. Also to
be deducted are those areas reserved for
other human activity (residences, businesses,
industry, recreation, transportation).

Economic and Environmental Impacts

The development of irrigated agriculture
has had tremendous impacts on central
Wisconsin. These impacts have been both
positive and negative in character. On the
positive side are the significant economic
advances the region has experienced. Money
received by producers of potatoes, sweet
corn, and snap beans is reinvested through
the purchase of local labor and goods. Part
of the income farmers earn is passed along to
state and federal government in the form of
taxes. The increasingly valuable agricultural
property is taxed by local government. In¬
come and property taxes benefit all area
residents, because they help maintain roads
and highways, support schools and univer¬
sities, and contribute to the nation’s defense
system.

The following facts brought out during a
March, 1982 Conference on Irrigated Agri¬
culture at Stevens Point reflect the impor¬
tance of such activity to the area economy
(Kenyon, 1982):

1. “Barren” land, once valued at a few
dollars per acre, is now worth as much
as $2000 per acre.

2. Area farmers annually earn $25
million from the sale of their products
to two Portage County canning and
potato processing companies.

3. One Portage County potato products
firm has just invested $30 million in
order to double its capacity (annual
employee payroll, $12 million).

4. One Portage County canning plant
processes twenty-six semi-trailer truck
loads of snap beans per day during the
peak production period.

5. More food is produced than can be
consumed locally; consequently, one
Portage County potato broker shipped
out 5500 semi-trailer truck loads last
year.

The negative features of irrigated agricul¬
ture are largely associated with the natural
environment. The rapid growth of this
method of farming has had adverse impacts
on soil, water, and wildlife resources. These
adverse impacts are exemplified by the fol¬
lowing facts, also presented at the 3-82
conference.

1 . Chemical substances manufactured for
farmers to control plant pests or to
stimulate crop growth have been car¬
ried downward through the soil into
drinking water supplies by excessive
amounts of rain or irrigation water.

2. The removal of wind breaks or natural
vegetation cover on large fields cleared
to accommodate self-propelled pivot¬
ing irrigation systems has resulted in
loss or displacement of soil.

1983]

Last— Irrigated Agriculture

55

3. University reports have pointed out a
loss of habitat for foxes, rabbits,
grouse, songbirds, and other wildlife
types where marshes have been drained
or trees cleared to produce irrigated
agricultural products.

In addition, federal government re¬
search suggests that the development
of lands for irrigation causes seasonal
as well as long-term changes in ground
water levels (Weeks, 1971).

There are still other impacts of irrigated
agriculture which are neither economic nor
environmental. For instance, there have
been social-political consequences where
such agricultural activity has been carried
out in close proximity to rural subdivisions.
Non-farm residences are not very compatible
with intensive agricultural activity of the
type associated with irrigation in central
Wisconsin. The arguments about which
human activity is the “highest or best use’’
or which activity was “located there first’’
are inevitable signs of this land use conflict.

Needed: A Regional Development Plan

Uncontrolled development of irrigated
agriculture— just like uncontrolled urban
development— is not in the best interests of
society. If allowed to grow as projected
without limits or bounds, irrigated agricul¬
ture could pose a threat to the long-term
health and well-being of central Wisconsin
residents (Butler, 1978). Short-range eco¬
nomic benefits should not take precedence
over longer range environmental costs.

What is needed now are joint discussions
between farmers, agri-business interests, and
those knowledgable about natural resource
management and protection. Such discus¬
sions will help pave the way for the eventual
establishment of policies on the growth of
irrigated agriculture in central Wisconsin.
When policies like these are developed and in
place, they will help guide the anticipated
growth. Controlled growth will allow farm¬

ers and agri-businessmen to make a profit
while at the same time reducing the possi¬
bility of adverse environmental side effects.

The purpose of such discussions would be
1) to examine the growth projections of irri¬
gated agriculture from now until the year
2000; 2) to examine the complex set of fac¬
tors which today influence the amount and
location of irrigated agriculture in central
Wisconsin; and 3) to discuss alternative
policies, programs, and practices which
government (local, state, federal) might
employ to better guide the development of
irrigated agriculture in the region over the
next two decades.

The ideas distilled from such discussions
could then be reviewed and evaluated. Those
with the greatest promise of success would
then be adopted by decision-makers, policy
bodies, and law-makers in the interest of
reasonable and rational development of irri¬
gation between now and the year 2000 in the
region.

Future growth of irrigation in central
Wisconsin is inevitable. But there are two
rather different possible scenarios for this
growth. On the one hand, growth could
occur haphazardly and explosively, to the
detriment of both the economy and the envi¬
ronment of the area. On the other hand, the
growth may occur in a systematic rational
fashion as a result of thoughtful anticipation
and the establishment of sound policy de¬
signed to accommodate it.

Literature Cited

Berge, O. I. 1964. Irrigation Equipment in
Wisconsin, University of Wisconsin Extension
Service Special Circular 90, 16 pp.

Butler, Kent S. 1978. Irrigation in the Central
Sands of Wisconsin — Potentials and Impacts,
University of Wisconsin-Madison College of
Agricultural and Life Sciences, Research Bul¬
letin R 2960, 52 pp.

Census of Agriculture (Wisconsin, Volume I,
State and County Data). 1978. United States
Department of Agriculture, 545 pp.

56

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

Collins, C. W. 1968. An Atlas of Wisconsin,
College Printing and Typing, Madison, 191 pp.

Irrigable Lands Inventory Plan of Work. 1980.
Golden Sands RC&D Area, 22 pp.

Kenyon, Sevie. April 3, 1982. “Pros, Cons of
Sands Irrigation Weighed,’’ Wisconsin Agri-
View, 2 pp.

Lippelt, I. D. and R. G. Hennings. 1981.
Irrigable Lands Inventory Phase I Ground
Water and Related Information, Wisconsin
Geological and Natural History Survey. 28 pp.

Schoney, Richard. 1977. Irrigation in Wisconsin,
Economic Issues Paper, University of Wis-
consin-Madison College of Agricultural and
Life Sciences, 4 pp.

Shariff, Ismail and G. D. Rose. 1966. The Nature
and Extent of Irrigation in Wisconsin, The
University of Wisconsin-Madison in co¬

operation with Economic Research Service,
USDA, 29 pp.

Statewide Water Conservation, Part II, Agricul¬
tural and Industrial. 1981. Office of Planning
and Analysis, Wisconsin Department of Nat¬
ural Resources, 38 pp.

Vegetable and Fruit: Potential for Production
and Processing in Central Wisconsin. 1964.
University of Wisconsin Extension Service, 36

pp.

Weeks, E. P. and H. G. Stangland. 1971. Effects
of Irrigation on Streamflow in the Central
Sand Plain of Wisconsin, U.S. Department of
the Interior, Geological Survey in cooperation
with Wisconsin Department of Natural Re¬
sources and Wisconsin Geological and Natural
History Survey, 1 17 pp.

GAD WALL DUCK INTRODUCTION IN NORTHWESTERN WISCONSIN

James O. Evrard

Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
Baldwin

Abstract

Gadwall (Anas strepera) ducklings were released into unoccupied habitat in
northwestern Wisconsin in 1970 and 1972 in an effort to establish a breeding popula¬
tion. Despite heavy first-year hunting mortality, sufficient survivors returned in sub¬
sequent years to establish a modest but successful breeding population. Releasing a
large number of ducklings can overcome the initial heavy hunting mortality.

Introduction

Releasing gadwalls into unoccupied
habitat to establish breeding populations has
been successful in several states in North
America, including Massachusetts (Borden
and Hochbaum 1966), New Jersey and New
York (Henny and Holgerson 1974), and
Minnesota (Moss 1975). In 1970 and 1972,
young gadwall ducks were released in the
Crex Meadows Wildlife Area (CMWA) in
northwestern Wisconsin through a coopera¬
tive project between the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the Wiscon¬
sin Department of Natural Resources
(WDNR). The objective of stocking gad-
walls was to fill an unoccupied niche created
by intensive management of the CMWA.

I acknowledge the efforts in this project of
J. Bergquist, W. Wheeler, R. Hunt, and
P. Kooiker of the WDNR, F. Lee and
H. Nelson of the USFWS, and N. Stone.

Study Area and Methods

The 10,820-ha CMWA, located in Burnett
County, Wisconsin, is managed primarily
for waterfowl, sharp-tailed grouse ( Pedio -
ecetes phasianellus) and prairie chicken
(Tympanuchus cupido ) by the WDNR. In¬
tensive fire and water management has at¬
tempted to restore the prairie wetland com¬
plex to conditions similar to those existing at
the time of white settlement in the 1850’s.
Detailed descriptions of the area and its

management are given by Vogl (1964), Berg¬
quist (1973), and Zicus (1974). Gadwalls
were released in the 970-ha refuge located in
the center of the CMWA. Gadwalls were not
known to breed on the CMWA prior to the
stocking experiment although there was a
vague and doubtful historical breeding ref¬
erence somewhere “in the extreme northern
part of the state” reported by Kumlien and
Hollister (1903). Breeding records do exist
for southeastern Wisconsin (Jahn and Hunt
1964).

The refuge contains approximately 320 ha
of open water; 240 ha are sedge ( Carex spp.)
and cattail ( Typha spp.) marsh; 110 ha are
cultivated (corn, rye, and buckwheat); 280
ha are brush prairie (big bluestem (Andro-
pogon gerardi ), little bluestem (A. scopar-
ius ), sweet fern (Myrica asplenifolia ), hazel
(Corylus spp.), and oak (Quercus ellipsoi-
dalis ) brush); and 16 ha are aspen (Populus
spp.) forest. Soils are organic peats and deep
sands of the Meenon-Newson Association
overlying Cambrian sandstone. Climate is
cool continental and precipitation averages
800 mm annually.

In 1970, gadwall eggs were collected by
USFWS personnel on the J. Clark Sayler
National Wildlife Refuge in North Dakota
and were taken to the Northern Prairie Wild¬
life Research Center, Jamestown, North
Dakota, for hatching. On 10 August 1970,
WDNR personnel transported 400 4-week-
old gadwalls (200 o% 200 9) at night by

57

58

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

truck from Jamestown to the CMWA where
they were released the following day into an
open-topped, 2.4-ha pen. The ducklings
were banded with standard USFWS alum¬
inum leg bands and numbered, white plastic
nasal saddles (Greenwood 1977) were placed
on the females for field identification of in¬
dividual birds in subsequent years. Mortality
in the pen was low — only 4 females died
before the birds became capable of flight
and left the pen.

On 8 August 1972, 200 additional gadwall
ducklings (95 cr, 1059) were sexed, leg-
banded, and transported from Jamestown to
the CMWA where they were released during
the night in the refuge pen. A raccoon ( Proc -
yon lotor) killed 6 birds during the second
week of confinement.

Waterfowl breeding transects have been
conducted on the CMWA since 1957 to
develop annual breeding pair and brood in¬
dices using criteria developed by Hammond
(1969). The road transect covers 10.6 km2
and is conducted every 7-10 days in May,
June, and July. Roads are driven during the
early morning and all waterfowl observed
with 7x35 binoculars and 25x60 spotting
scope are recorded.

Results and Discussion

In 1970, gadwalls left the CMWA by 8
November. There was apparent heavy hunt¬
ing mortality with a direct recovery rate ap¬
proaching 25%. Most direct recoveries were
in the vicinity of the CMWA with nearly
70% from Wisconsin. Approximately 5% of
the ducks checked (95) during the first 2 days
of the 1970 hunting season on the CMWA
were gadwalls. Prior to 1970, gadwalls
averaged 1% of the opening-day duck har¬
vest checked. Indirect recoveries continued
through 1972.

Gadwalls were again observed on the
CMWA in mid- April of 1971. The 7 May
waterfowl survey indicated 7 pairs (3 of the
females had nasal saddles) plus an extra
drake on the 10.6 km2 transect. Two nests,
both subsequently destroyed by predators,

were found in the release area. No broods
were observed. In 1972, the only gadwalls
observed were 5 drakes in a flock on 5 June.

Gadwalls released in 1972 also suffered
heavy hunting mortality. Gadwall ducks
made up 9% of the opening day harvest
compared to none examined in 1971. From
1973 through 1979 when the evaluation of
the stocking experiment ended, gadwalls
averaged 1% of the opening day duck
harvest on the CMWA.

Waterfowl breeding transects were not
conducted in 1973. In 1974, 6 gadwall pairs
were counted on the CMWA transect. The
number of indicated pairs has varied from 3
to 7 from 1975 to 1979. Broods were ob¬
served in 1974 and 1978, establishing the
gadwall as a breeding species on the CMWA.
While densities of breeding pairs have not
reached levels reported for prairie habitat by
Borden and Hochbaum (1966), the gadwall
ranks sixth numerically among the breeding
duck species on the CMWA (Table 1).

Management Recommendations

Gadwalls have recently expanded their
range in northeastern North America
(Henny and Holgerson 1974), Cantin et al.
1976). This expansion can be aided by releas-

Table 1. Estimated density of waterfowl breeding pairs
recorded on the Crex Meadows Wildlife Area transect,
Wisconsin.

Pairs /km2

Species

1975

1976

1977

1978

1979

Gadwall

0.6

0.6

0.6

0.3

0.5

Mallard

1.6

2.1

4.9

3.3

3.5

(Anas platyrhynchos)

Blue-winged teal

3.6

4.5

5.0

5.1

4.3

(A. discors)

Ring-necked duck

1.8

1.8

1.3

1.5

3.1

(Aythya collaris)

Others"

0.7

1.9

2.7

1.4

2.5

“ Black duck (Anas

ruhripes),

Pintail

(A.

acuta).

American wigeon (A. americana), Northern shoveler
(A. clypeata). Green-winged teal (A. carolinensis), Can-
vasback (Ay thy a valisineria), and Hooded merganser
(Lophodytes cucullatus).

1983]

Evrard—Gadwall Introduction

59

ing ducklings into suitable, unoccupied
habitat. The gentle-release method used on
the CMWA was successful. Since the young
birds are highly susceptible to hunting, the
release should be made, where possible, in a
large area closed to hunting. Special hunting
restrictions for the gadwall are not practical
due to the difficulty hunters have in identify¬
ing the bird (Evrard 1970) and the political
resistance to restricting the harvest of a
species relatively abundant over a large area.
The best approach appears to be liberating a
sufficiently large number of ducklings at any
one location or time to overcome the heavy
first-year hunting mortality.

References Cited

Bergquist, J. R. 1973. A study of constructed
ponds in relation to waterfowl production in
northwestern Wisconsin. M.S. Thesis. Univ.
Minnesota, St. Paul, MN. 1 1 1 pp.

Borden, R. and H. A. Hochbaum. 1966. Gadwall
seeding in New England. Trans. North Am.
Wildl. Nat. Res. Conf. 31:79-88.

Cantin, M., A. Bourget, and G. Chapdelaine.
1976. Distribution et ecologie de la reproduc¬
tion du canard chipeau (Anas strepera ) au
Quebec. Naturaliste Can. 103:469-481.

Evrard, J. O. 1970. Assessing and improving the

ability of hunters to identify flying waterfowl.
J. Wildl. Manage. 34:114-126.

Greenwood, R. J. 1977. Evaluation of a nasal
marker for ducks. J. Wildl. Manage. 41:
582-585.

Hammond, M. C. 1969. Notes on conducting
waterfowl breeding population surveys in
north central states. Pages 238-254 in Saska¬
toon wetlands seminar. Can. Wildl. Serv. Rep.
Ser. 6.

Henny, C. J. and N. E. Holgerson. 1974. Range
expansion and population increase of the gad¬
wall in eastern North America. Wildfowl
25:95-101.

Kumlien, L. and N. Hollister. 1903. The birds of
Wisconsin. Bull. Wise. Nat. Hist. Soc. 3(1-3).

Jahn, L. R. and R. A. Hunt. 1964. Duck and
coot ecology and management in Wisconsin.
Wise. Conserv. Dept. Tech. Bull. 33.

Moss, B. A. 1975. A study on the introduction of
gadwall (Anas strepera ) and widgeon (Anas
americana) into the Lake Minnetonka area.
M.S. Thesis. Univ. Minnesota, St. Paul, MN.
87 pp.

Vogl. R. J. 1964. Vegetational history of Crex
Meadows, a prairie savanna in northwestern
Wisconsin. Am. Midi. Nat. 72:157-175.

Zicus, M. C. 1974. A study of giant Canada geese
(Branta canadensis maxima ) nesting at Crex
Meadows, Wisconsin. M.S. Thesis. Univ. Min¬
nesota, St. Paul, MN. 116 pp.

THESES ON CHRISTIAN VIOLENCE

Kent D. Shifferd
Department of History
Northland College

“What causes wars and fightings among

you?”

James 4: 1

Christianity is unique among the Semitic
religions in its disavowel of violence.' No
stronger statements against violence can be
found in religious literature than those by
Jesus. Consider the following. “You have
heard it said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth
for a tooth,’ but I say to you, Do not resist
one who is evil.”, and, “You have heard it
said, ‘Love your neighbor and persecute
your enemy,’ but I say to you, Love your
enemies and pray for those who persecute
you.” (Matt. 5:38, and 43); “Blessed are the
peacemakers, for they shall be called the
sons of God.” (Matt. 5:39). Based on such
teachings, countless observers across the
centuries have agreed with the conclusion
stated by George F. Thomas, that “In his
life and teachings alike, Jesus showed
himself to be truly the Prince of Peace.”2
The example of Jesus and his teachings
inspire those who hope for a social order
founded on love, cooperation, and the sanc¬
tity of human life. But there is a little dis¬
cussed and oft-ignored tradition of brutality
and violence exercised in the name of this
teacher.3 Why? Why have Christians found
it easy to sanction and commit violence in
Christ’s name, especially when he appears to
have eschewed violence?

We are led to raise the question of whether
there is not some ethical contradiction in
Christianity, either in the teachings of Jesus
himself, or in the traditions about Jesus and
in the dogma and precedents established by
the Church throughout its history. I believe
this to be the case, and until we face it,
Christian violence will continue. If Chris¬
tians cannot summon the courage to exorcise

the demons in their own tradition, to pluck
out the offending members, they will be
powerless to control those surges of violence
which have characterized their past. My own
study is directed toward that end.

It is a somber fact of history that in the
name of Christ, men have murdered and
condoned murder, tortured women and chil¬
dren, slaughtered in war, and executed each
other without remorse. There have been
many types of Christian violence including
early acts of violence during the reigns of the
first Christian emperors, the infamous
gestae Francorum reported by the Bishop of
Tours, Charlemagne’s brutal Christianizing
of the pagans east of the Elbe, anti-semitic
pogroms carried out on the way to the
Crusades, the Crusades themselves, carried
out against Moslems, the Albigensian Cru¬
sade in Europe, the Spanish Reconquista,
the Inquistion, the trials and burnings for
witchcraft and heresy, the violence of
Protestant and Catholic during the Refor¬
mation, mistreatment of natives and of
Africans by Christians in the history of the
new world, the holy war of American Prot¬
estant ministers in World War One, and
contemporary Christian advocates of vio¬
lence such as the Lebanese Phalange, the
Way, the Christian Patriots Defense League,
and so on.

No one knows when the earliest act of
Christian violence occurred. We have
records of Christian mobs doing violence to
non-Christians in the second century and
any number of official acts of violence with
the dawning of the age of Constantine.4 It is
not my purpose in this paper to describe the
entire catalog of horrors perpetrated in
Christ’s name in the 2000 years since he
himself was the victim of Roman violence.

60

1983]

Shifferd— -Theses on Christian Violence

61

My purpose is to offer for debate several
theses about the genesis of Christian vio¬
lence. The following list of examples of
Christian violence is designed merely to
sensitize the reader to the seriousness of the
phenomena. Let us take, for example, the
legendary Christian monarch, Charlemagne,
who “. . . for eighteen campaigns waged war
with untiring ferocity. Charles gave the
conquered Saxons a choice between baptism
and death and had 4,500 [unarmed] Saxon
“rebels” beheaded in one day; after which
he preceded to Thionville to celebrate the
nativity of Christ.”5

In the sixteenth century Protestants and
Catholics tore one another to pieces. Martin
Luther, “stated again and again, especially
during the time of the Peasant’s War, that it
is impossible ‘to rule the world according to
the Gospel.’”6 Accordingly, he uttered his
famous instruction to the princes to cut them
down like dogs [etc.]7 But the Protestants
had no monopoly on violence during this
period. A Catholic attack on the town of La
Garde yielded this report. “The four prin¬
ciple men of La Garde were hanged and the
clergyman was thrown from the top of his
church steeple.”8

A single example will suffice from the
seventeenth century. There is a painting
above the alter at Notre Dames des Victoires
in Quebec, showing an English warship sink¬
ing beneath the waves of the St. Lawrence,
her sailers drowning, and flying over this
scene an angel of the Lord, bearing a shield
with the inscription, “Deus providebat.” It
commemorates the destruction of Walker’s
fleet in 1690. Of course, the casting of wars
in the mold of religion is not an isolated
event in Christian history. Our Civil War
gave us the great marching Battle Hymn of
the Republic. At the inception of that tragic
struggle, New Yorker George T. Strong,
wrote, “Exsurgat Deus!” Calling “for God
to rise up, he viewed the conflict as a
‘religious war — more important to mankind
than any since the Saracen invasion . . . was
beat back by Charles Martel.’ In Georgia,

Charles C. Jones saw it as ‘a national
judgment’ that ‘comes from God ... to
accomplish given ends.’”9

Our own century also bears witness to
Christian violence. The first World War was
interpreted in Christian terms on both sides.

Americans did not enter the war until 1917
and the religious community was almost uni¬
versally pacifist on religious grounds. Then
it turned 180° and preached holy war. Turn¬
ing pages of Christian journals from the year
1917 we find such assertions as, “We must
help in the bayonetting of a normally decent
German soldier in order to free him from a
tyranny which he presently accepts as his
choosen form of government.”10 One might
wonder what would have been Jesus’ re¬
sponse to such an assertion. A clergyman
did, asking and answering what is perhaps
the most bizarre question in the history of
Christian ethics. “Would He [Christ] fight
and kill? There is not an opportunity to deal
death to the enemy that He would shirk. . . .
He would take bayonet and bomb and rifle
and do the work of deadliness against that
which is the most deadly enemy of his
Father’s kingdom in a thousand years.”11
The phenomenon of Christian holy war is
not some historic fossil, left behind in the
middle ages.

Today we read in the newspapers of evi¬
dence of Christian advocacy of violence. The
Way is a contemporary sect founded by Paul
Wierwolle. A disaffected ex-Way member
recently told a reporter, “A leader took me
aside and told me not to worry. If people
outside the Way were killed [in the coming
revolution] he said it was no worse than
animals dying because the people aren’t
saved and have no souls.”12 The militaristic
tendencies of the new Christian conservatism
are accompanied by a kind of Christian
xenophobia as well. I recently saw the
following grafitti on a wall at a great Mid¬
western university. “Don’t feel sorry for the
starving of the third world. They are the
people of Satan and it’s God’s purpose that
they starve.”

62

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

We are here face to face with the least
attractive visage of Christianity, and would
do well to ask if these pathetic and repre¬
hensible people are indeed Christians at all.

The only workable definition of Christian
I have encountered is that all who call
themselves Christians, are. We cannot
simply dismiss the violence of Christian
history as being the non-Christian part of
that history. Nor would those who com¬
mitted the violence do so. Charlemagne sin¬
cerely believed he was the ideal Christian
monarch. Making distinctions is unfaithful
to the past and, as C. S. Lewis has pointed
out, linguistically unworkable.

Now if once we allow people to start spiri¬
tualizing and refining, or as they might say,
‘deepening,’ the sense of the word Christian, it
too will speedily become a useless word. ... It
is not for us to say who, in the deepest sense, is
or is not close to the spirit of Christ. We do
not see into men’s hearts. We cannot judge,
and are indeed forbidden to judge. It would be
wicked arrogance for us to say that any man
is, or is not, a Christian in this refined sense.

. . . We must therefore stick to the original and
obvious meaning. The name Christians was
first given at Antioch (Acts xi.26) to ‘the
disciples’, to those who accepted the teachings
of the Apostles. When a man who accepts the
Christian doctrine lives unworthily of it, it is
much clearer to say he is a bad Christian than
to say he is not a Christian.”13

In fact, I would not even go so far as to
distinguish between “good” and “bad” if
by those terms Lewis means faithfulness to
the true tradition. There is, nevertheless, a
clear distinction, even contradiction, be¬
tween the various elements of the tradition. I
believe Christian advocates of violence are
responding to certain other, bona fide ele¬
ments of their tradition, a tradition which
years of study and teaching has convinced
me is complex, paradoxical, even a multi-
dox.

The hypotheses I advance to account for
the paradox of Christian violence can be
classified into three groups: historical,

doctrinal and social. In the first I suggest that
Christianity inherited from Judaism a vio¬
lent set of mind. In the second I suggest that
certain aspects of Christian doctrine, rooted
in the New Testament and elaborated by the
Fathers of the Church, contain the seeds of
violence. Third, I suggest that the social con¬
ditions to which Christianity adapted itself,
with which it made its peace, guaranteed that
it would be at least in part a religion of
violence. 14

Christianity inherited a violent mind set
from Judaism. Jaweh is a Warrior , is the
title of a recent book.15 From earliest times
the God of Israel was associated with vio¬
lence. After the crossing of the Red (or
Reed) Sea the Israelites sang this song to
their deity:

I will sing to Yaweh for he has triumphed
gloriously;

the horse and the rider he has thrown into the
sea.

Yaweh is my strength and my song,

And he is my salvation;

this is my God and I will praise him,

My father’s God and I will exalt him.

Yahweh is a man of war.

(Exodus 15:1, my emphasis)

Millard Lind points out, “There is no ques¬
tion but that the exercise of military power is
the theme of this poem.”16 Yahweh becomes
King in this paradigmatic experience — the
warrior-god-king of Israel,17 providing a
normative image rich in possibilities made
actual in the later course of Christian his¬
tory. Even before the Exodus, in Egypt, so¬
ciety is divided into God’s people and God’s
enemies, the latter (including non-combat¬
ants who are the enemy after all, the “people
of Satan” as the graffitti had it) are struck
down by the willful violence of Jahweh exer¬
cising his powers over nature. “I know that
the king of Egypt will not let you go unless
compelled by a mighty hand. So I will stretch
out my hand and smite Egypt. . . . (Exod.
3:19) Moses, Jahweh’s designated, slays an
Egyptian. “It may not be insignificant that

1983]

Shifferd — Theses on Christian Violence

63

according to the tradition Moses was of the
house of Levi (Exod. 2:1), a house already
associated with violence in the Book of
Genesis.”18 One could elaborate this for
many pages. The Conquest of Canaan was a
series of divinely commanded and aided
military campaigns, or at the least it was seen
so by the Hebrews (the doubts of current
scholars being irrelevant — what we are seek¬
ing here is the imago dei). It was a conquest
“involving a great deal of violence, [a
conclusion] based not only on the simplified
account of the book of Joshua, but on the
archeological evidence as well.”19 Joshua
reads, “So Joshua defeated the whole land
. . . he left none remaining but utterly
des toyed all that breathed, as Yahweh God
of Israel commanded. (Josh. 10:40, by
emphasis) In the song of Deborah in Judges,
Jael is called “most blessed of women”
because she:

put her hand to the tent peg

and her right hand to the workman’s mallet,
She struck Sisera a blow,

She crushed his head,

She shattered and pierced his temple.

He sank, he fell,

He lay still at her feet. . . .

There he fell dead. (Judges 5:24-27)

“Thou shalt not kill” does not apply to
the enemies of God. Whatever we can con¬
clude about the image of God in toto in the
Old Testament, it is in part that of a violent
deity who destroys armies, commands his
people to commit genocide, and praises
single acts of brutality. From the time of the
Exodus to the wars of the Maccabees the
Jewish God was associated in the minds of
his believers with violence.20 The argument
of Vernard Eller, that all this is God’s war
and the Hebrews are expected to stand by
and let God do it, is not only morally hypo¬
critical — especially from the victims’ point
of view — but unfaithful to the Biblical text
and without scholarly foundation. His is the
valiant effort of a Christian pacifist to recast
a tradition he can’t bear to abandon, a tradi¬

tion that is not wholly pacifist.21 Thus, the
warrior god is the first part of the violent
legacy and Old Testament bequeathed to the
Christians.

The second part is the eschatology of late
Palestinian Judaism. Roman domination
and Persian influence brought about a
greatly heightened anxiety and laid the
psychological preconditions for violence.
The Roman conquest in 63 b.c. ended any
realistic prospect that Israel would work out
her divine future in the political sphere.
“The redemption she hoped for in the future
was not [to be] a real historical event, but a
fantastic affair in which all history had been
brought to an end for good and all.”22 God
was no longer transcendent over history.
“. . . another idea of transcendence came
instead. God, like his people, was cut adrift
from history. ... He now became universal
Lord of Heaven and earth . . . judge of the
world.”23 He would bring about the fearful
Last Days, the end of history itself. This
awful event was made necessary by the
power of sin on earth, for if God no longer
operated in history, Satan did. Part of this
was the influence of Persian dualism, the
notion that at the Last Days the forces of
light will lock in global combat with the
forces of darkness. “Sin appeared to be an
ineluctible power, spreading its tentacles
over the whole world, and affecting the heart
of the individual. . . .”24 The Last Days
would be accompanied by the coming of a
Messiah. Of course, there were many varia¬
tions on these themes. Some still hoped for
divinely-aided political victory for the “one
annointed of God to fulfill his purposes, like
the ancient kings of Israel — who would over¬
throw the enemies of God.”25

It is difficult for us to perceive how real
and concrete was this mass anxiety.

Evil is not to be thought of here as a philo¬
sophical abstraction: for the first-century
man, it was a personal matter . . . evil existed
as personal forces with which the universe, the
community, and the individual were all in¬
volved . . . evil was a personal being, called

64

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

simply ‘the serpent,’ who introduced to Adam
and Eve the idea of questioning the will of
God, and then of rebelling against it. In late
Judaism the tempter was identified as Satan—
i.e., the Adversary. In the Book of Daniel,
intersteller space is peopled with demonic
beings so powerful that they can delay the
messengers of God (Dan. 10). This dualistic
conception of evil . . . was probably adopted
by the Hebrews during the period of their
contact with the Persians, whose religion was
characterized by a sharp division of cosmic
forces into good and evil, engaged in constant
warfare . . .26

John the Baptist was only one of the pre-
Christian heralds of the Last Judgment. “He
felt called upon to announce an immanent
crisis in world history. The content of his
message is preserved in the Q source (Matt.
3:7-10, Luke 3:7-9). Here such phrases as
‘Wrath to come’ and ‘ax is laid to the root of
the trees’ indicate that John was proclaiming
the event long awaited by the Jews: God’s
final judgment upon the evils of the
world.”27 The final struggle against Satan
is on, and it is against the humans who are
his helpers. “Satan,” write Kee and Young,
“is assisted by men who submit themselves
to his purpose and thereby gain extraordin¬
ary powers. Others are involuntarily pos¬
sessed by demons. . . . [this doctrine became
a petri dish for the culturing of witch-
burners.] Jesus’s words in Mark 3:27 clearly
imply that before the constructive work of
establishing the rule of God can be com¬
pleted the Kingdom of Satan must be de¬
stroyed.”28

The new eschatological doctrines with
their concept of a final struggle against
Satan and a day of wrathful judgment to
come, a judgment in which not only are men
sent to everlasting hell, but cosmic violence
is employed to destroy earth, all raised the
stakes in the conflict between good and evil,
including our own participation in it. Anxi¬
ety was raised to a high level. Feelings of
anxiety, fear and anger are preconditions for
violence. When the last judgment failed to
occur on schedule, when it was put off again

and again, each delay increasing both the
desire for it and the fear of it, the event, with
all its symbolic mythology, became sus¬
pended in a limbo of the future where it
would fuel the hopes and fears and provide a
rationale for first century Christians and for
others down through history. The Last Judg¬
ment is God’s Final Battle. Which side are
you on?, is the question put by this terrible
dualism. Thus in late Palestinian Judaic
eschatology we have both a violent and
angry God and his enemies. Coupled with
the holy war motif of the Old Testament we
have the rationale and the role models for
violence, both bequeathed as a legacy to
whichever Christians would, in the future,
feel the need to avail themselves of them.
This argument comprises my first thesis
about Christian violence. The next five
theses fall under the heading of Christian
doctrine.

Any scholar or teacher who has attempted
to elucidate early Christian doctrine knows it
is a mass of confusion. Nevertheless, the
root of my second thesis is that the moral
and ethical pronouncements of Jesus himself
are confusing.

Jesus’ teachings on love, forgiveness, and
non-violence may seem clear and unambigu¬
ous. For example, he instructed to forgive
“seventy times seven” (Matt. 18:22), yet I
know of no medieval “witch” who was
forgiven 490 times before being burnt after
her 491st conviction. The problem with
Jesus’ non-violent ethic is two fold. First, it
has been watered down by interpretation, or
simply rejected outright by his followers who
wiggle through all manner of rationaliza¬
tions in the process, as Key and Young point
out. Jesus’

. . . demand is for unimpeachable integrity
and singleness of purpose, purity of heart.
Discerning listeners— in Jesus’ own day and
ever since — have been prompted to explain:
‘what man is capable of this?’ . . . They have
claimed that such teaching is utterly unrealis¬
tic in our world. . . . Some have said that we
are not to take his demands literally. What
Jesus meant to do was simply to illustrate the

1983]

Shifferd — Theses on Christian Violence

65

ideal attitude. . . . Others have insisted that
Jesus’ words must be taken literally . . . but
that they cannot be complied with in this
world . . . man can only fulfill them when God
finally brings about the consummation of the
kingdom. . . . Still others have sought to cope
... by asserting that they are not practical,
applicable, or even relevant to life in this
world. They are to be understood only in
terms of the coming of God’s final judgment.
. . . Jesus’ ethic has been called an interim
ethic ... in expectation of the immediate end
of the world.29

These enervating rationalizations appear to
be contradictions of Jesus’ ethic. Key and
Young think they are. But one can only
adopt such a position if one remains blind to
the second part of the problem and that is
Jesus’s own statements to the contrary.
While he did not adopt the holy war themes
of the Old Testament, he did embrace the
violent eschatology of late Palestinian
Judaism. Indeed, he can be understood in no
other terms. Thus, while Jesus’ own teach¬
ings on pacifism and non-violence may seem
clear, they do not exhaust his statements re¬
garding violence.

In Luke 13:49-54, Jesus is quoted in his
most violent statement.

I came to cast fire upon the earth; and
would that it were already kindled! I have a
baptism to be baptized with: and how I am
constrained until it is accomplished! Do you
think that I have come to give peace on earth?
No, I tell you, but rather division; for hence¬
forth in one house there will be five divided,
three against two and two against three; they
will be divided, father against son and son
against father, mother against daughter and
daughter against her mother, mother-in-law
against her daughter-in-law and daughter-in-
law against her mother-in-law.

Matthew’s account of this episode leaves out
the first two sentences and adds the follow¬
ing to the end,

and a man’s foes will be those of his own
household. He who loves father or mother
more than me is not worthy of me; and he who
loves son or daughter more than me is not

worthy of me; and he who does not take his
cross and follow me is not worthy of me. He
who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses
his life for my sake will find it. (Matt. 10:
38-39)

This makes it appear that Jesus is only using
the language of violence in a metaphorical
sense. He is not, perhaps, counseling
physical violence against the members of
one’s own family, but merely saying that
some will ‘believe’ while others won’t, and
that Christians must be willing to alienate
their closest family members for sake of
their religion. The various scriptural
accounts are not identical and are subject to
comparative interpretation, and they have
been subjected to varying interpretations
according to the needs of the historical ages
in which Christians have lived and sought
guidance from the scriptures.

One of the most difficult passages for
Christian pacifists to explain is the single
violent act of Jesus; although it should be
pointed out that in the rejected non-
canonical infancy gospels and other New
Testament apocrypha, the young Jesus per¬
forms several violent acts including murder.
Mark, the earliest gospel, reports: “And he
entered the temple and began to drive out
those who sold and bought in the temple,
and he overturned the tables of the money¬
changers and the seats of those who sold
pigeons (Mark 11:15-17). Luke’s account,
written later, is spare: “And he entered the
temple and began to drive out those who
sold, saying to them. ‘It is written, ‘My
house shall be a house of prayer’; but you
have made it a den of robbers.’” (Luke
19:45-46) The account of John, which is the
latest, is more descriptive, adding, “And
making a whip of cords, he drove them all,
with the sheep and oxen, out of the temple,
and he poured out the coins of the money
changers and overturned their tables.’’ In
the accounts of this action, Jesus is neither
meek, nor merciful, nor forgiving. He is
intolerant.

Indeed, Jesus is extremely intolerant of

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those who do not believe he is a special
messenger of God. The famous verses which
open the Gospel of John begin with God’s
love for man, but end with God’s condemna¬
tion of Man. “For God so loved the world
that he gave his only begotten son, that
whoever believes in him should not perish
but have eternal life. For God sent the Son
into the world, not to condemn the world,
but that the world might be saved through
him. He who believes in him is not
condemned; he who does not believe is con¬
demned already, because he has not believed
in the name of the only son of God. (John
3:4-19) (Although unclear in some versions,
these words are attributed to Jesus in the
World Publishing Company’s “Rainbow
Edition’’ in which Jesus’ words are printed
in red ink.) In this teaching, God, unforgiv¬
ing of unbelievers leaves them a choice of
believing or perishing. At the Last Supper,
Jesus appears to couple the love ethic with a
violent punishment for those who fail to
heed it, in what seems to be an inconsistency.

When the Son of man comes in his glory,
and all the angels with him, then he will sit on
his glorious throne. Before him will be
gathered all the nations, and he will separate
them one from another as a shepherd separ¬
ates the sheep from the goats, and he will place
the sheep at his right hand, but the goats at the
left. Then the King will say to those at his right
hand, ‘Come, O blessed of my Father, inherit
the kingdom prepared for you from the foun¬
dation of the world; for I was hungry and you
gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me
drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me,
I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick
and you visited me, I was in prison and you
came to me.’ . . . Then he will say to those at
his left hand, ‘Depart from me, you cursed,
into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and
his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me
no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no
drink, I was a stranger and you did not wel¬
come me, naked and you did not clothe me,
sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’

. . . And they will go away into eternal punish¬
ment, but the righteous into eternal life.
(Matt. 25:31-36, 41,42, 43,46)

This teaching is typical of many of Jesus’
utterances. He believed that mankind would
separate into two groups, one favored, and
the other accused. “He who is not with me is
against me.’’ (Luke 10:23) Jesus believed in
a dies irae when a wrathful God would do
violence to that part of mankind who had
rejected him. He said to the multitudes,
“You brood of vipers! Who warned you to
flee from the wrath to come?’’, and, “Even
now the axe is laid to the root of the trees;
every tree that does not therefore bear good
fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.”
(Luke 3:7, 9) Asking the question, “When
the Son of man comes, will he find faith on
earth?” (Luke 18:8), he in Matthew reports
his answer, given in the parable of the weeds
of the field.

“He who sows the good seed is the Son of
man; the field is the world, and the good seed
means the sons of the kingdom; the weeds are
the sons of the evil one, and the enemy who
sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the close
of the age, and the reapers are angels. Just as
the weeds are gathered and burned with fire,
so will it be at the close of the age. The Son of
man will send his angels, and they will gather
out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all
evildoers, and throw them into the furnace of
fire; there men will weep and gnash their teeth.
(Matt. 13:36-43)

In Mark, Jesus says, “But woe to him by
whom the Son of man is betrayed.” (Mark
17:21) Similarly in Luke: “And I tell you,
everyone who acknowledges me before men,
the Son of man also will acknowledge before
the angels of God; but he who denies me
before men, will be denied before the angels
of God.” (Luke 12:8-9) And “He who hates
me hates my father also.” (John 15:23) In¬
deed, whoever falls from the teaching will
suffer punishments worse than physical
mutilation. For example:

Whoever causes one of these little ones who
believe in me to sin, it would be better for him
if a great millstone were hung round his neck
and he were thrown into the sea. And if your
hand causes you to sin, cut it off; it is better

1983]

Shifferd — Theses on Christian Violence

67

for you to enter life maimed than with two

hands to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire.

(Mark 9:42-48)

Those who do not accept Christ are re¬
minded of the divine violence against
Sodom. (Luke 10:10-15 and 17:22-37) In the
parable of the vineyard, the fate of those
who reject God is thus: “He will come and
destroy those tenants, and give the vineyard
to others. . . . The very stone which the
builders rejected [i.e. Christ] has become the
head of the corner. Everyone who falls on
that stone will be broken to pieces; but when
it falls on anyone it will crush him.” (Luke
20:16-18) In John’s gospel Jesus is reported
as saying: “I am the vine, you are the
branches. He who abides in me and I in him
he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from
me you can do nothing. If a man does not
abide in me, he is cast forth as a branch and
withers; and the branches are gathered and
thrown into the fire and burned.” (John
15:5-6) The language of Jesus is rich in the
imagery of violence, but he also spoke
directly and plainly. “You brood of vipers!
how can you speak good when you are evil?

. . . I tell you on the day of Judgment men
will render account for every careless word
they utter for by your words you will be
justified, and by your words you will be con¬
demned.” (Matt. 12:34-36)

Professor Meinhold points out, “In the
apocalyptic speeches of Christ the multipli¬
cation of wars, the filling of the earth with
cries of wars, is a sign of man’s deep in¬
volvement with the antidivine powers and of
his degeneration. War, as an eschatological
event, is both cause and result of sin.30

The same confusion or lack of ethical clar¬
ity characterizes the rest of the New Testa¬
ment which is not, as Key and Young point
out, “. . . a single, unified work, but an
anthology of writings serving a variety of
objectives and originating in widely scattered
parts of the empire over a range in time of
about a century. So we must not expect
elaborate or systematic treatments of either
ethical or theological matters.”31 What

frequently happens, then, is that Christians
choose the saying of Jesus or Paul that in¬
forms the moment. Ethics is governed by the
principle of expediency.

But there was more confusion in the testi¬
mony of the early Christian centuries than
merely ethical confusion, there was an im¬
mense theological confusion that resulted
from the efforts to understand a Jewish
prophet in terms of both the mystery reli¬
gions of the east and the rational philosophy
of the Greeks. While this may have been an
intellectually fertile time, it led to two
consequences which have great significance
for the history of Christian violence. These
are the mutual rejection of Christians and
Jews and the long, brutal history of anti¬
semitism that culminated in the Holocaust,
on the one hand. And, on the other hand, it
led to the phenomenon of orthodoxy and
heresy. Since so much was at stake, i.e., the
fate of the ultimate being, God himself, and
the fate of all mankind at the last judgment,
since the stakes were on a cosmic scale, and
the whole business cast in a radical dualism
of good people versus the enemies of God, it
is easy to understand why so much violence
has been done to dissenters (the confusion
being so great and so much being at stake).
Theses three and four, then, are that the
theological confusion led to the creation and
subsequent hatred of “The Jews” and of the
heretic. Both were nurtured in the virulent,
emotional hothouse of early Christian escha¬
tology.

Rosemary Reuther has demonstrated in
Faith and Fratricide that anti-semitism has
its roots in the very core of Christian theol¬
ogy, that Christian scripture created the
stereotype of “The Jew,” the assassin of
God’s prophets and finally of God himself.32
Christianity is an exclusivist religion, delib¬
erately shutting out all who disagree, pro¬
nouncing them anathema. The first people
shut out were the Jews. Reuther shows that
the anti-Jewish trends in Christianity go
back to earliest times and are linked to their
proclamation of Jesus as the Christ which
brought with it a new way of reading the

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

scriptures. These were interpreted as scrip¬
tures. These were interpreted as signs of
the coming of Christ and of his rejection
by his own people. Gregory Baum, who
introduces the book, writes that, “. . . the
Christian affirmation of Jesus as the Christ
was accompanied by a refutation of the
synogogal reading of the Scriptures [i.e.,
refutation, which Rosemary Ruether calls
‘the left hand of Christology,’ is the source
and origin of Christian anti-semitism.33
Reuther herself writes, “On the one hand,
the Church argues that the true meaning of
the Scriptures is that of a prophecy of Jesus
as the Christ. And, on the other hand, it
developed a collection of texts ‘against the
Jews’ to show why the authority of the offi¬
cial Jewish tradition should be discounted
when it refutes this Christological midrash
of its own Scriptures.’’34

What powered this hostility was the great
and unexpected disappointment at the
failure of Jesus’ Jerusalem mission to usher
in the Last Days. Instead it ended with his
execution as a common criminal. How could
this happen to someone they believed was
the Messiah? Especially when the very fact
that it did happen convinced most Jewish
people that he wasn’t?35 The only possible
explanation was that it was destined to
happen and they had to find proof of it in
the Scriptures. Believing as they did, then,
“Those who refused to believe in his name
would be rejected from Israel and have no
part in the community of salvation. Now the
Church knew that it and it alone understood
the real meaning of the Scriptures.”36
“Why,” asks Reuther, “was it necessary to
emphasize that the Jewish religious tradition
not only rejects the gospel, but tries to kill its
messengers (including its ‘forerunners,’ the
prophets)? We would suggest that this theme
in the Christian tradition developed from the
crucial need to make religious sense out of
the crucifixion itself, i.e . to provide a
dogmatic necessity for the fact that the
Prophet-King-Son of Man is not only to be
unheard by an unbelieving people, but that it
was predicted that he should be killed by

them. This was accomplished by reading
back into Jewish history a pattern of an
apostate Israel which has always rejected the
prophets and killed them.”37 The attitude a
believer must adopt toward the perpetrators
of this most monstrous sacrilege was clear.
“. . . Christianity vilified Judaism outside its
converted community as an apostate, sinful,
worse than Gentiles, and even of the devil. It
regarded the others as fallen outside the true
covenant and ranked with the enemies of
God. Hypocrites, blind fools, blind guides,
whitewashed tombs, serpents, offspring of
vipers and children of hell are among the
epithets heaped upon rival interpreters (i.e.,
Jews (of the tradition in the Gospel of
Matthew.”38

The “Jew,” then, was created by the
Christian as the first and worst heretic. As
long as the Christians remained an insignif¬
icant minority in the Roman empire their
violent and arrogant attitudes toward the
Jews were inconsequential. When they cap¬
tured the empire they captured the tools for
actualizing their violence against the Jews. It
is not far from that position to the First
Crusade and its attendent massacres of Jews
along the way to the Holy Land. The reason¬
ing went, “why should we concern ourselves
with going to war against the Ishmaelites
[i.e., the Moslems] dwelling about Jerusalem
when in our midst is a people who disrespect
our God — indeed, their ancestors are those
who crucified him. Why should we let them
live and tolerate their dwelling among us?
Let us commence by using our swords
against them.”39 Thus the theological
conversion of Jesus into the classic eastern
type of the dying personal saviour god
activated the desire for revenge against those
held responsible for his death. That his death
was held to be inevitable and pre-destined
and that the whole doctrine of the atone¬
ment, so central to salvation, would have
been rendered meaningless without it,
appears never to have occured to anyone.
What the Jews were accused of and were
powerless to prevent was the facilitation of
the central event of salvation.

1983]

Shifferd — Theses on Christian Violence

69

The ethical Jesus was submerged by the
eschatological Jesus, a trend he himself
began, and which gained force with the
elaboration of Christian theologies and the
heretical controversies that inevitably
followed from that elaboration.

The most common cultural pattern for
religion to take is mythical, that is,
particular deities and their acts are not
significant in and of themselves but rather
point to a greater reality behind their mere
appearance. Thus several versions of an
event can be told without any threat or
challenge to the validity of the ultimate truth
which each version represents. Thus Egyp¬
tian creation stories signify several particular
geographic locations which were the first
place land appeared as the primeval watery
chaos subsided.40 Rationally speaking this is
a contradiction in terms, since only one
could be the first. However, the validity rests
not with the historic event, but rather with
the great message behind it, i.e., that the
universe is indeed a cosmos, a divinely
ordered system. And in the mythic religions,
the greatest message is the fundamental
unity of the cosmos, including the ultimate
union of man and God.41 “Myth,”
according to Alan Watts, “is to be defined
as a complex of stories — some no doubt fact,
and some fantasy — which, for various rea¬
sons, human beings regard as demonstra¬
tions of the inner meaning of the universe
and human life. Myth is quite different from
philosophy in the sense of abstract concepts,
. . .”42 In a mythic approach to religion the
concept of heresy makes no sense, and many
different paths are recognized as leading to
God or the Ultimate Unity.

Christianity partakes of the mythic ap¬
proach, especially as it was expressed by the
great mystics of the Middle Ages. But, says
Watts, it unfortunately tries to treat myth as
fact, resulting in deep ideological confusion.

The confusion has its roots in the fact that
Christian dogma is a blend of Hebrew mythol¬
ogy and history with Greek metaphysic and
science. ... As a result, then, Christian dogma

combines a mythological story, which is for
the most part Hebrew, and a group of meta¬
physical ‘concepts’ which are Greek, and then
proceeds to treat both as statements of fact
... in other words, it talks about mythology
and metaphysic in the language of science.
The resulting confusion has been so vast, and
has so muddled Western thought, that all our
current terms, our very language, so partake
of the confusion that they can hardly
straighten it out.43

This muddle had more than intellectual
significance, for it was one cause of several
that, a thousand years later, led to the roast¬
ing alive of young women for the “crimes”
of heresy and witchcraft.

“Almost from the beginning,” writes
Watts, “Christian orthodoxy began to insist
on the scientific rather than the metaphysical
or mythical interpretation of the divine
revelation.44 Christianity became a
peculiarly legalistic or creedal religion that
put its adherents to the test of words. The
influence of Hellenistic rationalism on the
minds of the Fathers led them to put the
great question of religion in the form, “what
must the true Christian believe?”, and to
heatedly argue and debate ever more subtle
points of doctrine until a welter of theo¬
logical ideas rushed hither and thither
throughout the Mediterranean civilizations.
Cross-currents, tides, up-wellings, ebbed
and flowed as a great intellectual plasma for
several centuries. Complicating the picture
was the welter of texts being read as
scripture, more than four times what
eventually found its way into the canon. For
the first four centuries there were many
Christian pathways to God, but this multi-
plasmic situation was vigorously opposed by
many who early sought to reduce it all to
deceptively simple creeds. Even after the
canon was fixed at twenty seven books, they
contained too much material of a polyglot
nature to serve as a “scientific” rule of faith
and, writes Oscar Cullmann ( The Earliest
Christian Confessions) “the essential
content had to be extracted.”45 These creeds
were mainly theological and not ethical

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

statements. They concentrate on Jesus as a
divine being rather than on Jesus as a
teacher. Thus evolved a number of bitterly
contested positions about who Jesus was and
what it all meant in cosmic terms. Ideas
barely mentioned in the scripture or not at
all were elaborated into complex theological
edifaces, such notions as the pre-existence of
Jesus, the incarnation, the divine sacrifice as
atonement for the sins of all mankind, the
sacrament of the Eucharist as the physical
body and blood of Christ and the whole
complex and fundamentally illogical doc¬
trine of the trinity, the idea of powers of evil
and Christ’s relationship with them, the last
judgment, and so forth, evolved over
centuries and attempts were made to codify
them in brief, trenchant symbols fully
understandable only by professional intellec¬
tuals. To the illiterate masses, among whom
we must number most Christians for most of
Christian history, it was impossible to make
sense of it. Yet it was crucial! One’s eternal
fate rested on it, a fate either blissful or,
depending on knowing the right answers to
the theological puzzle, incredibly violent.

Indeed, the doctrine of an afterlife led in
some cases to a devaluation of human life in
the here and now. What counted was one’s
eternal fate, and this life, this body and its
physical pains were only a means to the end
of eternal life. Thus people could literally be
killed in the belief it was for their own good,
for they would be sent on to divine judg¬
ment. The most notorius of such cases is the
statement attributed by Caesar von Heister-
bach to Arnald-Almaric, a leader of the 13th
century Crusades against the Albigensian
heretics in southern France. On ordering the
massacre of the people of Beziers, Arnald-
Almaric is reputed to have said, “Kill them
all, God will look after his own.’’46

How was it that the sword came to be
wielded for Christ, against men, women,
and even children? I believe the long road of
violence led out of the doctrines of late
Palestinean Judaism and of early, Hellen-
ized Christianity, with their peculiar
emphasis on exclusivity.

Those who pursued the creation of an
orthodoxy, and it was done from many sides
of the sea, including the losers who ended up
being declared heretics, generally agreed that
Christianity was an exclusionist religion.

Christianity is a monopolistic faith in that,
like later Judaism and Islam, it claims to be
the one true faith, a faith destined to prevail
for all on earth. The Christian wants to spread
Christianity and he has often spread it with the
sword; moreover, he wants the right kind of
Christianity, his own. . . ,47

Christianity evolved from an ideologically
fluid religion to one in which creedal
orthodoxy was favored, yet, at the same
time, it represented a gigantic fertile
synchretism of Greek, Persian, Hebraic and
Gnostic ideas which have for two thousand
years resisted efforts to reduce their living
complexity to dead formula. What is per¬
haps the most multi- faceted collection of
powerful religious ideas in the world was
nevertheless, subjected to the creedalizing
process. The effort to state the ineffable in
scientific terms led to the mutually gener¬
ating phenomena of orthodoxy and heresy.
Not only was this development an intellec¬
tual necessity, sui generis , but the social and
political matrix of the believers also fostered
it. So important was the formulation of this
true creed for social stability, that men were
fighting over it in the late third century. “At
least as early as the Arian controversy at the
end of the third century Christians were re¬
sorting to bodily violence to further the work
of God.’’48 It threatened to disrupt the
empire, and Constantine was forced to inter¬
vene.

The social context and causes of Christian
violence became readily apparent with the
identification of Church and State in the
early fourth century. I have already alluded
to the mutual rejection of the infant Church
and the Jews, a rejection made necessary by
orthodox Christology, or what eventually
became orthodox Christology after the
bishops had triumphed over the Gnostic
churches. But there was a social dimension

1983]

Shifferd — Theses on Christian Violence

71

as well. The two churches became two separ¬
ate communities, competing for converts in
the same towns and cities of the empire. The
peculiar Christology of the orthodox, and
the social competition for converts, laid the
foundation for twenty centuries of both
latent and manifest anti-semitic violence
which, by the twentieth had become so inter¬
woven into the social fabric of Europe as to
generate the Holocaust. This was possible
beause Christianity captured the state and by
means of it, the majority of the population.
From Constantine to our own day the cross
and sword of state have frequently been con¬
joined and the state has been the form in
which it presented itself to the people.
However, the first struggle over the social
forms in which Christianity was to express
itself in late antiquity was the struggle
between the Gnostics’ open-ended theologies
and proto-democratic churches and their
opponents, the creedalizing bishops who
eventually won and established their own
political authority as the proponents of the
“true” faith within Christendom.

Elaine Pagels has demonstrated in The
Gnostic Gospels that the struggle to reduce
Christian faith to an authoritarian Creed,
thus excluding the theologically rich
alternatives, was as much a social struggle
for political domination of the Christian
masses, as it was an ideological struggle. She
writes,

Traditionally, historians have told us that the
orthodox objected to gnostic views for
religious and philosophical reasons. Certainly
they did; yet investigation of newly discovered
gnostic sources suggests another dimension of
the controversy. It suggests that these religious
debates — questions of the nature of God, or
of Christ — simultaneously bear social and
political implications that are crucial to the
development of Christianity as an organized
religion.49

One of the areas of disagreement was over
the nature of Christ’s resurrection. The
Gnostics held it to have been a resurrection
in spirit only. The orthodox bishops held it

to be a bodily resurrection made manifest to
the apostles from whom authority among
Christians was passed in apostolic succession
to themselves. Pagels observes, “. . . we can
see, paradoxically, that the doctrine of
bodily resurrection also serves an essential
political function; it legitimizes the authority
of certain men who claim to exercise exclu¬
sive leadership over the churches as the suc¬
cessors of the apostle Peter.”50

Another institutional question was that of
the role of women within the Church. The
Gnostics admitted women to full member¬
ship as priests. This greatly offended the
orthodox, male, bishops such as Tertullian,
who suspects they not only preach and cure
but even perform the office of baptism.
“These heretical women,” wrote the bishop,
“how audacious they are! They have no
modesty; they are bold enough to teach, to
engage in argument, to enact exorcisms, to
undertake cures, and, it may be, even to
baptize!”51 Tertullian charged the churches
otherwise. “It is not permitted for a woman
to speak in the Church, nor is it permitted
for her to teach, nor to baptize, nor to offer
[the eucharist], nor to claim for herself any
share in the masculine function, not to
mention any priestly office.”52 A thousand
years later the Church would make as one of
its justifications for the slaughter of the
Albigensians the argument that they allowed
women to perform priestly functions.

Pagels also points out that the two kinds
of Christians split on the issue of martyr¬
dom, with the bishops encouraging it and
gnostic apologists opposing it as a ghastly
blasphemy. The gnostic author of The
Testimony of the Truth , “. . . ridicules
orthodox teachers who, like Ignatius and
Tertullian, see martyrdom as an offering to
God and who have the idea that God desires
‘human sacrifice:’ such a belief makes God
into a cannibal.”53 Pagels argues that the
orthodox bishops believed the attack from
the state could only be met by an institu¬
tional consolidation under (their) strong
leadership, and could thus brook no opposi¬
tion, especially from the Gnostics who were

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

attacking the Church’s most effective testi¬
monial act, the act of martyrdom. Increas¬
ingly the bishops coerced their followers by
threat of hell, and by withholding the eucha-
rist, into conformity to an ever more rigid
doctrine, hierarchy, ritual and canon. “The
bishops drew the line against all who chal¬
lenged any of the three elements of this
system: doctrine, ritual, and clerical hier¬
archy — and the Gnostics challenged them
all.”54 Thus did the church of Jesus, who
had said, “Come unto me all ye who are
heavy laden,” (Matt. 11:28) become an
excluding church, shutting out those
Christians who had a different understand¬
ing of the sacred mystery, or who preferred
congregational autonomy, or who admitted
women to full participation.

The way in which these “orthodox”
Christians dealt with this first “heresy” set
the pattern for the ages to follow. They
equated a particular form of Christian
organization — theirs — with the right state¬
ment of the faith, and whoso rejected one
was held to have rejected the other. The
bishop Ignatius put it unequivocally:

It is not legitimate either to baptize or to hold
an agape [cult meal] without the bishop ... To
join with the bishop is to join the Church; to
separate oneself from the bishop is to separate
oneself not only from the church, but from
God himself.55

Thus did the Church early on equate itself
with God. When one recalls that the per¬
sonality and will of God imaged in the
Judaic and Christian scriptures included
enemies and a violent punishment of these
enemies, it becomes more understandable
how it was that the bishops, acting for their
God, in his place, could transform their own
violent emotions and language into overt
violence against those who disagreed with
them. Once they captured the state of Con¬
stantine, and all of its successors, they would
translate their hostility into acts of violence
against those whom they would call “here¬
tics.”

The problematic relation between Christ

and culture was sketched many years ago by
H. Richard Niebuhr. He pointed to the
polarity between the claims of Christ and the
claims of society, between the One and the
many, the eternal and the temporal, the
absolute and the relative, the universal and
the specific, the single-mindedness of Christ
(mind God, all else will be taken care of) and
the many concerns necessary to a function¬
ing society. Polytheistic and mythic religions
are not confronted by this problem. Chris¬
tianity is. And it is complicated by the fact
that the universal, absolute, divine message
of Christ was delivered in the relativistic and
culture-bound person of Jesus of Nazareth,
thus confusing the issue of how particular
Christians located in particular cultures at
specific moments in history should act.
Niebuhr suggests that,

an infinite dialogue must develop in the
Christian conscience and the Christian
community . . . The dialogue proceeds with
denials and affirmations, reconstructions,
compromises, and new denials. Neither
individual nor church can come to a stopping
place in endless search for an answer which
will not provoke a new rejoinder.56

The various positions actually taken by
the Church, i.e., whether it rejected a
particular cultural context in which it found
itself, or whether it affirmed the culture and
its claims, depended in part on how much
power it could wield in the social world. It
also depended on which social classes and
ethnic groups were in control of the Church
hierarchy at the time. What did not change
was the Church’s implacable hostility
toward those who did not agree with it,
whether they, or the church itself, were in, or
out, of power.

Before the church came to power and
when it was a lower class phenomenon
(slaves, fishermen, etc.), it violently
repudiated Roman culture and, in the
language metaphor employed in the book of
Revelations, looked to the day when Baby¬
lon, the whore-monger, {i.e. Rome), would
be destroyed by the cosmic assault of Christ

1983]

Shifferd— Theses on Christian Violence

73

himself. (Rev. 2: 19-29, 6, 8, 9, etc.) Again,
note the violence of early Christians5 escha¬
tology. “So the four angels were released . . .
to kill a third of mankind. 5 5 (9: 1 5). When the
church stood outside the gates of power it
cursed the social order and called down
doom upon it. Then came the Edict of Milan
(313), when those gates opened and the
powerful embraced the church, the social
order was sanctified and, as was the case
earlier with the hierarchy itself, the social
order and God were equated. Meinhold re¬
ports,

Soon after the edict of tolerance of 313 . . . the
Synod of Arles decreed that soldiers who de¬
serted must be excommunicated from the
Church . . . The monogram of Christ was
affixed to the helmet of the soldiers and to the
standards of the emperor’s armies. With these
changes the church indicated she was now
ready to honor the profession of soldier and to
encourage military service by Christians.
From now on the wars which the Christian
emperors were waging were considered wars
for the propagation of the Gospel. . . .”57

Clearly, “the relationship between church
and state changed radically under Constan¬
tine the Great (306-360) . . . The church, on
her part, gave up her negative attitude
toward the state. The state had become her
friend and now provided her with an oppor¬
tunity for missionary work . . .”58 Church
and state began to merge as Christianity, the
universal, eternal and absolutist religion
made compromise with the particular, tem¬
poral and relative society of Byzantium.
Christ became lost in, or at least identified
with a particular culture, and what is more,
the needs and prerogatives of Church and
state were so woven together as to be incap¬
able of disentanglement. “. . . the imperial
church, which was closely identified with the
court of the Eastern Roman Empire, pat¬
terned her organization closely after that of
the state. Her laws were the laws of the
state.”59 In 346 a.d. the pagan temples were
closed and the death penalty decreed for
anyone found performing the old
sacrifices.60

The merger between Christianity and the
state during the age of Constantine became
ever more firmly established. When the
emperor Theodosius installed Nestor as
Bishop of Constantinople, the latter
preached a sermon in which he told the
emperor, “Give me, my prince, the earth
purged of heretics, and I will give you
heaven as a recompense. Assist me in
destroying heretics, and I will assist you in
vanquishing the Persians.”61 Nestor clearly
believed himself to be the Vicar of a god who
was engaged in deadly warfare against
enemies at home and abroad, and he makes
alliance with the state to use its weapons of
death against all who could not (would not)
assent to a particular creedal formulation of
faith.

Still, the problem of which creed was valid
plagued the church and was the occasion for
much internal violence.

Being a Christian, the emperor Constan¬
tins found out, was not a clear cut thing. At
first he supported the Arians. When he re¬
placed an orthodox bishop with an Arian
prelate, riots broke out and three thousand
persons lost their lives. Durant speculates
that “probably more Christians were
slaughtered by Christians in these two years
(342-343) than by all the persecutions of
Christians by pagans in the history of
Rome. 5 5 62

Certain of the Donatist heretics, in
particular, evolved a cult of religious
violence. These were priests who decried the
efficacy of sacraments administered by
priests who were in a state of sin. The state
church turned immediately to the weapons
now at its disposal and, using imperial
troops, forcibly removed them from their
churches. Reacting to the Church, which was
now identified not only with the state but
with the wealthy as well, some of them
became Christian revolutionaries.

Bands of revolutionaries, at once Christian
and communist, took form under the name of
Arcumcelliones, or prowlers; they condemned
poverty and slavery, cancelled debts and
liberated slaves and proposed to restore the

74

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

mythical equality of primitive man. . . .
Usually they contented themselves with
robbery; but sometimes, irritated by resis¬
tance, they would blind the orthodox or the
rich by rubbing lime into their eyes, or would
beat them to death with clubs; or so their
enemies relate. If they in turn met death they
rejoiced, certain of paradise. Fanaticism
finally captured them completely; they gave
themselves up as heretics, and solicited
martyrdom; they stopped wayfarers and asked
to be killed; and when even their enemies tired
of complying, they leaped into fire, or jumped
from precipices, or walked into the sea.63

In a curious inversion of violence, these
angry men at last turned upon themselves.

For a brief moment, the emperor Julian
(361-363) tried to undo the alliance between
Christianity and the state. He was killed on
the Persian front. The historian Libanius
believed he was assassinated by one of his
own, Christian troops. Sozomen, another
Christian observer, praised the assassin,
“who, for the sake of God and religion, had
performed so bold a deed.’’64 Julian was the
last apostate. Ever after the Church would
make free use of the sword of state. The
violence that was latent in Christian doc¬
trine, rooted in its Judaic foundations,
potential in its exclusion of all but one path¬
way to God, explicit in its eschatology, made
necessary by its legalistic creedalism, was
activated by its alliance with the state.

Another aspect of the Christ and culture
problem was that the Christian leadership
was variously captured by different ethnic
groups and social classes whose position in
society made them prone to violence, or
whose particular historic traditions
cherished warrior values. I have already
noted that the early church was sometimes
represented by the spokesmen of the
exploited and alienated lower classes, hostile
to the then-pagan ruling classes. And it is
common knowledge that, once Christian¬
ized, the ruling classes came to dominate the
church, especially in the Middle Ages in
Europe, where the Christian social sanction

of the feudal order gave Marx occasion to
characterize Christianity as the “opiate of
the masses.’’65 The powerful and rich had
much to defend against the lower classes and
were not above using religion to do so. One
need think only of Martin Luther, siding
with the Princes during the great peasant
rebellions of 1525. He specifically instructed
the Princes, “For a prince or a lord must
remember in this case that he is God’s minis¬
ter and the servant of his wrath (Romans,
xiii), to whom the sword is committed for
use upon such fellows. . . .”66

The Princes with whom Luther sided had
had a long heritage of Christian violence.
They were, or claimed to be, descendants of
teutonic warriors and Vikings whose entire
male-dominant social order was organized
around military virtues.

The transformation of Christianity into a
full blown warrior religion by the Normans
is nowhere more penetratingly analyzed than
in Henry Adams’ Mont-Saint-Michele and
Chartres. High on a summit overlooking the
Atlantic the Normans raised a great abby
church in the early twelfth century. Atop it
they placed a statue of the archangel
Michael.

Standing on the summit of the tower that
crowned his church, wings upspread, sword
uplifted, the devil crawling beneath, and the
cock, symbol of eternal vigilance, perched on
his mailed foot, Saint Michael held a place of
his own in heaven and on earth which seems
. . . hardly to leave room for the Virgin of the
Crypt at Chartres, still less for the Beau Christ
of the thirteenth century at Amiens. The
Archangel stands for Church and State, and
both militant. He is the conqueror of Satan
. . . His place was where the danger was the
greatest; therefore you find him here. For the
same reason he was, while the pagan danger
lasted, the patron saint of France. So the
Normans, when they were converted to
Christianity, put themselves under this
powerful protection.67

Here we do not have “the peace which
passeth understanding.’’

1983]

Shifferd — Theses on Christian Violence

75

Here in the great hall of the abbey Church
the Duke (William the Conquerer) and his
men listened to their favorite secular work,
the Chanson du Roland. In the climactic
death scene of the poem we are not very far
from the old Viking faith.

God the Father was the feudal seigneur, who
raised Lazarus — his baron or vassel — from the
grave . . . God the Father, as feudal seigneur,
absorbs the Trinity and, what is more signif¬
icant, absorbs or excludes also the Virgin, who
is not mentioned in [Roland’s] prayer. To this
seigneur, Roland, in dying, proffered his right
hand gauntlet. Death was an act of homage.
God sent down his archangel Gabriel as his
representative to receive the homage and
accept the glory.68

Thus dies the archetypical hero of medieval
literature — a Christian warrior, slain while
slaying Jahweh’s enemies, the merciful Mary
and Christ not mentioned by the poet. Such
was the Christian religion of the Normans
whose case is one more evidence for the
insights offered by H. Richard Neihbuhr in
Christ and Culture. Culture captured Christ.
These warriors were indeed men of God.

That the church was a thoroughly mascu¬
line institution has been alluded to else¬
where. If women were allowed in they were
cloistered. The Churchman’s relations with
women (scandel- mongers of the Reforma¬
tion notwithstanding) were either relations
of fantasy, as was perhaps the source of
psychological energy that powered the cult
of the Virgin in the high middle ages; or,
they were the relations of violence which
resulted in the extermination of millions of
women Churchmen thought to be out of step
with true Christianity.69 These unfortunate
females were the so-called witches. In a
classic case of psychological projection, the
celibate clergy transferred their own re¬
pressed desires, guilt and anger onto
females.

According to the church, all of the witches
power was ultimately derived from her sexual¬
ity. Her career began with sexual intercourse

with the devil and wild orgies at the Sabat . . .
The Malleus Maleficareum, or Hamer of
Witches, stated that all witchcraft comes from
carnal lust which in women is insatiable.70

The authors of the Maleus were subject
to delusions such as the following:

. . . what is to be thought of those witches who
in this way sometimes collect male organs in
great numbers, as many as twenty or thirty
members together, and put them on a bird’s
nest or shut them up in a box, where they
move themselves like living members, and eat
oats and corn, as has been seen my many and
is a matter of common report.71

It was this sort of evidence that caused
historian G. Rattray Taylor to exclaim that
the whole of Medieval Europe was “one vast
insane asylum.’’72 That is, of course, a gross
exaggeration, but it should not blind us to
the facts of neurotic male agression directed
against women. But, whether the most pa¬
thetic example of Christian violence against
the helpless is the Saxon prisoner bowing his
head to the sword of the executioner, or the
old women being tied to a stake by the
spokesmen of Christ, in each case, a male
dominated group is responsible. Masculinity
is a common thread running through the
history of Christian violence, whether it be
an expression of dominant norms, as is the
case of the warriors of Mont- Saint-Michele,
or mental illness, as with the witch-hunters,
or whether, as some recent research suggests,
it be genetic.73 Men are violent, and the
history of the Christian religion has been in
the main the history of Christian men.

My purpose in this paper has been to
suggest that in spite of the fact that some of
Jesus’ exhortations are to love and non¬
violence, that historic Christianity is a
religion afflicted with violence, and to offer
several theses toward an explanation of this
curious and usually shunned contradiction.
These theses have included the following
ideas: that the Judaic foundation of
Christianity contains a strong tradition of
divine violence; that late Roman Palestinian

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

eschatology as developed by Christianity
contains strong overtones of violence and
eagerness for revenge on unbelievers; that
the Christian assertion and Jewish rejection
of Jesus as Messiah provided the framework
for 2000 years of anti-semitic violence
culminating in the Nazi genocide of the
twentieth century; that the confusion of
traditions (Judaic, Greco-Roman, Gnostic,
et alia) in early Christian thought led to a felt
need for creedal clarity, which rendered
orthodox Christianity exclusionist, thereby
defining and identifying those against whom
it is permitted to exercise the anger of the
wrathful God; and that the Christian move¬
ment was socialized in various ways that made
the contradiction of its love ethic an historic
necessity. Among the latter are included the
contest with the Gnostics which began,
among other things, the long and violent
history of Christian sexism, culminating in
the witch craze of 1500-1700; the confusion
of Christianity with the needs of a particular
social class, whether underdogs or rulers,
and the infusion into Christianity of all the
hatreds and passions of the class struggle;
the capture of the hierarchy by the Germanic
warrior tribes whose patron, the Archangel
Michael, perfectly represented their militant
Viking-style Christianity and whose ethos
informed the Crusades; the capture of the
church by males generally, and, finally, and
most important, the alliance of Church and
State. It may well be that this last is the
sufficient cause for Christian violence and
all the others are but necessary causes. That
the socialization of the church into the
norms of violence proved so easy and was
almost unopposed suggests that the potential
for violence, and the acceptance of violence,
lies deeply buried in Christian doctrine. If
so, this is a tragedy because much that is
good is also rooted there.

Notes

1 Vernad Eller. War and Peace from Genesis to
Revelation (Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 1981), p. 11

2 George F. Thomas. Christian Ethics and Moral

Philosophy (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1955),
p. 348.

3 Harry Girvitz notes how little work has been done
on the topic of violence and quotes Hannah Arendt who
“also finds it surprising ‘that violence has been singled
out so seldom for consideration.”’ I found almost
nothing under this heading in card catalogues, literature
indices or book indices, the more so in the area of
religions, church history and ethics. “An Anatomy of
Violence” in Sherman Stanage, Reason and Violence
(Totowa, N.J.: Littlefield, Adams, 1974), p. 183.

4 Thomas, op. cit.

5 Will Durant. The Age of Faith (New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1950), p. 462.

6 Peter Meinhold. Caesars or Gods?: Conflict of
Church and State in Modern Society (Minneapolis:
AugsbergPub. House, 1962), p. 106.

7 Martin Luther, “Against the Robbing and
Murdering Horde of Peasants,” in Durant, The Age of
Faith (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1957), p. 390. To
wit “Therefore let everyone who can, smite, slay, and
stab, secretly or openly ... It is just when one must kill
a mad dog. . . .”

8 Amos Blanchard. Book of Martyrs (N.G. Ellis:
Kingston, U.C., 1842), p. 121.

9 Thomas B. Allen (ed.). We Americans (Wash¬
ington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 1976).

10 “The Advocate of Peace” in Ray H. Abrams,
Preachers Present Arms (New York: Round Table
Press, 1933), p. 160.

11 Ibid., p. 68.

12 Paul Maccabee. “The Way Invades Minneapolis,”
Twin Cities Reader, Vol. 6, No. 10, March 19-26, p. 8.

13 C. S. Lewis. Mere Christianity (New York:
Macmillan, 1952), p. 11. Historian Crane Brinton has
arrived at a similar conclusion. “Since for centuries all
Westerners were in a formal sense Christian, the actual
conduct of men called ‘Christians’ has run the gamut of
Western capacities, which are many and varied. It is at
least clear that many different beliefs, many different
human personalities, many kinds of conduct . . . have
been given ‘Christian’ as an attribute. ... I shall rarely
mean by Christian all men known as Christians. I shall
try to make clear when I am dealing with most, many,
or even average ordinary Christians, and when I am
trying to set up a Christian type, ideal, or pattern.” A
History of Western Morals (New York: Harcourt, Brace
& Co., 1959), p. 149.

14 Phillip Hallie. “Satan, Evil and Good in History”
in Sherman Stanage (ed.) Reason & Violence (Totowa,
N.J.: Littlefield, Adams & Co., 1974), p. 59, reminds
us, ’‘One does not do evil out of the blue. One does it
under many pressures ... It is a part of personal and
public history, a resultant of many forces, as they say in
physics.”

15 Millard C. Lind. Jaweh Is A Warrior (Scottdale,
Pa.: Herald Press, 1980).

1983]

Shifferd— Theses on Christian Violence

77

16 Ibid., pp. 48-49.

17 Ibid., p. 50, “Yahweh the warrior becomes
Yahweh the king.”

18 Ibid., p. 62.

19 Ibid., p. 65.

20 Ibid., p. 65.

21 Eller, op. cit. cf. Chapter 3 “It’s His war. Let Him
fight it!,” and elswhere. This is Eller’s thesis.

22 Rudolph Bultman. Primitive Christianity In Its
Contemporary Setting (Philadelphia: Fortress Press,
1956), pp. 60-61.

23 Ibid., loc. cit.

24 Ibid., p. 70.

25 H. C. Key and F. W. Young. Understanding the
New Testament, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Pren¬
tice Hall, 1965), p. 47.

26 Ibid., pp. 57-58.

27 Ibid., p. 80.

28 Ibid., p. 58.

29 Ibid., pp. 136-137.

30 Meinhold, op. cit., p. 124.

31 Ibid., pp. 66-67.

32 Rosemary Ruether. Faith and Fratricide: The
Theological Roots of Anti-semitism (New York: Sea-
bury Press, 1979).

33 Gregory Baum in Reuther, op. cit., p. 12.

34 Ruether, op. cit., p. 65.

35 Ibid., p. 69.

36 Ibid., p. 72.

37 Ibid., p. 90.

38 Ibid., pp. 74 & 75.

39 Slomo Eidelberg (ed.). The Jews and the Cru¬
saders: The Hebrew Chronicles of the First and Second
Crusades (Madison: Univ. of Wis. Press, 1977), p. 26.

40 John Wilson in Henri Frankfort (Ed.) Before
Philosophy (Baltimore: Penguin, 1949), p. 80.

41 Ibid., p. 36. This is also Alan Watts’ point in Myth
and Ritual in Christianity (Boston, Beacon Press, 1968),
prologue.

42 Alan Watts, op. cit., p. 7.

43 Ibid., p. 62.

44 Ibid., p. 70.

45 Oscar Cullman. The Earliest Christian Confessions
(London: Latterworth Press, 1949), p. 11.

46 Zoe Oldenbourg. Massacre at Montsegur (New
York: Minerva Press, 1968), p. 116.

47 Crane Brinton. A History of Christian Morals
(New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1959), p. 150.

48 Ibid., p. 161.

49 Elaine Pagels. The Gnostic Gospels (New York:
Random House, 1979), p. xxxvi.

50 Ibid., p. 6.

51 Ibid., p. 60.

52 Ibid., p. 60.

53 Ibid., p. 92.

54 Ibid., p. 118.

55 Ibid., p. 105.

56 H. Richard Niebuhr. Christ and Culture (New
York: Harper, 1956), pp. 39-40.

57 Meinhold, op. cit., p. 131.

58 Ibid., p. 38.

59 Ibid., p. 38.

60 Leo Pfeffer. Church, State and Freedom (Boston,
Beacon Press, 1953), p. 13.

61 Ibid., p. 13.

62 Durant, op. cit., p. 47.

63 Meinhold, op. cit., p. 8.

64 Ibid., p. 20.

65 Karl Marx, actually “Die Religion . . . ist das
Opium des Voelkes,” from his Kritik der Hegelschen
Rechtsphilosophie, the introduction.

66 Will Durant. The Reformation (New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1957), p. 390.

67 Henry Adams. Mont-Saint-Michelle and Chartres
(New York: Mentor, 1961), p. 15.

68 Ibid., pp. 42-43.

69 Mary Daly. Gyn/Ecology (Boston: Beacon Press,
1978). For these and other references on witchcraft, I
am indebted to Deeana Copeland.

70 Deeana Copeland, “The European Witch Craze of
the 1 5th- 17th Centuries,” unpublished manuscript,

p. 2.

71 Daly, op. cit.

72 As quoted in Url Lanharn’s Origins of Modern
Biology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968),
P- 77.

73 Melvin Konner. “She and He,” Science ’ 82 , Vol. 3,
No. 7, Sept. 1982, p. 57.

THE LOSS OF AN ENTIRE WETLAND HABITAT
AND ITS WILD BIRD POPULATIONS1

Robert A. McCabe
Department of Wildlife Ecology
University of Wisconsin , Madison

The loss of avian habitats by natural
means has been occurring from the time of
the origin of birds in the early Jurassic
150,000,000 years ago to the present. Prob¬
ably never in that long and occasionally
violent period did greater losses take place
than those caused during the last few cen¬
turies by technology in the hands of man.

In recent years we have become acutely
aware of endangered bird species. Protective
legislation in the form of restrictions on the
capture, killing, or interference with critical
species have been the main measures em¬
ployed to reduce further losses. But when the
food and cover needed for animal survival is
seriously altered, the carrying capacity of the
habitat is reduced, and when these habitat
attributes are destroyed, the animal popula¬
tion is lost.

Exploitation of avian habitats in the name
of progress by industry, agriculture, or
recreation is at the root of the endangering
process. Wherever man alters land, water,
animals or plants to achieve individual or
collective advantage, those birds that are
obligate to that environment will be in
jeopardy.

Loss of avian habitats has been justified
on the grounds that the loss was necessary to
benefit man. Today after many such habitats
are already lost and the welfare of many
birds is critical, we attempt to understand
and, on occasion, to rectify the situation.
One of the key aspects to the understanding
is to know what and how much has been
lost. Often there are few such data and even

1 This paper was read before the International
Ornithological Congress in Moscow, USSR, in August,
1982.

less information on the cause or the motiva¬
tion for the habitat destruction.

The objective of this report is to record the
loss of bird life brought about by the de¬
struction of an aquatic habitat in an agri¬
cultural environment.

The location of this aquatic habitat, 3
miles (5 km) north of Sun Prairie, first ap¬
pears on Ligousky’s 1861 Map of Dane
County (Wisconsin) as Lake Brasee (L.
Brazee). It has been variously measured as
164 (65.6 ha), 122 (48.8 ha), and 170 (68 ha)
acres, apparently depending on the season of
the year when it was measured. It had about
2.3 miles (3.7 km) of shoreline in most years,
and was 1,050 m long and 810 m wide at its
greatest dimensions (Figure 1). In periods of
drought and low watertable, part of the lake
was dry and put into crops. I heard unsub¬
stantiated reports that the lake “drained
naturally” in some years and then subse-

Fig. 1 . Aerial view of Brazee Lake prior to drainage.
The long axis of the lake is oriented N-S.

78

1983]

McCabe — Loss of Wetland Habitat

19

quently over several years gradually returned
to its status as a lake. It was also alleged to
have been spring fed, but I found no spring
flowing into the lake. The main source of
water was from ground water and surface
drainage. There is no stream in or out of the
wetland. Water was lost mainly during the
summer, by evapotransportation. Its maxi¬
mum depth in June 1950 was about 4/2 feet
(1.4m).

The emergent vegetation along the shore¬
line was sedge ( Eleocharis , Scirpus, Carex,
and Cyperus ), cattail ( Typha ), and bullrush
(Juncus). In the water area, arrowhead
( Sagittaria ), pondweeds ( Potamogeton sp.),
particularly sago pond weed (P. pectinatus ),
Bur reed ( Sparganium sp.), and Duck weed
( Lemna minor) were common.

The main landowner petitioned the state
ca. 1954 for permission to drain the lake so
the land could be used for agriculture. The
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
brought legal action to prevent the drainage.
I testified as a wildlife ecologist in support of
the state’s position that the lake had greater
public value as a natural area than as corn¬
field that would profit only two or three
landowners. The court, however, ruled in
favor of the landowners, and the lake was
drained the following year.

Bird disappearance was almost immedi¬
ate. Although no species counts were made
in the years following drainage, observation
indicated that the most water-obligate birds
(e.g., black tern, coot, ducks) disappeared
first. Some red-winged blackbirds, and even
yellowheaded blackbirds returned for at
least three years before abandoning the
marsh area completely.

One of the important ornithological
aspects of Brazee Lake was the largest
known colony of yellow-headed blackbirds
in southern Wisconsin. These large hand¬
some blackbirds were the primary species in
a study of all the marsh birds which I began
in 1947. A lake-edge study area of 1.32 ha
(Figure 2) was set up on the west side of the
lake. This was facilitated by a road that

100 meters

Fig. 2. The wetland study area where the yellow¬
headed blackbird colony was located.

paralleled the shore of the marsh and by a
line of telephone poles leading to a farm
house on the far southwest edge of the lake.
Numbers were painted high on each tele¬
phone pole large enough to be seen from the
widest part of the study site. Nests found in
the marsh were located by orienting to the
numbered poles.

Life-history data, ecology, and behavior
data were recorded by a field staff of three
persons. All nests were marked and exam¬
ined twice a week and occasionally more
often. Data on the breeding ecology of the
marsh birds are not germane to this paper
but the five-year nest total for yellow-headed
blackbirds was 246.

All other bird nests found in the study
area were also recorded during the field
work. In all, 646 nests of 15 species were ex¬
amined (Table 1). This amounts to 127 nests
per ha in the year with the largest bird
population and 76 per ha in the year of the
lowest density, averaging 96 per ha over the
5-year period.

The data in this paper have not been
published previously primarily because those
of us interested in the lake and its marshy
shores had hoped that the cropping scheme
would fail, the lake would reclaim its own,
and we could initiate periodic studies in this
wetland. This has not occurred in spite of
several crop failures, because outside finan¬
cial support from the federal government
and nonfarm income allowed the farmers to

80

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

Table 1. Active nests in the study area. 1

Species

1947

1948

1949

1950

1951

Total

Yellow-headed Blackbird

Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus

56

69

56

39

26

246

Black Tern

Chlidonias niger

11

38

56

8

28

141

Coot

Fulica americana

25

14

13

19

20

91

Common Gallinule

Gallinula chloropus

11

14

7

13

12

57

Ruddy Duck

Oxyrua jamaicensis

6

12

3

5

6

32

Pied-billed Grebe

Podilymbus podiceps

0

11

2

1

12

26

Red-winged Blackbird

Agelaius phoeniceus

5

5

2

1

5

18

Marsh Wren (long-billed)

Cistothorus palustris

1

2

0

14

1

18

Least Bittern

Ixobrychus exilis

0

3

1

0

2

6

Total

115

168

140

100

112

635

1 Six other species had less than 6 nests each in the 5-year study.

continue the cropping program. Even in
1982 only part of the lakebed was suitable
for corn production. Corn and silence dom¬
inate this once sound-filled, dynamic avian
environment.

Technology has provided the means, and
financial advantage the motive, for man to
destroy the environment of wild creatures.
Birds are only one, albeit major, example of
dwindling habitat in this process we regard
as progress.

Public lethargy and court rulings in favor
of an individual’s right to destroy what was
legally his place the integrity of many bird
habitats in jeopardy. Although some avian
habitats are naturally transient through
plant succession and ecological change, the
responsibility of the wildlife manager and
concerned laymen is to aid and abet factors
holding a habitat in a given stage to promote
the welfare of the avian species that rely on a
static or slowly changing environment.
Avian habitats are lost when gross physical
change alters the ecological attributes or the
plant succession of a bird’s habitat.

The most insidious aspect of such loss of
avian habitat, in particular wetlands, is that
the loss usually represents a financial gain
for someone , somewhere. The someone is
often not in need of financial help and may
be somewhere far from the site of the habitat
destruction — out of sight and out of mind.
Humanity is loath to accept responsibility
for its own environment as well as that for
wild creatures. This reluctance is difficult to
understand because we in the USA and per¬
haps elsewhere in the world can recognize
and identify the loss but are inept to do
anything but record the damage.

In June 1982 the National Wildlife Fed¬
eration (of USA sportsmen organizations)
wrote in a major report:

“It is estimated that we have lost at least 40
percent of the original wetlands in the lower 48
states. Of the approximately 148 million acres
of wetlands we have now, we lose more than
300,000 [120,000 ha] each year. Some experts
estimate that the loss is as high as 600,000
[240,000] acres each year. In the United States,
coastal marshes have been disappearing at a

1983]

McCabe— Loss of Wetland Habitat

81

rate of about one-half percent per year. One
million acres of coastal marsh have been lost
since 1954. By the year 2000, if the present rate
of marsh loss continues, an additional one
million acres will have been destroyed.

A look at wetland losses across the country
paints a stark and disturbing picture of the fate
of wetlands — and equally, the fate of much of
our wildlife.”

In the Midwest where this Wisconsin study
took place, the situation is even worse. Pre¬
cise data are not available, and current state
law has removed most restraints on drain¬
age. The report continues:

“Marshes along the Great Lakes have de¬
creased 70 percent. These marshes not only
provide habitat for fish and wildlife (for exam¬
ple, spawning habitat for northern pike), but
they also help to prevent shoreline erosion and
minimize the destructive effects of storms.”

Apart from the loss of birds through the
loss of their habitats, destruction of wild en¬
vironments is often irreversible. Lack (Jour.
An. Ecology , Vol. 34, 1965) makes a case for
basic understanding of the biota itself. He
states (p. 229):

“There is therefore an urgent need for the con¬
servation of natural habitats because, apart
from their beauty, it is only here that some of
the fundamental problems of biology can be
studied. Partly, but only partly, I therefore
think that the popular emphasis in conserva¬
tion propaganda on rare or threatened species
is misplaced. It evidently pleases many people
that Pere David’s deer Elaphurus davidianus
survives in zoos, or that two pairs of ospreys
Pandion haliaetus bred last year in Scotland,
but I would cheerfully lose these and other
scarce animals altogether if, in return, we
could conserve examples of the most important
natural habitats with their associated animals;
and for the study of higher vertebrates, such as
birds, extensive areas are required.”

Fundamentally, Lack was correct in his
assessment almost twenty years ago. Al¬
though I would not cheerfully accept the
demise of any bird species, I too feel that as

biologists we have paid too little attention to
the role of lost or degraded habitats in ap¬
praising the plight of those birds (and other
animals) that are becoming rare or that are
truly endangered.

The loss of wetland habitats is easily ra¬
tionalized because in their natural state they
have little commercial value and often im¬
pede commercial schemes to achieve finan¬
cial advantage. Wetlands are easily changed
or destroyed by drainage, filling, sometimes
by flooding, and more recently by pollution.
Agriculture, urbanization, land fills (trash
dumps), road systems, and hydro-electric
schemes have taken a drastic toll of wetland
habitats.

In the United States an Environmental
Protection Agency report (1980) estimates
that 120,000 ha of wetlands are lost an¬
nually. No data are available on the loss of
birds by this loss of aquatic habitat. What I
report here is a shameful microcosm that
focuses on the need to protect all wetlands
for the benefit of the wildlife resources and
the public amenities associated with natural
environments. We have yet to provide the
legal and economic mechanisms to protect
our wetlands, which recent studies have
shown to have immense public value in pro¬
tecting water quality and ground water
recharge, and in reducing flood damage, as
well as for wildlife habitat. Some form of
compensation to the landowner might deter
the drainage rig and plow and thus save
many valuable wetlands.

Acknowledgments

The field work was ably assisted by Robert
S. Ellarson, James B. Hale, Arnold S.
Jackson, Jr., and Fredric H. Wagner.
Editorial suggestions were made by Marie S.
McCabe and J. J. Hickey. Research support
was provided by the College of Agricultural
and Life Sciences, University of Wisconsin,
Madison, and the Charles W. Bunn Memo¬
rial Fund.

ASPEN UTILIZATION BY BEAVER (CASTOR CANADENSIS)
IN NORTHERN WISCONSIN

Reed B. Johnson
Port Edwards, Wisconsin

Abstract

Johnson, Reed B. 1983. Aspen utilization by beaver (Castor canadensis) in
northern Wisconsin. A quantitative survey of the feeding relationships of beaver at
two ponds showed quaking aspen (Populus tremuloides) was the main food.
Approximately 44 g/day (dry wt) of aspen inner bark were eaten by each adult
beaver. Mixed coniferous-deciduous forest, with ample aspen, birch and willow,
existed at both sites. The relationship between tree size cut and the amount of inner
bark utilized was also examined. It was found that 1) proportionally more inner
bark remained unutilized in larger trees which were cut, 2) generally, trees 3 to 5 in.
in diameter were most likely to lodge in other trees when felled and thus remain
unutilized, 3) approximately 9 to 12% of the available food from cut aspen was
unutilized at each site.

Exploitation of beaver ( Castor cana¬
densis) was largely responsible for the early
exploration of the northern United States
and Canada by fur trappers. After near
extirpation by overtrapping beaver have
recovered well. Today populations have
reached such levels that they are considered a
nuisance in many areas.

The beaver has a great ecological impact
upon the surrounding environment. Dam¬
ming of streams floods valuable lowland
forests, and occasionally, roads. Forest
structure and composition near the ponds
are altered by the cutting of large numbers of
trees. Beaver meadows are formed when
dams of abandoned ponds decay, lowering
the water levels and allowing marsh vege¬
tation to invade (Kendeigh 1974:84).

Whether one considers beaver a poten¬
tially valuable natural resource or a
nuisance, it is important to have quantitative
knowledge of the animals’ food habits. A
study was carried out from 14 May to 21
August, 1981, to observe feeding ecology of
beaver in northern Wisconsin. Areas
surrounding two beaver ponds were sur¬
veyed for forest composition, beaver food
gathering strategies and food types. Various

relationships between tree size and food
utilization were examined in detail.

Study Areas

The study was conducted on two active
ponds in T39N, R4E, Sects 21 and 22,
Oneida Co., Wisconsin. Pond 1 was located
on a small stream about 1 mi SSE of Squaw
Lake. The feeding area at this pond was
roughly 300 yds W of the lodge. Pond 2 was
located on Stone Creek about 1.5 mi N of
Stone Lake. There were two feeding areas
located on the west side of the pond about
100 yds S and 250 yds N of the beaver lodge.

Methods

The quarter method (W.S. Brooks, pers.
comm.) was used to determine the forest
composition of feeding areas and surround¬
ing forest at pond 1 and one feeding area at
pond 2. The other feeding area at pond 2 was
not surveyed for forest composition as it had
recently been commercially harvested, so no
mature trees existed in this area. Transect
lines and sampling points along those lines
were approximately 25 yds apart. Live trees
and beaver cut stumps were counted only if

82

1983]

Johnson— Aspen Utilization by Beaver

83

at least 3 in. dbh (diameter breast height) or
at the height of the cut, respectively.

To determine the total annual quantity of
inner bark eaten, height and diameter at cut
were measured for all trees that had been cut
by beaver within the last two years. Approx¬
imate age of the cut was determined by
peeling bark from the stump and observing
wood appearance. Those stumps more than
two years old were not recorded.

Populations of two adult beaver and
several young were observed at each pond.
Calculations were based upon populations
of three adult beaver per pond, the third
“adult” allowing for the young which
consume approximately the same amount of
food annually as a single adult.

To determine the quantity of potential
food per tree, a quaking aspen ( Populus
tremuloides ) of the average size used by
beaver was cut about 12 in. above the
ground. From base to branches, 15 in.
sections were cut and measured for diameter
at both ends. The outer cork was shaved
from these sections with a knife and the
inner bark (cambium and phloem) was
peeled off and stored in labeled plastic bags
for later dry weight measurements. Approx¬
imately 10 to 15% of the branches were
peeled and the inner bark similarly stored.
Bark was dried for 48 h at 90°C and weighed
immediately.

To determine the quantity of unutilized
food per cut tree at each pond, measure¬
ments of the length, and diameter at the base
and top of the untouched logs were re¬
corded. At each feeding area the number of
aspen trees lodging in other trees when cut
were counted and their base diameters taken.

Results and Discussion

Rue (1964: 42) stated that every beaver
pond has an occupation time limit regulated
by food availability. Beaver prefer to feed
near water both for safety from predators
and for ease in food transport. At both
ponds, feeding activity was always within
100 ft of the water. Several strategies have

been developed by beaver to increase ease in
procurement of food sources. The water
level may be raised by increasing the size of
the dam or building alternate dams, thus
bringing more food within reach. This pro¬
cess is efficient, but limited by danger of
flooding the lodge if the water levels are
raised too much. An alternate strategy is the
digging of canals to a food source. Both
techniques were employed at one of the
ponds. The canals measured were about 24
in. wide and 6 in. deep. Water levels were
probably higher at the time they were in use,
thus increasing their effective depth. At one
site, a main canal along the forest edge was
approximately 180 yds in length.

Feeding areas at both ponds were in mixed
deciduous-coniferous forest, with different
species dominating at each. The importance
value (IV = sum of relative frequency,
relative density and relative dominance),
used in comparing the relative importance
and influence of the different tree species,
indicates that paper birch ( Betula papy-
rifera), balsam {Abies balsa mea) and
quaking aspen in that order were the dom¬
inant species at pond 1 (Table 1). Spruce
{Picea sp.), aspen and birch dominated at
pond 2 with maple {Acer sp.), alder {Alnus
rugosa), tamarack {Larix laricina), and
white pine {Pinus strobus) present in lesser
amounts (Table 1). The difference in species
composition at the two ponds is probably
due to different environmental conditions or
different histories.

Aspens {Populus spp.) are the preferred
food of beaver (Rue 1964). The proximity of
water to the large population of aspen
explains beaver presence in these areas.
Other foods noted were willow {Salix spp.),
alder, birch, various ferns, sedges, grasses
and aquatic plants. The woody plants men¬
tioned were important not only as food, but
were extensively utilized by beaver as con¬
struction materials.

The feeding patterns of beaver change sea¬
sonally, with preference for woody vegeta¬
tion in the fall, winter and early spring, and

84

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

Table 1. Forest Composition of Feeding Areas at Ponds 1 and 2.*

Pond 1

N

Pond 2

Frequency

(%)

1 2

A VG. DBH
(in)

1 2

Importance Value
(IV)

1 2

Alder

(Alnus rugosa)

0

2

0

20

0

3.3

0

14

Aspen

(Populus tremuloides )

4

9

33

50

7.3

3.5

28

48

Cut Aspen

9

2

31

20

4.2

3.3

38

13

Balsam

( Abies balsamea)

13

1

54

10

9.2

3.1

96

6

Birch

(Betula papyrifera)

24

9

92

70

6.0

6.8

127

67

Maple
(Acer sp.)

0

4

0

30

0

3.2

0

23

Spruce
(Picea sp.)

2

10

15

80

3.7

5.0

12

83

Tamarack
(Larix laricina)

0

2

0

10

0

12.3

0

25

White Pine
(Pinus strobus)

0

1

0

10

0

18.5

0

25

Total

52

40

300

300

* Mean Distance (MD)
Mean Area (MA)
Total Density (TD)

Pond 1
8.92 ft
81 ft2

538 trees/A

Pond 2
11.83 ft
140 ft2
3 1 1 trees/A

for herbaceous foods during spring and
summer. In Ohio, Svendsen (1980) estimated
that non-woody vegetation accounted for
90% of the feeding time during the summer
and 40 to 50% in early spring and fall. In
Pennsylvania, however, Brenner (in Svend¬
sen 1980) found that only 33% of the
vegetation consumed per day in spring and
summer months was herbaceous material. I
found no information regarding herbaceous
feeding by beaver in Wisconsin.

By correlating data on the amount of
inner bark per tree (Fig. 1) with diameters
and numbers of the cut stumps, I determined
that, for both ponds, a single adult beaver
ate an average of approximately 44 g (dry
wt) of aspen inner bark per day. Aldous
(1938) estimated that beaver eat 640-670 g
wet wt per day, which is equivalent to
160-220 g dry wt of inner bark per day. My

consumption estimates are probably the
more accurate of the two because Aldous’s
estimates were based on aspen eaten by cap¬
tive beaver that had no herbaceous vege¬
tation to supplement their diet. Further,
Aldous’s weights included the cork layer and
the wood in twigs and branches under 0.5 in.
diameter. The present study excluded the
cork layer and the wood of twigs which are
of little nutritional value even if consumed.

At both ponds, cut trees were present on
which the inner bark was partially or totally
unutilized. By measuring the unused por¬
tions of cut trees, the weight of unutilized
inner bark was estimated. A correlation of
stump diameter to unused log length indi¬
cated that, as stump diameter increases, so
does the length of unutilized log, and thus
also the quantity of unutilized inner bark
(Fig. 2).

1983]

Johnson — Aspen Utilization by Beaver

85

Fig. 1. The amount of phloem per 15 in. section versus
the base diameter of the section.

Nixon and Ely (1969) found that in trees
under 2 in. dbh less than 1% was wasted.
Aldous (1938) estimated that in aspen with a
stump diameter (sd) of 1 in. there was 80%
utilization and in trees of about 6 in. sd there
was 35% utilization. Rue (1964: 109)

estimated that the utilization of trees 4 to 6
in. in diameter was approximately 36%.
There was a greater percentage of total
utilization of the available food in the 1 to 3
in. sd trees, but the quantity of food per tree
was small compared with that obtainable
from larger trees. However, the latter were
only partially utilized. Aldous (1938) found
that a 7 in. tree, half utilized, would provide
approximately the same amount of food as
four 3 in. trees totally utilized. The present
study confirms Aldous’ estimate.

According to Aldous (1938), beaver prefer
the relatively corkless bark of the small
branches and limbs to that of the trunk. At
both ponds the small branches of trees were
generally totally utilized. Because the ratio
of crown to trunk increases with trunk diam¬

Fig. 2. The amount of unutilized inner bark of various
sized log sections (open), and lodged trees (solid) at
pond 1 (□) and pond 2 (O).

eter, there is more preferred food available
in larger trees even though there is more
actual waste. However, larger trees are gen¬
erally cut only after the small ones are used.
Jenkins (1980) noted that beaver cut rela¬
tively more small trees as distance from
water increased. That pattern was observed
in the present study. Aldous (1938) observed
that the degree of wastage in large trees is
determined both by distance from water and
by terrain. I also found relatively more trees
were cut in the 1 to 3 in. sd class than in
larger classes (Table 2).

Several reasons exist for the preference
for, and more complete utilization of,
smaller trees. Large trees take propor¬
tionately more time and energy to process,
whereas small trees can be cut and carried to
water after felling. Also, the large tree has a
more extensive cork layer which is not util¬
ized by the beaver for food. It would not be
energy efficient to strip off the cork to get at
the edible bark. Further, beaver prefer to
feed in the water and a large tree, even if cut

86

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

Table 2. The Number and Diameter of Aspen Trees Cut at the Feeding Areas of Ponds 1 and 2

in the Last Two Years.

Diameter Class (in)

0-1 1-2

2-3

3-4

4-5

5-6

6-7

Number

Pond 1

2

30

24

6

3

1

0

of

Trees

Pond 2

1

23

26

5

3

1

2

* Mean diameter cut at Pond 1 = 2.4 in

Pond 2 = 2.5 in

into sections, is very cumbersome for a
beaver to transport to the water.

Beaver do not plan the direction a tree
falls when cut. Occasionally, a falling tree
will become lodged in other trees and thus,
suspended out of the beavers’ reach, will
remain unutilized. Compared to the number
of trees cut, relatively few trees become
permanently lodged. At both ponds, all
lodged trees had a diameter of between 3 and
5 in. (Fig. 2). Apparently, trees under 3 in.
sd were light enough in weight that the
beaver could dislodge them, while trees over
5 in. sd were heavy enough to crash through
most obstructions. Trees in the 3 to 5 in.
class, however, became lodged and could not
be pulled down. Generally the trees located
near water lean toward the water or have
more foliage in that direction because of
reduced canopy and more sunlight so that
when cut, the tree falls toward the water.
This fact may influence the inverse relation¬
ship noted above of tree size to distance
from water.

The total percentage of unutilized inner
bark at both ponds, including lodged trees,
was approximately 9-12% of the food
available from cut aspen per year. This
indicates that the beaver uses its food source
efficiently. On the other hand, Aldous
(1938) calculated that beaver waste 64% of
the food available from cut aspen. It should
be noted however, that his data involved a
greater number of large trees than were

found in the present study. Therefore, the
relative efficiency of resource utilization
probably varies from site to site, decreasing
as forests mature and/or older trees become
more prevalent.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank William S. Brooks,
Ripon College Dept, of Biology, for his
guidance and technical advice, and Mary Lee
Montoure, Shawano, WI, for her assistance
on this project. I also greatly appreciate the
help of Robert Petry, Manager Northern
Woodlands and John Baer, Northern Wis¬
consin Forester of Nekoosa Papers, Inc.,
who gave me permission to use Nekoosa
property and facilities in Oneida County.

Literature Cited

Aldous, S. E. 1938. Beaver food utilization
studies. J. Wildl. Man. 2(4):2 1 5-222.

Jenkins, S. H. 1980. A size-distance relation in
food selection by beavers. Ecology. 61(4):
740-746.

Kendeigh, S. C. 1974. Ecology with special ref¬
erence to animals and man. Prentice-Hall, Inc.
Englewood Cliffs, N. J. 474 pp.

Nixon, C. M. and J. Ely. 1969. Foods eaten by a
beaver colony in southeast Ohio. Ohio J. Sci.
69:313-319.

Rue, L. L. III. 1964. The world of the beaver. J.

B. Lippincott Co. Philadelphia. 155 pp.
Svendsen, G. E. 1980. Seasonal change in feeding
patterns of beaver in southeastern Ohio. J.
Wildl. Man. 44(l):285-290.

THE REVEGETATION OF A SMALL
YAHARA VALLEY PRAIRIE FEN

James Hall Zimmerman
Department of Landscape Architecture
U. W. -Madison

Abstract

Following sewer construction in winter, 1971-72, the revegetation of exposed
dredged peat was compared with an undisturbed portion of a 3-ha prairie fen near
the Yahara River in Cherokee Marsh City Park, Madison, Wisconsin. In the absence
of alien species and hydrologic alteration, and with prompt manual removal of the
initial one-time massive invasion of willows and cottonwoods, full plant cover was
restored in two seasons, and 49 of the 71 enduring vascular plant species had re¬
turned at reasonable to full frequency by 1979. Presumably germinating mostly in
the disturbance year, the three behavioral groups were “true pioneers,” “climax op¬
portunists,” and “climax dominants or associates.” In the undisturbed portion,
some climax species exhibited rotation in apparent dominance, varying in degree of
vigor and flowering from year to year, possibly with influence from weather,
animals and fire. The pioneering woody species are seen as local or temporary
dominants in an otherwise sedge-grass-dominated system maintained primarily by
consistent groundwater input.

Introduction

Defined as calcareous peatlands, fens vary
floristically with climate. In eastern North
America, fens in the cool humid forest re¬
gions have trees — especially white cedar
( Thuja occidental is) (Boelter & Verry 1977;
Frederick 1974; Muenscher 1946). South of
Curtis’ (1959) “tension zone,” virgin
Wisconsin fens — even today — generally lack
trees and dense shrub cover. Curtis ascribed
this difference chiefly to prevalent presettle¬
ment prairie fires and early post-settlement
hay-mowing, but he also mentions agricul¬
tural drainage as a factor favoring woody
invasions. Vogl (1969), demonstrating
woody and charcoal layers in sedge peat in
S.E. Wisconsin, postulated that regional
agricultural drainage after the 1930’s
prevented high water from returning, fol¬
lowing drouth, peat fires, and livestock
grazing impact, to account for the prevalent
woody species’ dominance in many of these
peatlands reported in the 1950’s by White
(1965). A possible reason for the former lack

of woody dominance in the moist undis¬
turbed fens in the relatively dry prairie and
oak grove regions is the ability of dense
grasses and sedges (no doubt stimulated by
frequent fires) to out-compete all invading
seedlings, whereas in the humid north and
east it is the wet (unoccupied and not inun¬
dated) mossy logs and stumps on which seed¬
lings may quickly rebuild the forest after fire
or windthrow. Preliminary studies by Kogler
(1979) do not refute the hypothesis that red
osier dogwood ( Cornus stolonifera ), typical
of almost all woody species of southern
Wisconsin, can be controlled in peatlands by
high water tables which favor competitive
sedge dominance and lower soil oxygen and
nutrient availability. Sytsma and Pippen
(1982) related patterns of fen succession to
carr and forest to a complex of water avail¬
ability and human impacts, with a persistent
trend toward diversity rather than succes-
sional convergence, thus confirming the con¬
clusion of Heinselman (1970). The impor¬
tance of this habitat diversity to faunal as

87

88

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

well as floral richness is seen in the drastic
changes in the avifauna of Wingra Fen
recorded between 1912 and 1968 as woody
plant invasion progressed (Zimmerman,
1983).

Associated with porous sloping substrates
— usually sandy or gravelly ice-contact de¬
posits and glacial lake shores — the fens of
southern Wisconsin and adjacent states are
classified as groundwater slope wetlands by
Novitzki (1982). They derive their steady

flow of water, rich in calcium and magne¬
sium bicarbonates and sulfates (Curtis
1959), from permeable glacial debris con¬
taining dolomites such as that spread south¬
ward in eastern Wisconsin by the Green Bay
and Lake Michigan Lobes of the Wisconsin
Ice Sheet (Martin 1936; Reed 1983). Some of
the water may also come from underlying
porous bedrock such as the Cambrian sand¬
stones that supply many of the Yahara
Valley springs and wetlands (figure 1). The

Fig. 1. Yahara Valley, Central Dane County, Wisconsin (after Bedford et al. 1974),
showing locations of some of the prairie fens.

LEGEND: F = Wheeler-School Roads Fen (within shaded area indicating the extent
of the Cherokee Marsh Fen Complex)

W = Wingra Fen in the UW-Madison Arboretum on Lake Wingra
S = Fen hump in the South Waubesa Wetlands Complex
N = Nine Springs Creek Fens
P = Fen in Pheasant Branch Wetland Complex

SCALE: 1 : 300,000 (1 " = 4.5 miles; 1 cm = 3 km)

Each square is one township (6 mi on a side)

1983]

Zimmerman — Revegetation of a Fen

89

uninterrupted artesian waterlogging assures
minerotrophic peat buildup, despite some
humification, sometimes 1-2 m above the
surrounding terrain (Moran 1981; Kratz and
Winkler 1982). The steady upward discharge
of water under pressure also assures in
summer that the peat remains cooler than
the surrounding soil and air, and that the
dissolved salts accumulate. In addition to
evaporation and mineral incorporation into
incompletely decayed plant matter, the up¬
ward gradient of increasing temperature and
decreasing pressure may enhance the trans¬
port and deposition of calcium (Reed 1983).

The result is a substrate suitable only for
an unusual assortment of plants adapted for
the triple root stress of low oxygen avail¬

ability, low temperatures, and skewed nutri¬
tion (Van der Valk 1977). Our fen flora in¬
cludes certain disjunct wetland species of
northern climates ( Scirpus cespitosus ), salt
marshes ( Triglochin maritima ), wet lime¬
stone ledges ( Gentiana procera), and even
Sphagnum bogs ( Sarracenia purpurea)
(Moran 1981; Mandossian 1965). In Table I,
the species are keyed to their affiliations.
“Calcophilous” plants of fens, charac¬
terizing high-lime substrates, might better be
called calcicoles, since they may be tolerant
of a low availability of, say, phosphorus,
rather than needful of a high level of Ca or
Mg. Where surface peat isolation from
groundwater, and prolonged leaching by
pluvial climate precipitation, produce a

Table 1 . Prairie Fen plants observed in the 5-ha Wheeler-School Roads Yahara Fen in the years 1972-79.

(For starred species see text.)

Figures in the 5 columns are the % frequency in 1-m2 quadrats; x = present in the zone but not in any quadrat; 0 = not
observed in the zone.

Floristic affiliations: G = prairie grassland. W = general wetland. B = bog. C = (wet) calcicole.

DZ = Disturbed zone= 10m x 200m strip of peat spoils 1-20 cm thick, deposited in winter, 1971-72,

UZ = Undisturbed zone = similar-sized adjacent strip of virgin fen.

COLUMN

1

2

3

4

5

ZONE

DZ

DZ

DZ

UZ

UZ

YEAR

1972

1976

1979

1976

1979

# QUADRATS

8

5

16

10

16

Group A: Competition-tolerant perennial (cespitose and/or clonal) “climax herbs — dominants & associates” (symbol
T in summary).

Species'

English Name

1

2

3

4

5

*Andropogon gerardi — G

Tall bluestem grass

12

20

24

80

84

*Carex sterilis — C

Small tussock sedge

36

20

60

80

90

Lysimachia quadriflora— G

Prairie loosestrife

12

60

72

90

90

Muhlenbergia glomerata, and

Fen muhlenbergia and

M. mexicana — C

“Anthill grass”

X

20

42

80

84

Viola cucullata — W

Marsh blue violet

48

60

48

70

54

Cladium mariscoides — C

Twig rush sedge

0

0

6

20

42

**Carex stricta — W

Tussock sedge

12

80

54

100

30

Solidago uliginosa — B

Bog goldenrod

0

40

0

80

30

**Carex lasiocarpa— B

Wiregrass sedge

0

0

36

10

24

**Carex aquatilis — C

Water sedge

X

0

12

40

12

Valeriana ciliata (edulis)— G

Valerian

0

0

0

X

12

Carex leptalea — C

Scaly sedge

0

0

0

0

12

Spiranthes cernua — G

Ladies’ tress orchid

0

0

0

X

12

Carex prairea — C

Sedge

0

0

0

40

6

Hypoxis hirsuta — G

Yellow star grass

0

0

0

X

0

90 Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

Group B: Competition-intolerant herbs.

O = “climax opportunists” persisting in climax fen.

P = “true pioneers” requiring major disturbance.

LIFE FORM: A = annual or biennial.

S = cespitose (short-lived?) perennial.

R = rhizomatous clonal perennial.

Species 1

Asclepias incarnata*

W

o

s

English Name

Marsh milkweed

1

X

2

60

3

42

4

30

5

24

Aster junciformis

C

o

R

Rush-leaf aster

12

0

24

50

24

Aster lucidulus*

W

o

R

Lavender marsh aster

24

80

78

10

6

Aster novae-angliae*

W

o

s

New England aster

X

0

X

10

6

Aster simplex*

w

o

R

White marsh aster

X

0

18

10

0

Aster umbellatus

c

o

R

Flat-top white aster

0

X

0

X

X

Bidens cernua

w

p

A

Nodding bur marigold

X

X

0

0

0

Bidens coronata*

w

o

A

Slender bur marigold

X

20

6

X

X

Bromus kalmii*

c

o

s

Kalm’s brome grass

X

20

12

50

12

Calamagrostis canadensis

w

p

s

Bluejoint grass

X

0

6

X

0

Campanula aparinoides

w

o

s

Bedstraw bellflower

X

0

48

30

24

Cardamine bulbosa

w

o

s

Marsh cardamine

0

0

0

X

0

Carex hystricina

c

p

s

Hedge-hog sedge

X

20

0

X

0

Carex sartwellii

w

o

R

Sartwell’s sedge

12

0

6

0

X

Carex tenera, bebbii

w

o

s

Slender and Bebb’s sedges

X

0

0

0

6

Carex tetanica

w

o

R

Sedge

0

0

12

30

X

Carex spp.

Cirsium muticum*

c

o

A

Unidentified Sedges

Marsh thistle

48

X

20

42

50

18

Cyperus erythrorhizos

w

p

A

Redroot galingale

X

X

X

0

0

Cyperus rivularis

w

p

A

Low galingale

X

0

6

0

0

Drosera rotundifolia

B

o

S

Roundleaf sundew

0

0

0

10

0

Dryopteris thelypteris

w

o

R

Marsh fern

12

0

24

60

24

Eleocharis acicularis

w

p

R

Tiny spike rush

0

40

0

0

0

Eleocharis elliptica

w

o

R

Peatland spikerush

12

0

24

0

24

Eleocharis obtusa

w

p

A

Annual spike rush

36

0

0

0

0

Epilobium coloratum

w

p

S

Willow-herb

12

X

0

0

0

Equisetum arvense

w

o

R

Horse-tail

12

40

72

0

0

Erigeron philadelphicus

w

o

A

Philadelphia fleabane

X

20

X

0

6

Eriophorum angustifolium

B

o

R

Cotton-grass

0

0

0

X

12

Eupatorium maculatum*

w

o

S

Joe- pye- weed

24

20

6

80

24

Eupatorium perfoliatum*

w

o

S

Bone-set

72

60

36

20

X

Galium labradoricum

c

o

s

Boreal bedstraw

0

0

0

60

0

Gentiana procera*

c

o

A

Lesser fringed gentian

X

X

X

X

X

Gerardia paupercula

c

o

A

Pink gerardia

X

60

6

X

0

Glyceria striata*

w

o

S

Manna grass

84

80

78

X

12

Hierochloe odorata

c

o

R

Sweet grass

12

X

X

0

0

Hypericum virginicum

B

o

S

Bog St. John’s Wort

12

20

6

10

0

(Triadenum fraseri)

Impatiens capensis (biflora)

w

p

A

Orange jewel weed

0

20

0

0

0

Iris virginica (shrevei)

w

p

R

Blue flag

0

0

6

10

0

Juncus dudleyi

w

o

S

Low-prairie rush

X

40

12

0

6

Juncus brevicaudatus

c

o

A

Fen rush

0

X

0

0

6

Juncus torreyi

c

p

A

Torrey’s rush

X

60

18

0

0

Lathyrus palustris

w

o

R

Marsh pea

0

0

0

20

0

Leersia oryzoides

w

p

A

Rice cutgrass

0

60

0

0

0

Lobelia kalmii

c

o

A

Kalm’s Lobelia

36

60

6

10

0

Lobelia siphilitica

c

p

S

Great blue Lobelia

0

X

0

0

0

Lycopus americanus

w

o

R

Water horehound

72

100

36

40

12

Lycopus uniflorus

w

o

R

Water horehound

60

60

70

30

1983] Zimmerman— -Revegetation of a Fen 91

Species'

Oxypolis rigidior

G

o

A

English Name

Cow-bane

1

0

2

0

3

0

4

0

5

6

Panicum flexile

C

p

A

Fen panic grass

0

0

12

0

0

Parnassia glauca*

C

o

s

Grass of Parnassus

0

0

18

90

36

Pedicularis lanceolata*

c

o

s

Lousewort

X

20

48

0

X

Potentilla palustris

B

o

R

Bog cinquefoil

0

0

0

X

0

Pycnanthemum virginicum

G

o

s

Mountain mint

12

0

0

0

0

Rhynchospora capillacea

C

p

A

Fen beak-rush

0

20

0

0

0

Rumex orbiculatus (brittanicus)

w

p

A

Marsh dock

12

0

0

X

0

Scirpus atrovirens

w

p

S

Black-green bulrush

X

20

0

0

0

Scirpus validus

w

p

R

Roundstem bulrush

48

40

60

20

12

Scutellaria galericulata

w

o

R

Skullcap

X

20

0

0

0

Solidago gigantea*

w

o

R

Smooth goldenrod

48

20

90

30

30

Solidago riddellii*

c

o

S

Riddell’s goldenrod

12

40

90

40

30

Spartina pectinata

G

o

R

Cordgrass

0

0

0

X

0

Sphenopholis intermedia

C

o

S

Wedge grass

12

60

0

0

0

Thalictrum dasycarpum

W

o

S

Tall meadowrue

0

0

0

10

6

Triglochin maritima

C

o

R

Arrowgrass

0

0

0

X

X

Typha (mostly latifolia)

W

p

R

Cattail

24

60

84

0

6

Utricularia intermedia

c

o

R

Small bladderwort

0

0

0

X

0

Verbena hastata

w

o

S

Marsh Vervain

12

0

0

X

0

Moss (Amblystegium sp.?)

w

o

R

Marsh Moss

X

NA

6

NA

42

Group C: Woody species enduring wet peat (symbol Y in summary). (Most of the invading willows and cottonwoods
were manually removed from the disturbed zone by the end of 1973.) The dogwood in the disturbed zone
consisted of 6 mature bushes until 1979, when numerous 1 -4-year-olds appeared.

Species'

English Name

1

2

3

4

5

Betula pumila

T

o

s

Bog birch

0

0

0

10

24

Cornus stolonifera

W

o

R

Red osier dogwood

0

40

90

50

48

Populus deltoides

W

p

s

Cottonwood

96

X

0

0

0

Ribes americanum

W

o

s

Black currant

0

0

6

0

0

Rubus spp.

w

o

R

Raspberries

X

0

0

0

0

Salix bebbiana

w

o

s

Bebb’s willow

X

20

24

10

12

Salix Candida

T

o

s

Sage willow

0

0

6

60

36

Salix discolor

w

o

s

Big pussy willow

X

0

24

0

6

Salix interior

w

p

R

Sandbar willow

X

20

30

0

0

Salix nigra

w

p

s

Black willow

X

X

0

0

0

Salix petiolaris

Salix spp.

w

o

s

Red and green willow
Unidentified willows

X

84

20

X

42

20

42

Viburnum trilobum (opulus?)

w

o

s

Highbush cranberry

0

0

6

0

0

SPECIES

BEHAVIOR

AFFILIATION

LIFE FORM

TOTAL

REASONABLY

SUMMARY1 2

T

O

P

G

W

C

B

A

S

R

Y

IN FEN

RESTORED

Group A

Climax Herbs

16

—

—

5

2

7

2

__

11

5

—

16

10 of 16 T’s

Group B

Intoh Herbs

—

48

19

3

38

22

4

18

25

24

—

67

35 of 48 O’s

Group C

Woody Spp.

2

7

3

9

3

12

12

4 of 7 O’s

TOTALS

18

55

22

8

40

29

6

18

45

32

12

95

49 of 71 T + O

1 Scientific names after Fernald (1950).

2 See text for discussion of additional upland alien invaders mostly considered temporary.

92

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

“poor fen,” additional bog species may
characterize the fen, as noted by Schwintzer
(1978) for northern Michigan. Our most
characteristic “poor fen” species is Carex

lasiocarpa, whose floating mats may support
either fen or bog plants, or mixtures, accord¬
ing to local water chemistry. Fen plants are
not tolerant of prolonged, or even inter-

Fig. 2. Location of Wheeler-School Roads Fen (adapted from Bedford et al. 1974) in the
SE 1/4 of Sec. 23, T 8 N, R 9 E, Dane County, Wisconsin, in the City of Madison and
Town of Westport.

LEGEND: 64 Sandhill

65 Fen

66 Sand and gravel pit

67 Yahara River at site of sewer crossing (dashed line)

68-69 Oak knolls

70-1 and 15 Diverse natural sedge meadows, fens, low prairies and floating
peat mats, with occasional islands of shrubs and aspens
73 wet carrs of willow, dogwood, and alder adjoining fens
L = outlet of large drainage ditch into Yahara River
D = outlet of level ditch over buried sewer pipe
P = sewer pump lift station
S = small drainage ditch
SCALE: 1:12,000(1"= 1000'; 1 cm = 120 m)

1983]

Zimmerman — Revegetation of a Fen

93

mittent, inundation; Moran notes Carex
stricta tussocks instead of fen species in an
Illinois fen located on a river floodplain.

In the prairie and oak grove region, two
extremes in a continuum of fen types may be
recognized (Moran 1981; Reed 1983): the
calcareous fen or marl flat, dominated by
extreme calcicoles like Eleocharis ros tel lata,
Rhynochospora capillacea, and Potentilla
fruticosa , and the prairie fen, with typical
wet prairie plants like Andropogon spp.
along with some of the smaller fen calcicoles
like Carex sterilis and Lobelia kalmii. The
marl flats are associated with a rapid
groundwater discharge and/or very high
lime content; their marl deposit is probably
the combined result of direct solute precip¬
itation and the growth of diatoms, bluegreen
algae, Chara, and molluscs. The prairie
fens, in contrast, form deep peat layers
(often over a layer of marl), to a depth of 1-3
m, largely as a result of root accumulation,
although the organic matter is not incor¬
porated into the upper mineral soil as is the
case in true wet to dry prairies. Curtis (1959),
Van der Valk (1975), and Kohring (1982)
have demonstrated the “hybrid” or, rather,
spectral or zonal nature of fens, in which
floristic composition varies locally with the
rate of groundwater flow, such as around a
“discharge window,” where varying degrees
of waterlogging, lime accumulation, and
peat formation depend on lateral distance
from the window. The habitat permanance
of steady flow combined with the high
diversity of local conditions helps explain the
puzzling richness of fen floras, which have
evidently sustained relict and specialized
species through climatic changes by exclud¬
ing competition from widespread species
which require more “average” conditions
under a given climate. A further part of the
explanation lies in the mechanisms of com¬
petition and renewal among populations of
associated fen species. The temporary dis¬
turbance of the natural fen investigated here
provided an opportunity to explore these
dynamics, which have import for the man¬

agement of rare and endangered species, as
well as for wetland restoration.

The purpose of this study was to see if a
disturbed fen could restore itself, and to
determine useful management strategies ap¬
plicable to this type of disturbance, which
was devegetation due to displacement of sur¬
face peat. The undisturbed portion of the
fen would serve as a “control” or bench¬
mark area.

Site Description and Methods

A series of accidents paved the way for
this opportunity. Glacial dams impounded
Madison’s five lakes in the spring-fed
Yahara Valley (figure 1). In 1912, the
Tenney park lock and dam in Madison
raised the upstream water-level of the
Yahara River north of Lake Mendota, pre¬
venting agricultural and urban drainage
ditches (L and S) from lowering the
watertable in a 3-ha hillside fen (#65) in
Cherokee Marsh near Wheeler and School
Roads (figure 2). From comparative obser¬
vations of recently farmed fens in the area,
this one appears to have had little or no
human impact at least as far back as 1912;
mowing and livestock grazing could have
occurred before that if it was not too wet
then. The vascular flora of this fen,
described in Bedford et al (1974), and
presented in Table I (Groups A, B, C), is
similar to that of the six fens studied by
Curtis (1959) near Madison, Wisconsin, and
the ten prairie fens studied by Moran (1981)
in northeastern Illinois. Of 37 “modal”
species (those having their highest % pres¬
ence in fens) and of 43 species with 33%
or higher presence, in Curtis’ fens, 24 and 38
species, respectively, occur in this fen. All of
Moran’s 36 most prevalent species (rated by
presence and frequency in combination) oc¬
cur in at least some Wisconsin fens, and 26
of them are found in this Cherokee fen.

Although Cherokee is one of the Madison
Park System’s “Conservation Parks”, plans
to avoid sensitive areas like the fen when
routing the Waunakee-DeForest sanitary

94

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

sewer interceptor were not implemented
because a map was misdelivered. Following
construction of the sewer, the segregated
sand and peat were carefully replaced after
being piled overwinter in 1971-72; but not
quite all the peat could be scraped off the fen
(figure 3). An irregular layer of raw fen peat
1-20 cm thick suffocated most of the vege¬
tation on a strip 10 m wide and 200 m long,
paralleling the sewer on its north side. That
strip is herein referred to as the disturbed
zone (DZ). When asked in April, 1972, by a
seedsman for advice on what to plant to
stabilize exposed peat, I asked to see the site.
Field inspection indicated that the water
table had not been altered, and that diverse
native fen vegetation existed in the adjacent
undisturbed zone of the fen (UZ). Since the
usual recommended wetland cover, an Eura¬
sian strain of reed canary grass ( Phalaris
arundinacea ), can remain as a competitive
monotype in both wet and drained fens, I

obtained the cooperation of the Madison
Metropolitan Sewerage District in allowing
natural revegetation to occur.

Within one season, native fen plants plus a
variety of temporary upland weeds attained
30% cover by visual estimate. No surface,
wind or water erosion was observed. How¬
ever, the peat replaced over the sewer pipe
was so fluid that it flowed westward out into
the river, leaving a level ditch (D in figure 2)
containing shallow water connected to the
river, allowing entry of fish which attracted
angling adults and youth for eight years. By
the time the high water of August, 1981,
caused a peat mat to float downstream and
lodge at the ditch mouth and close it off, a
well-worn path had been made in the DZ
parallel to the ditch. This path demonstrated
the importance of devegetating disturbances
to the perpetuation of truly pioneer herbace¬
ous but not woody species. Although the
fresh fen peat spoils had dried and become

K-

DZ —
5-10 m

UZ

A'

Fig. 3. Sewer Construction Impact: Transect A-A'of Figure 2 in Vertical Section Looking Toward River (vertical
scale exaggerated),

DZ = Zone of Peat Spoils incompletely scraped off
UZ = Undisturbed Fen
D = Level Ditch

1983]

Zimmerman—Revegetation of a Fen

95

encrusted with salts during May, 1972, the
upwelling artesian water had wetted the sur¬
face again by late summer, and pools of
surface water remained in the spoils’ irregu¬
larities through the following ten years.
During even the dry summers of 1976-77, the
water level in the piezometer (figure 3) re¬
mained near the peat surface, in contrast to
the level in the impacted Wingra Fen in the
University of Wisconsin Arboretum (figure
1) which dropped below the bottom of the
pipe and whose peat developed large cracks
(personal observation).

Observations were made at least once each
summer in 1972 through 1982. The final
accident was the fortuitous availability of
summer ecology classes for doing vegetation
sampling and manual labor. Although some
data were lost and some were not reliable
enough to use, one set of frequency data
from eight 1-m2 randomly placed quadrats
was obtained in the DZ in August, 1972, and
sets of five and ten quadrats in the DZ and
UZ respectively were obtained in July, 1976.
I personally sampled both the DZ and UZ
again in September, 1979, using 16 quadrats
each (Table I). Identification of immature
and vegetative plants was accomplished by
comparing mature species in the UZ. The
frequency figures should be taken only as
indicators of trends, for the uneven terrain
and small sample could cause a large sam¬
pling error. The line intercept used by Reed
(1983) is probably a more reliable as well as
quicker procedure.

The shrub cover in the UZ was 50% in
1976, based on 100 m of line intercept; it was
mostly red osier. Shrubs were lacking in the
DZ, either because of trampling by machin¬
ery and burial, or possibly because they were
scarce there to start with. The DZ alone suf¬
fered a one-time invasion in 1972 of numer¬
ous seedling woody species — the arboreal
cottonwoods (Populus deltoides) and
willows (mostly Salix nigra), the clonal Salix
interior, and the cespitose Salix discolor, S.
petiolaris, and S. bebbiana. It was assumed
that this dense invasion (more than one stem

per m2) might have usurped the DZ for
decades, since similar invasions have per¬
sisted around lagoons dug in 1936 and 1944
in the University of Wisconsin Arboretum
(no doubt there aided by peat-drying due to
spoils piling, water table lowering, and
enhanced evapotranspiration by the woody
species). Therefore, it was decided to remove
them from the DZ. They were pulled up by
hand, while it was still possible, in 1972 and
1973, when they were still small (20-200 cm
tall). The widely scattered mature shrubby
cespitose Salix and Betula species were
allowed to remain in the UZ where they were
not spreading. Several spring fires that swept
the fen, including the latest (and only inten¬
tional) one in 1982, appeared to have little
effect on any shrubs, since they always
regained full size in one or two seasons. The
seed source for the cottonwoods and tree
willows was the ditch berm (L) 300 m to the
north (figure 2). This fen was, uniquely,
almost entirely free of seed sources of alien
Phalaris, Rhamnus, and Lonicera species
within a radius of 300 m beyond the fen.

Results and Discussion

Table I lists all the vascular plant species
found in the UZ and DZ of the 3-ha Wheeler
Road-School Road Sector of the Cherokee
Marsh Fens, except for the mostly short¬
lived native and alien upland crop weeds,
which were abundant in 1972 in the DZ.
These included Agrostis alba, Aster pilosus,
Barbarea vulgaris, Chenopodium sp., Cir-
sium arvense, Erigeron strigosus, Fragaria
virginiana, Juncus tenuis, Lactuca sp.,
Lepidium sp., Oenothera biennis, Panicum
sp., Phalaris arundinacea, Poa pratensis,
Polygonum sp., Solidago altissima, and
Taraxacum officinale. Except for occasional
small clumps of Agrostis and Phalaris, these
species ceased to dominate the DZ by 1973
and had nearly disappeared by 1979, as had
occasional ephemeral seedlings of Populus
tremuloides, Carya ovata, Ulmus ameri-
cana, Acer saccharinum, and A. negundo.
After 1973 the ground was fully covered by

96

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

plants as the fen species rapidly spread and
displaced the agricultural weeds without
human intervention.

Group A of Table I comprises perennial
herbaceous species believed to be tolerant of
intense plant competition. They appear to be
long-lived, persistent, and often slow-
growing. The five starred species account for
most of the cover, thus qualifying as “cli¬
max dominants.” The others are “climax
associates,” likewise consistently well dis¬
tributed and periodically very conspicuous in
the UZ, and in similar undisturbed prairie
fens in southern Wisconsin. Hence, they are
all here considered to be species of the
“climax” phase, defined as stable, given
unchanging hydrologic conditions. In the
recent dynamic allogenic “Gleasonian”
model of wetlands (Van der Valk 1982),
there is no “Clementsian” mesic climatic
climax. The term climax as used here refers
to the presumed most stable and enduring
sedge-grass-dominated fen phase among the
endless cycling between dry and wet phases
characterizing all wetlands (Zimmerman
1982) and between open (disturbed or
devegetated) and closed (fully vegetated)
habitats (the “internal succession” of
Curtis, 1959).

The double-starred species of Group A
and the Cladium seldom flowered under un¬
disturbed (crowded) conditions in the UZ;
sometimes they flowered at the edge of
water, or occasionally with fire or local
animal or frost disturbances, in other fens.
The “tussock sedge”, Carex stricta (possibly
including hybrids with Carex aquatilis ), does
not produce tussocks in the raised calcereous
prairie fens of Wisconsin. Carex sterilis,
however, always produces distinct small,
dense, raised tussocks (with over 100
shoots/year) in the Yahara Valley Fens and
some others, whereas it is reported by Moran
not to do so in the northeastern Illinois
prairie fens he studied. Carex prairea —
locally dominant — forms raised tussocks as
large as those of Carex stricta . Several
species appeared to exhibit striking year-to-

year variation in dominance as measured by
vigor and heavy flowering; but unfortu¬
nately quantitative data were not obtained.
In dry summers like 1976-77, Andropogon
gerardi grew tall and tended to flower abun¬
dantly throughout the UZ. It also did so
after fire, such as in 1982, despite water¬
logging caused by abundant groundwater
recharge and discharge. In the wettest year
(1974), Cladium dominated several large
areas with heavy flowering, whereas it was
almost impossible to find in other years.
Carex sterilis always flowered well and was
easy to find through June; but it can be
obscured in late summer in high Andro¬
pogon years. The flowering Andropogons
were always all A. gerardi , whereas Moran
found A. (Schizachyrium) scoparius to be
nearly as important as a co-dominant. The
latter was found to be the sole dominant in
one small fen-like wet prairie in Jefferson
County, Wisconsin (personal observation,
1982). Some of the vegetative shoots seen in
the UZ were very flat but they did not form
tussocks as is usual in A. scoparius in both
wet and dry sites.

The colonization pattern of the species of
Group A in the DZ is in general accord with
expectations for climax vegetation: they
require time. Even as late as 1979 (column
3), most of them failed to attain full
frequency. The absence of the last five
species, and of recognizable Muhlenbergia
glomerata, in the DZ cannot be explained at
present. Muhlenbergia mexicana commonly
colonizes ant hills, which might qualify it as
competition-intolerant (Group B); but it is
widely prevalent in dense cover along with
M. glomerata, although it sometimes is
inconspicuous even in autumn. The other
species may have needed a coincidence of
dispersal and special weather conditions not
experienced by 1982 in order to colonize the
DZ. Possibly the Spiranthes, which has been
known to invade open peat or moist sand,
requires time for a specific fungal develop¬
ment. A solitary plant of Valeriana dis¬
covered in the DZ in 1982 might have been

1983]

Zimmerman— Revegetation of a Fen

97

from a buried root rather than a windblown
seed. The re-invading species evidently
started mostly or wholly from seeds brought
into or lying dormant in the peat, and grew
soon after the disturbance ended (1972 and
possibly 1973), since they were seen as
numerous small plants in those summers,
although the possibility of a few coming
from buried roots cannot be ruled out. It is
possible that the abundance of Viola in
August, 1972, came from new (1972) ant-
dispersed seeds finding the habitat still very
open and thus highly favorable, in addition
to some buried seeds and plants, whereas the
slow increase in Andropogon suggests a
gradual seeding-in (by wind) in combination
with a slow maturation rate. The high values
in 1979 for Carex stricta and C. aquatilis in
the DZ, along with a conspicuous abundance
of Typha latifolia and Scirpus validus, may
indicate “pioneering” advantage. (Possibly,
too, these four semi-aquatic species were
augmented in the DZ with rhizomes brought
in during peat dumping from flooded areas
closer to the river.)

The species in Group B, in contrast to
Group A, are rapid-growing and probably
less competitive herbs, as deduced from the
fact that they attained a much larger plant
size and/or abundance in the DZ than in the
UZ; moreover, many matured more quickly
than the “climax dominants” did, and then
some declined in abundance by 1979 (com¬
pare columns 1, 2 and 3). The starred species
of Group B, in particular, exhibited unusual
vigor in the DZ where plant cover was un¬
even and hence plant competition was per¬
haps reduced. For example, Bidens coronata
occasionally reached 2 m in height in the DZ,
in constrast to about 20 cm in the UZ, while
Gentiana procera reached 50 cm in height,
with 5-20 flowers per plant, in the DZ, in
contrast to 10-20 cm, with but 1-3 flowers, in
the UZ. This effect was as striking for some
perennials, such as Solidago riddel l ii, Pedi-
cularis lanceolata , and Parnassia glauca, as
it was in the biennials and winter annuals.

A further distinction could be made,

within the plants of Group B, between
“climax opportunists” (0) which persisted in
or reinvaded both zones, with a steady
annual frequency but lower in the UZ, and
the “true pioneers” (P) which appeared only
temporarily after the dredging disturbance,
and were not found in the UZ during the ten
years of observation. The true pioneers
tended to recur in the DZ only in the foot
path along the ditch after the first few years.
Both groups, probably differing only in the
degree of their intolerance of plant compe¬
tition, include calcicoles (C) and general
wetland species (W), and they include both
annuals-biennials (A) and perennials. The
long-lived clonal perennials (R) like Aster
lucidulus and Solidago gigantea persist as
rarely-flowering widely-scattered short
stalks in the UZ as do the (presumably short¬
lived) cespitose perennials (S) like Eupa-
torium macula turn and E. perfoliatum. With
drainage, these (R & S) species soon explode
and dominate the biomass, as noted in the
Wingra Fen study (Salli 1965) as well as by
Moran. Some perennials suspected of- being
short-lived in dense cover, such as Carex
hystricina and Scirpus atrovirens, may
persist indefinitely in springs, paths, ditches
and pastures; but they had died out in the
DZ by 1979. In one of the University of
Wisconsin Arboretum’s lagooned fens
(Monroe Street Duckpond), both species
persisted on eroding peat banks until 1948,
12 years after the original dredging, and then
reappeared on spoils from redredging in
1974 (personal observation); possibly, then,
their seeds lay dormant in the bottom peat
for 26 years.

The dozen “climax opportunists” which
had not appeared in the DZ by 1979 (and
1982) are placed in this category on the basis
of personal observation elsewhere. No ex¬
planation can be offered for the behavior of
Thalictrum. It is here, as usual, scarce in the
virgin climax condition; but it was expected
to invade the DZ in exceptional abundance.
It is one of the commonest species in most of
our somewhat pastured or drained fens

98

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

today, whereas it was apparently a rare
species in the early days (Cheney and True
1893).

The woody species (Group C in Table I)
seem to fall into the same three classes as did
the herbs. “Climax” species, marked T,
appear to be stable in the UZ and in similar
fens, neither increasing nor decreasing much
over the years. Curtis (1943) reported a
drastic decline in stem density of bog birch
( Betula pumila, glandulosa, or sandbergii;
part of a confusing complex needing further
study) in Wingra Fen in the University of
Wisconsin Arboretum, and a corresponding
increase in flowering and stem density of
Cypripedium candidum, after several years
of annual mowing, simulating prairie fires;
but whether the shrubs’ roots actually dis¬
appeared is not clear. Moran reviews several
observations suggesting that fires may help
control shrubs; but again it is not certain
whether these woody shrubs are actually
eliminated by fire or merely kept in an
inconspicuous subordinate state. As does the
birch, red osier dogwood varies from 0 to
over 50% cover in various undisturbed
burned and unburned Wisconsin prairie
fens, yet seemed not to be changing in the
UZ in the ten years observed. The dogwood
remained at 50% cover with neither seed¬
lings nor rooted stolons observed in the UZ.

Reproduction of the “climax” woody
species, however, may require special site
conditions so they might really all be
“opportunists” or even “pioneers.” The
birch, of low density in the UZ, was not
observed to reproduce in either zone,
whereas in the dry year 1976, birch seedlings
appeared in spring at very high densities (up
to 10/cm2) in the drying areas of peat
exposed in Wingra Fen, only to die of drouth
later in the season (personal observation).
The dogwood was virtually absent in the DZ
until 1979, when an abundance of seedlings
(66% frequency, often occuring in groups of
2-6 individuals, estimated at 1-4 years of age,
about 5-20 cm in height) was discovered
there. Only six adult bushes were in that
zone in 1979; presumably they predated the

construction in 1972. The tardiness of this
high rate of invasion by red osier dogwood
suggests that a special means of seed dis¬
persal was necessary, since berry production
was high in all years (never all burned).
Experimental germination was obtained
readily in one season with stratification
and/or scarification (Kogler, 1979); there¬
fore seeds buried in peat should have grown
by 1973. One possibility is that voles and
shrews — probable important vectors and
cachers of seeds (obtained either from berries
or bird excrement) — would not invade the
DZ until several years of revegetation had
built up sufficient cover and litter to provide
suitable habitat and food. Perhaps by 1979
the small mammal population was large
enough to consume most of the seeds they
brought in, as may be chronically the case in
the UZ, where no dogwood seedlings were
found. Habitat specificity, including tem¬
porarily reduced plant competition, as well
as reduced water saturation, may be as im¬
portant for the ecesis of dogwood as for bog
birch. In Waterloo Fen (Jefferson County,
Wisconsin) these shrubs are found mostly at
the sides of the fen humps which may be
subject to slumping and drying (personal
observation). Shrub patterns are likewise
conspicuous at Waubesa Fen (Kratz and
Winkler 1982), and they form a ring around
the Waubesa “gentian pocket” (Burr 1980)
and the “prairie ring” in one part of Wingra
Fen (Lovely 1983). These circles may sur¬
round “discharge windows.” Salix Candida,
like bog birch, failed to colonize the DZ,
perhaps likewise requiring a rare or narrow
range of temperature or moisture conditions
which did not coincide with the temporary
absence of competition in the years 1972-73.
A reasonable hypothesis for a scattering of
dogwoods, willows and birches in the UZ
and in other relatively undisturbed fens is
that microtopography caused by anthills and
trampling by deer might occasionally pro¬
vide small dry colonization sites.

In contrast to the “conservative” woody
species discussed above, Salix bebbiana, S.
petiolaris, and S. discolor (which do occur at

1983]

Zimmerman— Revegetation of a Fen

99

low frequencies in unaltered fens) invaded
the DZ very abundantly, but did so only
once, in 1972, while not changing in abun¬
dance in the UZ. Hence they can be called
“true pioneers, like the tree willows and
cottonwoods. Unlike the pioneer herbs,
however, all these woody species may be able
to dominate the vegetation for many years
and even alter the environment (by shading
ground herbs and drying the peat) to their
temporary advantage and that of upland
invaders. The sapling willows and cotton¬
woods reached a height of 0. 5-2.0 m in the
first or second years and were becoming
difficult to pull out by autumn, 1973. It
required about 20 people, working 2-3
hours, in both 1972 and 1973 to eradicate all
these invaders save a few of the climax
opportunist willow shrubs; although not
counted, the number removed must have
been on the order of 1,000-2,000 in the DZ,
in many parts of which the density exceeded
one per m2. The unmanaged control areas of
the DZ were perhaps not fully comparable
since they were sandier and drier — at the east
end of the ditch on both sides and all along
the south side where sand had been piled. In
these places an enduring dense thicket of
cottonwood, sandbar willow and tree wil¬
lows now reaches to ten m in height, with
stem densities still approaching or exceeding
1/m2.

Conclusions

1. Given a chance, natural vegetation can
restore itself in a prairie fen. In this case,
without any planting, given a seed source of
diverse native species nearby and possibly
also in the peat, given an undisturbed hydro-
logic regime which soon wetted the addi¬
tional (but thin) peat spoils cover, and given
prompt removal of the one-time invading
willows and cottonwoods, native plant
species restored full cover by the second
season’s end. In 1979, after the eighth
summer, 49 of the 71 enduring fen species
had returned, including ten of the fifteen
presumed “climax” fen herbs.

A major difference in aspect of the dis¬

turbed zone throughout this study was lack
of red osier dogwoods. However, a late
heavy invasion of seedlings of this shrub in
the DZ (by 1979) portended abnormally
dense dogwood cover in the future if these
did not die and if they were not removed or
thinned while still small. A second conspic¬
uous difference in the restored disturbed
zone as compared to the UZ was a greater
abundance maintained through 1982 of
semi-aquatic species, including Typha
latifolia, Scirpus validus, Carex stricta and
C. aquatilis. It was not clear whether this
difference would be permanent or not and to
what extent the invasion was due to tem¬
porary lack of competition in 1972, or to
fortuitous seed availability, or to an artifact
of spoils transport.

A distinction must be made between dis¬
turbances of the surface (soil or vegetation)
and of the hydrologic regime (water levels,
pressures, rates of flow, and sources). This
fen was unusual in suffering only a surface
disturbance; most fens today suffer hydro-
logic as well as surface impacts due to
human activity, with characteristic resulting
invasion of lowland and upland carr and
forest, or of ragweed (Ambrosia trifida) and
nettle (Urtica procera ), or reed canary grass,
or at least of general wetland opportunists
such as Impatiens biflora, Aster lucidulus
and A. simplex, and Solidago gigantea and
even S. altissima.

2. When compared with the vegetation in
the undisturbed zone, the response to dis¬
turbance revealed individual behavioral
characteristics and relationships among the
plant species. Several approaches for por¬
traying the nature of plant succession are
suggested by the results:

(a) A spectrum of survival strategies. At
one end are the “climax dominants and asso¬
ciates” which endure competition, grow
slowly, and exhibit a certain amount of year-
to-year rotation in dominance. At the other
end are the “true pioneers” which can
invade only once, at a time of major devege-
tational disturbance, and then run their life
course whether short or long. Among the

100

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

woody pioneers, tree species while alive indi¬
cate by their age the date of the most recent
major disturbance. In between the extremes
are the “climax opportunists” which persist
in or reinvade the climax phase at low vigor
and frequency (in a steady-state pattern) and
which indicate by becoming conspicuous the
time and location of minor as well as major
surface disturbances. Some of these plants
may have special survival strategies such as
the root parasitism of Pedicularis (Piehl
1965), fungal associations (orchids and
perhaps others), and special dispersal and
seed planting requirements such as being
stamped into the soil by deer or livestock
(suggested by various authors for Gentiana
and Cypripedium). Reed (pers. comm. 1983)
suggests subdividing the “climax opportun¬
ist” class into “general opportunists” found
in many habitats ( Equisetum arvense, Impa-
tiens biflora , Scirpus atrovirens, Thalictrum
dasycarpum, Aster simplex, Solidago a/tis-
sima ), “mid-succession” species (most of
Group B in Table I), and “late succession”
species (perhaps Galium labradoricum,
Spartina pectinata, Carex prairea, etc.).

No doubt the individual strategems will
prove to be so diverse and complex as to defy
simple classification when fully known. For
example, it has been suggested (Calvin
DeWitt, U W. Envt. Studies Institute, pers.
comm.) that Cypripedium candidum (absent
in this fen but present in fens nearby), whose
crowns are known to remain dormant during
some growing seasons, might flower best
when under environmental stress — the only
time that expenditure of energy for
reproduction is crucial — and if so would
then indicate conditions of environmental
change or habitat degradation rather than of
stability and “health.”

(b) The disturbance requirement for main¬
tenance of even the “climax” vegetation.
Some competition-tolerant species may
occasionally have a chance to replace their
senescent individuals in the local disturbed
sites that favor the opportunists as well (the
“gap-phase” of forestry and the “internal
succession” of Curtis). Other climax

members may require the prior establish¬
ment of mid-succession or even pioneer
species to flourish (possibly the case for the
last 5 species of Group A in Table I). How¬
ever, it appears from this study that many of
the permanent species of Group A repro¬
duced chiefly in the year of major distur¬
bance along with the pioneers. Succession,
as measured by successive dominance of spe¬
cies, would then be an artifact of the
different maturation rates of pioneer and
climax types. Succession in other wetlands,
too, has been found to be closer to this
“fortuitous allogenic” model than to the
traditional “environmental conditioning”
model (VanderValk, 1981, 1982).

(c) “Party-crashing” by species from alien
ecosystems. In the Van der Valk model,
plants play two games. Disturbances are like
the periodic stopping of music in the game of
“musical chairs.” Once “in,” either the
climax dominant fen herbs or the pioneering
woody species may then play “king of the
hill,” excluding most competitors and freez¬
ing for a long time the pattern of temporary
disturbance and fortuitous seed availability.
In these games, species from two alien com¬
munities — field and forest — may likewise get
“in” and participate in the fen’s succes-
sional cycle. In healthy fens, agricultural
crop pests (American and Eurasian) are
unlikely to remain except possibly the
hydrophytic reed canary grass, which has
persisted in a wet fen hump in Waubesa Wet¬
lands for several decades (Burr 1980). A few
small clones of reed canary have persisted in
the DZ through 1982.

By shading and drying effects, woody
invaders pose a serious threat to fen herbs
now that so few gene banks of native species
remain and now that additional Eurasian
species are available. In the past, invading
woody species such as alder (Alnus rugosa ),
tamarack ( Larix laricina) and white cedar (in
cool climates) and the cottonwoods and
willows of river floodplains, accompanied or
followed by other wet forest species, were
probably a normal successional expression
of dry phases of climatic cycles. Such an

1983]

Zimmerman — Revegetation of a Fen

101

interpretation could explain the woody and
charcoal layers in Vogl’s sedge peat profiles.
Tree-dried peat, in time of drouth, might be
especially prone to burn. Today, Eurasian
invaders of impacted fens exacerbate the
extinction of native fen species by being pre¬
adapted for fens and relatively resistant to
local consumers like deer, rabbits, and
insects. Kogler (1979) documents the rapid
invasion of Gardner Marsh (a ditched fen)
by Lonicera x Bella ( morrowi x tatarica ),
Rhamnus cathartica , floodplain trees (cot¬
tonwood, sandbar willow and ash), and
especially the European fen buckthorn,
Rhamnus frangula. The latter has abun¬
dantly invaded Wingra Fen (Lovely 1983)
and is now appearing even in the minimally
altered Cedarburg String Bog at Saukville
(personal observation, 1983). It is not known
if its recently widely propagated cultivar
“tallhedge” will also invade natural
communities.

3. Management of natural ecosystems to
perpetuate native gene banks requires coun¬
teracting the human impacts. For fens, these
impacts include alien species as well as
hydrologic effects. A number of our rare or
endangered plant (and possibly animal) spe¬
cies appear to be true pioneers or at least
climax opportunists, dependent on a certain
amount of recurrent local disturbance of the
soil and the vegetation fabric by weather,
animals, and probably by certain types of
fire (for example, see Smith 1983). These
same disturbances, however, may enable
long-lived and often habitat-influencing
alien species (from other habitats or con¬
tinents) to usurp the site. Planting, earth-
moving, and alteration of hydrologic re¬
gimes in the vicinity provide seed sources for
these aliens almost everywhere today, so that
the conditions (disturbance patterns) neces¬
sary for native species’ maintenance in pro¬
tected habitats risk allowing some aliens
repeatedly to get a foothold. For example,
lesser fringed gentians seem to benefit from
light grazing or trampling by dairy cattle at
the fen edge (Walworth County, Wisconsin,
near Lake Comus, personal observation,

1981). In such places, these alien threats to
lesser fringed gentians and other rare plant
and animal fen species include: a) reed
canary grass such as in South Waubesa and
Wheeler Road fens, b) buckthorns and river
nettles and giant ragweed in Wingra Fen and
many others, c) purple loosestrife (Lythrum
salicaria) in the Fox Valley Crane Refuge
and at the Horicon Wildlife Refuge, and d)
cottonwoods and several willows in all of
these Wisconsin wetlands.

Management of natural areas, therefore,
involves continual removal of the alien
species within and without the protected
area. Ironically, this constant cost-intensive
spatial segregation of species is precisely
what distinguishes the garden and the zoo
from a natural area. The high cost of seizing
opportunities to study impacted habitats and
the high cost of maintaining virgin examples
for comparison are justified by the high
efficiency with which the interactions and
dynamics are revealed, on which to base suc¬
cessful resource management strategies.

Acknowledgment

Special thanks are due to Mr. Jack
Maxfield for his cooperation in enabling
pursuit of this study as an alternative to
planting on the disturbed peat of the right of
way of the Madison Metro Sewerage Dis¬
trict, and likewise to Mr. Si Widstrand, for
permission to conduct the study and remove
invading woody plants within a Madison
Conservation Park. For critically reading
this manuscript and for many helpful sug¬
gestions I am indebted to Mr. Donald M.
Reed (biologist, S.E. Wis. Reg. PI. Comm.).

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Zimmerman. 1974. The Wetlands of Dane
County. Dane Co. Reg. Plan. Comm, and Wis.
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Boelter, D. H. and E. S. Verry. 1977. Peatland
and Water in the Northern Lake States.
U.S.D.A. For. Serv. Gen. Tech. Rept. NC-31,
N-C For. Exp. Sta., St. Paul, Minn. 22 p.

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

Burr, C. 1980. Lesser fringed gentians. Wis. Nat.
Res. Mag. 4:21-23. Wis. Dept. Nat. Res.,
Madison.

Cheney, L. S. and R. H. True. 1893. On the flora
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45-135.

Curtis, J. T. 1943. Use of mowing in manage¬
ment of white ladyslipper. Jour. Wildl. Mgt.
10:303-308.

Curtis, J. T. 1959. The Vegetation of Wisconsin
— An Ordination of Plant Communities. Re¬
print 1971, Univ. of Wis. Press, Madison,
657 p.

Fernald, M. L. 1950. Gray’s Manual of Botany,
8th ed. Amer. Book Co., N.Y., 1632 p.
Frederick, C. M. 1974. A natural history study of
the vascular flora of Cedar Bog, Champaign
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Univ. of Wis. Press, Madison (MS in prep.)

STORED-PRODUCT INSECT PESTS
IN FEED MILLS IN SOUTHERN WISCONSIN

Phillip Pellitteri and G. Mallory Boush
Department of Entomology
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Abstract

Twenty feed mills located in southern Wisconsin were sampled in an attempt to
assess the stored-product insect fauna present during the summers of 1975 and 1976.
Over 100 insect species were collected and identified, and 1 1 species recorded for the
first time as occurring in Wisconsin. Various sampling methods, including insect
traps and debris collections, were used to determine the degree of infestation within
each mill, and to determine the insect fauna present.

Introduction

The worldwide movement of stored-
product insects through commerce has often
caused economic and political problems
(Freemen, 1973). Early detection, and a
knowledge of the life histories and habits of
the insect species involved, are essential for
correct control procedures and for the pro¬
tection of the products involved (Aitken,
1975). Federal inspections and quarantine
regulations do much to check the introduc¬
tion or spread of stored-product pests, but
the need to monitor the insect fauna re¬
mains. To illustrate this point, Trogoderma
granarium the Khapra beetle, was first col¬
lected and identified in the United States in
California in 1953 (Allen and Linsley, 1954),
yet this destructive species had been intro¬
duced into the United States at least seven
years earlier, and spread to four states
before being eradicated in the early sixties
(Cotton, 1963).

No comprehensive stored product insect
survey has been previously conducted in
Wisconsin. The plan of the present investiga¬
tion was two-fold. First, 20 feed mills were
sampled over a two-year period in Southern
Wisconsin in an attempt to assess the stored
product insect fauna present. Secondly, an
analysis of interspecific distribution records
for the collected species of stored product in¬
sects was made. This paper deals with the in¬

sect fauna collected and categorized during
the two-year study.

Materials and Methods
Sampling Sites

Twenty feed mills located in southern
Wisconsin were selected as sampling sites
during the Spring of 1975: Sampling was
conducted in Dane, Rock, Iowa, and Jeffer¬
son counties during the eight-week periods
of June 24 through August 12, 1975 and
June 25 through August 1 1 , in 1976. Permis¬
sion to sample each mill was requested
yearly, and an agreement was made to keep
the affiliations and locations of each es¬
tablishment unpublished. In 1976, two mills
refused to allow further sampling for un¬
disclosed reasons.

Each feed mill was visited biweekly and a)
inspects traps were placed, b) previously
placed traps were collected, c) a 250 ml. sam¬
ple of spilled feed and grain was taken, d)
and a hand collected sample of insects was
made during each visit. Eight collections
were obtained from each mill during the two
year survey. Conditions of sanitation, in¬
festation problems, and insecticide treat¬
ments were recorded, along with pertinent
comments obtained in conversations with
the mill managers.

Fourteen of the twenty mills were less than
28,000 sq. ft. in area and the remaining six

103

104

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

sampling sites were more than 30,000 sq. ft.
Small amounts of corn were stored in vari¬
ous bins and storerooms in each of the
sampled mills. Fifty-pound bags of dairy
cow, calf, hog and horse feed along with
various dog foods were stored throughout
the mills. Three of the sampling sites were
also manufacturing plants and produced
their own feeds for commercial sale.

Identification of Specimens

The following specimens were identified
or confirmed by the following specialists at
the University of Wisconsin, Madison: Phil¬
lip Kingsley (Anthocoridae), Dennis Engel
(Diptera), Dr. R. D. Shenefelt (Braconidae),
and Dr. Jim Mertins (Pteromalidae). Speci¬

mens of Lariophagus distinguendus were
sent to the Insect Identification and Bene¬
ficial Insect Introduction Institute, Belts-
ville, Maryland, for verification. All Cole-
optera and Lepidoptera specimens, and a
majority of the Diptera and Hymenoptera
were identified by the senior author. Iden¬
tified specimens have been deposited in both
the Department of Entomology, University
of Wisconsin-Madison collection, and with
the State Agriculture Department, Madison.
Wisconsin State Department of Agriculture
and University of Wisconsin Insectarium
records, along with pertinent literature were
used as the criteria for distinguishing state
records for the occurrence of an insect
species.

Table 1. Anthropods collected in southern Wisconsin feed mills during 1975 and 1976.

1975 1976

No. of mills (Total No.

present collected)

Insecta

Thysanura

Lepisma saccharina L.

1

(1)

2

(5)

Collembola

10

(-)

12

(-)

Hemiptera

Reduviidae

Reduvius persona tus L.

1

(1)

2

(3)

Anthocoridae

Lyctocoris campestris (Fab.)

3

(4)

—

Xylocoris sp.

—

1

(1)

Orius insidiosus (Say)

2

(2)

—

Nabidae

1

(1)

1

(1)

Pentatomatidae

—

1

(1)

Lygaeidae

1

(1)

—

Homoptera

Cicadellidae

1

(1)

1

(4)

Fugaloridae

—

1

(1)

Aphidae

2

(2)

Psocoptera

12

(1)

10

(-)

Coleoptera

Anobiidae

Stegobium paniceum (L.)

2

(5)

5

(15)

Trypopitys sericeus (Say)

1

(1)

—

Anthicidae

Anthicus floralis (L.)

2

(2)

1

(2)

Anthicus cervinus LeFerte

1

(1)

6

(10)

Bostrichidae

Rhizopertha dominica (Fab.)

1

(1)

—

1983]

Pellitteri and Boush — Insect Pests in Feed Mills

105

Table 1. Anthropods collected in southern Wisconsin feed mills during 1975 and 1976. — Continued

1975

No. of mills
present

1976

(Total No.
collected)

Carabidae

Clivina impressifrons LeConte

2

(2)

—

Agonum sp.

1

(1)

—

Bembidion sp.

—

1

(1)

Agonoderus lecontei Chaudoir

—

1

(1)

Harpalus compar LeConte

1

0)

—

Chrysomelidae

Undetermined spp.

1

(1)

1

(3)

Gastrophysa polygoni (L.)

1

(1)

Disonycia sp.

—

1

(1)

Agalyma vitta F.

—

1

0)

Coccinelidae

Adalia bipunctata (L.)

3

(6)

2

(3)

Hippodamia convergens Guerin

—

1

(1)

Coleomegilla fusciiabris Mulsant.

4

(8)

2

(7)

Scymnus sp.

—

1

0)

Cryptophagidae

Cryptophilus integer Heer*

5

(22)

2

(5)

Cryptophagus pilosus Reitter

6

(9)

2

(3)

Cryptophagus obsoletus Reitter*

5

(8)

1

(1)

Cryptophagus croceus Zimm.

7

(18)

3

(3)

Cryptophagus sp.

2

(2)

—

Atomaria spp.

2

(2)

—

Cucujidae (Silvanidae in part)

Cryptolestes turcicus Grov.*

Cryptolestes ferrugineus Steph.*

11

12

(2,364)

9

9

(2,506)

Silvanus bidentatus (F.)

1

(1)

Oryzaephilus surinamensis (L.)

19

(1,698)

17

(793)

Ahasverus advena (Walt.)

20

(755)

17

(185)

Curculionidae

Sitophilus granarius (L.)

15

(779)

17

(1,455)

Dermestidae

Attagenus megatoma (Fab.)

20

(455)

18

(342)

Attagenus elongatulus Casey

2

(3)

1

(1)

Attagenus spp. (larvae)

20

(1,014)

18

(579)

Anthrenus fuscus Olivier

2

(2)

—

Anthrenus castanae Mels.

3

(4)

2

(2)

Anthrenus scrophularae L.

2

(2)

—

Anthrenus sp. (larvae)

1

(1)

2

(4)

Trogoderma variable Ballion

1

(2)

1

(6)

Trogoderma glabrum (Hbst.)

5

(37)

5

(12)

Dermestes lardarius L.

11

(28)

15

(65)

Dytiscidae

Ilybius sp.

1

(1)

—

Endomycidae

Mycetaea hirta (Marsh.)*

1

(1)

—

Histeridae

Dendrophilus xavier i Marsuel

4

(5)

2

(2)

Dendrophilus punctatus (Hbst.)

—

1

(1)

Carcinops pumilio (Erickson)

3

(3)

9

(118)

A cr i t us sp.

2

(4)

1

(128)

Sparinus sp.

—

1

(1)

106

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

Table 1. Anthropods collected in southern Wisconsin feed mills during 1975 and 1976. — Continued

1975

No. of mills
present

1976

(Total No.
collected)

Hydrophilidae

Cyphon sp.

1

0)

—

Lathridiidae

Lathridius minutus (L.)

10

(35)

2

(5)

Cart ode re sp.

1

(1)

1

0)

Coni nonius constrict a (Gyll.)

5

(7)

1

(2)

Corticara sp. (near e/ongata (Curtis))

3

(4)

1

(1)

Undetermined sp.

1

0)

—

Lyctidae

Lyctus planicollis LeConte

1

(1)

1

(1)

Mycetophagidae

Typhaea stercorea

16

(163)

11

(66)

Mycetophagus quadriguttatus Mull.

5

(7)

3

(7)

Litargus balteatus LeConte

7

(7)

1

(1)

Nitidulidae

Carpophilus hemipterus L.

11

(20)

2

(2)

Carpophilus sayi Parson

1

(1)

—

(2)

Carpophilus brachypterus Say

3

(3)

2

(2)

Glishrochilus fascia tus (Ollv.)

2

(2)

—

Glishrochi/us quadrisignatus

9

(25)

4

(6)

Omosita colon (L.)

1

(1)

3

(5)

Eupuraea sp.

1

(1)

—

Ostomidae

Tenebriodes mauritanicus (L.)

18

(269)

17

(151)

Orthoperidae

Molamba sp.

—

1

(1)

Ptinidae

Ptinus fur { L.)

7

(10)

4

(6)

Ptinus villiger (Reitter)

7

(ID

3

(13)

Ptinus clavipes (Panzer)

6

(14)

2

(3)

Gibbium psylloides (Czenpinski)

1

(4)

1

(2)

Pseudeurostus hilleri (Reitter)

1

(1)

1

(2)

Rhizophagidae

Monotoma picipes Herbst

—

2

(3)

Scarabeidae

Aphodius sp.

1

(1)

—

Staphylinidae

Philonthus spp.

2

(2)

4

(6)

A theta spp.

4

(5)

5

(9)

Undetermined specimens

2

(3)

6

(ID

Tenebrionidae

Alphitophagus bifasicatus (Say)

2

(18)

1

(1)

Alphitobius diaperinus (Panzer)*

3

(3)

1

(1)

Cynaeus angustus (LeConte)

4

(6)

5

(5)

Platydema ruficorne Sturm.

4

(4)

—

Tenebrio mol i tor L.

19

(169)

17

(135)

Tenebrio obscurus Fab.

19

(29)

9

(12)

Tenebrio spp. (larvae)

20

(554)

18

(414)

Tribolium casta neum (Hbst.)

7

(258)

5

(234)

Tribolium confusum DuVal.

9

(207)

8

(179)

Palorus ratzeburgi (Wiss.)*

5

(129)

4

(122)

1983]

Pellitteri and Boush — Insect Pests in Feed Mills

107

Table 1. Anthropods collected in southern Wisconsin feed mills during 1975 and 1976. — Continued

1975 1976

No. of mills (Total No.

present collected)

Diptera

Chironomidae

—

1

(1)

Cecidomyiidae

4

(6)

4

(5)

Mycetophilidae

Psycodidae

2

(-)

3

(-)

Psycoda spp.

Scenopinidae

2

(2)

2

(2)

Scenopinus fenestralis L.

Muscidae

14

(101)

13

(42)

Muscina stabulans (Fallen)

4

(11)

3

(4)

Musca domestica L.

Anthomyiidae

2

(3)

1

(1)

Hylemya sp. (prob. ciljcura (Rondani))

7

(30)

9

(17)

Fannia canicularis (L.) (pupae)

Scatopsidae

2

(5)

1

(1)

Scatopsis spp.

10

(42)

4

(28)

Tabanidae

—

1

(1)

Syrphidae

Lonchaeidae

1

(1)

—

Lonchaea sp.

5

(7)

—

Caliphoridae

3

(3)

3

(3)

Dolichopodidae

—

1

(1)

Drosophilidae

2

(2)

1

(1)

Helicomyzidae

1

(1)

Phoridae

1

0)

Undetermined Acalypterates

Lepidoptera

5

(12)

7

(10)

Pyralidae

Pyralis farina lis L.

Tineidae

14

(77)

8

(30)

Tineola biselliella Humm.

4

(7)

4

(18)

Nemapogon granella (L.)*

Phycitidae

3

(19)

5

(9)

Ephestia kuehniella Zell.

3

(ID

6

(12)

Plodia interpunctella Hubner

8

(89)

3

(17)

Hymenoptera

Ichneumonidae

Idechthis canescens (Gravenhorst)

4

(5)

2

(3)

Braconidae

Metrious sp.

Pteromalidae

2

(2)

—

Lariophagus distinguendus Foerst*

9

(22)

5

(15)

Undetermined specimens

Bethylidae

4

(6)

3

(3)

Cephalonomia sp.*

4

(6)

2

(4)

Plastanoxus sp.*

1

(1)

Formicidae

Arachnida

1

(1)

1

(1)

Chelontida

Cheliferidae

Chelifer cancroides (L.)

10

(42)

12

(102)

* State record for occurrence of species.

108

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

Sampling

A number of sampling techniques were
used in an attempt to fully assess the insect
fauna present in each mill. Samples of live
and dead insects were hand-collected during
each visit.

A 250 ml sample of whole grain corn,
oats, grain dust, and spilled feed was col¬
lected from each mill. Each sample was
passed through two sieves (U.S. standard
sieve series #40 and #12), adult insects were
separated, and the sample was incubated for
120 days at 21 ± 3°C and 60% RH, after
which it was again passed through a sieve
and all insects were removed and recorded.

A number of trap types were placed in
each mill and were collected during the
following visit. Pitfall traps using 100 x 15
mm plastic petri plates; 15 x 25 cm rolled
sheets of single-backed corrugated card¬
board; and cheesecloth-wrapped food traps
baited with various combinations of poultry
mash, whole grains, and Brewer’s yeast were
employed. Traps were brought back to the
laboratory and stored at - 10°C until the in¬
sects could be separated and identified.

Results

Fauna

A total of 18,410 insects were collected
and identified during the two year survey.
The faunal list obtained is shown in Table 1.
Eight orders, 60 families and over 100 insect
species were associated with the 20 southern
Wisconsin feed mills sampled. Eleven species
have been recorded for the first time as oc¬
curring in Wisconsin.

Coleoptera

Coleopterans made up 90.6% of the in¬
sects collected (Table 2). Of the 83 species of
beetles recorded, 62 are associated with
stored products (Cotton and Good, 1937,
and Aitken, 1975). The flat and rusty grain
beetles, Cryptolestes turcicus and C. fer-
rugineus were the most abundant insects en¬
countered. Both of these Cryptolestes spp.
were identified for the first time as occurring
in Wisconsin. Specimens identified as C.
pusillus, which had been previously collected
in the State were found in the University of
Wisconsin Insectarium and in the collection
of the Wisconsin State Department of Agri-

Table 2. Percentage of the total number of insects collected for select insects.

1975 1976

Tenebriodes mauritanicus

adult

1.76%

1.39%

Tenebriodes mauritanicus

larvae

1.00

0.346

Dermestes lardarius

adult

0.29

0.749

A ttagenus megatoma

adult

4.67

3.94

Attagenus spp.

larvae

10.41

6.67

Oryzaephilus surinamensis

adult

17.4

9.14

Sitophilus granarius

adult

7.99

16.77

A hasverus advena

adult

7.75

2.13

Tenebrio spp.

larvae

5.69

4.78

Tenebrio molitor

adult

1.73

1.55

Tenebrio obscurus

adult

0.297

0.138

Tribolium castaneum

adult

2.64

2.69

Tribolium confusum

adult

2.07

2.13

Typhaea stercorea

adult

1.67

0.761

Cryptolestes spp.

adult

24.37

28.89

Palorus ratzeburgi

adult

0.379

0.253

Pyralis farinalis

adult

0.787

0.345

Ephestia kuehniella

adult

0.112

0.138

Plodia interpunctel/a

adult

0.913

0.196

Total

91.97%

83.16%

1983]

Pellitteri and Boush— Insect Pests in Feed Mills

109

culture. Inspection of these specimens re¬
vealed that they had been misidentified by a
taxonomist at the Smithsonian Institute,
Washington, D.C. and were actually a mix¬
ture of C. ferrugineus and C. turcicus. Over
4,000 specimens were identified and 125
genitalia dissections were made, but no
specimens of C. pusillus were found during
this survey or in either collection. Bishop
(1959) reported numerous misidentified
specimens of Cryptolestes spp. as well as
confused distribution records, and that C.
turcicus and C. ferrugineus are the most
abundant species found in the northern grain
growing areas.

Attagenus megatoma was the most widely
distributed insect, occuring in every mill
sampled. Beal (1970) has recognized two
subspecies of Attagenus megatoma; A.
megatoma megatoma and the northern form
A. megatoma canadensis. Movement of the
two forms through commerce has somewhat
obliterated the line of demarcation. The
distinguishing characteristic between the
forms is the number of golden brown hairs
present on the elytra; no golden setae present
in A. megatoma megatoma, and A. mega¬
toma canadensis having golden brown hairs
inserted in some numbers on the base of the
elytra back to a distance equal to at least
three lengths of the scutellum. Examination
of the adult specimens collected during this
survey revealed the presence of A.
megatoma megatoma. No specimens of A.
megatoma canadensis were collected, but
numerous intergrade specimens (having
golden hair inserted on the base of the elytra
for a length of one half to two lengths of the
scutellum) were found. The sample popula¬
tions from a given mill had a characteristic
and more or less constant appearance. At¬
tagenus megatoma megatoma was prevalent
in eastern Dane and Jefferson counties,
while the intergrade specimens appeared in
southern Dane and Rock counties. The
gradation within mills was so constant that
an individual specimen could be placed as to
the county, and in some cases the mill, from

which it was collected on the basis of ap¬
pearance alone.

Sitophilus granarius, the granary weevil,
was found to be abundant and widely dis¬
tributed within the sampled feed mills. A
number of mill managers reported farmer-
delivered oats as the major source of the in¬
festations, yet specimens were collected only
in grain samples of whole corn, and weevils
were not observed at any time on whole
grain oats. The extreme winter temperatures
and short storage periods (usually under one
year) normally prevent weevil infestations
from becoming economically important in
Wisconsin, but weevil populations were suf¬
ficiently large in two feed mills during the
spring of 1975 to require a fumigation.
Although it has been recorded in stored
grain in Wisconsin, the rice weevil, Sito¬
philus oryzae, was not collected in any of the
feed mills sampled.

Other economically important stored
product pests recorded include the cadelle
beetle, Tenehriodes mauritanicus, the
drugstore beetle, Stegobium paniceum, and
the lesser grain borer, Rhizopertha
dominica. Both Tribolium castaneum and T.
confusum were widely distributed and in
some cases abundant. Mixed populations of
both species were collected during 1975 and
1976 in five and six of the sampled mills
respectively. Laboratory experiments have
shown that Tribolium spp. cannot coexist in
a closed system (Yoshida, 1976), but no
evidence of species dominance was observed.
Tribolium populations were largest in the
heated manufacturing mills. The tenebri-
onids, Tenebrio molitor and T. obscurus,
were found to coexist in a number of sam¬
pled mills, but in all cases T. molitor was
more numerous.

Various species of fungus beetles made up
32.4% of the total number of beetles en¬
countered (Table 2). Ahasverus advena, the
foreign grain beetle, was the most abundant
fungus beetle collected. The hairy fungus
beetle, Typhaea stercorea, was the most
widely distributed mycetophilous beetle;

110

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

other members of the family Mycetophil-
idae, Mycetophagus quadriguttatus and
Litargus balteatus were observed in a
number of mills, but were not abundant.
Seven species of Nitidulidae were captured,
with Carpophilus hemipterus and Glish-
rochilus quadrisignatus being the most wide¬
ly distributed and most numerous sap beetles
encountered respectively. Although mem¬
bers of this family often infest corn in the
field (Daugherty and Brett, 1966), C.
hemipterus was the only economically im¬
portant storage pest of this family collected.
Members of the family Cryptophagidae ap¬
peared in better than 25% of the sampled
mills. Species collected from this family in
order of decreasing abundance include:
Cryptophilus integer , Cryptophagus cro-
ceus , C. pilosus , C. obsoletus and A tomaria
spp. Lathridius minutus was collected in ten
of the mills sampled while four other species
of Lathridiidae were encountered.

Members of two predaceous beetle fam¬
ilies associated with stored product insects,
the Staphylinidae and Histeridae, were
observed and collected in a number of mills.
The numbers of these carnivorous beetles
collected in any given mill were normally
low, but in two cases in 1976, large numbers
of the hister beetles, Carcinops pumilio, and
Acritus sp. were observed. In both instances
the areas had remained undisturbed for long
periods of time, and large populations of
stored product pests had built up in the 8-30
cm of spilled feed and grain present on the
floor.

Over 2,000 specimens of the sawtoothed
grain beetle were collected, they were present
in 95% of the sampled sites (Table 1). Obser¬
vations on the number of beetles collected
during each sampling revealed rather con¬
stant populations of Oryzaephilus surina-
mensis present throughout the summer.

Three minor stored product pests, the
smalleyed flour beetle Palorus ratzeburgi,
the lesser mealworm Alphitobius diaperinus,
and the spider beetle, Pseudeurostus hilleri,
along with the mycetophilous stored product

beetles Cryptophilus integer , Cryptophagus
obsoletus, and Mycetaea hirta were collected
and identified in Wisconsin for the first
time. Because of the cosmopolitan distribu¬
tion of most of these species it is unlikely
that any were recently introduced. The lesser
grain borer, Rhizopertha dominica, was
recorded for the second time in Wisconsin.

Diptera

A number of dipterans collected during
this survey are not normally associated with
stored products. Members of the families
Chironomidae, Dolichopodidae, Syrphidae,
Tabanidae, Caliphoridae and Helicomyzidae
do not normally breed in stored product
habitats, or feed on stored product insects.
Their presence in the feed mills is therefore
considered accidental.

Damp, mold-ridden stored products often
support populations of mycetophilous Dip¬
tera. Species associated with these conditions
collected during this survey include members
of the families Cecidomyidae, Scatopsidae,
Psycodidae, Mycetophilidae, Anthomyiidae
and Muscidae. Pupae of Fannia canicularus
were found in four of the sampled mills. Fif¬
teen specimens of Muscina stabulans, which
normally breeds in decaying organic matter
(James and Harwood, 1969), and four speci¬
mens of Musca domestica were also col¬
lected.

Both the adults and larvae of the win-
dowpane fly, Scenopinus fenestralis, were
collected in over 60% of the feed mills.
Adults were observed and collected at win¬
dows, and the larvae, which are predaceous
on stored grain insects (Hinton and Corbet,
1955) were associated with samples of spilled
grain and feed.

Lepidoptera

Five species of stored product Lepidoptera
were recovered during the two years of sam¬
pling. The European grain moth, Nema-
pogon granella, was recorded for the first
time in Wisconsin. The meal moth, Pyralis
farinalis was the most abundant and wide-

1983]

111

Pellitteri and Boush — Insect Pests in Feed Mills

spread lepidopteran. Rarely economically
important, this pyralid breeds in damp prod¬
ucts (Anonymous, 1965). Plodia interpunc-
tella, the Indian meal moth, and the Med¬
iterranean flour moth, Ephestia kiiehniella,
built up to economically important numbers
separately in two Dane county feed mills in

1975. Plodia interpunctella was encountered
in 40% of the sampled feed mills in 1975.
Tineola biselliella, the webbing clothes
moth, was prevalent in one feed mill during

1976. The important lepidopteran stored
grain pest, Sitotroga cerealella, has not been
collected in Wisconsin.

Miscellaneous Orders

Six specimens of the silver fish, Lepisma
saccharina, were collected during the two-
year survey. Because of a starch diet, Linsley
(1944) considers these thysanurans to be of
little importance and their presence largely
incidental in stored products. Psocids (order
Psocoptera), were observed in over 55% of
the feed mills in 1975 and 1976. Their small
size, speed, and cryptic habits prevented an
accurate quantitative assessment. Members
of the collembolan family Entomobryidae
were collected in over half the mills sampled.
The Homoptera and Hemiptera collected ap¬
pear to be of accidental occurrence.

One species of Hymenoptera, Lariopha-
gus distinguendus (family Pteromalidae),
and two genera, Cephalonomia (prob. C.
tarsalis (Ashm.)) and Plastanoxus (family
Bethylidae) were collected in Wisconsin for
the first time. Lariophagus has been re¬
corded as a parasite of the rice and granary
weevils (Cotton and Good, 1947). Plasta¬
noxus spp. are parasitoids of various Cryp-
tolestes spp., and Cephalonomia has num¬
erous known stored-product hosts, (Evans,
1964). Distribution records within the twenty
feed mills for these minute parasitoids are
probably incomplete, as a majority of the
specimens were hand-collected at windows,
and the traps were not designed to capture
hymenopterans. Other hymenopterans col¬
lected include the stored product lepidop¬

teran parasitoid, Idechthis canescens (fam¬
ily Ichneumonidae), and the braconid,
Metrious sp.

Discussion

Feed mills offered an excellent environ¬
ment to sample the fauna of stored product
insect in Wisconsin. Few regulations deal
with insects in animal feed, and little concern
is given to insect infestations. Sanitary con¬
ditions varied greatly throughout the feed
mills sampled, and as business picked up in
the spring and fall, mill managers reported
that little time was invested in clean up pro¬
cedures. Insect infestations levels found dur¬
ing this survey were directly proportional to
the amount of debris found on the floor of a
given mill.

The total number of insect species col¬
lected during this survey of twenty southern
Wisconsin feed mills is higher than other
previous surveys conducted in the United
States and Canada. Few records of stored
product insect infestations exist for Wiscon¬
sin, and because little previous sampling has
been done outside of Dane County, over 140
county records for distribution were re¬
corded during this survey. Too often when
insect populations develop, chemicals are
used to control the infestations, and no at¬
tention is given to identification of the
species causing the problem. Knowledge of
which species are present, and an under¬
standing of their biology, would give clues
useful in implementing future sanitary and
cultural practices that could prevent infesta¬
tions.

The most significant finding of the study
was the repeated observation of the high
percentage of fungus feeding insects
associated with stored products. Unlike the
southern United States, where stored grains
are eaten and destroyed by primary pests
such as the granary and rice weevils, Wiscon¬
sin’s insect problems seem to be associated
with moldy feed and grain. Although any in¬
sect contamination may lead to dockage
when the grain is sold, Wisconsin’s problem

112

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

stems from moisture and mold problems,
which can draw insects in from outdoors.
Proper handling and storage could eliminate
90% of our stored grain insect problems in
the state without any remedial control
needed. This situation is unique to the upper
Midwest.

Acknowledgements

Supported by the College of Agricultural
and Life Sciences, University of Wisconsin-
Madison.

References Cited

Aitken, A. D. 1975. Insect Travellers — Vol. 1,
Coleoptera. Min. of Ag., Fisheries and Food
Ag. Development and Advisory Service, Pest
Control Lab. Tech. Bull. 31.

Allen, P., and D. G. Linsley. 1954. Proceedings
Pacific Coast Entomological Society. Pan-
Pacific Ent. 30:89-90.

Anonymous. 1965. Stored-Grain Pests. Farmers’
Bull. 1260. U.S.D.A., Market Quality

Research Division, Stored Product Insect
Research Branch. Washington, D. C.

Beal, R. S. 1970. A taxonomic and biological
study of species of Attagenni (Coleoptera:
Dermestidae) in the United States and Canada.
Entomologica Americana 45:141-235.

Bishop, G. W. 1959. The comparative bionomics
of American Cryptolestes (Coleoptera: Cucu-
jidae) that infest stored grain. Ann. Ent. Soc.
Am. 52:657-665.

Cotton, R. T. 1963. Pests of Stored Grain and
Grain Products (Rev. ed.), Burgess Pub. Co.,
Minneapolis, MN.

Cotton, R. T. , and N. E. Good. 1937. Anno¬
tated list of the insects and mites associated
with grain and cereal products, and of their
Arthropod parasites and predators. U. S.
Dept. Agr., Misc. Publ. 258.

Daugherty, D. M., and C. N. Brett. 1966. Niti-
dulidae associated with sweet corn in North
Carolina and influences affecting their damage
to this crop. N. Carolina Ag. Exp. Station,
Tech. Bull. No. 171.

Evans, H. 1964. A synopsis of the American
Bethylidae (Hymenoptera, Aculeata). Bull.
Mus. Comp. Zook, Harvard Univ., 132:1-222.

Freeman, J. A. 1973. Infestation and Control of
Pests of Stored Grain in International Trade,
p. 99-136, Grain Storage: Part of a System, R.
N. Sinha and W. E. Muir (Ed.), The Avi Pub.
Co., Inc., Westport, CN.

Hinton, H. E. and Corbet, A. S. 1955. Common
Insect Pests of Stored Products, a Guide to
their Identification, British Museum (Natural
History) Economic Series 5, London.

James, M. T., and R. F. Harwood. 1969. Herm’s
Medical Entomology. The MacMillan Com¬
pany, Collier-MacMillan Ltd., London.

Linsley, E. G. 1944. Natural sources, habitats,
and reservoirs of insects associated with stored
food products, Hilgardia 16:187-224.

Yoshida, T. 1976. Interspecific competition
among the stored product insects. In Pro¬
ceedings of the Joint U.S. -Japan Seminar on
Stored Product Insects. Kansas State Univ.,
Manhattan, KN.

FIRST REPORT OF A SAMSON GRAY FOX

David A. Root
College of Natural Resources
University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point

Neil F. Payne
College of Natural Resources
University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point

There have been reports of samson red
foxes (Vulpes vulpes) (Helminen 1961, Allen
1974) and other carnivores (Allen 1974), but
none of gray foxes ( Urocyon cinereoar-
genteus). The samson form is a genetic
variant in which the normal long guard hairs
of the coat are absent, showing only the
woolly undercoat. Failor (1977) stated that
this condition occurred more often among
red than gray foxes, but could not document
an observation of a samson gray fox. No
Wisconsin records of samson gray foxes are
known.

In late November 1979 a complete samson
gray fox was shot in Richland County, Wis¬
consin. Gross examination revealed a lack of
guard hairs over the entire body, in contrast
to a lack of guard hairs restricted to the tail
and hind quarters which is characteristic of
partial samson foxes (Allen 1974). External
measurements were: head, 148 mm; tail, 320
mm; hind foot, 132 mm; total body length,
641 mm. Jackson (1961) gave the following
approximate measurements for the gray fox

in Wisconsin: tail, 310-390 mm; hind foot,
130-145 mm; total length, 950-1,040 mm.
Gross body weight was not recorded, but the
animal appeared to be in good overall condi¬
tion when shot. Tooth wear patterns (Wood
1958) indicated that this male was <1 year
old when killed.

Literature Cited

Allen, S. H. 1974. “Samson fox.” North Dakota
Outdoors. 37(6):8-9.

Failor, P. L. 1977. Pennsylvania trapping and
predator control methods. Pennsylvania Game
Comm., Harrisburg, PA. 92 pp.

Helminen, M. 1961. Ketun samson — ominai-
suuden eslintymisesta suomessa. (On the
occurrence of the samson character in wild fox
( Vulpes vulpes ) populations in Finland.) Suom.
Riista., 14:143-157.

Jackson, H. H. T. 1961. Mammals of Wisconsin.

Univ. Wisconsin Press, Madison. 504 pp.
Wood, J. E. 1958. Age structure and productivity
of a gray fox population. J. Mammal. 39:
74-86.

113

“BURBANK WITH A BAEDEKER . .

Meredith E. Ackley
Milwaukee

Travel records can be broadly categorized
as impersonal (objective and literal) or
personal (subjective and interpretative). The
former results when the purpose of the
journey is the gathering of information and
the intention of the account is the accurate
reporting of that information. In the twelfth
century, Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela visited
Jewish communities from Sargassa to the
boundaries of China and his account of con¬
ditions he observed is an early example of
the impersonal record.' Lewis and Clark,
instructed by Jefferson to gather informa¬
tion on practically everything from the Mis¬
sissippi to the Pacific, recorded in their
journals a mass of facts on animals, plants,
people and geography.2 However far
execution may have fallen from intention,
early records of exploration were generally
of this type. They were intended as the basis
from which further exploration, exploitation
or colonization would proceed. Accuracy of
reporting was the goal of the writer and
assumed by the reader. It was of paramount
importance not only to encourage the invest¬
ment of capital and recruitment of colonists
but also to protect both investment and colo¬
nists when they were finally committed to ex¬
ploitation or settlement.

Nevertheless, credulity or inflexible re¬
ligious, philosophical or geographical the¬
ories or errors in translation or transcription
could lead to gross inaccuracies in the writ¬
ten record. Often over-zealous and imagina¬
tive projections of the desires and biases of
the explorer resulted in records which were
descriptions of what he wanted to see rather
than what he saw. Often his description of
what he hoped to find beyond the mountain
range he did not cross cannot be distin¬
guished from his account of areas he had

actually traversed. Thus, Verrazano, deter¬
mined to find Cathay whether it was there or
not, saw the “vast Oriental sea’’ beyond the
reefs of North Carolina and blithely com¬
pressed the North American continent into
an isthmus.3 (It is altogether appropriate
that Verrazano, the first to sight the harbor
of New York, has given his name to a bridge
of that city. Many of its present inhabitants
share his unusual view of continental geog¬
raphy.)

Some of the more speculative early rec¬
ords were based on interrogation of indigen¬
ous populations in whose answers the ex¬
plorer heard only what confirmed his
already entrenched beliefs in the Northwest
Passage or El Dorado. Often these same
indigenes , sensing from his questions the
answers he wished to hear, happily cooper¬
ated by supplying them.4 One of the
consequences of this desire to please (or to
get rid of the nosey and intrusive stranger)
was that distances were shortened or length¬
ened depending on the circumstances of
the questioning. In addition, the potential
for error was increased by differences
between the traveler and his informant in
their sense of distance. The perception of
“short’’ and “long’’ might bear little
relationship to actual milage. Further errors
might appear in the conversion from time to
distance when the circumstances of the
journey are not the same. A “three day’s
journey’’ may take considerably longer in
the rain or when burdened with baggage.
Furthermore, in gathering information on
land he himself had not traveled through,
even the most unbiased and objective ex¬
plorer faced the problems of translation
from one language to another, from one
system of measurement to another or from a

114

1983]

Ackley — Burbank with a Baedecker

115

lack of system to understandable units. Who
knows, for example, what is implied by
“across many rivers”?

Errors might proliferate but the intent of
this type of travel record was an accurate,
factual and literal description of verifiable
details of geography, agriculture, meteor¬
ology and inhabitants. Ideally, the account
was a manual for use by succeeding travelers
along the way as well as an advertising bro¬
chure and geographical record.

To guide him when he reached Cathay,
Columbus took with him on his first voyage
The Travels of Sir John de Mandeville
which, unhappily, was discovered in modern
times to have been written in the fourteenth
century by a well-read Belgian who had
probably never left his home in Liege.5 For a
variety of reasons, it is fortunate that
Columbus was never forced to depend on the
totally mythical Travels. However, the
work, though spurious, is an example of
another type of impersonal travel record —
the guidebook.

Though among the first (and thoroughly
fascinating in itself), the Travels hardly
ranks among the best. It does, however,
display many of the characteristics that
distinguish the type. Most guidebooks are of
less interest intrinsically than they are as
historical or sociological indicators. For
example, the very existence of a guidebook
implies the existence of a “tourist” —
someone with leisure and funds to pursue an
activity not related to supplying his daily
needs. The ostensible purpose of the Travels
was to guide those on pilgrimage to religious
sites in the Holy Land and beyond. Though
many in the fourteenth century may have
sinned mightily, few had the means or
opportunity to atone so thoroughly. How¬
ever, manuals for pilgrims were some of the
earliest guidebooks. The Travels was
extremely popular and underwent numerous
translations,6 but its fascination lies not in its
worth as a guidebook but in its portrayal of
the astonishing monsters and marvels to be

met with in foreign lands — the men with
heads beneath their shoulders who reappear
in Raleigh’s account of Guiana (see note 4),
people with heads of dogs (complete with
bark), the bountifull land of Prester John,
the people with but one huge foot which they
hold aloft to shade themselves while resting
and more, much more. There are notations
of distances between cities and outlines of
alternate routes as in any guidebook but the
delight of the Travels lies in the mythical not
the real information that it contains.

There were no Baedekers because few
traveled, as did Thomas Coryat in the six¬
teenth century, for enjoyment.7 When they
did, it was without benefit of marked routes
and handy lists of monuments. Celia
Fiennes, at the end of the seventeenth
century visited extensively with friends and
family throughout England and even beyond
the pale to Scotland and Wales. Presumably,
she relied on them for directions since it was
not until 1697 that a law ordaining signposts
on roads was passed.8 The classically trained
tutor sent with young noblemen on the
Grand Tour probably learned through bitter
experience the galleries and monuments to
which his charges were to be exposed. But
early travel was literally travail, a physically
uncomfortable activity accompanied by fear
of both the known and the unknown perils
of the journey. The earliest travelers —
minstrels, missionaries, mendicants or
merchants — journeyed as a necessity of their
calling and, though they and their tales were
objects of interest and curiosity, relatively
few of their hearers would willingly risk the
vicissitudes of the road.

The guidebook emerged as a response to
changes both in attitudes toward travel and
in the physical conditions and economics of
the journey. These factors were inter-related
and development and change in any one in¬
fluenced the others. Improvement in roads
and accomodations and their policing and
supervision made getting from one place to
another a less uncomfortable and dangerous

116

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

undertaking. The growth of a class with
money and time to spend on travel en¬
couraged improved conditions. Entrepre¬
neurs, from gondoliers in Venice to
merchants in Jerusalem with a large supply
of left-over fragments of the True Cross,
realized the value of this new source of
income.

As early as the end of the sixteenth
century, young English noblemen were sent
to travel on the Continent at the end of their
formal schooling. Destined in the nature of
things to govern the country and to shape
international policy, it behooved them to
know something of the countries with which
they would treat. Under the guidance of a
mentor, they traveled through France and
Italy on the Grand Tour, meeting their
French and Italian counterparts, viewing
public works, watching ceremonies, looking
at shipyards and, regrettably, betraying hos¬
pitality by acting as spies for their govern¬
ment. They might, in addition, visit ruins,
sketch vistas and copy inscriptions.9 Perhaps
nothing so completely separates the tourist
from the native or the traveler by necessity
than the veneration of historical sites. To
those who for ages had frugally re-used the
beautifully chiselled stones of Greek or
Roman ruins to shore up their own houses,
the interest of the tourist in the preservation
of fallen buildings must have seemed more
than slightly mad.

As the eighteenth century ended, spying
was no longer an adjunct of the Grand Tour
but travel had come to be considered an edu¬
cational activity and, moreover, a serious
one. One did not travel to get away from it
all but to learn more about it. Many of the
newly rich and newly leisured, lacking the
traditional education of the upper classes,
strove to amend their difficiencies by travel.
The guidebook was a necessary tool and re¬
flected the solemn diligence of their method¬
ical approach to the wonders of foreign
lands. It told them not only what they could
but what they should see and experience for

maximum benefit. Baedeker began publish¬
ing his series of guides in 1829 and soon his
name was a synonym for “guidebook.” He
introduced a system of rating both attrac¬
tions and accomodations and himself visited
the areas covered by his guides and awarded
the ratings. Until the innovation in mid¬
century of the tours of Thomas Cook the
Baedeker was indispensable to the inexperi¬
enced but eager traveler.

Ultimately, changed conditions and atti¬
tudes contributed to making travel fashion¬
able. Because travelers obviously could
afford to spend time and money on pleasure
and would return from the journey “broad¬
ened” by the experience, travel became a
symbol of status. The early travelers by
necessity — the government agent, the diplo¬
mat, the merchant — were joined by the
wealthy for whom travel was a social
exercise and by frowning note-takers
plodding purposefully around tombs and
tumuli. Of more significance, however, to
the development of the literature of travel
was the emergence of the figure of the per¬
manent wanderer, the professional traveler.

Fashions and status symbols, however,
lose their value as they become less exclusive.
As more and more people clutching Bae¬
dekers thronged the world’s cultural,
historical and recreational centers, a curious
reversal took place “Bright young things”
began to separate themselves from the
earnest bourgeoisie by avoiding those havens
of culture found in the pages of Baedeker. In
the late eighteenth and much of the nine¬
teenth century, most who wrote of their
travels scrupulously reported the number of
steps at Lourdes or windows at Versailles.
As time passed, however, an increasing num¬
ber of travel books appeared with intro¬
ductory disclaimers stating that the author
would not dream of insulting the reader’s
intelligence by offering anything resembling
a guidebook stuffed with mere dull facts. By
implication, both writer and reader shared
the assurance and independence of settled

1983]

Ackley — Burbank with a Baedecker

117

incomes or secure positions in society and
were absolved from the grim necessity of
being broadened. 10

The useful guidebook is, of course, still
with us. The classic Baedeker was followed
by Murray, Michelin and countless others
and by those publications which echo its
humble and utilitarian origins by advising
the traveler on what can be seen and done
for a minimum daily expenditure. These are
the most fleeting of an ephemeral form.
When economics — changes in prices or rates
of exchange — make it impossible to see
Europe for a dollar a day, wholesale
revisions raising the ante to five, ten or
fifteen dollars render the existing publica¬
tions useless.

Like the explorers’ records, guidebooks
intend objectivity and factual accuracy.
There is, certainly, selection of detail and
even an occasional negative judgement but
the selections and judgements are more
likely to reflect the temper of the time than
the impressions of an individual traveler.
Though contributing to an understanding of
the social and economic aspects of the his¬
tory of travel and, thus, to social history
generally, the guidebook — with few excep¬
tions such as E. M. Forster’s Alexan¬
dria 11 — has never attempted to be and has
never been accused of being literature. It is
the antithesis of the personal travel record.

The disclaimer, sometimes teetering on the
edge of the arch and coy, became a conven¬
tion of the personal record. The intro¬
ductory apologia, familiar as a conceit of
other genres since the Renaissance, appeared
somewhat earlier. If the journey served no
obviously useful purpose and the record
could not be justified as educational, the
apologia served to excuse what might seem a
frivolous exercise. Ill-health might be
adduced as the reason for the journey and
the insistence of friends the reason for
publication. In the late nineteenth century,
for example, Isabella Bird Bishop journeyed
throughout the world. In Indochina, the

Rockies, Afghanistan, she traveled with
daunting stamina in or on every mode of
conveyance known at the time including
horses, camels, donkeys and her own feet.
Her doctor had prescribed travel for her
delicate health. Having, at age seventy,
ridden a thousand miles through Morocco,
she died, no doubt delicately, at seventy-
three.

It is the diffidence of the apologia (not,
incidentally, a characteristic of the num¬
erous works of Bishop) that is significant in
the development of the literature of travel. It
defines a period of transition from the infor¬
mational and utilitarian to the personal and
subjective records. It signals the tentative
entrance of the individual voice — though
only at the urging of friends. It is a further
step toward the travel record which, in
Lawrence Durrell’s phrase, evokes a “spirit
of place.”12

In 1844, in his introduction to Eothan,
Arthur Kinglake defended his approach in a
wry disclaimer which indicates the broad
conventions of the personal travel record.
He writes, “. . . the book is quite superficial
in its character. I have endeavored to discard
from it all valuable matter derived from the
works of others. ... I believe that I may
truly acknowledge, that from all details of
geographical discovery or antiquarian re¬
search — from all display of ‘sound learning
and religious knowledge’ — from all histor¬
ical and scientific illustrations — from all
useful statistics — from all political disquisi¬
tions — and from all good moral reflections,
the volume is thoroughly free. . . . but it is
true in this larger sense, — it conveys, not
those impressions which ought to have been
produced upon any ‘well-constituted mind,’
but those which were really and truly re¬
ceived at the time of his rambles by a head¬
strong and not very amiable traveller, whose
prejudices in favor of other people’s notions
were then exceedingly slight.” 13

The development of the personal record
implies an audience receptive to a subjective

118

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

and interpretative — in other words, literary
rather than informational — record. It im¬
plies, further, a knowledgeable audience of
readers who respond to the record as well as
the event, taking pleasure in the author’s
communication of a spirit of place though
the place is one they have no intention of
visiting or, perhaps, one that no longer
exists. The personal and subjective nature of
these accounts is strikingly apparent, for
example, in Arthur Symonds’ re-creation of
his experience of Arles. Other accounts
stress the blinding sun, the intensity of color,
the heat or the mistral which drives the
unwary insane. Symonds was impressed by a
road lined with Roman tombs and describes
Arles as a mausoleum covered by the dust of
centuries which deadens sound, obscures
outlines and mutes color — a description in
which there is no hint of the sun drenched
riot of Van Gogh’s Arlesian canvasses. 14

It is true that the intense enthusiasms of
some of the early explorers result in vivid
images. Accounts of discovery in North and
South America often communicate an al¬
most poetic sense of a world new-made and
awesome in its abundance. In their
heightened imagery, these accounts become
literary as well as informational but the
conveying of facts remains their main
objective.15 The fully developed personal
record, however, is the product of a traveler
who is as much, if not more, a writer as he is
a wanderer and who may journey with the
express purpose of then writing of his
travels. In establishing a sense of place, the
author endeavors to communicate an emo¬
tional experience by ennumerating and de¬
scribing those details that have contributed
to the impact of the place upon the person.
A journey of a hundred miles remains a
hundred miles in Baedeker or Michelin. In
the personal travel record it may seem to
stretch forever or to be over much too soon.
Readers are not concerned, in reading the
personal account, with the actual mileage
but respond, rather, to the writer’s descrip¬
tion of the boredom of a seemingly unending

road, perhaps, or his perception and re¬
creation of the poignancy inherant in the
fleeting nature of all journeys.

An increase in the personal statement
marks the development of this type of travel
literature. Where Baedeker may say, “From
this spot can be seen . . . ,” the author of the
personal record says, “When I saw this, I
reacted thus. ...” The object of scrutiny — a
person, an activity, a flower, a backstreet —
may never appear in the pages of a guide¬
book. (There are, however, numerous titles
which begin “Little Known . . .” or “Un¬
noticed ...” or “Undiscovered ...” which
are guidebooks in the strictest sense.) The
object becomes image — the single memento
mori of Symonds’ description of Arles or the
more complex structure of Robert Louis
Stevenson’s The Amateur Emigrant . As
Stevenson travels further from Scotland on
his way to California, the objects and situa¬
tions he describes reflect his increasing alien¬
ation and the journey becomes a metaphor
of the emotional and spiritual trauma of
movement into the unknown. 16

The writer of the personal record may
scoff at those attractions which earlier
travelers felt compelled to visit and extol or
he may find in them a significance quite
different than that which is assumed to be
their historical or cultural value or he may
simply ignore the usual or expected sites. In
Iberia, James Michener explains that there is
no description of the city of Logrono
because his energies were spent, so to speak,
in gathering information for an impassioned
description of the various wines of the
region. He tastes one from central Rioja,
then one from lower Rioja. Then, “A
patriot from upper Rioja now proposed,
‘Our wine is the one that travels well, and
when you’re in a foreign country and want a
breath of Spain, order a bottle from our
region.’” Michener concludes, “I have only
the kindest memories of Logrono, and if I
cannot remember a single monument in the
city or any public works, in Rioja wine I
found a friend whose dark red countenance

1983]

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119

and crisp syllables evoke for me the spirit of
pilgrimage wherever I encounter him.”17

In records such as those of Fiennes or
Bishop, the object of their scrutiny remains
firmly rooted in actuality. They may be
highly individual in their judgements and in
that sense personal, but they are commen¬
taries rather than evocations. Wales, for
example, sent George Borrow18 (and others)
into raptures but elicited the following from
Fiennes. . . from thence my Relation
carry’d me to Holly Well (Holywell) and
pass’d thro’ Flint town which is the shire
town, 5 mile from Harding; its a very ragged
place many villages in England are better,
the houses all thatched and stone walls but
so decay’d that in many places ready to
tumble down; there was a Town Hall such a
one as it was. ...” And she continues, ”...
they speake Welsh, the inhabitants go bare-
foote and bare leg’d a nasty sort of people.

55 19

Though there may also be a wealth of
factual information in works such as
Michener’s, images like Rioja wine and a
Romanesque church on a treeless plain com¬
municate the traveler’s experience of locale
and evoke the spirit of place. If it can be said
that in these accounts the object becomes
image, in works such as Stevenson’s An
Inland Voyage, the experience becomes met¬
aphor. Stevenson describes the exhilaration
he felt canoeing on the Oise in flood and
then says, “If this lovely and beautiful river
were, indeed, a thing of death’s contrivance,
the old ashen rogue had famously outwitted
himself with us. ... If a man knows he will
sooner or later be robbed upon a journey, he
will have a bottle of the best in every inn,
and look upon his extravagances as so much
gained upon the thieves. And above all,
where instead of simply spending, he makes
a profitable investment for some of his
money, when it will be out of risk of loss. So
every bit of brisk living and above all when it
is healthful, is just so much gained upon the
wholesale filcher, death. We shall have the
less in our pockets, the more in our stomach,

when he cries stand and deliver. A swift
stream is a favourite artifice of his, and one
that brings him in a comfortable thing per
annum; but when he and I come to settle our
accounts, I shall whistle in his face for these
hours upon the upper Oise.”20

At the furthest remove from the commen¬
taries of Fiennes is William Beckford’s
Dreams, Waking Thoughts and Incidents in
which the actualities of the journey are
almost completely subordinated to the
singular mental experience of the writer.
Unfortunately, Beckford’s reflections are
neither broad nor deep and are muddy
enough to obscure almost all sense of place.
These are not unusual faults of this type of
extremely personal record. His descriptions,
though profuse, lack specificity but his
imaginative daydreams are lovingly detailed.
Nothing, however, in his vague descriptions
of town or terrain seems sufficiently unusual
to warrant the speculations they engender.
The experience does not grow into meta¬
phor; it remains simply an excuse. The rela¬
tionship of statement to object seems purely
fortuitous. His account may be so complete¬
ly divorced from the actuality of place that it
ceases to be description and becomes vision.
“It was a mild, genial evening; every moun¬
tain cast its broad shadow on the surface of
the stream. . . . All were asleep except a
female form in white with glow-worms shin¬
ning in her hair. She kept moving discon¬
solately about; sometimes I heard her sigh,
and, if apparitions sigh, this must have been
an apparition. Upon my return, I asked a
thousand questions, but could never obtain
any information of the figure and its lumin¬
aries.”21

In their handling of details of place, these
examples represent four broad types of the
personal travel record. In Fiennes, the
details remain fact. In Michener, they
become image, in Stevenson, metaphor and
in Beckford, excuse. An attempt to recog¬
nize and define categories such as these (with
a constant awareness that they grade one
into the other and have no firm boundaries)

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

is a necessary first step in developing a
critical system which will aid in further
analysis and understanding.

Because travel literature, like the mystery
novel, is defined by subject rather than
form, criticism often concentrates on the
journey or the locale, on the “what” rather
than the “how” of the record. Rather than
analyzing the intention of the record or the
method by which the writer reconstructs the
journey for the reader, this type of criticism
at its worst can degenerate into cavail over
where the traveler did or did not go or what
the critic thinks should have been seen and
was not. Superficial criticism of this nature
also encourages the undertaking and subse¬
quent recording of specialized and some¬
times peculiar journeys. Paul Theroux’s
train rides and Anthony Smith’s ballooning
are examples, and good ones, by and large,
of this type of specialized journey.22 One
would not be surprised, however, to find
among titles of this type something like “I
Journeyed from Boise to Butte on Hands
and Knees Pushing a Peanut with My Nose”
and to discover within its pages much about
ant hills and nothing about the Rockies.

Figures of speech based on the traveler
and the journey are ubiquitous in fiction and
poetry. Life seen as a journey from birth to
death or death seen as a journey from which
there is no return are examples so ubiqui¬
tous, in fact, that they have lost much of
their metaphorical character. Dip into alle¬
gory or fantasy, for example, from The
Fairie Queen to The Lord of the Rings and
there will be the hearty welcome of “mine
host” at the inn, the threat of the highway¬
man, the solace of companions of the road,
the loneliness of a stranger in a strange land
and the fear of a mis-step that will plunge the
pilgrim into the Slough of Despond. Figures
of speech such as these, from the sparrow’s
flight through the warmth of the great hall
that converted an English king to Christian¬
ity to the “carry me home” and “lonesome
road” plaints of popular songs need no

exigesis. They are immediate in their impact
and economical in their execution. The de¬
velopment and application of a critical sys¬
tem or rhetoric that focuses attention on the
travel record as a literary production will
enhance not only the understanding and
appreciation of travel literature but also
those works of fiction for which it has
supplied the raw material of metaphor and
image. As the title of this article suggests,
even the lowly guidebook may provide
material for image-making.23

Notes

1 The Itinerary of Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela, ed.
Marcus Nathan Adler (New York: Philip Feldheim,
1966).

2 The Journals of Lewis and Clark , ed. Reuben G.
Thwaites (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1904).

3 Lawrence C. Wroth, The Voyage of Giovanni de
Verrazzano (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1970).

4 In his first voyage to Guiana, Sir Walter Raleigh
was convinced of the potential riches to be plundered
from the city of Manoa (the El Dorado of the
Spaniards) by the revelations of a native, Topiawari,
and the captured Spanish governor of Trinidad, Berreo
— neither of whom, for different reasons, was a disin¬
terested informant. More astonishing, however, was his
credulous acceptance of the existence of “a nation of
people whose heads appear not above their shoulders;
which though it may be thought a mere fable, yet for
mine own part I am resolved it is true, because every
child in the provinces of Arromaia and Canuri affirm
the same. . . . Such a nation was written of by
Mandeville, whose reports were held for fables for
many years, and yet since the East Indies were dis¬
covered, we find his relations true of such things as
heretofore were held incredible. . . .” Sir Walter
Raleigh, “The Discovery of the large, rich and beautiful
Empire of Guiana,” in Richard Hakluyt, Voyages and
Discoveries, ed. Jack Beeching (Harmondsworth:
Penguin Books, Inc., 1972), p. 402.

5 Mandeville’s Travels, ed. M. C. Seymour (Oxford:
Oxford Univ. Press, 1967).

6 On the basis of an English translation, “de
Mandeville” was known as “the father of English
prose” until it was discovered that the original manu¬
script was written in French.

7 Coryat’s Crudities (Glasgow: J. MacLehose and
Sons, 1905).

8 The Journeys of Celia Fiennes, ed. Christopher
Morris (London: The Cresset Press, 1949).

1983]

Ackley — Burbank with a Baedecker

121

9 Geoffrey Trease, The Grand Tour (New York:
Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1967).

10 This attitude toward the tourist was so prevalent
that it needed no explanation when it appeared in
popular literature. For example, “She liked travel but
dreaded sight-seeing and would retain memories as
sharp as pencil drawings of unimportant details — a
waiter, a group of sailors, a woman in a bookstall.”
describes a character in Ngaio Marsh’s mystery novel, A
Wreath for Rivera ( Photo Finish & Two Other Great
Mysteries, New York: Nelson Doubleday, Inc., n.d.).

11 Alexandria: A History and a Guide (Garden City:
Doubleday and Co., 1961).

12 Spirit of Place, ed. Alan G. Thomas (London:
Faber, 1969).

13 Eothan (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1970),
intro, p. xvi.

14 “Arles II,” Wanderings (London: J. M. Dent and
Sons, 1931), pp. 23-27.

15 Pierre Esprit Radisson, one of the first to travel on
Lake Michigan in the mid-seventeenth century, writes,
“We embarked on the delightsomest lake of the world.
. . . the country was so pleasant, so beautiful, and fruit-
full that it grieved me to see that the world could not dis¬
cover such enticing countries to live in. This I say be¬
cause the Europeans fight for a rock in the sea against
one another, or for a sterile land and horrid country.
. . . Contrariwise, these kingdoms are so delicious and
under so temperate a climate, plentiful of all things, the
earth bringing forth its fruit twice a year, the people live

long and lusty and wise in their way.” The Explorations
of Pierre Esprit Radisson, ed. Arthur T. Adams (Min¬
neapolis: Ross and Haines, Inc., 1961), p. 91.

16 The Amateur Emigrant in From Scotland to
Silverado, ed. James B. Hart (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1966). See also Meredith E. Ackley,
“The Creative Artist as Traveler: Robert Louis Steven¬
son in America,” Transactions of the Wisconsin Acad¬
emy of Sciences, Arts and Letters, vol. 69 (1981), 87-92.

17 Iberia: Spanish Travels and Reflections
(Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett Publications, Inc., 1968),

p. 861.

18 Wild Wales (New York: W. W. Norton, 1955).

19 Fiennes, op. cit., pp. 179-181.

20 An Inland Voyage (New York: Charles Scribner’s
Sons, 1902), pp. 108-109.

21 Dreams, Waking Thoughts and Incidents, ed.
Robert J. Gemmett (Cranberry, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickin¬
son Univ. Press, 1971), p. 86.

22 Paul Therroux, The Great Railway Bazaar: By
Train Through Asia (New York: Ballantine Books,
1976).

_ The Old Patagonian Express: By Train Through

the Americas (New York: Pocket Books, 1980).

Anthony Smith, Jambo: African Balloon Safari (New
York: New American Library, 1963).

23 T. S. Eliot, “Burbank with a Baedeker; Bleistein
with a Cigar,” in Collected Poems 1909-1935 (New
York: Harcourt Brace, 1936), pp. 47-48.

TWO WISCONSIN LIBRARIES: 1854-1954

Louis Kaplan

Emeritus Director of Libraries ,
University of Wisconsin-Madison

This is the story of two publicly supported
libraries: the general library of the Univer¬
sity of Wisconsin, and the library in the State
Historical Society of Wisconsin. More
specifically this is the story of how two
libraries sought a modus operandi in the
building of library collections. For them, an
agreement on policy could not be avoided.
Being publicly supported, those responsible
for acquisitions simply could not ignore each
other. Mindless duplication was infeasible,
not only on economic grounds, but in order
to avoid the charge of squandering public
monies.

Where a state-supported society and
university are in separate cities, the need for
cooperation is lessened. Likewise of signif¬
icance, even when the two are in the same
city, is the scope of the society’s acquisition
program: the less ambitious the program,
the less is the need for cooperation. Working
out a coordinated policy is relatively simple
when a society is content to make its own
state its exclusive area of interest. In Wiscon¬
sin, even after extensive retrenchment, the
acquisitions program of the society is excep¬
tionally comprehensive. Unlike publicly sup¬
ported societies that limit themselves to the
region of which they are a part, the Wiscon¬
sin society took on a greater responsibility.

In explaining these differences among his¬
torical societies a leading author has written:
“Whether support comes from private citi¬
zens or legislatures, State historical societies
develop their own different approaches and
characteristics. These depend in part upon
location, the relative age of the State, the
nature of the inhabitants, and the extent of
their resources; they depend also to a con¬
siderable degree upon the personal interests

and abilities of the individuals who have
shaped them in critical periods of their
careers.”1

Wisconsin, especially among state-sup¬
ported societies, is different. Lyman Draper,
its first director, made a difference. Further¬
more, among this kind of society, Wisconsin
got an early start. A society founded in the
1 850’s was likely to be more ambitious than
a society that got its start in the eighties or
nineties. In the nineties, the imperatives of
fiscal support and the growth in book pro¬
duction served as a warning to those inclined
to be overly ambitious.

For the University in Madison the Society
was both a problem and a blessing. Strug¬
gling to support its variety of activities, the
youthful nineteenth century University was
troubled by the failure of its library to keep
pace with those in comparable universities.
Nearby, was the Society — eager to serve the
widest possible constituency, including uni¬
versity students and professors. What was
the University to do? Should it, or could it,
challenge the propriety of the Society’s wide-
ranging acquisitions policies? Or should it
remain quiet, hoping that its energetic
neighbor would successfully carry out its
self-appointed responsibilities in a manner
suitable to the needs of a university?

A Cavalcade of Books (1954-1956)

In the years 1954-1956 the Historical
Society transferred a large number of books
and periodicals to the new Memorial library
of the University of Wisconsin. Most of the
volumes dealt with British and European
history; others with Central and South
America. Included also were a considerable
number of titles by and about Shakespeare,

122

1983]

Kaplan — Two Wisconsin Libraries

123

and a large and unusual collection on his¬
tory, science and theology that had once
been the property of a Dutch minister.

Two widely divergent estimates have been
made of the number of volumes transferred.
Benton Wilcox, then the Society’s librarian,
put the number at 50,000 volumes. Clifford
Lord, sometimes Director (now deceased),
set it at 100,000 titles. 2 Wilcox, employing an
accounting procedure common among li¬
brarians, regarded a book of pamphlets as a
single volume. Lord, wanting to account for
the pamphlets separately, estimated that the
total number of pamphlets transferred was
equal to the combined total of books, peri¬
odicals and bound documents. Unfortu¬
nately, the proportion of pamphlets among
the British publications was probably
smaller than among those relating to the
United States. Consequently, because the
number of pamphlets cannot be estimated
with sufficient accuracy, Wilcox’s count of
50,000 volumes (inclusive of pamphlets)
must be taken as more reliable.

Two other questions arise in connection
with this transfer. How did it come about
that an American historical society had ac¬
quired a large body of materials on foreign
history and literature? And why, after many
years of ownership did the Society in the
mid-twentieth century relinquish its title to
it? Some answers to these questions are to be
found in the sections that follow.

Two Giants in the Pursuit of
Research Materials: Lyman Draper and
Reuben Gold Thwaites, 1854—1913

Two more eager and energetic ac¬
cumulators of library research materials
than Draper and Thwaites would be difficult
to imagine. Both held the title of Secretary to
the Historical Society, Draper in the years
1854-1886, and Thwaites from 1887 to 1913.
Draper’s biographer has written that he
“wanted all American history — and any
other kind of history.’’3 To assist him in this
task, Draper had Daniel Steele Durrie, who

for about 37 years gave almost undivided at¬
tention to augmenting the Society’s library.
As has been written of the pair, they
“worked together with one heart and hand
in many an endeavor. . . .”4 It was Durrie
who supervised the printing of the library’s
catalog that appeared in 1873; one needs
only casually to inspect this volume to see
that Draper had more in mind than Ameri¬
can history. With respect to foreign history
he was drawn strongly to Great Britain and
her colonies, so much so that he wrote a ra¬
tionalization of his conduct:

“Whatever relates to English history, her
colonies, her primitive manners and cus¬
toms, and the genealogy of her families, has
an intimate relation with American history
and habits of thought. In all our American
history there is so intimate a blending of our
own with the annals of the fatherland, that
our growth and progress cannot be properly
delineated without constant reference to
these blending relations.”5

Reaching beyond American and British
history, and indeed, beyond history itself,
was the Society’s acceptance of the Tank col¬
lection. Consisting of 4,812 volumes and 374
pamphlets, it was rich in works of science
and theology as well as in history. Gathered
by her father, a minister in Holland, and
presented to the Society in 1868 by Mrs. Otto
Tank of Howard, Wisconsin, this was the
kind of acquisition in which Draper could
exult.6 Nor was he swayed negatively by the
foreign languages in which the books ap¬
peared. Said Draper, with respect to these
languages, the Society must be ready to serve
“the wants of our citizens of all na¬
tionalities.”7

In the same year, Draper was able to an¬
nounce the purchase of 37 volumes of news¬
papers, published, in part, in Capetown
(South Africa), Melbourne, Liberia, China,
Smyrna and Constantinople.8 Then in 1873,
the Society acquired an esteemed Halliwell
edition of Shakespeare’s works in 16 folio
volumes.9

124

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

Thwaites, too, deserves his reputation as a
great but sometimes indiscriminate collector
of research materials. In quantitative terms
alone, his accomplishments were impressive;
in 13 years he managed to double the size of
the Society’s library, and then trebled its size
after 26 years in office.10 Better organized
than Draper, Thwaites proceeded to syste¬
matize the acquisition process; and then in
his methodical way, by purchase, by ex¬
change and by begging, he continuously en¬
riched the Library’s resources. One writer
claims that in the era of Thwaites, about 75
percent of the accessions came as gifts. 1 1

No more than Draper, did Thwaites turn
down opportunities to grasp sources that
were unrelated to American history. Regret¬
fully, however, he was forced to report that
apart from material on English history the
Society’s library possessed “few sources of
information for original study.’’ In the
absence of the requisite funds, with respect
to original sources “we cannot venture far
beyond our old-time speciality of Ameri¬
cana.’’12 Even so, he made the best of his
opportunities. A “monumental’’ work on
animal locomotion by Muybridge is but one
example; of the works of Shakespeare, in
1900 the Society possessed 1,000 volumes; a
vellum manuscript copy of the Book of
Hours was the prized accession of 1888; 13 at
a price of $265, paid by a donor in 1890, the
Society became the owner of Monumentos
del Arte Mexicano Antiguo, edited in three
large folio volumes by the “famous’’ Mex¬
ican scholar, Antonio Penafiel.14 In 1912,
the year prior to Thwaites’ death, the Society
acquired funds for the purpose of establish¬
ing a Hollister Pharmaceutical Library —
despite the existence of a well-established
library in the University’s School of Phar¬
macy. 15

No matter how far afield, gifts were dif¬
ficult to refuse; as for purchases, Thwaites
recognized that in order to maintain its
reputation as a library of history, the Society
would need to arrange with the University
for a division of interests. Logically, he

argued that such an arrangement would be
facilitated if the two libraries were to come
together in a single building. 16 So long as the
Historical Library continued in the State
Capitol building, and the University Library
in Assembly Hall (later Music Hall), the pro¬
cess of rationalization would be delayed.
Even before the two libraries were united in
1900 in the first unit of a magnificent struc¬
ture at the foot of Bascom Hill, Thwaites
conceived of a division of responsibility in
which the University would acquire materi¬
als in literature and the general sciences,
while the Society would develop a “depart¬
ment of History.’’17 But as will be seen, his
definition of history was worthy of Draper.

In retrospect, several alternatives were
available to those responsible for the
development of the Society’s library. One
choice, the narrow one, was to limit the
materials to the history of Wisconsin; most
readers of this article will no doubt be
amazed to learn that this narrow alternative
seemed to be in the minds of those who
wrote the Society’s constitution of 1854. 18
An alternative was to embrace the history of
the Middle West, or the whole of the United
States. Yet, as already seen, to Draper and
Thwaites these alternatives were too confin¬
ing, and this no doubt explains the greater
latitude permitted in the constitution of
1897. To fit his style, that constitution made
legitimate what Thwaites desired, namely, to
cover the whole of history, with special at¬
tention to Wisconsin and to the “Middle
West.”19

The University's Reaction to
Draper and Thwaites

In 1900 when the two libraries jointly oc¬
cupied the new building on the lower cam¬
pus, the University library claimed 75,000
volumes and 25,000 pamphlets. The Society
at this time estimated its holdings at 114,572
volumes and 112,374 pamphlets.20 How is
this difference in resources to be explained?
To begin with, the Society was far ahead of
the University in the persons of Draper and

1983]

Kaplan— Two Wisconsin Libraries

125

Thwaites, whereas those responsible for the
University library prior to 1890 were pro¬
fessors (with clerical assistants) who at¬
tended to library business on a part-time
basis. Furthermore, the University had other
problems to which it assigned a higher
priority. Though there was no intention to
ignore the library, the Regents and the ad¬
ministration could not fail to recognize that
the Society’s library in the State Capitol
building was ably serving both students and
professors. In 1891, the Society’s Executive
Committee was told that “students and pro¬
fessors now form a large proportion of our
readers. . . .”21

This is not to imply that the University
had no interest in its library. Certainly Presi¬
dent Adams made no secret of his desire to
improve the standing of the library in aca¬
demic circles. As evidence, there are the
remarks he made before the Regents in 1897
in which he spoke of the relative affluence of
Michigan and Cornell in library holdings. “I
fear,” said Adams, “the members of the
board are tired of hearing me on this subject
. . . .”22 Nor was the University’s first full¬
time librarian (appointed in 1890) quiescent.
Said he to the Regents: “While progress has
been made, the library is still greatly inferior
as a working library to those of many Ameri¬
can universities with which the university of
Wisconsin is proud to compare herself in
equipment and work.”23 All to little avail.
Despite the complaints of Adams, the pro¬
tests of the faculty and students, and the
pleas of the University Librarian, the library
in Wisconsin continued to lag behind those
found at comparable universities.24

The Delineation of Acquisitions Policies,
1895-1950

Even before the new building was jointly
occupied in 1900, the two libraries under¬
took informal agreements. As Thwaites re¬
vealed in 1897, for the past “two or three
years” the libraries had been guided by in¬
formal stipulations by which the University
undertook responsibility for science, tech¬

nology, philosophy, philology, education,
the fine arts, and belles lettres (except for
Shakespeare and old English drama). For its
part, the Society continued purchases in its
established specialties of history, genealogy,
travel and description, economics, soci¬
ology, Shakespeare, old English drama,
and newspapers. Admittedly, according to
Thwaites, there were aspects of the agree¬
ment that left open “many complicated
exceptions” which in the future would need
to be addressed.25

Further clarification was achieved by
1907, in a document in which the Society
declared its areas of interest to be North,
Central and South America, the United
Kingdom, and the British colonial posses¬
sions in the western hemisphere. In recogni¬
tion that all aspects of history in these areas
would be too ambitious a program, the So¬
ciety agreed that on the subject of education
it would concentrate on materials relating to
the United Sates; on immigration, the Soci¬
ety would not go beyond the United States
and Great Britain; American labor materials
were to be restricted to specific labor unions,
the general topic of labor to be left to the
University. Priority of interest in agriculture
was conceded to the University’s school of
agriculture. With respect to anthropology,
the University was to be responsible for
white Americans, while the Society would
concentrate on works relating to American
Negroes and Indians. All municipal public
utilities, except those in American and Cana¬
dian cities, were declared to be within the
University’s purview. In church history, the
Society limited itself to the United States and
to the Church of England.

Despite these retreats, the Society’s library
was left with a considerable mandate. Except
for subjects regarded as having only minor
interest, it was still responsible for the
history, broadly interpreted, of the United
States and Great Britain. Of materials on
Central and South America it still had much
to acquire, as for example, in politics,
biography, genealogy, travel accounts, and

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

general descriptive geography.26 In fact,
looking ahead some thirty years, it was to
become clear that the Society had staked out
a claim too great for its financial resources.

With the arrival in 1941 of Edward Alex¬
ander, the new Director of the Society, a
fresh look at the library’s problems was
guaranteed. Affable, yet energetic, among
his many problems Alexander recognized
that there was one that he might in a rela¬
tively short period of time move in the right
direction. Quickly, he saw that his library’s
book budget was hopelessly incapable of
meeting its wide-spreading acquisitions pro¬
gram. Surprisingly, that budget for 1941-
1942 was less supportive than it had been ten
years earlier.27 Acting in concert with the
University Librarian, two consultants — the
historian, Dean Blegen of Minnesota, and
the librarian, Metcalf of Harvard — were
brought to Madison in 1943 to offer advice
pertaining to acquisition policies and to the
problems of space.

On acquisitions, the consultants recom¬
mended that the Society limit itself to
American history, “broadly” defined. They
found that in American history the Society’s
library was losing ground, and that the situa¬
tion with respect to Great Britain and Latin
America was even worse. As for the Univer¬
sity Library, in order to take on new respon¬
sibilities, it would require a doubling of its
book budget.28

Determined to accept the advice of the
consultants, Alexander made a straight¬
forward recommendation to the Executive
Committee of the Society’s Curators. Clear¬
ly, he pointed out, the Society’s library was
attempting much more than it could
manage. The obvious solution was for the
library to cut loose those of its respon¬
sibilities that could with propriety be turned
over to the University. Given the inadequacy
of funding, how could the Society justify the
ambitious course set by Draper and
Thwaites? The book fund, which stood at
$10,700 in 1928-1929, had now shrunk to
$6,000. Moreover, Alexander had more than

the library on his mind; it worried him to
have no funds for the museum.29

Responding to the suggestions of the two
consultants, and to the importunities of
Alexander, the Curators agreed to the
change in acquisitions policy, and when the
Regents of the University added their ap¬
proval, the librarians of the two organiza¬
tions began to hammer out the details of a
written program.

The Memorial Library and the American
Historical Research Center, 1950-1954

From the viewpoint of dividing the
responsibility for collection building the year
1950 was marked by two related events. One
was the passage by the State legislature of an
appropriation for the University for an in¬
dependent library building. The other was
the announcement by the Society of the crea¬
tion of an American Historical Research
Center.

When the two consultants (Blegen and
Metcalf) arrived in 1943, storage space had
been a critical problem for both libraries for
about twenty years. After the original
building had been extended in 1913, each
library had its own bookstack in a U-shaped
structure. Without success the University
had, in 1925, sought funds for an indepen¬
dent library building. In their report of 1944
the consultants made suggestions designed to
enable the two libraries to remain in the
same building: for newspapers, they advised
that a separate structure should be con¬
structed; and to provide supplementary
shelving for books they recommended a T-
shaped addition to the existing building.30
These recommendations met with little
favor. The Society feared that their library
would soon be regarded as merely another
agency of the University.31 Within the
University there was strong support for an
independent structure.

From that moment the University moved
with determination towards legislative ap¬
proval of a new library building. Within a
legislative appropriation for the University

1983]

Kaplan — Two Wisconsin Libraries

127

passed in 1945, the Regents set aside a por¬
tion for a library, but this money had to be
diverted elsewhere within the University
because the State Architect failed to move
expeditiously with the preparation of the
necessary drawings.32 Finally, a special
library appropriation was approved in 1950
to honor those Wisconsin citizens who had
seen military service.

Professors in the American section of the
History Department were troubled by the
promise of a separate University library. To
some of these professors it was unpalatable,
for example, to divorce books on American
history from those on American literature.
Having these books in the same library
building, as they had been since 1900, was a
convenience that they preferred not to lose.
Of interest, therefore, to these professors
was the announcement in 1950 by the His¬
torical Society of the formation of an
American Historical Research Center.33 If
acceptable to the University — and this is
what led to considerable debate — those
books in the University library relating to
American culture would not be transferred
to the soon-to-be constructed Memorial
Library, but would remain behind in the
library of the Historical Society. More ex¬
plicitly, this meant that the University’s
books in American literature, economics and
political theory (among others) would be af¬
fected. Though requiring a considerable
outlay in funds, both for books and addi¬
tional study facilities, the Director of the
Society was confident that he could win the
support of the legislature in favor of the new
Center.34

Opposition to the Society’s proposal was
immediately expressed by the Department of
English,35 and soon after when the Univer¬
sity Library Committee made a canvass of
other departments it became clear that ex¬
cept for the History department, disapproval
was overwhelming. Therefore, in the
autumn of 1950, the Director of the Society
was informed that “with a new University
Library in the offing it is impossible to per¬

suade the faculty of the wisdom of transfer¬
ring to the Society new fields for
purchase.”36

This is a story with a sequel. When the
Joint Committee of the two library commit¬
tees met on the 16th of January, 1953, it was
told that a majority of the History depart¬
ment now wanted the books of the Society to
be transferred to the Memorial Library in ac¬
cordance with their previously expressed
desire to keep all books on American culture
together. As those in attendance knew, the
Curators were unlikely to accept this sugges¬
tion, and the chairman of the History De¬
partment himself said that the main purpose
was to have his department’s wish made part
of the record.37

In his Clio's Servant, Clifford Lord wrote
that the University had missed an outstand¬
ing opportunity in not accepting the Soci¬
ety’s plan for the American History Research
Center. As he expressed it, “the great vision”
thus offered the University community was
not to be realized.38 Whether the opportu¬
nity would in practice have proven successful
must remain a matter for conjecture. Realis¬
tically, in-so-far as it concerned the Univer¬
sity, the proposal was doomed from the
start. Not realized by Lord and by certain
members of the History department was that
within the University a transformation in at¬
titude towards its library had come about.
One element in the change in outlook was
the prospect of the new library building. Ad¬
ditionally, three hundred thousand dollars
had been raised in 1945-46 to acquire the
heralded Thordarson collection. Consisting
of about 11,000 titles representative of
various aspects of Anglo-Saxon civilization,
the purchase of this private library contain¬
ing editions prized by connoisseurs served to
convince the faculty that better days were
surely ahead for its library.

Thus, with its new confidence in the future
of the University library, the faculty in 1950
was sending an unprecedented message to
the Society: no longer would it willingly sur¬
render acquisitions that were normally the

128

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

province of a major research library. On the
other hand, there was no disposition within
the University to challenge the Society in
those fields for which its library had become
famous.

Once the University made known its oppo¬
sition to surrendering its responsibility for
the whole of American culture, there arose
the need to end the delineation of fields of
collecting that had been tinkered with since
1945. This task was completed in 1954, pro¬
ducing a document not significantly dif¬
ferent from earlier versions.39 Of the various
stipulations made the most important was
the Society’s agreement to confine its area of
interest to the region north of the Rio
Grande, inclusive of Canada.40 Cut loose
were Great Britain and South and Central
America. While including a number of
details that do not require enumeration,
some of the provisions found in the 1954
document are essential to an understanding
of the degree to which the Society was re¬
shaping its program to fit its pocket-book.
Among the variety of concessions made by
the Society some of the most important are
as follows:

Literature — except fiction and essays by
Wisconsin writers.

Economics — except materials on Wiscon¬
sin finance and production.

Banking, industry, railroads — as with
Economics.

Anthropology — only as it relates to the
area north of the Rio Grande.

Recreation — except in Wisconsin.

General periodicals.

Foreign newspapers.

Manuscripts — only those pertaining to
American history.

A Retrospective View

For almost a century the University library
danced to the tune played by the Wisconsin
Historical Society. When Draper made the
Society responsible for the whole of the
United States, the University raised no pro¬
test. Likewise, with respect to Canada, Great

Britain, and Latin America. In other univer¬
sities the need to forego foreign history did
not arise. In other historical libraries, such
as those in Minnesota and Ohio, because
these did not claim more than state and
region as areas for acquisitions, their neigh¬
boring university libraries were not required
to ignore the whole of the United States.

Understandable, and even fortunate from
the viewpoint of his successes, was the
University’s decision not to challenge
Draper’s program as it related to the history
of the United States. Actually, the Univer¬
sity could hardly have mounted a competing
campaign, considering that during the whole
of Draper’s tenure the University had not
appointed a full-time librarian. Less ex¬
cusable, as the University moved into the
20th century, was its acquiscence with
respect to historical materials on Great Brit¬
ain and Latin America. On these subjects,
because the Society’s holdings were not ex¬
ceptional, the University could with justice
have offered to take over. Had the Universi¬
ty library in the twenties or thirties been in
possession of an adequate budget, would the
Society have been willing to accept the offer?

Not until 1950, in connection with the pro¬
posal by the Society to inaugurate a com¬
prehensive library of American civilization,
was the University able to call its own tune.
Now it was the Society that was in the
weaker position by virtue of asking the
University to surrender that which it already
held. Unlike 1941, when the Society was anx¬
ious to absolve itself of responsibilities, the
University in 1950 was determined not to
give way as it had in the past.

Though it is true that scholars profited
from the policies set by Draper and
Thwaites, in the end both the Society and the
University were forced to face the conse¬
quences. The Society, for its part, inherited a
program it could not support. As the con¬
sulting team of Blegen and Metcalf reported,
the Society’s ability to collect research
materials on the United States was impaired
by the requirements of its extended acquisi-

1983]

Kaplan— Two Wisconsin Libraries

129

tions policies. Years before Alexander called
for a halt, the Society might have insisted
that the University assume responsibility for
areas outside the United States and Canada.

Nor did the University library escape un¬
scathed. For this the Society could not be
blamed; yet it is true that the strength of the
Society’s library made it possible for some
University officials to argue that it was
necessary to include the Society’s collections
when counting volumes on the University
campus. That university libraries in other
states could follow the same procedure
seems not to have been taken into account.
Actually, the situation was worse than they
knew. For example, the library of the Uni¬
versity of Minnesota, not the largest in the
mid-West, had almost as many volumes in
1927 as did the two libraries in Madison
combined, and by 1945 it had forged
ahead.41 Not until the fifties did the Univer¬
sity of Wisconsin finally bestir itself in
response to the need for more rapid growth.

References Cited

' Walter Muir Whitehill, Independent
Historical Societies { Boston, 1962), p. 269.

2 See the Proceedings of the State Historical
Society of Wisconsin, 1953-1954, p. 26. Here¬
after cited as Proceedings. See also Clifford L.
Lord and Carl Ubbelohde, Clio's Servant, The
State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1846-1954
(Madison, 1967), p. 437.

3 William B. Hesseltine, “Lyman Copeland
Draper, 1815-1891,” Wisconsin Magazine of
History, 35:163-166, 231-234 (Spring, 1952).

4 J. D Butler, “Daniel Steele Durrie,” in the
Proceedings, Dec. 9, 1892, p. 73-81.

5 Report and Collections of the State Historical
Society of Wisconsin, 6:46. Hereafter cited as
Report.

6 See George L. Mosse, “The Tank Collec¬
tion,” U. W. Library News, 4:1 (October, 1959).

7 Report, 5:162-163.

8 Report, 5:19.

9 Report, 7:29.

10 Clifford L. Lord, “Reuben Gold Thwaites,”
Wise. Mag. Hist., 47:3-11 (Autumn, 1963).

11 Carl Ubbelohde, “The Threshold of Possi¬
bilities: the Society 1900-1955,” Wise. Mag.
Hist., 39:76-84 (Winter, 1955-1956).

12 Proceedings, 1895, p. 8.

13 Proceedings, 1869, p. 15, and Jackson E.
Towne, “President Adams and the University
Library,” Wise. Mag. Hist., 35:257-261 (Sum¬
mer, 1952).

1 4 Proceedings, 1 89 1 , p . 4 1 .

15 W. H. Glover, “The Society’s Benefac¬
tions,” Wise. Mag. Hist., 32:290-301 (March,
1949).

16 On the campaign which led to the appropria¬
tion for the building occupied in 1900 see Vernon
E. Carstensen, “Adventure in Cooperation,”
Wise. Mag. Hist., 34:95-99 (Winter, 1950).

17 Thwaites to the Executive Committee,
January 10, 1893 in Minutes of Proceedings of
the State Historical Society (hereafter cited as
Minutes of Proceedings), Archive, Series 1932,
vol. 2.

18 “Early Records of the Society, 1848-1854”
in Collections of the State Historical Society of
Wisconsin. Reprint edition. l:lii.

19 Proceedings, 1897, p. 59.

20 Walter M. Smith, “The Library of the
University of Wisconsin,” in The State Historical
Society of Wisconsin. Exercises at the Dedication
of Its New Building . . . ed. by Reuben Gold
Thwaites (Madison, 1901), p. 111. For the Soci¬
ety figures see Proceedings, 1900, p. 28.

21 Proceedings, 1891, p. 31.

22 Minutes of the Board of Regents of the
University of Wisconsin, Record E, August 24,
1897, p. 39 (in University Archives).

23 Biennial Report of the Board of Regents of
the University of Wisconsin, 1910-11 and 1911-
12, p. 275 (in University Archives).

24 Merle Curti and Vernon Carstensen, The
University of Wisconsin, A History, 1848-1925 (2
vols., Madison, 1949) 1:652-655.

25 Proceedings, 1898, p. 22-23.

26 The document referred to is found in the
Society’s Archives, Series 678, Box 26, File 5.

27 Proceedings, 1941, p. 29.

28 The report of the consultants was reprinted
in the Wise. Mag. Hist., 27:498-502 (June, 1944).

29 Ibid., p. 495-497.

30 For the text of their report see the Wise.
Mag. Hist., 27:498-502 (June, 1944). See also
Proceedings, 1944, p. 493.

31 Lord, Clio’s Servant, p. 373-374.

130

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

32 Minutes of the Board of Regents, December
1 , 1954, in University Archives.

33 Lord gives credit for the idea of the Center to
the History department. See Proceedings, 1952,
p. 48 and Lord, Clio's Servant, p. 435.

34 See the minutes of the Library Committee of
the Society, dated June 24, 1950 in Minutes of
Proceedings, 6:32.

35 Minutes of the Joint Library Subcommittee
dated July 18, 1950 in Minutes of Proceedings,
6:33.

36 Louis Kaplan to Clifford Lord, October 12,
1950 in the Society’s Archives, Series 678, Box
26, File 5.

37 Minutes of Proceedings, 7:10-11.

38 Lord, Clio’s Servant, p. 435-436.

39 Minutes of Proceedings, 7:218-222.

40 The relevant agreements are to be seen in the
Society’s Archives, Series 678, Box 26, File 5. See
especially the material dated April 1 and Sep¬
tember 15, 1945.

41 Curti and Carstensen, The University of
Wisconsin, 2:308-309. See also [Louis Kaplan],
Some Data Relating to the Library at the Univer¬
sity of Wisconsin, in University Archives, file
22/1/4.

THEME AND SPEAKERS IN SHUM WAY’S “SONG OF THE ARCHER”

Jim Missey

Department of English
University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point

With the publication of the fourth book
of poetry, Practicing Vivaldi (La Crosse,
Wisconsin: Juniper Press, 1981), by the
Wisconsin poet, Mary Shumway,1 a critical
appreciation of some of her early work is in
order. An examination of Shumway’s early
narrative poem, “Song of the Archer,’’2 can
provide insights into her methods and
themes.

The theme of the poem, suggested by fre¬
quent quotations from Yeats’s “Sailing to
Byzantium,’’ is that life (or love) gives way
to death, out of which something permanent
(art) is reborn; this theme is articulated or
evoked by the three principal speakers in the
poem — the chorus, which acts as a kind of
framing narrator; the archer-centaur
Chiron, who narrates the main line of ac¬
tion; and the adult poet Chris, who, as a
child, is the main character in Chiron’s nar¬
ration.

The first speaker is the chorus, repre¬
sented in the text with roman type, the other
two speakers being represented with itali¬
cized type. Though the chorus’s is not the
first voice we hear— Chiron’s is that — it may
be thought of as structurally the first voice
since the chorus, providing a more general
overview than the other two speakers, some¬
times quotes Chiron and sometimes evokes
rather generally the theme of the poem.

In the form of somewhat general commen¬
tary, the chorus refers to twin aspects of the
theme, death and rebirth. Lines of the
chorus towards the end of the poem, just
after Chris has noticed that something has
happened to her grandmother (she may have
fallen under the weight of something she was
carrying), bespeak the inevitability of death:

We have seen August reach
Into autumn without holding back thieving winds

Nor catching leaves from swift brooks plying
A chrisomed shore; we have seen sun come and go
Without the seven trumpets ... ah, we worry the
Very daylight with how to become what we anyhow
Must become . . .

A few lines later, the chorus suggests another
aspect of the theme, namely, that out of pain
(or death) shall come a rebirth in the form of
art, in this case “The Song of the Archer’’:

Once the wash of the wind lay open the quick
Heart shall the heavens tell and shall we hear
The song of the archer roaming the early hill [. ]

The rather dense metaphorical language con¬
centrates the meaning of the lines, which
may be explained as follows: A wash in the
West is similar to an arroyo, or dry gully, so
one has the impression of the wind’s channel
or path lying open, suggesting exposure and
perhaps dessication. The exposure implies
vulnerability, perhaps the vulnerability one
feels after being reduced, diminished, or
hurt by death. But the “quick/Heart’’ — a
heart cut to the quick or a vital heart or even
a quickened heart — speaks (maybe cries
out), calling forth “The song of the archer.’’

Though the first speaker, the chorus,
refers generally to the theme of the poem,
the second speaker, Chiron, evokes the
theme in more specific terms. The opening
lines of the poem, for example, which are
spoken by Chiron, combine the suggestions
of mortality inherent in a dying day with the
vitality of sexuality: Chiron likens the setting
sun to “a slaughtered buir that “ Spewed
blood . . . over a /brewing storm. ...” The
scene includes “/wo cats ” that “ Coupled
deep by the shed ” and “A young chit ”
presumably sitting “/« the rust wood where
centuries rutted and /spilled Novembers
the young chit being Chris. The sexual con-

131

132

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

notations of the lines are deepened by the
pun on “rutted,” which suggests that the
centuries were not only in a rut in producing
Novembers year after year but that they
copulated like animals and had as their off¬
spring a succession of Novembers; and there
are sexual overtones in the word “chit,” too,
which may mean not only a pert girl but,
obsolescently, the offspring of a beast, for
example, a cub (see Webster's New Interna¬
tional Dictionary, Second Edition).

Not only does Chiron evoke death and life
in the opening description of the setting, but
he does so in a description of the sunset that
comes a bit later:

The earth

Turned slow from the dying sun and blood seeped

from the veined dust into a million tiny
Serpents shimmering in the turning, the tiresome

turning.

The lines obviously describe a form of death
— the sunset — and the weariness evoked by
them suggests that the earth itself is ap¬
proaching death. But the vividness of the im¬
agery, with streaks of sunlight being likened
to “a million tiny /Serpents shimmering ,”
indicates also the presence of life, albeit a
somewhat repulsive life.

In addition to Chiron’s presenting the
simultaneous presence of life and death in
some of the early descriptions, the archer-
centaur later conveys the theme of the poem,
that human existence is made up of a cycle —
from life to death to, in the form of art,
rebirth. This theme is shown in Chiron’s
dramatization of the vitality of Chris’s
grandmother (Gran), moving evocation
(through Chris’s reaction) of Gran’s death,
and symbolization of the death with the sug¬
gestion of rebirth.

Concerning Gran’s vitality, before the
grandmother dies Chiron vividly and affec¬
tionately evokes her liveliness. He shows it in
her colorful, if somewhat corny, way of
speaking (ironically, everything she says has
the feeling of death about it, though not the

way she says it): “‘Don’t like the looks of
that sky, ’ her grandmother/said, ‘ Some¬
thing rotten in Denmark, if you ask me. /I
wish it’d storm if it’s goin’ to.’” Later, in
warning Chris about being burned in the
woods, she says, “ Fine grease spot /You’ll
make in the devil’s kitchen. ” And still later,
after some nearby Indians have finished a
ceremony for someone who has died, she
says, “Well, I guess that’s that. It’s sure
none of us/ gets outa this world alive. ...”

Not only does Chiron show us the vitality
of the grandmother, but he movingly evokes
her death through Chris’s reaction to it.
Chris offers to carry something that Gran is
carrying, but Gran stubbornly refuses any
help and then apparently stumbles under the
load and dies. Gran’s dying is frozen in slow
motion, the effect being to deepen Chris’s
anguish. Twice Chris calls out to her grand¬
mother, “What’s the matter,” and eight
times she calls to her mother to come. One
has the impression of Gran’s slowly slump¬
ing to the floor — like the slaughtered bull,
perhaps, mentioned in the second line of the
poem — and of Chris’s mother’s responding
in a painfully slow fashion. There is some
reproach against the mother — Chris may
blame her for her grandmother’s death.
After the eighth time that Chris calls her
mother, the mother says, “‘I suppose we
should at least see . . . ,’” recalling an earlier
incident in the poem. In that incident, after
Chris had asked her mother whether she
could hunt turtles in the slough and got her
mother’s response, Chris had said, “All you
ever say is ‘ we’ll see ’ . . . well, when
will /we?”

In addition to showing in a moving way
Gran’s death through Chris’s reaction to it,
Chiron also symbolizes it in his description
of the physical setting at the time of the
grandmother’s death; and he hints at a
rebirth. The physical setting is a latent and
then breaking storm during a dying day of a
dying year (the time is November, “the
month of the hunter)”. Using heightened

1983]

Missey — Song of the Archer

133

diction, Chiron describes the storm’s break¬
ing as Gran dies, with a possible pun on
“dam”:

The

Old earth shuddered beneath her knees, the dam
crumbled and dissolved in the boiling flood, and
Thunder rode dusk from the river to the hill where
the storm lay broken.

But if the storm symbolizes death, it also of¬
fers hope of renewed life. In the last lines of
the poem, which complete the passage just
quoted, Chris reacts to Gran’s death in such
a way as to suggest a rebirth of sorts:

She saw the shallows flood,

And the old house fell in the thundering wind
darkly to the dark sun. She crawled toward them,
Into them, and with a single vision they were one,
and sang (“c. . . of what is past, or passing,

Or to come. * ”)

The “single vision” that Chris has achieved
indicates that she has integrated the parts of
her experience, especially the experience of
her grandmother’s death, and that, while she
sorrows over that death, she nonetheless has
put it into perspective. The achievement of
the “single vision,” moreover, answers the
question, already referred to, that Chris had
put to her mother earlier in the poem: “All
you ever say is ‘we'll see ' . . . well, when
will/ we?” Finally, the song that Chris sings
(presumably the lines from “Sailing to
Byzantium”) is the rebirth that follows
death; and it has the permanence of “such a
form as Grecian goldsmiths make/Of ham¬
mered gold and gold enamelling,” referred
to in the same stanza of Yeats’s poem as the
lines which Chris sings.

Chris not only appears as a character in
Chiron’s narration, but, as an adult poet,
she emerges as one of the three principal
speakers in the poem. She speaks in a sort of
inner monologue, which may be narrated by
Chiron — the passages, like those Chiron
speaks, are italicized — though the reader
feels, partly because of the indentation of
the lines, that Chris is speaking more directly

than in the parts of Chiron’s speech proper
in which Chiron quotes her. The parts or
fragments of the inner monologue — one is
reminded of the “fragments” that the Fisher
King in The Waste Land has “shored against
[his]ruins” — moreover, are not chrono¬
logically organized as are the events of
Chiron’s narration (indeed, some events
must have occurred after Gran’s death).
Rather, they are thematically organized, as
Jacob Korg has suggested the “unas¬
similated quotations” of The Waste Land
are organized.3 And the theme that unifies
the parts of Chris’s monologue is a recapitu¬
lation of the three aspects of the main idea of
the poem as a whole: life (often associated
with or replaced by love in Chris’s mono¬
logue), death, and rebirth (often identified
with art).

The three aspects of the theme are sym¬
bolized in an early fragment that occurs as
part of Chris’s inner monologue:

Her grandmother came running with a rake

and killed a springing snake she was
Playing with on the road, but she got to keep

the injured dove and built a cage until
He died of oatmeal.

The running grandmother, the “springing
snake,” and the playing girl all represent
life. The “injured dove,” which finally dies,
represents death. And the cage that Chris
built represents rebirth; it is an art form born
out of suffering and dying and, like the
“form as Grecian goldsmiths make,” out¬
lives the mortal animal.

Though the fragment from Chris’s mono¬
logue just discussed symbolizes all three
aspects of the poem’s theme, most of the
fragments seem to focus on only one or two
aspects. One section, for example, seems
primarily to evoke the idea of death though
it contains overtones of life:

Down the hill she saw her grandfather
Carry old Peach to the river with a shovel:

“Where you going with Peach, Gramp? Hey, Gramp,

134

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

What's the matter with him? Put him down,
Gramp; don ’t take him ”

But he had something else on his mind.

She ran but the wind was thick and it pushed
her head back hard on her shoulders.

Peach has presumably died — this is one of
the fragments the action of which occurs
after the events of Chiron’s narration, in
which Peach is alive — so that the focus of
the lines is on death. There is, however, un¬
deniably a sense of vitality in Chris’s running
against the wind.

It is the sense of vitality, often in the form
of sexuality or love, that informs most of the
fragments represented as parts of Chris’s
monologue. In one place, for example, Chris
recalls the sexuality of her mother and
father: “‘how’rt/tha both Mary and Thais,
ma cunt and/Mother, and I thy love and
lover ?’” (These lines are almost exactly
repeated in another fragment and alluded to
in another.) It is not sexuality itself,
however, that so much informs a number of
Chris’s fragments as it is sexuality shading
into romantic love; for the reader becomes
aware that Chris’s inner monologue is also a
love song, as indicated in the following frag¬
ment:

I want to wear it proudly, I want to wear it
on my face proud as autumn flames, stark as
Winter frames her black branches in a Christwhite
purity; this is no Gethsemane for solitary
Prayer. . . .

Very likely the reference of “it” is love — in
the next fragment Chris says she is “all inno¬
cence and Adam, huge and /unabashed hav¬
ing found you in the world /to love ” — and
generally the overtones of the passage are
positive or life-affirming though the diction
is slightly ambiguous. In moving from the
inflected adverb, “proudly,” to the unin¬
flected adverbs “proud” and “stark” — or
are “proud” and “stark” adjectives? — the
poet is concentrating her effect; she is also
moving from a rather more conventional
statement to a rather less conventional state¬

ment about love or life. The reader may
wonder whether Chris wears love or life
starkly because she has been ravished or ex¬
hausted by it.

The fragment just discussed ends with a
reference to Gethsemane, which is picked up
in another fragment of Chris’s monologue.
It is one of a group of fragments that em¬
phasize eye imagery (one is reminded of
Chris’s achievement of a “single vision,”
which resolved the conflict of the principal
narrative line of the poem):

And the sky hung like a full skin of ripe

wine. ‘. . . in thine eyes the Gethsemane
Gift and the envious sun scuttles thy

Kidron in fluted riffs of light ..."

The lines give further evidence for the claim
that Chris’s inner monologue is a love song,
for here Chris, quoting herself, addresses a
lover. (The Keatsian diction of the lines,
moreover, especially of those within quota¬
tion marks, testifies to the claim that Chris
has grown up and become a poet.) The lines
indicate that Chris sees in her lover’s eyes
“the Gethsemane/Gift, ” which must be,
judging from evidence in the first fragment
alluding to Gethsemane, a reference to the
privacy of the lovers’ love. The meaning of
the independent clause beginning with “and
the envious sun” is rather complex, but
Shumway-Chris must be using the intran¬
sitive sense of “scuttle” — to scurry—
transitively to mean to chase something, not
the usual, transitive sense of “scuttle,”
which means to sink a ship or boat. Kidron,
usually Kedron, according to Webster's New
World Dictionary of the American Lan¬
guage, College Edition, was once a stream
flowing into the Dead Sea. So Chris means
that the softness in her lover’s eyes is like a
river, the ripples of which are touched by the
sun — perhaps are light itself.

The rather complex association of eyes,
sexuality, and love is suggested in another of
Chris’s fragments (already partly quoted
from). Chiron’s lines, “She turned and saw

1983]

Missey—Song of the Archer

135

the deep wet sky /in her mother's eyes , ”
blend into lines of Chris’s:

. . . like two preachers at a spring revival
Intoning a weariness of sin, ‘ but she lay
her hand on my repentance and my blood
Sang salvation deep in my proverbs . . . how’rt
tha both Mary and Thais, ma cunt and
Mother, and I thy love and lover?'

The reference to Thais — presumably the
grandmother’s name— calls to mind
Massenet’s opera, alluded to elsewhere in the
poem, and it specifically suggests the fusion
of the sexual and religious, which the
passage as a whole generally suggests. (In
Massenet’s opera, Thais is transformed from
a life of sensuality to one of spirituality.)4
This fusion, moreover, reminds the reader of
the “single vision,’’ which Chris has
achieved at the end of the poem and to which
the eye imagery may be symbolically related.

Eye imagery occurs in another fragment
spoken by Chris, which recapitulates the
idea of vitality and sexuality that one has
come to associate with the fragments:

Weren ’t we always, Mother, or did we begin
somewhere? Her hair caught light like
Chestnuts do in falling suns, and the deep
cabala of the marvelous eyes[.]

Two fragments at the end of the poem,
separated by a narrative passage but clearly
continuous with each other, gather together
the motifs and phrases that have been run¬
ning through the poem and re-emphasize the
sexuality and love that have been at the heart
of Chris’s monologue, here moving from (in
the first fragment) Chris’s parents’ sexuality
and love to (in the second fragment) Chris’s
own:

“How’rt tha both Mary and Thais, ma cunt
and mother, and I thy love and lover—
and in the falling suns, Oh Lord, how plentiful,
how plentiful thy.

. . . and I’ll sleep in the wind, lie in the
belly of the sun for thy wisdom, thy wish,

thy gift. . . .

The use of the affectionate possessive pro¬
noun in the second fragment echoes its use in
an earlier fragment, already discussed, in
which Chris seemed to be looking into the
eyes of her lover. One may conclude, there¬
fore, that Chris here, too, is addressing her
lover.

In conclusion, Mary Shumway’s “Song of
the Archer” is structured according to three
speakers— the chorus, which functions as a
framing narrator; Chiron, who narrates the
main action of the poem; and the poet Chris,
who comments, in an inner monologue, on
the main action of the poem and recapitu¬
lates its theme in her love song. That theme,
we have seen, parallelling the theme of
Yeats’s “Sailing to Byzantium,” which is
quoted throughout “Song of the Archer,” is
that life gives way to death but that out of
death something permanent (art) is reborn.

Acknowledgment

The author wishes to acknowledge the
support of the University of Wisconsin,
Stevens Point, in the publishing of this
paper.

Notes

1 According to the dust jacket of Song of the Archer
and Other Poems, Mary Shumway is a “native of
Wisconsin’s ‘Winnebago Country’,” and she has taught
at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, since
1965.

2 It is the title poem of Song of the Archer and Other
Poems (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1964). I am
indebted to Mary Shumway for pointing out to me that
“Song of the Archer” originally appeared as a short
story in motive, 24 (January-February 1964), 45-50.

3 “Modern Art Techniques in The Waste Land,” The
Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 1 8 (June 1 960),
456-463.

4 See Milton Cross’ Complete Stories of the Great
Operas (Garden City, New York: Doubleday and Com¬
pany, 1952), pp. 530-538.

FISHES OF NAVIGATION POOL NUMBER 7,
UPPER MISSISSIPPI RIVER,

I: LAKE ON ALASKA

John W. Held
Department of Biology ,

University of Wisconsin-La Crosse

Abstract

Lake Onalaska, a backwater of Navigation Pool No. 7 of the Upper Mississippi
River, has experienced considerable habitat alteration since its creation in 1937.
Management objectives for this multipurpose resource are currently being
reevaluated by fish and wildlife resource planners. The objective of this paper is to
provide needed information on the fish community in Lake Onalaska. Sixty-seven
fish species were captured with several gear types used in the summer months of
1976 and 1977. The catch was dominated numerically by centrarchids (bluegill,
50.1%; black crappie, 2.5%; largemouth bass, 2.5%), cyprinids (spotfin shiner,
7.5%; spottail shiner, 3.2%; bullhead minnow, 2.6%), and atherinids (brook
silverside, 9.1%). The majority of the total catch biomass was comprised of
common carp (30.9%), northern pike (11.4%), shorthead redhorse (8.6%), spotted
sucker (6.9%), and bluegill (5.0%). Of the 67 species, approximately equal numbers
were represented by sport, rough, and forage species. This great ichthyofaunal
diversity reflects the habitat heterogenity of Lake Onalaska.

Introduction

Navigation pools and their associated
backwaters were created on the Upper Mis¬
sissippi River by construction of locks and
dams during the 1930’s. The backwaters
have subsequently been reduced in area due
to sedimentation. The Upper Mississippi
River Wildlife and Fish Refuge includes con¬
siderable backwater habitat, and the resul¬
tant habitat changes have prompted renewed
interest in developing sound resource man¬
agement objectives for critical portions of
this system.

Lake Onalaska is a shallow (mean depth
* 1.5 m) backwater lake that comprises the
lower third of Navigation Pool No. 7. Some
areas of the lake have experienced a 50%
decrease in depth since its creation in 1937,
and Claflin (1977) predicted further severe
loss of habitat diversity in the lake during the
next 30 to 40 years because of continued
sedimentation and eutrophication.

Historical information on the fishes of
this region is generally inadequate. Existing
data is limited either by its age, or by the
short sampling time and insufficient gear
types used in past surveys. Rasmussen (1979)
listed 80 fish species for Pool 7, including
those that occurred by accidental introduc¬
tion and those that had not been collected in
more than 10 years. Rasmussen’s tabulations
included fish taken from all habitats of Pool
7; no distinction was made between species
of the riverine portion of the pool and those
of Lake Onalaska. His species list was
compiled primarily from annual reports of
the Upper Mississippi River Conservation
Committee, much of what had previously
been summarized by Smith et at. (1971). A
more recent lake inventory by the Wisconsin
Department of Natural Resources docu¬
mented the presence of 41 species in Lake
Onalaska (Holzer and Ironside 1977).

The intent of this investigation was to

136

1983]

Held — Fishes of Pool Number 7, I

137

determine the current species composition of
the fish community in Lake Onalaska. Re¬
sults will help provide guidelines for the
development of management plans for this
multipurpose resource.

Methods and Materials

Fish sampling was conducted in Lake
Onalaska at 13 sites selected as being repre¬
sentative of major extant habitat types (Fig.
1). The sites ranged in substrate composition
from finely divided organic material to large
rocks, in depth from 0.5 to 2.6 m, and in
current velocity from undetectable to 28.2
cm/sec.

The size of Lake Onalaska (2185 ha) and
the diversity of its habitats and ichthyofauna
dictated the extensive use of several gear
types and collection methods. Both active
and passive methods were used for approxi¬
mately seven days in the middle of each sum¬
mer month (May through August) during
1976 and 1977.

More than 4900 hours of netting were con¬
ducted during the two years with experi¬
mental multifilament nylon gill nets (50 X
1.8 m, with 10-m sections of 3.8, 5.0, 6.4,
7.6, and 10.0-cm2 mesh). Large frame nets
(1.8 x 0.9 m with 0.6-cm2 mesh and 15 x
0.9 m leads) were fished in 1976 and 1977 for
4618 hr. Small frame nets (0.9 x 0.6 m with
0.6-cm2 mesh and 5.6 x 0.6 m leads) were
added in 1977 and accounted for 1481 hr of
effort. All nets were fished for 20 to 25 hr,
and duplicate net sets of the above gear types
were made at each site.

All sites were sampled with electrofishing
gear (250 V, 3-phase AC). More than 1250
minutes of electrofishing were conducted
during nighttime hours. Eight sites were
sampled with a 10-m bag seine (0.3-cm2
mesh) during 1977. One to three seine hauls
were made at separate locations at each site,
and up to three locations were established in
each of the eight accessible sites.

Quantification of fish catch was based on
effort. Catch per unit of effort (CPUE) for
gill and frame nets was expressed for 24 hr

-V

0 3

Fig. 1: Thirteen sites in Lake Onalaska (Navigation
Pool Number 7, Upper Mississippi River) sampled for
fishes during 1976 and 1977. Sampling locations - • .

and for 0.25 hr with electrofishing gear. All
data for each gear type were combined. Wet
weights were empirically determined.

Results and Discussion

Sixty-seven species of fish were captured
in Lake Onalaska during the two-year study
(Table 1). Nineteen species could be classi¬
fied as rough fish, 21 species as sport fish,
and 27 species as forage fish.

The Family Cyprinidae was represented by
17 species, numbering nearly 20% of all fish
collected. Five minnow species (golden
shiner, spottail shiner, spotfin shiner, weed
shiner, and bullhead minnow) were the most
numerous cyprinids. Cyprinidae species con¬
stituted 31.2% of the total collection bio¬
mass, due primarily to the presence of com¬
mon carp (30.9% of total weight; Table 1).

Ten catostomid species were caught
during the study. Shorthead redhorse and

Table 1 : Fish species collected from Lake Onalaska (Pool 7, Upper Mississippi River) during 1976 and 1977 with experimental gill nets, large and small frame
nets, electrofishing, and seining. The numbers in parentheses indicate the rank of the most important species captured by each gear type. Designation: R =
rough; S = sport; F = forage.

138

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

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Gill L. Frame S. Frame Electrofish. Total Total

Species Design (No./ 24 hr) (No. /24 hr) (No. /24 hr) (No./ 15 min) Seine Number Weight(kg)

1983]

Held— Fishes of Pool Number 7 , /

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142

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

spotted suckers were important in terms of
biomass and comprised 8.6% and 6.9% of
the total collection weight, respectively
(Table 1). The apparent importance of quill-
back (2.5% of the total number) was due pri¬
marily to the collection of 984 young of the
year in one seine haul.

Lake Onalaska supports nine species of
centrarchids. The most abundant species was
bluegill which accounted for 50.1% of all
fishes collected. Other centrarchids that
contributed significantly to total catch
numbers were black crappie (2.5%), large-
mouth bass (2.5%), pumpkinseed (2.2%),
rockbass (0.7%), and white crappie (0.7%
(Table 1).

Ictaluridae accounted for 1.5% of the
number and 6.9% of the collection biomass.
Yellow bullhead and channel catfish were
the most abundant of the six ictalurids.

Although nine species of Percidae were
collected, their importance in the lake in
terms of numbers (1.0%) and biomass
(1.3%) was small. The most abundant
percids were yellow perch and walleye.

The combined catch from all collection
methods indicated that bluegill was the most
numerous species (50.1% of total numbers
caught), followed by brook silversides
(9.1%) and spotfin shiner (7.5%) (Table 1).
These three species accounted for two-thirds
of the total numbers of fishes collected.
Other numerous species were spottail shiner
(3.2%), bullhead minnow (2.6%), black
crappie (2.5%), and largemouth bass
(2.5%). The dominant species in terms of
biomass was common carp (30.9%), fol¬
lowed by northern pike (11.4%) and short-
head redhorse (8.6%). These three species
accounted for over half of the total col¬
lection biomass.

Gill net CPUE indicated that common
carp was the most abundant species (Table
1). Shorthead redhorse, mooneye, northern
pike, and spotted sucker were also frequent¬
ly captured in gill nets.

Data from large and small frame nets em¬
phasized the importance of centrarchids and

cyprinids in Lake Onalaska. In terms of
large frame net CPUE, the most abundant
species, in descending order, were bluegill,
spottail shiner, black crappie, pumpkinseed,
and white crappie (Table 1). Although blue¬
gill, pumpkinseed, and spottail shiner were
also frequently taken by small frame nets,
this latter gear type more effectively sampled
other cyprinids; weed shiner, golden shiner,
and spottail shiner followed by bluegill and
pumpkinseed in order of importance (Table
1).

Electrofishing CPUE again emphasized
the importance of centrarchids in Lake
Onalaska. Bluegill, largemouth bass, pump¬
kinseed, and black crappie were taken most
frequently by this method (Table 1).

No attempt was made to standardize seine
hauls. The variable efficiency of seining in
the different littoral habitats made these
results incomparable. It is interesting to
note, however, that bluegill also dominated
the catch by this method (Table 1). Several
forage species, taken infrequently by other
methods, were important in seine catches;
namely, brook silversides, spotfin shiner,
and bullhead minnow.

Summary

Intensive sampling during 1976 and 1977
indicated that Lake Onalaska supported a
diverse fish community of 67 species, indica¬
tive of a heterogenous environment. The
rough, sport, and forage species were ap¬
proximately equal in number.

The lake is apparently well suited for
centrarchids (especially bluegill, pumpkin¬
seed, and crappies), as well as predator game
fish species (northern pike and largemouth
bass). In addition to young of the year cen¬
trarchids, several forage species provide a
diverse food base for piscivores. Common
carp and a significant catostomid fauna also
play a major role in the fish community.

These results suggest that management ob¬
jectives should include the maintenance of
habitat diversity in Lake Onalaska.

1983]

Held — Fishes of Pool Number 7, I

143

Acknowledgments

I am most grateful to the many students
who worked so diligently on this project.
Funds were provided by the Faculty Re¬
search Committee, University of Wisconsin-
La Crosse.

Literature Cited

Claflin, T. O. 1977. LakeOnalaska rehabilitation
feasibility study. Report to the Lake Onalaska
Rehabilitation District, River Studies Center,
Univerity of Wisconsin-La Crosse: 41 pp.
(mimeo)

Holzer, J. A. and S. J. Ironside. 1977. Basic lake
inventory of Lake Onalaska, La Crosse, Wis¬
consin. Wis. Dept. Nat. Res.: 42 pp. (mimeo)
Rasmussen, J. L. (ed.). 1979. A compendium of
fishery information on the Upper Mississippi
River, 2nd edition. Upper Mississippi River
Conservation Committee, Rock Island, Illi¬
nois: 259 pp.

Smith, P. W., A. C. Lopinot, and W. F. Pflieger.
1971. A distributional atlas of Upper Missis¬
sippi River fishes. Ill. Nat. Hist. Surv., Biol.
Note 73: 20 pp.

FISHES OF NAVIGATION POOL NUMBER 7
UPPER MISSISSIPPI RIVER,

II: THE RIVERINE PORTION

John W. Held
Department of Biology
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse

A bs tract

Adequate fisheries information does not exist for the riverine portion of
Navigation Pool No. 7 of the Upper Mississippi River because of the overriding
interest in its backwater lake (Lake Onalaska) and because of the difficulties in
sampling the riverine portion of the pool. The objective of this paper is to report
total catch data from sampling sites associated with the main channel of Pool 7.
Seventy-one fish species were captured with several gear types used in the summer
months of 1978 and 1979. The most abundant fishes were cyprinids (emerald shiner,
25.9% of total numbers; spotfin shiner, 8.2%; spottail shiner, 7.2%; bullhead
minnow, 6.3%) and centrarchids (bluegill, 8.0%, and black crappie, 5.7%). Major
contributors to the total catch biomass were common carp (18.1%), shorthead
redhorse (9.2%), northern pike (8.9%), and silver redhorse (7.4%). Of the 71
species, 23 could be classified as rough fish, 19 as sport fish, and 29 as forage fish.
This variety of ichthyofauna is an indicator of the habitat diversity in the riverine
portion of Pool 7.

Introduction

Navigation Pool No. 7 of the Upper Mis¬
sissippi River was formed in 1937 by the
closure of Lock and Dam 7 at Dresbach,
Minnesota. The pool extends from river mile
702.5 (miles above the mouth of the Ohio
River) to river mile 714.3, a distance of 19
km. The pool has an area of 5443 ha, a
perimeter of 60 km, and is up to 7.8 km
wide.

Little fisheries information exists on the
riverine portion of Pool 7. Investigators
have either concentrated their efforts on
Lake Onalaska (Held 1983; Holzer and Iron¬
side 1977) or they have combined the fish¬
eries data from all areas of Pool 7 (Rasmus¬
sen 1979). Also, comprehensive fish surveys
have likely been discouraged because of
sampling difficulties associated with the
riverine portion of the pool, i.e., problems
caused by significant current velocities, fluc¬
tuating water levels, and heavy commercial
and recreational use of the main channel.

The intent of this study was to sample sev¬

eral lotic sites in the riverine portion of Pool
7. This report provides baseline information
on the fish community found in this part of
the river.

Methods and Materials

Twelve sampling sites were chosen in the
tailwater, middle, and lower reaches of Pool
7 (Fig. 1). The sites were sampled midmonth
from May through August, 1978, and June
through August, 1979.

Multifilament nylon experimental gill nets
(50 x 1.8 m, with 10-m sections of 3.8, 5.0,
6.4, 7.6, and 10.0-cm2 mesh) were fished in
all areas for a total of 3726 hr. Large frame
nets (1.8 x 0.9 m with 0.6 cm 2 mesh and 15
x 0.9 m leads) and small frame nets (0.9 x
0.6 m with 0.6-cm2 mesh and 5.6 X 0.6-m
leads) were set in littoral habitats for 2488 hr
and 2324 hr, respectively. Hoop nets (0.75-m
diameter with 2.5-cm2 mesh) were used in
open water areas for a total of 2317 hr.
Duplicate sets of the above gear types were
made at each site, and each net was fished
for 20 to 25 hr.

144

1983]

Held— Fishes of Pool Number 7, II

145

All areas were sampled at night on most
dates with electrofishing gear (250 V, 3-
phase AC) for a total of 752 min. Seven to 10
of the areas were sampled with a 1 0- in bag
seine (0.3-cm2 mesh) when water level
conditions permitted.

Quantification of catch was based on
effort. Catch per unit of effort (CPUE) for
gill, frame, and hoop nets was expressed for
24 hr. CPUE for electrofishing was number
per 0.25 hr. Seine hauls were not stan¬
dardized. All data for each gear type was
combined. Wet weights were empirically
determined.

Results and Discussion

Over 28,000 fish of 71 species were
sampled by all methods from the riverine
portion of Pool 7 during the summers of
1978 and 1979 (Table 1). The total catch bio¬
mass was nearly two metric tons. Of the 71
species, 29 could be classified as forage fish,
23 species as rough fish, and 19 as sport fish.

Seventeen cyprinid species accounted for
59.7% of total catch numbers. Emerald
shiner (7342), spotfin shiner (2327), spottail
shiner (2045), bullhead minnow (1798), and
golden shiner (1560) together comprised
53.1% of the total catch (Table 1). Common
carp contributed the majority of the biomass
(360. 1 kg, or 18.1% of total catch biomass).

Catostomidae were represented by 12
species in the riverine portion of Pool 7.
Their numbers (1313) accounted for only
4.6% of the total catch, but their combined
biomass (584 kg) represented 29.4% of the
total. The most numerous catostomids were
shorthead redhorses (1.6% of the total), and
spotted sucker (1.1%) (Table 1). Several cat¬
ostomids contributed significantly to the
total biomass, including shorthead redhorse
(9.2%), silver redhorse (7.4%), spotted
sucker (4.9%), and quillback (3.1%). The
collection and first documentation of two
river redhorse ( Moxostoma carina turn) from
Pool 7 was of special note.

Nine species of Centrarchidae contributed
18.2% of total catch numbers and 13.6% of

Fig. 1: Twelve sites in the riverine portion of Navi¬
gation Pool No. 7 (Upper Mississippi River) sampled
for fishes during 1978 and 1979. Sample sites = • .

the biomass. Bluegill was the predominant
component of the sunfish catch and ac¬
counted for 8% of the total numbers and
2.7% of the biomass (Table 1). Other im¬
portant centrarchids were black crappie
(5.7% by number and 5.2% by weight) and
white crappie (1.9% by number and 3.1% by
weight).

Ictaluridae were not very important nu¬
merically (1.1% of the total), but their com¬
bined biomass comprised 9.6% of the total.
Prominent among the five ictalurid species
were flathead catfish (128.9 kg, or 6.5%)
and channel catfish (55.1 kg, or 2.8%)
(Table 1).

The Family Percidae was represented by
10 species, but their combined number
(1808) and weight (47.3 kg) were not great
(6.4% and 2.4% of the totals, respectively).

Table 1: Fish species collected from the riverine portion of Navigation Pool No. 7 (Upper Mississippi River) during 1978 and 1979 with experimental gill
nets, large and small frame nets, electrofishing and seining. The numbers in parentheses indicate the rank of the most important species captured by each gear
type. Designation: R = rough; S = sport; F = forage.

146

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

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150

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

The most numerous percids were johnny
darter (3.1970 of the total catch) and yellow
perch (1.3%) (Table 1). Walleye comprised
1.2% of the total catch biomass and sauger,
0.9%.

Some other species that contributed sig¬
nificantly to the total catch biomass were
northern pike (176.9 kg, 8.9%), freshwater
drum (83.7 kg, or 4.2%), and shovelnose
sturgeon (72.7 kg, or 3.7%) (Table 1).
Another numerous forage species was giz¬
zard shad (3.3% of the total catch).

In summary, the most numerous species,
according to the total catch number of all
gear types combined, were emerald and spot-
fin shiners, bluegill, spottail shiner, bullhead
minnow, and black crappie (Table 1). Those
species that contributed most to the total
catch biomass (all gear combined) were com¬
mon carp, shorthead redhorse, northern
pike, silver redhorse, flathead catfish, and
black crappie.

Gill net CPUE indicated that common
carp, northern pike, shovelnose sturgeon,
freshwater drum, and silver redhorse were
the important species in the riverine portion
of Pool 7 (Table 1). Large frame nets sam¬
pled the centrarchids more effectively and
these data suggested the most abundant spe¬
cies were black and white crappies, white
bass, bluegill, and rockbass. Small frame net
CPUE also indicated that centrarchids were
dominant (black crappie and bluegill) but
also emphasized the importance of forage
species, including spottail and spotfin shiner
(Table 1). Electrofishing CPUE again signi¬
fied the major role of bluegill and black
crappie, but electrofishing was also effective
in capturing some catostomids, namely
shorthead redhorse, spotted sucker, quill-
back, and silver redhorse. Hoop nets ap¬
peared to be the most selective gear type.
Hoop net CPUE, generally low, indicated
that flathead catfish was an important river¬
ine species.

CPUE was not calculated for seining
because it was not possible to uniformly
sample the different habitats. Ranking the

combined seine catch, however, emphasized
the major role filled by the forage species in
the riverine portion of Pool 7 (Table 1).
Emerald shiner, spotfin shiner, spottail
shiner, bullhead minnow, golden shiner, and
gizzard shad owe their high total catch rank¬
ing to seine haul results.

Summary

Sampling during 1978 and 1979 in 12 areas
associated with the riverine portion of Pool 7
documented the presence of a complex fish
community. Seventy-one fish species were
taken by a variety of gear types. The numer¬
ical dominance of some minnow species and
other young of the year signified a strong
forage base for piscivores, although few
large predators (other than northern pike)
were prominent in the catch. The riverine
portion of Pool 7 seems to be favorable
habitat for several species of centrarchids
and catostomids. These results reflect the
habitat diversity of the river channel and its
border. If habitat heterogeneity begets fish
community complexity, then attempts to
further alter the Upper Mississippi River
should be restrained.

Acknowledgments

I express my appreciation to the many
students who have contributed to this study,
and to the University of Wisconsin-La
Crosse Faculty Research Committee and
Dairyland Power Cooperative (La Crosse)
for financial support.

Literature Cited

Held, J. W. 1983. Fishes of Navigation Pool 7,
Upper Mississippi River, I: Lake Onalaska.
Trans. Wis. Acad. Sci. , Arts and Lett., 71 .
Holzer, J. A. and S. J. Ironside. 1977. Basic
lake inventory of Lake Onalaska, La Crosse,
Wisconsin. Wis. Dept. Nat. Res.: 42 pp.
(mimeo)

Rasmussen, J. L. (ed.). 1979. A compendium of
fishery information on the Upper Mississippi
River, 2nd edition. Upper Mississippi River
Conservation Committee, Rock Island, Illi¬
nois: 259 pp.

MAMMALS OF FORT McCOY, MONROE COUNTY, WISCONSIN

Maj. Richard M. Pitts
Department of Military Science
Texas A&M University

Introduction

This study was initiated by the author dur¬
ing the summers of 1976 and 1977 to inven¬
tory the species of mammals present in Fort
McCoy. Information on fur bearers and
some of the larger game mammals was pro¬
vided by Kim Mello, biologist at Fort Mc¬
Coy, from data collected during the winters
of 1979 and 1980.

Material and Methods

The fort grounds were sampled randomly
with snap traps, live box traps and mist nets.
Records from trappers were used when
available. Trapping was conducted both
diurnally and nocturnally. Allocations of
specimens to subspecies followed Hall
(1981). Specimens were verified by Dr.
Herschel Garner. All specimens are on
deposit in the mammal collection of Tarle-
ton State University, Stephenville, Texas.

Study Area

Fort McCoy is located on 59,778 acres in
Monroe County, in the unglaciated area of
southwest Wisconsin (Martin 1916). The
undeveloped habitat suitable for wild mam¬
mals consists of 261 acres in streams, ponds,
and flowages, 51.1 miles of trout streams
and 57,767 acres of varied terrestrial
habitats. The altitude ranges from 850 to
about 1,450 feet above sea level. The topog¬
raphy is nearly level to very steep with inter¬
mittent areas of rolling terrain. The La
Crosse River and its tributaries drain most of
the fort. Silver Creek drains the extreme
south part and merges with the La Crosse
River outside the fort boundary at Angelo,
Wisconsin. Sparta, Stillwell and Tarr Creeks
drain the south central part. All three merge
southwest of the troop billeting area then

join the La Crosse River. Squaw Creek and
the La Crosse River proper drain the central
and north-central area. The north end is
drained by Clear Creek (Crispin, et at. 1976).

The soils of Fort McCoy are predom¬
inantly sands or rough stony land of little
agricultural value. Only a few scattered areas
of loam or silt loam exist. There are at least
five different major soil types.

The average length of the growth season
varies from 125 days on low-land to 140 on
the uplands. The average killing frost date in
the spring is April 25, and for the fall is Oc¬
tober 16 (Whitson and Baker 1912). Records
from the weather recording station indicate
the mean annual precipitation for the fort is
31.16 inches; mean annual temperature is
46.29°F.

This region of Wisconsin consists prin¬
cipally of forest cover with some grassy
openings. The native climax grasses are
mainly big bluestem ( Andropogon gerardi)
and little bluestem {Andropogon scoparius).
The principal species of native trees are jack
pine (Pinus banksiana ), white pine {Pinus
strobus ), paper birch {Be tula papyrifera ),
red oak {Quercus rubra), black oak {Quercus
velutina ), white oak {Quercus alba), red
maple {Acer rubrum), box elder {Acer
negundo), northern pin oak {Quercus ellip¬
soidal is), and quaking aspen {Populus
tremuloides).

Synopsis of Species

Didelphis virginiana virginiana (Kerr)
Common Opossum. Uncommon throughout
the fort limits. Occasionally observed
meandering around the buildings after dark,
but primarily inhabitants of the deciduous
woods. After the harsh winter of 1978, the
number of opossums on post declined.

151

152

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

Sorex cinereus cinereus (Kerr) Masked
Shrew. Uncommon. These shrews were
found among the leaf litter of the deciduous
or coniferous woods on post. Their greatest
period of activity was during the crepuscular
hours and at night. This shrew was difficult
to catch using snap traps; it might prove to
be more common if “pit fall’’ traps are used.

Blarina brevicauda brevicauda (Say)
Shorttailed Shrew. Uncommon. Several
were caught under log piles near the
deciduous woods and in dense grass on the
sides of the creeks. They are active primarily
after sunset.

Scalopus aquaticus machrinus (Rafines-
que) Eastern Mole. Very common. Mole
workings occurred alongside the fort roads
and in the grassy areas near the buildings.
They were also common along the edges of
the woods. Captures occurred during all
hours of the day and night.

Myotis lucifugus lucifugus (Le Conte) Lit¬
tle Brown Bat. Very common. They are early
flyers which were often seen coming from
the attics of some of the buildings on post at
twilight.

Eptesicus fuscus fuscus (Beauvois) Big
Brown Bat. Very commonly seen flying
around street lights at night. Many were
found in the seldom-used halls of the old
hospital. They were swift flyers, usually
staying higher than 20 feet.

Lasiurus borealis borealis (Muller) Red
Bat. Common. Red bats were seen flying up
and down the creeks and around street lights
shortly after dark. They are swift flyers and
usually fly at a height of about twenty feet
first, then at a height of about eight feet.

Marmota monax monax (Linneaus)
Woodchuck. Abundant. Woodchucks were
found in the grassy areas between the
buildings, in culverts under the roads, and
along edges of the woods. They were espe¬
cially active in early morning and late after¬
noon.

Spermophilus tridecemlineatus tridecem-
lineatus (Mitchell) Thirteen-Lined Ground
Squirrel. Abundant in the short dry grassy
meadow and along the sides of the roads in

the cantonment area. They seem to prefer
the sandy soils. All specimens were trapped
diurnally.

Tamias striatus griseus (Mearns) Eastern
Chipmunk. Common in the woods and at
the post recreation area by the lake during
the day.

Eutamias minimus neglectus (J. A. Allen)
Least Chipmunk. Rare. Several were ob¬
served at the post recreation area. They
prefer the coniferous woods. They were ac¬
tive throughout the day, but their greatest
activity was in early morning and later after¬
noon.

Sciurus carolinensis hypophaeus (Mer-
riam) Eastern Gray Squirrel. Abundant in
the deciduous woods.

Sciurus niger rufiventer (Geoffroy-Saint-
Hilare) Fox Squirrel. Abundant in the
deciduous woods.

Tamiasciurus hudsonicus minnesota
(Allen) Red Squirrel. Abundant in the
deciduous woods. A nest with four baby
squirrels was found inside a rotten stump
four feet above ground.

Glaucomys volans volans (Linnaeus)
Southern Flying Squirrel. Flying squirrels
were common in the deciduous woods, but
due to their nocturnal habits, they were
seldom encountered.

Geomys bursarius wisconsinensis (Jack-
son) Plains Pocket Gopher. Gophers were
common in open areas with loam or sandy
soils. Some mounds were observed along the
edges of woods.

Castor canadensis michiganensis (Bailey)
Beaver. Common. Colonies of beavers use
the lakes on post and their dams have im¬
pounded water in several places. The beaver
population has been estimated to be 130 us¬
ing data from a biological survey. Sixty-
three were trapped in 1981 by trappers.

Peromyscus leucopus noveboracensis
(Fisher) Northern Whitefooted Mouse.
These mice were very abundant in the
wooded areas. Most were caught near tree
stumps and fallen logs. Several were caught
beside piles of limbs that had been stacked.
All were trapped after dark.

1983]

Pitts— Mammals of Fort McCoy

153

Clethrionomys gapperi gapperi (Vigors)
boreal Red-Backed Vole. Red-backed voles
were very abundant among the fallen logs
and tree stumps. This record is a range ex¬
tension of 13 miles south from Millston,
Jackson County and 22 miles southwest
from Mather, Juneau County (Jackson,
1961). Six adults were caught in the same
runway beneath a decaying stump, in¬
dicating that the red-backed vole could live
in colonies and be gregarious. Manville
(1949) concluded that the red-backed vole
does not form colonies and is not gregarious.
Two specimens were caught during the day,
the others were caught at night.

Microtus pennsylvanicus pennsylvanicus
(Ord) Meadow vole. Meadow voles were
very abundant between buildings and tall
grassy fields. Some were trapped inside
buildings. The meadow vole was the most
common microtine trapped on the post.
These voles were active all day, but most
were trapped at night.

Ondatra zihethicus zibethicus (Linnaeus)
Muskrat. Common. Several colonies have
become established on the lakes within the
fort boundaries. In 1981, 94 muskrats were
trapped by fur hunters. The estimated popu¬
lation is 1,000.

Rattus norvegicus (Berkenhout) Norway
Rat. Uncommon. They are found under the
barracks and also near the messhalls. None
were trapped very far from areas frequently
used by humans.

Mus musculus domesticus (Rutty) House
Mouse. Common. They are found around
buildings and under piles of decaying logs
where timber had been cleared.

Zapus hudsonius intermedins (Zimmer¬
man) Meadow Jumping Mouse. Common.
Many jumping mice were trapped along the
creeks with tall grass along their banks. All
specimens were trapped between midnight
and dawn.

Erethizon dorsatum dorsatum (Linnaeus)
Canada Porcupine. Rare. Only a few have
been seen in the wooded areas on the north¬
ern part of the post limits.

Lepus americanus phaeonotus (J. A.

Allen) Snowshoe hare. Rare. Only one has
been taken by a hunter in 1979 in the brushy
woodlands area of the northern post limits.

Sylvilagus floridanus mearnsii (J. A.
Allen) Eastern Cottontail. Cottontails were
abundant throughout the post. They are very
common around the buildings. The cotton¬
tails prefer thickets or dense brush. Most
were sighted in the early morning hours and
shortly before sunset. The biological survey
estimated the cottontail population to be
over 1 ,000.

Canis latrans thamnos (Jackson) Coyote.
Uncommon. However, coyotes were found
roaming brushy habitats of the impact area
and outlying training areas. Only two were
trapped by trappers in 1980.

Vulpes fulva fulva (Desmarest) Red Fox.
Common around the creek bottoms with
good concealment. Thirty-six were trapped
in 1981 by fur hunters.

Urocyon cinereoargenteus ocythous
(Bangs) Gray Fox. Gray foxes are common
in the brushy areas, usually along streams.
They were found in the woods more often
than the Red Fox. Eighteen were trapped in
1981 by fur hunters.

Procyon lotor hirtus (Nelson and Gold¬
man) Raccoon. Raccoons were very com¬
mon in the deciduous woods, usually along
streams. They frequently came into the can¬
tonment area at night in search of food.
Seventy were trapped by hunters in 1981 .

Mustela rixosa a/legheniensis (Rhoads)
Least Weasel. Rare. They were sighted near
streams in grassy fields. They were seldom
found in the woods. Only one was captured
on the post limits.

Mustela frenata noveboracensis (Em¬
mons) Longtailed Weasel. Rare. The one
Longtailed Weasel observed was in wood¬
lands near streams.

Mustela vison letifera (Hollister) Mink.
Common. Mink were found in wooded areas
along streams and lakes. The biological
surveys estimate a population of 200. Fur
hunters trapped 2 minks in 1981.

Taxidea taxus jacksoni (Schantz) Badger.
Common in the impact and training areas.

154

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

Mephitus mephitis hudsonica (Richard¬
son) Striped Skunk. Skunks were commonly
seen roaming at night throughout the post.
More common in open wooded areas. Sixty-
two were trapped by fur hunters in 1980.

Lutra canadensis canadensis (Schreber)
Otter. Uncommon. Only a few sightings of
otters on post have been documented. These
sightings were along streams that were away
from the normal areas used for training. A
biological survey estimated a population of
only 10 otters on the post.

Lynx rufus superiorensis (Peterson and
Downing) Bobcat. Rare. Very few observa¬
tions have been reported to biologists on
post. These were in the heavily wooded area
at higher elevation.

Odocoileus virginianus borealis (Miller)
Whitetailed Deer. Deer were very common
in the woods on post. They were seen roam¬
ing throughout the post limits in mornings
and evenings. The 1981 deer census con¬
ducted on the post has estimated the deer
population to be between 1800-2100. The
number killed by hunters in 1981 was 839.

Conclusion

Although Fort McCoy is used as a training
area for several thousand military personal
the environment is still inhabitated by a total
of thirty-nine mammal species, which were
recorded on the post reservation; eleven of
these species had not previously been offi-

Table 1. New Records of Mammals from Monroe
County, Wisconsin.

Myotis /. lucifugus
Eptesicus f. fuscus
Lasiurus b. borealis
Tamias striatus griseus
Eutamias minimus neglect us
Glaucomys v. volans
Geomys bursarius wisconsinensis
Clethrionomys g. gapperi*

Zapus hudsonius intermedius
Mustela frenata noveboracensis
Lutra c. canadensis

* Species representing small range extension.

dally recorded in Monroe County (Table 1).
Most of these are fairly common to this part
of Wisconsin but six represent species that
are either at or approaching their distribu¬
tional limits. (Jackson, H. T., 1961)

No records were obtained for four species
which are believed to be present. Spermo-
philus franklini , Peromyscus maniculatus,
Synaptomys cooperi , and Microtus ochrog-
aster. They are within the known ranges
(Jackson 1961); with more intensive collect¬
ing, these species should be obtained.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Dr. Herschel Garner,
Tarleton State University, for verifying the
mammals captured and also for his critical
reviewing of this manuscript and his advice
and helpful suggestions. To Kim Mello, who
compiled field data on some of the game and
fur bearing mammals of Fort McCoy, Wis¬
consin, and also for reviewing this
manuscript, I am also grateful. Finally, to
Dr. Ruth Hine, for her helpful advice and
review of this manuscript.

References Cited

Crispin V. A., D. C. Kirkmann, and J. A. Hutch¬
inson. 1976. Fish and Wildlife Management
Plan. Supplement to Fort McCoy Natural
Resource Management Plan. Department of
the Army.

Hall, Raymond E. 1981. The Mammals of North
America. John Wiley & Sons, New York, NY.
Jackson, H. T. Hartley. 1961. Mammals of Wis¬
consin. The University of Wisconsin Press,
Madison, WI.

Manville, Richard H. 1949. A study of small
mammal populations in northern Michigan.
Misc. Publ. No. 73, Mus. Zool., Univ.
Michigan. Ann Arbor, MI.

Martin, Lawrence. 1916. The Physical
Geography of Wisconsin. Wis. Geol. and Nat.
Hist. Survey, Bull. No. 36, Educational Series
No. 4. Madison, WI.

Whitson, A. R., and O. E. Baker. 1912. The
climate of Wisconsin and its relation to
agriculture. Univ. Wis. Agric. Exper. Station,
Bull. 223. Madison, WI.

Northeastern limit

Southern limit
Southern limit

Eastern limit
Southwestern limit
Southwestern limit

A VASCULAR FLORA OF WINNEBAGO COUNTY, WISCONSIN

Katherine Dorney Rill1
Oshkosh , Wisconsin

Abstract

The major part of this study is a catalogue of vascular plants that were growing
or now grow without cultivation in Winnebago County, Wisconsin. Catalogues of
an area's vegetation are an important scientific record. They also serve a critical
function in geographical areas where land is continually being converted for urban
development and agricultural use. Winnebago County, which in presettlement days
was largely covered by hardwood forests, scattered prairies with oak openings, and
abundant wetlands, now is over 80 percent developed. Today only seven percent of
the land area is wooded, remnant prairies are rare, and wetland acreage has been
greatly reduced. While a large number of native species have been identified in the
county, the quantity of many of these species has diminished over the years. One
dramatic loss has been the disappearance of bogs and almost all bog vegetation.
Steps have been taken by the state, the county, and other interested groups to
protect several sites of botanical value, but the spread of non-native species,
development pressures, and poor land use practices continue to threaten natural
habitats.

Significance of a County Flora

A county flora is part of an old botanical
tradition. As a record of the vegetation of a
limited geographical area, it is a valuable
reference for comparison with the flora of
other areas and the same region at a future
date. It documents both the disappearance
of species and the introduction of new ones.
Awareness of these changes in floristic
makeup can initiate action to protect rare
species, preserve native plant communities,
and inhibit aggressive species which may
pose a threat.

Concentrated efforts in a limited geo¬
graphical area result in a more complete
listing of species present than work done in a
larger region. In the course of this study,
many new county records were added. This
does not so much reflect the rarity of these
taxa as it does the bias of collectors for
favorite places and the tendency to travel

1 Publication of this paper has been supported by the
Norman C. Fassett Memorial Fund.

within easy distance from centers of botan¬
ical activity.

Since a flora of any region is in a constant
state of change, a study of this type is never
complete. It is anticipated that this begin¬
ning will be an incentive for others to add to
this record.

Location and Land Use

Winnebago County, located in east central
Wisconsin, is one of the smallest counties in
the state, with a land area of 454 miles, or
285,920 acres. An additional 84,000 acres is
water. One half of Lake Winnebago is in¬
cluded in the county and makes up most of
its eastern border (Fig. 1). The parallel
44 05 ' North Latitude and the meridian
88°40' West Longitude intersect in the
county.

About 10 percent of the land area is wet¬
lands and about seven percent forested.
Agriculture is a major land use, with over 70
percent of the land committed to farming.
Most development is concentrated along the
eastern edge of the county in the Fox River

155

156

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2

WAUPACA CO. OUTAGAMIE CO. OUTAGAMIE CO.

Fig. 1

1983]

Rill— Flora of Winnebago County

157

Valley, an urbanized area extending from
Green Bay to Fond du Lac. Population in
1980 was 131,732.

Surface Water and Drainage

The county lies entirely within the Fox-
Wolf River drainage basin. The Fox River
enters the county from the southwest,
emptying into Lake Winnebago at Oshkosh,
and after being split into two channels by
Doty’s Island at Neenah and Menasha, flows
through Little Lake Butte des Morts and out
of the county at Menasha. The Wolf River, a
tributary of the Fox, enters the county from
the north, flowing into Lake Poygan and
through Lake Winneconne to join the Fox
River in Lake Butte des Morts. Lakes Butte
des Morts, Poygan, Winneconne, and Little
Lake Butte des Morts cover a total area of
about 20 square miles. One other lake, Rush
Lake, is located in the southwestern part of
the county. This lake, with a maximum
depth of approximately five feet, is drained
by Waukau Creek which flows into the Fox
River between Eureka and Omro.

Physiographical and
Geological Features

Granitic rocks of Precambrian age under¬
lie the county. These do not outcrop, but are
the upper rock unit in one small area north
of Lake Poygan (Olcott, 1966).

Above the Precambrian age rocks are four
approximately parallel units of sedimentary
rocks of Cambrian and Ordovician age.
From west to east, the eroded edges of these
rock units are exposed in this order: Cam¬
brian age sandstones, Prairie du Chien
dolomite, St. Peter sandstone, and Platte-
ville-Galena dolomite. Because of differen¬
tial weathering, the harder dolomitic layers
form two cuestas with backslopes to the east.
The west facing escarpments are relatively
low, with the Prairie du Chien unit higher
than the Platteville-Galena.

The land, fairly flat near the lake, tends to
become gently rolling toward the west. The

relief of the county is low with a range of
altitudes between 750 and 950 feet above sea
level.

The topography of the bedrock controls in
part the topography of the county. Pre¬
glacial valleys cut into bedrock have been
filled with glacial deposits so the landscape is
relatively level. Glacial deposits in the
county were laid down during the Cary and
Valders stages of Wisconsin glaciation.

Soils

Soils in the county are classified
predominantly as heavy clayey type soils.
Sandy soils are limited to an area in the
northwest part of the county. About 54% of
the land area is classed as “wet” soils, i.e.
saturated with water for long periods at a
depth of three feet.

The county’s soils fall into seven general
soil associations. The major soil associations
in parts of the county covered by the most
recent glacier, the Valders ice sheet, are
Kewaunee-Manawa-Hortonville, Zittau-
Poy, Houghton-Willette and Oakville-Brem-
Morocco. Valders drift, which covers about
86% of the county is a fine textured red clay
material with a subdued relief. In the
southwestern part of the county, which was
primarily influenced by the Cary ice sheet,
major soil associations are Kidder-
McHenry, LeRoy-Ossian-Lomira, and
Plano. Cary drift is characterized by
yellowish brown, loamy till with more hills
and ridges than Valders drift (Mitchell,
1977).

Climate

The climate of the county is continental,
with long cold winters and warm humid
summers. Mean yearly temperature is 45.9°F
(7.7°C). The monthly averages range from
18.6°F ( - 7.4°C) in January to 72.4°F
(22.4°C) in July. About five months of the
year are usually free from freezing tempera¬
tures. May 9 is the average date of the last
32° temperature in spring and October 4, the

158

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

PRESETTLEMENT VEGETATION
OF

WINNEBAGO COUNTY, WISCONSIN

After R.W. Finley, 1976. From U.S. General Land Office Notes

1 WHITE PINE,
J RED PINE

LOWLAND

HARDWOODS

1 BEECH, SUGAR
j MAPLE, BASSWOOD

PRAIRIE

OAK FOREST

([TTTTTT] SWAMP conifers -white
I'.WUll CEDAR , TAMARACK

OAK OPENINGS

T~"T~| SEDGE MEADOW, WET
1 PRAIRIE, LOWLAND
SHRUBS

SUGAR MAPLE
BASSWOOD

Fig. 2

1983]

Rill— Flora of Winnebago County

159

first in fall. The growing season averages 148
days. Mean annual precipitation, including
snowfall, is 28 inches.

Thomas Nuttall, First Botanist

Thomas Nuttall was the first botanist to
travel through the Winnebago County area.
On a trip in 1810, he included three species
as having been collected somewhere between
Green Bay and the Wisconsin River portage.
These were Smilacina trifolia (L.) Desf.,
Artemisia gnaphaloides Nutt., which is now
generally considered to be a variety of A.
ludoviciana Nutt., and Amorpha canescens
Pursh. [A. pumila of Nuttall ’s Diary
(Stuckey, 1967), a new species (Graustein,
1967, p. 53).] As these plants are now
considered “lost” it is impossible to know
exactly where they were collected. Nuttall
also recorded his interest in the making of
maple sugar and the harvesting of wild rice
by the Indians (Graustein, 1967).

Presettlement Vegetation

The presettlement vegetation of Winne¬
bago County was primarily oak savanna
interspersed with prairie, southern hard¬
woods, and in the northern part of the
county, pine forests. Wetland plant commu¬
nities were abundant along the water courses
(Fig. 2).

While the field notes of government sur¬
veyors dating back to 1834 are the most
accurate source of information about pre¬
settlement and early settlement vegetation of
the county, earlier reports by explorers,
traders, and missionaries give an indication
of the nature of the county and the plants
growing in the region.

Among the most revealing indicators were
notes on the food habits of the Indians.
Almost all written accounts mention wild
rice (Zizania aquatica L.). This plant grew in
great abundance along the Fox-Wolf and
Rat River waterways. The Jesuit Allouez,

wrote of his journey on the Fox River: “The
banks of this river, which flows gently
through the midst of these prairies are
covered throughout with a certain plant
bearing what is called here wild oats of
which the birds are wonderfully fond.”
(Jesuit Relations, 1670-1671, 55:193).

Jerusalem artichoke (Helianthus tuberosa
L.) was also gathered by the Indians. In
addition, wild plums, crab apples, and ber¬
ries were reported as Indian food (Campbell,
1906, 2:55). All of these plants grow
wild in the county today.

Foraging and gathering had little impact
on the flora. Some activities of the Indians,
however, brought about deliberate change
from the natural condition. Early records
describe Indian agriculture. “The Indians
raised large quantities of Indian corn, beans
and pumpkins, squashes, watermelons and
some tobacco. ...” (Carver, 1796).

In his field notes of the early survey of
Poygan Township, in 1852, James Marsh
records Indian cornfields and Indian plant¬
ing grounds. Harney (1880, p. 279) also
mentions Indian fields in Black Wolf Town¬
ship.

Fires set deliberately by the Indians may
have been an important factor in maintain¬
ing the prairies and oak openings in the
county (Curtis, 1959, p. 361). Fuel gathering
activities, which included felling trees as well
as gathering downed wood, also had an
effect on the nature of the woodland.

Curtis (1959, p. 463) claims that there is
circumstantial evidence that Indians may
have been responsible for the introduction of
certain plants into Wisconsin. Among these
are Prunus americana Marsh. (Canada
plum), Acorus calamus L. (sweet flag),
Allium tricoccum Ait. (wild leek), and Apios
americana Medic, (ground nut). A tree with
spotty distribution, associated with Indian
village sites, is Gymnocladus dioica (L.)
Koch (Kentucky coffee tree). The spread of
this tree may have resulted from the use of
its seeds in a kind of dice game played by the

160

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

Indians (Curtis, 1959, p. 463). The Kentucky
coffee tree is present in the county today in a
few scattered locations.

Government Survey Records

The government survey records indicate
that some townships in the county were
prairie and oak opening, with oak-hickory
forests on the drier sites and maple-bass¬
wood forests on the mesic sites. Pinus
strobus L. (white pine) was common in the
northern part of the county as well as Larix
laricina (Du Roi) K. Koch (tamarack) and
Thuja occidentalis L. (white cedar) in the
swamps. Survey records also identified
marshes along rivers and lake shores.

The prairies are now mostly farm fields,
but prairie plants still grow in some un¬
disturbed roadsides and fields as well as
along railroad rights-of-way. Quercus
macrocarpa Michx. (bur oak), a common
tree of the oak openings, is still an important
tree in the county, but most of the surviving
large trees are in yards or parks and in a few
uncut oak woods. Oak-hickory and maple-
basswood forests are still present but in
greatly reduced acreage and mostly second
growth. Fagus grandifolia Ehrh. (American
beech), sometimes a member of the maple-
basswood forest, was recorded as a witness
tree in the early survey of Menasha Town¬
ship. Costello (1931) showed American
beech for Winnebago County on his dis¬
tribution map. Except for a few beech trees
on undeveloped city lots in Menasha and
east of Little Lake Butte des Morts, native
beech trees seem to have disappeared from
the county.

When wetlands were recorded, surveyors
listed numerous marshes containing marsh
hay or grass and, as might be expected, wild
rice. In the swamps, surveyors noted “alder
swamp’’ and “tamarack swamp’’ in Wolf
River Township, “willow swamp’’ and
“black ash swamp’’ in Poygan Township,
and “cedar and tamarack swamp’’ in Win¬
chester Township. White cedar and tama¬

rack still grow in the county, much of it on
land which is in public ownership.

The surveyors were not botanists and the
reliability of their identifications might be
questioned. They used common names ex¬
clusively, but in only a few cases is there
some doubt about what species is meant.

A tree often mentioned in the survey notes
was “sugar.” This was generally used to
denote Acer saccharum Marsh, (sugar
maple). Sometimes “maple” was used mak¬
ing it difficult to know what species of maple
was intended. “Elm” was probably Ulmus
americana L. (American elm) but in one
instance “slippery elm” was mentioned
( Ulmus rubra Muhl.). It is probably reason¬
able to assume that where “pine” was used,
it referred to Pinus strobus L. (white pine)
but in Wolf River Township, James Marsh,
in 1852, recorded “yellow pine.” He prob¬
ably was referring to Pinus resinosa Ait. (red
pine) which grows in the county along with
white pine in some of the northern town¬
ships.

John Brink, in his surveys of the town¬
ships of Utica, Nepeuskun, and Nekimi,
mentioned an undergrowth of “red root”
and “rosen weed.” “Red root” is probably
Ceanothus americanus L. and “rosen weed.”
Silphium laciniatum L. (Parry, 1848). He
also mentions “a growth of red top, cane”
in the marshes. “Red top” probably was
Calamagrostis canadensis (Michx.) Beauv.
(blue joint). The European Agrostis stolon-
ifera L., also called “red top,” was not well
established at the early date of 1834 when the
townships were surveyed. The “cane” was
probably Phragmites australis (Cav.) Trin.
ex Steud. which is an obvious grass in low
meadows.

Early Settlement

After the land was surveyed and became
available for purchase, it was not long
before the many advantages of the area
attracted immigrants in increasing numbers.
At the time the county was organized in

1983]

Rill— Flora of Winnebago County

161

1842, the population was 143 (McLeod,
1846); in just eighteen years, by 1860, it had
grown to 23,770 (Titus, 1930).

With settlement came accelerated changes
in the vegetation. Trees were cut for cabins
and fuel and the land was cleared for agri¬
culture. As the towns grew into cities, much
of the original vegetation of the town sites
was destroyed. Harney (1880, p. 230) de¬
scribes the Township of Menasha in the early
days of settlement.

Its surface, originally covered with a dense
growth of timber, principally sugar-maple,
white and swamp oak, beach [beech], hickory,
ash and basswood, interspersed in the north¬
west portion of the town with groves of pine,
has been to a large extent, cleared of timber
and converted into excellent farming lands.

The coming of the settlers greatly reduced
the amount of forested land in the more
heavily timbered townships. Extensive log¬
ging depleted most of the virgin pines in the
northern tier of townships, which lie at the
southern edge of the famous “Wolf River
Pinery.” Settlement, however, was also re¬
sponsible for an increase in the acreage of
woodland in certain of the more open parts
of the county.

In the early days, the prairie and openings
portion of the county was more open than at
present. The annual fires kept down the young
growth. Since they have stopped, a native
growth has sprung up on the uncultivated
ground, and especially in the towns of Utica
and Nepeuskun that used to be considered
prairie towns, large groves of good sized trees
have grown up within the past twenty-five
years (Harney, 1880, p. 130).

The luxuriant growth of marsh hay in the
county’s abundant lowlands was considered
an asset when farm land was selected.
Harney (1880, p. 261 and p. 275) describes
land in the Township of Winneconne, “. . .
where extensive marshes abound, of little
value, save some which are sufficiently firm
to produce good crops of grass and hay.”

and in Wolf River Township, “. . . good
wild hay is cut on some of the marshes. ...”

The abundant marshes in the county not
only served the farmer as a source of marsh
hay, but also stimulated the founding of a
grass twine and grass rug industry. The
“wire grass” was bound together with
cotton thread to make binder twine. This
enterprise proved unsuccessful because
crickets ate the cotton thread and the twine
fell apart. In 1902, the Oshkosh Grass Rug
Company began weaving marsh grass into
rugs which were sold in many places all over
the country as “art squares.” The last grass
used for this purpose was harvested in 1929
but until 1935 rugs were made from supplies
on hand. The waste grass, about 60 percent
of the total, was sold for packing material.
Although no record of the scientific names
of the grass used for these purposes could be
found, it was probably a sedge, Carex stricta.

Cranberries were harvested and raised
with some success for a short time. Harney
(1880, p. 275 and 248) writes, “. . . small
tracts of marsh have been purchased for rais¬
ing cranberries; although at the present time
with indifferent success.” and also in Rush-
ford Township, “In the northwestern por¬
tion of the town are some very productive
cranberry marshes.” In 1907, Lawson (1908,
1:255), lists 512 bushels of cranberries for
the county, produced on 110 acres. Today
there is little if any evidence of the existence
of these cranberry bogs. Tamarack still
grows in some locations but without the bog
species that might be associated with it.

Introduction of Exotics

Exotics were imported for landscaping at
an early date. The survey records from about
1850 show English poplar (. Populus alba L.
?) and Lombardy poplar ( Populus nigra L.)
as witness trees. Probably the immigrants
felt more at home surrounded by familiar
plants from the “old country.” Norway
spruce (Picea abies Karst.) was a very pop¬
ular tree for landscaping and wind breaks.

162

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

Norway spruce trees are still growing near
rural and urban homes. Also imported were
cultivated plants that have since spread
beyond the garden. The common dandelion
( Taraxacum officinale Weber) and chicory
(Cichorium Intybus L.) were imported as
food plants and are now ubiquitous weeds.
Water cress (Nasturtium of finale R. Br.) was
planted in springs and now appears native.
Loosestrife (Ly thrum salicaria L.) and
forget-me-not (Myosotis scorpiodes L.) were
imported for the garden. Loosestrife now
appears to be a threat to wetlands, spreading
and replacing native wetland species. Of
interest may be the early record of forget-
me-not in the county. It was collected grow¬
ing wild in 1894, one of the earliest dates for
the State of Wisconsin (Johnson, 1972).

In more recent times, floristic additions to
the county have included plants that have
extended their ranges. Two of these are
Ly copus asper Greene and Aster furcatus
Burgess (Tans & Read, 1975). A very recent
addition to the flora of the county is
Butomus umbellatus L. found in the Wolf
River south of Orihula.

Two other aquatics have recently become
part of the flora of Winnebago County:
Potamogeton crispus L. and Najas marina
L. More recently a halophyte, J uncus com-
pressus Jacq. has become established and is
spreading along a roadside. This colony is
located along a heavily traveled stretch of
road that has undoubtedly been repeatedly
salted. Possibly this salt tolerant species is
better able to compete with other plants in
this location.

Two recent intentional introductions are
Coronilla varia L. (crown vetch) and Lotus
corniculatus L. (bird’s foot trefoil), both
planted for erosion control, forage, and soil
enrichment. Lotus appears to be spreading
onto lawns from roadsides where it had been
planted for erosion control.

Protected Areas

Poor land use practices, residential
development pressures and conversion of

wetlands to agricultural use continue to be
responsible for loss of native plant commu¬
nities. To offset these losses, steps have been
taken by the State and other interested
groups to protect several sites of botanical
interest. These include High Trestle Scien¬
tific Area (Sec 12, T17N, R17E), Allen
Marsh (Sec 4, T18N, R16E) on Lake Butte
des Morts, Waukau Creek Nature Preserve
(Sec 25, T18N, R14E), and prairie preserves
along the county recreation trail (Sec 31, 32,
T20N, R16E and Sec 5, 6, 17, T19N, R16E).
In addition, the Department of Natural Re¬
sources has acquired natural lands as hunt¬
ing areas and owns marshes adjacent to crit¬
ical fish spawning beds. Some high quality
natural areas in the county are still unpro¬
tected. Unless action is taken in the near
future to preserve these areas, their unique
scientific, historical, esthetic, and educa¬
tional values will be lost.

Catalogue Sources

The major part of this report is a
catalogue of vascular plants which have
grown or now grow without cultivation in
Winnebago County, Wisconsin. Included
also are those cultivars that have escaped
and are reproducing spontaneously.

The catalogue list is based principally
upon specimens in the Herbarium of the
University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh (OSH),
the Buckstaff Collection, formerly housed at
the Oshkosh Public Museum but now at the
University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, and my
private herbarium, which for purposes of
this report will be designated (RILL). All
Winnebago County specimens in these her¬
baria have been examined and verified.
Where specimens from other herbaria are
cited, credit is given.

In addition to specimens from these
herbaria, records from the literature have
been included.

A search for species expected in the
county, but not found in the above herbaria
or during the course of field work, was made
at the University of Wisconsin-Madison

1983]

Rill — Flora of Winnebago County

163

(WIS), the Milwaukee Public Museum
(MIL), and Ripon College herbaria.

Catalogue Design

Families are listed according to the Engler-
Prantl System. The genera and species are
listed alphabetically within each family.

Nomenclature follows Gleason and Cron-
quist (1963) except where names do not
conform to the International Code of Botan¬
ical Nomenclature or where new scientific
investigations have presented a convincing
argument that different names are appro¬
priate. Exceptions to this are Viola which
follows Russell (1965) except for Viola
papilionacea Pursh, which Russell does not
recognize as a species; and Salix which
follows Argus (1964).

Each species is recorded with its scientific
name and authority. For many, familiar
common names, habitat, and statements
about frequency of occurrence are included.

The terms “rare,” “uncommon,” “occa¬
sional,” and “common” are used to de¬
scribe frequency of occurrence. “Rare”
plants are those found at one or two loca¬
tions, “uncommon,” those seen infrequent¬
ly, “occasional” refers to those found more
often but at scattered locations, and “com¬
mon,” those seen almost everywhere within
the county. Although these terms are subjec¬
tive and inexact, they indicate the relative
abundance of species.

Specimens collected in the course of this
study are deposited in the Herbarium of the
University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh (OSH)
and my private herbarium (RILL).

Definitions of Terms

The definitions of terms used in this report
are as follows: native flora , native vege¬
tation, and native plant refer to groups of
plants or plants that were part of the pre¬
settlement flora. They have developed here
since the last period of glaciation and have
special value because they represent a gene
pool with proven adaptability. An exotic is a
plant native to another country or continent.

Although some native species may be aggres¬
sive, the term weed is used to indicate an
aggressive exotic that is able to colonize dis¬
turbed soil.

Statistical Synopsis

The catalogue lists a total of 1024 species.
Of these Aethusa cynapium, Festuca
myuros, Juncus compressus, Kickxia elatine,
and K. spuria are new for the state. The
Compositae is the largest family with 125
species, the Gramineae next with 109, fol¬
lowed by the Cyperaceae with 80. Of the
eight known orchids for the county, two are
apparently extirpated. Broken down by
major groups, there are 30 Pteridophytes, 7
Gymnosperms, 281 Monocots and 706 Di¬
cots.

Catalogue of Species

Lycopodiaceae (Clubmoss Family)

Lycopodium dendroideum Michx. Ground cedar.
Woods. Uncommon.

L. flabelliforme (Fern.) Blanch. Running pine. Un¬
common.

Equisetaceae (Horsetail Family)

Equisetum arvense L. Common horsetail. Roadsides,
railroad cinders, and gravel. Common.

E. ferrissii Clute. (E. hyemale x laevigatum.)

E. fluviatile L. Water horsetail. Marshes, wet ditches.

E. hyemale L. Railroad tracks.

E. laevigatum A. Br. Smooth scouring rush. Road¬
sides, railroads, damp woods in substrates as di¬
verse as cinders and clay.

E. x litorale Kuhlw. (E. arvense x fluviatile .) Springy
shore of Fox River, Eureka, 14 Sept. 1931, Fassett
13243 (WIS) (Hauke, 1965).

E. x nelsonii (A. A. Eat.) Schaffner. (E. laevigatum x
variegatum .) Railroad tracks.

E. scirpoides Michx. Mapped for Winnebago Coun¬
ty, Wisconsin (Tryon et al., 1953) and (Hauke,
1965) probably based on the same specimen (WIS),
s.n., undated from the collection of J. J. Davis,
collected by Dr. Lewis Sherman, labeled only Lake
Poygan, Wisconsin. Lake Poygan is partly in Wau¬
shara County. Sight record, James Peck in cedar
swamp. Northern part of County. Personal corres¬
pondence, 1981.

Ophioglossaceae (Grapefern Family)

Botrychium dissectum Spreng. f. obliquum (Muhl.)
Fern. Leather grape fern. One record.

B.lanceolatum Angstr. Low forest. Northern part of
County.

164

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

B. matricariaefolium A.Br. Low Forest. Northern
part of County.

B. virginianum (L.) Sw. Rattlesnake fern. In woods.
Uncommon.

Osmundaceae (Royalfern Family)

Osmunda cinnamomea L. Cinnamon fern. Woods.
Uncommon.

O. claytoniana L. Interrupted fern. Occasional, in
woods.

O. regalis L., var. spectabilis (Willd.) A. Gray.
Royal-fern. Damp meadows, wet woods, and
ditches. Uncommon.

P olypodiaceae (Polypody Family)

Adiantum pedatum L. Maiden hair fern. Occasional.
Woods.

Athyrium angustum (Willd.) Presl. Lady fern. De¬
ciduous woods.

Cystopteris bulbifera (L.) Bernh. Bulbet fern. Wet
woods with yellow birch and white cedar. One
record.

C. fragilis (L.) Bernh. var. fragilis. Fragile fern.
Woods and limestone outcroppings.

C. fragilis (L.) Bernh. var. mackayi Lawson.

C. protrusa (Weath.) Blasdell. Woods. One record.

Dryopteris cristata (L.) A. Gray. Crested fern.

Swamps.

D. intermedia (Muhl.) Gray. Florist fern. Woods.

D. spinulosa (O. F. Muell.) Watt. Low woods.

Matteuccia struthiopteris (L.) Todaro, var. pensyl-

vanica (Willd.) Morton. Ostrich fern. Wet woods.

Onoclea sensibilis L. Sensitive fern. Wet woods.

Pteridium aquilinum (L.) Kuhn. Bracken. Light soil.

Thelypteris palustris Schott., var. pubescens
(Lawson) Fern. Marsh fern. Damp meadows, wet
woods.

Pinaceae (Pine Family)

Abies balsamea (L.) Mill. Balsam fir. Shown for the
county near the northern shore of Lake Winnebago
(Fassett, 1930). Dots based on Cheney’s unpub¬
lished manuscript show this species near the north
shore of Lake Winnebago.

Larix laricina (Du Roi) K. Koch. Tamarack. Wet
woods in the northern part of the county and west
near the Waushara County line south of Lake
Poygan. Old survey records show it much more
abundant in the past.

Pinus resinosa Ait. Red pine. Large trees present in
the northern part of county.

Pinus strobus L. White Pine. There are still some
remnant forests of pine and hardwoods on the
southern edge of the “Wolf River Pinery’’ in the
northern part of the county.

Tsuga canadensis (L.) Carr. Hemlock. One tree only
in a woods.

Cupressaceae (Cypress Family)

Juniperus virginiana L. Red cedar. Occasional in dry
woods and pastures.

Thuja occidentalis L. White cedar. Only in the
extreme northern part of the county.

Typhaceae (Cattail Family)

Typha angustifolia L. Narrow cat-tail. Less common
than the following. Wet marshes, lake shores and
sloughs.

T. latifolia L. Cattail. Common. Wet marshes, lake
shores, and sloughs.

T. angustifolia x latifolia.

Sparganiaceae (Bur-reed Family)

Sparganium chlorocarpum Rydb. Bur-reed. Partially
dry drainage ditch. One record.

S. eurycarpum Engelm. Bur-reed. Marshes, wet
shores. Common.

Najadaceae (Pondweed Family)

Najas flexilis (Willd.) Rostk. & Schmidt. Naiad. A
common plant in lakes.

N. marina L. Rush Lake. Examined for Wisconsin
rare species list 1977. One record.

Potamogeton crispus L. Forming large beds. Be¬
coming more common in rivers and lakes.

P. foliosus Raf. One location only near the mouth of
drain tile at outlet of farm pond.

P. friesii Rupr. (?) Lake Butte des Morts. Probably
this, although specimen is vegetative.

P. natans L. In lakes. Common.

P. nodosus Poir. In lakes and rivers. Common.

P. pectinatus L. Sago pondweed. In lakes and rivers.
Common.

P. richardsonii (Benn.) Rydb. In lakes and rivers.
Common.

P. zosteriformis Fern. In lakes. Fairly common.
Zannichellia palustris L. Lake Poygan. Rill 4223
(RILL). Not collected often. Probably more com¬
mon than collections seem to indicate.

Alismataceae (Water Plantain Family)

Alisma plantago-aquatica L., var. americanum
Schult. & Schult. Water plantain. Shallow water
and wet marshy shores.

A. plantago-aquatica L., var. parviflorum (Pursh)
Torrey. Shallow water, wet marshy shores.
Sagittaria cuneata Sheldon. Arrow head. Marshes,
shallow water, shores of lakes and rivers.

S. latifolia Willd. Marshes, shallow water, shores of
lakes and rivers.

S. rigida Pursh. Shallow water.

Butomaceae (Flowering Rush Family)

Butomus umbellatus L. Flowering rush. Wolf River.
In shallow water with Sagittaria, Spartina, Typha,
and Scirpus. Apparently spreading. First collection
from Winnebago County, 1976.

Hydrocharitaceae (Frog’s-bit Family)

Elodea canadensis Michx. Waterweed. Quiet water.
Vallisneria americana Michx. Tape grass. Shallow
water. Submersed.

Gramineae (Grass Family)

Agropyron repens (L.) Beauv. Quack grass. A com¬
mon weedy grass in old fields, pastures, gardens.

1983]

Rill-— Flora of Winnebago County

165

A. smithii Rydb. Occasional along railroad tracks.

A. trachycaulum (Link.) Malte. Prairies and fields.

Agrostis hyemalis (Walt.) BSP. Weed in rock garden.
One record.

A. stolonifera L. including A. gigantea Roth. Red
top.

Alopecurus aequalis Sobol. Dry drainage ditch. One
location.

A. pratensis L. Disturbed fields and lake shores.

Andropogon gerardii Vitm. Big bluestem, turkey
foot. Prairies and undisturbed roadsides.

A. scoparius Michx. Little bluestem. Along RR
tracks, prairies, undisturbed roadsides. Less
common than the preceding.

Anthoxanthum odoratum L. Sweet vernal grass.
Spontaneous in my garden.

Aristida basiramea Vasey. Along railroad tracks. Dry
locations.

A. necopina Shinners = A. intermedia Scribner &
Ball, auct. mult. Along railroad tracks. One
record.

A. oligantha Michx. Railroad tracks.

Avena fatua L. Wild Oats. Railroad tracks in cinder
and gravel.

A. sativa L. Oats. Railroad tracks in cinder and
gravel.

Beckmannia syzigachne (Steud.) Fern. Slough grass.
Marsh. One location.

Bouteloua curtipendula (Michx.) Torr. Grama grass.
Dry gravelly hillside in the open. Collected twice
only.

Brachyelytrum erectum (Schreb.) Beauv. Pinus and
Acer rubrum woods in northern part of county.

Bromus ciliatus L. Brome grass. In woods. Occa¬
sional.

B. inermis Leyss. Smooth brome. Fields, roadsides
and vacant lots. A common cultivated grass often
escaped.

B. kalmii A. Gray. One collection.

B. latiglumis (Shear) Hitchc. = B. altissimus Pursh.

B. pubescens Willd. Canada brome.

B. tectorum L. Downy chess. Roadsides, railroads. A
common grass of disturbed sites.

Calamagrostis canadensis (Michx.) Beauv. Bluejoint.
Marshes, lake shores, wet places. Common.

C. stricta (Timm) Koeler. Undisturbed sedge
meadow.

Cenchrus longispinus (Hack.) Fern. Sandbur. Sand
along roadsides, railroads, and disturbed sites. Un¬
common because of the lack of suitable habitat.

Cinna latifolia (Trev. ex Gopp) Griseb. Wood reed.

Dactylis glomerata L. Orchard grass. Fields and
clearings.

Danthonia spicata (L.) Beauv. Oat grass.

Digitaria ischaemum (Schreb.) Muhl. Weed in
gardens, lawns, and waste places.

D. sanguinalis (L.) Scop. Crab grass. Weedy grass of
lawns, gardens, and disturbed sites.

Echinochloa muricata (Beauv.) Fern. var. micro-
stachya Wiegand.

E. occidentalis (Wieg.) Rydb. = E. crusgalli (L.)
Beauv. Barnyard grass. In damp soil. Common.

E. walteri (Pursh) Heller. A striking and attractive
grass of wet muddy shores and marshes of the Fox
River and in large lakes.

Eleusine indica (L.) Gaertner. In two separate
parking lots on the Fox River at Eureka. Only
known locations for county.

Elymus canadensis L. Wild rye. Railroad prairies,
roadsides.

E. canadensis L. x Hystrix patula Moench.

E. villosus Muhl. in Willd. Weedy area between
marsh and woods. One record.

E. virginicus L. Wet woods and lake shores.

Eragrostis cilianensis (All.) Link. Stink grass. Waste
places. Weed.

E.frankii C. A. Meyer. Fields, gardens, along paths.

E. hypnoides (Lam.) BSP. Mud flats. Occasional.

E. pectinacea (Michx.) Nees. Fields, gardens. Weed.

E. poaeoides Beauv. ex R&S. Weed in landscape
planting.

Festuca arundinacea Schreb. Roadsides.

F. myuros L. Gravel driveway. May have been intro¬
duced with fill. One location.

F. obtusa Biehler. Moist woods.

F. ovina L. Weedy in disturbed places.

F. rubra L. Red fescue. Roadside ditch. Garden
weed.

Glyceria borealis (Nash) Batch. Moist soil.

G. grandis S. Wats. Marshes, damp places.

G. septentrionalis Hitchc. Wet grassy meadow.

G. striata (Lam.) Hitchc. Fowl meadow grass. Wet
woods, marshes, shores. Common.

Hierochloe odorata (L.) Beauv. Sweet grass. Fields,
prairies, roadsides. Not found often.

Hordeum jubatum L. Squirrel tail grass. Roadsides,
vacant lots, waste areas. Common.

Hystrix patula Moench. Bottlebrush grass. Wet and
mesic woods. Occasional.

Leersia oryzoides (L.) Sw. Cut grass. Marshes, wet
shores.

L. virginica Willd. Wet woods.

Lolium perenne L. Roadsides. Probably introduced
with grass seed.

L. perenne L., var. aristatum Willd. = L. multi-
florum Lam.

Milium effusum L. Woods.

Muhlenbergia asperifolia (Nees & Mey.) Parodi.
Mapped (Fassett, 1951).

M. frondosa (Poir) Fern., f. commutata (Scribn.)
Fern. Shore of Fox River near Eureka locks.

M glomerata (Willd.) Trin. Wet meadows.

M. mexicana (L.) Trin. Railroad prairies.

M. racemosa (Michx.) BSP. Railroad tracks.

Oryzopsis asperifolia Michx. Rice grass. Woods, Un¬
common.

166

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2

Panicum boreale Nash. Marshy woods. One record.

P. capillare L. Weedy grass common along railroads,
in fields and gardens.

P. depauperatum Muhl. Railroad prairie.

P. dichotomiflorum Michx. Parking lots, waste
places, roadsides. Weedy.

P. implicatum Scribn. Mapped (Fassett, 1951).

P. latifolium L. Woods, with oak, basswood and elm.

P. leibergii (Vasey) Scribn. Railroad prairie.

P. miliaceum L., var. miliaceum. Possibly from bird
seed.

P. miliaceum L., var. ruderale (Kitagawa) Tzevelev.
Proso millet. A new agricultural weed.

P. oligosanthes Schult. Edge of quarry. Railroad
tracks.

P. philadephicum Trin. In marsh.

P. praecocius Hitchc. & Chase. Dry hillside.

P. virgatum L. Switch grass. Marshy roadside,
prairies.

Phalaris arundinacea L. Reed canary grass. Marshes,
low fields, pastures. Covering extensive areas and
becoming almost a monoculture in low meadows.
Introduced from Europe as a forage grass.

P. canariensis L. Canary grass. Apparently spontane¬
ous near foundation of abandoned house. Prob¬
ably introduced in bird seed.

Phleum pratense L. Timothy. Fields, roadsides, waste
areas. Common.

Phragmites australis (Cav.) Trin. ex Steud. A grass of
lakeshore marshes and wet ditches.

Poa annua L. Lawns, disturbed soil.

P. compressa L. Canada bluegrass. Roadsides, rail¬
roads, fields.

P. paludigena Fern. & Wieg. Around base of trees.
Swamp with Thuja, Larix. /?/// 4267 (RILL).

P. palustris L. Fowl meadow grass. Peaty wet
meadow.

P. pratensis L. Kentucky bluegrass. Lawns, pas¬
tures.

Puccinellia distans (L.) Pari. Edge of pond.

Schizachne purpurascens (Torr.) Swallen.

Secale cereale L. Rye. Railroads.

Setaria faberi Herrm. Roadsides, fields, railroads,
waste places. Especially abundant, edge of culti¬
vated fields. A troublesome agricultural weed.

S. glauca (L.) Beauv. Foxtail grass. Roadsides, fields,
railroads, waste places.

S. verticillata (L.) Beauv. Roadsides, fields, waste
areas, railroads.

S. viridis (L.) Beauv.

Sorghastrum nutans (L.) Nash. Indian grass. Prairies,
roadsides.

Sorghum halepense (L.) Pers. Johnson grass. Field.

S. bicolor (L.) Moench. Weed, soy bean field. Prob¬
ably persistent from cultivation or accidentally
planted.

Spartina pectinata Link. Cord grass. Marshes, wet
prairies, shores.

Sphenopholis intermedia (Rydb.) Rydb. Wedgegrass.
Mossy woods. One record.

Sporobolus asper (Michx.) Knuth. Dropseed. Rail¬
roads.

S. neglectus Nash. Garden weed. Roadsides, dis¬
turbed areas of dry, hardpacked, infertile soil.

S. vaginif torus (Torr.) Wood. Prairies, railroads.

S. heterolepis (Gray) Gray. Railroad prairies. A
native prairie grass.

Stipa spartea Trin. Needle grass. Prairies. Uncom¬
mon.

Triticum aestivum L. Wheat. Escape.

Zizania aquatica L. Wild rice. Rivers, lakes in shallow
water.

Cyperaceae (Sedge Family)

Bulbostylis capillaris (L.) Clarke. Adventive on fill.

Carex alopecoidea Tucker. Wet woods, damp
ditches, marshes.

C. amphibola Steud., var. turgida Fern. Damp
deciduous woods.

C. aquatilis Wahl. Marshes and wet meadows.

C. arctata Boott. Sandy woods.

C. atherodes Spreng. Floating bogs, marshes.

C. aurea Nutt. Wet “floor” of limestone quarry.

C. bebbii (Bailey) Fern. Wet prairies, fields, and
marshes.

C. bicknellii Britt. Wet prairies.

C. blanda Dew. Mixed oak, maple, basswood forests
and wet ditches.

C. brevior (Dewey) Mackenzie. Wet roadside ditch.

C. brunnescens (Pers.) Poir. In woods. Northern part
of county.

C. buxbaumii Wahl. Wet prairies, ditches.

C. comosa Boott. Marshy shores, floating bogs.

C. conoidea Schk. Roadside prairie.

C. convoluta Mack. Woods.

C. crawfordii Fern. Shallow marsh.

C. cristatella Britt. Flood plain forests, marshes.

C. deweyana Schwein. Swampy woods.

C. debilis Michx. Pine and red maple woods.

C. emoryi Dew. Damp shores.

C. gracillima Schw. Wet woods, marshes.

C. granularis Muhl., var. haleana (Olney) Porter.
Marshes, damp shores.

C. gravida Bailey. Small roadside marsh with Larix.
One record.

C. grayii Carey. Seems to be confined to flood plain
forests.

C. haydenii Dew. Wet woods, shores of lakes.

C. hirtifolia Mack. Woods, with Pinus.

C. hystericina Muhl. Marshes.

C. interior Bailey. Small roadside marsh with Larix.

C. intumescens Rudge. Wet woods, flood plain for¬
ests.

C. lacustris Willd. Open marshes.

C. lasiocarpa Ehr., var. americana Fern. Sedge
meadow.

1983]

Rill— Flora of Winnebago County

167

C. lasiocarpa Ehr., var. latifolia (Boeckl.) Gilly = C.
lanuginosa Michx. Wet woods, prairies, and
marshes.

C. laxiflora Lam. Swampy woods.

C. leptonervia Fern. Sandy woods.

C. lupulina Muhl. Wet places in woods, marshes and
flood plain forests.

C. molesta Mack. Shallow marsh.

C. muskingumensis Schwein. Flood plain forests.

C. pensylvanica Lam. Edge of deciduous woods.

C. project a Mack. Woods.

C. pseudo-cyperus L. Edge of bog. Peat soil.

C. retrorsa Schw. Open marshes and wet woods.

C. rosea Schk. In woods.

C. rostrata Stokes. Marshes, floating bogs.

C. sartwellii Dew. Wet marshes, lake shores.

C. sparganioides Muhl. Woods.

C. stipata Muhl. Marshes.

C. strict a Lam. Wet prairies, marshes, wet shores.

C. tenera Dewey. Sandy woods.

C. tetanica Schk. Near shore of Lake Butte des
Morts.

C. tribuloides Wahl. Sandy woods.

C. trisperma Dew. Cedar swamp.

C. tuckermanii Boott. Flood plain forests.

C. vesicaria L. Floating bogs, sedge meadows.

C. vulpinoidea Boott. Damp woods, wet ditches.

Cyperus aristata Rottb. Awned Cyperus. Mapped
(Marcks, 1974) and as C. inflexus Muhl. (Greene,
1953).

C. diandrus Torr. Low Cyperus. Sandy shore of Fox
River, floating sedge mats.

C. engelmannii Steud. Mucky sand, marshes, floating
sedge mats. Common.

C. esculentus L. Yellow nut grass. Weed in corn field.

C. erythrorhizos Muhl. Bank of Fox River.

C. filiculmis Vahl. = C. lupulinus (Spreng.) Marcks,
comb. nov. Slender stemmed Cyperus.

C. odoratus L. Coarse Cyperus (Marcks, 1974).

C. rivularis Kunth. Shining Cyperus. Wet shores, wet
sand.

C. schweinitzii Torr. Sandy farm lane. One record.

C. strigosus L. Straw colored Cyperus. Mapped
(Marcks, 1974).

Dulichium arundinaceum (L.) Britt. Mucky soil. Un¬
common.

Eleocharis compressa Sulliv. Wet meadow.

E. erythropoda Steudel. Common.

E. elliptica Kunth. Wet soil.

Eriophorum angustifolium Honckeny. Marshes. Un¬
common.

Scirpus acutus Muhl. ex Bigel. Hardstem bulrush.
Often in deeper water than S. validus.

S. acutus Muhl. x S. heterochaetus Chase.

S. acutus Muhl. x S. validus Vahl.

S. atrovirens Willd. Wet ditches and marshes.

S. cyperinus (L.) Kunth. Common in wet ditches,
marshes and lake shores.

S. fluviatilis (Torr.) Gray. A common component of
shore-land marshes of the large lakes.

S. heterochaetus Chase. Apparently rare.

S. pendulus Muhl. Marshes, damp soil, wet roadside
ditches.

5. pungens Vahl. Three square. On sand bar in Fox
River near Eureka and mixture of clay and sand on
two lake shore locations.

S. validus Vahl. Softstem bulrush. Marshy wet soil.

Araceae (Arum Family)

Acorus calamus L. Sweet flag. Wet shores, marshes.

Arisaema dracontium (L.) Schott. Green dragon.
Flood plain forests. Known from only two loca¬
tions.

A. triphyllum (L.) Schott. Jack-in-the-pulpit. Woods.

Calla palustris L. Wild calla lily. Very wet ditches,
swamps.

Symplocarpus foetidus (L.) Nutt. Skunk cabbage.
Wet marshes, low places, especially in mucky soil.

Lemnaceae (Duckweed Family)

Lemna minor L. Duckweed. Floating on water. The
most common of the duckweeds.

L. trisculca L. Duckweed. Floating on water.

Spirodela polyrhiza (L.) Schleiden. Duckweed. Float¬
ing on water.

Wolff ia columbiana Karst. Floating on water.

W. punctata Giseb. Floating on water.

Commelinaceae (Spiderwort Family)

Commelina communis L. Day flower. Aggressive
escape.

Tradescantia bracteata Small. Dirt pile at excavation
site. Garden escape.

T. ohiensis Raf. Prairies, fields, railroad rights-of-
way. Uncommon.

P ontederiaceae (Pickerel Weed Family)

Pontederia cordata L. Pickerel weed. Shallow water.

Zosterella dubia (Jacq.) Small. Water star grass.
Floating in water.

Juncaceae (Rush Family)

J uncus alpinus Vill. Wet sand and along railroad
tracks.

J. articulatus L. Heavy clay soil in roadside ditch.

J. balticus L. Toad rush. Wet sand and gravel.

J. canadensis J. Gay in La Harpe. Edge of partially
dry drainage ditch, peaty soil.

J. compressus Jacq. A state and county record. A salt
tolerant species found at edge of State Highway 21
near Highway 41 overpass where heavy road salting
occurs annually.

J. dud ley i Wieg. Damp soil. Common.

J. pylaei La Harpe. One record.

J. nodosus L. Marshy places, sedge meadows with
Spartina and Typha.

J. tenuis Willd. Path rush. Disturbed damp soil.

J. torreyi Cov. Marshy places, wet clay.

Luzula campestris (L.) DC., var. multiflora (Ehrh.)
Celak. Grassy edge of woods and in woods.

168

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

Liliaceae (Lily Family)

Allium canadense L. Wild onion. Roadsides, open
fields.

A. tricoccum Ait. Wild leek. Woods.

Asparagus officinalis L. Asparagus. Escape from cul¬
tivation. Roadsides, railroads.

Clintonia borealis (Ait.) Raf. Blue bead lily. Woods
Northern part of county only. Uncommon.

Convallaria majalis L. Lily of the valley. Spreading
from cultivation.

Erythronium albidum Nutt. White dog tooth violet;
trout lily. Woods Common in suitable habitats.

E. americanum Ker. Yellow dog tooth violet, trout
lily. Common in suitable habitats.

Hemerocallis fulva L. Day lily. Garden escape.
Dumps, roadsides.

Lilium michiganense Farw. Michigan lily. Wet prai¬
ries, damp roadside ditches.

L. philadephicum L. var. andinum (Nutt.) Ker.
Wood lily. Rare in one undisturbed railroad prai¬
rie.

Maianthemum canadense Desf. Canada mayflower.
Woods. Uncommon.

Medeola virginiana L. Indian cucumber root. In one
pine woods where it is abundant.

Muscari botryoides (L.) Mill. Grape hyacinth.
Spreading from cultivation and appearing natural¬
ized.

Polygonatum biflorum (Walt.) Ell. Solomon’s seal.
Woods, hedgerows, railroad prairies.

P. pubescens (Willd.) Pursh. Solomon’s seal. Woods.

Scilla sibirica Haw. Squill. Garden escape.

Smilacina racemosa (L.) Desf. False Solomon’s seal.
In deciduous woods.

S. stellata (L.) Desf. Starry false Solomon’s seal.
Roadsides, prairies, wood lots.

Smilax ecirrata (Engelm. ex Kunth) S. Watson. Car¬
rion flower. Woods, roadsides.

S. hispida Torr. Greenbrier. Mixed evergreen and
deciduous woods.

S. illinoensis Mangaly. Carrion flower. Woods,
hedgerows.

S. lasioneura Hook. Carrion flower. Hedgerows,
woods.

Trillium cernuum L. Nodding trillium. Woods.

T. grandiflorum (Michx.) Salisb. Trillium. Woods.

Uvularia grandiflora Sm. Bellwort. Woods.

Dioscoreaceae (Yam Family)

Dioscorea villosa L. Wild yam. Stream banks, woods.

Amaryllidaceae (Amaryllis Family)

Hypoxis hirsuta (L.) Cov. Star grass. Prairies, open
roadsides.

Iridaceae (Iris Family)

Iris germanica L. Railroad prairie. Garden escape.

/. pseudacorus L. Wet ditch. One location.

I. virginica L., var. shrevei (Small) E. Anders = I.
shrevei Small. Wild iris. Wet places.

Sisyrinchium albidum Raf. Wet prairie.

S. atlanticum Bickn. Railroad prairie.

S. campestre Bickn. Blue-eyed grass. Railroad prai¬
ries, damp roadsides. Fairly common.

S. mucronatum Michx. Damp field.

Orchidaceae (Orchid Family)

Aplectrum hyemale (Muhl. ex Willd.) Torr. Adam
and Eve. Woods with maple, basswood, pine. One
location.

Corallorhiza macula ta Raf. Coral root. Woods. With
oak, hickory, maple. One record.

Cypripedium calceolus L., var. pubescens. Yellow
lady slipper. Old specimen with no date or location.
Labeled, Winnebago County, Wisconsin, W. A.
Kellerman.

C. candidum Muhl. White lady slipper. Mapped
(Case, 1964).

C. reginae Walt. Showy lady slipper. Mapped (Fuller,
1933).

Habenaria leucophaea (Nutt.) A. Gray. Prairie white
fringed orchid. Open wet prairie. Known from two
locations.

H. psy codes (L.) Spreng. Purple fringed orchid.
Rare. Open shrub marsh.

Spiranthes cernua (L.) Rich. Ladies’ tresses. Railroad
prairies. Known from two locations.

Salicaceae (Willow Family)

Populus alba L. White poplar. Roadsides, escape (not
apparently planted).

P. balsamifera L. Balsam poplar. Pioneer tree in dis¬
turbed soil in quarry, roadsides.

P. deltoides Marsh. Cottonwood. Damp places,
shores.

P. grandidentata Michx. Big tooth aspen. Disturbed
woods.

P. tremuloides Michx. Trembling aspen. Disturbed
woods.

Salix alba L. White willow. Railroads, waste areas.
Not planted.

S. amygdaloides Anderss. Peach leaved willow. Lake
shores.

S. babylonica L. Weeping willow. Vacant lot. Ap¬
pearing native.

S. bebbiana Sarg. Beaked willow. Roadside ditches,
damp places.

S. Candida Fluegge. Undisturbed wet meadows.

5. fragilis L. Roadsides, ditches, shores. The most
common large willow tree.

S. glaucophylloides Fern. Blue leaved willow. Rail¬
road prairie.

S. humilis Marsh. Upland willow. Railroad prairies,
marshes.

S. interior Rowlee. Sandbar willow. Roadsides,
ditches, shores, sandbars. A pioneer shrub.

S. lucida Muhl. Shown for the county by Argus
(1954).

S. pedicel laris Pursh. Woods Northern part of
county.

1983]

Rill— Flora of Winnebago County

169

S. petiolaris J. E. Smith. Slender willow. Bottom
lands along creeks, rivers.

S. rigida Muhl. Roadside ditches, railroad rights-of-
way.

Juglandaceae (Walnut Family)

Carya cordiformis (Wang.) K. Koch. Bitternut hick¬
ory. Woods.

C. ovata (Mill.) K. Koch. Shagbark hickory. Com¬
mon component of oak-hickory forest.

Juglans cinerea L. Butternut. Woods.

J. nigra L. Black walnut. Woods, especially in the
southern part of the county near Lake Winnebago.

Betulaceae (Birch Family)

Alnus rugosa (Du Roi) Spreng. Speckled alder
Swamps.

Betula glandulosa Michx. Bog birch. Swamps with
Larix, Rhus vernix, Ilex, Alnus. Uncommon.

B. alleghaniensis Britt. Yellow birch. In northern part
of county only.

B. papyrifera Marsh. Paper birch. Woods. In north¬
ern part of county.

Carpinus caroliniana Walt. Ironwood. Damp woods.

Corylus americana Walt. Hazel nut. Woods, low
prairies.

Ostrya virginiana (Mill.) K. Koch. Hop hornbeam.
Woods.

Fagaceae (Beech Family)

Fagus grandifolia Ehrh. Beech. Uncommon, limited
to an area east of Little Lake Butte des Morts near
Fox River.

Quercus alba L. White oak. Woods.

Q. bicolor Willd. Swamp white oak. Wet woods.

Q. borealis Michx. f. Red oak. Woods.

Q. ellipsoidalis E. J. Hill. Hill’s oak. Hedgerows,
pastures, woods.

Q. macrocarpa Michx. Bur oak. Woods, prairies,
roadsides.

Q. velutina Lam. Black oak. Woods.

Ulmaceae (Elm Family)

Celtis occidentalism . Hackberry. Woods.

Ulmus americana L. American elm. Low woods,
yards, city streets. Now becoming less common
because of Dutch Elm Disease.

U. thomasi Sarg. Rock elm. Mapped (Costello, 1933)

U. rubra Muhl. Slippery elm. Woods, hedgerows.

Moraceae (Mulberry Family)

Cannabis sativa L. Hemp. Waste places.

Humulus lupulusL. Hops. Hedgerows, railroads.

Morus alba L. White mulberry, hedgerows, waste
places.

M. rubra L. Red mulberry. Mapped (Costello, 1933).

Urticaceae (Nettle Family)

Boehmeria cylindrica (L.) Sw. Wet woods, flood
plains of rivers.

Laportea canadensis (L.) Wedd. Wood nettle. Wet
woods, flood plain forests.

Parietaria pensylvanica Muhl. Pellitory. Occasional.
Damp soil.

Pilea f on tana (Lunnell.) Rydb. Clearweed. Damp
soil.

P. pumila (L.) Gray. Clearweed. Damp soil, marshes.

Urtica dioica L., var. procera (Muhl.) Wedd. Stinging
nettle. Wet soil in woods, flood plain forests,
marshy places. Common. Sometimes forming a
monoculture.

Santalaceae (Sandlewood Family)

Comandra umbellata (L.) Nutt. Bastard toadflax.
Railroad prairies, roadsides, woods.

Aristolochiaceae (Birthwort Family)

Asarum canadense L. Wild ginger. Moist woods.

Polygonaceae (Smartweed Family).

Fagopyrum esculentum Moench. Buckwheat.
Woods. Probably escaped from cultivation.

Polygonum achoreum Blake. Roadsides, railroads.

P. amphibium L., var. natans (Michx.) Eat. = P.
natans Michx. An illegitimate name. See (Hitchc.,
C. L., 1964).

P. aviculare L. Lawn and garden weed.

P. coccineum Muhl. Water smartweed. Shallow
water, shores, marshes.

P. convolvulus L. Black bind weed. Roadsides,
hedgerows, railroads.

P. cuspidatum Sieb. & Zucc. Mexican bamboo. Barn¬
yards, railroads. Garden escape.

P. hydropiper L. Marshes, mucky soil.

P. lapathifolium L. Most soil, marshes.

P. orientate L. Prince’s feather. Waste places, dis¬
turbed fields, old dumps. Escape from cultivation.

P. pensylvanicum L. Waste places, moist soil.

P. persicaria L. Waste places, shores.

P. punctatum Ell. Marshes, shores.

P. sagittatum L. Tear thumb. Marshes.

P. scandens L. False buckwheat. One record.

P. virginianum L. Jumpseed. Flood plain forest,
damp woods.

Rheum rhaponticum L. Rhubarb. Persistent after
cultivation.

Rumex acetosella L. Sheep sorrel. Weedy in poor soil.

R. altissimus Wood. Water dock. Wet prairie.

R. crispus L. Sour dock. Roadsides, disturbed sites.

R. mexicanus Meissn. Wet soil, especially disturbed
sites.

R. orbiculatus A. Gray. Great water dock. Marshes.

R. verticillatus L. Water dock. Marshes, shores.

Chenopodiaceae (Goosefoot Family)

A triplex patula L. Disturbed soil.

Chenopodium album L. Roadsides, gardens.

C. hybridum L. Roadsides, gardens.

Cycloloma atriplicifolium (Spreng.) Coulter. Winged
pigweed. Open sand.

Kochia scoparia (L.) Schrader. Summer cypress. Dis¬
turbed soil.

Salsola kali L. Russian thistle. Disturbed sites, espe¬
cially sand or sterile soil.

170

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

Amaranthaceae (Amaranth Family)

Amaranthus blitoides S. Wats. = A. graecizans L.

Tumbleweed. Disturbed sites.

A. retroflexus L. Pigweed. Disturbed sites, fields and
gardens.

A. tuberculatus (Moq.) Sauer. Shores, bottom lands,
marshes.

Nyctaginaceae (Four-o’clock Family)

Mirabilis nyctagineus (Michx.) MacM. Railroads,
roadsides.

Aizoaceae (Carpet-weed Family)

Mollugo verticil lata L. Carpet- weed. Sand, sterile
soil.

Portulaceae (Purslane Family)

Claytonia virginica L. Spring beauty. Woods.
Portulaca oleracea L. Purslane. Gardens, disturbed
sites.

Caryophyllaceae (Pink Family)

Agrostemma githago L. Corn cockle. Old specimen
labeled only Butte des Morts, 1900-1908.

Arenaria lateriflora L. Sandwort. Not uncommon in
woods, and edges.

A. serpyllifolia L. Weed in cemetery lawn.

Cerastium nutans Faf. Weed. Disturbed sites.

C. vulgatum L. Weed in cemetery lawn.

Dianthus deltoides L. Pink. Probably an escape from
cultivation.

Gypsophila scorzonerifolia Ser. in DC. In gravel at
junction of Osborn Rd. and Morrissey Rd. near
Rush Lake.

Lychnis alba Mill. Campion. Common weed of fields
and disturbed sites.

Myosoton aquaticum (L.) Moench.

Saponaria officinalis L. Soapwort, bouncing Bet.
Weed. Disturbed sites.

Silene antirrhina L. Catchfly. Sandy soil, waste
places.

S. armeria. Sweet William. Escape from cultivation.

S. cserei Baumg. Railroads.

S. vulgaris (Moench.) Garcke. Bladder campion.

Railroads, fields, roadsides.

S. noctiflora L. Garden weed. Fields.

Spergularia marina (L.) Grisebach. Shoulder of road.
Stellaria graminea L. Low meadow.

S. longifolia Muhl. Sedge meadow.

S. media (L.) Cyrill. Chick weed. Garden weed.

Ceratophyllaceae (Hornwort Family)

Ceratophyllum demersum L. Coontail. Rivers, lakes.

Nymphaeaceae (Water-lily Family)

Nelumbo lutea (Willd.) Pers. Lotus. Scattered loca¬
tions. Rivers, lakes. Forming extensive beds.
Nuphar variegatum Engelm. Spatterdock. Lakes,
rivers.

Nymphaea odorata Ait. Quiet water.

N. tuberosa Paine. Quiet water.

Ranunculaceae (Buttercup Family)

Actaea pachypoda Ell. White baneberry. Woods.

A. rubra (Ait.) Willd. Red baneberry. Woods.

Anemone canadensis L. Windflower. Wet prairies,
low fields.

A. cylindrica A. Gray. Railroad prairies.

A. quinquefolia L. Wood anemone. Woods.

A. virginiana L. Dry woods.

Anemonella thalictroides (L.) Spach. Rue anemone.
In some woods so common it may form a ground
cover.

Aquilegia canadensis L. Wild columbine. Woods.

Caltha palustris L. Marsh marigold. Swamps, wet
soil.

Clematis virginiana L. Clematis. Hedgerows.

Coptis trifolia (L.) Salisb. Rare. Restricted to pine
woods in the northern part of the county.

Delphinium ajacis L. Larkspur. Escape from culti¬
vation. Persistent on dirt fill.

Hepatica nobilis Schreb., var. acuta (Pursh) Steyerm.

Isopyrum biternatum (Raf.) T. & G. False rue
anemone.

Ranunculus abortivus L. Buttercup. Woods.

R. acris L. Weed in moist soil, roadsides.

R. aquatilis L. White water crowfoot. Quiet water.

R. circinatus Sibth. Slow moving water of Eight Mile
creek.

R. fascicularis Muhl. Dry pasture.

R. flabellaris Raf. Shallow water.

R. hispidus Michx.

R. longirostris Godr. White water crowfoot.

R. pensylvanicus L.f. Moist soil.

R. recurvatus Poir. Woods. Moist soil.

R. repens L. In lawns and grassy areas.

R. rhomboideus Goldie. Pond edge.

R. sceleratus L. Cursed crowfoot. Moist organic soil.

R. septentrionalis Poir. Moist soil.

Thalictrum dasycarpum Fisch. & Ave-Lall. Meadow
rue.

T. dioicum L. Maple-basswood woods.

T. revolutum DC., var. glandulosior Boivin. Wet
prairies.

Berberidaceae (Barberry Family)

Berberis thunbergii DC. Barberry. Escape, woods.

Caulophyllum thalictroides (L.) Michx. Blue cohosh.
Maple-basswood forests. Uncommon.

Podophyllum pe/tatum L. May apple. Open woods.

Menispermaceae (Moonseed Family)

Menispermum canadense L. Moonseed. Woods.

Papaveraceae (Poppy Family)

Papaver rhoeas L. Corn poppy. Garden escape.

P. somniferum L. Opium poppy. Persistent, dump
area.

Sanguinaria canadensis L. Bloodroot. Woods.

Fumariaceae (Fumitory Family)

Fumaria officinalis L. Fumitory. Well established in
dump area and edge of baseball field.

Dicentra cucullaria (L.) Bernh. Dutchman’s breeches.
Woods.

1983]

Rill— Flora of Winnebago County

171

Cruciferae (Mustard Family)

Arabis glabra (L.) Bernh. Rock cress. Old Field.
Armoracia aquatica (Eat.) Wieg. In pool in intermit¬
tent stream. Collected once and not found again.

A. rusticana Gaertn., Mey. & Scherb. Horse-radish.
Persistent along railroads.

Barbarea vulgaris R. Br. Winter cress. Roadsides,
fields, railroad, waste places. Weed.

Berteroa incana (L.) DC. Hoary alyssum. Roadsides,
fields, waste places. Weed.

Brassica hirta Moench. Woods. One location.

B. kaber (DC.) Wheeler. Roadsides, fields, disturbed
sites. Weeds.

B. rapa L. sensu FI. Eur. Railroads.

Capsella bursa-pastoris (L.) Medic. Shepherd’s purse.
Roadsides, fields. Weed.

Cardamine bulbosa (Schreb.) BSP. Wet meadows.

C. douglassii Britt. Moist woods and flood plain
forests.

C. pensylvanica Muhl. Moist woods and flood plain
forests. Mucky soil.

Dentaria laciniata Muhl. ex Willd. Toothwort.
Woods.

Descurainia pinnata (Walt.) Britt., var. brachycarpa
(Richards) Fern. Disturbed soil.

D. sophia (L.) Webb. Dump site. Probably from a
garden.

Diplotaxis muralis (L.) DC. Disturbed site.

Draba replans (Lam.) Fern. Limestone rock. One
location.

Erucastrum gallicum (Willd.) O. E. Schulz. Road¬
side.

Erysimum cheiranthoides L. Roadside, Weed.

E. inconspicuum (S. Wats.) MacM.

Hesperis matronal is L. Dame’s rocket. Garden
escape.

Lepidium campestre (L.) R. Br. Disturbed soil.
Weed.

L. densiflorum Schrader. Pepper grass. Disturbed
soil. Weed.

L. ruderale L. Barn yard. One record.

L. virginicum L. Pepper grass. Disturbed soil. Weed.
Lobularia maritima (L.) Desv. Sweet alyssum.
Garden escape.

Lunaria annua L. Honesty. Appearing spontanous.
Garden escape.

Nasturtium officinale R. Br. Water cress. Moist
ditch, springs.

Rorippa islandica (Oeder) Borbas. Marsh cress.
Marshes, shores.

R. sylvestris (L.) Besser. Field, rip-rapped shore.
Sisymbrium altissimum L. Tumbling mustard. Dump

area. Weed.

S. officinale (L.) Scop. Hedge mustard. Disturbed
soil. Weed.

Thlaspi arvense L. Penny cress. Roadsides, fields,
waste places.

Capparidaceae (Caper Family)

Cleome spinosa L. Spider flower. Garden escape.
Polanisia dodecandra (L.) DC. Railroads.
Crassulaceae (Orpine Family)

Penthorum sedoides L. Ditch stone crop. Damp soil.
Woods.

Sedum telephium L. Stone crop. Railroad. Garden
escape.

Saxifragaceae (Saxifrage Family)

Heuchera hirsuticaulis (Wheelock) Rydb. Alum root.
Railroad prairies.

Mi tel la diphylla L. Bishop’s cap. Rich woods.

M. nuda L. With Thuja in northern part of county.
Rare.

Parnassia glauca Raf. Grass of Parnassus. Wet
meadows and fens. Rare.

Ribes americanum Mill. Wild black currant. Woods.
R. cynosbatiL. Gooseberry. Woods, thickets.

R. hirtellum Michx., var. calcicola Fern.

R. odoratum Wendl. Persistent from cultivation.

R. sativum Syme. Garden currant. Appearing native.
Saxifraga pensylvanica L. Swamp saxifrage. Woods,
wet prairies.

Rosaceae (Rose Family)

Agrimonia gryposepala Wallr. Agrimonia. Woods.

A. pubescens Wallr. Woods.

Amelanchier laevis Wieg. Juneberry. Woods.

A. sanguinea{ Pursh) DC. Roadsides, hedgerows.

A. spicata (Lam.) K. Koch.

Aronia melanocarpa (Michx.) Ell. Chokeberry.
Roadside ditch.

Crataegus calpodendron (Ehrh.) Medic. Hawthorn.

C. crus- galli L.

C. mollis (T. & G.) Scheele.

C. punctata Jacq.

C. succulenta Link.

Fragaria vesca L. Woodland strawberry. Mapped
(Mason & litis, 1958).

F. virginiana Duchesne. Wild strawberry. In woods
and edges.

Geum aleppicum Jacq., var. strictum (Ait.) Fern.
Roadsides, woods.

G. canadense Jacq. Damp woods.

G. laciniatum Murr. Edge of field.

G. rivale L. Water avens. Swamps.

G. triflorum Pursh. Prairie smoke. Railroad prairies.
Physocarpus opulifolius (L.) Maxim.

Potentilla anserina L. Silver weed. Along railroad
rights-of-way. Light soil.

P. argentea L. Silvery cinquefoil. Railroad prairies.

P. canadensis L. One location along railroad in
Oshkosh.

P. fruticosa L. Shrubby cinquefoil. Edge of cedar
bog. One record.

P. intermedia L. Dry cinders along railroad track.

P. norvegica L. Railroads, fields, waste places.

P. palustris (L.) Scop. Marsh cinquefoil. Marshes.

172

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

P. recta L. Drywoods, prairies, roadsides.

P. simplex Michx. Old field cinquefoil. Open woods,
fields.

Prunus americana Marsh., var. lanata Sudw. Wild
plum. Hedgerows, woods, railroads.

P. nigra Ait. Canada plum. Hedgerows, woods, rail¬
roads.

P. pensylvanica L.f. Pin cherry. Hedgerows, open¬
ings.

P. serotina Ehrh. Black cherry. Woods, hedgerows.

P. virginiana L. Choke cherry. Hedgerows, openings.

Pyrus ioensis (Wood) Carruth. Wild crab apple.
Woods, railroads.

P. malusL. Apple. Persistent after cultivation.

Rosa acicularis Lindl. Prairies, roadsides.

R. arkansana Porter. Roadside.

R. blanda Ait. Meadow rose. Prairies, roadsides.

R. Carolina L. Pasture rose. Prairies, roadsides.

R. palustris Marsh. Swamp rose. Prairies.

Rubus allegheniensis Porter. Common blackberry.
Roadsides, railroads, fields, open woods.

R. idaeus L. Red raspberry. Open fields, roadsides.

A. occidentalis L. Black raspberry. Hedgerows,
woods.

R. ostryifolius Rydb. Blackberry. Railroad prairies.

R. pubescens Raf. Moist woods, swamps.

Sorbaria sorbifolia (L.) A. Br. False spiraea. Damp

roadside. Escape from cultivation.

Sorbus aucuparia L. European mountain ash. Hedge¬
rows. Apparently planted by birds.

Spiraea alba Du Roi. Meadow sweet. Marshes, wet
meadows, railroads.

S. tomentosa L., var. rosea (Raf.) Fern. Wet
meadow. Northern part of county.

Waldsteinia fragarioides (Michx.) Tratt. Mapped
(Mason & litis, 1958).

Caesalpiniaceae (Caesalpina Family)

Gymnocladus dioica (L.) K. Koch. Kentucky coffee-
tree. Woods along creek, and lake shore at three
locations.

Fabaceae (Bean Family)

Amorpha canescens Pursh. Lead plant. Railroad
prairies.

Amphicarpa bracteata (L.) Fern. Hog peanut.
Woods, thickets.

Apios americana Medic. Wild bean. Near Lake Win¬
nebago.

Astragalus canadensis L. Milk vetch. Railroad
prairies.

Baptisia leucantha T. & G. Wild indigo. Railroad
prairies, roadsides, open woods.

Desmodium canadense (L.) DC. Tick trefoil. Rail¬
road prairies and roadsides.

D. dillenii Dari. Railroad prairies, roadsides.

D. glutinosum (Muhl.) Wood. Woods.

D. iilinoense Gray. Open roadside north of Oshkosh.
Buckstaff 39-4 (Buckstaff Collection).

D. nudiflorum (L.) DC. Woods.

Glycine max (L.) Merr. Soy bean. One plant, road¬
side. Accidental. Rill 3349 (RILL).

Lathy rus ochroleucus Hooker. Vetch. Woods.

L. palustris L. Grassy marshes, wet prairies, damp
roadsides.

L. venosus Muhl., var. intonsus Butters et St. John.
Wet prairies.

Lespedeza capitata Michx. Bush clover. Railroad
prairies.

Lotus corniculatus L. Bird’s foot trefoil. Roadsides.
Planted and spreading.

Lupinus x regalis. Fence line along Hw. 41. Probably
site of abandoned farm.

Medicago falcata L. Roadside. One record.

M. lupulina L. Black medic. Lawns, roadsides, dis¬
turbed sites. Weed.

M. sativa L. Alfalfa. Roadsides, fields.

Melitotus alba Desr. White sweet clover. Roadsides,
railroads, fields.

M. altissima Thuill. Roadsides, railroads, fields.

M. officinalis (L.) Desr. Yellow sweet clover. Road¬
sides, railroads, fields.

Petalostemum candidum (Willd.) Michx. White prai¬
rie clover. Railroad prairies. Uncommon.

P. purpureum (Vent.) Rydb. Purple prairie clover.
Railroad prairies.

Robinia pseudoacacia L. Black locust. Hedgerows,
forming thickets. Spreading from cultivation.

Trifolium aureum Pollich. Edge of field.

T. campestre Schreb. in Sturm. = T. procumbens L.,
nom. ambig. (Gillett & Cochrane, 1973).

T. hybridum L. Alsike clover. Roadsides, fields.

T. pra tense L. Red clover. Roadsides, fields.

T. repens L. White clover. Roadsides, fields.

Vicia americana Muhl. Purple vetch. Railroads,
fields, roadsides.

V. caroliniana Walt. Pale vetch. Woods.

V. cracca L. Tufted vetch. Low field.

V. sativa L. subsp. nigra (L.) Ehrh. as given in FI.
Europaea = V. angustifolia Reichard. Railroad
prairies.

V. villosa Roth. Russian vetch. Roadsides, fields.

Oxalidaceae (Oxalis Family)

Oxalis corniculata L. Field, woods. Two records.

O. dillenii Jacq. Roadsides, lawns, waste places, rail¬
roads.

O. stricta L. Roadsides, lawns, waste places, rail¬
roads.

Geraniaceae (Geranium Family)

Erodium cicutarium (L.) L’Her. Filaree. Lawn weed.

Geranium bicknellii Britt. Marshy woods. One
record.

G. maculatum L. Wild geranium. Woods.

Linaceae (Flax Family)

Linum usitatissimum L. Common flax. Escape along
railroad. One record.

1983]

Rill — Flora of Winnebago County

173

Rutaceae (Rue Family)

Zanthoxylum americanum Mill. Prickly ash. Forming
thickets. Disturbed woods.

Polygalaceae (Milkwort Family)

Poly gala senega L. Seneca snakeroot. Railroad prai¬
ries. Uncommon.

Euphorbiaceae (Euphorbia Family)

Acalypha rhomhoidea Raf. Three seeded mercury.

Roadsides, disturbed sites. Weed.

Chamaesyce maculata (L.) Small. Wart weed. Road¬
sides, lawns and gardens.

C. nutans (Lag.) Small. Occasional. Along railroad
tracks.

C. vermiculata (Raf.) House. Roadsides, lawns.
Weedy.

Euphorbia corollata L. Flowering spurge. Railroads
and dry roadsides.

E. cyparissias L. Cypress spurge. Railroads, dry road¬
sides.

E. glyptosperma Engelm.

E. marginata Pursh. On fill. Garden escape.

E. myrsinites L. Adventive in garden.

E. peplus L. Disturbed roadside. One record.

E. podperae Croiz. Leafy spurge. Noxious weed.
Poinsettia dentata (Michx.) Kl. & Gke. Railroads.

Callitrichaceae (Water-starwort Family)

Callitriche palustris L. Water star wort. Exposed
mud, drainage ditches.

Anacardiaceae (Cashew Family)

Rhus glabra L. Smooth sumac. Roadsides, railroads,
openings. More common than R. typhina.

R. radicans L., var. rydbergii (Small) Rehd. Poison
ivy. Roadsides, hedgerows, woods, railroads,
openings. Abundant.

R. typhina L. Staghorn sumac. Roadsides, railroads,
openings.

R. typhina L., f. laciniata (Wood) Rehd. Cut leaf
sumac. Escape from cultivation.

R. vernix Marsh. Poison sumac. Swamp, with Ilex,
Larix, Alnus. One location in bog where it was
abundant.

Aquifoliaceae (Holly Family)

Ilex verticillata (L.) Gray. Holly. Uncommon.
Swamps, with Larix, Thuja, Alnus and in moist
areas in white pine, red maple forest in northern
part of county.

Celastraceae (Staff-tree Family)

Celastrus scandens L. Bittersweet. Hedgerows.

Threatened by “clean farming.”

Euonymus atropurpureus Jacq. Burning bush. Edge
of swamp. Not apparently planted.

Staphylaceae (Bladder-nut Family)

Staphylea trifolia L. Bladder-nut. Edge of Woods.
Two locations near Rush Lake.

Aceraceae (Maple Family)

Acer negundo L. Box elder. Hedgerows, woods,
roadsides.

A. nigrum Michx. f. Black maple. Woods.

A. rubrum L. Red maple. Woods.

A. saccharinum L. Silver maple. Damp woods. Flood
plain forests.

A. saccharum Marsh. Sugar maple. Woods.

A. spicatum Lam. Wet woods, flood plain forest of
Rat River. One location.

Balsaminaceae (Touch-me-not Family)

Impatiens capensis Meerb. = /. biflora Walt. Jewel-
weed. Damp soil.

Rhamnaceae (Buckthorn Family)

Ceanothus americanus L. Railroad prairies.

Rhamnus cathartica L. Buckthorn. Edge of woods,
disturbed woods where it may form thickets.

R. frangula L. Edge of woods, and brushy places.
Not as common as the former.

V itaceae (Grape Family)

Parthenocissus vitacea (Knerr) Hitchc. Woodbine.

Hedgerows, woods, shores.

Vitis riparia Michx. Grape. Hedgerows, woods,
shores.

Tiliaceae (Linden Family)

Tilia americana L. Basswood. Large forest tree.

Malvaceae (Mallow Family)

Abutilon theophrasti Medic. Velvet leaf. Common
weed of corn fields, disturbed sites.

Alcea rosea L., var. sibthorpii Boiss. Hollyhock. Per¬
sistent in dump area.

Hibiscus trionum L. Flower-of-an-hour. A common
weed of gardens, disturbed soil.

Malva neglecta Wallr. Common mallow. Gardens,
disturbed sites.

Hypericaceae (St. John’s-wort Family)

Hypericum canadense L. Peaty ditch.

H. majus (Gray) Britt.

H. perforatum L. Klamath weed. Oldest record for
the county, collected 1900-1908 by Mr. and Mrs.
Jay Davis.

H. punctatum Lam. Edge of woods.

Triadenum fraseri (Spach.) Gleason. Marsh St.
John’s wort. Marshes, swamps.

Cistaceae (Rock-rose Family)

Helianthemum bicknellii Fern. Frost weed. Dry soil
near railroad.

Violaceae (Violet Family)

Viola adunca Sm. Sand violet. Woods, railroads.

V. affinis LeConte. Moist woods.

V. canadense L., var. canadense. Canada violet.
Woods.

V. canadense L., var. rugulosa (Greene) C. L. Hitchc.
Mapped (Russell, 1965).

V. conspersa Reichenb. American dog violet. Woods.
V. cucullata Ait. Marsh violet. Damp woods,
swamps.

V. novae-angliae House. Northern part of county.

V. novae-angliae x sagittata.

V. odorata L. Lawn weed, Oshkosh.

174

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

V. papilionacea Pursh. Meadow violet. Railroad prai¬
rie, roadside.

V. pedata L. Bird’s foot violet. Dry place in woods,
sandy hillside. Two records, 1925 and 1930.

V. pedatifida G. Don. Uncommon. Railroad prairies
and dry hillside.

V. pubescens Ait., var. eriocarpa (Schwein.) Russell.
Yellow violet. Woods.

V. pubescens Ait., var. pubescens. Downy yellow
violet. Woods.

V. sagittata Ait. Arrow leaved violet. Northern part
of county. One record.

V. septentrionalis Greene. Woods.

V. sororia Willd. Woods.

Lythraceae (Loosestrife Family)

Decodon verticillatus (L.) Ell. Water willow. Edge of
Rush Lake.

Lythrum alatum Pursh. Railroad prairies, meadows.

L. salicaria L., var. tomentosum (DC.) DC. Purple
loosestrife. Wet soil. Escape, becoming a problem
in wetlands.

Elaeagnaceae (Oleaster Family)

Elaeagnus angustifolia L. Escape near Lake Butte des
Morts bridge.

Onagraceae (Evening Primrose Family)

Circaea alpina L. Enchanter’s nightshade. With
Thuja. One location.

C. lutetiana L., subsp. canadensis (L.) Asch. &
Magnus.

Epilobium angustif olium L. Fire weed. Railroads,
roadsides.

E. coloratum Biehler. Willow herb. Marshes, wet
ditches.

E. glandulosum Lehm., var. adenocaulon (Haussk.)
Fern.

E. leptophyllum Raf. Roadside marsh near Fox
River.

Guara biennis L., var. biennis. Roadsides, railroads.

Ludwigia palustris (L.) Ell., var. americana (DC.)
Fern. & Griscom. Water purslane. Cattail marsh.

Oenothera biennis L. Evening primrose. Roadsides.

O. oakesiana (A. Gray) Robins. Along railroad track.

O. parviflora L. Railroads, roadsides, fields. Com¬
mon.

O. perennis L. Sundrops. Marsh, on higher ground,
with shrubs. One record.

O. pilosella Raf. Landfill site. One record. Probably
brought in with fill material.

O. villosa Tunb. = O. strigosa (Rydb.) Mack. & Bush
of American authors.

Haloragaceae (Water Milfoil Family)

Myriophyllum spicatum L., var. exalbescens (Fern.)
Jepson = M. exalbescens Fern. Lakes, rivers.

Araliaceae (Ginseng Family)

Aralia nudicaulis L. Wild sarsaparilla. Woods.

A. racemosa L. Spikenard. Moist soil.

Panax quinquef olium L. Ginseng. Woods. Rare.

Umbelliferae (Parsley Family)

Aethusa cynapium L. Fool’s parsley. Appearing as a
weed in gardens. First Wisconsin record, 1968.

Angelica atropurpurea L. Angelica. Marshes, wet
ditches.

Carum carvi L. Caraway. Railroads, roadsides,
fields.

Cicuta bulbifera L. Marshes, ditches, damp mead¬
ows.

C. maculata L. Water hemlock. Marshes, ditches,
damp meadows.

Cryptotaenia canadensis (L.) DC. Honewort. Woods.

Daucus carota L. Queen Anne’s lace. Roadsides.

Heracleum lanatum Michx. Cow parsnip. Moist soil,
marshes, wood lots.

Osmorhiza claytonii (Michx.) Clarke. Sweet cicely.
Woods.

O. longistylis (Torr.) DC. Anise root. Woods.

Oxypolis rigidior (L.) Raf. Wet prairies, damp road¬
sides, wet meadows, wet woods.

Pastinaca sativa L. Wild parsnip. Weed. Railroads,
meadows, roadsides.

Pimpinella saxifraga L. Roadsides, often with
grasses.

Sanicula gregaria Bickn. Black snakeroot. Woods.

S. marilandica L. Woods.

S. trifoliata Bickn. Woods.

Sium suave Walt. Water parsnip. Wet meadows,
marshes, wet forests.

Taenidia integerrima (L.) Drude. Prairies, dry woods.

Zizia aurea (L.) Koch. Golden alexanders. Railroad
prairies, meadows.

Cornaceae (Dogwood Family)

Cornus alternifolia L. Alternate leaved dogwood.

C. canadensis L. Canada dogwood. Rare. In northern
part of county in pine and red maple woods.

C. obliqua Raf. Railroad prairies, roadsides. In damp
soil.

C. racemosa Lam. Railroad prairies, roadsides. In
damp soil.

C. rugosa Lam. Northern part of county in Thuja
swamp.

C. stolonifera Michx. Red osier. A common com¬
ponent of shrub swamps.

Ericaceae (Heath Family)

Chimaphila umbellata (L.) Bart. Prince’s pine.
Woods with Pinus strobus. Uncommon.

Gaylussacia baccata (Wang.) K. Koch. Huckleberry.
Woods with Pinus strobus.

Monotropa hypopitys L. Pine sap. Woods with Pinus
strobus.

M. uniflora L. Indian pipe. Woods. One plant.

Pyrola elliptica Nutt. Shinleaf. Woods. Uncommon.

P. rotundifolia L. Woods, northern part of county.
Rare.

P. secunda L. Woods, northern part of county. Rare.

1983]

Rill — Flora of Winnebago County

175

Vaccinium angustifolium Ait. Uncommon. In a few
woods in northern part of county.

V. lamarckii Camp. Blueberry. Uncommon.

Primulaceae (Primrose Family)

Anagallis arvensis L., var. arvensis. Pimpernel.
Abandoned garden, waste area. Two locations.

Dodecatheon meadia L. Shooting star. Railroad prai¬
ries, roadsides, oak openings.

Lysimachia ciliata L. Fringed loosestrife. Marshes,
wet meadows, flood plain forests.

L. nummularia L. Moneywort. Escape in cemetery,
river banks, and flood plain forests. Forming a
ground cover in some locations.

L. quadriflora Sims. Railroad prairies, roadsides.

L. terrestris (L.) BSP. Swamp candles. Marshes,
swamps. Uncommon.

L. thyrsiflora L. Marshes, swamps.

L. vulgaris L. Mucky shore of Lake Butte des Morts.
Not planted.

Trientalis borealis Raf. Star flower. Woods. North¬
ern part of county. Uncommon.

Oleaceae (Olive Family)

Franxinus americana L. White ash. Woods.

F. pennsylvanica Marsh., var. Pennsylvania. Red
ash. Wet woods. The most common ash.

F. Pennsylvania Marsh., var. subintegerrima (Vahl.)
Fern. Green ash. Wet woods.

F. nigra Marsh. Black ash. Swamps, low forests.

Gentianaceae (Gentian Family)

Gentiana andrewsii Griseb. Wet prairies, meadows
and shores.

G. quinquefolia L., var. occidentalis (Gray) Gillett.
Railroad. Damp clay. Uncommon.

Menyanthes trifoliata L. Buckbean. Swamps. Un¬
common.

Apocynaceae (Dogbane Family)

Apocynum adrosaemi folium L. Dogbane. Railroads,
roadsides. Common.

A. medium Greene. Railroad prairies.

A. sibiricum Jacq. Indian hemp. Railroads, road¬
sides.

Asclepiadaceae (Milkweed Family)

Asclepias exaltata L. Poke milkweed. Edge of woods,
quarry. Two records. Uncommon.

A. incarnata L. Swamp milkweed. Marshes, shores.
Common in suitable habitat.

A. ovalifolia Decne. Prairie. One record. Rare.

A. purpurascens L. Mapped (Noamesi & litis, 1957).

A. syriaca L. Common milkweed. Railroads, road¬
sides, fields.

A. tuberosa L. Butterfly weed. Uncommon. Railroad
prairies.

A. verticillata L. Whorled milkweed. Railroad
prairies.

Convolvulaceae (Morning Glory Family)

Convolvulus arvensis L. Bindweed. Roadsides, waste
places. Weed.

C. sepium L. ( Calystegia sepium (L.) R. Br.) Hedge
bindweed. Roadsides, waste places. Weed.

Cuscuta cuspidata Engelm. Dodder. Twining on
vegetation.

C. gronovii Willd. Dodder.

C. polygonorum Engelm.

Ipomoea hederacea Jacq. Railroad. Escape. One
record.

I. purpurea (L.) Roth. Morning glory. Edge of
marshy ditch. Six miles from Oshkosh on Hw. 1 10
Collected by H. Buchholz, Sept. 10, 1969, s.n.
(WIS). Escape from cultivation.

Polemoniaceae (Phlox Family)

Phlox divaricata L. Wild blue phlox. Woods.

P. pilosa L. Prairie phlox. Railroad prairies.

P. subulata L. Moss pink. Roadside. Escape from
cultivation.

Hydrophyllaceae (Waterleaf Family)

Hydrophyllum virginianum L. Water leaf. Wet to
mesic woods. Forming a ground cover at times.

Ellisia nyctelea L. Landscape plantings and dump
area.

Boraginaceae (Borage Family)

Cynoglossum officinale L. Hound’s tongue. Upland
woods.

Echium vulgare L. Blue weed. Roadside.

Hackelia virginiana (L.) Johnst. Stickseed.

Lappula echinata Gilib. Stickseed.

Lithospermum canescens (Michx.) Lehm. Hoary
puccoon. Railroad prairies.

L. officinale L. Weed in sidewalk crack.

Myosotis scorpioides L. Forget-me-not. Shore of
Wolf River.

Symphytum officinale L. Common comfrey. Escape.
Mapped (Kruschke, 1944).

Verbenaceae (Vervain Family)

Phyla lanceolata (Michx.) Greene. Frog fruit. Rip-
rapped shore of Wolf River.

Verbena bracteata Lag. & Rodr. Open ground.

V. hastata L. Vervain. Marshes and low forests.

V. x illicita Moldenke. Mapped (Tans & litis, 1979).
Only location in Wisconsin. Collected in 1909.

V. stricta Vent. Along railroad tracks.

V. urticifolia L., var. urticifolia. Weed in moist soil.

V. urticifolia L., var. leiocarpa Perry & Fern. Weed.

Labiatae (Mint Family)

Agastache nepetoides (L.) Kuntze. Giant hyssop.
Woods, uncommon.

Dracocephalum parviflorum Nutt. Specimen col¬
lected by Kellerman, s.n., labeled only Oshkosh,
Wis. (WIS).

Glecoma hederacea L. Ground ivy. Lawn weed.

Hedeoma hispida Pursh. False pennyroyal. Dry loca¬
tions.

H. pulegioides (L.) Pers. American pennyroyal. Gar¬
den weed.

Isa n thus brae hiatus (L.) BSP. Railroads.

176

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

Lamium ampexicaule L. Dead nettle. Weed in gravel,
around shrubs in landscape planting.

Leonurus cardiaca L. Motherwort. Disturbed weedy
places.

Ly copus americanus Muhl. Damp soil.

L. asper Greene. Shore of Lake Winnebago, banks of
Fox River. Two locations.

L. uniflorus Michx. Damp soil.

L. virginicus L. In marshes.

Mentha arvensisL. Mint. Damp soil.

M. cardiaca Baker. Mapped (Koeppen, 1957).

M. piperita L. Peppermint. Shore of Lake Win¬
nebago. One record.

Monarda fistulosa L. Wild bergamot. Railroad
prairies, roadsides.

Nepeta cataria L. Catnip. Disturbed weedy places.

Physostegia virginiana (L.) Benth. = P. formosior
Lunell. False dragon head. Wet woods, marshy
places.

Prunella vulgaris L. Self heal. Common. Weed in
lawns, low meadows and woods.

Pycnanthemum virginianum (L.) Durand & Jackson.
Mountain mint. Railroad prairies, meadows.

Scutellaria galericulata L. Skull cap. Wet soil,
marshes, shores.

S. lateriflora L. Wet soil, marshes, shores.

S. parviflora Michx., var. leonardii (Epling) Fern.
Railroad prairies.

Stachys hispida Pursh. Hedge nettle, damp soil.

S. palustris L. Damp soil. Common.

Teucrium canadense L. Germander. Damp soil.
Common.

Solanaceae (Nightshade Family)

Datura stramonium L. Jimson weed. Waste area.
One record.

Lycium halimifolium Mill. Matrimony vine. Rail¬
road. One record.

Lycopersicon esculentum Mill. Tomato. Spontaneous
in field. One record.

Nicotiana tabacum L. Spontaneous on dirt fill. One
record.

Physalis heterophylla Nees. Ground cherry. Rail¬
roads, roadsides.

P. ixocarpa Brot. Spontaneous in garden.

P. longifolia Nutt. Edge of cornfield. One record.

Solanum carolinense L. Horse nettle. Railroads. One
record.

S. dulcamara L. Bittersweet nightshade. Lake shores,
hedgerows, gardens, marshes. Common weed.

S. nigrum L. Black nightshade. Disturbed sites.

S. rostratum Dunal. Buffalo bur. Disturbed site.

Scrophulariaceae (Figwort Family)

Agalinis purpurea (L.) Pennell. In clay soil along rail¬
road.

A. tenuifolia (Vahl.) Raf. Damp soil.

Aureolaria grandiflora (Benth.) Pennell, var. pulchra
Pennell. False foxglove. Mapped (Salamun, 1951).

Castilleja coccinea (L.) Spreng. Indian paint brush.
Mapped (Salamun, 1951).

Chaenorrhinum minus (L.) Lange. Railroads.

Chelone glabra L. Turtlehead. Marshes, wet mead¬
ows, shores.

G ratio la neglecta Torr. Hedge hyssop. Damp soil.

Kickxia elatine (L.) Dum. Cancer wort. Spantaneous
in garden. First Wisconsin record.

K. spuria (L.) Dum. Spontaneous in garden. First
Wisconsin record.

Linaria vulgaris Hill. Butter and eggs. Railroads,
roadsides, disturbed sites. Common.

Lindernia anagallidea (Michx.) Pennell. Wet soil in
fallow field.

Mimulus ringens L. Monkey flower. Marshes, shores.

Pedicularis canadensis L. Lousewort. Railroad
prairies.

P. lanceolata Michx. Marshes, shores.

Penstemon digitalis Nutt. Beard tongue. Roadsides,
fields.

Scrophularia lanceolata Pursh. Figwort. Railroads,
roadsides.

5. marilandica L. Carpenter’s square. Railroads,
roadsides, woods.

Verbascum blattaria L. Moth mullein. Weed in
planted shrubbery.

V. thapsus L. Mullein. Railroads, roadsides, open
fields. Weed.

Veronica anagallis-aquatica L. Wet mucky shores.

V. arvensis L. Speedwell. Weed in lawns.

V. longifolia L. Garden escape. One record.

V. peregrina L. Roadsides, weedy fields.

V. persica Poir. Garden weed.

V. scutellata L. Partially dry drainage ditch.

V. serpyllifolia L. Lawn weed.

Veronicastrum virginicum (L.) Farw. Culver’s root.
Railroad prairies, wet woods.

Lentibulariaceae (Bladderwort Family)

Utricularia vulgaris L., var. americana Gray. Shallow
water.

Phrymaceae (Lopseed Family)

Phryma leptostachya L. Lopseed. Railroads, wet
woods.

Plantaginaceae (Plantain Family)

Plantago arenaria Waldst. & Kit. = P. psyllium L.,
nom. ambig., and P. indica L., nom. illegit. (See
Tutin, Flora Europaea, 4:43.)

P. lanceolata L. English plantain. Lawns, disturbed
sites. Weed.

P. major L. Common plantain. Lawns, disturbed
sites.

P. rugelii Decne. Lawns, disturbed sites. Weed.

Rubiaceae (Madder Family)

Cephalanthus occidentalis L. Button bush. River
banks.

Galium aparine L. Cleavers. Woods.

G. boreale L. Northern bedstraw. Wet prairies.

1983]

Rill— Flora of Winnebago County

177

G. circaezans Michx., var. hypomalacum Fern. Wild
licorice. Woods.

G. continuum T. & G. Shining bedstraw. Woods.

G. labradoricum (Wiegand) Wiegand. Undisturbed
sedge meadow.

G. obtusum Bigel., var. ramosum Gleason. Damp
roadsides, woods.

G. tinctorium L. Marsh.

G. trifidum L. Small bedstraw. Marshes, shores.

G. triflorum Michx. Sweet scented bedstraw. Woods.

Houstonia longifolia Gaertn. Mapped (Urban & litis,
1957).

Mitchella repens L. Partridge berry. Northern part of
county. Woods in association with Pinus strobus
Rare.

Caprifoliaceae (Honeysuckle Family)

Diervilla lonicera Mill. Bush honeysuckle. Un¬
common. Roadsides, edges of woods.

Lonicera x bella Zabel. Bell’s honeysuckle.

L. dioica L., var. dioica. Wild honeysuckle. Moist
woods.

L. dioica L., var. glaucescens (Rydb.) Butters.

L. morromi Gray. Escape.

L. prolifera (Kirchner) Rehder., var. prolifera. Grape
honeysuckle.

L. tartarica L. Tartarian honeysuckle. Escape in
woods.

Sambucus canadensis L. Elderberry. Railroads, road¬
sides, thickets.

S. racemosa L., ssp. pubens (Michx.) Hulten. In
woods in northern part of county. Less common
than preceding species.

Symphoricarpos occidentalis Hooker. Wolf berry.
Railroads.

Triosteum aurantiacum Bicknell. Horse gentian.

T. perfoliatum L. Marshy woods.

Viburnum acerifolium L. Woods. Occasional.

V. lentago L. Nannyberry. Hedgerows, woods, and
thickets.

V. opulus L., var. americanum Ait. American high
bush cranberry. Woods.

V. opulus L., var. opulus. European high bush cran¬
berry. Escape.

V. rafinesquianum Schult., var. rafinesquianum.
Maple basswood forest.

Valerianaceae (Valerian Family)

Valeriana edulis Nutt. Railroad prairies. Uncommon.

V. officinalis L. Valerian. Freely spreading and per¬
sistent from cultivation.

Dipsacaceae (Teasel Family)

Cephalaria tatarica Schrad. Spontaneous in one loca¬
tion. No longer present. Site developed.

Dipsacus laciniatus L. Cut leaved teasel. Waste area
near cemetery.

D, fullonum L. = D. sy Ives iris Hudson of Am.
authors. Spontaneous in cemetery and one other
area. A county record.

Cucurbitaceae (Gourd Family)

Echinocystis lobata (Michx.) T. & G. Wild cucumber.
Hedgerows, marshes, thickets. Damp soil.

Campanulaceae (Harebell)

Campanula americana L. Tall bell flower. Occasional
in woods.

C. aparinoides Pursh. Marsh bell flower. Marshes.

C. rapunculoides L. Escape. Roadsides, railroads,
thickets.

C. rotundifolia L. Harebell. Rare in county. Along
railroad track. One record.

Lobeliaceae (Lobelia Family)

Lobelia cardinalis L. Cardinal flower. Wet shores,
flood plain forests.

L. inflata L. Indian tobacco. Field near Menasha.
One record.

L. kalmii L. Sedge meadow. One record near Rush
Lake.

L. siphilitica L. Great blue Lobelia. Marshes, shores.

L. spicata Lam. Spiked Lobelia. Railroad prairies,
roadsides.

Compositae (Composite Family)

Achillea millefolium L. Yarrow. Railroads, road¬
sides, fields.

A. ptarmica L. Established along one roadside.
Garden escape.

Ambrosia artemiisif olia L. Ragweed. Railroads,
roadsides, fields. Common weed.

A. trifida L. Giant ragweed. Railroads, roadsides,
fields.

Antennaria neglecta Greene. Pussy toes. Railroads,
roadsides, woods.

A. plantaginifolia (L.) Richards. Railroads, road¬
sides, woods.

Anthemis cotula L. Dogfennel. Roadsides, waste
places, marshy fields. Weed.

Arctium minus (Hill) Bernh. Common burdock. Dis¬
turbed sites. Common weed.

Artemisia absinthium L. Absinth. Railroads, road¬
sides, hard packed gravel.

A. biennis Willd. Disturbed sites.

A. caudata L. Wormwood. Edge of sand quarry.

A. ludoviciana Nutt. White sage. Railroad prairies.
Uncommon.

Aster azureus Lind. Railroads.

A. brachyactis Blake. Clay fill, edge Lake Winne¬
bago; railroad tracks on campus of University of
Wisconsin, Oshkosh.

A. ericoides L. Heath aster. Railroad prairies, road¬
sides. Common.

A. falcatus Lindl. Near water filled pits in sand
quarry. One location.

A. furcatus Burgess. Railroad. One record. Rare. A
northern extension of range (Tans & Read, 1975).

A. hesperius Gray. Railroads, wet meadows.

A. junciformis Rydb. Undisturbed sedge meadow.

A. lateriflorus (L.) Britt. Woods, edge marsh.

178

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters [Vol. 71, Part 2,

A. laevis L. Railroad prairies, fields.

A. lucidulus (Gray) Wieg. Damp soil.

A. macrophyllus L. Large leaved aster. Moist woods.

A. novae-angliae L. New England aster. Railroad
prairies, roadsides, fields. Common.

A. pilosus Willd. Roadsides.

A. prenanthoides Muhl. Woods. Bucks taff 38-56
(Buckstaff Collection).

A. sagittifolius Willd. Railroads, roadsides.

A. sericeus Vent. Railroads. Two records.

A. shortii Lindl. Dry woods.

A. simplex Willd. Woods, fields, waste areas.

A. umbellatus Mill. Rill 5591 (RILL).

Bidens aristosa (Michx.) Britt. Marshes, wet mead¬
ows.

B. bipinnata L. Yard weed. Probably introduced acci¬
dentally.

B. cernua L. Sticktight. Wet shores, ditches. The
most common Bidens.

B. coronata (L.) Britt. Marshes, wet meadows.

B.frondosa L. Bur marigold. Marshes, wet meadow.

B. tripartita L. Waste area near Fox River. One
record.

B. vulgata Greene. Waste areas.

Boltonia asteroides L’Her. Low ground. One record,
1935.

Carduus acanthoides L. Plumed thistle. Field. Also
one white flowered plant. Introduced; not a com¬
mon thistle at this time.

Centaurea maculosa Lam. Centaury. Railroads,
roadsides, weedy.

Chrysanthemum leucanthemum L. Daisy. Railroads,
roadsides.

C. uliginosum Pers. High daisy. Escape. Appearing
native. Two records.

Cichorium intybus L. Chicory. Railroads, roadsides,
disturbed sites. Common weed.

Cirsium altissimum (L.) Spreng. Wood thistle. Rail¬
roads, roadsides. Uncommon.

C. altissimum (L.) Spreng x C. discolor (Muhl.)
Spreng. One location.

C. arvense (L.) Scop. Canada thistle. Common weed.

C. discolor (Muhl.) Spreng. Prairie thistle. Railroads.
Uncommon.

C. muticum Michx. Swamp thistle. Wet meadows,
damp roadsides.

C. vulgare (Savi) Tenore. Bullthistle. Roadsides,
fields, waste places. Common weed.

Conyza canadensis (L.) Cron. Horseweed. Road¬
sides, disturbed sites. Weed.

Coreopsis pa/mata Nutt. Tickseed. Railroad prairies.

C. tinctoria Nutt. Disturbed site. Weed in landscaped
planting.

Crepis tectorum L. Roadside. Weed of disturbed
sites. Becoming more common.

Erigeron annuus (L.) Pers. Railroads, roadsides.

E. philadelphicus L. Daisy fleabane. Railroads,
roadsides.

E. strigosus Muhl. Roadsides.

Eupatorium altissimum L. Tall boneset. Along
railroads. Range extension and county record. One
location.

E. macula turn L. Joe-pye weed. Damp soil.

E. perforatum L. Boneset. Damp soil.

E. purpureum L. Woods. One record.

E. rugosum Houtt. White snakeroot. Woods, road¬
sides, marshes.

Galinsoga ciliata (Raf.) Blake. Disturbed soil. Weed.

Gnaphalium obtusifolium L. Cudweed. Open sandy
field, cinders near building, open woods.

G. uliginosum L. Planting near building. One record.

Grindelia squarrosa (Pursh) Dunal. Tarweed. Rail¬
roads, roadsides.

Helenium autumnale L. Sneezeweed. Marshes, wet
ditches, wet meadows.

Helianthus annuus L. Escape or a remnant of culti¬
vation.

H. hirsutus Raf. Railroads, roadsides.

H. giganteus L. Roadsides.

H. grosseserratus Martens. Railroads, roadsides.

H. laetiflorus Pers. Railroad prairie. One location.

H. maximilianii Schrader. Undeveloped field in city
of Oshkosh.

H. strumosus L. Edge marshy woods.

H. tuberosus L. Railroads, roadsides.

Heliopsis helianthoides (L.) Sweet. Railroads.

Hieracium aurantiacum L. Orange hawk weed. Pas¬
tures, lawns. Weed.

H. kalmiiL. Railroads.

H. scabrisculum Schwein. Railroads, woods.

Iva xanthifolia Nutt. Marsh elder. Beside driveway.
One record.

Krigia biflora (Walt.) Blake. Dwarf dandelion. Un¬
common. Undisturbed railroad prairies.

Lactuca canadensis L., var. longifolia (Michx.) Farw.
Railroads.

L. pulchella (Pursh) DC. Railroad.

L. serriola L. Prickly lettuce. Railroads, roadsides.

Liatris aspera Michx. Blazing star. Prairies. Un¬
common.

L. pycnostachya Michx. Prairie gayfeather. Wet
prairies. Uncommon.

Matricaria chamomilla L. Disturbed site.

M. matricarioides (Less.) Porter. Pineapple weed.
Disturbed sites.

Polymnia canadensis L. Marshy shore of Rush Lake.

Prenanthes alba L. Rattlesnake root. Damp woods.

P. racemosa Michx. Railroad prairies. Uncommon.

Ratibida columnifera (Nutt.) Woot. & Standi. Cone
flower. One location. Railroad.

R. pinnata (Vent.) Barnh. Yellow cone flower.
Railroad prairies, roadsides. A fairly common
prairie element persisting along roadsides.

Rudbeckia hirta L. Black-eyed Susan. Railroad
prairies, fields.

R. laciniataL. Roadsides.

1983]

Rill— -Flora of Winnebago County

179

R. triloba L. Occasional. Fields, roadsides.

Senecio aureus L. Ragwort. Woods.

S. pauperculus Michx. Woods, pastures.

S. plattensis Nutt. Dry upland woods.

S. vulgaris L. Weed in plantings and disturbed soil.
Common.

Silphium laciniatum L. Compass plant. Railroad
prairies, undisturbed roadsides.

S. terebinthinaceum Jacq. Prairie dock. Railroad
prairies, undisturbed roadsides. More common
than the former.

Solidago canadensis L. (Including S. altissima L.)
woods, railroads.

S.flexicaulis L. Zig-zag golden rod. Woods.

S. gigantea Ait. Railroads, roadsides.

S. graminifolia (L.) Salisb. Railroads, roadsides.

S. juncea Ait. Wet woods, shores.

S. nemoralis Ait. Railroads, fields.

S. riddellii Frank. Railroads, damp clay soil.

S. rigida L. Stiff goldenrod. Railroad prairies, fields.
A common prairie element.

S. speciosa Nutt., var. rigidiuscula Rydb. Showy
goldenrod. Along railroad tracks.

S. uliginosa Nutt. Sedge meadow.

S, ulmifolia Muhl. Elm leaved goldenrod. Open
fields.

Sonchus arvensis L. Sow thistle. Roadsides, disturbed
sites. Weed.

S. asper{ L.) Hill. Roadsides, disturbed sites.

S. oleraceus L. Roadsides, disturbed sites.

S. uliginosus Bieb. Roadsides, disturbed sites.

Tanacetum vulgare L. Tansy. Escape. Railroads,

roadsides, fields.

Taraxacum officinale Weber. Dandelion. Lawns, dis¬
turbed sites. Common weed.

Tragopogon dubius Scop. Greater goat’s beard. Rail¬
roads, roadsides, fields.

T. dubius Scop, x T. pratensis L. Field.

T. porrifolius L. Spontaneous in my garden, not
planted.

T. pratensis L. Lesser goat’s beard. Railroads, road¬
sides, fields.

Vernonia fasciculata Michx. Ironweed. Marshes, wet
meadows.

Xanthium strumarium L. Cocklebur. Disturbed sites,
waste places.

Acknowledgments

Special thanks is extended to Neil Har-
riman, Curator of the herbarium of the
University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh who gave
freely of his time and talent and was always
available for consultation. I also acknowl¬
edge the assistance of the following who
examined specimens and offered sugges¬
tions: Hugh H. litis and Theodore Coch¬

rane; James Peck and Paul Taylor, for their
help with the Pteridophytes; Peter Salamun
for help with the Caryophyllaceae; James
Richardson for help with Euphorbiaceae;
and James Zimmerman for examining and
annotating Carex.

I would also like to thank those who
helped with field work: Russell A. Rill,
Anita Carpenter, Robert Jansen, and Bruce
Parfitt, and in addition, Janet Scalpone who
examined and edited this manuscript.

Literature Cited

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the flora of Wisconsin. No. 51. Salicaceae. The
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53:217-272.

Campbell, Henry Colins, ed. 1905. Wisconsin in
Three Centuries. 2 vol. The Century Company,
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Carver, Jonathan. 1796. Three years travels
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Kay & Simpson, Philadelphia. 375 pp.

Case, Frederick W. 1964. Orchids of the Western
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Costello, D. F. 1931. Preliminary reports on the
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_ . 1933. Preliminary reports on the flora of

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Curtis, John T. 1959. The Vegetation of Wis¬
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Deltox Rug Company. 1952. Fifty years of rug
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Fassett, Norman C. 1930. Preliminary reports on
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_ . 1951. Grasses of Wisconsin. Univ. of

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Fuller, Albert M. 1933. Studies on the flora of
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Public Lands.

Gillett, John M. & Theodore S. Cochrane. 1973.
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Gleason, Henry A. and Arthur Cronquist. 1963.

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United States and Adjacent Canada. Van
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Gould, F. W., et al. 1972. A Revision of Echi-
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Graustein, Jeannette E. 1967. Thomas Nuttall,
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348 pp.

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Johnson, Marlin. 1972. Introduced aquatic
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Koeppen, Robert C. 1957. Preliminary reports on
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from its Early discovery to the present period;
including a geological and topographical de¬
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Marcks, Brian G. 1974. Preliminary reports on
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261-284.

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47:65-69.

Mitchell, Michael J., comp. 1977. Soil interpre¬
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Noamesi, Gottlieb K. & Hugh H. litis. 1957. Pre¬
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sources of Winnebago County. U.S. Geol. Sur.
Water Supply Pap. 61 pp.

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during the season 1848. Owen’s Geol. Surv. of
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central and eastern United States: An intro¬
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Salamun, Peter J. 1951. Preliminary reports on
the flora of Wisconsin. No. 36. Scrophulari-
aceae. Trans. Wis. Acad. 40(2): 1 1 1-138.

_ 1963. Preliminary reports on the flora of

Wisconsin. No. 50. Compositae III — Compos¬
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rod. Trans. Wis. Acad. 52:353-382.

_ . 1979. Preliminary reports on the flora of

Wisconsin. No. 68. Caprifoliaceae — Honey¬
suckle Family. Trans. Wis. Acad. 68:103-129.

Stuckey, Ronald L. 1967. The “lost” plants of
Thomas Nuttall’s 1810 expedition into the old
northwest (the Great Lakes region). Mich. Bot.
14:131-143.

Tans, William E. & Robert H. Read. 1975. Re¬
cent Wisconsin records for some interesting
vascular plants in the western great lakes
region. Mich. Bot. 14:131-143.

_ ., and Hugh H. litis. 1979. Preliminary re¬
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relations and allied documents. 73 vol.
Burrows Bros., Cleveland. 55:1-322.

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Chicago. 1:1-418.

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Acad. 46:91-104.

ADDRESSES OF AUTHORS: Transactions Wisconsin Academy, 1983 (Pt. 2)

Ackley, Meredith
2640 North Booth Street
Milwaukee, WI 53212

Boush, G. Mallory
Department of Entomology
University of Wis. -Madison
Madison, WI 53706

Dorney, John R.

Weed Science Center
Crop Science Dept.

North Carolina State University
Raleigh, NC 27607

Evrard, James O.

Wetlands Wildlife Research,
D.N.R., Box 61
Baldwin, WI 54002

Fishkin, Kenneth Paul
Computer Science Division
University of Calif.-Berkeley
Berkeley, CA 94720

Held, John W.

Department of Biology
University of Wis. -LaCrosse
LaCrosse, WI 54601

Hutchison-Ceely, Sally
4344 Bagley Parkway
Madison, WI 53705

Johnson, Reed B.

50 Ver Bunker Avenue
Port Edwards, WI 54469

Kaplan, Louis
5725 Elder Place
Madison, WI 53705

Last, Donald

Soil and Water Conservation
U.W. Extension/College of
Natural Resources
Stevens Point, WI 54481

McCabe, Robert A.

Department of Wildlife Ecology
University of Wis. -Madison
Madison, WI 53706

Meyer, Wayne
Department of Library Science
Ball State University
Muncie, IN 47306

Missey, Jim
Department of English
University of Wis. -Stevens Point
Stevens Point, WI 54481

Payne, NeilF.

College of Natural Resources
University of Wis. -Stevens Point
Stevens Point, WI 54481

Pellitteri, Phillip
Department of Entomology
University of Wis. -Madison
Madison, WI 53706

Piechowski, Marjorie
Office of Research Support
Marquette University
Milwaukee, WI 53233

Pitts, Major Richard M.
Department of Military Science
Texas A & M University
P.O. Box 3220
College Station, TX 77841

Rill, Katherine D.

1520 Bowen Street
Oshkosh, WI 54901

Root, David A.

3017 Stanley Street
Stevens Point, WI 54481

Shifferd, Kent
Department of History
Northland College
Ashland, WI 54806

Williams, Elizabeth
Department of English
University of Wis. -Milwaukee
P.O. Box 413
Milwaukee, WI 53201

Zimmerman, James Hall
Department of

Landscape Architecture
University of Wis. -Madison
Madison, WI 53706

181

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Volume 12
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TRANSACTIONS

OF THE

WISCONSIN ACADEMY
OF SCIENCES, ARTS
AND LETTERS

Volume 72, 1984

Co-editors

PHILIP WHITFORD
KATHRYN WHITFORD

Copyright © 1984

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TRANSACTIONS OF THE
WISCONSIN ACADEMY

Established 1870
Volume 72, 1984

THE WIFE’S PROLOGUE AS ROLE PLAYING 1

James D. Alexander

HAWTHORNE’S CHILLINGWORTH: ALCHEMIST AND PHYSIOGNOMIST 8

Henry J. Lindborg

NOAH IN INTERNATIONAL WATERS 17

Kathy Piehl

THE ACCOMPLISHED LADY IN THE ENGLISH NOVEL 24

Susan Schoenbauer Thurin

THE CAPTAIN OF COMPANY K FIVE WARS LATER 36

Kent Gramm

THE RARE BOOK DEPARTMENT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-

MADISON: ORIGINS AND EARLY DEVELOPMENT, 1948-1960 40

Dennis Auburn Hill

THE WELFARE MUSE 49

Anthony Graybosch

SOME REFLECTIONS ON RIGHTS: HUMAN, NATURAL, MORAL,

AND FUNDAMENTAL 57

Marcus G. Singer

WISCONSIN’S WAR AGAINST RUSSIA, 1918-1919 65

Benjamin D. Rhodes

INCIDENT AT NORTHLINE 79

John Anthony Turcheneske, Jr.

THE CHANGING COMPADRAZGO IN THE UNITED STATES 87

Silvester J. Brito

FROM ARC LIGHTS TO GIGAWATTS FOR WESTERN WISCONSIN 97

Frederick H. C. Schultz

NATURAL HAZARD EXPOSURES, LOSSES AND MITIGATION COSTS

IN THE UNITED STATES, 1970-2000 106

Arthur A. Atkisson, William J. Petak and Daniel J. Alesch

MEDIA OF EXCHANGE 113

Edward E. Popp

BOTANISTS AND NATURALISTS AT DEVIL’S LAKE

STATE PARK, WISCONSIN 117

Kenneth I. Lange

HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN ARBORETUM PRAIRIES 130
Thomas J. Blewett and Grant Cottam

SOIL SURFACE DYNAMICS IN SELECTED PRAIRIES

OF THE ALDO LEOPOLD MEMORIAL RESERVE 145

Bruce R. Herrick

PHYTOCHEMICAL AND MORPHOLOGICAL DIFFERENTIATION

BETWEEN MYRIOPHYLLUM SPICATUM L. AND MYRIOPHYLLUM

EXALBESCENS FERN. IN TWO WISCONSIN LAKES 153

Stanley A. Nichols

THE CADDISFLIES (TRICHOPTERA) OF OTTER CREEK, WISCONSIN 157

Jeffrey C. Steven and William L. Hilsenhoff

GRAY PARTRIDGE IN NORTHWESTERN WISCONSIN 173

James O. Evrard

CHARACTERISTICS OF RUFFED GROUSE DRUMMING

SITES IN NORTHEASTERN WISCONSIN 177

Stephen DeStefano and Donald H. Rusch

BROOK LAMPREYS ( ICHTHYOMYZON FOSSOR AND LAMPETRA

APPENDIX) IN THE WISCONSIN PORTION

OF THE ILLINOIS RIVER DRAINAGE 183

Philip A. Cochran

LONG TERM COMPARISON OF THE POPULATION STRUCTURE OF THE

CISCO ( COREGONUS ARTEDII LE SUEUR) IN SMALLER LAKES 185

Lars G. Rudstam

THE DISTRIBUTION AND ZOOGEOGRAPHY OF LAKE TROUT,

LAKE WHITEFISH, AND NINESPINE STICKLEBACK IN VILAS

AND ONEIDA COUNTIES, WISCONSIN 210

John Lyons

THE CRYSTALLINE MONADNOCKS OF NORTH-CENTRAL WISCONSIN 212

Gene E. Musolf

ADDRESSES OF AUTHORS

223

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COUNCILORS-AT-LARGE

TERM EXPIRES 1988
James Crow, Madison
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TERM EXPIRES 1987

James R. Johnson, River Falls
Daniel O. Trainer, Stevens Point

TERM EXPIRES 1986
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TERM EXPIRES 1985
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1984 FELLOWS OF THE WISCONSIN ACADEMY

Aaron Bohrod, Madison
Gunnar Johansen, Blue Mounds
James Crow, Madison
Frances Hamerstrom, Plainfield

1984 AWARDS
Academy Citations:

Eagle Valley Environmentalists, Inc., Apple River, IL
Nancy Oestreich Lurie, Milwaukee
Hannah Werwath Swart, Fort Atkinson

Gordon MacQuarrie Award:

Dave Otto, Green Bay (Green Bay Press Gazette)

THE WIFE’S PROLOGUE AS ROLE PLAYING

James D. Alexander
Department of English
University of Wisconsin Center — Marshfield

Ever since Chaucer created the Wife of
Bath, she has taken on a life of her own. The
sheer length of her own Prologue serves as a
realistic portrayal of a person who talks too
much, of one who simply takes too long to
get to the point. As the Friar exclaims, hers
is a long preamble to a tale (1. 837), and the
modern reader tends to agree. Her Prologue
is almost twice the length of her story and
longer than the total of the introductory
material to all the stories in the Canterbury
cycle (Sedgwick 1934:263). Perhaps Chaucer
allowed her to ramble on so long because
even he became seduced by her astonishing
complexity and lifelike autonomy. Of all the
Canterbury Pilgrims, she is the one Chaucer
refers to by name in his other poetry, as
when he tells Bukton on the subject of mar¬
riage to rede the Wyf of Bathe (Robinson ed.
1961:539).

In this century alone the Wife has gone
through several stages of interpretation. She
has been seen as a one-dimensional figure,
with a storehouse of medieval learning
(Shumaker 1951); as an iconographic char¬
acter made into a vehicle, or a butt, of
antifeminist satire (Robertson 1962; Weiss-
man 1975); as a woman whose speech shows
she is in contention with the mores of her
world (Schauber and Spolsky 1977); and
most recently as a case study in neuroticism
(Fritz 1980). Even the literature on the Wife
has spawned a literature. Sands, for exam¬
ple, has a whole article comparing the views
of critics on the Wife’s personality, with
only a passing glance at the primary source
itself (1978).

But far too much of what has been said
about the Wife is based on the substance of
her report, often in isolation from the
literary construct in which she is portrayed.

Almost no one has testified to the dramatic
properties of the Wife’s discourse. No analy¬
sis of Dame Alison will be definitive unless it
views her lines not as a text, but as an act.
No critical assessment will be complete until
it sees the Wife as being the speaker of lines,
the player of parts, the central figure in a
well-contrived dramatic monologue. 1

Our ears should be able to make out the
surface markers that give the Wife’s lines the
sound of talk. There is the colloquial
“these” for a familiar referent, in Thise
wormes ne thise motthes ne thise mites (586).
Now we have been cautioned against con¬
cluding that a medieval character’s syntax is
“chaotic” simply because it is not like our
own, since Chaucerians did use a different
and apparently more colloquial syntax in
their poetry than we do (Roscow 1981:1-9).
Still, a number of syntactic shifts seem to be
idiosyncratic to characters, as the shift from
“us” to “she” in Some for oure shape , and
some for oure fairness, /And som for she can
outher singe or daunce (264-5) (Schlauch
1952). Other shifts in number (400-401, 568,
698) may not be salient only because they are
integrated so naturalistically in the Wife’s
speech. There are numerous imperatives like
Now herkneth hou I bar me prop rely (230),
most of which are superfluous because they
command speakers to do something they are
already doing, or do not need to do, but
function as vocal indices of insistence.
Emphasis comes from the frequent use of
“will” in lines like For sith I wol not kepe
me chast in al (52) and of double negatives,2
like I ne owe hem nat a word that it nis quit
(431). Other lines are intensified by vocal
idioms, like by my trouthe in For, by my
trouthe, I quitte hem word for word (428),
which underscore the Wife’s resolve to fol-

1

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low her own inclinations. Certain set phrases
and set expressions, including proverbs,
which occur so often in the Wife’s talk are
not just filler; they are what Ong calls oral
formulae , marking discourse as having de¬
scended patently from an oral culture (1982:
26). Part of this complex are the oaths, like
“God knows” in For God it woot, I chidde
hem spitously (229), that in Alison’s talk
ironically call on God to witness her most
un-Christian activities: her indulgence in
fleshly pleasures and her tyranny over her
husbands. Other indices of vocal strength¬
ening are Alison’s exaggerations, as her
claim that she told everything to her con¬
fidante about her husband, even if he “did
something that would have cost his life”
(541); and the strength of language she uses
in her sweeping dismissals, those one-or-
two-liners, some blistering with invective:
With wilde thonder-dint and firy levene/
Mote thy welked nekke be tobroke! (282-3).

The Wife’s recourse to word play substan¬
tiates Chaucer’s remark that she has a talent
for laughing and talking in company (GP
476). There is the use of dighte in the senses
of both ‘copulated with’ and ‘dressed’ in
t'espye wenches that he dighte (404) and
aside from double entendres, numerous puns
l flour (119, 483), ba (439), leek (578), croce
(490), daungerous (520)], 3 and those
coarsely figurative expressions, like having
‘delight in bacon’ (424) which pass for
“country talk.”4

One item occurs so repeatedly that the
hearer cannot but conclude that the Wife is
preoccupied by the idea. The phrase bere on
honde has as its primary sense ‘to govern,’
and as secondary senses ‘to convince,’ and
‘to accuse falsely.’5 Its frequent use (232,
238, 333, 386, 399, 581) is an index to the
Wife’s character, since it reflects how she
sees herself in relation to her husbands: thus
. . . bar I stifly mine olde housbondes on
honde (385-6). Colloquial and physical, the
idiom illustrates her propensity for having
her husbands in her grasp; it shows her
desire to dominate. The phrase is probably
intended to be accompanied by a manual

gesture. As such it functions as a stage
direction, a way of establishing a setting in
words, like Alison’s reference to the “tun”
the Pardoner is drinking from at the time
(176).

It is in fact when we hear Chaucer’s lines
read by an actress that we become aware of
how much they were designed for oral de¬
livery. An example is lines 9 to 25 as read by
Dame Peggy Ashcroft:

But me was told, certain, nat longe agoon is,
That sith that Christ ne wente nevere but ones
To wedding in the Cane of Galilee,

That by the same ensample taughte he me
That I ne sholde wedded be but ones.

Herke eek, lo, which a sharp word for the nones,
Biside a welle, Jesus, God and man,

Spak in repreve of the Samaritan:

“Thou has yhad five housbondes,’’ quod he,
“And that ilke man that now hath thee
Is nat thyn housbonde.’’ Thus saide he certain.
What that he mente therby I can nat sayn,

But that I axe why the fifthe man
Was noon housbonde to the Samaritan?

How manye mighte she han in mariage?

Yit herde I nevere tellen in myn age
Upon this nombre diffinicioun.6

In line 9 we hear the voice begin low, remote,
with a quality of wonder, and rise to the
incredulity of ne . . . wedded be but ones.
Then there is a break. With Herke, we hear a
tone of querulousness, as the speaker passes
into the second Biblical text, now moving
more quickly through the quote as she builds
to the climax. This is followed by a half-line,
in a tone of childlike assurance, Thus said he
certain, as if the speaker wants to testify to
the fact that the strangest stuff does occur
somewhere in Scripture. There is a sudden
modulation, the lines afterward taking on
different voice qualities in quick succession.
What that is delivered with flippant jocular¬
ity. But that I axe is impatient. The two
following questions are insistent. There is a
break. The kicker then comes with the voice,
now stretched to encompass all the Wifely
experience, climbing to an authoritative
ring, and then, with the word diffinicioun,
the voice drops to the hint of a giggle. This

1984]

Alexander — The Wife’s Prologue

3

quality of recitation, which enhances mean¬
ing and gives the impression that Alison is
enjoying her own lines, is a tribute, of
course, to the probity of the actress. But the
fact that Chaucer can provide the literal
basis for tonal changes, and thus for shifts
and starts of feeling, shows that our full
appreciation depends upon our tuning in
upon Alison speaking.

As indicated above, insisting is one thing
the Wife does, but she is also engaged in
confiding , arguing , and challenging. These
are the speech acts of the Wife, as identified
by Schauber and Spolsky (1977:26), who
conclude, 4 The overwhelming message we
receive from Alison’s Prologue is of her
incessant struggle with the givens of her
world, her indomitable revisionism, subver¬
sion, reordering.” The writers hold that
distinguishing her speech acts is a major way
of “knowing” a character. It can also be
held that the theory of speech acts, when
applied to literature, aids us in knowing the
text as well, for we then assume that the text
is not merely words but part of an action
intended by a speaker to have an effect on a
hearer, however fictional they both are.
There are indications, even surface features,
that the first and second persons are fore¬
grounded in Alison’s lines.

The 17 or so questions that occur in the
Wife’s address to the Pilgrims all have the
effect of drawing the hearers into her dis¬
course. The earlier ones, those before line
168, like How manye mighte she han in
manage? (23) do give the Wife a tone of
contentiousness. The later ones, however,
like What sholde I say? (633) and woostou
why? (568) momentarily halt and reverse the
flow of her confessio, and thereby lend it
some liveliness. The same quality comes
from the exclamations she makes on her sub¬
ject. There are the irreverent outbursts like
Which yifte of God hadde he for alle his
wives! (39), and asides like Ye woot wel what
/ mene of this, pardee (206), this one a leer¬
ing reference to her old husbands’ impotence
while she tells how she taxed them. Once she
interrupts herself to show her feeling of out¬

rage: Fy! speek namore—it is a grisly thing
(741). Here it is almost as if the Wife is brief¬
ly taking on the role of hearer of her words.
A later couplet has her pulling herself back
from mental rambling in the words, But now
sire— la t me see, what shal I sayn?/Aha, by
God, I have my tale again (591-2). In addi¬
tion to these features of spontaneity are
those that indicate the Wife’s side of the
interaction with the audience. A whole suc¬
cession of first person pronouns may occur
within a short space: I wol . . . I nam . . . wol
I . . . If I . . . me . . . My housbonde . . . wol
I, I wol ... my dettour . . . my thral . . . I am
... I have ... al my life . . . unto me
(154-66) all within 13 lines. Other lines show
Alison personalizing the scriptural texts and
proverbs, as ‘Paul told me’ and ‘Christ
taught me’ (166, 12); God bad us for to wexe
and multiply e; /That gentil text can I well
understonde (28-9). Muscatine has remarked
that the Wife “swallows” whole Biblical
texts into her monologue and adapts them to
her personality (1966:209). The rather fre¬
quent occurrence of the subjunctive is ex¬
plained in that Alison continually inserts her
own feelings into her lines: the devel go
therewith! (482), God his soule blesse! (531),
Blessed be God that I have wedded five (44).
In these passages the interruptors,7 the
asides, the questions, all underscore the
Wife’s involvement in her material, im¬
posing her personality on it, as well as stress
her consciousness of an audience.

And the audience that Alison is in trans¬
action with, the Canterbury Pilgrims, is one
which, according to Kittredge, is taking a
“lively interest” in what she says (1911-
12:440). So compelling is her discourse that
it actually provokes someone to respond, as
when the Pardoner interrupts with his
comments on his intended marriage. The
audience contracts briefly to the “young
man” alone whom the Wife addresses, as¬
suring him she will warn him away from
matrimony. At another point the Wife’s
concept of audience seems to shift to a class
of people who are not on the Pilgrimage,
those to whom she wants to confide the wiles

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she uses to keep men under dominance: Ye
wise wyves , that conne under stonde, /Thus
sholde ye speke and here him wrong on
honde (231-2).

The dramatic monologue derives its qual¬
ity from a person’s speaking in a well-
defined situation, conscious that she is
before an audience. The person is in trans¬
action with one or more listeners. The per¬
son is portrayed as a character by being
caught in the act of revealing herself, with all
of its implications for unreliability and dra¬
matic irony. The speaker is dynamic, chang¬
ing in time, becoming more and more com¬
plex as she reveals herself to us, and as we
undergo successive realizations about her.

The unreliability of the Wife as a spokes¬
person is manifested by a number of rhetor¬
ical features. Readers have already com¬
mented on the distortions Alison gives to the
Scriptures, especially to the Cana text and to
the Samaritan woman exemplum 8 She then
mounts a suspect analogy, on the issue of
successive marriage, between the Biblical
patriarchs (who were populating the earth)
and herself (who never admits to having chil¬
dren). This, when it is concluded with her
leering over the prospect of Solomon’s wed¬
ding nights, must have made her hearers
smile.

Alison’s numerous repetitions serve to
stamp a quality of spontaneity on her lines.
She overuses the terms bigamy e (33-102),
chastitee (100-147), and purvey (566-91), and
she belabors the notions of virginity (65-98)
and procreation (121-43). As a debator she
relies distinctly more on rhetoric than on
logic. Whereas she claims to defend remar¬
riage, she really defends the state of mar¬
riage. Whereas she has begun by insisting
virginity is not obligated, she at length holds
that she will not oblige procreation. Both
assertions are a manifest shifting of the
grounds of her argument.

Other features show that the Wife has not
carefully edited her speech, mainly those
instances of digression. She announces that
she will speak from experience, and then

undertakes a tour of the authorities. She
refers at the outset to the wo in the wedded
state (3), and does not arrive at the subject
until about 200 lines later, after the Par¬
doner’s interruption pulls her back. Then
she promises to tell her tale (178, 199), but it
has to wait. At line 458 Alison says she will
speak of her fourth husband. The 30 or so
lines that follow furnish us with an expose
rather of the Wife, her appetites and the loss
of her beauty. She tries again. In line 486 she
embarks on the subject of her fourth hus¬
band, but she actually explains what treat¬
ment the man got at her hands, purgatorial,
and how stingily she buried him. In line 509
she moves on to her fifth husband, but then
she really recounts how she courted Jankyn
when her fourth was still alive. At this point
she becomes so diverted by her anecdote of
the fictive symbolic dream that she must
catch herself from betraying something
dangerous.9 Finally, after illustrating her
new husband’s obnoxious habit of reading
to her from the clerkly writings, she departs
into a disquisition on clerks (694-716). By
the end of her 834-line monologue she is
again announcing her tale.

Among the more obvious dramatic fea¬
tures in the Wife’s Prologue are those
instances of exhibitionism. She demands the
attention of others through histrionics:
Allas, alias that evere love was sinne! (620).
She climaxes her account of her marital
experiences, and of her Prologue, with a line
more melodramatic than any in the Tales: O
hast thou slain me, false thief? (806).

When Alison cites others, she either gives
her own digested version of the authorities
or, with the exception of Jankyn’s final
lines, quotes herself. When she relates to the
audience her confrontations with her hus¬
bands, all the lines are her own. She ac¬
counts for her husbands’ words only in the
report she makes of them in her sample of
invective against her husbands. She punctu¬
ates her lines with thou saist, probably to
keep the hearers aware that the accusations
are consistently to be attributed to her

1984]

Alexander — The Wife's Prologue

5

husbands. She then abruptly dismisses the
accusations, and thus her husbands, with
steaming epithets. Here Alison is claiming
the prerogative of the dramatist, in assigning
lines, and that of the stage director, in dis¬
posing of the characters at will. As it hap¬
pens, she has all the lines and she has the last
word; she seems to be enjoying herself at her
absent husbands’ expense.

Now it is one thing to claim that the
Wife’s lines ramble and another to claim
that her Prologue is disunited.10 If the
Prologue seems to lack unity, the impression
comes only from viewing the content of the
work and not the act the speaker is engaging
in. There is a source of esthetic integrity in
the succession of revelations the Wife gives
to her listeners. They would first be famil¬
iarized with Dame Alison from her portrait
in Chaucer’s General Prologue. From this
she appears as a type figure well known to
medievals. She derives both from the charac¬
ter of La Vieille, the old lady, in The
Romance of the Rose , who knows all the
intricacies of amorous love, and from the
type of the much remarried wife, “liber¬
ated,” uninhibited about acting out in
company (Rowland 1972:385). There are
several clear references in her own Prologue
keyed to her portrait in the General Pro¬
logue: her dress, her deafness, her gapped
teeth, her being remarried five times, and her
craft at seduction. Chaucer then adds ele¬
ments to the Wife’s character that serve to
pull it away from the medieval stereotype.
She launches into the subject of her frequent
remarriage, a sore point among medievals,
and so reveals herself to be assertive,
argumentative. Here she adopts the role of
disputant. She then promises to inform her
audience of the hardships of marriage, but
she really intends to inform wives from her
own experience on how to keep the upper
hand when they are accused by their hus¬
bands. The martial quality of her tempera¬
ment, by which she has sought at all times to
dominate her husbands, emerges. She has
assumed the role of domestic tyrant. At this

point while the Wife reveals she is strong-
willed, she testifies to a powerful acquisitive
instinct. It bristles in her many proverbs,
with their mice that have more than one
hole, their hands that lure hawks, their
people who are the first to grind at mills.
These and the ruthlessly commercial diction
she applies to the marital arrangement, paye
his dette (159), dettour (161), raunson (417),
put the Wife in the role of exploiter , of
opportunist who sees life as a series of
business transactions for which she must be
prepared. She has already given utterance to
her promiscuity, with imagery variously
comparing herself to a magpie, a nightin¬
gale, a colt, but it is in the later part of her
Prologue that she reveals her erotic drive.
She makes it clear that she has remarried
most recently for this reason — out of the
Venus instinct in her character. But this
is directly in conflict with the desire to
dominate, and this desire overwhelms her in
her role of lover , so that the Wife then
recounts her achievement of mastery over
Jankyn. Chaucer seems to be presenting suc¬
cessive stages in our apprehension of the
Wife’s character almost as if he were peeling
away the layers of an onion.

The Wife, then, is a dynamic figure, not
of one who undergoes change quite so much
as one who brings about change in her audi¬
ence’s awareness of her. What listeners
earlier hear as defense of a life style, they
now hear as lusty venturesomeness; what
they earlier hear as resourcefulness, they
now hear as exploitativeness; what they
earlier hear as bold assertiveness, they now
hear as aggressive self-interest.

This is not to say that the various roles the
Wife assumes are mutually exclusive.
Alison, who is complex, can play multiple
roles. For instance, at the point when she
passes from disputant to domestic tyrant
(192), she disclaims all seriousness, and says
her intent is for to pleye. The diversity of her
character may in fact be the diversity of an
abnormal personality. Recent psychological
analyses of the evidence in the Wife’s lines

6

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

show that she is an authentic case study in
neuroticism It is the neuroticism of the
person who can at one moment speak in jest
and at another disclose that she has some¬
how driven her husbands to the grave. 1 1

Thus the integrity of the Wife’s Prologue
comes from the speaker’s dynamic quality, a
quality which is vital to the dramatic mono¬
logue: a character changes, or the audience’s
apprehension of a character changes, as the
character gradually reveals himself. And as
the audience for Browning’s “My Last
Duchess’’ modifies its estimate of the Duke,
while he shows himself capable of more and
more drastic measures to maintain his dom¬
inance, the listeners have an analogous
experience as the Wife of Bath reveals her¬
self more and more ruthless in the pursuit of
her instincts.

For like Browning’s Duke, the Wife is not
to be trusted in what she reports of her life. 12
Of the many contradictions in the Wife’s
Prologue which she is unaware of, are these.
Alison says that God commanded us to
increase and multiply (as a defense of her
marital yearnings), but nowhere does she
admit to having borne children. She claims
that she wants to live in a way that is little
less than perfect, but she reveals that her
appetites are wholly undisciplined. She says
that she will comply with her husbands’
sexual desires at any time, yet she later states
that she would never satisfy her husband
without a price. Her open confession of her
marital tactics confirms the very accusations
she claims clerks make scurrilously against
women. The crowning contradiction of
course is that Alison cherishes the memory
of the period when Jankin was not to be
mastered, but she claims that all was idyllic
in their marriage only when he submitted to
her.13

Such contradictions, when they are ex¬
pressed by a character seemingly unaware of
them, are the stuff of dramatic irony.

Another ironic element, which is situa¬
tional, but which is compounded (because it
is not recognized) into dramatic irony, com¬

prises the reversals working through the
Wife’s Prologue. If she is standoffish with
her husbands, she holds, may God give her
sorrow. In fact she is standoffish, and in fact
she comes in for a share of grief. She reveals
that when she married Jankyn she turned
over her possessions to him (636-7), a
reversal of the situation of her prior
marriages, one which she never quite realizes
(Dempster 1959: 81). Then, we recall that the
Wife earlier reminisces on the grief she has
caused her husbands, in the line O Lord! the
paine I did hem and the wo (390). Later she
repeats the words, but in their mirror image
form. Nothing so clearly underscores the
reversion upon self of the same grief, now
done her by Jankyn, than this line: Who
wolde weene . . . The wo that in myn herte
was , and pine? (792-3).

Readers do not tend to think of the Wife
of Bath’s Prologue as dramatic monologue.
A look in Hugh Holman’s Handbook of
Literature (1972) under the entry dramatic
monologue turns up illustrations of the
genre in citations from Tennyson, Brown¬
ing, and more recent poets, but Chaucer is
not mentioned. Still, it is in her role playing
that the confrontation emerges between the
Wife of Bath and her world, and between
her and herself. And it is in her speaking
roles that we can account for Alison’s bois¬
terousness, her indomitability, her rampant
individualism, her carnality, her acquisitive¬
ness, her neuroticism, and her fascination
with that last young man.

Notes

1 The Norton Anthology (1975) is used for all cita¬
tions to The Wife’s Prologue.

2 Rifaterre holds that the reality of a stylistic device is
proved by its existence in a convergence with another
feature of style (1959:172-3). Certain convergences,
especially of wol with double negatives, seem to be
stylistic indicators of assertiveness on the part of the
Wife.

3 The puns are explicated in MacLaine (1964:110-12).
Also see Sanders (1968:192-5).

4 There is a publication of such rural expressions,
though many of the submissions come from the city:
Dick Syatt, Country Talk (Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel
Press, 1980).

1984]

A lexander— The Wife's Prologue

7

5 Duncan gives a concordance for honde as it occurs
in the Wife’s Prologue, which includes the senses cited
(1966).

6 Caedmon TC 1101, 1961.

7 Muscatine writes that exclamations like Herke eek
serve as well to “refresh the illusion of speaker and
actual audience” (1966:209-10).

8 Preston (1952:242); Speirs (1967:137-8) points out
that the Wife misapplies quotations, ones especially
from the Bible. Also, Bradley observes that the Wife
garbles the Scriptural and sermon literature (1956: 625).

9 There is a clear sign here of the fact that Alison and
Jankyn were accomplices in the murder of the fourth
husband, as explained by Rowland (1973:277). Sands
(1973:179) corroborates this interpretation.

10 Rowland reports this allegation (1972:385, 393).

11 See Rowland and Sands above in 9. Fritz
(1980:171) explains that an animus-possessed woman
such as the Wife is quite capable of driving a husband to
death by sickness or accident.

12 Parker (1970) provides extensive evidence for the
Wife’s untrustworthiness.

13 See Parker (1970:98). This contradiction is
explained most eloquently by Magee (1971:41-2).

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Duncan, Edgar H. ‘“Bear on Hond’ in The Wife
of Bath’s Prologue .” Tennessee Studies in
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Fritz, D. W. “The Animus-Possessed Wife of
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MacLaine, Allan H. The Students Comprehen¬
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Rifaterre, Michael. “Criteria for Style Analy¬
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_ . “On the Timely Death of the Wife of

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Sanders, Barry. “Further Puns from the Pro¬
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Sedgwick, Henry Dwight. Dan Chaucer. New
York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1934.

Shumaker, Wayne. “Alison in Wander-land: A
Study in Chaucer’s Mind and Literary
Method.” A Journal of English Literary
History. 18 (June 1951). 77-89.

Speirs, John. Chaucer the Maker. London: Faber
and Faber, 1967.

Weissman, Hope Phyllis. “Antifeminism and
Chaucer’s Characterization of Women.” In
George D. Economou, ed., Geoffrey Chaucer.
New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975. Pp. 93-110.

The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Second
Edition. F. N. Robinson, ed. Boston:
Houghton-Mifflin, 1961.

HAWTHORNE’S CHILLINGWORTH:
ALCHEMIST AND PHYSIOGNOMIST

Henry J. Lindborg
Marian College of Fond du Lac
Fond du Lac , Wisconsin

Transformation has special significance to
those poet-prophets of the American Renais¬
sance who themselves undergo a kind of sha-
manic initiation to perceive in the flux of
nature those forces which “weave and warp
and broider at the Godhead’s living garb.’’1
In Walden , for example, Thoreau reveals the
poet not only shaping his vision but being
shaped by it in the creation of sacred space
and in ritual purification.2 In linking the
human and divine spheres in the organic
cycle of nature, Thoreau draws upon a num¬
ber of sources from mystery cults of antiq¬
uity to Eastern religions for patterns of
metamorphosis in a complex symbolic
framework, a method also employed by
major fiction writers equally concerned with
changes wrought upon men by the visions
they embrace — Melville’s practice with
Ishmael in Moby-Dick being a signal
example. Transformation is no less signif¬
icant in the writings of Nathaniel Haw¬
thorne, whose The Scarlet Letter evinces
great sophistication in its use of the patterns
of change.3

This study will explore the change of The
Scarlet Letter's Roger Chilling worth, as he
descends from a high-minded philosopher to
a fiend. While Hawthorne outlines the old
man’s transformation in demonic terms
recognizable as belonging to the romance’s
Puritan milieu, he includes elements which
clearly suggest occult frames of reference
which serve both to enhance the psycho¬
logical revelations of the book and to pro¬
vide ironic counterpoint to the limitations of
the Puritan perspective. Before exploring the
roles of Chillingworth as physiognomist and
alchemist, however, it is necessary to discuss
the complex narrative method of Haw¬

thorne’s most famous work in terms of both
the processes of transformation and the
presentation of the Puritan outlook.

The Scarlet Letter is premised upon
renewal of the higher faculties of its
narrator, who escapes the “enervating
magic’’ of the Custom-House which he fears
“might make me permanently other than I
had been, without transforming me into any
shape it would be worth my while to take.’’4
His restored capacity “to live throughout the
whole range of his faculties and sensibil¬
ities’’ (p. 40) frees him from the materialism
and torpid senility of the Custom-House and
enables him to create the romance through
interpretation of the cabalistic letter.5 This
significant change in the inner life of the
artist is presented by the narrator as a
figurative death, a metaphorical decapita¬
tion through the loss of his Custom-House
office (p. 43). Though the narrator’s playful
suggestion that he writes from the grave (p.
44) has obvious ironic overtones in terms of
Hawthorne’s loss of position, at the same
time it establishes a pattern of death and
rebirth which is important throughout the
romance.6

In a sense, through his metaphorical death
the narrator takes up the position of the de¬
ceased Surveyer Pue, from whose “ghostly
hand’’ (p. 33) he receives the central symbol
of the romance along with Pue’s historical
researches on it. Thus, at the verge of life, in
the imaginative realm which ghosts inhabit
(p. 36), the artist’s power to interpret the
letter and to gain control over the “corpses’’
(p. 34) of his characters is restored. Here the
artist operates in “a neutral territory, some¬
where between the real world and fairy-land,
where the Actual and the Imaginary may

8

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Lindborg — Hawthorne ’s Chillingworth

9

meet, and each imbue itself with the nature
of the other” (p. 36). But the Puritan
mythos which underlies the action of The
Scarlet Letter demands that the narrator deal
in matters which link not only “the Actual
and the Imaginary,” but also the human and
the divine.7

The romancer is seemingly thrust into the
position of prophet, interpreting what
appear to be the designs of Providence in the
Puritan drama of salvation. But though he
relies upon symbols which come out of the
Puritan Weltanschauung, he employs them
as revelatory of the human condition in this
world, not the next.8 In fact, all pretensions
to prophetic offices which would attempt to
see beyond that which is human meet with
irony throughout The Scarlet Letter. The
narrator provides overlapping interpreta¬
tions of psychological transformations
which reveal, often ironically, the depth and
complexity of lived experience.9 Elements of
Christian and occult belief establish the
place of the transforming power of the
human imagination in history; they are dis¬
covered in a Lebenswelt in which imagina¬
tion clothes under various guises the truths
of the human heart. 10

Presented as they are in a complex his¬
torical vision, the romance’s transformation
motifs rely on a code of communication
which has, in common with allegory, an
assumption of the reader’s knowledge of
religious tradition, as well as the practice of
objectification of interior conflicts in
symbolic terms. The romance’s tragic design
is enhanced by the irony of such motifs
reflecting the action of human passions on a
symbolic stage which transcends humanity.
The narrator’s objective stance gives full
weight to the division between the roles
characters play and their underlying human¬
ity, a division which is significant to the
tradition of the nineteenth-century realist
novel as well as tragic drama. 1 1

The principal transformations in The
Scarlet Letter treat the activation of human
potential through processes which include

figurative deaths like that of the narrator in
“The Custom-House.” These are played
against one another in highly controlled and
balanced interactions of characters whereby
change in one causes change in another.12
Since multiple interpretations of such trans¬
formations are resolved dramatically rather
than theologically, it is necessary to explore
Chillingworth’s metamorphosis within its
dramatic context, while at the same time
paying close attention to its connotative
values, especially as Puritan vision is juxta¬
posed with unorthodox viewpoints.

Two secrets are the springs of the dramatic
action which transforms The Scarlet Letter’s
principal characters: that Dimmesdale is
Pearl’s father, which Hester refuses to reveal
before the Puritan community (III), and that
Chillingworth is her husband, which she
agrees to conceal during an interview in the
privacy of her prison cell (IV). These, along
with the symbolism associated with the
Puritan point of view, are established by the
romance’s first four chapters, thereby pro¬
viding a context in which the passions of a
secret domestic triangle will be interpreted in
terms of the Puritan drama of salvation.

Hester’s transformation in the eyes of the
Puritans is the book’s first metamorphosis;
the scarlet letter “drew all eyes, and as it
were, transfigured the wearer,” the narrator
comments, “so that both men and women,
who had been familiarly acquainted with
Hester Prynne, were now impressed as if
they beheld her for the first time” (p. 53).
The term transfiguration in this passage
connotes a mode of revelation present
throughout the romance; in its broadest
sense, it suggests a manifestation of that
which has been present but heretofore
hidden.13 Here the community sees Hester
for the first time in her role as adulteress,
which is conditioned by Mr. Wilson’s con¬
ventional sermon endowing the letter with
infernal significance and reducing its wearer
to what Chillingworth calls “a living sermon
against sin” (p. 63). 14 However, the scene
preserves an inward human reality as against

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the abstract Puritan interpretation of sin.
Hester’s life as a woman has indeed entered
a new stage, and as she stands before the
community the young woman contemplates
the path which bought her to the scaffold.

In a series of “phantasmagoric” (p. 57)
scenes which Hester calls up to relieve her
agony on the scaffold, she traces her child¬
hood, maidenhood, and marriage— presum¬
ably the last public festival at which she has
been the object of attention. Her marriage
has offered her “a new life,” but one which
nourished “itself on time-worn materials,
like a tuft of green moss on a crumbling
wall” (p. 58). This marriage, by betraying
her into a relationship with “decay” (p. 75),
set the stage for her adultery in a situation
not uncommon in literature and folk tale.
But in The Scarlet Letter these circumstances
are given a tragic dignity. For throughout
the romance, promises of a new life offer to
the characters only stronger ties with death
and illusory hopes of regeneration. The
tragedy of the book lies in the opposition of
Hester’s passions to community imperatives
which are imposed upon her through an ill-
fated marriage. 15 No social forms permit her
to act out the full range of her “faculties and
sensibilities,” to put her plight in the terms
established in “The Custom-House.”

Just as Hester seemingly becomes another
person in her transformation, so her
husband is also transformed by it. As he
stands by the scaffold he suppresses the
“writhing horror” which “twisted itself
across his features, like a snake gliding
swiftly over them” (p. 61), and signals
Hester to be silent. He then meets with her in
prison to demand that she “Let . . . thy
husband be to the world as one already dead,
and of whom no tidings shall ever come” (p.
76). With her consent, Prynne becomes
another man who seeks a “home” (p. 76) in
his secret connection with Hester as he had
in his unfortunate marriage to her (p. 74).
Prynne’s transformation to Chillingworth
thus takes place with a figurative death.
With this death he activates his potential for

hatred. He announces to Hester his purpose
of discovering and gaining control over her
paramour, leading her to ask if the old man
is not “like the Black Man that haunts the
forest round about us” (p. 77). And in fact,
Chillingworth ’s degeneration to a demon is a
principal transformation of the first half of
The Scarlet Letter. Significantly, Hester’s
silence permits this change, as it allows the
changes in the Rev. Mr. Dimmesdale under
Chillingworth ’s baleful influence.

Chillingworth’s means of discovery of
Dimmesdale’s secret and his purposes in
doing so are purely personal and mortal; in
fact, so linked to mortality is he that his
interests are presented in metaphors of death
and corruption. He works his way toward
the minister from outward signs which offer
to him clear clues of Dimmesdale’s relation¬
ship to Hester and Pearl. Mid-way through
the first half of The Scarlet Letter (VIII), at
the inquest called by the ministers and
magistrates to determine Hester’s fitness to
rear Pearl, Chillingworth remarks upon the
“strange earnestness” (p. 115) with which
the young minister defends Hester’s right to
custody of the child. He also observes
Pearl’s sympathetic response to her father
(p. 115), an echo of her gesture toward him
on the scaffold three years before (p. 67).
But when he comments upon the possibilities
of discovering Pearl’s parentage from her
person, the Puritans recoil.

The old physician exclaims: “A strange
child! ... It is easy to see the mother’s part
in her. Would it be beyond a philosopher’s
research, think ye, gentlemen, to analyze
that child’s nature, and from its make and
mould, to give a shrewd guess at the
father?” The Rev. Mr Wilson, though he
had urged Hester to reveal the child’s father
on the scaffold, immediately rejects the
knowledge offered by “profane philos¬
ophy;” he suggests that each man ought to
act the part of Pearl’s unknown father,
leaving “the mystery as we find it, unless
Providence reveal it of its own accord” (p.
116). The Puritan’s unwillingness to explore

1984]

Lindborg — Hawthorne *s Chillingworth

11

Pearl’s riddle is in keeping with the scrip¬
tural injunction to “judge nothing before
the time, until the Lord come; who will bring
to light the hidden things of darkness, and
will make manifest the counsels of hearts’’ (I
Cor. 4:5). Chillingworth, however, moils
about in the darkness seeking to read hearts,
not to bring their secrets to light, but for
personal revenge.

Chillingworth’s attention to Pearl’s “out¬
ward make and mould” indicates that he is a
practicing physiognomist, gaining his knowl¬
edge from the body. The “science” he em¬
ploys, condemned in Elizabethan England,
was codified in the eighteenth century by
Lavater, whom Hawthorne read, and offers
explanations of the physician’s methods; for
example, according to Lavater, “illegitimate
children tend to resemble one parent more
than another, which likeness may become
more evident over time.” 16 This is in fact one
of the possibilities Dimmesdale himself fears
(p. 206). In addition, Lavater proposes that
parents and children have natural affinities,
a belief which Chillingworth announces
when he visits Hester in prison and com¬
ments that tiny Pearl will not recognize him
as her father (p. 72), only shortly after the
infant has made a tell-tale response to
Dimmesdale.17

According to Lavater, the physiognomist
exercises his art with a “secret delight,”
discerning “those internal motives which
would otherwise be first revealed in the
world to come.”18 Chillingworth does in fact
discover what the Puritans would leave to
Providence, but he is limited to corporeal
signs to the point that only a physical mani¬
festation of the letter on the minister’s
person provides him with certain knowledge
of Dimmesdale’s guilt. Because Chilling¬
worth has no higher motive than his quest
for personal revenge, he is mired in the
mortality which his vision comprehends. The
new life which the old man adopts through
his figurative death is allied to decay, and in
the moral sphere his actions transform him
into a “fiend.”

The second quarter of The Scarlet Letter
traces the effects of his quest for and
discovery of Dimmesdale’s secret upon
Chillingworth himself (IX, X), and upon the
unfortunate minister (XI, XII). Chilling-
worth’s discovery activates his malice (p.
139) transforming him into a demon, while
Dimmesdale is impelled toward madness as
his undiscovered enemy subtly works on his
conscience. Ironically, as the pivotal “The
Minister’s Vigil” (XII) dramatizes, Dimmes¬
dale alone is unable to perceive his physi¬
cian’s demonic transformation. Having
departed “out of life as completely as if he
indeed lay at the bottom of the ocean,
whither rumor had long ago consigned him”
(p. 119), Chillingworth attaches all of his
interests to the minister with a single-
mindedness which limits him to the realms of
sin and death.

In his investigations Chillingworth is pre¬
sented by the narrator as a metaphorical
grave robber, digging “into the poor clergy¬
man’s heart, . . . like a sexton delving into a
grave, possibly in quest of a jewel that had
been buried on the dead man’s bosom, but
likely to find nothing save mortality and
corruption. Alas for his own soul, if these
were what he sought!” (p. 129). He does in
fact ignore all of the finer things he discovers
in Dimmesdale’s character while he seeks out
guilt (p. 130); in St. Paul’s terms, he is “a
natural man” who “receiveth not the things
of the spirit of God; for they are foolishness
unto him” (I Cor. 2:14). But limited to
mortality as he is, Chillingworth is inter¬
preted by all but Dimmesdale in spiritual,
though demonic, terms. And he does play a
role which is appropriately so interpreted,
but with a number of ironies and qualifica¬
tions included in its explication.

Two points may be advanced concerning
Chillingworth’s role as fiend or demon; first,
though it may be true that Hawthorne at
points gothicised him into unbelievability
through unfortunate dramatic emphasis, he
is not the only character to act the part of the
Black Man.19 Hester ascribes that identity to

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[Vol. 72

Dimmesdale when at Pearl’s insistence she
explains that she has met the Black Man in
the forest and the letter is his mark (p. 185).
This explanation comes shortly before she
again meets the minister in the forest, and
the child, not knowing whom they are to
encounter, expects the devil (p. 187). 20 And
after the forest meeting in which Hester
helps Dimmesdale to resolve to flee the
colony and take on a new identity, he feels
that he has met Satan in the person of Hester
(p. 222). 21 Though Chillingworth’s

identification as a demon may be more con¬
sistent than that of the other characters, it is
not less subject to multiple interpretation
and dramatic irony.

Second, Chillingworth does not share the
Puritan system of belief; in fact, he regards
Dimmesdale’s view that in his anguish he is
being tortured by a fiend as “the superstition
common to his brotherhood’’ (p. 171).
Through Dimmesdale’s orthodoxy the physi¬
cian is able to manipulate the minister in a
way which exercises in Puritan terms “a
devil’s office’’ (p. 170); but only when
Hester confronts her former husband with
what he has become does he see himself,
though fleetingly, as demonic (p. 172).

In an important scene, “Hester and the
Physician’’ (XIV), Hester attempts to
employ her influence for good to dissuade
her former husband from further exercising
the “quiet depth of malice, hitherto latent”
(p. 139) which he has activated in the
discovery of Dimmesdale’s secret. Here she
negates the promise she made during “The
Interview” (IV) and attempts to steer the old
physician from the course she foresaw for
him when she first designated his purposes as
those of the Black Man. Even in spite of that
“glare of red light” (p. 169) which the
narrator describes as emitted by Chilling-
worth’s eyes, Hester does not see his
demonic transformation as forever fixed.
She employs a species of what Lavater calls
pathonomy : “the knowledge of character”
through “the signs of the passions.” This is
“character in motion,” what a man “be¬

comes at particular moments; or what he
might be.”22 Knowing what Chillingworth
has been, Hester attempts to restore his bet¬
ter nature.23

Hester’s attempt is revelatory to Chilling¬
worth. It is in describing his work on the
minister that the physician sees what has
become of his former self, benevolent and
studious as both he and Hester recognize
him to have been. He asks Hester, “What
see you in my face . . . that you look at it so
earnestly?” (p. 170). Through Hester’s
response that “hatred . . . has transformed a
wise and just man to a fiend” (p. 173), he
understands that he has in fact fulfilled a
role drawn from the world-view of the
“superstitious” minister. He reacts “with a
look of horror, as if he had beheld some
frightful shape, which he could not recog¬
nize, usurping the place of his own image in
a glass” (p. 172). However, in scriptural
terms, he is “like unto a man beholding his
natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth
himself, and goeth his way, and straightway
forgetteth what manner of man he was” (Jas
I: 23-24).

Since Hester’s influence as a woman is
brought to bear in an attempt to save
Chillingworth from damnation, echoes of
Goethe’s Faust may come to mind; however,
she operates in a dramtic situation which
also recalls Marlowe’s version of the Faust
myth, in which the Old Man approaches
Faustus even at the threshold of his damna¬
tion with:

Though thou has now offended like a man,

Do not yet perserver in it like a devil.

Yet, yet, thou hast an amiable soul,

If sin by custom grow not into nature.24

In both cases the appeal fails. But here
Hester’s response is as significant as
Chillingworth’s. She, too, can be changed by
active passion, and her failure to win mercy
from the physician breeds hatred of him. She
mentally ascribes to him a whole catalogue
of infernal attributes, expecting him to
“spread bat’s wings and flee away, looking

1984]

Lindborg — Hawthorne ’s Chillingworth

13

so much the uglier, the higher he rose toward
heaven” (p. 176).

Chillingworth’ s transformation into a
fiend, most directly evident in this scene, is
presaged, as has been noted, by Hester in the
prison interview, and again when she sees an
ugly physical change in him at the Gover¬
nor’s mansion (p. 112). The people of Bos¬
ton also discern his “remarkable change”:
“At first, his expression had been calm,
meditative, scholar-like. Now, there was
something ugly and evil in his face, which
they had not previously noticed, and which
grew still the more obvious to sight, the
oftener they looked upon him” (p. 127). So
sinister does Chillingworth seem that they
see him as an evil spirit contesting with their
minister in a battle from which they expect
Dimmesdale to emerge “transfigured” (p.
128). Such a transfiguration does take place
in the public imagination, which converts the
hypocritical clergyman to an angel; but the
conflict they discern has other ironic dimen¬
sions which the people cannot fully under¬
stand.

Paradoxically, Chillingworth does act the
part the community assigns him, but he does
so by moving Dimmesdale toward self-
realization as Goethe’s Mephistopheles does
Faust, quite against his own aims.25 His
unwilling participation in the minister’s
“salvation” has further resonances than
those which apply to the community’s per¬
ceptions, however. For in taking up his
home with Dimmesdale, ostensibly to act as
his physician, Chillingworth establishes a
laboratory which the town sees as a passage
to hell: “According to the vulgar idea, the
fire in his laboratory had been brought from
the lower regions, and was fed with infernal
fuel; and so, as might be expected, his visage
was getting sooty with smoke” (p. 127). But
the science of alchemy, which Chillingworth
admits practicing and uses as an analogy for
his quest for the truth about Pearl’s father
(p. 75), is traditionally a path of spiritual
perfection, not of damnation.26

According to one writer whom Hawthorne

may have encountered about the time he was
working on The Scarlet Letter, “the
principal object of the alchemist was a
perfection of that knowledge by which the
secrets of nature could be laid open; and, so
far, was not only lawful, but a laudable
pursuit; particularly when* associated with
the prevailing and frequently repeated,
opinion, that the initiated were working
under the immediate sanction and guidance
of the Almighty.”27 For the alchemist as for
the physiognomist, to “make things that are
not perceived, but lie hid in shadow, to
appear, and to take from them their veil, is
granted to an intelligent philosopher through
nature.”28 Chillingworth does not desire
either the spiritual perfecting of Dimmesdale
or the public exposure to which that would
necessarily lead. But he does propel the
minister toward a rebirth which fits patterns
of both alchemical and Christian symbolism.

For the practitioner of alchemy, “death
was more a term implying transformation
than destruction.” “The perfection of every
thing . . . requires a new birth, as that which
is sowed is not quickened except it die; but
here death is taken for mutation, and not for
rotting under the clods.”29 Echoing as it
does I Corinthians: 15, this passage is
important in its elucidation of the multiple
possibilities of The Scarlet Letter's symbol¬
ism of death and rebirth. That alchemical
symbolism is indeed one of the possible
methods of viewing the romance’s spiritual
dimensions is made clear by the narrator in
his “Conclusion” (XXIV), in which he seeks
to draw morals and settle destinies.

Though Chillingworth would finally seem
to have unhumanized himself to the point of
necessarily being packed off to hell, the
narrator employs an alchemical analogy in
an attempt to “be merciful” to his
“shadowy beings,” including Chillingworth
(p. 260). He writes of love and hate: “Phil¬
osophically considered ... the two passions
seem essentially the same, except that one
happens to be seen in a celestial radiance,
and the other in a dusky and lurid glow. In

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[Vol. 72

the spiritual world, the old physician and the
minister— mutual victims as they have been
— may, unawares, have found their earthly
stock of hatred and antipathy transmuted
into golden love” (pp. 260-261). But this is a
qualified attempt to provide a balance of
forces in tragic resolution, not a theological
assertion, and morally it does not condone
Chillingworth’s conduct.

Within the dramatic action of the romance
Chillingworth may himself use alchemical
typology in his own defense. When he per¬
ceives himself as a fiend but rejects Hester’s
suggestion that he can change (XIV), the old
man says, “My old faith, long forgotten,
comes back to me, and explains all that we
do, and all we suffer ... Ye that have
wronged me are not sinful, save in a kind of
typical illusion; neither am I fiend-like, who
have snatched a friend’s office from his
hands. It is our fate. Let the black flower
blossom as it may!” (p. 174). In alchemy the
“black flower” is that stage in the process
which is a harbinger of gold. Chillingworth
may thus be recalling the high-minded
alchemical faith which animated his more
benevolent past pursuits.

In the human dimension Chillingworth
does what can aptly be called devil’s work.
But in claiming a typical part in a fated
process he throws off his identification with
the demonic as it is seen by the Puritan
mind; and in the spiritual realm he may be
correct— just as Dimmesdale may be correct
in his judgment, which seems confirmed by
the power of his sermons, that a sinful man
can do good in a ministerial office (p. 132).
The tone and method of The Scarlet Letter
are premised upon such ironies. But death
shrouds from individuals the ultimate
designs of Providence, and the roles of
prophet and magician stand in ironic
counterpoint to those who would play them.
Death is the boundary of a drama in which
characters summoned from the grave return
to it. Though the narrator makes a spiritual
disposition of his “shadowy people,” the
book’s final revelations are of the passions

which Hawthorne portrayed employing ap¬
propriate symbolic frames of reference be¬
yond Puritanism.

Notes

1 The words of the Earth Spirit in Goethe’s Faust,
Part I, lines 508-9, trans. Walter Arndt (New York:
W. W. Norton, 1976), p. 14.

2 The transforming initiation has religious signif¬
icance, “for the change of existential status in the
novice is produced by a relgious experience. The intiate
becomes another man because he has had a crucial
revelation of the world and life.’’ Mircea Eliade, Rites
and Symbols of Intiation: The Mysteries of Birth and
Rebirth (New York: Harper and Row, 1958), p. 1.

3 A study of literary transformation is Irving Massey,
The Gaping Pig: Literature and Metamorphosis (Berke¬
ley: University of California Press, 1976).

4 Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, ed.
William Charvat, Vol. I. The Centenary Edition of the
Works of Nathaniel Hawthorne (Columbus: Ohio State
University Press, 1962), p. 23. All subsequent references
to this volume will appear in the text.

5 The Custom-House, like “Circe’s Palace’’ in
Tanglewood Tales (Centenary Edition, Vol. VII), turns
men like the old Inspector into animals. Only the artist’s
vision spares the “Custom-House’’ narrator this fate.
The range of sensibilities suggested by him resembles the
Renaissance Neo-Platonic scale upon which man has
kinship with both the beasts and the angels, as ex¬
pounded by Pico della Mirandola in On The Dignity of
Man, for example.

6 The importance of “The Custom-House’’ in estab¬
lishing significant patterns for the romance as a whole
has been noted in numerous studies. A few which stress
the role of the narrator’s imagination are Nina Baym,
“The Romantic Malgre Lui: Hawthorne in ‘The
Custom-House,’” ESQ: A Journal of the American
Renaissance, 19 (1973), 14-25, reprinted in The Shape
of Hawthorne’s Career (Ithica, N.Y.: Cornell Univer¬
sity Press, 1976); John Paul Eakin, “Hawthorne’s
Imagination and the Structure of ‘The Custom-
House,’” American Literature, 43 (1971), 346-358;
Harry C. West, “Hawthorne’s Editorial Pose,” Amer¬
ican Literature, 44 (1972), 208-221.

7 Millicent Bell, in Hawthorne’s View of the Artist
(New York: University Publishers, 1962), asserts that
Hawthorne’s “most deeply felt image of the artist” is
that of a necromancer, “a worker of illicit black
magic,” p. 58, and as Harry C. West notes in “Haw¬
thorne’s Magic Circle: The Artist as Magician,” Criti¬
cism, XXX, 16 (1974), 311-25, magic circles pervade his
art. The magician works at the border of two worlds
calling up characters like ghosts, but the ghostly border
also suggests access to the next world’s revelations. The
fashion in which revelation comes in Hawthorne is close

1984]

Lindborg— Hawthorne ’s Chillingworth

15

to that discussed in a passage from Creuser in Joseph
Ennemoser’s The History of Magic, trans. Howett
(London, 1854): “The strictly symbolical confines itself
to the . . . middle line between Spirit and Nature; within
these bounds it can avail to render visible to a certain
degree even the Divine, and is so highly expressive. It
obeys Nature, merges itself into her form, and animates
it; the infinite becomes human, and thus the strife be¬
tween the two is at an end” (II, 6). Creuser’s discussion
of symbols comes from his work on myth. Ennemoser’s
quotation of Creuser reflects a sense of the connections
between myth and magic close to Hawthorne’s. Haw¬
thorne employs his “magic” art at a boundary in which
he shapes myths which contain elements of relevation.
Whether Hawthorne knew of Ennemoser’s work, orig¬
inally published in 1846, is not known. But he was
influenced by Creuser at least to the extent of his
admitted employment of Charles Anthon’s A Classical
Dictionary (New York: Harper, 1844), which in its
preface (vii) acknowledges the primacy of Creuser’s
system of mythology, and extensively employes
Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Volker, besonders
der Griechen (Heidelberg, 1810), widely known through
its heavily annotated French edition by J. D. Guigniaut,
Religions de L ’ Antiquite (Paris, 1825). Hugo
Mcpherson has done a reading of Hawthorne based on
Anthon: Hawthorne as Myth-Maker (Toronto: Univer¬
sity of Toronto Press, 1969).

8 Hawthorne’s work presents competing modes of
vision, none of which is given supernatural validation.
He solves problems psychologically rather than doc-
trinally. For studies of multiple interpretation in
Hawthorne’s narrative, see Elaine T. Hansen, “Ambi¬
guity and the Narrator in The Scarlet Letter Journal
of Narrative Technique, 5 (1975), 147-63, and John O.
Rees, Jr., “Hawthorne’s Concept of Allegory,” Philo¬
logical Quarterly, 54 (1975), 494-510.

9 The best studies of dramatic irony and trans¬
formations respectively, remain Richard Harter Fogle,
Hawthorne's Fiction: The Light and the Dark, rev. ed.
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964), and
Roy R. Male, Hawthorne’s Tragic Vision (Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1957).

10 Lebenswelt as here employed implies the sense
which Merleau-Ponty gives it when he writes of his
philosophy’s effort to “return to the life-world this side
of the objective world; ... to give the thing its concrete
physiognomy, to organisms their own manner of han¬
dling the world, to subjectivity its historical inherence”
— Phenomenology of Perception as quoted in “Trans¬
lator’s Preface” to Signs, trans. Richard McCleary
(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), p.
xiii. Hawthorne’s view of history restores to it a full
range of belief systems, including the occult.

1 1 The sense of division in tragedy is given emphasis
by Robert B. Heilman’s “Tragedy and Melodrama,”
The Texas Quarterly, 3 (Summer 1960), 36-50, re¬

printed in Tragedy: Vision and Form, ed. Robert W.
Corrigan (San Francisco: Chandler, 1965), pp. 245-257.
The Scarlet Letter reflects “the kind of division that
seems inseparable from human community — from the
fact that, in the ordering of life, we maintain different
imperatives that correspond to different and perhaps
irreconcilable needs” (p. 246). On tragedy, see Richard
B. Sewall, “The Scarlet Letter, ” The Vision of Tragedy
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961), 86-91; Bruce
I. Granger, “Arthur Dimmesdale as Tragic Hero,”
Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 19 (1964), 197-203; Dan
Vogel, “Hawthorne’s Concept of Tragedy in The
Scarlet Letter, ” Nathaniel Hawthorne Journal (1972),
183-93. Richard R. Brodhead, in Hawthorne, Melville,
and the Novel (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1976), sees Hawthorne employing formal division
through his use of the narrator’s objective stance, which
contrasts the fixed meanings of the Puritan community
with the open-ended symbolism arising from life situ¬
ations (pp. 64-65).

12 This is a version of the principle of organization
perceived by John C. Gerber, “Form and Content in
The Scarlet Letter, ’’New England Quarterly, 17 (1944),
22-55.

13 Transfiguration usually implies an encounter with
divinity. The Transfiguration of Jesus (Mt 17:1-8; Mk
9:1-7; Lk 9:28-36) is the central instance.

14 Sermons gain in ironic significance throughout the
romance. Hester is the living version of the message
underlying all of Dimmesdale’s sermons, which take
power from his anguish. For an historical perspective on
the ecclesiastical elements of the romance, see Frederick
Newberry, “Tradition and Disinheritance in The Scarlet
Letter, ” ESQ: A Journal of the American Renaissance,
23(1977), 1-26.

15 Hester has often been seen, in Darrell Abel’s
words, as typifying “romantic individualism,” in
opposition to the community, “Hawthorne’s Hester,”
College English, 13 (1952), 303. A good examination of
how themes of isolation inform Hawthorne’s major
romances is Arne I. Axelsson, “Isolation and Inter¬
dependence as Structure in Hawthorne’s Four Major
Romances,” Studia Neophilologica, 45 (1973), 392-
402. See also Nina Baym’s “Passion and Authority in
The Scarlet Letter,” New England Quarterly, 43 (1970),
209-30, also reprinted in The Shape of Hawthorne’s
Career.

16 According to Marion L. Kesselring, “Hawthorne’s
Reading,” Bulletin of the New York Public Library, 53
(1949), 185, Hawthorne read Lavater’s Essays on Physi¬
ognomy in October 1828. On the resemblance of chil¬
dren to parents, see Essays (Boston: Spots wood and
West, n.d.), p. 117. Taylor Stoehr’s “Physiognomy and
Phrenology in Hawthorne,” Huntington Library Quar¬
terly, 37 (1974), 355-400, reprinted in his Hawthorne’s
Mad Scientists (Hamden, Connecticut: Shoe String
Press, 1978), is a rich source of physiognomy in Haw-

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

thorne; however, it makes none of the points advanced
in this study.

17 Lavater also notes the influence of the mother’s
imagination on the child. “We also know,’’ he writes,
“that children most resemble the father only when the
mother has a very lively imagination, and love for, or
fear of the husband’’ ( Essays , p. 115). Hawthorne
makes clear the influence of Hester’s imagination on
Pearl throughout the romance.

18 Lavater, p. 10.

19 Chillingworth’s demonic nature has long been the
subject of discussion. The classic study is William
Bysshe Stein’s, in Hawthorne’s Faust (Gainesville:
University of Florida Press, 1953) pp. 104-22. See also
Darrell Abel, “The Devil in Boston,’’ Philological
Quarterly, 31 (1953), 366-81, and Edward Stone’s
“Chillingworth and His Dark Necessity,” College
Literature, 4 : 1977), 136-43, which answers points
advanced by Martin Green’s Re-Appraisals (New York:
W. W. Norton, 1965).

20 Witchcraft in general is well handled in Karl
Wentersdorf’s “The Elements of Witchcraft in The
Scarlet Letter,” Folklore, 83 (1972), 132-53.

21 For Hester’s role within a Faustian framework, see
Neal B. Houston, “Hester Prynne as Eternal Fem¬
inine,” Discourse, 9 (1966), 230-44.

22 Lavater, Essays, pp. 24-25.

23 Lavater discusses the restoration of harmony in the
character of a loved one through “cooperating with the
yet unimpaired essential powers” (Essays, p. 37).

24 Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, V, i, 40-43.

25 Dimmesdale’s confession ends his personal division
through hypocrisy; whether or not he is “saved” is a
point which has been disputed. If one employs a
physiognomic interpretation of Dimmesdale’s transfig¬
uration during his final hours, no implications of
salvation need be drawn. Employing a long tradition
that persons are restored to nobility near death, Lavater
writes, “I have observed some among the dying, who
had been the reverse of noble or great during life, and
who, some hours before their death, or perhaps some

moments . . . , have had an inexpressible ennobling of
the countenance. Every body saw a new man; coloring,
drawing, and grace, all was new, all bright as the
morning; beyond expression, noble and exalted.” ( Es¬
says , p. 124). Among critics who focus on Dimmes¬
dale’s last moments are Terrence Martin, “Dimmes¬
dale’s Ultimate Sermon,” Arizona Quarterly, 27 (1971),
230-40, and William B. Dillingham, “Arthur Dimmes¬
dale’s Confession,” Studies in Literary Imagination, 2
(1969), 21-26.

26 Critics have worked on alchemical patterns in a
number of Hawthorne’s works; for example, David M.
Van Leer’s “Aylmer’s Library: Transcendental Al¬
chemy in Hawthorne’s ‘The Birthmark,”’ ESQ: A
Journal of the American Renaissance, 22 (1976), 211-
20; Mark Henelly, “Hawthorne’s Opus Alchymicum:
‘Ethan Brand,’” ESQ: A Journal of the American
Renaissance, 22(1976), 96-106.

27 Hawthorne may have read “Alchymy” in the
Retrospective Review, 14 (1826), 98-135, which
according to Kesselring he checked out on November
12, 1849 (“Hawthorne’s Reading,” p. 189). The quota¬
tion cited appears on p. 107.

28 “Alchymy,” p. 127. Alchemy employed a theory
of natural “sympathies” through which its adepts
worked. As Walter Pagel explains, “Alchemy and
Medicine . . . form two aspects of natural magic already
in Hellenistic times. The Magus applies the principle of
sympathy; everywhere like years to unite with like . . .
The ‘seat of magic’ . . . lies in Nature in which as by a
magic chain everything is interconnected and alive. It is
the task of the Magus to adapt himself to Nature so
closely that he can influence it by setting, as it were, a
sympathetic chord into vibration.” “Paracelsus and the
Neo-Platonic and Gnostic Tradition,” Ambix: The
Journal of the Society for the Study of Alchemy and
Early Chemistry, 8 (1960), 125-66. The importance of
the concept of sympathy in general is treated by Roy R.
Male, “Hawthorne and the Concept of Sympathy,”
PMLA, 68(1953), 138-49.

29 “Alchymy,” p. 109.

NOAH IN INTERNATIONAL WATERS

Kathy Piehl

Center for Children /Young Adult Books
Mankato State University , Minnesota

Tales of a huge flood sent by the gods
appear in cultures throughout the world.
North American Indians and Siberian
peasants each have a legend about how a
small group of animals and people were
saved from a watery death. However, the
two most famous accounts come from the
Middle East. The Epic of Gilgamesh from
Babylon tells how the King and his family
were spared from the wrath of the storm god
by heeding the instructions of the god of
water to build a giant boat. More familiar to
people in Western cultures is the Genesis
account of Noah and the great flood.

Noah’s story is the Old Testament tale
most often retold in picture books. In fact,
dozens of versions have been produced by
authors and illustrators in the United States.
But the fascination with Noah’s story con¬
tinues in other parts of the world as well, as a
number of picture books demonstrate. In¬
deed, the continuing interest indicates that
Noah indeed sails in international waters.

Probably the most familiar Noah’s ark
picture book, at least to audiences in the
United States, is the one by Peter Spier,
which won the Caldecott award in 1978. But
even those who have examined Spier’s book
may have forgotten that he chose as its
“text” a 17th century poem by Jacobus
Revius, which he translated from Dutch to
English. Using this poem from his native
country, Spier amplifies both its simple text
and the Biblical version through his marve¬
lously detailed and evocative illustrations.
The poem’s long list of boarding animals,
including

Cow and moose,

Hare and goose,

Sheep and ox,

Bee and fox

is reflected in pictures of the loading of the
ark which teem with all kinds and sizes of
animals. But neither the poem nor Spier ig¬
nores the reality of those who could not get
on.

But the rest,

Worst and best,

Stayed on shore,

Were no more.

The whole host
Gave the ghost.

They were killed
For the guilt
Which brought all
To the Fall.

The illustrations show a throng of animals,
young and old, watching the ark as the flood
water rises. Inexorably they are covered,
even those which climbed into trees to
escape.

Spier’s imagination takes over in his pic¬
tures of life on board since neither the Bible
nor Revius’ poem supplies details of the trip.
But the reader senses the “rightness” of the
portrayal because it is consistent with our
knowledge of animal life. The animals must
be fed and their stalls cleaned. They give
birth, some, like the rabbits, with remark¬
able regularity. And they rejoice when the
dove returns with green leaves. Spier en¬
riches the reader’s understanding of Noah’s
story, and the book well deserves its Calde¬
cott medal.

As might be expected, the book that
adheres most closely to the Old Testament
comes from Israel. Yael Guiladi stresses
God’s anger about what people had done to
his world, an emphasis apparent in most
books that give God a prominent role. In
Guiladi’s version, God had given people a
“general idea of how He expected them to

17

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[Vol. 72

behave,” but they became wicked, dis¬
honest, cruel, and corrupt. When God plans
to destory the world, he tells Noah to take a
pair of most animals but seven pairs of clean
animals. This injunction, which is found in
Genesis, is ignored in most retellings of
Noah’s story but would have significance for
Jewish readers because of their religious
practices. Other parts of Guiladi’s story,
such as the exact specifications of the ark’s
dimensions, reveal a faithfulness to Old
Testament details not observed in most
versions. The illustrations portray Noah and
his family as inhabitants of the Middle East.
All have slightly slanted eyes and dark hair
and complexions. The women have large
earrings and cover their heads with a
garment that extends to their feet.

The illustrations for Swiss poet Max
Bolliger’s retelling also have an Eastern
feeling. Helga Aichinger has used spare
figures and muted colors to accompany
Bolliger’s text, which is close to Genesis.
Again God is a dominant force, displeased
with people because they disobeyed and then
laughed at Noah for his obedience. “Their
scorn did not trouble Noah. But God was
angry with them because they did not fear
Him, and because they laughed.” These
scoffers die a horrible death, as Bolliger
emphasizes when he describes their flight to
the hills and mountains in a futile attempt to
escape. Dead bodies float in green and pur¬
ple water in Aichinger’s gruesome depiction
of their fate. Bolliger’s account of the trip’s
length and the various flights of raven and
dove follows strictly the Genesis version.
When the water recedes, all that people had
built and planted has been destroyed. Cer¬
tainly this is a grim tale, particularly for a
picture book. But then Bolliger offers his
readers hope, the same hope Noah feels
looking at God’s rainbow sign.

God heard Noah’s prayer of thanks

He looked at the ruined earth

and had pity

on Noah, whom He loved,

and on his family—

his wife,
his three sons,
their wives,
and children,

and all the children of these children,
who were not yet born.

This stress on life’s continuity is clear in the
picture of a small boy and girl playing with a
miniature ark in a puddle. Noah and his
family were spared so that life could go on.

Two more recent stories, also originally
written in German, display similarities to
Bolliger’s retelling. Gertrud Fussenegger
shares Bolliger’s emphasis on the wickedness
of humankind and its horrible destruction.
In her story Noah prays every night that God
would keep him safe from people who “lied
and cheated and hurt one another . . . beat
defenceless [sic] people with whips and
sticks.” These wicked men and women mock
Noah and his family until the rain starts to
fall. Then they pack their gold and head for
the mountains. Inside the ark Noah hears
their “pitiful wailing” as even “the last and
strongest of the people, who had clung to the
treetops or climbed mountain peaks, were
washed away and drowned.” Life on board
the ark has its own discomforts, but at the
journey’s end, Noah and his family praise
God for their deliverance and receive his
rainbow and promise not to destroy the
world again with a flood.

Margrit Haubensak — Tellenbach also in¬
cludes the destruction of the doubters, who
“cried and screamed and banged on the
ark” as the waters cover them. But her
account shares another theme with Bolliger’s
as well: the continuation of life. Animals
give birth while they journey on the ark, and
as they depart, Noah instructs them to “ ‘Go
and have lots of children.’” Two double¬
page spreads, one on shipboard and one on
land, emphasize the theme. The pages are
jammed with animals and their young in
illustrations by Erna Emhardt, one of
Germany’s foremost “primitive painters.”

The concern with reproduction is strongest
in an Italian version by Jolanda Colombini

1984]

Pie hi — Noah in International Waters

19

Monti, who emphasizes what happens after
the flood. Once God has explained about the
rainbow, the animals start to leave the ark.
God instructs them to “wander over the
Earth, grow and multiply.” Many of them
do not need those instructions. Baby mice
and rabbits leave the ship with their parents.
The text mentions that “even the ostrich
alighting from the Ark showed Noah a little
baby ostrich just a few days old who was still
a little unsteady on his huge legs.” The
fertility of the animals is even more apparent
in the fold-out illustration in which almost
every species has been eager to follow God’s
command to “raise a family and multiply
the species.” This emphasis does not seem
unusual for a country that is heavily Roman
Catholic, particularly when we note that it
was written in the mid-1950s. Another part
of the story that seems to indicate the
religious influence is the ending in which
Noah becomes a farmer who is the first to
discover the importance of bread and wine.
Although Genesis acknowledges that Noah
planted a vineyard, and Spier shows him on
his hands and knees setting out vines, Monti
is the only author to give such prominence to
this part of the tale, linking it to the Roman
Catholic sacraments.

Another strongly religious retelling comes
in a Liberian version of Noah’s story. While
Lorenz Graham was in Africa, he heard the
native people telling stories from the Bible,
“recreating the tales in their own environ¬
ment and telling them in their own words.”
In their version, God plays a crucial role.
They begin by tying Noah’s story to the crea¬
tion.

God make the time for Him Own Self.

He make the rain

He make the dry and wet.

Disappointed and angered by what people
are doing to His creation, God decides that
He must try again. He visits Noah and in¬
structs him about preparations for the flood,
then becomes an active participant in the
boat’s construction.

God come walk about inside the ship

And Noah hear God’s Word and mind.

He advises Noah about bad boards that need
replacement, locations of rooms, and other
details. In keeping with the African origin of
this version, the illustrations depict Noah
and his sons as blacks and the boat as a kind
of basket that might have been constructed
of materials found in a tropical region. Noah
and his sons fell palm trees to get building
materials. When all the animals are on board
in accordance with God’s instructions, He
makes the rain fall. After He is certain that
everything has been destroyed except for
Noah’s ship, He opens new holes in the sea
to drain away the water, sends dry winds to
sweep the world, and sets the ship down
softly. There are no raven and dove in this
version. God is the one who provides for
Noah and his company, and the flood has
been for His benefit, giving a way to start
again, as the book’s ending makes clear:

And in the sky He set Him bow

And turn to make a better world.

The African story ignores the raven and
dove but stays close to Genesis in plot and
moral. A Japanese picture book gives the
two birds a prominent place, and in so doing
demonstrates how modern authors often
move away from the Biblical tale. In 1964
Pooke and Kark in the Ark by Sekuja
Miyoshi was voted the outstanding picture
book in Japan. Although Miyoshi includes
other animals in his story, he concentrates
on two birds: Kark the crow and Pooke the
dove. After God tells Noah that a drought
will be followed by heavy rains, Noah con¬
structs an ark and begins collecting animals.
His neighbors laugh at the strange vehicle
which looks like a large wooden box due to
Noah’s inadequate building skills. Kark
refuses to board because his forest home is
on a hilltop, and he is convinced no flood
can reach it. Pooke urges him to follow
Noah, and eventually the crow is forced to
join the other animals on the boat. After the
rain ends and the boat drifts for 150 days,

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

the animals get restless. Kark decides to find
land, and when he does not return, the
animals begin to worry. Pooke volunteers to
search for him, and eventually she finds dry
land and Kark. Unlike the crow, she feels
obligated to return to her shipmates. On the
return trip she gets tired and cannot find the
ark. Then she sees the rainbow, which gives
her new energy. “She flapped her wings with
all her strength, and passed under the rain¬
bow toward the ark.”

Miyoshi has kept many of the Biblical
elements but given prominence to two birds
which figure in that tale. They act indepen¬
dently of Noah and have definite person¬
alities. The illustrations are brilliantly
colored and exhibit a fine graphic sense.
Bright orange, purple, brown, blue, green,
and other hues are arranged in patterns that
make the reader aware that this book is a
product of the “modern” period which
revises an ancient story. Yet Miyoshi’s
contrast of the believer versus the doubter
echoes a theme of the original account. Here
the contrast is between two birds instead of
between Noah and his neighbors.

Like Miyoshi, Isaac Bashevis Singer uses
the dove as a central character in his tale
about the ark. Just as Spier returned to the
language of his youth to find a text for his
work, Singer used his childhood language,
Yiddish, and let Elizabeth Shub translate the
work into English. While Noah and his sons
construct the boat at God’s command, the
animals argue because they “had heard a
rumor that Noah was to take with him on the
ark only the best of all the living creatures.”
Each stresses his own virtue such as strength,
beauty, or cleverness. Almost the entire
book is devoted to their bickering. Finally
Noah appears and sees a dove silently
perched on a branch. It explains why it
didn’t brag by saying, ‘“Each one of us has
something the other doesn’t have, given us
by God who created us all.’ ’’Then Noah tells
all the animals that they can come on board,
but because the dove had been modest, Noah

chooses it to be his messenger. The flood
itself doesn’t appear. The text simply skips
to the time when the rains stop, and Noah
keeps his word by sending the dove. The
story ends with the moral that “there are in
the world more doves than there are tigers,
leopards, wolves, vultures, and other fero¬
cious beasts. The dove lives happily without
fighting.” Although Singer mentions God’s
promise not to destroy the earth again
because of sin, the focus of Singer’s tale is
on the dove and the example it provides. His
tale is designed to teach a moral that is not
explicitly stated in the Old Testament but
which he obviously feels is important for
contemporary readers.

Similarly, British author Brian Wildsmith
adapts Noah’s story to address a modern
problem, man’s destruction of the natural
world through pollution. While Wildsmith
looks back to the ancient story for his central
idea of the survival of animals from extinc¬
tion, he sets his own tale in the future for a
type of “science fiction” story of Noah. The
animals who live in the forest are threatened
by air pollution and meet to decide how to
escape. Owl reports that he has seen a “huge
and wondrous object” being built, and when
the animals investigate, they find Professor
Noah, who is constructing a spaceship to
take the animals to another planet where the
forests “‘will be as beautiful as our forest
once was before it was spoiled by
pollution.’” The animals help Noah’s robots
finish the task and prepare for the voyage of
40 days and 40 nights. They clamber on
board to escape a terrible forest fire set by
man and blast into space. In the take-off a
time guidance fin is damaged, and an ele¬
phant must don a spacesuit to adjust it for
their voyage into the future. However, he
miscalculates, and the ship is propelled
backward. After they land, Noah realizes
that the leaf the dove brings from her
exploratory mission is from Earth — but
what a difference! They have landed on
Earth “as it was many hundreds of years

1984]

Piehl — Noah in International Waters

21

ago, before it was polluted.” As the animals
emerge from the ship, the otter comments
that there seems to have been some flooding.

While the problem and solution Wild-
smith uses are “modern,” his retention of
certain conventions clearly reveals his
awareness of the original: 40 days and 40
nights, the dove as explorer, the watery
world. As in Miyoshi’s and Singer’s books,
the animals here are active participants in the
advancement of the plot. In fact, Noah is the
only human and does not even take his own
family on the voyage. Like all Wildsmith’s
picture books, this one is brightly colored.
The many animals in the story give him a
chance to exhibit his considerable talent in
drawing wildlife.

The animals tell their own story in another
English picture book about Noah by George
Macbeth. In fact, inanimate objects get to
speak too. Macbeth offers a series of short
poems, each about a different plant, animal,
or object encountered in Noah’s story. After
the descriptive poem about the story ele¬
ment, the subject makes its own comment on
the situation. Oak and pine speak during the
“Building of the Ark.” Then 11 animals
have their say while they enter. For example,
Noah has this conversation with a roly-poly
bear.

are you there? Why you smell
of honey. You voracious small bear!

Why have you come with your paws all
sticky? Go down to the sink.

You must dance for your
supper, and it won’t be sweets.

Coarse brown bread for omnivorous

bears. And a beaker of brine

if we have to keep washing you in drinking water.

I am sorry, Noah. But I grew
quite faint. So I stopped by a hive
for a rest and a meal.

Let me give you a hug.

During the storm a “Battle with the Ele¬
ments” pits Noah against thunder, light¬
ning, rain, and wind as all the creatures on
board suffer.

rain

is the one who goes on. He is flung
pita-pata-pita-pata from a
tipped bowl of dry peas. Wet fur,
wet wood, wet wings, wet canvas: the
whole wide world is awash in a
sluice of beans. Rattle, rush.

Down comes the roof in a slush

of cold glass bits. Below decks

glum beasts peer out and steam dry slowly.

Finally, sand, rock, and grass welcome the
voyagers when they come safely to their
“Landing of Ararat.” The dove and the
raven feed peacefully in the thick grass filled
with flowers, worms, bees, ants, butterflies,
and a spider. Two pages of poetry are fol¬
lowed by two pages which illustrate the sub¬
jects of the verse. The ark is invariably por¬
trayed as a small vessel, whether dwarfed by
the whale that swims beside it or buffeted by
wind.

Macbeth’s use of short poems based on
Noah’s adventure is reminiscent of a much
earlier English version by Fish, published in
1918. Each short poem is on a different
topic, and the author claims that he was told
about the trip by a teddy bear named Red¬
der.

He knew the Noahs very well
And went with them to sea,

And all that I am going to tell
Young Redder told to me.

All the animals look as though they had
stuffed toys as models, and even the people
look like wooden dolls. The journey is idyl¬
lic, with time for the animals to swim in their
striped suits and enjoy the outing im¬
mensely, rather as though the ark were a
well-appointed yacht.

This portrayal of the ark as a kind of
cruise ship appears in a modern British
version of Noah’s story by Judy Brook.
After Noah learns about the impending
flood from a well-informed dove, he hur¬
riedly constructs a giant ship, complete with
striped sails and a royal lion masthead. Noah
and his family are sturdy English peasants,

22

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[Vol. 72

used to handling farm animals. The women
have a cozy farm kitchen on board and ger¬
aniums in the windows. Rather than bring¬
ing the animals to the ark, the Noah family
sails around the world to rescue a pair of
each kind. They take polar bears and walrus
on board before the ice floes melt and ferry
zebras and lions from mountain tops. Each
day the animals run around the deck for
exercise and hear Mrs. Noah’s bedtime
stories. When land is sighted, everyone
gratefully takes “a lovely hot sunny
holiday” on the African coast, where the
Noah family members lounge in beach
chairs. Then the ark completes another
round-the-world voyage to return the
animals, who “always felt so sad when the
Ark left them, they were almost sorry the
flood was over.” Clearly, Brook’s story
lacks any sense of punishment or destruction
inherent in the original.

The same barnyard adventure format is
obvious in N or ah* s Ark, also from Britain.
Norah and her animals learn of the impend¬
ing flood from a TV weatherman. They turn
the barn upside down to form a makeshift
boat and have a “holiday afloat.” Despite a
few minor complications, no one is hurt, and
when the water subsides, the animals and
their owner are left with an enlarged pond,
something they had wanted for a long time.
Like the rest of the British books, this lacks
any theological dimension. Instead the flood
is simply a diversion from everyday activ¬
ities.

A similar attitude is evident in two French
versions. The first, by Matias (Charles
Henriod), has Noah invite all the animals to
board his multi-storied yacht, which resem¬
bles a tiered apartment building. On top is a
little house for Noah’s family. The animals
tell each other stories, and at night they
“were very good and slept without making a
sound.” When the sun shines after 40 days,
the elephants tip the ark to one side with
their jumps of delight. The animals rush to
disembark on Ararat and return to their
countries when the water has receded. Be¬

cause no reason for the flood is given and no
word of hope offered at the end, despite the
rainbow that appears in the sky, the story
seems flat and strangely without purpose.
Noah in his red beret and his wife in her long
blue apron are undeniably French, but the
illustrations are almost as unsatisfactory as
the text with blobs of bright colors scattered
randomly over figures drawn with black ink.

The other French version, by Etienne
Delessert, reveals its kinship to some of the
English versions in its title, Sans Fin La
Fete. The party is to celebrate the launching
of Captain Noah’s boat, and the crows de¬
liver the party invitations. All kinds of
animals converge on the ark for a sea cruise.
They eat cake and ice cream and watch the
snake do acrobatics. The party is fine until
they decide to hold a jumping contest. The
flea jumps so high that it hits the sun in the
eye, and the uncontrolled tears lead to a seri¬
ous flood. The animals retreat inside but
continue the party with story telling. As the
days pass, they play games, take turns steer¬
ing, and hold concerts, but eventually they
become restless and irritable. They play
practical jokes and plan a mutiny. While
Noah listens to the centipede tell story after
story, the seal changes course. The dove, a
peaceful creature, dislikes the mutiny and
flies in search of land. Soon she returns with
a branch and a postcard showing a mountain
she discovered. The animals once again have
reason to celebrate.

Probably the strangest detail in the illus¬
tration of this version is the “human” sun
which has facial features plus suit-coated
arms and hands. His two-fingered V salute
after the rain ends resembles the gesture of a
politician, particularly since he also displays
a toothy grin. Even this bizarre account
reveals its derivation from the original Noah
story although the elements are definitely
transformed. For example, the rainbow ap¬
pears at the end in the guise of a chameleon
that “turned every color of the rainbow.”
The Biblical interpretation of its presence as
a sign of divine promise has been replaced by

1984]

Piehl—Noah in International Waters

23

a natural phenomenon. As in many of the
books already discussed, God simply has no
role.

Although these secular versions may be
designed to satisfy modern audiences who no
longer believe in traditional religion, the
stories are unsatisfying. By removing God
and religious overtones, the authors have
removed much of the conflict and drama as
well. Good and evil, struggle against the
elements, rebirth and hope for the future are
all part of the original story. The idea that
representatives of all earth’s animals could
be crammed on a single vessel and somehow
survive an overwhelming catastrophe is
incongruous, unbelievable . . . and yet, we
want to believe that escape from destruction
is possible. Like the believers in various gods
who told the original legends, we maintain
our fascination with the story of one family
that sailed the endless sea when the world
was just beginning.

Literature Cited

Bolliger, Max. Noah and the Rainbow.
Translated by Clyde Robert Bulla. Illustrated
by Helga Aichinger. New York: Thomas Y.
Crowell, 1972.

Brook, Judy. Noah's Ark. New York: Franklin
Watts, 1973.

Cartwright, Ann. Norah’s Ark. Illustrated by
Reg Cartwright. London: Hutchinson, 1983.

Delessert, Etienne and Schmid, Eleonore. The
Endless Party. New York: Harlan Quist,
1967.

Fish and Lavington, Margaret. The Noah's Ark
Book. London, 1918.

Fussenegger, Gertrud. Noah’s Ark. Translated
by Anthea Bell. Illustrated by Annegert
Fuchshuber. London: Hodder and Stoughton,

1983.

Graham, Lorenz. God Wash the World and
Start Again. Illustrated by Clare Romano
Ross. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1971.
Guiladi, Yael. Noah's Ark. Illustrated by Riki
Ben-Ari. Jerusalem: Koren, 1968.
Haubensak-Tellenbach, Margrit. The Story of
Noah's Ark. Illustrated by Erna Emhardt.
New York: Crown, 1983.

Henriod, Charles. Mr. Noah and the Animals.

New York: Henry Z. Walck, 1960.

Macbeth, George. Noah's Journey. Illustrated
by Margaret Gordon. London: Macmillan,
1967.

Miyoshi, Sekuja. Pooke and Kark in the Ark.

New York: Hawthorn, 1964.

Monti, Jolanda Colombini. Noah's Ark. Illus¬
trated by Mariapia. Milan: Piccoli, 1956.
Singer, Isaac Bashevis. Why Noah Chose the
Dove. Translated by Elizabeth Shub. Illus¬
trated by Eric Carle. New York: Farrar, Straus
& Giroux, 1974.

Spier, Peter. Noah's Ark. Garden City, N.Y.:
Doubleday, 1977.

Wildsmith, Brian. Professor Noah's Spaceship.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1980.

THE ACCOMPLISHED LADY IN THE ENGLISH NOVEL

Susan Schoenbauer Thurin
English Department
University of Wisconsin — Stout
Menomonie

When Dorothea Brooke visits the Vatican
museum on her honeymoon in Rome, she is
seen by an artist who identifies her as a
perfect model for a madonna. Romola, who
is repeatedly apostrophized as a madonna,
poses as Ariadne for a portrait. These
descriptions of the heroines of Middle-
march and Romola as devotional figures and
art objects allude to a view of woman often
expressed in eighteenth- and nineteenth-
century English novels, that a woman may
be judged according to her ability to
resemble a work of art, to emulate the
idealized portrait of womanhood society
holds up to her. Put another way, woman’s
aim is supposed to be self-perfection, with
woman herself as both artist and artifact: To
be a thing of beauty is the traditional role
assigned her. However, just as the standard
of beauty changes over the course of a cen¬
tury, so do the specifications of the tradi¬
tional role. These changing specifications are
illustrated in the characterizations of the
accomplished lady in the English novel.

The ideal of the accomplished lady in the
eighteenth-century novel incorporates an
ornamental education with genteel house¬
wifery, the willing acceptance of which is
indicative of the moral character of the lady
in question. The accomplishments of the
lady include both the practical and the
decorative crafts such as needlework and
china painting. Because young ladies were
taught music and drawing for specific
domestic application rather than for purely
aesthetic purposes, these too adorn the
accomplished lady. For she ought to have
been able to decorate her home with objects
of her own making as well as be personally
ornamental in her beauty, dress, conversa¬

tion, and ability to entertain by singing a
popular song or playing a reel for an
evening’s dance. In the nineteenth-century
novel, this woman’s role is still pervasive,
but is accompanied by a dramatic change in
the value assigned woman’s work. As a re¬
sult of this revaluation, woman’s accom¬
plishments increasingly go beyond the do¬
mestic sphere as a means of personal success.

Authors use fine distinctions within the
range of activities accorded women to
indicate the position of women in society,
reflect upon changing marriage ideals,
promote self-esteem among their heroines,
and comment upon woman’s contribution to
society. The didactic attention given to
women’s accomplishments in the eighteenth-
century novel makes them an easy target for
satire in the nineteenth-century novel, but
also evolves into a reassessment of the value
of woman’s work, the domestic crafts-
woman, and the woman artist. This evolu¬
tion in woman’s work and role forms the
basis for the ensuing inquiry. Surveying a
broad range of novels, including work by
Richardson, Fielding, Burney, Austen,
Dickens, Thackeray, the Brontes, and Eliot;
and relying on the conduct books and
Ruskin as reference points about the per¬
ceived role of women in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries; I trace the evaluation
of woman’s work by focusing on the accom¬
plished lady.

The conduct books present ornamental
accomplishments as woman’s duty along
with piety, maidenly virtues like modesty,
and domestic skills. The Ladies Calling
juxtaposes ornamental and housekeeping
skills with religious piety by advising women
to “secure themselves by a constant serious

24

1984]

Thurin — The Accomplished Lady

25

Employment” with that which is “worth
their time: wherein as the first place is to be
given to the Offices of Piety” and next

the acquiring of any of those ornamental im¬
provements which become their Quality, as
Writing, Needle-work, Languages, Music, or
the like. If I should here insert the art of Econ¬
omy and Household Managery, I should not
think I affronted them in it; that being the most
proper Feminine business, from which neither
wealth nor greatness can totally absolve them. 1

Further, the conduct books reason that the
purpose of acquiring feminine accomplish¬
ments is to secure a husband as The Ladies
Calling indelicately adjures: “An old maid is
now thought such a curse as no Poetic fury
can exceed, look’d on as the most calamitous
Creature in nature” (II, i, 3). A few genera¬
tions later, Hester Chapone softens the
phrasing, saying that a lady’s accomplish¬
ments will make her “so desirable a com¬
panion” that “the neglect of them may
reasonably be deemed a neglect of duty.”2
According to this circular reasoning, then, a
woman’s duty includes becoming both ac¬
complished and a wife, one dependent on the
other.

While the focus of the various conduct
books varies, they all provide advice on the
same range of activities.3 Hester Chapone’s
list has more breadth than others, for she
argues that women are capable of a more de¬
manding education than is usually afforded
them. She emphasizes the need for reading
on the subjects of religion, history, poetry
(particularly Shakespeare and Milton), na¬
ture studies, moral philosophy, and books
on taste and criticism in order to be a good
conversationalist; dancing and French as of
equal importance; Italian— optional; hand¬
writing and common arithmetic “indis¬
pensable”; music and drawing “as genius
leads”; and a warning against the study of
classical languages (III, 129-174). Sermons
to Young Women makes a virtue of develop¬
ing these accomplishments. For example,
rather than simply recommending drawing

and music to those who have talent, Fordyce
advises young women to take up these arts as
a means of entertainment for themselves and
others, as well as to prevent the folly and sin
proceeding from idleness. If the lady be a
musician, her art must have an inspirational
value. Her music should “prove a kind of
prelude to the airs of paradise.”4 Fordyce
finds a “moderate and discreet use” of
dancing tolerable since dancing is connected
with Old Testament worship, but also be¬
cause the dancer is a work of art. Dancing
promotes health, good humor, sociability
and “that easy graceful carriage, to which
Nature has annexed very pleasing percep¬
tions in the beholders” (I, 226).

On the subjects of dress and needlework,
Chapone suffices with a few words about
economy and good sense, but the male con¬
duct book writers expound on the duty and
virtue in them. Fordyce goes so far as to
recommend that women do needlework dur¬
ing conversation so as to be continually busy
and as a buttress against the emptiness and
gossip to which conversation can descend —
almost as if the needlework were a simul¬
taneous reparation for the sinful conversa¬
tion. He adds, of needlework, that “We find
it spoken of in scripture with commenda¬
tion” (I, 239 and 249). The kind of advice in
Sermons to Young Women did not go un¬
noticed— Fanny Burney, Susan Ferrier, and
Jane Austen all allude to the work. Mary
Wolstonecraft’s reaction is more encompass¬
ing: “It moves my gall to hear a preacher
descanting on dress and needlework.”5

Several novels seem to put to deliberate
application some of this conduct book
advice on the efficacy of education and
acquiring of grace, polish, and skills in order
to become a companionable wife by empha¬
sizing its importance in the courtship
process. Some of Austen’s heroines display
their individuality and intellectual acumen —
and thereby their marriageability — by de¬
bunking the poetry of sensibility and carry¬
ing on critical conversations on literature.
The heroines of Pride and Prejudice and

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

Persuasion are thus quite different from the
young ladies in Evelina who are silenced by a
rebuke for expressing their criticism of a
bawdy comedy. In a Victorian novel, Char¬
lotte Yonge’s The Heir of Reddy ffe, the
young Morvilles and Edmonstones are ideal¬
ized for putting their education to good use
by engaging in long and frequent literary dis¬
cussions.

Besides serving as a lure for prospective
husbands, developing the lady into a display
object, and refining her virtue, feminine
accomplishments have a practical-religious
application in the form of philanthropy.
Novelists and conduct book writers alike
wax eloquent on the desirability of young
ladies saving some of their pin money for
good works among the poor.6 Burney’s
heiress-heroine Cecilia does this in a grand
way by supporting several deserving poor
folk and educating impoverished young
girls. In Susan Ferrier’s Marriage, A Novel,
the exemplary Scottish lady, Mrs. Douglas,
busies herself knitting stockings for poor
children during the hours devoted to conver¬
sation (heeding Fordyce’s advice), and turns
her husband’s wild Highland farm into a
scenic wonder by directing the labor of
otherwise idle and useless children under the
age of twelve. Austen scales down such
enterprising generosity in Persuasion where
the invalid Mrs. Smith earns the admiration
of the heroine by selling her needlework in
order to help support families even poorer
than herself. Even Anne Bronte’s pathetic
governess-heroine, Agnes Grey, derives her
only satisfaction from her charities among
the poor cottagers. George Eliot, in contrast,
alludes to the hypocrisy in this kind of
philanthrophy by making Dorothea’s rela¬
tives obstruct or ignore her attempts to give
away money and design more habitable cot¬
tages for her tenants. Dorthea finally realizes
that she is using the poor and even her own
charitable instincts to find an occupation for
her time.

The early novelists mirror the values of the
conduct book writers by portraying an easy

acceptance of traditional woman’s work —
accomplishments, education, duties— as the
hallmark of an approved character, while
making a woman’s rejection of it a signal of
her unwomanliness or immorality. Richard¬
son’s Sir Charles Grandison, for example,
affords numerous instances when women’s
traditional duties are discussed in relation to
their education. Harriet Byron, the heroine,
was taught French and Italian as well as fem¬
inine virtues like “not to start subjects.’’7
Despite her observance of this modesty, she
is assigned the task of debating the pedant
Walden to whom she not only proves equal
in intelligence, but also defends the world as
a university since women are forbidden ad¬
mittance to the formal university. However,
Harriet’s eloquence is carefully comple¬
mented by her cultivation of feminine crafts
and housewifery, even when she becomes the
wife of an extremely wealthy baronet. Miss
Clements, a very learned lady in the same
novel, wonders why knowledge, if it “makes
a man shine, should make a woman vain and
pragmatical,’’ yet she too excells in house¬
wifery (I, 69). In Richardson, approved
characters universally uphold the right of
women to be educated as ability and desire
prompt them, but never at the expense of
traditional women’s work. Echoing The
Ladies Calling, cited above, Richardson
writes to a friend that a woman who despises
domestic duties “is good for nothing.’’8

Fanny Burney supports Richardson’s view
of the learned woman by her attack on the
learned Mrs. Selwyn in Evelina, albeit her
wit and repartee evoke a certain amount of
silent admiration in the circumspect Evelina
and mortify her male party — Burney firmly
advocates more emphasis on modesty than
agility in conversation. Evelina spends a
good deal of her time in dressing her hair
and attiring herself appropriately for the
various social functions to which she is
introduced (not surprisingly, for Fordyce de¬
votes much of one of his first sermons to the
subject of women’s dress). She minds her
table manners, learns the decorum of the

1984]

Thurin — The Accomplished Lady

27

Ranelagh tea room, the Vauxhall gardens,
the Bath parties, and practices the art of
letter writing. In short, she becomes a lovely
ornament, thereby earning herself a titled
husband and exercising her moral virtue at
the same time. In Camilla , Burney shifts the
focus away from the cultivation of social
graces and toward the development of the
fine moral distinctions and domestic crafts
in her heroine, though the results for
Camilla are the same as for Evelina. While
the beautiful Camilla devotes herself to
morality, housekeeping, and needlework,
her younger sister, physically handicapped
as a result of a childhood fall and scarred
from small pox, studies classical languages
and literature which her family feels is ap¬
propriate since they consider her unmar¬
rigeable. To complete the paradigm, then,
Camilla marries a moral paragon who is also
a wealthy landed gentleman, while her sister
is cruelly deceived by a fortune-hunting
rake.

Tom Jones and Sir Charles Grandison
associate women’s accomplishments with the
marriage ideal by linking the accomplish¬
ment specifically to submission to male
authority. The striking example is Sophia’s
filial devotion to her much-inebriated,
coarse, and violent father which she demon¬
strates by cheerfully playing over and over
his favorite bawdy songs without ever be¬
coming the least tainted by them. Sophia’s
incorruptibility is directly linked with her
ability to delight her father, be a dutiful
daughter, and play the harpsichord. Her
ornamental accomplishment is thus related
to her submissiveness, her most admirable
quality, according to Squire Allworthy, and
that which makes her an ideal marriage
partner. Even Sophia’s riding to hounds
with Squire Western is adduced as an act of
submission to please him because he likes to
have her with him as much as possible;
Sophia would rather read a book, since the
sport is too rough for her. Allworthy apos¬
trophizes her for this quality as “an
inestimable Treasure to a good husband,’’

since “she always shewed the highest
Deference to the Understandings of Men; a
Quality, absolutely to the making a good
Wife.”9

Several of Richardson’s female characters
protest the inequalities between men and
women, but they find approval by finally
submitting to male authority. Harriet Byron
is incensed when Greville, one of her early
suitors, attempts to exert control over her by
following her to London. Later, as Lady
Grandison, she commiserates with Clemen¬
tina being bullied by her brothers into
marrying, “as if she were not to have a will”
(VI, 151), yet she chastizes Charlotte for
calling her marital squabbles a “struggle for
my dying liberty” (III, 390). Moreover, she
entirely approves when a newly meek Char¬
lotte turns over her personal kitty of fifteen
hundred pounds to her husband as a symbol
of her acquiescence to masculine authority.
Finally, though offended when called upon
to sing a song ridiculing the ability of women
to remain constant, Harriet fulfills the re¬
quest; she is one of Sophia’s sisterhood,
after all.

The eighteenth-century ideal of women’s
accomplishments as ornamental and synony¬
mous with a high moral sense, purity, and
passivity, undergoes a dramatic revaluation
in the nineteenth-century novel. Austen,
Thackeray, Bronte, Dickens, and Eliot all
assail the value of ornamental accomplish¬
ments in order to redefine woman’s role in
society. Austen objects to the purely orna¬
mental education promoted by popular
moralists and novelists alike on the basis of
its indefensible intellectual vacuity. The
great danger in the superficial education
aimed at making women display objects lies
in its contamination of the moral and intel¬
lectual training afforded women also. When
Emma puts her slim talent for drawing to use
as a matchmaking device for Mr. Elton and
Harriet, she displays ignorance of her limita¬
tions as an artist and vanity in her under¬
standing of other people’s feelings. Sim¬
ilarly, in Pride and Predjudice, Mary

28

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

Bennet’s musical performance embarrasses
Elizabeth less for the eagerness of its display
than for the affectation and conceit which it
manifests. Mary’s intellectual pretentions
are absurd, not because she represents the
learned woman so derided in the eighteenth-
century novel, but because, being deficient
in understanding, she is reduced to shallow
moralizing and half-understood quotation
from old conduct books. Her display is little
different from that of Miss Bingley who likes
to walk about a room to show off her figure.
Worse, the display of their slim talents has
made these women vain. 10

The conversation at Netherfield about
what constitutes female accomplishments
contains the gist of Austen’s ideas on the
subject. Bingley asserts that netting purses,
covering screens, and painting tables show
how accomplished young ladies are. Miss
Bingley elaborates:

“No one can be really esteemed accom¬
plished, who does not greatly surpass what is
usually met with. A woman must have a thor¬
ough knowledge of music, dancing, drawing,
singing, and the modern languages to deserve
the word; and besides all this, she must possess
a certain something in her air and manner of
walking, the tone of her voice, her address, and
expressions, or the word will be but half de¬
served.’’

All this she must possess,’’ added Darcy,
“and to all this she must yet add something
more substantial, in the improvement of her
mind by extensive reading.’’

I am no longer surprised at your knowing
only six accomplished women. I rather wonder
now at your knowing any. ’ ’ 1 1

Elizabeth’s rejoinder is sometimes taken as
an ironic confirmation that Miss Bingley’s
definition of accomplishments is correct.
Taking into consideration the qualifiers
“thorough,” “a certain something,” “more
substantial,” and “extensive,” Elizabeth’s
irony must be seen first of all as a plea for

reasonableness. She is not necessarily ad¬
verse to the basis on which the worldly judge
sophistication, but her irony does imply a
criticism of sophistication as being neces¬
sarily desirable.

Notably, the above quotation from Pride
and Prejudice discusses the definition of
“accomplishment” without association with
virtue. Nor does Austen connect the degree
of accomplishment in a young lady with her
desirability as a marriage partner — the most
accomplished ladies lose the hero as Mary
Crawford and Caroline Bingley illustrate. In
these ways, then, Austen departs radically
from the way in which ornamental accom¬
plishments are treated by earlier writers;
however, this does not mean that she rejects
the value of traditional women’s work.
Austen satirizes the definitions offered by
Bingley and his sister because of the narrow
range and unintellectual nature of activities
they accord women, but she does not attack
the activities per se. Elizabeth Bennet takes
up a piece of needlework as often as a book
during evening hours at Netherfield when
the conversation takes a frivolous turn. The
needlework of Fanny Price, the nursing of
the sick by Elizabeth Bennet and Anne
Elliott, the babysitting of Jane Bennet and
Anne Elliott, the household management of
Emma Woodhouse and Elinor Dashwood,
as well as the musical and artistic abilities of
characters like Jane Fairfax all recommend
the characters within the context of the
novels. Austen is well aware that the daily
requirements of the home must be met, and
she accepts this as woman’s role.

Austen’s neutral presentation of ladies’
accomplishments is followed by Thackeray’s
associating accomplishments with vice. In
Vanity Fair , Thackeray develops a bifur¬
cated Sophia Western in his dual anti-hero¬
ines, relegating Sophia’s liveliness to Becky
Sharp and her submissiveness to Amelia
Sedley, then filling in the other half of the
characterizations with egoism, vanity, vice,
and shallowness. Becky and Amelia, like

1984]

Thurin—The Accomplished Lady

29

Sophia, are musicians of sorts, but there the
similarity ends. To Amelia, the piano gives
pleasure to no one but herself. Significantly,
the piano itself rather than any music she
might produce on it interests Amelia, for she
is convinced it is a gift from George. Thus
Thackeray uses the paradigm from the eight¬
eenth-century novel to reveal the vanity and
folly of the character. The sentimental Amelia
cannot perceive George’s indifference or
that he would be incapable of such a gener¬
ous gesture as retrieving her piano from the
auction block. The piano becomes one of the
items in her shrine to George’s memory that
helps her avert a romantic involvement with
Dobbin.

By contrast, Becky Sharp uses her accom¬
plishments to secure social success. She
captivates Jos Sedley with sentimental love
songs, later entertains gentleman callers at
her soirees with her music, once moves Lady
Steyne to tears by her rendering of the
Mozart religious songs, and unsuccessfully
tries to support herself by singing profes¬
sionally. The best that can be said of Becky
in these instances is that she manages her
own destiny; she is active and resourceful on
her own behalf. But Becky’s activity is as full
of guile as that of the rest of Vanity Fair.
Through her manipulations she provides for
her little family “on nothing a year” while
incurring little guilt and a great deal of debt.
Ironically, of course, Becky’s conventional
gentlewoman’s ornamental talents derive
from her bohemian background which ordi¬
narily would be a deterrent to her social
goals. If the emptiness of ornamental educa¬
tion is satirized by Austen, Thackeray clearly
links it to hypocrisy and immorality.

Thackeray also reverses the association of
feminine accomplishments with the marriage
ideal illustrated by Fielding. Sophia’s sub¬
missiveness is replaced by Becky’s preda¬
toriness and Amelia’s self-pitying manipula¬
tion. As a result, Becky stalks the innocent
and decent Mr. Crisp as well as the prepos¬
terous collector of Boggley Wollah. That her

values coincide with those of her society,
however, is indicated by the fact that no one
questions the latter match — Amelia is all
sentimental flutter over the prospect; Mrs.
Sedley regrets only the lowness of Becky’s
parentage, and George interferes out of
snobbery. In view of Becky’s goals, it is
ironic that in marrying Rawdon she both
secures a fairly compatible husband and fails
to make an economically advantageous
match. Amelia, on the other hand, ostensi¬
bly modest, submissive, and self-sacrificing,
has two-edged virtues; their possessor is
morally flaccid. That these virtues are
counter-productive is nowhere so clearly
revealed as when they manage to get her
George Osborne for a husband.

While James Fordyce preaches needle¬
work as a woman’s moral obligation and
Jane Austen accepts it as a fact in woman’s
life, Thackeray turns it into a display of
hypocrisy and vanity. Whenever Becky
wants to appear domestic, she applies herself
to a dirty rag of a shirt she supposedly is
sewing for little Rawdon. Amelia, on the
other hand, assiduously cuts up all of her
own clothing into clothes for little George.
Becky’s lack of interest in her son is as
extreme as Amelia’s smothering care of hers,
and both attitudes are indicated by the abuse
of a traditional woman’s craft. Thackeray
also explodes Fordyce’s dictums about the
moral and practical applications of drawing
as a lady’s occupation. As an impoverished
young widow, Amelia thinks of selling her
art work as a livelihood. Not only is the
market glutted with amateur art, but
Amelia’s pathetic and childish pictures get
no buyers. Her naivete about the value of
her work soon turns into despair in her situ¬
ation.

Dickens completes the dismantling of the
old mythology regarding women’s accom¬
plishments, and along with other Victorian
novelists, revalues women’s crafts in relation
to woman’s role in society. In David
Copperfield, Dora, modeled after the eigh-

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teenth-century ideal of the genteel lady with
an ornamental education, exposes the
impracticality of the ideal. Dora paints
flowers while meals go unprepared, the
servants pilfer from the larder, and Jip, her
dog, wreaks havoc in the house. She uses her
cookbook as a prop for one of Jip’s tricks
and bursts into tears when David attempts a
few lessons in household accounts. The
“indispensable” handwriting recommended
by Hester Chapone, proves equally useless to
Dora who copies David’s manuscript by end¬
ing each page with her beautiful signature as
if it were a school exercise. According to the
old formulas for domestic order, the hus¬
band’s duty is to develop his wife’s abilities,
but Dora is impervious to such help, subvert¬
ing David’s remonstrances by her alternate
affectionate cajolement and irrational out¬
bursts. The old ideals for the conduct of life
simply do not work in David Copperfield.

Instead, David slowly comes to under¬
stand that the sister-angel-helpmeet, Agnes,
represents the new ideal. Significantly, she is
more desirable because she is more useful;
her domestic accomplishments make life
comfortable. She flourishes in motherhood
while Dora is killed by it. The description of
Dora’s stillbirth is revealing: “I had hoped
that lighter hands than mine would help to
mold her character, and that a baby-smile
upon her breast might change my child-wife
into a woman. It was not to be.”12 David is
interested in the efficacy of motherhood as
an improver of character, but “It was not to
be.” Dora dies a short time after her still¬
born child.

David’s marriage to Agnes results in a
redefinition of the feminine ideal. Romantic
love, represented by David’s marriage to
Dora, leads to the loss of sexual innocence
which in turn proves to have destructive
emotional and physical effects, so David
“disciplines” his heart to prefer a non-
sexual mother-woman like Agnes. Agnes is
the reliable counsellor to whom David turns
for advice from childhood through his court¬
ship and marriage to Dora and years of lone¬

liness and spiritual growth. Agnes, with her
little basket of keys, her father’s competent
housekeeper, becomes the preferred ideal. In
David’s second marriage, the more private
and self-centered aims are submerged in the
public roles of spouse, parent, and worker,
epitomizing the individual as a thoroughly
useful member of society.

Being useful and doing useful work is cru¬
cial to the ideal which Agnes represents.
While her domesticity and motherliness
might at first seem to be little different from
the eighteenth-century ideal suggested by the
typical happy-ever-after ending of novels
like Tom Jones and Sir Charles Grandison,
there is a difference. In the earlier novels, the
usefulness of women’s work ranks below the
virtue with which it is performed — Lady
Grandison’s feminine submission and sense
of moral obligation to be efficient and eco¬
nomical in her housekeeping surpass the use¬
fulness of the work which she actually per¬
forms (the housekeeper seems to have kept
up the grand establishment perfectly well for
years before the arrival of Lady Grandison).
However, in the work ethic promoted by
Dickens and the other Victorian writers,
characters actively respond to forces which
affect their lives. To illustrate, when Agnes’
father has financial misfortune, she takes the
initiative by starting a little school.

The values approved in David Copperfield
parallel those promoted in Ruskin’s “Of
Queen’s Gardens,” a central document on
Victorian values. In this essay, Ruskin
considers what portion of “power” falls to
women and what kind of education prepares
them for the proper exercise of this power.
He urges that “a girl’s education should be
nearly, in its course and material of study,
the same as a boy’s; but quite differently
directed,” and he criticizes bringing up girls
“as if they were meant for sideboard orna¬
ments.”13 He does not intend that women
seek knowledge for its own sake or even for
their own, but rather that it will enable them
“to understand, and even to aid, the work of
men . . . but only to feel, and to judge” (sec.

1984]

Thurin—The Accomplished Lady

31

72). Ruskin then applies this theory to the
public and private duties of men and
women:

Now, the man’s work for his own home is, as
has been said, to secure its maintenance,
progress, and defence; the woman’s to secure
its order, comfort, and loveliness.

Expand both these functions. The man’s
duty, as a member of a commonwealth, is to
assist in the maintenance, in the advance, in the
defence of the state. The woman’s duty, as a
member of the commonwealth, is to assist in
the ordering, in the comforting, and in the
beautiful adornment of the state.

What the man is at his own gate, defending
it, if need be, against insult and spoil, that also,
... in a more devoted measure, he is to be at
the gate of his country, leaving his home ... to
do his more incumbent work there.

And, in like manner, what the woman is to
be within her gates, as the centre of order, the
balm of distress, and the mirror of beauty: that
she is also to be without her gates, where order
is more difficult, distress more imminent, love¬
liness more rare.

(sec. 86)

Though the modern reader may find much
to fault in Ruskin’s views, from the Vic¬
torian standpoint they have revolutionary
significance. In effect, Ruskin assigns a
social and political value to traditional
women’s work, making it a corollary to
man’s role of protecting the family and
contributing to the empire. His recommen¬
dation that boys and girls be given the same
course of study, though to different depths,
is more progressive than the eighteenth-
century idea that the subjects suitable for
study by men and women are mutually ex¬
clusive. Ruskin, at least in theory, maintains
that woman has a duty to the state “without
her gates,” although he offers no specific
examples of what this duty might include.

This revaluation of woman’s role mani¬
fests itself in a number of ways in the treat¬
ment of woman’s work in the nineteenth-
century novel. Most striking is that the
purely amateurish craft, whose chief pur¬

pose is to take up time, is repudiated in favor
of professionalism and useful work. In
Eliot’s Middlemarch, Dorothea’s failure in
her social welfare schemes and attempts to
participate in Casaubon’s intellectual work
are all the more poignant because she rejects
the old-fashioned ladies’ busy work:

. . . With some endowment of stupidity and
conceit, she might have thought that a
Christian young lady of fortune should find
her ideal life in village charities, patronage of
the humbler clergy, the perusal of “Female
Scripture Characters,” unfolding the private
experience of Sara under the Old Dispensation,
and Dorcas under the New, and the care of her
soul over her embroidery in her own boudoir. 14

Rejecting the shallow existence to be found
in needlework and pious practices, Dorothea
strives to overcome the disadvantages of her
“toybox” education through her marriage
to Casaubon. This bookish clergyman, she
thinks, will open broad vistas of knowledge
hitherto beyond her reach and allow her a
substantive participation in his intellectual
labors. However, her intelligence proves
fatal even to her willingness to act as an
amanuensis to her husband. Distrusted by
Casaubon, disillusioned by the flaws in his
“Key to All Mythologies,” she suffers
rebuff even in her attempts to offer him
wifely consolation, affection, and under¬
standing. Thus deprived of doing either use¬
ful work or providing psychological support
to her husband, her relatives’ advice that she
spend her time riding and growing gerani¬
ums seems a mockery.

A strong argument for the readers who see
Mary Garth as the feminine ideal in Middle-
march can be made of the fact that she,
unlike Dorothea, succeeds at being useful.
When necessity demands, Mary earns a liv¬
ing by doing needlework and nursing the
sick. As a tribute to the ironies of life, Mary
Garth writes children’s books as an exten¬
sion of her family life, while the large-goaled
Dorothea finally has only her domestic life.
For Dorothea errs in her understanding of

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[Vol. 72

the helpmeet role, expecting far too much
from it. In perfect agreement with the
description of a wife’s duties offered by
Ruskin, both Lydgate and Casaubon expect
their wives to be uncritically admiring of
their work, but not to have any responsi¬
bility for its actual performance. What
seems revolutionary in Ruskin is reactionary
for Dorothea.

A second salient issue in relation to Mary
Garth arises from her rejection of a teaching
job in favor of remaining at home to help
her overburdened mother. She agrees to take
the job because of her family’s grim finan¬
cial situation, but is overjoyed when her
father regains his local position and receives
lucrative employment, thus obviating her
need to work for a living. A similar situation
occurs in Jane Eyre when Jane, who has
been doing an admirable job teaching girls in
a rural school, closes the school and retires
to her avocations of sketching, reading, and
housekeeping, when she inherits a large sum
of money. The actions of Mary and Jane
align with the view that a genteel person does
not work for a living, but at first sight
appear at odds with more progressive ideas
about women’s work. St. John Rivers’ criti¬
cism of Jane Eyre’s action says as much:

“It is all very well for the present,” said he:
“but seriously, I trust that when the first flush
of vivacity is over, you will look a little higher
than domestic endearments and household
joys.”15

St. John is particularly interested in what
Jane should consider her religious duty, to
teach the ignorant and to become a mission¬
ary. Jane not only rejects his cold idealism,
but finds real joy in renovating Moor House,
studying, and reading with her cousins.

Anyone who knows the drudgery in a dull
and unrewarding teaching position can
sympathize with Mary Garth’s and Jane
Eyre’s rejection of it. The portrait of school
life and the teacher’s lot given in the first
part of Jane Eyre and in Villette suggest that
to Bronte teaching entails far more pain than

joy. Moreover, the preference for domestic
life by Jane and Mary indicates how limited
their alternatives are as well as carrying a
note of wish fulfillment. It is not only that
Jane Eyre’s life at Moor House seems to
include an imaginary redecorating of the
Brontes’ Haworth parsonage and an ideal¬
ization of life there, but also a longing for
independence and the artist’s struggle to be
free. The artist needs both time and freedom
from stultifying demands in order to work.
Jane’s allegorical pictures, her use of
sketching as therapy in order to overcome
her jealousy of Miss Ingram, and her skillful
portraits reveal a commitment to her art, but
she can only indulge it in moments stolen
from her governness work and in the leisure
of Moor House where she feels ’‘a thrill of
artist-delight” as she paints (373). So too, an
aspiring novelist like Bronte might long to
trade her teaching duties for a self-structured
work routine.

Like Jane Eyre, Mary Garth rejects teach¬
ing because she dislikes it, but Eliot does not
depict the alternative as idyllically as Jane’s.
Mrs. Garth’s life, which Mary elects to ease,
consists of a dawn-to-dusk multiplicity of
chores and cares. Though Mrs. Garth cheer¬
fully bakes pies, launders clothes by hand,
and teaches her younger children their les¬
sons all at the same time, her life is un¬
enviable. Yet for Mary, a daughter’s duty
and family happiness offer more personal
satisfaction than she can find in school
teaching. Woman’s traditional work has a
positive value for her.

When traditional women’s work has
merely an ornamental value, however, Eliot
wastes no effort in defending it. Unlike
Dorothea who has the author’s sympathy for
endeavoring to make her life effective,
Rosamund Vincy in Middlemarch and
Gwendolyn Harleth in Daniel Deronda earn
her censure for failing to recognize their
limitations. For Rosamund, this means her
assumption that her finishing at Mrs.
Lemon’s school, even including the “extras,
such as the getting in and out of a carriage”
(I, 143) prepares her for the exigencies of

1984]

Thurin — The Accomplished Lady

33

marriage. Marrying the nephew of a baronet
“offered vistas of that middle-class heaven,
rank” (I, 177), so great that she even dis¬
counts her own reservations about Lydgate’s
low-status medical profession and disgusting
(to her) research. Having paid so much
attention to furnishings and refinements,
Rosamund responds predictably to Lyd¬
gate’s revelation about their debts with
“ ‘What can I do?’ ” and with her attempts to
subvert his professional goals by urging him
to set up a fashionable practice in London.

Gwendolyn Harleth errs in confusing the
depth and purpose of her lady’s training.
The utter folly of her belief that she can
dominate Grandcourt indicates how little
intellectual acuity her education has given
her, nor has it given her any practical skills.
An over-rated sense of her personal worth
and character strength leads her not only
into a devastating marriage, but numerous
smaller mistakes. When Gwendolyn thinks
she can become a professional singer because
she is a lady— which she assumes qualifies
her for “a high position’’ on the stage — Herr
Klesmer lectures her at length on the qualifi¬
cations of a professional actress and singer,
starting with the need for talent and years of
dedicated training.16 After marrying, when
Gwendolyn again thinks of taking singing
lessons, Grandcourt scoffs at her motives
and the likely result, that she will make a
fool of herself by singing for her guests:
“‘Amateurs make fools of themselves. A
lady can’t risk herself in that way in com¬
pany. And one doesn’t want to hear squall¬
ing in private’” (III, 65). The element of
justice in this chastisement stings her all the
more by coming from the odious Grand¬
court as well as vivifies the criticism of orna¬
mental education for making women super¬
ficial and naive.

Occasionally, however, amateurism can
lead to professionalism. Such is the thesis
offered by Anne Bronte in Tenant of Wild-
fell Hally one of the first portraits of a
woman artist. Though the focus of the novel
is on the plight of the innocent wife of an
incorrigible dissipate, Helen Huntingdon’s

professionalism is well marked. She deter¬
mines to become an artist in order to support
herself and her son and escape from her hus¬
band. First, she realizes, she “must labour
hard to improve [her] talent and to produce
something worthwhile as a specimen of [her]
powers.”17 She sets up her easel and works
from morning to night until her husband de¬
stroys her work and prevents her from
obtaining new materials. When he installs
his mistress as his son’s governess, she takes
the bold step of decamping with her son,
servant, and baggage.18 Then posing as the
widowed Mrs. Graham, she sets up a studio
at Wildfell Hall, turns out landscapes,
secures a London agent, pays her debts, and
wins the admiration of her friends and
relatives. Left a wealthy widow after her
husband’s death, Mrs. Huntingdon appar¬
ently abandons her art for the management
of her estate, but this suits Bronte’s charac¬
terization too. Mrs. Huntingdon is a profes¬
sional, whatever her occupation is.

A second, rare consideration of the pro¬
fessional woman artist occurs in Daniel
Deronda. In this novel, Daniel’s mother
consciously chooses her profession and
achieves great success as a singer. To do so,
though, she has had to flaunt convention.
Explaining the difficulty of being both a
woman and an artist, she makes a passionate
defense of her abandonment of her son, hus¬
band, marriage, and religion in order to
pursue her art, partly because marriage was
forced upon her by her parents. She argues
for a need and right to be free, for her talent
and aspirations are unconventional:

I was a great singer, and I acted as well as I
sang. All the rest were poor beside me. Men
followed me from one country to another. I
was living a myriad of lives in one. I did not
want a child.

(Ill, 123)

. . . you can never imagine what it is to have a
man’s force of genius in you, and yet to suffer
the slavery of being a girl. To have a pattern
cut out— “this is the Jewish woman; this is
what you must be; this is what you are wanted

34

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[Vol. 72

for; a woman’s heart must be of such a size and
no larger, else it must be pressed small, like
Chinese feet; her happiness is to be made as
cakes are, by a fixed receipt.”

(HI, 131)

Eliot allows the character to speak for her¬
self. Daniel makes no comment on the valid¬
ity of his mother’s position. She has chosen
her own life, defends it, accepts it; the reader
may do the same. Eliot’s presentation of this
character takes us far from Fordyce’s
moralizing about needlework and music. If
music be woman’s work, Eliot’s character
implies, let it be work, and it will have value.

However, Eliot will not allow so simple an
alternative as either to accept or reject the
justice of the claims of Deronda’s mother.
Instead, she offers the portrait of Mirah
Cohen, who on the verge of brilliant success
as a singer also, abandons her career for
marriage to Daniel and dedication to Zion¬
ism. Beautiful, talented Mirah marries the
hero and opts for the conventional life;
beautiful, talented Mrs. Deronda opts for
her profession and forfeits the conventional
life. A parallel situation arises in Eliot’s
earlier novel, Adam Bede , when Dinah gives
up preaching after marrying Adam. In
Eliot’s novels, the roles of professional
artist and wife are mutually exclusive.

In fact, it is the rare Victorian novel which
explores artistic endeavor as a means of
livelihood.19 Instead, novelists prefer to use
the commonplace activities of women to de¬
pict the position of women in society, the
marriage ideal, and individual values. This
preference may reflect the authors’ attempt
to present a realistic picture of middle class
life, in effect, to preserve an artifact of the
popular novel. The Victorian novelists de¬
part from the didacticism of the eighteenth-
century novelists by dissociating the personal
rectitude of their heroines from the degree of
their attainment of ornamental accomplish¬
ments as when Dickens separates the roman¬
tic and conjugal ideal in Dora and Agnes.
Victorians, aware of the vapidness to which

eighteenth-century ornamental education
can lead a woman, disapprove of women
who view themselves as works of art.

Woman in the eighteenth- and nineteenth-
century novel tends to be defined by and
confined to her traditional crafts. From an
historical perspective, the novel offers few
happy or realistic alternatives to being an
ornament, an accomplished lady, or a gen¬
teel housewife. The genteel women’s occupa¬
tions which occur in novels, those of govern¬
ess and school teacher, result in a dismal life
joyfully traded at the earliest opportunity
for those of wife or amateur artist.20 The
artistic professions mentioned in the novels
are those which grow out of women’s tradi¬
tional accomplishments, but ironically, these
professions offer one of the most difficult
means to success: Who can assure the aspir¬
ing painter, novelist, actress, or musician a
secure future? In reality, too, artistic
professions are unlikely alternatives for they
would undoubtedly result in a bohemian life
outside the boundaries of the genteel charac¬
ters who might be inclined to them. In the
Victorian novel, women’s traditional work
may be either an ideal or a limitation, but
seems to be one from which there is no
escape.

Notes

1 Richard Allestree, The Ladies Calling (Oxford:
Theater, 1673), Pt. II, i, 7. Further references are in the
text.

2 Hester Chapone, Letters on the Improvement of the
Mind in The Works of Mrs. Chapone, 4 vols. (London:
Murray, 1807), III, 15. Further references are in the
text.

3 Thomas Gisborne has a somewhat hostile tone as he
chides women who complain that men and women are
given unequal education; he divides women’s education
into religious instruction and that “on the score of
ornaments,” but concentrates largely on woman’s duty
to provide for the needs of other family members in An
Enquiry into the Duties of the Female Sex, 11th ed.
(London: Cadell and Davies, 1816), pp. 10, 79, ff. Most
conduct books, however, have a rather paternal tone.

4 James Fordyce, Sermons to Young Women, 2 vols.
(London: Cadell, 1791), I, 255 and 262. Further refer¬
ences are to this edition and are cited in the text.

5 Vindication of the Rights of Women (New York:

1984]

Thurin — The Accomplished Lady

35

Norton, 1975), p. 94. Without acknowledging his
source, Villars uses Fordyce’s words on woman’s virtue
in advice to Evelina in Fanny Burney’s Evelina
(London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1968), p. 164. Austen
parodies the same advice in Pride and Prejudice when
Mary moralizes on Lydia’s elopement. In Susan
Ferrier’s Marriage, A Novel, Lady Juliana’s refusal to
read Fordyce’s Sermons is one of many examples of her
frivolity (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1971), p. 60.

6 E. g. Dr. John Gregory, A Father’s Legacy to His
Daughters (1774; rpt. Boston: Dow, 1834), p. 23.

7 The History of Sir Charles Grandison, Shakespeare
Head Ed., 6 vols. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1931), I, 20. Fur¬
ther references are to this edition and are cited in the
text.

8 Selected Letters of Samuel Richardson, ed. John
Carroll (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1964), p. 177.
Moralists and novelists of the eighteenth century
generally agree that women could be allowed to learn
what men were taught if they had particular genius;
however, the learned lady was supposed to conceal the
fact of her learning and complement it with well-
developed domestic skills. Cf. Lady Mary Wortley
Montague cited in Robert Palfrey Utter and Gwendolyn
Bridges Needham, Pamela’s Daughters (New York:
Macmillan, 1957), pp. 29-30; Lord Chesterfield, Letters
to His Son, ed. Oliver H. Leigh, 2 vols. (New York:
Tudor, 1941), I, 107-108; Gregory, p. 20; Charlotte
Smith, The Old Manor House (London: Oxford Univ.
Press, 1969), pp. 186-188.

9 Henry Fielding, The History of Tom Jones A
Foundling, ed. Fredson Bowers, Wesleyan Ed., 2 vols.
(Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1975), II,
882-883.

10 Lloyd W. Brown, “Jane Austen and the Feminist
Tradition,” Nineteenth-Century Ficiton, 28 (1973), 321 -
338; Brown compares Mary Bennet and Caroline Bing-
ley in some detail.

11 Pride and Prejudice, ed. R. W. Chapman, 3rd ed.
(1931; rpt. London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1967), pp.
39-40.

12 The Personal History of David Copperfield, The
Oxford Illustrated Dickens (1948; rpt. London: Oxford
Univ. Press, 1971), p. 698.

13 “Of Queen’s Gardens,” in Sesame and Lilies
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1900), sec. 74 and 80.
Further references are to sections and are noted in the

14 George Eliot, Middlemarch, Cabinet Ed., 3 vols.
(Edinburgh and London: Blackwood, 1878), I, 39. Fur¬
ther references are to this edition and are cited in the
text.

15 Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (London: Oxford
Univ. Press, 1973), p. 395. Further references are to this
edition and are cited in the text.

16 George Eliot, Daniel Deronda, Cabinet Ed., 3 vols.
(Edinburgh and London: Blackwood, 1878), II, 375-
398; Ch. 23. Further references are to this edition and
are cited in the text.

17 Anne Bronte, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (Har-
mondsworth: Penguin, 1979), p. 358. No standard edi¬
tion of this novel is available.

18 The independence and decision of Helen
Huntingdon should not be underestimated. The novel
was written in 1848 when husbands had complete legal
control over wives and children. When Dickens separ¬
ated from his wife in the 1860’s, he maintained control
of all of his property, keeping his home, his children,
and his wife’s sister as housekeeper, while his wife was
sent off to a small flat where all but her eldest son were
forbidden to visit or correspond with her. See Edgar
Johnson, Charles Dickens His Tragedy and Triumph, 2
vols. (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1952), II,
918-926 and 1064.

19 Zelda Austen notes the consistency with which
authors of autobiographical novels tend to cast their
fictional selves as “something more commonplace than
genius,” preferring to universalize themselves for the
sake of realism; “Why Feminist Critics Are Angry with
George Eliot,” College English, 37 (February, 1976),
553. In Literary Women, Ellen Moers argues that Mme.
de Stael’s Corinne served as a model for several other
nineteenth-century works about “the woman as
genius”; (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1977),
Ch. 9.

20 Nursing, a traditional woman’s task noted in the
conduct books, practiced by various characters within
the domestic setting (e.g. Anne Elliott in Persuasion and
Agnes in David Copperfield), and professionalized by
Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War, fails to
be recognized by novelists as an occupational alternative
for a heroine, probably because of the generally low
status of the medical profession up to the end of the
nineteenth century.

text.

THE CAPTAIN OF COMPANY K FIVE WARS LATER

Kent Gramm
English Department
Ottawa University
Ottawa , Kansas

The Captain of Company K, by Joseph
Kirkland, was published in 1891, four years
before Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of
Courage. Crane was not a veteran of the
Civil War, but Kirkland was. While both
novels exhibit the new tendency toward
realism in American fiction, The Captain of
Company K lacks the pervasive irony and
naturalism of Crane — perhaps because Kirk¬
land, a generation older than Crane, was
also a veteran of The Great Sentimental Age.
He is therefore an intriguing transitional fig¬
ure, presenting war graphically but within
the context of a conventional popular
romance novel which would not have been
out of place during and immediately before
the Civil War. This may partly explain the
artistic inferiority of The Captain of
Company K, lacking as it does the unity,
focus, and intensity of Crane’s Civil War
novel. Being an uncongenial juxtaposition of
fiction and the author’s feelings, attitudes,
and recollections, The Captain of Company
K may have little to offer as art, but as a
statement and reminiscence by a Civil War
veteran it has high historical and current
interest.

Kirkland’s novel deserves its neglect in
literary history also because its characters
are stereotypes — and this notwithstanding,
many of them are still hardly distinguishable
from each other at times without their highly
artificial and overdrawn dialects, accents,
and mannerisms — and because its plot is
merely a series of individual incidents related
to the unsatisfyingly predictable stock plot
of a man winning a woman. Little illumina¬
tion is thrown upon this man-woman dy¬
namic, however; the book’s interest lies in its
war scenes and the author’s attitude toward
them.

Will Fargeon, a mild and humanitarian
man, has been courting Sara Penrose, the
typically beautiful and somewhat vain and
heedless elder daughter of a well-meaning
befuddled clergyman. Will is persuaded by a
typical Scottish uncle, Colin, to back up his
own Union rhetoric and enlist, whereupon
Company K of Chicago’s Sixth Illinois fills
immediately and elects the sterling but
peace-loving Fargeon its captain. Fortu¬
nately, Fargeon’s first lieutenant is “Mac”
McClintock, an ideal soldier and wise
veteran of the Mexican War. Will becomes a
new man, a real man perhaps, during the
first year of the war, and Sara and he declare
their love for each other. Meanwhile Will
and Mac become closer than brothers. At
Shiloh Will loses part of a leg and Mac is
apparently killed. Lydia, Sara’s younger
sister and a typical second daughter, has
fallen in love with an appreciative Mac, and
the loss seems tragic. However, Mac had not
been killed after all and returns from a
Southern prison. There are two weddings,
Will and Sara inherit Colin’s fortune, Mac
becomes a career soldier and never gets his
deserved promotion, Will becomes a surgeon
and continues to clump around on the same
wooden leg he got after Shiloh and saves the
bloody shirtsleeve he used as a bandage, and
the public goes on with its booming postwar
business and couldn’t care less.

But the author invites us to look at his
work as a personal document, and therefore
we can go far beyond his vacuous plot and
characters. He refers to the Union soldiers as
“our” men and describes events as if he were
an unnamed participant. He uses the first
person at times: “God! If I wanted to
magnify the pathos of all this, what could I
say that would not belittle it?”1 (220), and

36

1984]

Gramm — The Captain of Company K

37

throughout makes direct statements about
war: . . [which is] fortuitous death by an

unseen missile from an unknown hand . . .
But to the average American brutal battle is
better than irksome idleness.” (83)

It is not the empty wit of the characters’
dialogue that is interesting; it is rather the
dialogue within Kirkland’s own voice (such
as in the quotation above) that intrigues. On
the one hand Kirkland gives the reader some¬
times rhetorical, sometimes vivid, statements
on the evil of war. “Why are men so fool¬
ish,” is the unconsciously telling question
that Sara asks as the story opens. As the
company’s first skirmish is described Kirk¬
land asks, “Is not the time coming when the
rank and file . . . will . . . learn good sense
. . . [and] cry with one voice: ‘It is enough.
We will have no more of it.’” (83) In that
skirmish one of the men is not permitted to
stop and care for his brother, who has just
been shot:

“I don’t care if he’s your sister! Drop him
and take your gun! ’’

Poor Aleck obeyed; laid down his burden,
tenderly kissed the pale face, rose with tears
streaming down his face, loaded his piece,
crying. Still crying, went forward to the firing
line, and cried and fought, fought and cried, as
long as there was any fighting to do. Country
— duty— glory? (99)

In a crucial scene, a party of truce delivers
news to a dignified Confederate (Kirkland
declines to capitalize the c) officer that his
son is mortally wounded. The boy is
“Young, strong, handsome, high-bred-
curls, that might have been the pride of a
doting mother . . . Eyes fit to shine as the
heaven of love and trust to some happy
bride.” This sentimental description is
followed by: “A bullet had torn clean
through his lungs, and the breath made a
dreadful noise escaping through the wound
at every exhalation.” (104) A little later Will
glimpses a man’s wounded hand: “. . . a
broken bone, and bloody skin and flesh both
fat and lean,” and feels “a little nausea.”
(118) “Oh, how can a just God permit such
things?” he cries (119), and not for the last

time. The brother of the man described
earlier dies and is hastily buried:

Our forces did not hold this position; and after
we retired it is probable that some enemy found
the spot and destroyed the simple record, or
perhaps the wood-fires burned it, or hogs
rooted it up. But what difference did that
make? Nobody ever went back to look for it.
(135)

In the description of the battle of Shiloh
Kirkland writes:

How do men fall in battle?

Forward, as fall other slaughtered animals . . .

As they fall, so they lie, so they die and so
they stiffen; and all the contortions seen by
burial details and depicted by Verestschagin
and other realistic painters are the natural
result of the removal of bodies which have
fallen with faces and limbs to the earth, and
grown rigid without the rearrangement of
“decent burial.” (279)

And he quotes Cowper: “War is a game
which, were their subjects wise, /Kings
would not play at.”

Is The Captain of Company K an anti-war
novel, then? Just before the Cowper quota¬
tion, Kirkland says, “Then one must pause
to remind himself that war did not invent
death; nor does even blessed peace prevent
it.” Then are the anti-war statements merely
items which are conventional in a war story
of the late nineteenth century? Kirkland
suggests that his conscious purpose may
have been to give his readers “an education
. . . concerning the realities of war from the
point of view of the front-line men.” (158)
This purpose would permit more than one
feeling about war to be expressed, but per¬
haps Kirkland also has a less conscious atti¬
tude toward war which is not as ambiguous,
and discoverable.

War does have its good aspects. Will
Fargeon displays upon his enlistment a new
and deeper quality, which others perceive in
his face. (15) There is the bond Will begins to
feel toward his men, and the affection and
sense of responsibility that ensue: army life
seems to be as pleasant as the feeling of love

38

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

he has for Sara — in fact one day he doesn’t
even open a package from Sara as long as he
is busy with the men (71); the conversation
among soldiers can be sheer delight (73-74,
for example); war teaches the difference
between bravery and courage (86); nobility is
tested and can be encouraged (112); civilian
life is by contrast intricate and exasperating
(152); the fatherly and brotherly aspects of a
man can be brought out by army life: Will
and Mac once went “stealing along the sleep¬
ing line of Company K, slipping two biscuits
and a bit of pork into every sleeper’s haver¬
sack” (183-4); and in a very effective scene
where Will stays behind enemy lines with his
bleeding Irish corporal and cradles the dirty,
smelly body to his own against the wet and
cold (194ff) we see the selfless devotion war
can call up among fellow sufferers.

But more important than all these to Kirk¬
land seems to be the summation: war, in its
terrible glory and its tragic, brutal beauty, is
larger than peace. We see the aging Will
Fargeon at the end, still devoted to his war
experiences, memories, and friend, and
know that war was the main event of his life.
We see almost nothing of his civilian, mar¬
ried life after the war. Was Will as bored by
the Fargeon home as it seems Kirkland was?
War was intense, it was life; if often
horrible, then life, real life, is often horrible.
Peace is blessed but pale; peace is a washed-
out mere absence of war. Peace has offered
little to the reader — contrived, wooden, and
unreal conversations among stereotypes —
but war was interesting; to the characters
themselves peace offered little — but war
developed them and gave them something to
do and to feel.

Before a conclusion is drawn from this,
some other valuable aspects of the novel
should be outlined. An historian would find
many fascinating items of Civil War
minutae, ranging from how soldiers posi¬
tioned themselves in sleep so as to keep their
equipment dry in wet weather to how cannon
fire sounded. The battle descriptions are
excellent. Here is part of the description of
how the surprise morning attack by the Con¬

federate army at Shiloh looked to a unit not
in a forward position:

“Hellow, Mac! What’s all this? Somebody
else is reconnoitering I guess.” For the sharp,
untimely musketry persists in making itself
heard from the outposts. Mac looks glum and
anxious. He hurries up all the morning opera¬
tions with asperity and profanity not usual
with him.

The rattle of musketry becomes more and
more steady and continuous. Scattered men
without muskets begin straggling down the
road toward the rear. . . .

... the road is growing fuller and fuller of
fugitives; here and there a wagon or ambu¬
lance, but chiefly infantry-men walking or
running toward the river. . . .

Still that rising approaching rattle of
musketry . . . The distant sound of cannon has
been heard some time; now comes the welcome
thunder of a battery which has opened fire
from our own side . . .

As the men gather on the color line in re¬
sponse to the long roll, they see the other regi¬
ments in the brigade hurriedly striking tents
and scrambling them into wagons as best they
can . . .

By this time the road has become a
pandemonium of flying forces. Wagons go
galloping in the rear in a nearly continuous
stream, while twice there comes a yet more
harrowing sight — the flight of caissons, forge
and battery wagon; but no limbers and no
cannon!

. . . Already bullets have made themselves
heard . . .

Now the wild yell of the enemy is audible,
beginning far away on the left and spreading
toward them. Now it is directly in front . . .

... A movement in the underbrush is per¬
ceptible, a glimpse of butternut . . . (269-276)

It is also fascinating to see the soldiers
described: the jokers, the skulkers, the
officers, Grant, the enemy (gallant but
blindly hostile), the soldiers from other
states referred to with appreciation, the
political appointee officers; what the soldiers

1984]

Gramm— The Captain of Company K

39

did in camp and how they talked, and what
they did and thought in battle. The helpful/
indifferent home front is seen, along with
painfully stereotypical blacks and Jews.
Significantly, the war’s issues are absent—
which is realistic enough; blacks are not only
unimportant but when seen are childish,
ignorant and comical. Business is rapacious,
newspapers are unscrupulous, Washington is
incompetent— and after the war the soldiers
are forgotten by all three. Women are senti¬
mentalized, but we see how even in the
North they helped inspire war. The surpris¬
ing etiquette, even between enemies, of the
early years of the war is shown. We glimpse
immigrants and feel Kirkland’s affectionate
but condescending attitude toward them.

Of great importance is Kirkland’s position
relative to the sentimentality of the age he
comes from and the realism of the age he is
moving into. Women, Mother, grief and loss
are sentimentally regarded, as is appropriate
to American society of 1860, but battle,
wounds, the political and economic systems
are rendered realistically (and the author
seems to be quite consciously doing so.) This
is a key to evaluating Kirkland’s attitude.

In the scene dealing with the Confederate
officer learning of his son’s mortal wound
we read:

The grief-stricken father never raised his
hand to his eyes; but his frame wavered a little,
and from time to time he bowed his head and
shook it slightly, when one or two scattered
drops would shine for an instant in the sun as
they fell to the ground. (109-1 10)

This scene is significant because the
approach is sentimental; that is to say, the
author dwells on the pathos of the scene, and
the tragedy of wounding and loss and war in
general, and even shows us the regret and de¬
pression of the decent man who shot the
Confederate officer’s son — but the evil in¬
herent in the situation has disappeared. It is
pathetic that the young man was mortally
wounded, but we do not hear about whether
it was good or evil to have shot him. The
basic issue (if the basic issue is a moral one)

is covered by valid sentiment — but covered.
Perhaps this is why Walker Percy says that a
sentimental people is a cruel people, and why
the Great Sentimental Age produced and/or
permitted such a cruel war. Pain and grief
are described in the novel, but killing is not
discussed (except that Sara at one point
lightly suggests that Willie might be changed
to “Killie.”) In this regard the Captain of
Company K is inferior to, for example,
Howells’ “Editha,” in which the prime issue
is not death and suffering but killing.

War is interesting. There is a “joy of
battle” (303) against the intense glare of
which peaceful life appears hopelessly dull.
Kirkland expresses this fact honestly, though
he does not deal with the question of
whether the contrast is so obvious because
war is more real than peace or because our
civilian conduct is weak and foolish. Per¬
haps the validity of Kirkland’s observation
says more about peace as we manage it than
about war.

Kirkland’s attitude displays human
nature. It does not affirm the health of the
human animal, but it does show us its con¬
sistency: feelings similar to Kirkland’s are
expressed in some recent Viet Nam fiction.
We are now ready to regret the neglect of
veterans which Kirkland also decries, and we
are willing to praise the comradeship and
character development one can find in the
military. We can begin to understand why
some soldiers re-enlisted for another tour in
Southeast Asia, and we are even ready to use
the words “honor” and “country.”

Kirkland’s novel will always be interest¬
ing, but it is especially illuminative now. At
some times a country is in the frame of mind
to honor those who waged and endured a
war more than it is to honor those who
opposed and protested it.

Note

1 Joseph Kirkland, The Captain of Company K,
Ridgewood, N.J.: The Gregg Press, 1968. Reprint of
1891 Dibble Publishing Company edition. (Page nuhi-
bers given in parentheses.)

THE RARE BOOK DEPARTMENT OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON:
ORIGINS AND EARLY DEVELOPMENT, 1948-1960

Dennis Auburn Hill

University of Wisconsin , Memorial Library , Madison

Introduction

Although it was eventually to become a
department with collections of national sig¬
nificance, in addition to providing direct and
important services to the university com¬
munity in meeting its teaching and research
needs, at its inception the Rare Book Depart¬
ment (hereafter RBD) of the University of
Wisconsin-Madison ran the risk of becoming
and remaining a stepchild of the university
library. Through the continuing definition
and development of its functions the RBD
became, during the period 1948-1960, an
integral part of the University of Wisconsin
community and developed a role extending
to the wider city and state community.

At the outset two basic principles gov¬
erned the RBD’s development— the collec¬
tions were increased for the most part in
areas of strength, and these same collections
were developed with the intention and
expectation that they be used and answer to
the research and teaching needs of the facul¬
ty and students of the university. The latter
may seem an obvious point, yet it indeed
needs to be made owing to the common be¬
lief that a rare book department consists of a
collection of items preserved for their finan¬
cial value or antiquarian interest alone.

Origins

The Rare Book Department was formed
as a direct result of the acquisition of the
library of Chester A. Thordarson by the
University in 1946. The purchase price to the
University was $300,000, a substantial sum
for the time. Yet the library was considered
well worth the price — it was probably worth
a good deal more — and through the efforts

of a number of persons lobbying for its pur¬
chase, the Board of Regents was convinced
to vote its approval on January 19, 1946. 1
E. B. Fred, President of the University at the
time, was to say in an interview in 1976 that
the Thordarson Library “was the best in¬
vestment the University ever made.”2

Chester A. Thordarson was born in Ice¬
land in 1867 and came to Milwaukee with his
family in 1873. His father died shortly after
the family’s arrival in Milwaukee and his
mother and her children went on to live in
Deforest and Shawano, Wisconsin, moving
to North Dakota in 1879. Thordarson, born
HjOrtur Thordarson, received his brief formal
education in Chicago. He left school after
completing the 7th grade at the age of 20 and
continued his education through self-study.
After working for a number of electrical
companies in Chicago and St. Louis, he
formed his own electrical manufacturing
company in Chicago in 1895. The success of
this self-educated and widely acclaimed
genius was great and rapid. He was awarded
more than 100 patents during his career and
won gold medals at both the Louisiana Pur¬
chase exposition in St. Louis in 1904 and the
International Panama-Pacific Exposition in
San Francisco in 1915.

Thordarson acquired an interest in books
and learning early and maintained this inter¬
est to an extraordinary degree throughout
his life. He amassed a systematic collection
of significant works in the development of
early English science and technology in first
and early editions which received wide atten¬
tion. Fields well represented in the library
include Agriculture, or Husbandry, Natural
History, Medicine, Mathematics, Botany,
Ornithology, Electricity and Magnetism,

40

1984]

Hill — Rare Book Department

41

and Domestic Occupations. The collection
of magnificent large color-plate books in
Ornithology and Botany is remarkable. In
addition, important works in English litera¬
ture are well represented. The books were
without exception very well preserved and
Thordarson had many rebound in full or
three-quarter leather by the well-known
binder Rivi&re and Sons.3

The course of events leading to the acqui¬
sition of the Thordarson Library can be
divided into two periods: interest on the part
of the University while Thordarson was still
alive; and lobbying efforts after his death to
convince University administrators to sup¬
port, and the Board of Regents to approve,
its acquisition from his estate. There is little
evidence concerning the first of these peri¬
ods; and, although the actual initiation of
the lobbying efforts also remains unclear,
the course of these efforts can be described
in some detail.

Thordarson had various associations with
Wisconsin. His family lived here during their
first years in this country. Later, Thordarson
designed laboratory equipment for the facul¬
ty of the University, addressed classes on a
number of occasions, and was awarded an
honorary Master’s degree in 1929. Finally,
he owned and, after 1941 housed his library
on, Rock Island, Wisconsin (now a State
Park). His library had received some atten¬
tion in the popular press as well as in the
Papers of the Bibliographical Society; and as
Thordarson himself indicated in a letter to
Clarence Dykstra, President of the Univer¬
sity, he had encountered active interest in his
library from many parties.4

Beginning in 1942 it is possible to docu¬
ment the University’s early interest in
Thordarson’s library. Gilbert H. Doane,
Director of Libraries, prepared a draft of
“Memoranda for an Agreement between
Chester H. Thordarson and the Regents of
the University of Wisconsin” in 1942. 5 This
agreement proposed the donation by Thor¬
darson of his library to the University. This
draft agreement was then revised by A. W.

Peterson, Comptroller, and submitted to
President Dykstra.6 A possible third version,
“An Agreement Between Chester H. Thor¬
darson and the Board of Regents,” was sub¬
mitted in November 1943. 7

It is clear from all this that Dykstra was
preparing to pursue the matter with
Thordarson, but this agreement was never
carried out. In a confidential memo to
President Fred from Peterson, dated July 6,
1945, Peterson made reference to a concern
of Trigg Thordarson (one of Thordarson’s
two sons), about a memorandum signed by
Thordarson and Dykstra on November 12,
1943. This may have been the agreement last
referred to above, but no memorandum of
this date has been found over the signatures
of these two men. In any case, Peterson
assured Trigg Thordarson that the Univer¬
sity would take no legal action.8 Further¬
more, Thordarson’s letter to President
Dykstra dated December 11, 1943 makes it
clear that Thordarson had indeed not agreed
to Dykstra’s proposal as of that date.

In this letter, the only known statement by
Thordarson on the subject of the disposition
of his library, he writes in a somewhat ram¬
bling style about his library and its impor¬
tance to his study of nature on Rock Island,
the interest people have shown in it, and his
“plan” for the library. This “plan” is of
greatest interest here, but it unfortunately
remains rather vague. Thordarson was clear
about one thing, however, stating “I never
use the word ‘donation.’ I couldn’t because I
never thought that way.” His plan seems to
have been to avoid the issue of “legal
ownership” and to follow the plan of the
Huntington Library in Pasadena, whereby
an agreement with the state (according to
Thordarson) provides “that the library is to
be used as a semi-public institution and that
they are exempted from taxation.” Just
what he meant by “they are exempted from
taxation” is difficult to understand. Jens
Christian Bay of the John Crerar Library
was carrying on the correspondence with the
Huntington Library for Thordarson. Thor-

42

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

darson intended to see Bay and “get from
him a clear and definite summary of the plan
and what has been done.” Some light is shed
on this near the end of his letter where he
states “I still hope that I can find a way to
establish a fund that would take care of the
library for all time to come. This is my idea
and I would not need any financial support
from the University.” From these statements
we can infer that Thordarson’s “plan” was
to set up a fund to support the library, that
the library be a semi-public institution, and
that the fund not be subject to taxes.9
Nothing came of this plan, yet interest did
not die out, although an agreement was
never reached with Thordarson, who died on
February 6, 1945.

It is possible to identify several key figures
in fostering the University’s interest in the
Thordarson Library as well as key steps lead¬
ing to the University’s final decision to
acquire the library. President Fred and
Professor William S. Marshall of the
Zoology Department became interested at
the outset. In a letter of May 15, 1945,
Marshall informed Doane that “President
Fred thinks there may be a chance of our
getting the Thordarson Library, a few of us
are trying to help him . . .”10 He asks Doane
for a description of the library and requests
that he send Fred a letter. This he quickly
did, as acknowledged in a letter to Doane
from Marshall dated May 30, 1945, wherein
he stated that Doane’ s and Professor Wag¬
ner’s letters were “very good.”11

A very important meeting took place at
the Crerar Library in Chicago on November
15, 1945, at which Bay described to Doane,
Ralph Hagedorn, Acquisitions Librarian,
and A. W. Peterson, Director of Business
and Finance, the unique importance of the
Thordarson Library and its value as an
investment.12 It was at this meeting that
Peterson’s enthusiasm was restored and, as
Doane reported to Bay on November 24,
1945, “the next morning we were able to win
over the President. There remains the task of

convincing the Board of Regents, but thanks
to you, I now have two powerful allies in the
president and the director of business and
finance.”13

Possibly the most important step toward
convincing the Regents took place at a con¬
ference Doane had on November 27, 1945
with D. Clark Everest, President and
General Manager of the Marathon Corpora¬
tion of Wausau, Wisconsin, and Allen
Abrams, Vice-President and Technical
Adviser.14 At this meeting Everest agreed to
write to regents F. J. Sensenbrenner,
Michael Cleary, and Walter Hodgkin. This
he did, and Sensenbrenner, in response, re¬
ported that his letter “was read to the mem¬
bership of the Board of Regents in executive
session and I am hopeful with you that we
can secure the library.”15 The Regents
authorized the signing of an option agree¬
ment on January 19, 1946 and such an agree¬
ment was signed on January 21, 1946, pro¬
viding for “a consideration of $270,000 for
the purchase of the Thordarson Library and
a broker’s commission of not to exceed
$30,000.” 16 In a letter to Bay dated February
1, 1946, wherein he thanks Bay for his help
in the transaction, Doane makes it fairly
clear that Everest’s influence was of conse¬
quential importance stating “Fortunately,
one of our paper barons recognizes a book
when he sees it and through him the Presi¬
dent was able to convince some of the
businessmen on the Board of Regents.”17
The Board of Regents exercised its option in
December 1946 and the Thordarson Library
came into the permanent possession of the
University, although it had already been
moved to Madison in August of that year.

Of the more than 11,000 volumes in the
original Thordarson Library, fewer than
half were to make up the foundation collec¬
tion of the Rare Book Department, which
came into being nearly two years after the
final purchase of this important library. The
other books, consisting mostly of reference
works, secondary materials, collected edi-

1984]

Hill — Rare Book Department

43

tions of standard authors, and most of
Thordarson’s fine collection of Icelandic
books, went into the general collection,
while the Americana went to the State His¬
torical Society Library. The volumes which
made up the nucleus of the RBD formed the
essence of the Thordarson Library and con¬
sisted of those books “which are genuinely
rare; those which require special care (such
as color plate books); and the important
editions of scientific books which, although
often not notably scarce at the present,
should be preserved for future genera¬
tions.”18

Staff

From 1948 to 1960 there were three
curators of rare books. Throughout this
early period of the RBD the support staff in
the department varied in number, length of
service, and type of position. For the two
years of the first curator’s tenure and the
first two years of the second curatorship,
there was no assistance at all. Both curators
referred to this situation in their annual re¬
ports pointing out that it was not possible to
provide proper service so long as the depart¬
ment remained a “one-man” operation.19

Assistance first came in 1952 with the hir¬
ing of a student as a temporary library assis¬
tant. The first professional assistant began
on April 2, 1954, nearly six years after the
naming of the first curator. Over the years
there were appointments of assistants in the
department with varying titles, some of them
clerical, others professional, and still others
falling between these types, e.g. project
assistant. The following list includes in
chronological order of their appointment all
the staff members who worked in the RBD
from 1948-1960 together with their titles and
inclusive dates of service:

Ralph Hagedorn, Curator, 1948-1950

Samuel Ives, Curator, 1950-1958
Carllyn Anderson, Temporary Library
Assistant, July- Aug. 1952

Klara Cook, Project Associate, October
1952- June 1953

Donna Grooms, Student Assistant, Oct.
1952-Jan. 1953; Library Assistant,
Feb. 1953-?

Aaron Polonsky, Assistant to Curator,
April 1954- April 1956

Jeremiah O’Mara, Assistant to
Curator, June 1956 (one week only)20

Edward Grant, Project Assistant, Aug.
1956-Feb. 1957

Garrett Droppers, [Project Assistant],
Feb. 1957-Jan. 1958

Dorothy Handley, Assistant to Curator,
Feb. 1958-

2 part-time student assistants, Spring
1958

Felix Poliak, Curator, Summer 1959-

The position “Assistant to the Curator”
was a professional position. Ives, in making
his recommendation for a full-time profes¬
sional assistant in his first Annual Report
(1950-1951), described the qualifications he
had in mind. The assistant should be a “well
trained cataloger, efficient, thoroughly reli¬
able in all things, and with an appropriate
background and enthusiasm for rare
books.” A full-time assistant was provided
for in the 1952/53 budget, but none was
appointed until April 1, 1954. Grant and
Droppers, the two Project Assistants who
filled in after O’Mara’s unexpected resigna¬
tion, until the hiring of a new Assistant to
the Curator, were both graduate students in
the History of Science Department of the
University.

The curator’s position originated when the
Board of Regents created the position
“Curator of the Thordarson Collection” for
the 1947-49 biennium. This position was not
filled, however, until September 1948 when
Ralph Hagedorn was hired as curator. The
title of the position was changed to “Curator
of Rare Books” when the decision was made
early in 1949 to establish a separate RBD
with a major portion of the Thordarson

44

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

Library serving as its nucleus. Hagedorn,
who had been Acquisitions Librarian, im¬
mediately went on a study trip to acquaint
himself with rare books librarianship. From
October to December 1948 Hagedorn
studied at Harvard’s Houghton Library and
visited rare book libraries between Cam¬
bridge, Massachusetts, and Washington,
D.C. During his tenure as curator he had to
contend with the initial organization of the
collections, while at the same time trying to
provide services to the public. At this time
the RBD occupied Rooms 324 and 325 of the
State Historical Society Building, where it
was to remain until the opening of the Mem¬
orial Library in 1953.

Due to the unorganized state of the
department at the time, it was opened
“without fanfare,” Hagedorn recommend¬
ing appropriate “advertising” once the
collection was in good order. The duties of
the curator were defined as follows: “75%
cataloging materials and 25% searching for
rare books now in the stacks, recommending
purchases of rare books,” and, ‘in general,
engaging in such work as will add to his pro¬
fessional equipment.” Surprisingly enough,
while this statement of duties implies other
possible tasks, such as mounting exhibits,
which Hagedorn did carry out, it leaves little
room for servicing the collection for
patrons. Hagedorn pointed this out in his
Annual Report for 1949-50, adding that
“the unsatisfactoriness of a one-man depart¬
ment is too apparent to need further discus¬
sion.” In reading this report, one senses a
general feeling of dissatisfaction. Although
recommending purchases was considered
one of his duties, none of the important
reference works and rare books he recom¬
mended were purchased. Finally, he felt it
necessary to state: “It is perhaps not
unnecessary to point out that neither the
article nor the address were prepared on
library time.” The article referred to
appeared in the Papers of the Biblio¬
graphical Society of America and was
entitled “Bibliotheca Thordarsonia: The

Sequel”; the address was presented to the
University’s Language and Literature Club.
Both these activities appear to be entirely
appropriate and professional ones for a
curator of rare books to perform and, in
light of the extent to which the subsequent
curator was involved in such activities, it
may seem that Hagedorn had cause to be dis¬
satisfied in his position.

Samuel A. Ives was appointed curator in
1950 and remained in that position until his
sudden death on August 9, 1958. Ives was a
classical scholar, with a knowledge of eight
to ten languages in addition to Latin and
Greek; an experienced rare book librarian;
and a specialist in the history of science and
the Bible.21 Under his curatorship the
department expanded services, developed ef¬
fective relationships with the faculty, added
greatly and significantly to the department,
reorganized the collections, and refined pro¬
cedures. Ives was active as an author of
articles in scholarly journals, appeared on
local television and radio programs, and ini¬
tiated an important bibliographical project
in the history of chemistry, medicine, and
pharmacy.22 Although he began as the only
staff member in what was still a one-man
and only partly-organized department, he
was able to refer to what was to be his last
full year as curator as “a banner year in the
history of the RBD.” As regards staff, the
situation improved under Ives nearly to the
point it was to reach at the end of the
decade.

After Ives’ death there was a hiatus of ca.
10 months in the occupancy of the curator’s
position. Handley, who carried on the day to
day duties of the department referred to
these months as a period of “treading
water.” During this same period members of
other library departments did some work for
the RBD. John Neu of the Order Depart¬
ment prepared a bibliography of the Burgess
Collection (see Collections Added below)
and Virginia Kay, also of the Order Depart¬
ment, organized the French Pamphlet Col¬
lection. Lloyd Griffin, the Humanities

1984]

Hill— Rare Book Department

45

Librarian, undertook the initial organization
of the Sukov Collection.

The acquisition of the Little Magazine
Collection of Dr. Marvin Sukov early in
1959 may have played no small role in the
appointment of the next curator. Felix
Poliak, who took over as Curator in the
summer of 1959, was a poet and writer, who
himself contributed to little magazines.
After a career that included a doctorate of
jurisprudence from the University of
Vienna, and both bachelor’s and master’s
degrees in library science, Poliak came to the
Rare Book Department from Northwestern
University, where he had been Curator of
Special Collections. In addition to Latin and
Greek, he knew German, French, and Ital¬
ian. Although the staff of the department
during Poliak’s first year was as large as it
had ever been, he, too, felt the need to
request more staff in the form of permanent
clerical help and/or an increased student
assistant budget. Some help was again
received from outside the department in
1959-60, as John Neu helped in the catalog¬
ing of the Mazarinades in the department.

In terms of staff the RBD thus evolved
from a one-person department to one requir¬
ing a regular staff consisting of the curator,
professional assistant to the curator, and
student assistants performing the routine
clerical duties in the department. This
development was in part a response to that
of the department in other areas, especially
in collection development and public ser¬
vices.

Collection Development

In general a dual pattern in the
acquisition of material for the RBD was
followed during these years. Collections
and individual works were purchased to
build on the strength of the collection. For
example, beginning with the Thordarson
Collection’s importance in the history of
science, the Duveen, Boyle and Priestley
Collections were added. Secondly, material
was acquired outside of areas of present

strength in response to faculty needs,
major purchases not being made without
faculty support or the expectation of such
support. The Sukov Collection is an exam¬
ple of a major acquisition in a new area,
but one which had received strong faculty
support and which has been built on ever
since. Acquisition by purchase specifically
for the RBD was only one of several
methods by which additions were made to
the collections. Gifts, of both collections
and individual titles, transfers from the
general stacks, transfers from the State
Historical Society Library, exchange

books, and books acquired through normal
channels and earmarked for the RBD all
constituted means for increasing the

department’s holdings. Examples in each
of the first four of these methods of

acquisition illustrate the importance of

multiple sources very well:

1. a) The gift from Norman Bassett of

an O. Henry Collection of 20
volumes of first editions,
b) The gift from Denis I. Duveen of
manuscript notes of lectures in
chemistry given by Joseph Black
at the University of Edinburgh in
1776-77.

2. The transfer from the stacks of a vol¬
ume of alchemical tracts once in the
library of Isaac Newton and including
marginal notes in Newton’s hand.

3. The transfer from the State Historical
Society Library of the exceedingly
rare 47 volume lithographic facsimile
of the quarto edition of the complete
plays of Shakespeare.

4. Receipt on exchange from the Uni¬
versity of Uppsala of Johannes
Hesse’s Itinerarius (Cologne, 1500).

General principles governing the material
to be included in the RBD’s collections had
been set out in a document dated February
25, 1949 and supplemented by a note from
Louis Kaplan, Associate Director, dated

46

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

March 25, 1949. 23 Now lost, this document
must have contained chronological guide¬
lines, since Hagedorn refers to selection of
stack transfers “within date limits” in his
Annual Report for 1948-49. Ives reported^
three years later that ordering by the
curator was limited to rare books in the
history of science and general bibliog¬
raphy.24 Since this was still early in the
department’s history and before the expan¬
sion of fields of interest which was to
come, it is possible that this policy changed
later on. Books being recommended by the
curator for transfer to the RBD either
from the general stacks or by earlier trans¬
fer from the Historical Library underwent
further review by Kaplan and Gerhard
Naeseth, the Head of Technical Services.25
In Poliak’s first Annual Report (1959-60),
he referred to what was the general policy
governing RBD acquisitions, namely col¬
lecting “in strength” and reflecting faculty
needs and interests.

Regarding this latter aspect of an acqui¬
sition policy for the RBD, Ives had
solicited from 13 faculty members repre¬
senting 9 departments names of titles that
were rare and important in their fields, for
the purpose of forming “a file of prime
desiderata.”26

This, however, was not the only instance
of faculty-RBD contact which sheds light
on the subject areas covered in the collec¬
tions. At a meeting with several faculty
members called by Louis Kaplan, the sub¬
ject cataloging of rare books was dis¬
cussed. The outcome of this meeting was a
list of “Subject Headings for Rare Books”
solicited from the faculty members present
representing “the needs of people who
would most use it.”27 This was intended to
be a “subject guide” rather than a “sub¬
ject catalogue.” These headings were to be
assigned by the RBD staff and a subject
card file using these headings was even¬
tually set up. While this is another example
of faculty-RBD relations, it also provides a
way of determining the strengths of the

collection and interests of the faculty
during this period. A printed list of these
headings has not been located. A list re¬
constructed from the old subject-file in the
department includes twenty-three headings:

Alchemy

Mathematics

Astronomy

Medicine

Biography

Music

Botany

Natural History

Botany-Herbals

Occult Science

Chemistry

Pharmacy

Cook Books

Philosophy

Emblem Books

Physics

Geography and Travel

Rhetoric

Geology and Mining

Sermons

Legal Works

Social Studies

Literary Works

The following record of major

collections added to the RBD during this
period is based on information in the
Annual Reports and articles in the UW
Library News, the library’s newsletter from
1956 to 1973. References to articles in UW
Library News on the collections are given
in parentheses at the end of each descrip¬
tion.

Collections Added 1948-1960:

Thordarson Collection. 1949 (1946).

History of British Science, Color-Plate
Books. Literature. Acquired by purchase
from the Thordarson estate for $300,000
in 1946. Originally 11,000 volumes;
4-5,000 volumes formed the nucleus of
the Rare Book Department in 1949. (1:3,
p. 4; XI-3, p. 1; see also Bay and
Hagedorn)

Marshall (William S.) Collection. 1950-51.
English Literature and Travel. Gift of
the estate. Ca. 30 vols. of an original
700 from which the department could
choose. (1:3, p. 3)

Brownell (George H.) Collection. 1950-51.
Mark Twain and Twainiana. Gift of
Brownell. Ca. 300 vols. and ephemera.
(1:1, p. 2; 11:9, p. 2; 111:1, p. 7; XIII:7,

p. 1)

1984]

Hill — Rare Book Department

47

Duveen (Denis I.) Collection. 1951. Al¬
chemy and Early Chemistry. Acquired
by purchase from H. P. Kraus for
$50,000. 3452 vols., 2958 titles. One of
the most extensive single collections of
its kind. (11:1, p. 1; XII:3, p. 1; see also
printed catalog Bibliotheca Alchemica et
Chemica , London, 1949.)

Montauban Collection. 1952-53. French
Calvinism . Acquired by the library in
1951. Of 982 books, pamphlets and
manuscripts, 250 vols. selected for the
RED. (1:6, p. 1)

Russian Underground Collection. 1954-55.
Russian Revolutionary Movement , 1825-
1925. Acquired by purchase. 1,000-1,400
items. (VIII:6, p. 1)

Hoyer (Theodore) Collection. 1954-55.
Lutheran Theology , 16th-18th Centuries.
Gift of Theodore Hoyer to the library in
1918. Ca. 50 titles, (111:7, p. 1)

Slaughter (Moses S.) Collection. 1954-55.
Latin Classical Literature. 48 titles.

Bassett (Norman) Collection. 1954-55.
Mark Twain and Twainiana. Gift of
Bassett. Ca. 70 vols. (See under Brownell
Collect.)

Papyri Collection. 1957 (1920). Egyptian
Papyri , 3rd C. BC-7th C. AD. Acquired
in 1920 with funds given by a graduate
student. 83 papyri. (11:8, p. 4; IX: 10,
p. 1; XII:7, p. 8)

Goldschmid (Edgar) Collection. 1957-58.
Evolution of Anatomical Illustration.
Acquired by purchase. 170 titles in 241
vols. Later transferred to the new
Medical Library. (XII :9, p. 1)

Burgess Collection. 1957-58. Thornton W.
Burgess , Juvenile Author. Gift of the
estate of Roy Oppegard. 162 vols., 10
scrapbooks. (VI: 1) p. 1)

Boyle Collection. 1958. Robert Boyle ,
English Scientist. Acquired by purchase.
Originally collected by Hugh MacDonald
Sinclair. 141 titles in 153 vols. Includes
items not recorded in the standard bibli¬
ography of Boyle. (111:4, p. 1; X:4, p. 1)

Priestly Collection. 1958. Joseph Priestley ,

English Scientist. Acquired by purchase.
Originally collected by Hugh MacDonald
Sinclair. 134 titles in 147 vols. Includes
items not in the standard bibliography of
Priestley. (111:4, p. 1; X:5, p. 14)

French Pamphlet Collection. 1958. Polit¬
ical Pamphlets , 1550-1650. Acquired by
purchase. Ca. 1,000 items.

O. Henry Collection. 1958. O. Henry and
Porteriana. Gift of Norman Bassett. 20
vols. (111:5, p. 1)

Wallerstein (Ruth C.) Collection. 1958.
English Literature, 17th C. Imprints.
Gifts of her estate. More than 60 vols.
of the original 1,400 given the library are
in the RBD. (111:6, p. 1)

Mazarinade Collection. 1958. Opposition
to Cardinal Mazarin, 1648-1652. Ac¬
quired by purchase in several small col¬
lections. Several hundred. (XIII:2, p. 1)
Sukov (Marvin A.) Collection. 1959. Little
Magazines, 1900-1960. Acquired by pur¬
chase from Dr. Marvin A. Sukov. More
than 700 titles and 10,000 issues. One of
the most extensive collections of its kind.
(IV: 3, p. 1; X:2, p. 6; XI:5, p. 1; XII.T,

p. 16)

Chwaliobog (Witold) Collection. 1959-60.
European Theology, 17th and 18th Cen¬
turies. Originally acquired as a per¬
manent loan from the Kellogg Public
Library of Green Bay in 1946. Ca. 1,000
vols.; partly in RBD. (IV: 10, p. 1)

Beatty (Arthur) Collection. 1960. Words-
worthiana. Gift of Hamilton Beatty in
honor of Prof. Arthur Beatty. Originally
more than 1,000 vols.; the editions of
Wordsworth and the Wordsworthiana
housed in the RBD. (V:2, p. 4; see also
printed exhibit catalog)

Notes

1 Memorandum re: Thordarson Library [inch
“Excerpt from Minutes of Regents Meeting,
January 19, 1946”] no date, University Archives,
UW-Madison.

2 E. B. Fred, Edwin Broun Fred: an interview
conducted by Donna S. Taylor, Madison, Uni-

48

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

versity Archives Oral History Project, 1976,
p. 87.

3 The library has been described in articles in

the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of
America by Jens Christian Bay ([1930] 25:1-17)
and Ralph Hagedorn ([1950] 44: 1-26).

Thordarson’s biography appeared in Reykjavik
in 1973 (Steingrimur Jonsson, Hugvitsma durinn
Hjortur Thordarson .)

4 Chester Thordarson, Letter to President
Clarence Dykstra, December 11, 1943, University
Archives, UW-Madison.

5 Gilbert H. Doane, Letter to Clarence A.
Dykstra, April 18, 1942, Rare Book Department
Files, UW-Madison.

6 A. W. Peterson, Letter to President Clarence
A. Dykstra, May 16, 1942, RBD Files, UW-
Madison.

7 Draft, unsigned, includes a pencilled note
indicating it was submitted to President Dykstra,
November 18, 1943, RBD Files, UW-Madison.

8 A. W. Peterson, Confidential Report to
President Fred re Thordarson Library, July 6,
1945, RBD Files, UW-Madison.

9 Chester Thordarson, op. cit.

10 William S. Marshall, Letter to Gilbert
Doane, May 15, 1945, RBD Files, UW-Madison.

11 _ , Letter to Gilbert Doane, May 30,

1945, RBD Files, UW-Madison.

12 Confidential Memo re Thordarson Library,
November 15, 1945, RBD Files, UW-Madison.

13 Gilbert H. Doane, Letter to Jens Christian
Bay, November 24, 1945, RBD Files, UW-Madi¬
son.

14 Confidential Memo re Thordarson Library,
November 27, 1945, ms., RBD Files, UW-
Madison.

15 F. J. Sensenbrenner, Letter to D. C. Everest,
December 3, 1945, RBD Files, UW-Madison.

16 Memorandum re: Thordarson Library, no
date, University Archives.

17 Gilbert H. Doane, Letter to Jens Christian
Bay, February 1, 1946 RBD Files, UW-Madison.

18 Ralph Hagedorn, “Bibliotheca Thordar-
soniana: The Sequel,” Papers of the Bibliograph¬
ical Society of America, 44 (1950), p. 4 and 3,
resp. For detailed description, see also Jens
Christian Bay, op. cit.

19 Annual Report of the Rare Book Depart¬
ment, UW-Madison, 1948-49, 1949-50 and 1950-
51. — Most of the information for this section on
staff has been taken from the Annual Reports for
the appropriate years. Information from other
sources only will be noted separately hereafter.

20 Jeremiah O’Mara was forced to resign after
only one week’s service after having been stabbed
on Bascom Hill on June 24, 1956. UW. Library
News 1:2 (July/August 1956), p. 13.

21 “Samuel A. Ives,” UW Library News (Sept.
1958), p. 1-2.

22 Chemical, Medical and Pharmaceutical
Books Printed before 1800: in the Collections of
the University of Wisconsin Libraries , edited by
John Neu, compiled by Samuel Ives, Reese
Jenkins, and John Neu, Madison, University of
Wisconsin Press, 1965, p. vii.

23 Annual Report 1948-49, RBD Files, UW-
Madison.

24 Annual Report 1951-52.

25 Annual Report 1953-54.

26 RBD Files, UW-Madison.

27 Annual Report 1954-55.

THE WELFARE MUSE

Anthony Graybosch
Mount Senario College
Ladysmith , Wisconsin

John Steuart Curry was the first perma¬
nent artist in residence at University of
Wisconsin — Madison. The post was at¬
tached to the School of Agriculture. This
progressive institution believed in
introducing the latest technology into
farming as well as in giving cultural
expression to the values of this emerging
educated class.1 Curry’s family was an
American version of landed gentry. They
were spared the trauma of the Depression,
which might help to explain the artist’s own
romantic digression from the period. Curry
attained prominence as a member of the
midwestern Regionalist movement with the
more widely known Thomas H. Benton and
Grant Wood. This paper is a study of the
values expressed in Curry’s work, within the
context of New Deal art, and was suggested
by recent exhibits of his work.

The word welfare in the title recalls the
fact that most 1930’s artists like the other
unemployed of the era, had to take a poverty
oath and be officially on the dole before
becoming eligible for work assignments.

The muse was the Great Depression itself.
The disastrous economic climate with its
social suffering and a budding trade union¬
ism movement proved to be a fertile source
of artistic images, the so called American
Scene. Sometimes it was handled directly, as
in the case of the social realists, or indirectly
in an equally derivative but retrospective
flight from its immediacy as in the mid-
western Regionalist work of John Steuart
Curry.

The Economic Background

Because of its unprecedented scale of
subsidized artistic productivity and the

polemics over style, subject and message
which I will introduce shortly, the Depres¬
sion resulted in several revolutionary steps.

It brought about official recognition of art
as a legitimate occupation worthy of “un¬
employment benefits.” It resulted in the
toppling of academic art’s monopoly and
opened the field to newer forms of expres¬
sion in the art commissioned for government
buildings.2 And, the Depression introduced
novel concepts such as ‘Art on Wheels’ —
mobile art museums, and adult art education
networks as well as other methods of dis¬
seminating art to the masses.

Government patronage of the arts had its
genesis in the contact initiated in 1933 by
artist George Biddle with President Roose¬
velt. Biddle pleaded on behalf of fellow
artists for an opportunity for American
artists to immortalize in permanent art form
and make living monuments to the: “social
revolution that our country and civilization
are going through . . . and to the social ideals
which you are struggling to achieve.”3
Biddle cited the Mexican muralists as the
precedent that they would like to follow.
Roosevelt replied that he did not want a lot
of young enthusiasts painting Lenin’s head
on the Justice Building.4 He steered Biddle
to the Secretary of the Treasury Department,
Morgenthau, who set up the internal Section
of Painting and Sculpture in 1934.

In a milieu of cyclical repression and
revolution, Mexican artists used murals as a
form of social protest.5 The art form was
indigenous to the illiterate, agrarian people.
The American murals of the 1930’s lack this
immediacy and the medium itself has been
abandoned for all but decorative — architec¬
tural purposes.

49

50

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

The other major New Deal art program,
and the major benefactor of the multitudes
of artists, was the Works Progress Adminis¬
tration (WPA), more specifically the Federal
Art Project (FAP), established in 1935. The
purpose of mass patronage was to keep
artists alive and creative during this difficult
period by purchasing their work while prac¬
ticing non-interference with the artistic
process. Both forms of patronage wound
down with the onset of World War II.

The Section referred to above had a defin¬
ite stated program of cultivating native art
and artists while acquiring suitable art, as
long as it was American Scene. In their at¬
tempt to assist development of art in this
country administrators proscribed poten¬
tially divisive subjects. One of these was
Curry’s Freeing of the Slaves. Curry
described what happened: “because of the
racial implications of the subject matter it
was felt that Washington was not the appro¬
priate place to erect this mural.’’6
Censorship was felt by artists on the other
side of the political-artistic spectrum as well.
The social realist Ben Shawn had to erase
from a mural a Walt Whitman inscription
perceived as too secular.7

The whole patronage phenomenon was a
conscious attempt by the government to
encourage a taste for a particular style of
American art and thus engage in a
management of ideas through the marketing
of a controlled public art.8 This
manipulation was implemented by the public
endorsement of a chosen style and subject
matter, prominent display in places such as
post offices and the precaution that the art
said the right thing including tacitly
encouraging the re-painting of much of
American history where necessary.

To illustrate this point we can note that
Curry’s Justice Defeating Mob Violence ,
1937, stands in the Justice Department
building in the space originally reserved for
the Freeing of the Slaves. This mural depicts
a white man being protected from a lynch

mob, clearly a victim substitution. In the
other Curry works on the theme of lynching,
the victims are black. A companion piece in
the Justice Building is Westward Migrations ,
1936, which shows noble American pioneers
pushing ahead with an absence of any native
Americans in their way.

The concern to spur American economic
recovery by buying American and bolstering
“America’s faith in itself’’ is not a sufficient
explanation of why the emerging American
art took its particular regional style. After
all, the private art patrons and the govern¬
ment could have had no reservations about
buying and promoting the non-representa-
tional native art which was evolving in
parallel to the realism of the 1930’s.

I am, of course suggesting an accomplice
role for the Regionalists in the government
policy. To the extent that Curry engaged in
collaborating with the party line to the
detriment of art itself or the endeavors of
other artists, he is culpable. A post-mortem
on the careers of Curry, Wood, and Benton
reveals a cul-de-sac. They failed to influence
the further development of American art or
its international standing. This is ironic
because they spearheaded the call to arms
for the creation of a native American art in
opposition to modern European trends, a
convulsive reaction to the New York Armory
Show in 1913.

Regionalist Ideology

The Regionalists attempted to nationalize
an art which spoke to their idea of middle
America. According to the group ideologue
Benton “the intellectual aspects of art are
not art.”9 The critic Thomas Craven wrote:
“the function of art is communication and
not technique.”10 Curry’s own criticism of
social realists was that they painted symbolic
figures rather than real people engaged in
real events.11 The obvious retort one can
make to Curry is that a painting is nothing if
not a symbol.

Perhaps the figures of the social realists

1984]

51

Graybosch — The Welfare Muse

seemed symbolic to Curry precisely because
they were not farmers. This is Curry’s own
self-characterization: “I do not feel that I
portray the class struggle, but I do try to
depict the American farmer’s incessant
struggle against the forces of nature.”12
Curry as an artist poses a strange contra¬
diction. He is trying to give an agrarian
underpinning to an industrial society. A
farm is a farm, in Europe or America, the
nostalgia of the western frontier aside. An
art which denies the existence of 90% of
America, is a type of violence and not a
unique, new style of American art. There is
no such thing as an American people. The
gates of immigration are still open, and they
were open then too.

From biographical materials one gathers
that the Regionalists spent time in Europe,
but got no first hand exposure to the modern
movements, with the exception of Benton.
Instead, they floated like ghosts through the
museums in search of dead masters. They
made no attempt to plug into the vitality that
was there but treated it as a place full of
cemeteries. Is it any wonder that ‘resenti¬
ment’ was their reaction when these Euro¬
peans began to influence and control the
course of modern art?

Perhaps only the itinerant photographers
that worked for the Department of Agricul¬
ture give a direct access to the raw, uninter¬
preted human mass of the Depression, be¬
cause they found it harder to superimpose a
veneer on the images they took in the field.
While it is known that few social realists had
proletarian roots and, therefore, their in¬
sight and accuracy of portrayal of the work¬
ing class are somewhat suspect, they at least
acknowledged that they lacked a universal,
ready idiom.13 As a result, their work
evolved more individualistically than that of
the Regionalists.14

In contrast, the Regionalists in effect if
not in intent, produced an art for hard times,
an art encouraging the lowering of expec¬
tations and defusing the impulse toward the

revolutionary. Instead of wondering what
this new American art would be and who
would produce it and when, the Regionalists
decided that they already had it. They
treated America as already-made and en¬
gaged in an aesthetics of everyday life and
banality, with official sanction. The artistic
commitment of the Regionalist movement
was an attempt to create a landed gentry.

It is ironic that Curry, basically a nature
artist, Wood, whose Iowa landscapes are
very private and introspective visions, and
Benton, all got drafted into expressing the
official American consciousness with only
the tenuous bonds of surface ‘realism’ and
midwestern themes to bind them. Of the
three, perhaps only Benton rose to the task
with his muscular man as machine composi¬
tions unifying the farm and the urban
setting.15

The fallacy of the Regionalist ideology is
the belief that realism and familiarity some¬
how preserve and present an intact world
with its verities and homilies. Curry forgets
that the simplest object can be removed from
its context in the universe through art. His
focusing on ordinary life, despite his
motives, takes the farm out of its specific
social context. Using his father as a subject
may avoid symbolism and intellectualization
for Curry, but not for his audience. He is a
child denying that there is a world outside of
Kansas. And Curry does not try hard enough
to reintroduce reality even within this limited
subject matter.

The major political connection to make
between the subsidized art produced by the
Regionalists and their sponsor, was that the
‘‘paid commercial message” dictated that
the way to survive in the face of an over¬
powering force such as the Depression is
through resignation and perseverance. You
should hold on to your traditional values
and find a way to graze off the land. Where
the political order manages to present itself
as the natural order, people transfer the
attributes of nature to the political order

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[Vol. 72

Fig. 1 . John Steuart Curry, The Road Mender's Camp 1929.

itself, leading to totalitarianism and glori¬
fication of the common man and a rise of
‘resentiment’ in the face of difference.

Curry’s Work

Now to come to Curry as the man in his
work. I find much of his work somnabulistic
in flavor, curiously static even when por¬
traying catastrophes. His focus is the anti¬
climax. This is his individual trait. In the
Road Mender's Camp, 1929, (Fig. 1) all is in
its place, there is no discord, just people at
rest after a hard day’s work. The key here is
that he chose not to show the work itself —
turning instead to the card playing, chil¬
dren’s games and the mother with babe in
arms.

Consider his Baptism in Kansas, 1928. Its
history includes the fact that the canvas

started out as Signorelli nudes around a
bathing pool and then the prop change took
place to a wooden baptismal fount.16 This
suggests Curry was still in search of subject
matter. There is circus imagery here which
relates to his later opus of circus prints. It is
a spectacle complete with center ring, a Fer¬
ris wheel suggested by the omnipresent
weather vane, and an absorbed audience.
There is a cohesion of the group, suggesting
unity of purpose, but Curry gives us an un¬
obstructed access to center stage on the left
as if offering us an invitation to join in or
perhaps an outlet to escape.

The hands of the two protagonists are
highly symbolized. Curry consistently uses
hands iconically, they express a lot in a very
stylized manner. The birds overhead are
emblematic of the spirit. For example, in

1984]

Graybosch — The Welfare Muse

53

The Fugitive , 1933, there are butterflies
symbolizing flight. The woman in white in
Baptism is suggestive of a melting candle,
she dissolves and is assimilated into the
glimmering pool of white water. The
preacher pushing her in is shut-eyed and
forcibly concentrating, face and body turned
slightly away from her with effort. Also, you
can see the Curry technique of using the
weather metaphor to represent human emo¬
tion. Here we have a sunny day, but the
emotional pitch of the group is evoked by
the tight sway of the human circle. We are
inside a human tornado. This is the work
that launched Curry nationally, having won
him a competition. I am not suggesting a
mercenary response in Curry, but his subse¬
quent work does engage in further nostalgia
and glorification of his own idyllic version of
an atemporal America.

When I look at The Tragic Prelude (John
Brown), 1938-39, and see the background
wagon trail, I wonder whether we should see
it as the frontier spirit or flight from reality?
Brown is an imposing quixotic figure, with a
Bible, a gun, and a brave daring stance. He is
simultaneously defiant and vulnerable with
torso extended wide, a figure of obvious his¬
torical impact. The Bible and the gun sym¬
bolize the inherent injustice and accom¬
modation to hypocrisy America has to take
in order to exploit the blacks. Had we taken
the Bible literally, and Curry is very
interested in the impact of religion, there
would not have been a need for the gun and
the bloodshed. In the mural there is an
obliviousness to Brown except by the black
faces gazing up at him. The emerging black
imagery in Curry and others in the 30’s
served as the symbol of social and not merely
racial oppression. They had a group exhibi¬
tion on the subject of lynching called “An
Art Commentary on Lynching” in 1933.

Interestingly enough, we can accuse Curry
of whitewashing Brown. The problem, as I
see it, is that John Brown is not finished yet,
although dead. He is still, and was then, a
dynamic figure. The black struggle is still

going on. The government showed aware¬
ness by not permitting black subject matter
into Washington. This mural of a less than
favorite adopted son is in Topeka, Kansas.
This placement, although geographically
accurate, limits the national importance of
its theme. How could John Brown be a hero
in a country which feared him and is still
racist and ambivalent about its heroes?
Curry is trying to fence Brown in, to
homogenize him so to speak by tucking him
away into the pages of history.

The Tragic Prelude , although visually
exciting, points out that Curry was a product
of his society. We have to deny privileged
access to one’s own values to all, even artists.
No one escapes the shadow of history. One
finds other hints of criticism of the social
order in Curry, but one wonders why they
are only hints and why he found a super¬
ficial, token treatment of blacks more
accessible than dealing with the American
worker, or the dustbowl and migrant labor.

If you look at the black faces in the mural
you see them cowering, terrified in the
protective shadow of the good white man,
and the abolitionist sentiment he repre¬
sented. So a final objection is that the blacks
have been dispossessed of even their anger
and the potential for violence and revenge.
There are no angry black people, just an
angry John Brown.

Freeing of the Slaves, 1942, is the
infamous mural banned from the Justice
Building. It portrays blacks in the aftermath
of The Tragic Prelude. The center figure of
Brown has been replaced by the young black
who has stepped off his tree-cross in The
Fugitive, and is now leading his people in
exultation. The union flag is center stage and
you can almost hear the voices, the black
chorus praising the Lord. An old man is still
praying in the wagon, perhaps he does not
realize yet that salvation is here. Unlike the
flat terrain in the back of John Brown, these
people are ascending from the darkness left
behind. They emerge from a hollow, dark
low horizon on the left and are teeming into

54

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

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the light center stage. In a similar mural,
Diego Rivera’s Zapata , Zapata’s men are
armed, the people and the liberators are one
and the same. There is no dichotomy as in
American history and imagination. The
casualties at the Mexican revolutionaries’
feet are the ones they have killed themselves.

The forces that caused the plight of blacks
were human forces: racial prejudice, eco¬
nomics, religion and politics. In the flood
theme of The Mississippi, 1935, they are
represented as impersonal, uncontrollable
forces of nature, blacks caught in the tur¬
bulent waters of history. Again we encounter
the weather metaphor for human existence.
This removes the human element of guilt and
the personal value of survival as well. The
blacks are just ‘lucky’ to have survived the
whole mess. And what follows is that it all
just could not be helped. The victims are
resigned in the painting and resorting to
prayer. The political order is the natural
order with its storms and its calm days so do
not rock the boat. Things will get better in
time.

Only the roof of a house is left where the
whole black family remains intact, even the
cat. They are set drifting into a new future,

freshly baptized as Americans. Curry gives
blacks turbulent waters while the whites
immerse themselves in calm streams and
pools. The supplicating hands of the male
are pronounced, males are the more ex¬
pressive gender in Curry’s work.

The one nice quality about The Mississippi
is its musical-aural quality. The tumultuous
waters, soaked whistling trees, cat meowing,
roof planks creaking and the howling wind,
all combine to produce a wall of sound
effect.

Wisconsin Landscape, 1939-39 (Fig. 2), is
representative of the later landscape work
and is a macrocosm to the microcosm seen in
the close up of a Kansas Cornfield , 1933. It
is unusual in that it is very dramatic in its
high color and almost impressionistic brush
quality. The chiaroscuro light strips criss¬
cross the landscape into dynamic parcels.
The raised perspective also magnifies the
already present vastness of the subject. If the
human houses and barns were not tightly
delineated by the artist, one could forget the
intrusion of man into this Eden. The drama
of nature occurs without human interces¬
sion. Perhaps, while awed by the suggested
beauty of it we are also supposed to feel

Fig. 2. John Steuart Curry, Wisconsin Landscape 1938-39.

1984]

Graybosch — The Welfare Muse

55

fatalistically that everything would be fine in
the absence of humanity.

Curry’s nature images recall Nietzsche’s
indictment of society as being no shepherd
and one herd. But this painting is certainly a
more emotional engagement on Curry’s part
than the flat landscape backdrops he erects
in the historical murals.

In closing this section, I would like to
quote Arthur Dove, an abstractionist in the
1930’s. “When a man paints the El (sub¬
way), a 1749 house or a miner’s shack, he is
likely to be called by his critics ‘American.’
These things may be in America, but it is
what is in the artist that counts. What do we
call American outside of painting? Inven¬
tiveness, restlessness, speed, change. ... A
painter may put all these qualities in a still
life or an abstraction, and be going more
native than another who sits quietly copying
a skyscraper.17 Only the term ‘copying’
betrays the indignation in this otherwise
lucid pronouncement on the polemics of
realism versus abstract art in America.

What Price Art?

The Section was oppressive in their
funding of public art, attempting the
creation of art for the masses. The older
non-democratic societies had sponsored art
for the elite only. The WPA was benevolent
and non-intrusive into the creative process,
but financially less rewarding than the
Section. A question we might ask in retro¬
spect is whether the public could have re¬
fused something the artist produced. For¬
tunately, we had the Section to insure that
our dollars were well spent.

In post World War II America, there have
been three ways for the artist to exist: in the
commercial market, via subsidies through
grants and awards, and teaching in the
academe, while retaining the energy and
impetus to produce. The days of private
patronage seem to be over. One problem
with public funding is that during periods of
economic stress, art takes low priority and
loses funds proportionately. Another prob¬

lem is that centralized disbursement of funds
and judging of beneficiaries, may lead to
subsidizing mass culture art.18 Also,
government bureaucrats have a fondness for
the concretism of conspicuous consumption
evidenced in the erection of monumental
museums and theater complexes.

A sad postscript to the New Deal was the
destruction of a vast amount of art. Most of
the destruction was not malicious and,
before the dissolution of WPA, strenuous
attempts were made to house and perma¬
nently allocate art works with any public
institution that would have them. The WPA
anticipated that the war shortages and the
prospect of indefinite storage would imperil
the works. This danger materialized when
the majority of the work fell under the
classification of surplus art.19 There are
stories of prints being recycled into pulp,
paintings sold as ‘used canvas,’ and sculp¬
ture demolished because of its sheer size.

Of course, there are villians as well, such
as the infamous Lt. Somervell who inter¬
preted the order to liquidate the WPA as a
mandate to destoy its artistic legacies as well.
He destroyed several mural panels at Floyd
Bennett Airport in 1940 as subversive mate¬
rial. But Somervell did not go after commu¬
nist iconography alone. About 800 paintings
and graphic works were incinerated. In the
words of an artist active during the era: “for
many artists several years of their serious
professional work had simply evapo¬
rated.’’20 The problem is compounded by the
fact that the allocation cards have been lost
thereby making the location of surviving
lesser known work impossible to trace. Art
had finally become public property.21

Notes

1 Laurence E. Schmeckebier, John Steuart Curry's
Pageant of America, (New York: American Artists
Group, 1943), 82.

2 Francis V. O’Connor, Federal Support for the
Visual Arts: The New Deal and Now (Greenwich, Con¬
necticut: New York Graphic Society, Ltd., 1969), 106.

3 Ibid. 18.

4 Ibid.

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

5 Ralph E. Shikes, The Indignant Eye (Boston:
Beacon Press, 1969), 374.

6 Matthew Baigell, The American Scene: American
Painting in the 1930's (New York: Praeger, 1974), 129.

7 O’Connor, 24.

8 Olin Dows, “The New Deal’s Treasury Art
Program: A Memoir,” The New Deal Art Projects, An
Anthology of Memoirs , edit. Francis V. O’Connor,
(Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press,
1972), 36.

9 O’Connor, Federal Support, 63.

10 Ibid. 23.

11 Joseph S. Czestochowski, John Steuart Curry and
Grant Wood, A Portrait of Rural America (Columbia,
Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 1981), 40.

12 Baigell, 128.

13 Ibid. 174-175.

14 Prior to the Depression America had no artistic
tradition of social commentary and protest except
political cartoons in the print media.

15 Martin Greif, Depression Modern (New York:
Universe Books, 1975), 34-36. Offers a quote by
designer W. D. Teague, which applies to the Benton
dynamics. “We are a primitive age, a dynamic people,
and we respond only to the expressions of tension, of
vigor, of energy.”

16 Oliver W. Larkin, Art and Life in America (New
York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston Inc., 1949), 414.

17 O’Connor, Federal Support, 66.

18 For an exhaustive exploration of these issues see
Gifford Phillips, The Arts in a Democratic Society
(Santa Barbara, California: The Center for the Study of
Democratic Institutions, 1966).

19 O’Connor, Federal Support, 102.

20 Ibid. 103.

21 Research funded in part by a Wisconsin Human¬
ities Committee Mini-Grant.

SOME REFLECTIONS ON RIGHTS:

HUMAN, NATURAL, MORAL, AND FUNDAMENTAL*

Marcus G. Singer
Department of Philosophy
University of Wisconsin , Madison

Recent years have seen an unprecedented
flurry of interest in the philosophical
analysis and elucidation of human rights.
There are now two or three journals devoted
to human rights — or at least to their dis¬
cussion. The 1981 volume of Nomos, no.
XXIII, is on the topic of Human Rights.
There have been many books on the subject
with, we may be sure, many more to come. It
is a famous observation of Hegel’s that The
Owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with
the coming of the dusk. We may hope that
this observation, so profound on other
matters, does not prove to be true of human
rights as well. But there are regimes in the
world that honor human rights more in the
breach and the official rhetoric than in the
observance, and others where they are
honored in no way, not even in the official
ideology. Even the present tendency of pub¬
lic opinion seems more concerned with free¬
dom of enterprise than freedom of the per¬
son, with property rights, to lapse into some
older terminology, than human rights. I
think it was Anatole France who observed
that a poor person has as much right as a
rich one to dine at the Ritz, or to sleep on the
banks of the Seine, or something to that
effect, and a political regime in which that is
emphasized is not one that has any special

* This paper was presented at the Tenth Inter-
american Congress of Philosophy, at The Florida State
University, Tallahassee, Florida, 18-23 October 1981,
devoted to the topic of Human Rights, in a Symposium
on Human Rights and the Political Community, 19
October 1981. Abstracts of papers from the Congress,
in English, French, or Spanish, can be found in Human
Rights: Abstracts of Papers from the Tenth Inter-
american Congress of Philosophy (Tallahassee, Florida:
Department of Philosophy, The Florida State Univer¬
sity, 1982).

concern for human rights. Yet the notion is
alive in the world, if not at the moment in
Washington, and it behooves us to under¬
stand why and how.

The interest generated in recent years by
appeals to human rights is not something
temporary, unless human life itself is. That
the appeal to human rights has met with such
a response in the less developed parts of the
world, as well as those enslaved by the
present day imitators of Nero and Caligula,
indicates that it is not something that can
easily be papered over. On the world stage,
the appeal to human rights has always had a
revolutionary force, from the time it first
arose in the 17th century, and though the
force of the appeal has waxed and waned, it
seems always ready to be revived when the
occasion warrants.

The present period in human history may
be one of those occasions. It is to be hoped
that the present interest taken by philos¬
ophers in the concept does not result in its
being appropriated as a topic to be endlessly
analyzed and argued about and refined to
the point where its appeal to governments
and ordinary people is correspondingly di¬
minished. Too much philosophical explora¬
tion of and debate about minutiae may tend
to have this effect. Still, we need not worry
overmuch about this. For it is not evident
that all the philosophical talk about the
existence of God has had any appreciable
effect on the strength of religious belief. So
it may be that all the philosophical talk
about human rights will not damage the con¬
cept as a political, moral, rhetorical, and
emotional tool. For of course it is such a
tool. To be sure, on many occasions it has
been misused. The idea, naturally, is to

57

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[Vol. 72

clarify the concept, not to bury it; to
elucidate it, not to appropriate it, and if
philosophy performs its proper task aright,
it will be strengthened, not diminished.

That is my object in this paper. I present
no theory of rights — there are plenty of
those available — only some observations and
reflections and questions that seem illumi¬
nating and essential for any adequate general
theory of rights to take account of.

1. A theory of rights must capture and
explain the force of “rights-talk.” It has
rhetorical hence political and also moral
force, which must be recognized. It is a vital
weapon of social conflict, hence must be
understood. It has a nearly universal appeal,
hence must be mastered — not for purposes
of propaganda, but for purposes of under¬
standing and securing rights, when genuine.

For rights-talk is significant. The claim
“A has a right to X” is different from “A
wants X.” If I say ’T have a right to do X”
that is different from saying “I want to do
X.” When we use such locutions ourselves
we are conscious of meaning something dif¬
ferent and something more and when we
hear them used by others we are conscious of
their meaning something different and some¬
thing more. What the difference is, it is the
task of a theory of rights to determine, but
the fact is plain enough. The fact that one
who asserts a right to something also wants
that thing does not deny the point of differ¬
ence; it only accentuates it. But I must
recognize that when someone else asserts a
right to something, what is being asserted is,
quite apart from the validity of the claim,
essentially different from merely asserting a
desire to have it or demanding it, because I
recognize that that is true of myself when I
assert or claim a right. I am aware that I am
not merely expressing a desire; that I don’t
merely want it. This is true even if I on
occasion engage in deception, and assert a
right to something that I only want and do
not really believe I have a right to.

The argument here is something like San¬

tayana’s for the reality of truth. One awakes
“to the being of truth,’’ Santayana observes,
through “the experience of other people
lying. When I am falsely accused, or when I
am represented as thinking what I do not
think, I rebel against that contradiction to
my evident self-knowledge; and as the other
man asserts that the liar is myself, and a
third person might very well entertain that
hypothesis and decide against me, I learn
that a report may fly in the face of the facts.
...” [Skepticism and Animal Faith (1923),

p. 266.]

Since I am aware that I mean something
different when I assert a right to something
than when I merely say I want it, I must
recognize that there is a difference between
them, even if I am unable to describe that
difference in words. And a little experience
of the world is sufficient to convince me that
others also are aware of such a difference.

Further, there is a force in “You have no
right to do that” that is not captured by its
formal equivalent, “It is wrong of you to do
that,” or “You have a duty not to do that.”
What is the explanation of this?

To have a right is to have an authoriza¬
tion, an entitlement, and this is a certain sort
of moral capacity. “You have no right”
claims that you do not have that capacity.
But why does it have this force?

2. Yet rights-talk is easily and often
exaggerated, and is often used to cover up
and suggest a sanction for mere claims or
demands that have no other backing than
self-assertion. In these circumstance, “I
have a right to it” is only a highly emotive
way of saying “I want it.” Thus people
claim a right to something they want because
rights-talk is in general significant, power¬
ful, effective. Too much of this darkens
counsel, tends to corrupt moral discourse at
its roots.

By an analogue of Gresham’s Law, bad
rights-talk will tend to drive good rights-talk
out of circulation, or rather it will tend to
corrupt and discredit it, as inflation corrupts

1984]

Singer — Some Reflections on Rights

59

and discredits a currency. This is why rights-
talk, and rights-claims, need to be so care¬
fully scrutinized, like the claims of adver¬
tisers and hucksters and propagandists.

Just as there is a distinction between a
claim to know and genuinely knowing, there
is a distinction between claiming to have a
right and genuinely having one. Those who
claim a right to everything they want are
making a claim that would be self-contra¬
dictory if universalized. It follows that no
one can have a right to everything he or she
wants. The distinction between wanting
something and having a right to it remains
basic, and enables us to say that in a morally
tolerable world people will, in general, have
rights to have their basic wants satisfied and
that these rights will be recognized. But since
not everyone can have a right to everything
she or he wants, no one can — and no one
does.

3. In the United States especially there is a
tendency to use rights-talk extravagantly, to
exaggerate one’s special wishes or wants into
the claim that one has a right. This is only
partly because of the American tradition of
the tall tale and the happy exaggeration. The
country was explicitly founded on the basis
of rights and in the light of the philosophy of
natural rights and the enlightenment, and
the tendency to think in terms of rights as
basic and self-certifying reasons is part of
our heritage, which we acquire as we acquire
our mother tongue. One result of this is that
opposing sides in moral conflicts assert in¬
compatible rights and as the conflict esca¬
lates assert them in louder and louder tones,
so that many moral and value conflicts tend
to turn into shouting matches, or worse.
Some of these conflicts we get over; some we
do not. But if the concept and the language
of rights is to be of use in settling conflicts
we must have a way of resolving conflicting
claims of rights. It may seem self-evident —
though it is probably not even true — that
genuine rights themselves cannot be in con¬
flict. But it does not matter, for a conflict of

rights-claims cannot be settled merely by an
appeal to rights. There must be a basis for
determining which claims are genuine and
which not.

4. Some consideration of the history of the
concept may be of use. I do not know for
certain when the expression “ human rights”
came into general use and currency, but the
evidence indicates that it came into general
use in the late 19th Century or early 20th, as
part of the progressive movement. It was
used in contrast with property rights , and it
involved the implicit claim that human rights
should take priority over the rights of prop¬
erty or corporations. Thus it was used by
supporters of Woodrow Wilson’s “new free¬
dom” and in conjunction with Theodore
Roosevelt’s “square deal,” and perhaps
earlier. This is not its standard use now, but
this is its pedigree. As the term is used now it
traces from the 17th century notion of
natural rights, which were regarded as the
natural rights of man (as in Tom Paine’s
famous book). Mary Wollstonecraft’s Vin¬
dication of the Rights of Woman received no
noticeable vindication at the time it first
appeared (1792, the year after Paine’s), but
it has been vindicated now for some time, so
it is probably better to speak of the rights of
human beings than of the rights of man.
Hence “human rights” has a birthright. But
it is, I think, a not altogether felicitous
expression.

Why “human rights?” Presumably be¬
cause they are the rights human beings have
in virtue of being human, and they are no
other special class of rights. The expression
suggests, however, that they are a special
kind of rights, along with such categories of
rights as constitutional rights, civil rights,
political rights, economic rights, legal rights.
Of course they are not. And why are these
rights of human beings, and not of other
creatures or beings as well? I would prefer to
speak of moral rights, but of course it is
futile to argue against an established usage.
Better to understand it.

60

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

But even though human rights are in a way
a descendant of, and another expression for,
natural rights, they are also a bit different.
They are similar in that they claim to be
universal, to have validity across cultural
and political boundaries, to be the rights of
human beings as human beings, in virtue of
their common humanity (an assumption nec¬
essarily involved in the conception). But
natural rights, as the concept was used for
generations, were thought of as rights to
certain kinds of freedoms and protections.
What are now referred to as human rights
tend to be thought of as, perhaps in addi¬
tion, rights to certain kinds of services and
benefits, such as health care and a living
wage. Is this significant? I think it is not,
that it is only a historical accident, the term
“natural” having fallen out of favor and the
term “human” not — at least not yet.

One rather amusing and at the same time
pathetic aspect of this usage is the ap¬
pearance of signs and manifestos saying,
“We have human rights too!” This is
usually proclaimed by some group that feels
particularly oppressed, and of course some¬
times such a group genuinely is oppressed.
But this involves a confusion of categories.
What is meant is “We are human beings and
we have rights too.” Unhappily, it is some¬
times in this unhappy world necessary to
point that out. But the expression “We have
human rights too” suggests, as I said before,
that human rights are a certain kind of
rights, and of course they are not. They are
the rights natural to human beings, if they
are genuinely rights at all, in virtue of certain
invariant and fundamental moral principles.
Since their justification must lie in such prin¬
ciples I think it more perspicuous to think of
them as moral rights.

And we should remember, in speaking of
human rights, that we should not overlook
human wrongs. Though it may not be only
human beings that have rights, it is only hu¬
man beings who can commit wrongs, just as
it is human beings who are the source of evil,

and it is only human beings who can violate
human rights.

5. What is the basic human right, assum¬
ing that there is one? One often hears it said
nowadays that the basic human right is the
right to life, on the ground that being alive is
essential to having any other rights. But the
argument is fallacious. What is essential to
having rights is not the right to life, but
simply life. A right to life is, I have come to
think, an ad hoc construction used to shore
up certain contentious positions based on
faulty logic and a misreading of history.

The idea that the right to life is basic is
often traced back to the Declaration of Inde¬
pendence, in accordance with the charac¬
teristically American practice of tracing any
contentious point of political philosophy
back to some great document in the history
of the country. Now it is true that the
Declaration of Independence, as adopted,
contains the phrase: “that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their
creator with certain unalienable rights, that
among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit
of happiness.” But a little research suffices
to show that what appears in the final ver¬
sion as a right to life was stated in Jeffer¬
son’s original draft and early versions, and
retained for more than a little time, as a right
to “the preservation of life, and liberty, and
the pursuit of happiness.” [See Carl Becker,
The Declaration of Independence (1922),
Ch. 4.] A small change, you think? Well, I
am not so sure it is so small. I think it was
not a philosophical consideration that led to
the dropping of “the preservation,” but
considerations of style and rhetoric and pol¬
itics. For the purpose, superb. For philo¬
sophical and even moral purposes, perhaps
not so happy.

Consider its antecedents. Hobbes’s “right
of nature ... is the liberty each man hath, to
use his own power, as he will himself, for the
preservation of his own nature; that is to
say, of his own life ...” [Leviathan (1651),
ch. 14, par. 1]. Locke, a more obvious

1984]

Singer — Some Reflections on Rights

61

influence on Jefferson, also had put it this
way, though this is almost always over¬
looked in quick and rapid statements of
what are taken to be Locke’s basic princi¬
ples. We find Locke, in the Second Treatise
of Government (1690) speaking (sec. 11) of
the “right of self-preservation” and also
saying: “Natural reason . . . tells us that
men, being once born , have a right to their
preservation, and consequently to meat and
drink and such other things as nature affords
for their subsistence” (sec. 25, italics
added). I do not know why Locke restricted
himself to “men, being once born” Perhaps
Locke scholarship can tell us. I do know that
that is what he says. And his famous trinity
of rights, supposedly the model for Jeffer¬
son’s statement in the Declaration, reads this
way (sec. 87): “Man, being born with a title
to perfect freedom and uncontrolled enjoy¬
ment of all the rights and privileges of the
law of nature equally with any other man or
number of men in the world, has by nature a
power ... to preserve his property— that is,
his life, liberty, and estate ...” Again, to
preserve his life.

It appears, then, that the phrase “right to
life” entered the language and our common
culture only as a sort of shorthand and by
accident.

It is in the context merely an aside and an
example, and I do not wish to enter the lists
here in the contemporary dispute about
abortion, but it seems clear that those who
oppose it in any and all cases must find some
better argument for their position than a
supposed right to life on the part of the
fetus, as a right basic to all, say, human
beings. For, as I suggested before, apart
from the facts of history just reviewed, it is
not the right to life that is basic as essential
to enjoying or exercising any other rights,
but rather life itself, and perhaps a bit more,
such as competent life. Being alive, or being
a being of a certain kind, is the condition of
having rights.

In this connection one occasionally hears

talk of a “right to be born,” and I have
heard that countered by an assertion of a
“right not to be born.” This is something
perhaps congenial only to those brought up
in a natural rights environment. But surely
here we have an object for Bentham’s con¬
temptuous phrase, “nonsense on stilts.” For
if there is a right to be born, we must be able
to specify whose right it is and under what
conditions it is violated. If we can speak
sensibly of a “right to be born” — which I
doubt — then we can speak sensibly of “a
right to be conceived,” and a corresponding
“right not to be conceived.” And here we
have started a game in which all rules are
off. It is reported that when a student,
terribly bothered by Descartes’ demon, said
to Professor Morris Cohen, “But Professor,
tell me, do I exist?”, Cohen replied by
saying, “Who wants to know?”

One is also reminded of the old Jewish
story, now famous, of the two men mourn¬
fully complaining of the woes and sorrows
of existence. “Life is so terrible,” one of
them says finally, “it would have been better
never to have been conceived.” “True,”
said the other, “but who is so lucky? — not
one in a million.”

Whose right is it? Who’s asking? Who
wants to know?

Rights-talk has got to be more sensible
than this if it is to pass rational muster. The
alleged “right to life” does not. If it does,
we shall have created also the right to be
born and the right to be conceived and the
right to be brought into existence. But who
has such a right, and on what basis is it
asserted? The multiplication of such alleged
rights can only serve to discredit rights-talk
altogether, which in turn will cover up the
many and repeated violations of genuine
human rights constantly occurring in the
actual world in which we live.

6. A recent notice from an organization
called “Greenpeace” asks “Do whales have
a right to live?”, and answers itself, “Yes,
they do have a right to live.”

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

I find myself wanting to agree with that,
without any clear idea of why or what or
how. For the peculiarity of assertions such as
this, “Whales have a right to live,” is that
people who assert it are asserting it not of
individual whales, but of the species, are
asserting that the species has a right to
survive. And when we talk of human beings
having a right to life we of course are refer¬
ring to each and every one, not the species of
humans.

I wonder if the ease with which we find
ourselves agreeing that whales, tigers, ele¬
phants, have a right to live is not generated
by the ease with which we picked up and re¬
peat the phrase “the right to life.”

Do trees have a right to live? Do roses
have a right to live? Do mosquitoes have a
right to live? Do cockroaches have a right to
live? Do bedbugs have a right to live? Do
weeds have a right to live? Do these ques¬
tions have answers?

Do minnows have a right to live? But free¬
dom for the pike, as Tawney said, is death
for the minnow. Do pike have a right to live?
A right to freedom?

The piece from Greenpeace, after provid¬
ing a horrendous description of the process
by which whales are killed — slaughtered, ac¬
tually — , observes that when the process of
raping the whales’ bodies of fat and muscle
is finished, “the remains are dumped over¬
board to the sharks.”

But if whales have a right to live, don’t
sharks have a right to live?

How can we tell?

7. We need to recognize that, even where it
is not abused, rights-talk is not all-sufficient.
It needs to be supplemented by a concern for
and attention to consequences and alterna¬
tives, and also by a consideration of duties
and obligations. For talk only about human
rights, with no consideration of conse¬
quences and obligations, is egoistic talk, and
can destroy the possibility of a moral com¬
munity and a moral life. Under such circum¬
stances it would lose all meaning, including

emotive meaning, and could no longer be
used, as it is now so often used, even for the
deception of oneself and others.

If everyone were only to assert rights and
never acknowledged duties, both rights and
duties would lose all meaning and signif¬
icance because there would be no moral
community in terms of which alone they can
have significance.

8. But are there basic or genuine human
rights? Certainly there are, for there are
moral rights. This follows from fundamental
principles.

What would happen — how would it be — if
no one had rights and if no one were recog¬
nized as having rights? It would be intoler¬
able. No one could tolerate a situation in
which no one was recognized as having
rights and, as a consequence, no one’s rights
were recognized. A maxim of recognizing no
one as having rights could not be willed to be
universal law. All rational persons would
rationally want others to recognize them as
having rights, and consequently must recog¬
nize others as having rights. Though specific
rights can vary from one to another, funda¬
mental rights are necessarily reciprocal and
identical. If any one has rights then so must
everyone similarly situated. The supposition
that no one has rights thus cannot be sus¬
tained. And everyone is similarly situated in
being a human being and thus a potential
member of the moral community.

The supposition, indeed, that there is a
community none of whose members has any
rights is self-contradictory. An organization
there might be with members having no
rights — as there might be an organization of
robots or automatons— but community
there could not be. But without community
there could be no duties or obligations
either. Thus the idea of rights is, it seems to
me, essential to moral thought. But princi¬
ples establish them and it is by reference to
principles that they are to be understood and
weighed and, where appropriate and called
for, limited.

1984]

Singer — Some Reflections on Rights

63

9. Is there any one right that is basic or
fundamental? I am not sure that there is, but
if there is, I should say that it is the right to
freedom of conscience, the right to think as
one is led to think through the free and un¬
fettered operation of one’s own mind and
distinctive personality. I say this because this
right cannot be violated without destroying
the individual, without destroying the indi¬
vidual’s capacity to think, to feel, to be
aware and conscious of oneself as an individ¬
ual person and personality as distinct from a
heteronomous automaton. And this is, so
far as I can see, the only right of which this is
true. This right has obvious affinities with,
may even be identical to, the right to be one¬
self, but I do not discuss this here. It also
links, in interesting ways, with other rights
of great importance which, lacking the fea¬
ture mentioned, cannot be regarded as rock-
bottom.

10. The question is often raised, which is
prior, rights or the community? Do human
beings have rights outside of and prior to
any community — as is implied by traditional
contract theory and maintained today by
egoistic libertarians — , or do human beings
have rights only within and as a consequence
of the existence of the community and of
their being accorded by the community — as
is maintained by collectivists and social
function theorists? The question is, in my
estimation, spurious. There is no need to
determine which is prior, rights or the
community, and no possibility of doing it.
These are, I suggest, polar or interdependent
notions. Neither concept can be understood
or explained without the other.

There are at least two senses of polar
terms that we have to note, one wider than
and implied by the other. In one, (1) two
terms A and B are polar if the meaning of
one involves the meaning of the other. This
is the wider sense, in which the relationship
is conceptual only. In the other, the nar¬
rower stricter sense, (2) A and B are polar if
it is impossible for there to be an instance of

one without there existing an instance of the
other. Clearly (2) implies (1), but not vice-
versa.

Instances of terms that are polar in the
stricter, existential sense are: buying and
selling, north and south, cause and effect.
Terms that are polar in the wider, conceptual
sense, but not necessarily in the existential
sense, include: supply and demand, means
and ends, part and whole, peace and war,
husband and wife, form and content, and,
unfortunately, teaching and learning.

Now it seems clear enough that rights and
duties are polar in one of these two senses. I
do not stop to determine which. My sugges¬
tion here is that so are right and community
polar, in at least the intensional, conceptual,
sense: that is, the meaning of one involves
the meaning of the other. Whether the exis¬
tence of one entails the existence of the other
I am not sure. But even the weaker polar
relationship indicates that neither is basic,
any more than one of the polar pairs north
and south, right and left, husband and wife,
buying and selling, must be basic.

The concept of polar notions can be
extended to a wider range. Multiple concep¬
tions can be polar — or better, interdepen¬
dent or multi-polar — and there is illumina¬
tion in extending the concept in this way. For
it enables the polar relationship to be under¬
stood. The basis of the relationship between
husband and wife is marriage, and there is
similarly a basis for every polar relationship.
The basis for the polar relationship between
rights and duties is the ground or rationale
or reason that determines that one person
has a duty and another a right. And it is not
at all implausible to hold that the notions of
rights, duties, moral agents, and the moral
community are in some such way as this
interdependent.

1 1 . This suggests another reason why, as I
suggested before, the expression “moral
rights” is preferable, on philosophical
grounds, to the expression “human rights.”

For they are, as I said, moral rights, rights

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

which beings have in virtue of morality —
fundamental moral principles.

Secondly, they are not just the rights of
human beings, which is the suggestion con¬
veyed by the expression “human rights.”
Animals can have moral rights, as they can
be members — or can be treated as members
— of the moral community. But how can
nonhumans have human rights?

Thirdly, moral rights are polar to the
moral community, which transcends all
merely political and even cultural boun¬
daries. Thus moral rights are not polar to the
actual human community — if there is one — ,
or to any actual political community. What
is polar to the political community are
political rights, and in some political
communities there may actually be none,
except, perhaps, those held and exercised
only by the rulers.

By the moral community I mean the com¬
munity of all moral persons, persons of good
will, those who recognize moral rights and
duties, the “ethical commonwealth” orig¬
inally conceived by the Stoics and so elo¬
quently described by Kant in his later ethical
works and in his concept of a kingdom of
ends.

But of course the expression “human
rights” is preferable rhetorically, politically,
and practically.

12. None of this is to deny — it is rather to
affirm — that human beings have certain
fundamental rights, which ought to be, must
be, need to be recognized. Any government
that denies or violates such rights is to that
extent bad, wrong, and illegitimate, and
hence has to that extent no claim, no right,
to respect or obedience or even to existence.
But what this means in practice, and how it
is to be applied and carried out into practice,
is something else.

References

Becker, Carl L., The Declaration of Inde¬
pendence. 1922. (New York: Alfred A. Knopf:
Vintage Books, 1958.)

Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan. 1651.

Locke, John, An Essay Concerning the True
Original , Extent, and End of Civil Gov¬
ernment: The Second Treatise of Government.
1690.

Paine, Thomas, The Rights of Man. 1791.
Pennock, J. Roland and John W. Chapman,
eds., Human Rights, Nomos XXIII. 1981.
(New York & London: New York University
Press.)

Santayana, George, Skepticism and Animal
Faith. 1923. (New York: Charles Scribner’s
Sons.)

Wollstonecraft, Mary, Vindication of the Rights
of Woman. 1792.

WISCONSIN’S WAR AGAINST RUSSIA, 1918-1919

Benjamin D. Rhodes
Department of History
University of Wisconsin- Whitewater

As they left America by troopship in the
summer of 1918, the Wisconsin soldiers
treated in this essay were under the impres¬
sion that they were on their way to France to
wage war against the forces of Kaiser Wil¬
helm II. At the last minute, however, both
their destination and the enemy were
changed. Their exact location was now a
classified secret.1 But, in letters to their
relatives, the soldiers described many attrac¬
tive aspects of the place. Geographically the
country resembled northern Wisconsin.2
Forests of pine, spruce, and aspen domi¬
nated the largely flat landscape which also
featured numerous meadows filled with wild
flowers and unusual mosses, as well as clear
lakes and rivers. The woods teemed with
deer, ducks, geese, woodhens, crows, im¬
mense rabbits, and flocks of white chicka¬
dees so plentiful that “when they flew it
looked like a snowstorm.”3 In summer there
were long hours of daylight and mild tem¬
peratures. During the months of intense cold
the troops were housed in snug, well-heated
dwellings which were frequently equipped
with saunas. Even the long winter nights
were made memorable by brilliant displays
of northern lights. And the natives of the
region were not too different from the
people at home — hardworking, religious
folk who loved a good joke and often drank
too much.

At the same time there were drawbacks:
bottomless swamps and clouds of mos¬
quitoes in the summer. During the winter
months homesickness and melancholia were
induced by the short days and temperatures
as low as - 53 degrees Fahrenheit. The food
ration, consisting primarily of black tea,
hardtack, and canned willy (corned beef),
also left much to be desired. Flies, fleas,

cockroaches, bedbugs, and ticks were other
sources of discomfort. “It’s the filthiest
place I’ve ever been in,” wrote one Milwau-
kean. “The cooties keep us dancing every
minute.” Probably the most unattractive
feature of the mission was the imminent
danger of death from sickness, mines, booby
traps, and rifle and artillery fire. Tragically
for the ten Wisconsin soldiers who lost their
lives, they were not engaged in practice ma¬
neuvers in the north woods, but were fight¬
ing a shooting war against the Bolsheviks
more than 200 miles deep in the interior of
North Russia.4

Wisconsin’s connection with the affair
originated in the distressing news which
came out of Russia in the autumn of 1917.
First, in November the Bolsheviks easily
toppled the pro-Western Provisional Gov¬
ernment. And within a few months, to the
consternation of the Allies, the Bolsheviks
betrayed the West by signing a separate
peace with Germany and leaving the war.
From the Allied viewpoint, especially that of
the British War Cabinet, the Bolshevik ac¬
tion was intolerable, because it would permit
the Germans to transfer their army to the
Western Front and to gain control over
Allied military supplies sent to Russia. The
British proposed, therefore, to invade Russia
through its northern ports of Murmansk and
Archangel, take possession of the extensive
military supplies there, and eventually reor¬
ganize the Eastern Front with the assistance
of Russian volunteers.5 President Woodrow
Wilson, against his better judgment, reluc¬
tantly agreed to participate in the campaign.
Supposedly the American troops were to be
restricted to guarding military stores and to
assisting the Czechoslovak Legion — an anti¬
communist group of former war prisoners

65

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

which was fighting its way across Siberia to
Vladivostok.6

The 339th Infantry, the 4500-man unit
which received the dubious honor of being
selected to serve in North Russia, was
primarily staffed by draftees from Michigan.
In fact the regiment was commonly referred
to as “Detroit’s Own.” To fill vacancies
about 125 men from Wisconsin were trans¬
ferred from Fort Sheridan, Illinois, to Camp
Custer, Michigan, where the 339th Infantry
underwent basic training. The University of
Wisconsin was well represented among the
junior officers and infantry assigned to the
expedition. Students and recent graduates of
the university connected with the affair in¬
cluded H. L. Babbitz, Carl H. Berger,
Marcus Casey, Charles Collins, John A.
Commons, Lawrence Gooding, Gordon
Reese, W. B. Webster, and Malcolm Whyte;
Berger and Casey were among the dead. The
two American consuls at Archangel also had
ties to Wisconsin. Consul Felix Cole, an
articulate opponent of American interven¬
tion in Russia, spent his freshman year at the
University of Wisconsin in 1904-1905, and
his assistant, Consul Maurice Pierce, gradu¬
ated from the university in 191 2. 7 The largest
Wisconsin contingent served not in the
infantry, but in the 310th Engineers; about
half the 788 members of this company were
from Wisconsin. The other units involved in
the affair, the 337th Field Hospital and the
337th Ambulance Company, were almost
entirely staffed by soldiers from Michigan,
except for a few Wisconsin physicians. Ac¬
cording to an estimate by the Wisconsin War
History Commission, approximately 500 of
the 5710 soldiers sent to Archangel were
from Wisconsin.8

Unquestionably the troops were inexperi¬
enced as their training had consisted of only
a month at Camp Custer, followed by a sec¬
ond month spent in crossing the Atlantic.
Arriving at Aldershot, England, they learned
of their new destination and were outfitted
by the British with winter equipment, includ¬
ing snowshoes, fur caps, long woolen coats,

and the Shackleton boot, which proved
warm, but slippery and vulnerable to damp¬
ness. Colonel George E. Stewart, the com¬
mander of the 339th Infantry, facetiously
asked the British whether they intended to
carry out the “Britishizing” process to its
ultimate extent by issuing him five thousand
monocles.9 The soldiers’ American rifles
were replaced by Russian rifles (manufac¬
tured by Westinghouse), but the men had
little confidence in them as the ammunition
frequently jammed and they were said to be
so inaccurate as to shoot around corners.
Moreover, the bayonet was fixed immovably
to the rifle and rapid fire was impossible.
Each man had fired only ten rounds with the
rifle on a range before the 339th departed
from Newcastle on August 26, 1918. 10

Three weeks previously the British had
boldly seized the port of Archangel. On
August 1 Major-General Frederick C. Poole
and a naval flotilla equipped with two sea¬
planes overwhelmed Bolshevik defenses on
nearby Mudyug Island. During the after¬
noon and evening the Bolsheviks fled south¬
ward toward Vologda by railroad and by
boat toward Kotlas on the Dvina River. The
next morning (August 2) a new socialist
government, which had just seized power in
a coup, invited Poole and his tiny force of
fewer than 1500 onto Russian soil.11 As the
troops marched to the government buildings
they were greeted with cheers, whistles, and
the waving of handkerchiefs. However, Felix
Cole, the 30-year-old American Consul at
Archangel, detected an ominous note in the
proceedings. Only the middle class and the
peasants, the two groups which had suffered
the most at the hands of the Bolsheviks’
demonstrated approval. “The working
class,” Cole perceptively observed, “was
patently absent.”12

Even prior to the arrival of the 339th
Infantry, Poole commenced his campaign to
conquer North Russia. Within a few days
allied forces were able to advance 40 versts
(26 miles) to the south on the Archangel-
Vologda Railroad before being stalled by

1984]

Rhodes — Wisconsin’s War against Russia, 1918-1919

67

burned bridges and rear guard sniping from
engines. Preparations were hurried to chase
the retreating Bolsheviks on the Dvina River
as well, although Poole was temporarily
delayed by an acute shortage of transport. A
start was made at recruiting Russians into
the “Slavo-British Legion”; however, only a
few hundred enlisted, the majority of whom
were either old and hungry or repatriated
prisoners of war.13 The amateurish nature of
the enterprise shocked realistic observers
such as the British representative in Moscow,
Bruce Lockhart. “We had committed,” the
incredulous Lockhart noted in his memoirs,
“the unbelievable folly of landing at Arch¬
angel with fewer than twelve hundred
men.”14 Further folly was soon added when
the intervention was expanded following the
arrival of the bulk of the American forces on
September 4, 1918.

Due to circumstances beyond their control
about one-third of the Americans were in no
condition to fight a war. Shortly after leav¬
ing Britain a virulent strain of “Spanish
influenza” broke out on two of the three
British transports. The illness frequently
proved fatal even to young men in good
health and it spread rapidly due to the close
quarters on shipboard. By mistake practic¬
ally no medical supplies had been placed on
board the ships and the few medicines left
over from training at Camp Custer were
soon exhausted. “Congestion was so bad,”
recalled one soldier, “that men with a
temperature of only 101° or 102° were not
put into the hospital but lay in their
hammocks or the decks.”15 Therefore, when
the men arrived at Archangel the situation
was serious, but only 25 seriously ill Amer¬
icans could be accommodated by the British

Fig. 1. Funeral procession of Marcus T. Casey of New Richmond, Wisconsin, at Archangel, Russia, September 18,
1918. Photo no. 1 1 -SC-28605 in the National Archives.

68

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

53rd Stationary Hospital. Under the direc¬
tion of Major Jonas R. Longley of Fond du
Lac, who was himself “nearly dead of the
disease,” an American hospital was estab¬
lished with supplies and nurses furnished by
the American Red Cross and the Russian
Red Cross. In September 378 Americans
were afflicted by influenza and eventually 72
died of the disease or the resulting pneu¬
monia. Lt. Marcus T. Casey of New Rich¬
mond, a law student at the University of
Wisconsin, was the first of three Wisconsin
soldiers to succumb to the disease. At Arch¬
angel Casey received an elaborate military
funeral which was heavily attended by the
well-to-do.16 (Fig. 1) However, as had been
the case when General Poole landed a month
and a half before, the laboring classes were
conspicuously absent.

For a time the local manufacturers of cof¬
fins were unable to keep up with the demand
and the churches worked overtime conduct¬
ing funerals for the American and Russian
victims. One American medical officer
observed that the Orthodox priests routinely
used the same yellow robe to cover all
corpses and that during the funeral chants
each member of the congregation kissed the
same spot on an icon held by the priest. “It
is their belief,” he noted, “that during a
religious service it is impossible to contract
disease.”17 The high death rate may also
have been aggravated by the general lack of
sanitation at Archangel. The sewer system
consisted merely of ditches under the side¬
walks which emptied into cesspools. “This is
some city,” reported Lt. Charles Ryan to
Professor John R. Commons. “It can be
smelled for quite a distance. Among his
other crimes, Peter the Great was
responsible for this place.”18 Under normal
circumstances the cesspools were period¬
ically emptied and their contents carted off
to the swamps and tundra. But as Major
Longley pointed out: “Due to the disorga¬
nization resultant from war conditions, the
labor necessary to effect this had been
lacking, the cess pits had overflowed, flush

latrines had become plugged and human
excreta was conspicuous and abundant both
inside and outside of buildings . . . The
situation was made worse by the Influenza
Epidemic which started among the troops on
the way to Russia. ” 1 9

Under the supervision of the 310th Engi¬
neers — about half of whom were from Wis¬
consin^ — the odoriferous job of emptying
and cleaning latrines and cess pits was
begun. Bathhouses, incinerators, and a
delousing station (the “cooty mill”) were
constructed. As a result, noted Longley,
“before winter made outdoor work impos¬
sible, the situation had been greatly im¬
proved.”20 During a brief general strike,
called to protest the temporary displacement
of the socialist government by a coup, Com¬
pany “C” of the engineers received some¬
what more pleasant duties. Now they were
detailed to operate the Archangel power
plant, the waterworks, run a sawmill, and
operate the local streetcar system. One prob¬
lem with the latter occupation was that the
Americans neither knew the language nor
understood the value of the money presented
by the passengers. Therefore, as one partici¬
pant recalled, “No change was ever given.
The motorman would go down the street
hollering Michigan Avenue, Woodward
Avenue and other streets in Detroit.”21

In the meantime General Poole had sent
about half the American troops southward
by railroad toward Vologda. At first rapid
progress was made as the Allies captured
Oberskaya about seventy miles to the south.
Soon surprisingly determined resistance was
encountered, which led Poole to the mis¬
taken conclusion that German officers were
directing the defense. Another unexpected
obstacle was the swampy terrain. As
summed up by Poole: “The country consist¬
ing of practically nothing but forest and bog
presents the most extraordinary difficulties.
This renders any attempt at a turning move¬
ment both difficult and slow. For a detach¬
ment to have to wade waist deep in bog even
on patrol work is an almost daily occur-

1984]

Rhodes — Wisconsin's War against Russia, 1918-1919

69

rence.”22 Between Archangel and Vologda
(425 miles to the south) there were 262
bridges and, noted Poole, “as my forces
stand at present I shall be held up at every
bridge, each of which takes some days to
repair.”23

The hard physical work of replacing the
wrecked bridges and track fell to the engi¬
neers. As a result, many of the Wisconsin
men on the Railroad Front became more
adept at construction work than at the use of
weapons. Most of the bridges were short
one-span structures supported by steel
girders which rested on masonry abutments.
In destroying the bridges the Bolsheviks
customarily dynamited the girder span.
Often the Americans found that it was possi¬
ble, through the use of jacks, to lift the span
back into place and support it with round
timber and ties. Altogether the engineers
estimated that they constructed 3000 feet of
timber bridges. One of their most imagina¬
tive projects was the secret building of a 60-
foot crib bridge in preparation for a fall
offensive against the Bolshevik armored
train, located just north of Plesetskaya at
verst 455. As described by the officer in
charge:

This work was completed in two nights, and
was entirely finished before the enemy knew
that an advance was anticipated. Not a single
spike or bolt was driven on the job. Railway
spikes were driven into the ties behind our own
lines, and ties carried up and placed. Finally
the rails were forced in under the heads of the
spikes, and were permanently fastened after
the advance.24

Despite these preparations the offensive
proved unsuccessful. A party of engineers
had hoped to slip to the rear of verst 455,
destroy the track and trap the Bolsheviks.
But the engineers were unable to accomplish
their mission due to the swampy ground.
Therefore, when the Allies attacked at 6:40
a.m. on October 14 the Bolsheviks simply
withdrew their armored train and troop
train, destroyed another bridge and surren¬
dered three versts (about two miles) of

track.25 Despite the setback, General Poole
remained convinced that just a few more
battalions would enable him to launch a suc¬
cessful winter offensive. “If we succeed in
reaching Vologda, we may well open up line
to Viatka,” he predicted.26

In London the War Office was now hav¬
ing second thoughts about Poole’s grandiose
plans. At the same time the Wilson adminis¬
tration began to raise objections to Poole’s
use of American troops for offensive opera¬
tions. As Secretary of State Robert Lansing
instructed Ambassador David R. Francis,
“all military effort in northern Russia [must]
be given up except the guarding of the ports
themselves and as much of the country
round them as may develop threatening con¬
ditions.”27 Furthermore, when Poole made a
short trip to London in mid-October, he
found that not only had his plan for a winter
campaign been rejected, but that he was be¬
ing replaced by 38-year-old General Edmund
Ironside. The change in leadership meant
also a major shift in strategy as Ironside was
instructed that his operations were to be
“limited to the defensive and to the training
of the Russians.”28 In other words, the
offensive phase of the campaign had come to
a premature end.

There remained an enormous amount of
physical work for the engineers to perform
in preparing a strong defensive position.
First, the front line at verst 455 was strongly
fortified with barbed wire entanglements
(constructed from 40,000 rolls of wire found
in Archangel), and these were supplemented
by 316 shellproof blockhouses, 273 machine
gun emplacements, and 167 infantry out¬
posts. One of the most tedious and back
breaking jobs was cutting lanes of fire
through the dense timber. Further to the rear
the engineers constructed barracks, and con¬
verted railroad box cars into sleeping
quarters for the troops. Two hundred fifty-
seven cars were double lined with six-inch-
thick sawdust filled walls; bunks, stoves, and
electric lights provided by an old airplane
engine completed what were, by the stan-

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

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dards of North Russia, deluxe accommoda¬
tions. A Canadian aviator who toured the
American train noted that it was “about as
close to the Ritz as we are likely to get out
here.”29

Fewer engineers and therefore fewer Wis¬
consin men were involved in the second
major phase of the expedition in which the
British sought to advance along the Dvina
river to Kotlas where a branch of the trans-
Siberian railroad terminated. Among the
Wisconsin officers assigned to this front
were Captain Joel Moore, and Lieutenants
Francis Cuff, Glen Weeks, and John
Cudahy. Pursuing the retreating Bolsheviks
by boat, the Americans at first made impres¬
sive progress against only light resistance. By
the end of September the Allies had easily
captured the cities of Toulgas on the Dvina
and Shenkursk on the Vaga, the latter re¬
garded as the most important city of the
region after Archangel. “But/’ as John
Cudahy observed in his memoir of the cam¬
paign, “before these forces had been halted,

already the Vaga Expedition had gone too
far, thrust out nearly one hundred miles
from the Railway, and fifty miles further
south than the Dvina River party, it pre¬
sented inviting opportunity for enemy en¬
circlement.’’30 Another disquieting aspect of
the situation, recalled Cudahy, was that
Shenkursk was garrisoned by locally re¬
cruited Russians whose training, bravery,
and loyalty were highly suspect. Actually,
General Ironside was well aware of the over¬
extended nature of the position he had in¬
herited from Poole. However, for political
reasons it was decided to hold the area
through the winter, as it was felt an evacua¬
tion without a fight would deal a shattering
blow to Russian morale (Fig. 2). Besides,
reasoned Ironside, “I considered that my
intelligence was good enough to give me
sufficient warning to operate a successful
evacuation to prevent our force from being
shut in.”31

The month of October in Shenkursk was
relatively uneventful as the troops worked at

Fig. 2. Point of furthest advance by American forces in North Russia, 28 versts from Shenkunsk. The village of
Pagosta in the distance was occupied by the Bolsheviks and the church towers were used as an observation post. Eleven
days after this photo was taken, the Bolsheviks launched a surprise offensive which forced the Allies to abandon this
point and Shenkunsk as well. Photo by Sgt. Grier M. Shotwell, Signal Corps, January 8, 1919. Photo no. 111-
SC- 152825 in the National Archives.

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71

patrolling and, when it was not raining,
building fortifications. One Wisconsin
officer, Lt. Glen Weeks, noted in his diary
that much of his time was occupied with
writing letters and opening mail, having his
teeth cleaned, and shooting three wild
turkeys which were served with an excellent
peach pie.32 The signing of the Armistice on
the Western Front on November 11, 1918 at
first produced a mood of elation. But the ar¬
rival of cold weather, the closing of Arch¬
angel by ice, and the realization that there
was no end in sight to the campaign, pro¬
duced what Ironside called “a bad effect
upon the weaker members of the com¬
mand.”33 The widespread dissemination of
Bolshevik propaganda and reports of de¬
mobilization in the West further contributed
to sagging morale.

Demonstrating a familiarity with the ter¬
rain and ignoring the Arctic winter the
Bolsheviks gradually took the offensive
against the overextended Americans. On the
very day the war ended on the Western Front
the Bolsheviks subjected Toulgas to an
intense artillery barrage. On this occasion,
reported Ironside, the day was saved ‘‘by the
exceedingly gallant behavior of the drivers of
a Canadian battery; on the 11th November
they turned out and annihilated a strong
enemy force which had got round the rear of
our forces and threatened them with cap¬
ture.”34 Meanwhile the Vaga column expe¬
rienced increased pressure. Lt. Weeks, now
stationed at the most advanced American
outpost of Ust Padenga (located eighteen
miles from Shenkursk), recorded numerous
instances of increased Bolshevik activity. On
November 13 a four-man patrol fell into a
trap from which only one escaped. The three
victims were ‘‘mutilated sadly.” Four days
later “we caught two spies trying to find out
our position, outpost strength, etc. Lt.
[Frances W.] Cuff [of Rio, Wisconsin], Lt.
[J. D.] Winslow [of the Canadian Field
Artillery], and myself took one of them out
in the woods and shot him.” The next day in
honor of the first sunny day in three weeks,

the officers “went out and buried [the]
spy.”35 On November 29 an American patrol
of 60 men, seeking to locate the exact posi¬
tion of the Bolsheviks, ran into a strongly
defended position in a forest clearing. An
enemy force estimated at 400 men tried to
surround the Americans who hastily re¬
treated, being “severely handled in the
process.”36 Fifteen Americans died
including Lt. Cuff, who “was killed after he
was almost out of the enemy territory.”37

During the month of December, Bolshevik
probing became more and more persistent
and, in response, Ironside ordered increased
Allied patrol activity to discover the enemy’s
strength. Learning that 200 Bolsheviks had
occupied Kodema, located 20 miles east of
Shenkursk, Col. C. Graham, the British
commander at Shenkursk, ordered a similar
sized force of Americans and Cossacks to
recapture the place. Weeks, who partici¬
pated in the operation, recorded that the
column made its approach march at night in
a snowstorm. Arriving at Kodema at 5:45
a.m. on December 7, the troops prepared to
attack but abandoned the plan when “the
pom pom [a small one-pound cannon] would
not work,”38 Lt. Henry Katz, who was
assigned as regimental medical officer, ob¬
served that the machine guns froze also and
therefore “we retired without firing a shot.”
A week later Katz was present as a second
American attack on Kodema miscarried.
Due to “some mistake in orders” the frost¬
bitten Americans failed to advance in sup¬
port of a hundred attacking Cossacks. “It
was very cold and trip very hard on the
men,” he noted.39 A completely different
interpretation was recorded by Ironside. In
his view the attacks “failed owing to the
quality of the U.S. troops and the behaviour
of one of their officers, and gave the enemy
an idea of the value of our troops opposed to
them.”40 Then a few weeks later the 280-
man Caucasian Cossack Regiment, despite
two months of training, also failed in an
attack upon Kodema. “The enemy were
noticed to be in greater numbers than had

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 7.2

been expected,” recorded Col. Graham,
“and in addition to the committing of
several tactical mistakes the Cossack Cavalry
got out of hand and could not be rallied.”41
Weeks and his troops were sent out from
Shenkursk to gather stragglers and re¬
establish order.42 In Ironside’s opinion the
disastrous performance of the Cossacks fur¬
ther demonstrated to the Bolsheviks “the
lack of value of our troops.”43

The next few weeks were unusually
uneventful. Weeks’ diary entries mentioned
concerts featuring “very good” singing by
the Russian Y.M.C.A., a visit to the local
jeweler, card playing, reconstruction of
Shenkursk’s fortifications, and extreme cold
which reached -27 degrees. “Not much
change in conditions in general,” he
recorded on January 17. 44 The next day
General Ironside arrived for an inspection
and was thus present at Shenkursk when the
Bolsheviks launched a surprise New Year’s
offensive against Ust Padenga at 6:15 a.m.
on January 19. As Ironside summarized the
situation:

The enemy attacked with great gallantry and
considerable organization. The American
troops at Ust Padenga and the Cossack In¬
fantry made a gallant resistance, but were
driven in by force of numbers. All the Troops,
both Russian and American, did very well this
day. Casualties were about 50 out of a number
of about 450, and the shelling was heavy.

Seeing that the enemy attacks were growing
stronger and stronger and that casualties had
increased, I ordered the evacuation of Shen¬
kursk late on the 24th.45

Throughout the battle Weeks and his
platoon protected the line of communication
between Shenkursk and Ust Padenga. By the
evening of January 23 the platoon was
ordered to retreat to Shenkursk and Weeks
for the first time realized that the situation
was serious. An all-day bombardment of
Shenkursk, which “set fire to part of our
billets,” was followed by a daring night
retreat over an obscure winter road which
the Bolsheviks had neglected to block. The

main body of Americans departed at 1:30
a.m. on January 25 and Weeks, who was as¬
signed to the rear guard, was one of the last
two Americans to flee the city at 3:00 a.m.
Fortunately the evacuation was not detected
and after a retreat of 50 miles a new defen¬
sive line was successfully established. “The
Bolo [slang for Bolsheviks] tried to knock us
out,” recorded Weeks, “but our line
stuck.”46

For two weeks the atmosphere remained
tense as the Bolsheviks probed with patrols
and lobbed artillery shells. However, by
early February the military pressure subsided
as Allied planes reported that the Bolsheviks
had pulled back their troops and artillery.
On February 7, for the first time since the
start of the Shenkursk offensive, Weeks was
able to change clothes and get a good night’s
sleep. Much of the lieutenant’s time was now
taken up with letter writing, playing dom¬
inoes and cards (black jack and “chase the
ace” were the most popular games), and on
February 23 his company played a game of
baseball in the snow against the Canadian
artillery men (losing by the score of 21 to
5). 47 Yet, from Ironside’s perspective, the
American troops conducted too little in the
way of physical training and as a result the
“American troops deteriorated rapidly even
from the low value they already possessed,
through the incompetence of their officers in
this portion of their duties.”48

In view of all the factors against them —
enemy attacks, long hours of duty, the lack
of reserves, bitter weather, and unappetizing
food — it is hardly surprising that the 339th
Infantry experienced a severe crisis of
morale. As one injured soldier noted after
his return to America in April, “A spirit of
restlessness has been spreading over the
whole regiment since the armistice. No one
has been able to tell the men why they were
fighting in Russia, and naturally their
morale was not what it should have been.”49
Dr. Arthur Nugent, a Milwaukee medical of¬
ficer, recalled that the Americans who
fought Germany on the Western Front had

1984]

Rhodes — Wisconsin's War against Russia, 1918-1919

73

no difficulty in understanding their mission.
“But we were fighting a people against
whom war had never been declared and we
didn’t know why we were fighting them.’’50
None of the officers seem to have been able
to offer the troops any coherent explanation
as to why they were being asked to risk their
lives. When Col. George Stewart, the highest
ranking American officer in North Russia,
addressed troops on the Dvina Front, he
tactlessly remarked that the men should
understand that his work at Archangel was
just as difficult as theirs, if not more so.
According to their commander, the men
were “very disappointed by the talk he made
to them as it did not explain what they were
here for.’’51

Letters critical of the shaky morale of the
troops began to filter through the heavy veil
of official censorship. Most of the letters
were smuggled out of Russia by wounded
soldiers and then printed in the Congres¬
sional Record or released to the press by
such critics of the venture as Senators

Charles E. Townsend of Michigan, Robert
LaFollette of Wisconsin, and Hiram John¬
son of California. “This is the most God¬
forsaken country I have ever seen,’’ wrote a
Milwaukee mechanic.52 “I’m full up on
Russia, and ready to move now,’’ wrote
another Milwaukean.53 Others complained
of the distasteful British ration which neither
dogs nor cows would touch. Captain Joel R.
Moore of La Crosse wrote of an occasion
when the menu featured “grass stew’’ and
one soldier gave his portion to a Russian
woman. “She tasted it,’’ recorded Moore,
“and then threw it on some hay before the
cow. The cow refused to eat either the ‘grass
stew’ or the hay.’’54 Under the circum¬
stances, the 339th Infantry felt forgotten and
abandoned. The disillusioned soldiers ex¬
changed bitter remarks such as, “It’s hell to
hang on, but it’s death to stop,” or “We are
one outfit that hasn’t had to worry about
finding jobs after the war. We keep right on
with what we are doing.”55 The letters he
had received about conditions in North

Fig. 3. Verst 455 Railroad Front, February 17, 1919. “I” Company is lined up preparatory to the awarding of the
French Croix de Guerre to eight soldiers for bravery. Captain Horatio G. Winslow of Madison is in front of the
company. Six weeks later “I” company was inaccurately accused of having mutinied. Photo no. 1 1 1 -SC- 161 083 in the
National Archives.

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

Russia, proclaimed Senator Johnson, made
“an American hang his head in shame.’’56

Still, most Americans had little if any
awareness of the North Russian expedition
until the press carried sensational accounts
of a “mutiny” by American troops at Arch¬
angel. According to the reports and a subse¬
quent press release by the War Department,
members of “I” Company, while stationed
at Archangel, refused on March 30 to pack
their equipment and return to the front. It
took a personal appeal from Col. Stewart to
persuade the men to obey the order, and
even then, the men insisted upon the release
of a soldier who had been confined to the
guard house for insubordination. The troops
also asked such questions as “Why are we
fighting in Russia?” and “Why are we being
sent to the front now that war on the Wes¬
tern Front has ended?”57 Captain Horatio
Winslow of Madison, the commander of
Company “I”, was the recipient of much
unwanted publicity (Fig. 3). One Wisconsin
newspaper ungraciously suggested that
Winslow had been subverted by insidious
socialist and Bolshevik propaganda.58

All connected with the affair agreed that
the term “mutiny” was a distortion of what
was basically a trivial incident. One return¬
ing soldier recalled, “We kicked like hell,
but we didn’t mutiny”; another called it “a
case of shattered nerves, not mutiny.”59
Major J. Brooks Nichols of Detroit regarded
the incident as a misunderstanding and said,
“I have heard more ‘bunk’ about this
mutiny than could be written in a dozen
books.” Captain Winslow concurred stat¬
ing, “There was no mutiny.”60 A thorough
investigation by Brigadier General Wilds P.
Richardson confirmed that the incident was
“of not a very serious character.” In his
view, the non-commissioned officers could
have handled the affair more forcefully, but
he commended Col. Stewart for talking to
the men and explaining to them the serious
consequences of disobeying an order.
Further action in the case “could not have
served any good military purpose,” con¬

cluded Richardson.61 However, DeWitt
Poole, the American Charge at Archangel,
regarded the incident as an object lesson and
urged the State Department to announce a
definite date for the withdrawal of the
troops. To leave the 339th Infantry in Russia
past the month of June was “quite out of the
question.”62

The widely publicized affair further im¬
pressed upon the Wilson administration the
necessity of extricating itself from a situation
which was not only untenable from a mili¬
tary point of view but from a political one as
well. Senator Johnson shrewdly accused the
Wilson administration of having submitted
to a de facto league of nations by accepting
British command over the American forces
in North Russia. “Under the orders of
foreign nations Americans wage war without
declaration by the American Congress or the
consent of the American people,” he
charged.63 Wisconsin Governor E. L.
Philipp demanded an immediate pull-out of
the troops. “Our country is not at war with
Russia and we should not keep an army in
that country,” he stated. “I am in favor of
withdrawing our army at once.”64 In fact the
Wilson administration had already taken
steps to pull out unilaterally. A few weeks
previously Brigadier General Wilds P.
Richardson, an officer with Alaskan expe¬
rience, had been appointed to command the
American forces in Russia and to supervise
their evacuation. When Richardson met the
President at Paris in mid-March to discuss
his assignment, Wilson was emphatic in
criticizing the British use of the American
forces and stated that he desired the with¬
drawal of all Americans “as soon as prac¬
ticable after the opening of navigation.”65

Fortunately for the demoralized American
forces, the expected large scale Bolshevik
spring offensive never materialized. The
diary of Lt. Glen Weeks now dealt with such
matters as melting snow, fishing, duck hunt¬
ing, card playing, two fighting roosters fall¬
ing into a well, and the court martialing of
several of his men to determine where they

1984]

Rhodes — Wisconsin's War against Russia, 1918-1919

75

had got their “gabby water.” A woman pre¬
sented Weeks with two dogs which were
appropriately named Lenin and Trotsky.
Retreating toward Archangel Weeks lacon¬
ically recorded: “We burned the mill in the
woods outside of Shuskega,” and on May 2
he noted: “Beautiful day . . . Gunboats
bombarded Kurgomen. Burned the two
churches. We took a couple of prisoners;
also arrested a family caught signalling to
the Bolo gunboats. They had a dance at the
Y. I wrote a couple of letters in the eve¬
ning.” By late May the main subject of the
diarist’s concern was how to defeat the
Canadian artillery men at baseball. Unfortu¬
nately, in the last inning “our men went to
pieces and the Canadians beat us.” A re¬
match was aborted when the baseball re¬
fused to stay in one piece.66

Finally at 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, June 7,
Weeks and his troops arrived by boat at
Archangel and eight days later, dodging
large ice flows in the White Sea, the trans¬
ports Menominee and Porto evacuated all
but a small rearguard of the American North
Russian Expeditionary Force. During a brief
stopover at Murmansk, a “dirty town of
shack buildings,” the troops experienced
their last taste of combat. Unwisely the
Menominee was docked opposite an incom¬
ing British troopship bringing large re¬
inforcements to Archangel. What began as
mere “ribald banter” between British sailors
and American soldiers soon degenerated into
an exchange of insults.67 According to a
British pilot who witnessed the affairs, it was
the Americans (objecting to being called
“bloody hobos”) who began throwing
lumps of coal. Before the pilot “could say
‘Jack Robinson’ buckets of coal were being
handed up from below at an amazing
speed.” Numerous casualties were recorded
on both sides, but it was the British,
throwing bottles in addition to coal, who
took the honors. “I saw one Yank take an
enormous lump full in the face,” recorded
the British observer. Finally, one of the
Americans “committed a dastardly act,” by

throwing an open jack knife which missed its
target. Such cowardice, maintained pilot Ira
Jones, explained the Americans’ “unenvi¬
able war record in Russia.”68 The remainder
of the trip was far less eventful. On June 26
the Menominee arrived at Brest, and five
days later Lt. Weeks and members of the
339th Infantry sailed for America on the
S . S . Presiden t Gran /. 6 9

For the time being the reinforced British
troops remained in North Russia. By Sep¬
tember, however, they too abandoned the
cause as hopeless. For a few months the
shaky “Provisional Government of the
Northern Region” managed to stagger along
while the Bolsheviks concentrated upon
defeating White Russian forces in Siberia
and the South. The defeat and execution of
Admiral Kolchak in early 1920 meant the
inevitable. On February 19 the Northern
Provisional Government fled to Britain and
two days later, without firing a shot,
Bolshevik forces entered Archangel to the
acclaim of the population.70

So far as the Wisconsin participants were
concerned, the North Russian expedition
was by then no more than ancient history. In
mid-July the 339th Infantry arrived at
Detroit and was given a tumultuous welcome
which included a ticker tape parade and a
Chamber of Commerce reception. Within a
week the soldiers were discharged to return
to their homes and the routine of civilian
life, occasionally to reminisce about their
experiences at reunions of the Detroit-based
Polar Bear Association. Like the rest of the
country, most of the Wisconsin soldiers
wanted merely to forget the whole un¬
pleasant experience as soon as possible.
Many felt a sense of chagrin and rejection
for having been associated with a “mutin¬
ous” regiment which fought an unpopular
and unsuccessful war. “Whether willfully or
unwillingly,” wrote John Cudahy, “our
country had engaged in an unprovoked
intensive, inglorious, little armed conflict
which had ended in disaster and disgrace.”
In his view the North Russian expedition

76

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

“will always remain a depraved one with
status of a free-booter’s excursion.”71 Much
of the soldiers’ resentment was directed at
the British and at General F. C. Poole in
particular. As Capt. Robert P. Boyd of Eau
Claire told the local Kiwanis Club, Poole
thought the Russians would rally to do the
fighting while the Allies guarded supplies.
Instead, “the Russians stole the supplies and
we did the fighting.”72 The soldiers’ opinion
of the enterprise was aptly summed up by a
doughboy’s ditty brought home by one Wis¬
consin engineer:

It’s the land of the infernal Odor
The land of the National Smell

The average American soldier
would sooner be quartered in Hell.

It’s back to the States for Yours Truly,

I’m not wishing anyone ill

But Russia can hang for all I care
And truly I reckon she will.

Yes it’s back to the States for Yours Truly,

A sadder but wiser young chap

The Lord played a joke on Creation
When Russia was dumped on the map.73

Did nothing at all beneficial result from
the experience? Several of the Wisconsin sol¬
diers suggested that the nine months in
Russia had turned them into something
resembling superpatriots and had made them
appreciate many things in America they had
previously taken for granted. Writing to
professor Carl Russell Fish, Lt. John A.
Commons remarked that the war had “made
damn good Americans out of our soldiers
. . . And, if you should care for a very
exciting 5 minutes at any time, just mention
Bolshevik or I.W.W. to a member of the
339th.”74 Or, as expressed by Capt. Robert
P. Boyd, all those lucky enough to come
back from Russia alive were certain to be
“better men and better citizens, to be more
contented with less envy, willing to work and
to clean up the backyard.”75 Certainly the
Wisconsin soldiers had no reason to hang
their heads. It was true, of course, that the
339th Infantry was not well prepared for its

assignment (General Ironside said he had
never seen any American regiment in France
as “bad” as the 339th Infantry, and that the
troops had received “absolutely no training
and the officers are one and all of the lowest
value imaginable”).76 But it was also true
that the British commanders were utterly un¬
realistic in their expectations. In the opinion
of General Richardson, the British seemed to
think the Americans “were imbued with
some quality of inherent ferocity and desire
for blood which would cause them to do all
the fighting willingly and eagerly, even
though commanded by incompetent British
officers.” Based on his four months at Arch¬
angel, Richardson concluded that the Amer¬
ican troops had ranked “well at the top of all
of the troops in North Russia, both as to
character and accomplishment.”77

Transported by an historical accident
from the pastoral life of Michigan and
Wisconsin to the tragicomedy of the Arch¬
angel intervention, the soldiers of the 339th
Infantry were deserving of the eulogistic
sentiments expressed by Senator Hiram
Johnson: “They served under conditions
that were the most confusing and perplexing
that an American army was ever asked to
contend with, but they did their duty.”78

References Cited

1 1st Lt. Malcolm K. Whyte, a member of the 310th
Engineers, wrote to his wife, “You will not hear from
me for a long time perhaps months due to a long trip
that we are about to start on. I will not be able to
mention the place in my letter . . . The gaps in mail this
winter will likewise be long. Don’t worry if you do not
hear from me for months.’’ Malcolm K. Whyte to his
wife, August 24, 1918, William F. Whyte Papers, State
Historical Society of Wisconsin, hereafter cited as
SHSW.

2 Henry Dennis to his father, Madison Democrat,
December 22, 1918, Wisconsin War History Commis¬
sion, Clipping File, 1916-1919, SHSW; Clarence J.
Primm to his wife, September 19, 1918, Clarence J.
Primm Papers, SHSW.

3 Robert P. Boyd to his parents, Eau Claire Leader,
January 7, 1919, Wisconsin War History Commission,
Clipping File, 1916-1919, SHSW.

4 W. C. Butts to his parents, Milwaukee Sentinel,
March 10, 1919, Wisconsin War History Commission,

1984]

Rhodes — Wisconsin ’s War against Russia, 1918-1919

77

Clipping File, 1916-1919, SHSW; The Wisconsin
soldiers who died in North Russia were Carl H. Berger,
Mayville; Marcus T. Casey, New Richmond; Edmund
R. Collins, Racine; Francis W. Cuff, Rio; Andrew
Kulwicki, Milwaukee; Sebastiano Lencioni, White-
water; Frank J. Mueller, Marshfield; Ferdinand
Passow, Mosinee; Frank K. Sawickis, Racine; Adolph
Schmann, Milwaukee.

5 The standard account is Leonid I. Strakhovsky,
Intervention at Archangel: The Story of the Allied
Intervention and Russian Counter-Revolution,
1918-1920 (Princeton, 1944). Strakhovsky’ s work has
now been superceded by George F. Kennan, Soviet-
American Relations, 1917-1920 (2 vols., Princeton,
1956-1958), and Richard H. Ullman, Anglo-Soviet
Relations, 1917-1921 (3 vols., Princeton, 1961). The
most recent scholarship on the subject is contained in
Eugene Trani, “Woodrow Wilson and the Decision to
Intervene in Russia: A Reconsideration,’’ Journal of
Modern History 48 (September, 1976), 440-461, and
John W. Long, “American Intervention in Russia: The
North Russian Expedition, 1918-1919,’’ Diplomatic
History 6 (Winter, 1982), 45-67.

6 Secretary of State Robert Lansing to the Allied
Ambassadors, July 17, 1918, Department of State,
Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United
States [1918] Russia (3 vols., Washington, 1932), II,
287-290; George F. Kennan, The Decision to Intervene
(Princeton, 1958), 419-420.

7 John A. Commons to Professor Carl Russell Fish,
May 21, 1919, Carl Russell Fish Papers, Box 5, SHSW;
The Liberty Badger 1919 (Madison, 1920), 364-390.

8 Milwaukee Sentinel , April 12, 1919, Wisconsin War
History Commission, Clipping File, 1916-1918, SHSW;
Memorandum by Joseph Schafer, no date, enclosed in
unpublished manuscript, “The Polar Bear Expedition,”
by John G. Gregory, Records of the Wisconsin War
History Commission, SHSW.

9 Ambassador David R. Francis to Lansing, Septem¬
ber 20, 1919, David R. Francis Papers, Box 34, Missouri
Historical Society.

10 Interview with Major J. Brooks Nichols, Detroit
Free Press, July 1, 1919, Wisconsin War History Com¬
mission, Clipping File, 1916-1919, SHSW.

11 Poole to the War Office, August 4, 1918,

W0106/1 153/HM06606, Public Record Office, here¬
after cited as PRO; Major-General F. C. Poole, “A
Report of the Action of the North Russia Expeditionary
Force from its Inception of 24th May 1918 up to 30th
September 1918,” October 5, 1918, W0158/714/
HM06495 , PRO.

12 Cole to Lansing, September 10, 1918, Department
of State, Papers Relating to Foreign Relations [1918]
Russia, II, 527-530.

13 Poole to the War Office, August 6, 1918,

W0106/1 153/HM06606, PRO; Poole to the War Of¬
fice, August 17, 1918, W0158/712/HM06477, PRO.

14 Robert Hamilton Bruce Lockhart, British Agent
(London, 1933), 308.

15 Joel R. Moore, Harry H. Mead, and Lewis E.
Jahns, eds., The History of the American Expedition
Fighting the Bolsheviki; Campaigning in North Russia
1918-1919 (Detroit, 1920), 15-18.

16 “Lieutenant Marcus T. Casey,” in John G.
Gregory, “The Polar Bear Expedition,” no page
number, Records of the Wisconsin War History Com¬
mission, SHSW.

17 Moore, Mead, and Jahns, Fighting the Bolsheviki,
98-99.

18 Charles Ryan to John R. Commons, December 18,
1918, Madison Democrat, March 21, 1919, Wisconsin
War History Commission, Clipping File, 1916-1919,
SHSW.

19 “Extract from Report of Chief Surgeon Jonas R.
Longley,” no date, Records of the American Expedi¬
tionary Forces, 1917-1923, Box 1548, RG 120 (National
Archives).

20 Ibid.

21 Moore, Mead, and Johns, Fighting the Bolsheviki,
39-40, Art Wickham to Michael Macalla, July 20, 1966,
Papers of Michael Macalla, Michigan Historical Col¬
lections, Bentley Historical Library, University of
Michigan.

22 Poole to the War Office, October 5, 1918,
W0158/714/HM06495, PRO.

23 Poole to the War Office, September 9, 1918,
W0106/1155/HM06615, PRO.

24 “Final Consolidated Report of the 310th
Engineers, Archangel, Russia,” June 20, 1919, William
F. Whyte Papers, SHSW.

25 Memorandum by Major J. Brooks Nichols,
October 23, 1918, Historical Files of the American
Expeditionary Force, North Russia, 1918-1919,
National Archives Microfilm Pubication M924, Roll 2.

26 Poole to the War Office, October 13, 1918,
W0106/1 155/HM06615, PRO.

27 Lansing to Francis, September 26, 1918, Depart¬
ment of State, Papers Relating to Foreign Relations
[1918] Russia, II, 546.

28 The War Office to Ironside, November 11, 1918,
W01 58/71 2/HM06477, PRO.

29 “Final Consolidated Report of the 310th Engi¬
neers, Archangel, Russia,” June 20, 1919, William F.
Whyte Papers, SHSW; Norman Shrive, ed., Frank J.
Shrive, The Diary of a P.B.O. * Poor Bloody Observer
(Erin, Ontario, 1981), March 27, 1919, 79.

30 John Cudahy [A Chronicler], Archangel: The
American War with Russia (Chicago, 1924), 178.

31 Ironside to the War Office, February 7, 1919,
W0158/714/HM06495, PRO.

32 Diary of Glen L. Weeks, October 5, 6, 11, 13, 18,
20, 28, 1918, Records of the Wisconsin War History
Commission, SHSW.

78

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

33 Ironside to the War Office, June 12, 1919, W0106/
1 164/HM06679, PRO.

34 Ibid.

35 Weeks diary, November 17, 18, 1918, SHSW.

36 Col. C. Graham, “Report on Operations Vaga
Column, November, 1918 to January, 1919,” January
30, 1919, WO 1 5 8/7 1 4/HM06495 , PRO.

37 Weeks diary, November 29, 1918, SHSW.

38 Ibid., December 6, 7, 8, 1918, SHSW.

39 Henry Katz, “Short Summary of Activities of
Medical Personnel With First Battalion 339th In¬
fantry,’’ no date, Michigan Historical Collections,
Bentley Hitorical Library, University of Michigan.

40 Ironside to the War Office, February 7, 1919,
W0158/714/HM06495, PRO.

41 Col. C. Graham, “Report on Operations Vaga
Column, November, 1918 to January, 1919,’’ January
30, 1919, W01 58/7 14/HM06495, PRO.

42 Weeks diary, January 6, 1919, SHSW.

43 Ironside to the War Office, February 7, 1919,
WO 1 58/7 1 4/HM06495 , PRO.

44 Weeks diary, January 17, 1919, SHSW.

45 Ironside to the War Office, February 7, 1919,
W01 58/7 1 4/HM06495 , PRO.

46 Weeks diary, January 27, 1919, SHSW.

47 Ibid., February 3-20, 1919, SHSW.

48 Ironside to the War Office, June 12, 1919, W0106/
1 164/HM06679, PRO.

49 Detroit Free Press, April 15, 1919, Wisconsin War
History Commission, Clipping File, 1916-1919, SHSW.

50 Gerald Kloss, “When U.S. Soldiers Fought the
Russians,’’ Milwaukee Journal, November 24, 1957.

51 Captain Eugene Prince, “Morale of the American
Troops on the Dvina Front,” February 2, 1919, M924,
Roll 2.

52 Milwaukee Journal, April 2, 1919, Wisconsin War
History Commission, Clipping File, 1916-1919, SHSW.

53 Milwaukee Sentinel, March 10, 1919, ibid.

54 Joel R. Moore, “M” Company, 339th Infantry in
North Russia (Jackson, Michigan, 1920), no page num¬
bers.

55 Gerald Kloss, “When U.S. Soldiers Fought the
Russians,” Milwaukee Journal, November 24, 1957.

56 Chicago Tribune, April 11, 1919, Wisconsin War
History Commission, Clipping File, 1916-1919, SHSW.

57 Moore, Mead, and Jahns, Fighting the Bolsheviki,
223-230; Chicago Tribune, April 11, 1918, Wisconsin
War History Commission, Clipping File, 1916-1919,
SHSW.

58 Racine Times-Call, April 17, 1919, Wisconsin War
History Commission, Clipping File, 1916-1919, SHSW.

59 Detroit Free Press, July 4, 1919; Ibid., April 15,
1919, Wisconsin War History Commission, Clipping
File, 1916-1919, SHSW.

60 Washington Post, July 1, 1919, ibid., SHSW.

61 Richardson to the Adjutant General of the Army,
July 23, 1919, Records of the American Expeditionary
Forces, 1917-1923, Box 268, RG 120.

62 Poole to Acting Secretary of State Frank Polk,
March 31, 1919, Department of State, Papers Relating
to Foreign Relations [1919] Russia, 623.

63 Chicago Tribune, April 11, 1919, Wisconsin War
History Commission, Clipping File, 1916-1919, SHSW.

64 Chicago Tribune, April 13, 1919, ibid., SHSW.

65 Report of Brigadier General Wilds P. Richardson
to the Adjutant General of the Army, no date, M924,
Roll 1.

66 Weeks diary, April 11, 17, 22, 29, May 2, 4, 7, 9,
18,22, 24, 28, SHSW.

67 Diary of Edwin Arkins, June 17, 1919, Michigan
Historical Collections, Bentley Historical Library, Uni¬
versity of Michigan.

68 Ira Jones, An Air-Fighter’s Scrap-Book (London,
1938), 113-114.

69 Weeks diary, July 1, 1919, SHSW.

70 Strakhovsky, Intervention at Archangel, 230-254.
For the background of the British evacuation from
North Russia see John M. Thompson, Russia Bol¬
shevism, and the Versailles Peace (Princeton, 1966),
212-221.

71 Cudahy, Archangel, 211-213.

72 Eau Claire Leader, July 25, 1919, Wisconsin War
History Commission, Clipping File, 1916-1919, SHSW.

73 “The Creation of Russia,” attributed to Sgt. R. S.
Clark, Company “C”, 310th Engineers, enclosed in
Weeks diary, SHSW.

74 John A. Commons to Professor Carl Russell Fish,
May 21,1919, Carl Russell Fish Papers, Box 5, SHSW.

75 Eau Claire Leader, July 25, 1919, Wisconsin War
History Commission, Clipping File, 1916-1919, SHSW.

76 Ironside to the War Office, November 6, 1918,
W0158/714/HM06496, PRO.

77 Richardson to the Adjutant General of the Army,
July 23, 1919, Records of the American Expeditionary
Forces, 1917-1923, Box 268, RG 120.

78 Detroit Free Press, July 5, 1919, Wisconsin War
History Commission, Clipping File, 1916-1919, SHSW.

INCIDENT AT NORTHLINE

John Anthony Turcheneske, Jr.
River Falls , Wisconsin

Throughout the United States today there
is renewed racial and religious intolerance
which is surfacing in reaction to increasing
world and national social, political and
economic instability and polarization. This
illiberality is especially manifested by the
preachments of hatred and bigotry on the
part of such extremist organizations as the
American Nazi Party, particularly vigorous
in Illinois, California, New York and Mary¬
land; a resurgent Ku Klux Klan which is
currently not confining its endeavors to the
South, but is also assiduously laboring in
such fields as New Mexico, Arizona and
California; and the Posse Comitatus which
is currently conducting underground law and
order campaigns and operations in Wiscon¬
sin. In view of this occurrence, it is well to
recall what can befall a community’s social
fabric when residents succumb to the fears
generated by agents of bigotry who would
exploit the nation’s ills for their own
distorted ends. Nearly fifty- five years ago
inhabitants of Hudson, then a sleepy hamlet
located on the St. Croix River in north¬
western Wisconsin, were so afflicted.

As a case study Hudson is both interesting
and important since, in certain respects, this
community continues to bear the scars in¬
flicted by the societal plague experienced
throughout this period. At that time, the
United States as a whole was beset by the
Red Scare and the urge to return to the false
security of isolationism. Thus, during the
decade of the twenties, there reappeared on
the national scene fanatics who were fully
determined not only to make the United
States safe for Americans, but also to recon¬
stitute this country’s social fabric in their
own warped image.

In Hudson the fanatics were the Knights
of the Ku Klux Klan. This organization
spread its influence and invective throughout

the northern and western sections of the
United States. Such ideology was introduced
to Wisconsin from the Klan’s stronghold in
Indiana by specially trained agitators. One
of the areas in Wisconsin to be particularly
troubled by the Klan’s presence was St.
Croix County.

Though the Klan entered Wisconsin in the
early twenties, the hooded order did not
commence its operations in western St.
Croix County until June 1926. Hudson, the
county seat, was one locale which was es¬
pecially torn asunder by the Klan activities.
It was not long before Hudson’s Roman
Catholic community, whose members were
the particular targets of these individuals,
felt the sting of Klan vituperation and
innuendo. What follows is an account of
Catholic reaction to Klan malignities and the
results thereof.

During the second week of June, there
were rumblings in Hudson that some kind of
Catholic protest was to be registered against
the Ku Klux Klan’s Northline meetings.
Northline, approximately three miles
northeast of Hudson, was both a junction
and way station on the old Omaha Railroad.
Located about one mile east of this junction,
the Klan tent was pitched on a rented plot of
ground. On a clear salubrious evening the
Catholics chose to make their stand. At
approximately eight o’clock on June 14, the
Knights of the Ku Klux Klan began to assem¬
ble for their meeting. Marching as a body,
the protesting Catholic delegation soon ar¬
rived. Arguments ensued and, to the dismay
of the Klansmen, the Catholics managed to
gain access to the tent.

Father Peter Rice, Pastor of St. Patrick’s
Catholic Church in Hudson, arrived soon
thereafter. He approached the stage with the
purpose of proving false the Klan attacks on
the Catholic Church. Rice failed in his

79

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

attempt and general disruption ensued. Klan
speakers soon fled the scene. Under what
appeared to be suspicious circumstances,
and as a final climax to the evening’s pro¬
ceedings, the Klan tent, with its appurten¬
ances, burned to the ground. It was an inci¬
dent which achieved instant notoriety and
which resulted in acrimonious feelings for all
involved.

As reported by the St. Paul Dispatch, the
Klan tent was alleged to have been burned
after the meeting ended in a near riot. Sev¬
eral hundred men were said to have pro¬
tested against anti-Catholic statements made
by Alfred Brown, a Klan speaker. One thou¬
sand persons had gathered to hear Brown.
Rice was said to have gone to the platform
protesting that the meetings, held at North¬
line for the past week, were anti-Catholic in
nature. Still, the lecturer attempted to con¬
tinue. Subsequently, the meetings ended
with several encounters between opposing
factions, though none was serious. It was at
this point that the tent was burned. 1

In its version of the incident, the New
Richmond News noted that the Klan tent
was destroyed by fire of an unknown origin
“together with the piano, seats and every¬
thing.’’ Prior to the fire a rather boisterous
meeting was held. “There was no storm dur¬
ing the night, so the tent evidently was not
struck by lightning.’’2 According to the
Spring Valley Sun, 1000 people were
gathered to hear Alfred Brown. Brown was
said to have challenged a Catholic priest to
answer him. Rice appeared with several hun¬
dred supporters. After he proceeded to the
platform, a row developed.3

Warrants were soon sworn out for the
fourteen individuals suspected of being
involved in the Klan tent burning. Charging
the suspects with disturbing a public meet¬
ing, the warrants were issued on the com¬
plaint of J. H. Neff who was said to be the
Ku Klux Klan organizer at the meetings. On
Saturday, June 19, eleven of the defendants
were arraigned before Judge Otto A. Arn-
quist at Hudson Court House. All concerned
pleaded not guilty and were later released on

a one hundred dollar bond, with their cases
being adjourned until June 28. 4

In an editorial entitled “He Who Casts the
First Stone,” the Spring Valley Sun stated
that the burning of the tent was to be re¬
gretted particularly because of the effects the
incident would produce. No one, explained
this journal, believed that the Klan would
fail to retaliate. It was now time for cooler
heads to prevail lest serious consequences
follow. Violence would beget violence.
Hatreds created as a result of this affair
would last a lifetime.5

At the preliminary hearing, on the mor¬
ning of June 28, Judge Arnquist opened the
proceedings. Describing the hearing’s set¬
ting, the St. Paul Dispatch said the fourteen
defendants were under an armed guard of
ten deputy sheriffs. Five hundred persons
jammed the court room one half hour before
the hearing commenced. “Hudson is filled
with automobiles of farmers and persons
from neighboring cities and towns. They
began arriving early today and were still
coming at noon.” Excitement was said to be
at fever pitch. Not only was the court room
filled to capacity, but hundreds were said to
be milling also about the halls and the Court
House grounds. There was jeering from the
crowd when organizer Neff testified. Arn¬
quist issued a severe rebuke. Later in the
morning, he announced that due to wide
interest in the proceedings he would permit
“ ‘wide latitude in the testimony in order that
the truth about the Klan might be made
known and to discourage and set right some
of the rumors that have been circulated.’ ”6

According to the St. Paul Pioneer Press,
five hundred persons braved the heat and
jammed the court room to overflowing.
“Two girls in the crowded court room
fainted from heat in the forenoon session
and several others succumbed to the heat in
the afternoon.” Hudson was said to be
sharply divided on the matter. Due to a
manifestation of partisanship during the
hearing, St. Croix County Sheriff M. C.
Emerson was ordered to clear the court
room at the next display of such action.

1984]

Turcheneske, Jr. — Incident at Northline

81

“This order was issued after repeated
cautionings and rebukes from the bench.”

Further tension was added, said the
Pioneer Press , when Ray C. Twining, an
attorney from Milwaukee, arrived on the
scene. His purpose in coming to Hudson was
soon evident. It was Twining’s intention to
sue fifty Hudson businessmen for the sum of
$2000 in damages in connection with the tent
burning affair. This “intention to sue for
damages was made in letters received by the
businessmen a week ago, but was not taken
seriously until late today when Twining ar¬
rived to gather evidence for his case.”7
Twining said he definitely planned to go on
with the suit.

Any excitement that was evident during
the first day of the hearing, said the St. Paul
Dispatch , had disappeared by the second day
of the hearings. Hudson had returned to an
orderly condition.8 Parallelling the
Dispatch's story in this regard, the New
Richmond News noted that the interest in
the proceedings appeared to have waned
materially as the “morbid curiosity seekers
concluded the day before that there wasn’t
going to be anything doing in their line.”
Reporters described the day as “sweltering”
and “torrid” with the court room packed to
the suffocating point. As to disorder in the
court room, the News remarked that there
}N as not foundation to the stories appearing
in a certain St. Paul paper, items which were
to be chalked up to the excitement and
imagination of the young reporter. What
fever pitch existed was due to the torrid
temperatures and lack of ventilation. People
were standing in the aisles, along the sides
and in the rear, with others standing on
chairs or perched on window sills, radiators
and tables. Still others stood within the rail.
The “court room was a sort of a Turkish
bath on a large scale. People perspired gal¬
lons and gallons and everybody reduced very
materially.”

As to the matter of the armed guard, Sher¬
iff Emerson said ‘“Why, there’s absolutely
nothing to the “ten deputies” story.’” There
was on duty “‘but one deputy and myself

and nothing for us to do in the way of main¬
taining order. There was no disorder of any
sort.’” Emerson never saw a “‘crowd of that
size more orderly despite the lack of chairs
and despite the torrid heat.’” Whatever
violence there was, said the News, “was
confined entirely to the vigorous use of
fans” and whatever could be converted into
such.9 Still, the Hudson Star Observer noted
that “considerable partisanship was mani¬
fested and on two occasions Judge Arnquist
threatened to have the court room cleared by
Sheriff Emerson unless better order pre¬
vailed.”10

During the course of these proceedings,
the New Richmond News also noted the ap¬
pearance of attorney Twining from Mil¬
waukee. Twining told a News correspondent
that he represented the state organization of
the Ku Klux Klan and was keenly interested
in the deliberations. A civil suit would be
brought against fifty Hudson businessmen
to recover damages for the Klan tent de¬
struction. These businessmen had received a
letter from Twining stating that he had been
retained by A. McMaster, J. H. Neff, Ben
Anderson and Arley Martin “to collect dam¬
ages from you and others associated with
you in the destruction of the tent, piano and
other personal property burned and de¬
stroyed at the Klan meeting held at the Town
of Hudson on June 14.” Twining also had
the names of sixty other individuals who
were involved in this matter. “Unless
settlement of the damages is made within
one week or some satisfactory arrangements
made for a settlement, suit will be com¬
menced against you and the others for the
amount of $2000.” 11 Initially, they did not
give the letter serious consideration. But
with Twining’s arrival “for the purpose of
getting evidence in the matter affairs took a
new turn, and the parties concluded that he
means business.”12

William T. Doar, a New Richmond at¬
torney, represented the defendants when the
preliminary hearing opened at Hudson
Court House.13 William R. Kirk, District
Attorney for St. Croix County, was the

82

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

prosecutor. J. H. Neff was the prosecution’s
chief witness. Neff, who swore out the orig¬
inal complaint, was the Klan organizer pres¬
ent at the tent affair.

Neff stated that he was the Grand Titan of
the Fourth Province, Realm of Wisconsin,
Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Klan meetings
had been held one week prior to the events of
June 14. Advertisements for these meetings
consisted of handbills distributed in that part
of the state. He described the tent as being
forty by one hundred twenty feet with plank
seating and a platform twelve by twenty feet
in size. Decorations consisted of American
flags and bunting. There was also a player
piano and Klan paraphernalia such as robes,
signs and handbills.

That evening, the Klan meeting was sched¬
uled to begin at eight thirty. At eight fifteen,
said Neff, a large mob gathered at the gate
and demanded to be admitted. Because the
meeting was for Protestants only, the crowd
was told that it could not enter. Also, since
the grounds were rented, it would be illegal
to do so. But the crowd advanced in a bois¬
terous manner “stating that they were there
to commit violence, stating to me that fact.’’

Neff said the crowd was excited, “and
naturally they cursed me; they God-damned
me, if that is admissable. I hate to say it, yet
I must.” He was “called other names; the
tent was filled up to its full capacity of a
howling, cursing — you couldn’t hardly call it
an audience — call it a mob.” According to
Neff, the Klansmen tried to defend them¬
selves. Dr. Brown was taken to shelter. Neff
said he then went to the platform and at¬
tempted to ameliorate the situation by a
recitation of the Lord’s Prayer and the
singing of “America.” This was met by
jeers, cursing and general disturbance by the
anti-Klan element. Neff explained that after
telling the mob it was acting illegally, an
attempt was made to explain the principles
of the Klan; “but I was told that they did not
want to hear anything about the Klan. They
knew it all, but they wanted to know about
those damn lies that had been told about the
Roman Catholic Church.” Neff, seeing that

all was futile, said he was about to dismiss
the meeting when Father Rice walked to the
platform. Rice said he was representing
several local priests and the Catholic people
with the intention of protesting the meeting
and driving the Klansmen out. 14

Neff testified that he finally dismissed the
meeting, but immediately saw several guns
pointing at him. Neff then went to the back
of the tent to the yells of ‘“kill him, lynch
him, mob him; we want Pat Malone, where
is he? Where is Dr. Brown? We want him;
we want Neff!’” Neff said he managed to
escape through the side of the tent to his car,
after managing to hastily rebuke the crowd
for its destruction. Then he and several of
his associates drove to the Fillbach house
where his wife and family were located. Neff
said he remained at the house until he saw
the tent in flames, at which point he drove to
River Falls.15

Under questioning by attorney Doar, Neff
maintained that he did not have an arrest
record. Testifying that he had been con¬
nected with the Ku Klux Klan since 1922
when he joined the organization in Indiana,
Neff said that he earned his living by
working for them as an organizer. At first,
Neff refused to divulge information about
his wages and other interests in the Ku Klux
Klan. Later, he stated that his income was
four dollars per man enrolled, which funds
came out of an initiation fee. As to whether
his living depended on enrolling as many
members as possible, Neff said that this was
not the case since he was interested in
building the Klan out of the best timber he
could get, regardless of the commission he
received. Still, it was his living.

Neff said that he had been connected with
the entire province of the Ku Klux Klan for
one year. Meetings had been conducted in
the St. Croix Valley only during the two
previous weeks and these had been at North¬
line. Prior to that, he had been in River Falls
for a month. As the Grand Titan of Province
Number Four, it was his job to supervise
Klan activities in twenty-one counties, an
area which included St. Croix County.

1984]

Turcheneske, Jr.— Incident at Northline

83

Pat Malone’s affiliation with the Klan was
only as a lecturer, as was Dr. Brown’s. Only
Protestants were admitted to the meetings
because these were of a private, Protestant
and invitational nature. Hence not all Amer¬
ican citizens were permitted to attend.

Neff insisted that the uninvited crowd
poured through the gate. As to Father Rice
being recognized as a Catholic priest, the
organizer stated that Rice introduced himself
explaining that he was there on behalf of his
colleagues and people. Neff said that he had
no knowledge of an invitation being issued
to a priest; that no charges were leveled
against the priesthood; and that he never
heard about any reflections being made
against the Catholic Church, its priests,
sisters and faithful, at least not at Northline.
Neff admitted to hearing these accusations
at River Falls. But the challenge to debate
was issued to Father Fassbender by Pat
Malone. Neff insisted that Father Rice was
never challenged at Hudson. 16

Father Peter Rice was the chief witness for
the defense. Answering attorney Doar, Rice
testified that he knew of the Klan meetings at
Northline through the Klan placards he had
seen displayed. In addition, he received
anonymous letters from several places in the
county, letters which had Pat Malone’s
picture on them. Contained in the letters
were charges made against the morality of
every Catholic priest in the county. These
letters arrived after the first of the River
Falls meetings.17

Rice testified that the substance of an
earlier sermon was that “our Catholic
people should protest, not by way of vio¬
lence or physical force, but by pamphlets in
writing and by requested permission to
attend” Klan meetings. Klan members were
to be asked whether “we could get a chance
to refute their statements as to the moral
character of the Catholic priesthood in
general and the priests of the county in
particular.” As to the remarks made at the
Catholic Guild meeting that Sunday after¬
noon, Rice told the ladies that they should
defend the Sisters’ and their honor by

protesting in a dignified manner against
individuals who saw fit to admit anti-
Catholic lecturers within their home.
Cathoic nuns were charged with being “the
mistresses of Catholic priests.” These
statements were made at River Falls and at
Northline, only with more inuendo.

Rice admitted attending the Klan meet¬
ings, but said that it was more a spur of the
moment type of thing. Initially, he had no
intention of doing so. If there were to be a
debate, the priest expected that the con¬
frontation would take place at Hudson. Rice
went to the meeting at the request of Joe
O’Connell and James McMahon. Also, the
Klan had issued an invitation. “That was the
sole reason I went, because I was a man and
wouldn’t back down where challenge was
made.” Rice said he went into the tent,
quieted the people down, and asked Neff if
he could say a. few words. Neff said
“‘certainly.’” He told Neff that “I had
come out here in response to repeated chal¬
lenges brought to me, conveyed to me, to re¬
fute or ask for proof of any charges against
the morality of any Catholic priest in this
county, any sister, or his housekeeper.” Rice
then told the people to keep quiet. Rice also
told Neff that “I wanted proof given of any
statement that any of the Klan members had
to make against any Catholic priest in the
county, to make it now.” Neff, in a low
tone, replied that none had been made.

Neff seemed to be a little excited at this
juncture. Rice then said as a “Catholic priest
I protest against being slandered or my
brother priests being slandered. I did not say
that they must be driven out.” He had no
intention to incite violence and denied any
“literal expression that can be interpreted,
legally, with intent toward physical force or
disrupting their “meeting. After his speech
Rice immediately went home.

As to the matter of the challenge, Rice
testified that it was direct inasmuch as the
placard issued at the River Falls meetings
challenged Father Fassbender and other
priests. It did not matter who authorized the
placard as it was still the same organization.

84

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

Besides, “they would be alike in their dirty
methods.” With regard to the statements
made at Northline, the Pastor said that he
was informed “they were asking for the
Catholic priest out there, people in Klan
uniform.” Several individuals yelled ‘“why
don’t you bring out your old priest.’” Rice
said he ignored previous challenges. “But I
thought I would back down before no man
when he challenged my character.” Kirk
then asked whether Rice was directly at¬
tacked. Rice explained that a general attack
was made against all Catholic priests in the
county and the “fact that I was a priest in
the county was a specific attack, because
there are only five priests in the county.”

Rice had no prior knowledge that there
was to be a crowd of several hundred
parishioners at Northline; although he had
heard rumors that a Catholic crowd would
be there. Even so, the purpose in going out
was to defend the character of the Catholic
priesthood and sisterhood. Rice also testified
that he did not believe that his concern over
the statements of the Ku Klux Klan would
serve to influence his parishioners. He did
not advocate physical violence and testified
that “my Catholic people were instructed in
church to avoid physical violence with any¬
body.”

But he also told his parishioners “that
when your Catholic priesthood is attacked
and the honor of Catholic women and sister¬
hood, that you should answer back and ask
for proof of the statements they were
making.” As to instructing the Ladies Guild
to go down to Disney’s, Rice said that “I
did; pardon me, that is incomplete. On Sun¬
day afternoon the 13th, I think,” Rice sug¬
gested to the ladies that they visit these indi¬
viduals and ask them “if it was their intent
to insult their Catholic neighbors by keeping
anti-Catholic lecturers in their home.” He
did not know that this was the Disney’s only
source of income. Rice did not want anyone
put out. It was just to be a protest. As to
whether harboring the Klan lecturers indi¬
cated the Disney’s true feelings in the matter,
Rice replied that “under the circumstances it

would indicate at least sympathy.” It was his
belief that there existed no connection be¬
tween the action of the Ladies Guild and the
Klan tent burning. Under additional ques¬
tioning, Rice said he did not rile up the
Catholic men, but did impress upon them
the necessity of upholding the honor of their
women.

Kirk then asked Rice whether he gave
advance notice that he would engage Klan
leaders in debate. Rice explained that “I
mentioned in a lecture given in the church to
Catholics and non-Catholics earlier in the
year, that I stood ready to meet at any place,
any time, any anti-Catholic lecturer as long
as” Rice was given a “fair show and fair
hearing for debate. That was sometime in
March, and I believe you were present in the
Catholic church the same night Mr. Kirk, be¬
cause I saw you.”

Replying to defense attorney Doar’s ques¬
tion relative to a printed challenge, Rice said
that he had one in his possession which read
as follows. “‘As a rule I debate only with
priests but due to the fact that Father Fass-
bender is too big a coward to meet me in
open debate, I will be glad to meet your man
Emil E. Holmes.’” As to the Pastor’s
feelings toward Hudson’s Protestant com¬
munity, Rice testified that “my experience
generally is the Protestant people are as fine
people as there is in America; I want no reli¬
gious bigotry.”18 Thus was concluded the
priest’s testimony in the matter.

In his summation for the State, Kirk
demanded that all defendants be bound over
to the Circuit Court for trial. Rice was said
to be morally responsible for the riot.19
Doar, in a complete and total condemnation
of the Klan, demanded that the cases be dis¬
missed.20 As County Judge, Arnquist was
only empowered to determine whether the
defendants should be turned over to the Cir¬
cuit Court for trial.21

In arriving at his decision, Judge Arnquist
issued a ringing denunciation of the Klan.
Arnquist said it was “regrettable that any
such organization should have come here.
There is no question but that it tends to

1984]

Turcheneske, Jr. —Incident at Northline

85

make bitterness, strife and violence.” There
“have been a number of such movements in
the past, and many of them created vio¬
lence.” One could not “blame Father Rice
for being indignant at the charges of
immorality made against him and the Catho¬
lic priesthood in Klan meetings.” As such,
Rice could not be condemned for “going to
the Klan tent when told, through bad judge¬
ment, that he was invited there to defend
himself against them.”

Furthermore, said Arnquist, the “doc¬
trines for which the Klan stand are well
known, and are antagonistic to those of the
Catholic Church,” Because of this, and the
charges made against him, Rice “was nat¬
urally against the Klan.” As such, Rice
“said in his church that a protest should be
made against the charges.” He had “no
violence in his mind, only protection of the
Church and himself from the charges.”
From this, noted the Judge, the “District
Attorney has deduced a moral responsibility
of Father Rice for the riot.” Yet there was
“no legal responsibility attaching to him,
and that is what we are examining here.
Therefore, it is my duty to discharge Father
Rice.”22 Tony Lombard and George Hen-
nesy were also acquitted.23 Eleven remaining
defendants were bound over for the Fall
Term of the Circuit Court.24

In the aftermath of the hearing, the
Hammond News noted that a great deal of
feeling was being created over the incident.
Many different stories were said to be
circulating. These had gotten to be so out of
proportion that it was getting difficult to
obtain any accurate information on the
happenings.25 Feeling, observed the Baldwin
Bulletin , was running rather high in Hudson.
Sheriff Emerson was said to be taking pre¬
cautions to prevent any reprisals that might
occur. After the hearing was concluded,
Klan members and sympathizers gathered to
discuss Arnquist’s decision. Those who sym¬
pathized with the defendants did the same.26

Hudson, noted the New Richmond News,
was indeed getting plenty of publicity. Most
of it, however, was of an undesirable nature.

This Klan rumpus managed to push the town
right onto the front page. Said the News of
the publicity: “It reminds one of what the
manager of a 10-20-30 show once said to this
writer: ‘I don’t care whether you write us up
or write us down, but great Scott, don’t
ignore us any longer!’”27 Still, the end to the
Klan tent affair had yet to be written.

In October, the Woodville Times noted
that the Klan riot case was scheduled for the
Fall Term of the Circuit Court. Yet there
was some talk that this case might not be
called. District Attorney Kirk, though, in¬
sisted that, if at all possible, he would bring
the matter to trial.28 In a succeeding issue,
the Times said that the Klan riot case was not
to be tried that Fall after all. Indeed, it was
exceedingly doubtful that the case would
ever come to trial. This was particularly so
because “with the present evidence,” or lack
thereof, “no conviction could be secured,”
and Kirk did “not want to make a fizzle of
it.”29 Thus the case was put over to the
March Term.

In November, the County Claims Com¬
mission was approached with a claim for
$1967 for the loss of the Klan tent. This was
said to be the biggest item before the Claims
Commission.30 Members of this body,
composed of N. E. Fraher, J. W. Hanley
and Elmer Afdahl, dissallowed the claim. As
to the reason for its action, the Commission
stated that it was a matter for the courts to
handle.31

Even so, the Klan tent affair did not reach
the Circuit Court for the Spring Term of
1927. In the interest of a peaceful settlement
of the issue, Spencer Haven appeared before
the St. Croix County Board which convened
a special session on Saturday, May 7. Haven
said that the Catholics had subscribed five
hundred dollars to this end. Various Hudson
businessmen contributed a total of four
hundred dollars. It was Haven’s belief that if
the County were to contribute five hundred
dollars, the case would be settled out of
court.32

Acceding to this request, the County
Board charged this claim to the next year’s

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

tax receipts.33 One source noted that “the
Klan will accept the $1400 in full for all dam¬
ages and drop the suit, which was bothering
a number of people quite badly.”34 The
identity of the individuals who instigated the
incident at Northline would remain a mys¬
tery. The Klan riot case was closed.

Finally, it is to be hoped that the lessons
emanating from the social divisiveness, experi¬
enced not only by Hudson and other Wis¬
consin communities, but also similar local¬
ities throughout the land, have not been for¬
gotten; and having remembered, citizens will
not succumb to the irrational fear generated
by such revitalized hate organizations.

Notes

1 St. Paul Dispatch (St. Paul, Minnesota), June 15,
1926. In a postscript to the article, the Dispatch noted
that Brown’s remarks had been resented. Several days
prior to the incident, a delegation of twenty-five
Catholics went to the place where Brown was rooming
with the demand that the landlady evict him. Brown
volunteered to move to a different residence.

2 New Richmond News (New Richmond, Wisconsin)
June 16, 1926.

3 Spring Valley Sun (Spring Valley, Wisconsin), June
17, 1926.

4 New Richmond News, June 23, 1926.

5 Spring Valley Sun, June 24, 1926.

6 St. Paul Dispatch, June 28, 1926.

7 St. Paul Pioneer Press (St. Paul, Minnesota), June
29, 1926. Twining was one of three signers of the
Articles of Incorporation, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan,
Realm of Wisconsin.

8 St. Paul Dispatch, June 29, 1926.

9 New Richmond News, June 30, 1926.

10 Hudson Star Observer (Hudson, Wisconsin), July
1, 1926.

11 New Richmond News, June 20, 1926.

12 New Richmond News, June 30, 1926.

13 The fourteen defendants were: Alex Lomnes,
William Burton, Jr., Edward Christoph, Robert
O’Rourke, Father Peter Rice, Gregg Busby, Henry
Zorn, Mrs. Joe Miller, Tony Lombard, Henry Klein,
George Hennessey, Harry Kinney, Eugene Ritchey and
Tony Muchie.

14 Testimony of J. H. Neff, State of Wisconsin v.
Alex Lomnes, et al, June 28-29, 1926, File Number

9506, St. Croix County Court House, Hudson, Wis¬
consin (hereafter cited as Preliminary Hearing), pp. 1-4.
Father Rice was present on behalf of Father Fassbender
of River Falls and Father Shanaghy of Ellsworth.

15 Testimony of J. H. Neff, Preliminary Hearing,
p. 5. The Fillbach’s were the people who rented part of
their acreage to the Klan.

16 Testimony of J. H. Neff, Preliminary Hearing, pp.
7-15. It should be noted that Pat Malone, whose head¬
quarters was at Chetek, Wisconsin, was a circuit
lecturer for the Klan in Wisconsin. Anti-Catholic and
one hundred percent American in approach, Malone
was a big drawing card at Klan gatherings. Interestingly
enough, Malone was not a member of the Klan. Prior to
working for the hooded order as a lecturer, Malone rode
the anti-Catholic lecture circuit causing community
dissension, disruption and acrimony in such diverse
areas as Elm Creek, Nebraska and Oakland, California.

17 Testimony of Father Peter Rice, Preliminary
Hearing, p. 78. Of interest here is that Rod Chinook,
owner of a River Falls printing shop, printed a large
amount of the Klan’s propaganda. This material was
used for the River Falls and Northline campaigns.

18 Testimony of Father Peter Rice, Preliminary
Hearing, pp. 79-89. It should be noted that the Klan
were mistaken in their belief that Holmes was a Catholic
representative. Holmes, president of the World War
Veterans Association, located in Minneapolis, Min¬
nesota, debated on his own account with Pat Malone at
River Falls in April 1926.

19 Baldwin Bulletin (Baldwin, Wisconsin), July 2,
1926.

20 St. Paul Pioneer Press, June 30, 1926.

21 St. Paul Dispatch, June 29, 1926.

22 Baldwin Bulletin, July 2, 1926.

23 New Richmond News, June 30, 1926.

24 Hudson Star Observer, July 1, 1926.

25 Hammond News (Hammond, Wisconsin), July 1,
1926.

26 Baldwin Bulletin, July 2, 1926.

27 New Richmond News, June 30, 1926.

28 Woodville Times (Woodville, Wisconsin), October
1, 1926.

29 Woodville Times, October 8, 1926.

30 Baldwin Bulletin, November 26, 1926.

31 New Richmond News, November 26, 1926.

32 Hudson Star Observer, May 12, 1927.

33 St. Croix County Board Proceedings, Special
Session, St. Croix County Court House, Hudson, Wis¬
consin, May 7, 1927, 055/1/2, Area Research Center,
Chalmer-Davee Library, University of Wisconsin, River
Falls, Wisconsin, VII, p. 66.

34 Woodville Times, May 11, 1927.

THE CHANGING COMPADRAZGO IN THE UNITED STATES

Silvester J. Brito
Department of English
University of Wyoming
Laramie

Introduction

This essay will examine the way in which
the compadrazgo mechanism presently oper¬
ates in the United States as compared to its
older form in Old Mexico. We will discuss
the compadre system in terms of its basic
structure as well as its functional relation¬
ships to various aspects of culture, such as
the family, the status system, and the role of
the individual in culture.

The compadrazgo as it exists in the New
World is a ritual phenomenon which desig¬
nates a particular set of complex rela¬
tionships which are set up between those
individuals who participate in the ritual of a
Roman Catholic Baptism. This term is also
used to indicate those similar sets of relation¬
ships which are set up when discussing the
compadre mechanism as it is applied to the
Catholic rituals of confirmation and mar¬
riage. When applicable, we will borrow
Mintz and Wolf’s use of the term “hori¬
zontal” to designate the direction which the
compadre mechanism takes when linking
together members of the same social class,
and also, the use of their term “vertical” to
indicate the direction that this mechanism

Field data for this paper were gathered from 1976 to
the ethnographic present, May 1984. I selected these
interviews out of twenty others dealing with Mexican-
American (Chicano) culture and society; these are on
ten, one hour tapes. I believe that they best represent the
ongoing changes in the compadrazgo system among
Mexican-Americans (Chicanos) in the United States. I
have used the terms Mexican-American and Chicano
relative to the way the people (respondents) see
themselves.

Portions of this study were presented in a folklore
conference (II Mesa Redonda De Folklore Y Ethno-
musicologia) in Mexico City, Summer of 1983.

takes when linking members of different
socio-economic and socio-cultural classes.

Basic Structure and Terminology

In the main, this religiously based rite —
compadrazgo (ritual kinship) involves three
individuals or groups of individuals, depend¬
ing on the type of Roman Catholic rite tak¬
ing place. The basic participants in this ritual
are: one, an initiate who is a child, as in the
baptismal rite (although the initiate may be
an adolescent and in rare cases, an adult);
two, the biological parents of the initiate;
three, the sponsors of the initiate. The com¬
padrazgo or co-parenthood thus, generally
involves three sets of relationships: The first
set links the parents and the child; the second
set links the child and his ceremonial spon¬
sors; and the third set links the biological
parents of the child to his ceremonial spon¬
sors. The ceremonial sponsors of the child at
baptism are known as padrinos de bautismo
or padrinos de pila (godparents). The
baptized child (godchild) is thus addressed as
ahijado (male) or ahijada (female). The
godchild addresses his sponsors as madrina
or nina (female) and padrino or nino (male).
The relationship between godparents {pad¬
rinos) and godchild {ahijado (a)) is known as
the padrinazgo. The relationship between
the child’s sponsors {padrinos ) and his real
parents is known as the compadrazgo or co¬
parenthood. Both the child’s sponsors and
his parents generally address each other as
compadres, and in the singular, comadre
(female) and compadre (male). These terms
are also used to indicate similar sets of
relationships when discussing the compad¬
razgo as it is applied to the rituals of first
communion, confirmation and marriage.

87

88

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

For a detailed discussion on the structure
and function of the compadrazgo in Meso-
America see: Paul 1942; Mintz and Wolf
1950; Foster 1953; Sayres 1956; Ravicz 1967;
Nutini and White 1977; and in the United
States, Spicer 1940.

Historical Development

Various writers have speculated on the
background of the compadrazgo’s New
World development — debating whether its
main influence came from Europe, the
American Indian, or Criollo culture (Mintz
and Wolf: 342). But in order to best under¬
stand the importance of the compadrazgo’s
changes in the Americas, more especially in
the United States, it is necessary to under¬
stand its early development in Europe.

Although the basic form of the New
World compadrazgo had its chief ante¬
cedents in Spain, the concept and practice of
co-parenthood was also known across medi¬
eval Europe. In fact, in the early days of
Christian persecution a system of requiring
sponsors for new converts was established to
avoid the admission of untrustworthy indi¬
viduals into the cult (Mintz and Wolf: 343).
Sponsors of new Christian converts came to
be viewed as spiritual parents or godparents.
Subsequently, the ritual practice of co¬
parenthood went through various stages of
development in Spain and Europe.

Ritual co-parenthood received its primary
established overt recognition when the
Roman Catholic Church required that all
infants be baptised. This ritual act was
viewed as a spiritual rebirth, the sponsor
being spiritually bound to the new member.
The biblical scholar, Jeremeas contends,
however, that infant baptism was in practice
before the church made it mandatory in the
Fourth Century (Gudeman: 228). During
this historic period, required sponsorship for
the godchild went through several major
changes. At first, it was required that an
outsider be the ritual sponsor, then it became
a custom for the parents of the child to be his
sponsor. This practice became so entrenched

that by A.D. 408, Bishop Boniface believed
that parents were required to sponsor their
own children. Saint Augustine (A.D. 345-
430), however, disagreed with this point of
view. He called the Bishop’s attention to the
fact that because slaves, orphans and
deserted children could not be sponsored by
their parents, it was necessary to make
exceptions to this custom, thus permitting
non-parents to be the ritual sponsors of these
familyless people (Gudeman: 228-229).

During the fifth century individuals
revived the initial custom of having non¬
parents serve as the ritual sponsors for an
infant’s baptism. This custom grew out of
the belief that a special spiritual relationship
was established between the sponsor and the
godchild. Furthermore, by choosing outside
individuals to sponsor a child, people began
making the clear distinction between the
natural parents and the spiritual ones. The
Roman Catholic Church in A.D. 813, recog¬
nized and reinforced this idea of a spiritual
relationship; moreover, it issued an edict
which forbade parents to be their children’s
ritual sponsors (Gudeman: 231; Mintz and
Wolf: 344). In addition, from 900 to 1300
A.D., ritual co-parenthood relations became
vertical between serfs and their lords (Mintz
and Wolf: 364). Thus, mutual aid agree¬
ments between feudal lords and their vassals
were strengthened through the compadrazgo
system.

During the sixteenth century the Spanish
essentially conquered the New World, and as
a result established a compadrazgo system,
similar to that of the feudal period, between
the conqueror’s and their Indian subjects.
Each Spanish conqueror was obligated to
have all the Indians under his jurisdiction
Christianized. Therefore, to facilitate the
conversion of the Indians, the Spanish rulers
introduced their compadrazgo system.

Since little is known of the development of
the compadrazgo in Old Mexico following
the Spanish conquest it is appropriate to
note the views of the following Middle
American scholars. According to George

1984]

Brito— The Changing Compadrazgo

89

Foster (1953:24), the Indians were not only
receptive to the Spanish compadrazgo be¬
cause it was similar to their indigenous prac¬
tices (i.e., the notions of spiritual rebirth and
spiritual kinship were not contradictory to
Indian beliefs), but they also developed it
into a more complex system than that in
Europe. Horstman and Kurtz, however, be¬
lieve that the conquered Indian society
readily accepted the Spaniard’s introduction
of the compadrazgo system because of their
post-conquest condition, one permeated
with grief and stress (Horstman and Kurtz:
361). The institution of ritual co-parent¬
hood, then, was a vehicle which these native
cultures could utilize in their efforts to
regroup as a viable force under the domi¬
nance of their Spanish rulers. It can thus be
hypothesized that it is this nationalistic
impulse which the Mexican-Americans (Chi-
canos) have institutionalized in their practice
of the compadrazgo in the United States. In
other words, these acculturating Mexican-
Americans have experienced conditions
under the Anglo-Americans similar to those
experienced by their ancestors under Spanish
rule. It can be argued that the compadrazgo
system serves the Mexican-Americans (Chi-
canos) as a viable adaptive mechanism for
coping with stressful conditions in American
society. It is also quite probable that the
compadrazgo, as an institution, has
persisted in Mexican-American (Chicano)
culture because of its superior adaptive
ability, especially in terms of the wide
choices it offers this ethnic minority group in
establishing interpersonal relationships. As a
result of making strategic choices in their
selection of compadres, these people are able
to establish internal (horizontal) ties as well
as vertical ties with fellow Mexican-Amer¬
icans (Chicanos) who have achieved a higher
socio-economic level in Anglo-American
society. This practice, then, assists them to
survive as an identifiable society. With the
aid of the following studies as well as my
field interviews, we can better understand
how the Mexican-American (Chicanos) util¬

ize the practice of the flexible compadrazgo
system in their efforts to adjust to stressful
conditions in Anglo-American society.

Comp rad razgo and Adaptation in
Twentieth Century U.S.A.

For comparative purposes it is appropriate
to review both Madsen’s and Rubel’s de¬
scriptions of the compadrazgo among rural
Mexican-Americans in South Texas as well
as Carlos’ and Thurston’s data on the use of
ritual co-parenthood by urban Mexican-
Americans.

In South Texas the ceremonies for which
ritual sponsors are selected are baptism,
confirmation and marriage (Madsen: 49;
Rubel: 80-83). Madsen states that it is also
an accepted practice for the baptism godpar¬
ents to serve as the confirmation godparents.
In order of importance, godparents of bap¬
tism come first, then those for confirmation.
By comparison, godparents of marriage
rank last, and in a sense, are considered
insignificant (Madsen: 49).

Mexican-Americans of South Texas seek
compadres who have the following qualities:
honorable, goodhearted and respected in the
community. In keeping with this value
system, it is considered bad taste to select
godparents who are of a higher socio-eco¬
nomic status. Within this esoteric com¬
munity, such a choice would suggest that the
selecting party is interested in rising above
the socio-economic status of his neighbors.
More and more, it is becoming a common
practice for these people to select compadres
from their blood kin, such as uncles and
aunts. These people believe that it is wise to
select compadres who are biological relatives
because they are less likely to leave the
community and thus not fulfill their ritual
obligations as godparents. Choosing com¬
padres who are blood relatives not only
strengthens the bonds of the family but it
helps to preserve the group’s identity in the
face of increasing anglicization (Madson:
49).

Relationships between Mexican-American

90

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

compadres are dignified and formal. There¬
fore, it is only proper for these co-parents to
address each other in the Spanish formal
term, “listed,” rather than with the informal
pronoun, “tu.” Compadres are never to
joke or gossip about each other. Within this
socio-religious system, it is expected that
compadres will visit each other at regular
intervals and cultivate close relationships. In
times of great need, compadres may exercise
their right to call upon each other for aid and
advice (Madsen: 49; Rubel: 82-83). By
comparison, Mexican-Americans in rural
South Texas, have a complementary system
of exchange which is similar to but not as
formal as the system of exchange that
characterizes the Tzintzuntzan compadrazgo
in Old Mexico (See, Foster; 1967: 75-85).

According to Rubel, not only is formal
behavior a custom between Mexican-Amer-
ican compadres in rural South Texas, but the
incest taboo also applies to their ritual
relationships, similar to those among the
Tzintzuntzenos of Old Mexico. Rubel states
that one of his informants told him that if a
man fears that his friend may sleep with his
wife, he makes him his compadre (Rubel: 80;
Foster: 79). Nevertheless, the most impor¬
tant characteristics of co-paternity among
rural Mexican-Americans of South Texas are
its combined reciprocal ritualized obliga¬
tions between compadres with additional
privileges of mutual aid.

Some researchers, such as Carlos, claim
that there is little difference between rural
and urban use of the compadrazgo among
Mexican-Americans (Carlos: 476). More¬
over, Carlos and Thurston found that urban
Mexican-Americans are very interested in
maintaining the compadrazgo system
(Carlos: 477; Thurston: 51). Thurston’s
study of a Los Angeles barrio shows that a
significant percentage (75%) of young
women from this area are in favor of per¬
petuating the compadrazgo. He, however,
suggests that the compadragzo has been de¬
valued among Mexican-Americans, espe¬
cially among the young. Grebler, Moor and

Guzman, support Thurston’s point of view
(Thurston: 46-52; Grebler, Moore and
Guzman: 354-355). Manuel Carlos disagrees
with these writers. He contends that the
compradrazgo is valued by urban Mexican-
Americans, pointing out that welfare pro¬
grams, voluntary associations and pressures
for acculturation have not significantly
changed the Mexican- American’s reliance on
family ties or fictive kinship for mutual aid
(Carlos: 477). What has been asserted to be a
devaluation of the compadrazgo among
Mexican-Americans is more of a change in
the formality of structuring the compadres*
interrelationships.

Thurston states that urban Mexican-
Americans choose sponsors for baptism,
first holy communion, confirmation and
marriage. According to his study of a Los
Angeles barrio in 1957, Mexican-Americans
believed that, ideally, non-relatives should
be selected as Godparents (Thurston: 46).
He notes, however, as did Madsen in his
study of the rural compadrazgo , that there is
a growing tendency for urban Mexican-
Americans to select blood relatives as
compadres. They believe that blood kin are
more reliable and less likely to leave the Los
Angeles area; thus, more likely to live up to
their obligations as godparents and respon¬
sible compadres (Thurston: 46; Madsen: 49).
Furthermore, it is evident that some young
urban Mexican-Americans either select com¬
padres who have prestige in the community
or from those associates who are fellow
workers. In addition to Thurston’s and
Madsen’s data, Carlos’ more recent infor¬
mation reveals that urban Mexican-Amer¬
icans prefer relatives or intimate friends as
ritual godparents, that relatives are selected
more frequently than friends (Carlos: 477-
478).

Selective Geographical Interviews
in the U.S.A.

The following interviews represent
selective, socio-cultural views of the
compadrazgo system as practiced by

1984]

Brito — The Changing Compadrazgo

91

Mexican-Americans (Chicanos) residing in
cities and small towns in the United States.
In the main, their comments reflect the
various forms of stress they experienced
while in the process of acculturating to
middle class Anglo-American society.
G.M.’s godparents are of blood kin; his
padrino is his father’s brother and his
madrina is the wife of his father’s brother.
Both families immigrated from Old Mexico
to the United States, first his godparent’s
family and then his family. G.M. said “my
father and his brother are compadres, they
think of each other as compadres and then as
brothers.’’ G.M. related that, unfortunately,
there was little contact with his godparents
because they, unlike his family who settled in
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, never settled in one
place for they were constantly part of the
stream of Mexican-American migrant farm
workers.

With regard to co-parenthood relation¬
ships, G.M. believes that it is very common
for isolated immigrant families, such as his,
who settled in the Milwaukee area, to con¬
fine the selection of godparents, especially of
baptism, to members within the extended
family. G.M. is the godfather of his
brother’s son, and another brother is god¬
father to G.M.’s daughter. These brothers,
however, unlike the formal relationship
between his father and godfather (his uncle),
think of each other first as brothers and
address each other by name, seldom address¬
ing each other as compadres. G.M. stated “I
guess it feels strange for my brothers and I,
here in the United States, to address each
other as compadres.’’ It is safe to assume
that this change of formal relationships is
due to their exposure to the norms of Anglo-
American society which does not have or
understand the compadrazgo mechanism.

G.M. and his brothers ( compradres ) rea¬
lize that their socio-cultural milieu is
different from that of their cousins in Old
Mexico. G.M. states “our relatives in Mon¬
terey (Nuevo Leon, Old Mexico) live among
the people. When they become co-parents in

a baptism or for confirmation or in a mar¬
riage, their relationships are very formal
with the child and his parents. They (the
godparents and child’s parents) address each
other as compadres and comadres. These
compadres look upon each other with great
respect and reverence.” G.M. said that this
formal attitude is present in the relationships
between godparents and their godchildren.
The godchildren refer to their godparents as
madrina and padrino , and the godparents
address their godchildren as either ahijada or
ahijado. All the members of this Mexican
compadrazgo employ such forms of address
very seriously for they consider these ritual
relationships as part of a sacred pact with
God. By comparison, G.M. states “In the
United States, within my own family the
practice of the compadres is different than
that of my (Mexican) cousins. Even though
my wife is a Catholic, she is of an Anglo
background. Among her people there isn’t
that concept of compadrazgo (ritual co¬
parenthood) but they do believe in having
godparents for a child’s baptism.” Thus,
when the time came to select co-parents for
their daughter, they chose one from each
side of the family; one Anglo-American, and
one Mexican-American. G.M. said that the
reason for this dual selection was to keep
peace in the family. He said “it works.” The
manner of reference between parents and
godparents is not formal, each addressing
the other by first name.

The next interview was with a third gener¬
ation Mexican-American (Chicano) who was
from Brown, Texas but now resides in
LaCrosse, Wisconsin. D.C. states “My rela¬
tionship to my compadres (godparents of his
children) is one of friendship, but it is not
ritualistic. For Chicanos, I think, the ritual
aspect of the compadre has died. They are
not Mexicans like the people from Old
Mexico; they are Chicanos who are born in
the States. With my father and his compad¬
res (second and third generation Mexican-
Americans), they were more than friends,
but it wasn’t a formal relationship. With my

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

grandfather, however, it was a different
case. He used the term compadre in a ritual¬
istic way, with great respect and reverence.’ *

D.C. said that there was a great difference
between his grandfather’s idea and practice
of the compadrazgo and that of his parents.
Among godparents and parents ( compadres )
there was always great respect for each
other. These ritual co-parents, especially of a
baptised child, could trust and count on each
other in times of need, i.e., compadres and
comadres could always count on each
other’s help. D.C. stated “Favors were
always fulfilled between Mexican god¬
fathers; then a promise was a promise to
your compadre.”

D.C. said that within his grandfather’s
generation, both in Old Mexico as well as in
the United States, it was always considered a
great occasion when godparents came to the
child’s house for a visit, especially if they
were his baptismal sponsors. When the men
got together (compadres), it was a call for a
great festive celebration. The women of the
house (wife, mother, and sisters) were
expected to cook a meal for their comadres.
D.C. stated “I think there was a lot of tribal
attitudes present in the old traditional com¬
padrazgo, something which is not present or
seen today in the United States.” It was
evident, from further conversation with
D.C., that the compadrazgo tradition and
practices among second and third generation
Mexican-Americans have been diminished or
repressed as a result of their efforts to cope
with American society.

D.C. stated that his baptismal godparents
had not been selected from blood relatives.
“They were just people who my parents met
at church. In those days there were few
places where Mexicans could socialize; they
were a segregated group in Brown, Texas (a
small town outside of Dallas).” For his
confirmation an uncle and aunt served as his
sponsors (godparents).

D.C.’s parents remained in Brown, Texas,
staying in the same low income, socio¬
economic strata as most of the Mexican-

Americans of their age group. His god¬
parents of baptism, however, like a few
other Texas, Mexican- American families,
either entered the stream of migrant labor or
permanently moved from Texas. D.C. said
that he left his father’s community so that he
could get an education and gain higher
socio-economic status. Now, as a college-
educated man who married an Anglo-Amer¬
ican woman, D.C. feels that he is an
assimilated Mexican- American. He stated “I
could not compare my Chicano culture to
that of my grandfather’s. My compadres,
the godparents of my children, are Mexican-
Americans. We address each other as com¬
padres but we are only friends, compadre
friends. We are not compadres of blood
relation, and we don’t maintain the formal
practices of the compadrazgo as my grand¬
father did. We are Chicanos who have devel¬
oped a different culture.”

Mrs. H.S., from Grand Junction, Colo¬
rado presents another view of the practice of
the compadrazgo among Mexican-Amer¬
icans. The compadres of her parents, the
ones who baptized her, are her father’s sister
and her husband. Mrs. H.S. stated “I always
think of my aunt as my madrina and her
husband as my padrino.” Her parents and
godparents always address each other as
compadres. She emphasized that in her
tradition (of an Old Mexican background),
compadres remain as such for the rest of
their lives, regardless of their blood ties or
even divorce. Furthermore, when uncles or
aunts, in her compadrazgo system, become
godparents or compadres, the blood cousins
automatically become more than blood
relation. These cousins become known to
each other as “hermanas or hermanos de
pila.” She also stated “If your brother(s) or
sister(s) become the godparents of your
children, then the tradition is that you
should address them as your compadres. But
if your parents baptize your children, then,
even though they are your compadres, one
must never address them as such. One must
always refer to them as father or mother.”

1984]

Brito — The Changing Compadrazgo

93

After further conversation with Mrs.
H.S., it was evident that members of her
nuclear and extended family not only iden¬
tify with Old Mexican society and culture
but they maintain its particular form of the
compadrazgo system. The reason they ad¬
here to and support the practice of selecting
their parents as godparents for their children
is because it helps strengthen the son-in-law
and mother-in-law relationship, as well as
the father-in-law and daughter-in-law
relationship. This esoteric group also
believes that because they maintain this
practice there is less possibility that any one
of the in-laws, on either side of the family,
will commit incest with a son-in-law or a
daughter-in-law. It is considered more sinful
and sacreligious to break this incest taboo
than if one of the in-laws or one of the
married couple had extra-marital relations
outside of their extended family. This
group’s practice of the incest taboo is similar
to that cited by Rubel in South Texas or
Foster in Old Mexico.

The values and respect for the compad¬
razgo pact, especially between compadres of
baptism, is further exemplified in the follow¬
ing belief and practice. Mr. H.S. stated
“when two compadres get mad at each other
and they can no longer stand their anger,
finding it necessary to fight, they throw their
hats into the air and ask God’s permission to
fight; then they fight.” According to Mrs.
H.S., this custom must be adhered to in
order not to offend God and thus maintain
their belief in the sacredness of the com¬
padrazgo.

In an interview with E.V. from Laramie,
Wyoming, it is evident that young Chicanos
still believe in and maintain the com¬
padrazgo mechanism. He stated “I feel very
close to my godchild (male) and he always
calls me his nino. They (his parents) say that
that is all he talks about, is his nino. I believe
that I would be responsible for his spiritual
and even general upbringing, that is, if his
parents should pass away or they were seri¬
ously injured and “unable to raise him.”

E.V. visits his godchild every opportunity he
gets, and takes him a present on his birth¬
day.

The baptismal co-sponsors for the above
godchild are the parent’s best friend (E.V.)
and the initiate’s aunt on his mother’s side of
the family. E.V. speaks to his co-parents in
English and addresses them by their first
names but they answer him in Spanish and
address him as their compadre. E.V. says
that when he gets married (within a year of
the interview) he will ask his “favorite
cousin” (a second cousin) to be his sponsor
(padrino, the best man) and his fiancee is
going to ask her first cousin to be her
sponsor ( madrina , the maid of honor). The
ring bearer is going to be her aunt’s son on
her father’s side of the family. E.V. intends
to have his children sponsored at baptism
either by one of his brothers or his wife’s
brothers and their wives. His rationale for
this selection is mainly to keep the com¬
padrazgo relationships within the family,
thus, they can be counted on to raise his
children if something should happen to him
and his wife, especially, in case of the death
of both of them. In addition, speaking for
himself and on behalf of his future wife,
E.V. believes that in order of rank, com¬
padres of baptism are the most important
because they have the greatest responsibility
to the growing child. Selecting compadres
from any particular socio-economic level
was not important to him, what counted was
the child’s spiritual upbringing. The spon¬
sors for confirmation and marriage are sec¬
ondary to those of baptism, especially for
marriage because by that time the individual
is grown and has learned the important
spiritual way of life as well as proper social
behavior. E.V. believes that the selection of
compadres from blood kin also strengthens
the bonds of the extended family. Finally,
based on further discussion with E.V., it is
clear that his views of the compadrazgo
system reflect those of his immediate and
extended family and friends who migrated to
Wyoming from north central New Mexico.

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

Our final view on the practice of the
compadrazgo in the United States comes
from Nancy Ortiz. In 1976 she interviewed
five urban Chicanos from central California.
Her data reveals that: first, in every case,
parents selected the baptismal godparents;
three were not blood kin. Second, they
maintain a sense of obligation and respect
for their godparents. Third, all of them
believe that relatives make better godparents
than outsiders, because they are more de¬
pendable and tend not to move away. Even
when they leave the community, they keep in
touch with the compadres and will travel a
long distance to see their godchildren.
Fourth, all five respondents stated that it
was preferable to select godparents who are
relatives, for not only are they viewed as very
special, more than those outside of the
immediate family, but they strengthen blood
kinship bonds. This view is in agreement
with those of Mrs. H.S. of Colorado and
E.V. of Wyoming. Fifth, all of the five
Chicanos agreed that they would come to the
aid of their godparents if they were in
trouble. Finally, all of Ortiz’s respondents
believed that godparents are responsible for
the care of the spiritual and physical needs of
their godchildren in the event that the par¬
ents can not. (Ortiz, 1976) Both of these
points of view are similar to all of the above
cited interviews and studies of the compad¬
razgo system among Mexican-Americans
(Chicanos) in the United States.

Analysis and Conclusion

Based on the foregoing studies and inter¬
views, it is evident that Mexican-Americans
and Chicanos, from both rural and urban set¬
tings, have an understanding of the compad¬
razgo mechanism, thus maintaining and
perpetuating its beliefs and practices. These
people, however, have experienced great
pressure in acculturating to middle class
Anglo-American society. This process has
affected changes in the compadrazgo sys¬
tem. When married couples are outside of

their traditional community and away from
the extended family, they tend to select god¬
parents from among other Mexican-Amer-
ican (Chicanos). And once the individual
moves away from the esoteric community
and out of the influence of the extended
family, he acquires ways of the dominant
society through social and cultural contact.
In other words, in seeking upward mobility
in both social and economic stratifications,
they tend to choose Mexican-American
(Chicano) godparents who are friends and
not blood kin. Another ramification related
to seeking upward mobility by first, second,
and third generation Mexican-Americans is
that acquiring degrees in higher education
and positions in professional fields leads to
both friendships as well as intermarriage
with Anglo-American people, most fre¬
quently marriage with Anglo-American
women. In other words, due to cultural
contact and the upward movement in socio¬
economic status, these Mexican-Americans
(Chicanos) find there are very few of their
own to associate with, especially to date or
marry. To fulfill these needs they acquire
both Anglo-American friends as well as
spouse from among their college peers and
working milieu. In a case of intermarriage,
compadres are selected from both Mexican
(Chicano) and Anglo-American Catholic
families, even though the two have different
concepts, beliefs and practices with regard to
godparents or co-parenthood. Moreover, the
compadrazgo mechanism, though it operates
on a less formal level, helps strengthen
family ties for members of the Mexican-
American (Chicano) family who have ac¬
quired afinal relatives through marriage.

The differences between the Old Mexican
peoples’ use and the Mexican-Americans’
(Chicanos’) use of the compadrazgo system
may be explained, in part, by the different
socio-economic conditions they experience.
Mexican-Americans and Chicanos, like the
people of Tzintzuntzan, do not adhere
strictly to the Roman Catholic church’s rules

1984]

Brito— The Changing Compadrazgo

95

regarding ritual co-parenthood. Some have
the same individuals for godparents in two
or more ceremonies. All of them extend the
spiritual relationship to include the parents
of the child and the sponsors as ritually
related. In addition, the compadrazgo for
Mexican-Americans and Chicanos may be
seen as a more intimate relationship reserved
for relatives and close friends. Moreover, the
informality between urban Mexican-Amer¬
icans and Chicanos and their compadres is
related to their contact with Anglo-Amer¬
ican society which practices less stress on
formality, i.e., people who are close express
their intimacy by addressing each other by
their first name. It is thus not surprising that
urban Mexican-Americans and Chicanos
drop the formalities within the compadrazgo
relationships. But it would be an error to
view this informality as a devaluation of the
compadrazgo mechanism. It is as revered by
Mexican-Americans as it is by Foster’s
Tzintzuntzenos. Both cultures observe the
incest taboos between sponsors and god¬
children and between compadres and
members of the extended family. As in the
Old Mexican traditions, Mexican-Americans
and Chicanos have adapted the compad¬
razgo system to fit their changing needs and
life styles.

Finally, it would be unrealistic to state
that a generally established pattern has
evolved for either the horizontal or the
vertical selection of compadres by members
of the various groups of Mexican-Americans
and Chicanos, especially within the last
quarter of this century. The reason for this
diversity of practice is that not only have a
sizable number of Mexican-Americans and
Chicanos entered middle class Anglo-
American society, but more of these people
are breaking out of the manual labor and
blue collar worker’s socio-economic class,
and into the professional world with its more
sophisticated socio-political class structure.
In essence, by becoming skilled workers, and
acquiring better educations contemporary

Mexican-Ameicans and Chicanos are be¬
coming more mobile. It is this phenomenon
of upward mobility which has had a direct
affect on the nature of the compadrazgo
system in the United States. There is no
doubt, however, that the compadrazgo is a
viable institution which is part of an on¬
going, progressive Mexican-American (Chi-
cano) society and culture.

References Cited

Carlos, Manuel L., 1972, “Traditional and Mod¬
ern Forms of Compadrazgo Among Mexicans
and Mexican-Americans,” Proceedings of the
40th International Congress of Americanists,
469-483.

Foster, George M., 1953, “Confradia and Com¬
padrazgo in Spain and Spanish America,”
Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 9:1,
1-28.

Foster, George M., 1967, Tzintzuntzan: Mexican
Peasants in a Changing World, Boston: Little,
Brown and Company.

Grebler, L., J. W. Moore and R. C. Guzman,
1970, The Mexican-American People: The
Nations Second Largest Minority, New York:
The Free Press.

Gudeman, Stephen, 1975, “Spiritual Rela¬
tionships and Selecting a Godparent,” Man,
10:2,221-237.

Horstman, Connie and Donald V. Kurtz, 1979,
“Compadrazgo and Adaptation in Sixteenth
Century Central Mexico,” Journal of Anthro¬
pological Research, 35:3, 361-372.

Madsen, William, 1973, Mexican-Americans of
South Texas, sec. ed. New York: Holt,
Rinehart and Winston, Inc.

Mintz, S. W. and E. R. Wolf, 1950, “An Analy¬
sis of Ritual Co-parenthood (Compadrazgo),”
Southwest Journal of Anthropology, 6:4,
341-368.

Ortiz, Nancy, 1976, The Compadrazgo, manu¬
script.

Paul, B. D., 1942, Ritual Kinship & With Special
Reference to Godparenthood in Middle Amer¬
ica, Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago.

Ravicz, R., 1967, “Compadrinazgo,” pp. 238-
252, in Social Anthropology (ed. by M. Nash),
Vol 6 of Handbook of Middle American In-

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[Vol. 72

dians (ed. by R. Wauchope), Austin: Univer¬
sity of Texas Press.

Sayres, W. C., 1956, “Ritual Kinship and
Negative Affect,” American Sociological
Review , 21, 348-352.

Rubel, Arthur J., 1966, Across the Tracks: Mexi-
can-Americans in a Texas City , Austin: Uni¬
versity of Texas Press.

Thurston, Richard G., 1957, Urbanization and
Sociocultural Change in a Mexican-American
Enclave, Ph.D. diss., U.C.L.A.

Respondents

D. C., 1977, La Cross, Wisconsin, age 27 B.A.
and M.A. in Counciling, third generation Chi-
cano (Mexican-American).

E. V., 1984, Laramie, Wyoming, age 27, B.S. in
Biology.

G.M., 1976, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, age 30 B.A.
and M.A. in Counciling, naturalized citizen.

Mrs. H.S., 1979, Grand Junction, Colorado, age
59, high school education, housewife.

FROM ARC LIGHTS TO GIGAWATTS
FOR WESTERN WISCONSIN

Frederick H. C. Schultz
Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire

One hundred ten years ago man had for
light at night and in dark places only the
flaring gas jet and the kerosene lamp. These
were better than the tallow candles and
whale oil lamps they had replaced but they
were still dim, inconvenient and dangerous,
and a new source of light was needed by an
increasingly technological society.

The Chinese of a thousand years ago used
magnetism for the compass and Benjamin
Franklin was a leading expert on the
phenomena of static electricity. In 1789
Volta invented the battery which would pro¬
vide electric current for Davy’s arc and in¬
candescent lights, for Davenport’s electric
motor and for Morse’s telegraph. In the
1830’s Michael Faraday combined magne¬
tism and electricity in building the all-
important generator which would turn
mechanical energy into electric energy in any
quantity desired. These men were scientists
who pursued their studies for the love of
them. Their discoveries were used by more
practical men to complete the industrial
revolution and to change the way of life of
the civilized world.

By the 1870’s Brush had developed the
series connected electric arc but its sputtering
glaring light was suitable only for streets or
large places. Edison who, after several
successful inventions, was looking for new
opportunities immediately saw the enormous
possibilities in home and general electric
lighting. By 1879 he had invented the high
resistance low current incandescent light
bulbs to be connected in parallel in a low
voltage circuit. On September 4, 1882, his
Pearl Street Station became the first central
electric generating station in the world. On
September 30, the Appleton, Wisconsin gen¬

erating station was turned on as the second
Edison central generating station and the
first in the world to use hydropower as its
primary source of energy. The Edison direct
current circuits limited the size of systems
and especially the distances between gener¬
ators and loads. By 1886 George Westing-
house, and his engineers had worked out a
system for generating, transmitting and
using alternating current which enormously
extended these limits. After his brilliant suc¬
cess in lighting the 1893 Chicago World’s
Fair and a bitter battle with Edison and his
General Electric Company, in 1896 the two
companies adopted a compromise of 110
volt, 60 cycles per second, alternating
current for distribution systems.

Within a few years nearly every Wisconsin
community of more than a few hundred resi¬
dents had one or more supplies of electricity.
These were often called Electric Light Com¬
panies or Electric Light and Traction Com¬
panies as the combination of electric lighting
at night and electric streetcars and inter-
urbans during the day seemed a good way to
get full use from the central generating
equipment. The primary sources of energy
were water power where available, coal fired
reciprocating steam engines and, in later
years, steam turbines and ponderous oil
burning diesels. Service was erratic, often
intermittent, and was limited to city resi¬
dents or even to parts of cities. As the years
passed, the quality of the service rapidly
improved and the areas were increased, but
only the most far-sighted of those early
entrepreneurs ever imagined great electrical
networks with connection available to
almost every building in Wisconsin.

This is not surprising because growth was

97

98

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

characterized by confusion, uncertainty, and
almost yearly corporate change. Three
classes of men transplanted electric plants
from the greenhouses of the inventors to the
cities and villages where they could grow:
Manufacturers and salesmen, city and vil¬
lage fathers who saw electric lights as a desir¬
able civic improvement; and less often, men
who saw central stations as a business with a
great future. At least thirty years passed
before the electrical generating business in
Wisconsin could be called reasonably stable
and financially successful. It is interesting to
summarize some of the reasons why that
time was so long.

First the whole field was new and there
was little outside or previous experience to
draw upon. The equipment salesmen and
city fathers were often more interested in
getting the generation and distribution of
electricity started than in establishing a
stable industry which could grow and
expand appropriately with the passing of
time. Others saw lighting and traction com¬
panies as a quick way to make money and
this was almost never true. Second, the
combination of lighting and traction which
seemed so attractive did not work out well.
Few of the street car and interurban lines
were ever profitable and the lighting part of
the enterprise, which might have done well
by itself, was financially unable to support
both. Eventually the traction companies
were separated and nearly all had quietly
discontinued business by the end of WW II.
A third reason was that the whole technol¬
ogy was new. Companies which were well
managed and well engineered for the time
had also to be almost lucky to be able to
select good equipment for their particular
installations and even then would find, in a
few months or years, that it had been made
obsolete by rapid technical developments.
Finally, there was a fourth factor which had
at least as great effect as any of the others
then and is just as important today. It was
that there is a great increase of economy with
size in an electric generation and distribution
system. An electric company must be big

enough to efficiently utilize its management,
its engineering services, its installation and
maintenance services, its accounting and
financial functions, and especially its genera¬
tion and distribution facilities. This was
recognized by the more astute in the industry
as soon as technology made growth, area
expansion, and interconnection possible.
When appropriate levels of these had been
achieved by various companies, electrical
generation and distribution became profit¬
able and service could be improved and
extended in an orderly manner.

By 1882 there were eight arc lighting
systems in Wisconsin, and Eau Claire was
the first city in the state to have competing
hydroelectric arc lighting companies. The
Eau Claire Brush Electric Company was an
immediate financial success and in 1885
became the first in the state to earn and pay
common stock dividends and continued to
do so for the next five years. The competing
company gave only irregular service and by
1888 had been absorbed by the Brush Com¬
pany. By this time a horse-powered street
railway was in operation and in 1890 the
three companies were merged into the Eau
Claire Street Railway, Light and Power
Company. The company went into incandes¬
cent lighting, electrified the railway and
began to fail financially almost from its
inception. When it went into receivership in
1896, it was acquired by A. E. Appleyard
who, after some manipulations, combined it
with the Chippewa Falls Water Works and
Lighting Company, which had built an inter¬
urban line to Eau Claire into a successful
operation called the Chippewa Valley Elec¬
tric Railway and Light Company. Then in
1905 Appleyard suddenly and somewhat
mysteriously sold out to a group of pur¬
chasers headed by the Ingram, Knapp and
Stout lumber families.

The new owners, like most, directed their
efforts towards hydroelectric power develop¬
ment, but unlike most, they used good
judgement in so doing. A lease for the 650
horsepower output of the Eau Claire Dells
Dam provided the principal source of energy

1984]

Schultz— From Arc Lights to Gigawatts

99

for the Chippewa Valley Company. The
Knapp-Stout interests also owned the light¬
ing plant in Menomonie and supplied it from
the hydro plant at their lumber mill on the
Red Cedar River. They planned to expand
from these two bases until the potentials of
both the Chippewa River and the Red Cedar
were fully utilized but they were also fully
aware of the vagaries of these rivers, devel¬
oped relatively small hydro sites, one at a
time, on the Red Cedar and built a market
for the new power as they proceeded. They
did this by acquiring the lighting companies
in the surrounding small towns, by extending
service to others which had none, and by
selling power to other companies. In 1910,
the lumbermen completed the 8,000 horse¬
power moden hydroelectric plant at Cedar
Falls and by 1914 they were ready to begin
the development of the Chippewa. Then they
hesitated when they learned that a single site
would cost at least as much as they had pre¬
viously invested in the entire company.

While they hesitated, the American Public
Utilities Company, a holding company
owned by Charles B. Kelsy and Joseph
Brewer, promoters and engineers, offered
them $5,848,000 for the Chippewa Valley
properties. This gave the lumbermen a net
profit of over $3,000,000 and they accepted
the offer. Kelsey-Brewer already owned the
LaCrosse Gas and Electric Company. It
immediately merged the two into the Wis-
consin-Minnesota Light and Power Com¬
pany. The Kelsy-Brewer organization was
aggressive, energetic, skilled and ambitious.
The time was auspicious and it immediately
began intensive development of the existing
electric properties while continuing rapid
expansion by acquiring the small hydro
plants and other distribution systems in the
area. The company was an immediate finan¬
cial success but healthy earnings from a rela¬
tively small utility was not Kelsy-Brewer’ s
goal. The reason for modernizing and inter¬
connecting the Wisconsin-Minnesota system
was to facilitate Brewer’s larger plan to
develop hydroelectric power sites on the
Chippewa River and ultimately to bid for

control of all electric service in central
Wisconsin. He was in a position to do this
when WW I began.

The Wisconsin-Minnesota Light and
Power Company controlled by the Ingram-
Knapp-Stout group and, after 1914, by
Kelsy-Brewer, recognized that a potential
market is necessary for an economically
successful large hydroelectric project. By
1915 the market seemed assured and the
Wisconsin-Minnesota Company began plan¬
ning for a hydroelectric project at Paint
Creek on the Chippewa River, two and a
half miles above Chippewa Falls, where a
fifty-seven foot head could be obtained for a
potential power of more than 30,000 kilo¬
watts. This was to be, at the time, not only
the largest hydroelectric project in Wiscon¬
sin, but the largest in the United States and
the entire world. The cost of the Wissota
project, as planned in the depressed year of
1915, was to be something over $2,000,000.
The actual construction, carried out in the
highly inflationary years of 1916-18, cost
nearly $6,500,000.

The power from Wissota was far more
than the Wisconsin-Minnesota system was
expected to need for some years, so a large
part of it was contracted to the rapidly grow¬
ing Consumers Power Company (changed in
1917 to Northern States) owned by the
Byllesly interests, which served the heavily
populated Minneapolis-St. Paul area in Min¬
nesota. The contract carried a stiff penalty
clause for poor water conditions and in the
years from 1919 to 1922 the Chippewa had a
continuously smaller flow. As a result of this
and the fixed expense of the securities issued
for the much higher than planned construc¬
tion costs, Wissota, instead of being an
asset, rapidly placed it deeper and deeper in
debt to the Northern States Power Company
of Minnesota. In 1923 Kelsy-Brewer sold
Wisconsin-Minnesota’ s common stock to
Northern States Power Company.

Wisconsin law required that utilities oper¬
ating in the state must be Wisconsin corpora¬
tions. The Byllesly interest, therefore, incor¬
porated the Wisconsin-Minnesota Company

100

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

as the Northern States Power Company of
Wisconsin, a wholly owned subsidiary of the
Minnesota company and operated as an inte¬
gral part of it. The company immediately
became prosperous, developed the hydro¬
electric resources of the Chippewa and other
streams in its regions, and was able to give
excellent service at constantly decreasing
rates to the industry, businesses and homes
in its area.

Here again it is illustrated that the electric
central station business had become one re¬
quiring great financial resources. A prosper¬
ous, though somewhat local company, did
not have the financial ability or reserve to
plan and complete a project which, though
surely large for the time, would be small in
comparison to those necessary for good
economical operation in the years ahead.

Natural Monopolies

Railroads and telephones had each been in
existence only a short time before the public
and the government recognized that it would
be neither practical or economical to have
competing companies serving essentially the
same area. From this came the practice of
the franchised public utility. Some unit of
government, such as a city, township, or
state \yould give a company the exclusive
right, or franchise, to provide its services in
some area over which the unit of government
had jurisdiction. In return, the company
would have to pay a fee, and also agree to
provide certain services, such as a telephone
to any person or business requesting a
connection, at a cost previously determined
by an agreement beween the unit of govern¬
ment and the utility. These franchises were
usually for brief fixed times and so had to be
continuously renegotiated.

The first Edison and Brush electric
generating stations, which could supply, at
most, only a few hundred bulbs to customers
in a small nearby area, had not seemed to
fall into the category of public utilities.
However, with the introduction of alternat¬
ing current and its almost universal adoption
after the 1893 World’s Fair, it was soon

obvious that one company might best serve a
whole city, or perhaps even many cities, and
that electric generating and distributing com¬
panies were public utilities. As such, by 1900
the electric companies were being regulated
by municipal governments with the regula¬
tion being whatever was most politically
advantageous at the moment. Utilities
offered a product available from only one
source at a predetermined price, and politi¬
cians recognized almost immediately that
voters often responded favorably to attacks
upon them. As stated by McDonald in Let
There be Light , “Utilities employed several
weapons, none of which guaranteed success,
and they never gained by fighting politicians.
Local politicians had countless weapons, one
of which, control over enfranchisement of
utilities, was all-powerful, and they never
lost and often gained by fighting utilities.”
Franchises were always for limited times and
the utilities were in a constant hassle to stay
in business at any kind of a reasonable
profit. Responsible leaders in the electric
central station, and other similar industries,
recognized and propagated the idea that
state regulation was a natural corollary of
the monopoly principle and that it was the
only way that the industry could be made
stable and profitable.

The Wisconsin Railroad Commission
and its Successor The Wisconsin
Public Service Commission

There arose at this time in Wisconsin a
political movement, led by a most dynamic
politician named Robert M. LaFollette,
which called itself “Progressivism.” The
simplest description of it would be LaFol¬
lette versus special interests, with the util¬
ities, particularly the railroads and big
business in general, as the special interests.
Actually LaFollette was careful never to
clearly define or identify these special
interests thus leaving it possible to cooperate
with individual business interest groups
whenever it was mutually advantageous to so
do. In addition, LaFollette progressivism
had three other elements which made its

1984]

Schultz — From Arc Lights to Gigawatts

101

position on regulation similar to that of the
utility men: (1) Consciously or uncon¬
sciously, it espoused increased centralization
of government power in the hands of the
state. (2) It advocated government by expert
commissions. (3) It had a vested interest in
vocalizing against utilities and the railroads
in particular; the non-Progressive political
organizations were closely connected with
the city, and other political machines which
were considered to be the servants of the
special interests and, as such, were natural
enemies of the Progressives. These same
local governments and politicians would
strongly resist any measure which would
take away their useful and profitable power
to franchise utilities. Thus there was formed
an alliance between what would seem to be
bitter enemies.

This alliance influenced the 1907 legisla¬
ture to pass the statute which created the
pioneer Wisconsin Railroad Commission.
This statute together with important amend¬
ments in 1911 and 1913, and its resulting
commission, became the model for similar
commissions in more than forty other states.
It was the first such commission to have real
regulatory powers and to use these powers in
an enlightened way. The essential features
were a three-person commission, appointed
for staggered six year terms, with one com¬
missioner being appointed every odd-num¬
bered year. State appropriations were made
large enough to enable the commission to at¬
tract highly trained engineers, accountants,
and other necessary professional help. The
record and reputation of the commission
indicate that the commissioners were able
men who carried out the spirit of the law to
the best of their ability.

The responsibilities of the commission
were to police the financial activities of all
utilities, establish standards of service, and
fix rates. Rate-making can surely be classi¬
fied as the most controversial and trouble¬
some responsibility. The commission oper¬
ated on the theory that utilities were entitled
to receive sufficient income to pay all
reasonable and necessary operating expenses

and taxes, maintain equipment in a good
state of repair, provide an adequate reserve
for depreciation, and yield a reasonable rate
of return on legitimate and necessary invest¬
ment in the business. The last has been the
most misunderstood and the most difficult
to determine. The Wisconsin Commission
correctly decided that it takes money to earn
money and with no investment there would
be no return. Therefore, it set a certain per¬
cent of profit for each utility. If the utility,
by good management and good fortune, ap¬
preciably exceeded this, the commission
would have to cut rates. Poor management
and smaller profits were not a justification
for a rate increase; so the allowable rate of
return actually worked out as a profit maxi¬
mum rather than a minimum as it is often
popularly thought to be.

To police the financial activities of the
utilities, the 1907 law and the revision of
1911, provided that the utilities must have
Commission approval for every issue of se¬
curities. This power, combined with that
added in 1931 to grant or withhold certif¬
icates of public convenience and necessity,
gave the Commission complete working con¬
trol over investments and construction. The
Commission also used this power to keep the
distribution of kinds of securities at the best
balance for the protection of investors.

The Commission also issued indetermin¬
ate permits in place of the previous limited
term franchises granted by local units of
government. Thus, the utility could depend
upon a perpetual monopoly so long as it
operated in a manner beneficial to the pub¬
lic. Conversely, municipalities could, at any
time, purchase all the property of a utility at
a “fair price” which would be established by
the Commission.

By 1911 the Commission was given con¬
trol over all water power in the state. From
that time on, the Commission’s approval of
plans and a prior permit was required for the
construction and use of hydroelectric gen¬
erating facilities.

The Wisconsin Commission developed a
uniform system of accounting which all

102

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

utilities were required to follow. This system
was later adopted by the Federal Power
Commission and by nearly all other state
commissions.

In 1931 the Wisconsin Railroad Commis¬
sion was reorganized and given the title, the
Wisconsin Public Service Commission. It
was also given more control over the internal
workings of utilities and over the relation¬
ships between utilities and holding com¬
panies. Finally, provision was made to pass
the costs of regulation directly on to the
utilities themselves. The creation of the
Wisconin Railroad Commission and its suc¬
cessor, the Wisconsin Public Service Com¬
mission has great significance to the public,
to the utilities, and to government. It gives a
middle ground between the extremes of
sometimes irresponsible private business on
one side and the possible waste and ineffi¬
ciency of public ownership on the other. It
has created conditions under which private
enterprise would work both for the benefit
of the owners and the general public. During
its lifetime it has also served as a model for
other states and for the federal government
and has demonstrated how such a govern¬
ment agency could generally remain inde¬
pendent despite pressure by business, by
politicians, and by various special interest
groups.

Northern States

Power Company's Privileges

a. The exclusive right to sell its services in
the area granted to it by the WPSC
(Wisconsin Public Service Com¬
mission).

b. The right to charge its customers for
services at the rates set by the WPSC.

c. The opportunity to issue various kinds
of securities, raise capital, acquire
facilities, pay dividends, retire indebt¬
edness, and conduct its daily business
according to rules prescribed for public
utilities with special attention to secur¬
ing prior permission for certain classes
of transactions.

d. The right to make a reasonable profit

on their investments for its stockhold¬
ers and the holders of its securities.

e. As a public utility, the right to secure
property and right-of-way necessary
for the most efficient generation and
distribution of its products such as
electricity, to the public being served.
This includes the right of condemna¬
tion where necessary property or right-
of-way is concerned and no mutual
agreement can be reached.

f. The right to have the WPSC issue or
deny permits, act upon requests, make
recommendations, etc., in reasonable
times and in ways which will facilitate
the efforts of the company to give the
public the best possible service at the
lowest possible cost.

Northern States

Power Company's Responsibilities

a. Northern States Power Company
(NSP) must provide service to all
potential customers who request it and
who are so located in the franchise area
that it is physically possible to deliver
electricity and gas to them.

b. NSP must charge for its services at
rates determined by the WPSC.

c. NSP must maintain its generating and
distribution systems and have trained
personnel to keep its regular service at
high level.

d. NSP must have plans, equipment and
personnel to promptly and efficiently
cope with natural disasters and any
other unexpected interruptions to ser¬
vice.

e. NSP must make plans for the near and
more distant future so that adequate
service will be available. Plans must be
made and approved by the WPSC so
that sites and right-of-way can be ac¬
quired, equipment planned and or¬
dered and the system given the capabil¬
ity to carry the expected loads. It is
much easier to delay or cut back on
expansion than it is to hurry it up.

f. Plans must be made for shedding load,

1984]

Schultz — From Arc Lights to Gigawatts

103

or other actions, to preserve the integ¬
rity of the system in the event of an
overload above the capacity of the
generating units and purchased power
available. All possible eventualities
must be considered for action with a
minimum of inconvenience and cost to
the customers.

g. NSP must conform to all laws, rules
and regulations, etc., of the WPSC,
the State of Wisconsin, the Environ¬
mental Protection Agency, the Federal
Power Commission, the Occupational
Safety and Health Administration, and
the Department of Energy, the Secur¬
ities and Exchange Commission and
possibly others.

h. Finally, while complying with all the
above, the officers and managers of
the company shall run it so efficiently
and well that there will be a profit, and
therefore dividends, for the stockhold¬
ers and the holders of any other com¬
pany securities.

Growth and the Need for Power
and Generating Facilities

From 1923 to 1938 the operations of the
Northern States Power Company of Minnes¬
ota and its wholly owned subsidiary, the
Northern States Power Company of Wiscon¬
sin operated as an integral company and
cannot be considered separately. From 1938
on the Wisconsin company continued opera¬
tion as an integral division of the Minnesota
company but was managed, financed, and
regulated as a separate utility.

The financial adjustments and revision of
1938 established the working relationships
for the Northern States Power Company of
Minnesota and its subsidiary, the Northern
States Power Company of Wisconsin, which
have been continued since that time. Under
it, the Northern States Power Company is a
supplier of electrical service in an area of
40,000 square miles in Minnesota, North
Dakota, South Dakota, and Wisconsin con¬
taining 950,000 electrical customers in 630
communities with approximately 3,000,000

residents in 1975. The NSP electrical system
has nuclear, coal and oil-fired steam; hydro¬
electric; oil-fired turbine; and diesel-
powered generating stations; bulk power
substations and local distribution systems. It
is interconnected with Dairyland Power Co¬
operative, Cooperative Power Association,
some municipally owned systems with which
it shares its area, and with all the big utilities
on all sides of it to be a part of the Mid-
Continent Area Power Pool (MAPP) to give
a maximum of reliability of service at a
minimum of cost to its customers. It is a
member of the National Electric Reliability
Council (NERC) through its participation in
the Mid-Continent Area Reliability Coordi¬
nation Agreement (MARC A), which report
to the Federal Power Commission on the
reliability and adequacy of the bulk power
supply of the electric utility systems.

As a public utility, NSP is obligated to
provide reasonable and adequate service to
all its customers in the area. This means that
NSP must be able to provide the maximum
amount of energy each customer needs and
that it must also be able to provide the total
amount of power required by all its custom¬
ers at any one time. The latter must be
accomplished in spite of scheduled mainte¬
nance, generating plant failures, transmis¬
sion line outages, and all other foreseen and
unforeseen contingencies, in ways that will
keep power outage to the smallest possible
area and prevent spreading into a disastrous
breakdown of the whole system. This, com¬
bined with a constantly increasing demand in
most areas (see Table 1) increasing capital
and equipment costs, increasing environ¬
mental restrictions and regulations, and
increasing public resistance to construction
and power lines in the latter 1960’s made
accurate record keeping and scientific analy¬
sis for prediction of future needs absolutely
vital. A critical problem was upon what fac¬
tors predictions for future demand could be
based. Should curves be plotted for the total
energy use and for the peak demand, and
then extrapolated? Should certain normaliz¬
ing factors be used on the data for these

104

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

Table 1. Maximum Demand and Total Energy Use

PEAK DEMAND (MW)

TOTAL ENERGY (GWH)

Year

NSP System

NSP Wisconsin

NSP System

NSP Wisconsin

1965

1975

260

10140

1489

1966

2177

297

11154

1593

1967

2311

352

11994

1725

1968

2697

324

13413

1923

1969

2893

385

14637

2046

1970

3109

411

15916

2273

1971

3278

420

16697

2337

1972

3674

438

18039

2535

1973

3836

451

18669

2606

1974

3954

471

18783

2662

1975

4206

496

19769

2738

1976

4325

528

20890

2890

1977

4488

572

21300

3110

1978

4629

601

22390

3320

(winter)

(winter)

4018

670

1980

(summer)

(summer)

23708

3515

4667

656

(winter)

(winter)

4110

682

1981

(summer)

(summer)

23938

3596

4681

620

(winter)

(winter)

4137

676

1982

(summer)

(summer)

25312

3689

5222

662

(winter)

(winter)

4640

712

1983

(summer)

(summer)

27246

3895

5389

685

The Lake Superior District Power Company was added to the System in the middle of 1982. In 1983 it had summer and
winter peaks of 122 and 137 megawatts and a total use of 817 GWH. The 1983 winter peak was unrefined in February
1984; refining may lower or raise it slightly.

curves before plotting and extrapolating?
Should other influences such as the gross
area product, population changes, etc., also
be worked into the predictions? Both
MARCA and MAPP agreed that operation
should be with a reserve capacity of 15%
each of the individual utilities peak demand.
This has historically resulted in adequate
reliability for consumers. With electricity

becoming more of a prime energy source,
and particularly the best and most available
source for winter heat in Wisconsin, this
reserve capacity becomes more critical.

As of January 1, 1984, the total system of
Northern States Power Company had a sum¬
mer generating capability of 5929 MW and a
winter of 6375. This would be with all gener¬
ating stations available and operating which

1984]

Schultz — From Arc Lights to Gigawatts

105

would be a happy, albeit unlikely, situation.
This total included 1633 MW of nuclear with
the rest supplied by coal fired steam turbines
for base and intermediate loads and oil fired
gas turbines and a small amount of diesel
and hydro mostly used for peaking.

Also available by NSP Wisconsin were 747
MW made up of 188 MW of hydro used for
baseload and peaking, with the rest nearly all
the very expensive to run oil fired gas tur¬
bines used only when absolutely necessary.
NSP also has a contract to buy energy from
Manitoba Hydro and exchanges energy with
all neighboring systems when mutually ad¬
vantageous.

In 1983 the 1633 MW nuclear plants pro¬
vided about 50% of the electrical energy
supplied to NSP customers and it was the
economical performance of these that made
it possible for NSP to continue some of the
lowest electrical rates in the nation.

What Table 1 Shows

a. The system as a whole has had a 172%
increase in peak demand from 1965 to
1983. From 1973 to 1983 the increase
was 40.5%. The addition of the Lake
Superior District contributed 3.7% to
the peak in 1983. For the Wisconsin
part of the company the corresponding
percentages were 174 and 57.8. Al¬
though not constant, there has been an
increase in the peak demand on the
whole system every year of the record.
The identification of summer and
winter peaks shows the effects of
weather but has not changed the over¬
all picture. With the minor variation
due to the warm winter, cool summer
year of 1982 the Wisconsin record is
similar.

b. In total use the system increased 169%
from 1965 to 1983 and 47% from 1973
to 1983. The Wisconsin figures are
162% and 49.5%. There has been an
increase in total electrical energy use by
the whole system and by Wisconsin in
every year of the record.

c. Though not shown in the tables, in
1968, 68% of the electrical energy used
in Western Wisconsin came from the
baseload generating plants in Min¬
nesota. The percentage was about the
same in 1983. This poses no problems,
except for the distance of transmission,
as long as the Minnesota company has
the generating capacity available.

Summary

The production and distribution of
electrical energy in Western Wisconsin has
grown to be a major public utility and a
major and highly important industry which
affects the life of everybody. The availability
and cost of this electrical energy are an im¬
portant concern of the residents and govern¬
ment. This concern has resulted in the Wis¬
consin Public Service Commission and an
enlightened regulation which is a credit to
Wisconsin and a model for other states.

The 1973 energy crisis with the resulting
depression, increase in costs, public aware¬
ness, and conservation somewhat slowed the
rate of increase of both peak demand and
total use of electrical energy. However, both
continued to increase and there is every
reason to expect that this increase will
continue as oil and gas become more scarce
and expensive and people are forced to turn
to electricity for their energy needs.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to give special
credit to Let There Be Light by Forrest
McDonald, published in 1957 by the Amer¬
ican History Research Center, Inc., of
Madison, Wisconsin, which provided most
of the information on the beginning of the
electrical industry in Wisconsin. Other
information came from the documents and
management of the Northern States Power
Company-Wisconsin and the author ex¬
presses his thanks and appreciation to
NSPW for making this history possible.

NATURAL HAZARD EXPOSURES, LOSSES AND MITIGATION
COSTS IN THE UNITED STATES, 1970-2000

Arthur A. Atkisson
Public and Environmental Administration
University of Wisconsin-Green Bay

William J. Petak

Institute of Safety and Systems Management
University of Southern California

Daniel J. Alesch

Public and Environmental Administration
University of Wisconsin-Green Bay

This paper presents the major findings of
a three-year study of the exposure of United
States population and buildings to nine
natural hazards: expansive soils, landslide,
earthquake, tsunami, coastal storm surge,
riverine flooding, hurricane, tornado, and
severe wind.1 The research utilized com¬
puterized probabilistic risk analysis methods
to determine annual expected losses for each
hazard. The losses were calculated on the
basis of long-term exposure of geographic
areas in the United States to the various
hazards, including estimated magnitude or
intensity expected for each area. The re¬
search includes an examination of the costs
and benefits of a wide variety of possible
policies to mitigate the effects of the nine
natural hazards on life and property, util¬
izing a variety of discount rates.

The Incidence and Costs
of Natural Hazards in the U.S.

Almost no portion of the planet’s surface
is free from the risks produced by hazardous
natural events. Scattered around the planet
are 516 active volcanoes from which erup¬
tions occur approximately once each fifteen
days. The global network of earthquake
monitoring instruments currently records
approximately 2000 tremors beneath the
crust of the earth each day and, almost twice
each day, earthquakes of a magnitude suffi¬
cient to damage buildings and other struc¬

tures occur somewhere on the face of the
planet. Quakes of sufficient strength to pro¬
duce widespread damage and death occur
fifteen to twenty times each year. Above the
surface of the earth, 1800 orbiting thunder
storms can be observed at any given time and
lightening strikes the planet’s outer skin at
the rate of 100 times per second. In late sum¬
mer, 50 or more hurricanes can be observed
forming somewhere in the world and, during
approximately the same season, from 600 to
1,000 tornadoes strike somewhere in the
United States at a rate of four or more per
day. Nearly one half billion members of the
planet’s total population now reside in
riverine and coastal flood plains where they
produce one third of the world’s total prod¬
ucts and, on any given day, some fraction of
these plains are covered by flood waters.

Many natural events occur only infre¬
quently, but when they do occur, they
produce catastrophic results. Natural
disasters of major proportions have oc¬
curred throughout the history of the United
States. Twenty-one years before the adop¬
tion of the Declaration of Independence,
earthquakes shattered Massachusetts. Dur¬
ing the height of the War of 1812, the highest
magnitude earthquake in the history of the
United States left parts of Missouri and
Arkansas permanently sunken. In the imme¬
diate post-Civil War years a devastating
earthquake struck South Carolina, and, in

106

1984]

A tkisson, Petak and A lesch — Natural Hazard in the U.S.

107

1871, a forest fire raged throughout north¬
eastern Wisconsin causing the deaths of
more than 1200 persons.

On a single day in 1889, flood waters
claimed 2,209 lives in Johnstown, Pennsyl¬
vania. Eleven years later, the largest civil
disaster in U.S. history occurred when a
hurricane pushed the waters of a storm surge
over Galveston, Texas, causing 6,000 deaths.
Six years later, in 1906, an earthquake
rocked San Francisco and, along with the
fires produced by the event, caused the
deaths of 500 to 700 persons and more than
$374 million in property damage. In 1928, a
dam collapsed in California, sending a wall
of water over an unsuspecting population,
sweeping 450 persons to their deaths. Only a
few months later a Florida hurricane caused
1833 deaths.

More recently, the Palm Sunday tor¬
nadoes of 1965 claimed 271 lives in five
states; hurricane Camille (1969) destroyed
over $1.4 billion in property and claimed 256
lives; the South Dakota flash flood of 1972

killed 236 persons; the Alaska earthquake
(1965) killed 131; and Agnes, the hurricane
and tropical storm (1972), caused 118 deaths
and property losses in excess of $3.1 billion.
On a single day in 1974, separate tornadoes
caused the deaths of 318 persons in several
southern and midwestern states.

Although less dramatic, a variety of other
natural hazards produced considerable dam¬
age to property during these same time
periods, resulting in substantial annual eco¬
nomic losses. These hazards include ex¬
pansive soils, land subsidence, landslides,
erosion of river and shore banks, periodic
droughts, and hail, ice, snow, and rain
storms.

The economic losses due to the nine nat¬
ural hazards considered in this research
project are substantial. As shown in Table 1,
“Annual Expected Losses from Nine Nat¬
ural Hazards in 1970, Compared with An¬
nual Value of Other Types of Losses and
Events,” the annual expected losses from
these hazards exceeds all losses from traffic

Table 1 . Annual Expected Losses from Nine Natural Hazards in 1970,
Compared with Annual Value of Other Types of Losses and Events

Type of Loss or Event Value in 1970

(Millions of $)

1 . All Property Tax Collections by State and Local Governments 34,054

2. All Accidents 27,000

3. Expected Annual Natural Hazard Losses (2000 Exposure) 17,779

4. All Traffic Accidents 16,200

5. Total Economic Effects of Air Pollution 16,000

6. Health Insurance Premiums 1 1 ,546

7. Increase in Annual Expected Losses from Natural Hazards, 1970-2000 9,685

8. Pollution Control Costs (Air, Water, Solid Wastes) 9,300

9. Auto Liability Insurance Premiums 8,958

10. Expected Annual Natural Hazard Losses (1970 Exposure) 8,094

11. Losses from Accidents at Work 8,000

12. Losses from Air Pollution-Related Morbidity and Mortality 6,000

13. Air Pollution Effects on Value of Property 5,200

14. Air Pollution Effects on Materials and Vegetation 4,900

15. Expenditures by All State and Local Police Departments 4,494

16. All Crimes against Property 4,264

17. Investments in Water Pollution Control Facilities 3, 100

18. Business Losses Due to Six Types of Criminal Activities 3,049

19. Building Losses Due to Fires 2,209

Source : Petak and Atkisson (1982)

108

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

accidents and is approximately half the
amount of all property taxes collected by
state and local governments.

Public Policy and Natural Hazards

Many public and private actions have been
taken in our efforts to mitigate the effects of
exposures to natural hazards. Population
warning systems have been placed in opera¬
tion, rivers have been dammed, deepened,
and diked. Coastlines have been equipped
with sea walls, storm cellars have been dug in
back yards, buildings have been elevated
above the level of expected flood heights,
and a variety of means have been employed
to strengthen structures and reduce their
vulnerability to the forces exerted by winds,
land movement, and other natural hazards.

Unfortunately, these efforts at mitigating
losses due to exposure have produced less
than satisfactory results. Construction of
flood control facilities has seemed to prompt
heavy migration into flood prone areas and
has, thereby, escalated the real costs of flood
exposures. Governmental provision of disas¬
ter relief, low cost loans, and subsidized
insurance has seemed to encourage, rather
than discourage, private risk-taking activity.
A public unwillingness to acknowledge the
threat of future loss-producing occurrences
in high hazard areas and an accompanying
faith that government will somehow protect
them, has contributed to a continuing
population movement into such high hazard
areas as the hurricane and flood prone
coastal areas along the Gulf Coast and the
South Atlantic. Similar population move¬
ments have taken place in seismically active
areas and along the shores of rivers and lake
subject to periodic flooding. As a result, the
United States now faces the probability that
one or more major community catastrophes,
each far greater in loss of life and property
than any which have previously occurred in
our history, may occur over the span of the
next several decades.

At the same time we have ignored the high
risks of natural hazard events, we also face
the risk of over-reacting to the threats posed

by natural hazards and the related risk of im¬
plementing public policies which may result
in costs far in excess of the benefits they will
yield.

Numerous types of building strengthen¬
ing, area protection, site development, and
other technologies are available for use by
those who wish to reduce the risks associated
with exposure to natural hazards. Manda¬
tory application of these technologies can be
forced through adoption of a wide variety of
federal, state, and local public policies.
Hazard mitigating amendments to building
codes, subdivision standards, and land use
regulations can be enacted. Hazard zones
can be identified and sanctions employed to
prohibit development in such areas. The risk
of loss may be spread through use of insur¬
ance schemes. The impact of catastrophic
events on exposed populations may be
reduced through community safety plans,
disaster relief, and recovery measures
financed by non-impacted parties.

What mix of these measures to employ,
when, where, at what cost, and to whom,
has become a major public policy question.
To assist in resolving this question, the
authors have conducted an interrelated set of
policy studies of this subject2 and have
anchored these studies on findings from a
computer-based study of U.S. population
and building exposures to nine natural
hazards over the period 1970-2000. 3 The
computer models used in the study were
based on risk analysis procedures developed
to predict annual expected losses arising
from the periodic occurrences of these haz¬
ards and were supplemented by procedures
which permit examination of the relation¬
ship between the costs and benefits associ¬
ated with applying a variety of loss-miti¬
gating measures in the U.S. natural hazard
zones.4

Annual Expected Losses

and Exposed Populations

Application of risk assessment models
resulted in estimates of nationally aggre¬
gated annual expected natural hazards losses

Table 2. Expected Annual Losses from Natural Hazard Exposures in the United States
By Type of Hazard and Type of Loss, 1970 and 2000
Expected Annual Losses

1984]

Atkisson, Petak and Alesch— Natural Hazard in the U.S.

109

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for 1970 and 2000. These data are summar¬
ized in Table 2. The study revealed that
natural hazard exposures in the year 1970
produced annual expected dollar losses total¬
ling approximately $8 billion and nearly
1,000 annual expected deaths. Approxi¬
mately 71 per cent of the expected dollar
losses for 1970 resulted from building dam¬
age, approximately 24 per cent from damage
to building contents, and the balance from
expected losses sustained by workers and
increased costs of transporting goods due to
delays and reroutings. The study showed
that annual expected natural hazard losses
(in 1970 dollars) would rise to approximately
SI 7. 8 billion in the year 2000 and that build¬
ing contents losses will rise to approximately
40 per cent of that total. Annual expected
deaths from natural hazard exposures were
predicted to increase to 1790 in 2000.
Expected annual national losses from expo¬
sure to all nine hazards produced per capita
losses of $39.76 in 1970 and $69.41 in 2000
(1970 dollars).

Mitigation Technologies and Costs

Seventeen potential loss-reducing
strategies were examined in detail, represent¬
ing five different major approaches to man¬
aging natural hazard risks. The five include
hazard avoidance, area structure protection,
building strengthening, site preparation, and
building removal. The seventeen potential
strategies are listed in Table 3. Each mitiga¬
tion strategy is related to the hazards for
which it is potentially applicable.

As a result of technology and cost analy¬
ses, it became clear that the high levels of
hazard exposure the study predicted for the
future need not occur; they can be prevented
or lessened through use of several types of
technologies and through implementation of
a variety of public policies. The analysis
revealed that building damage losses alone
could be reduced by approximately 42 per
cent from those projected for the year 2000.
However, the study also revealed that no
loss-reducing strategy is completely free

110

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

Table 3 . Hazard-Mitigating Technologies, by Type and Applicability to Nine Natural Hazards

Hazard to which applicable

Technology by class and title

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53

i§

1 .0 Hazard Avoidance Strategies and Technologies

1 . 1 Zero growth on fifty-year flood plains after 1980

•

•

1 .2 Zero growth on 100-year flood plains after 1980

•

•

1 .3 Zero growth on fifty-year riverine flood plains in specified
additional numbers of flood-prone cities each year, to 2000

•

1 .4 Zero growth in counties exhibiting high Tornado Strike Risk
(greater than 10~4 tornado strikes per year per square mile).

•

2.0 Area Structural Protection Strategies

2.1 Structural protection (dams, levees, etc.)
of cities with riverine flood problems.

•

2.2 Construction of sea-walls to protect four additional counties
per year from 100-year storm surge heights. Construct in
order of decreasing damages in affected counties.

•

3.0 Building Strengthening Strategies

3.1 Require tie-downs on all mobile homes.

•

•

•

3.2 Increase designed wind resistance capability of new buildings
to level equalling 1 .5 x the level specific in the Uniform

Building Code (1.5 x UBC)

•

•

•

3.3 Increase designed wind resistance capability of new buildings
to level equalling 3.0 x the level specified in the Uniform

Building Code (3.0 x UBC).

•

•

•

3.4 Increase strength of new buildings to level required in UBC
Earthquake Zone #3. (UBC 3).

•

3.5 Floodproof 2% annually of all structures in fifty-year riverine
flood plains to provide zero damage to height of four feet.

•

3.6 Floodproof 2% annually, of all structures in 100-year riverine
flood plains to provide zero damage to height of four feet.

•

3.7 After 1980, floodproof all new buildings in storm surge areas
to height of four feet.

•

3.8 Modify and retrofit existing buildings in high seismic risk
areas to meet seismic safety standards.

•

4.0 Site Preparation Strategies

4. 1 Require soils testing and improved site grading standards in
landslide-prone areas.

•

4.2 Require soils testing and pre-construction moisture control
and/or soil stabilization on construction sites.

•

5.0 Building Removal Strategies

5.1 Purchase and/or condemn and accelerate removal of high
vulnerability structures in high hazard areas.

•

•

•

• •

Source: Petak and Atkisson (1982).

1984]

A tkisson, Petak and Alesch— Natural Hazard in the U.S.

Ill

from economic or social cost and that over-
zealous use of some strategies might actually
increase total national hazard exposure costs
when these costs are defined to include both
the losses resulting from hazard exposures
and the costs of implementing the mitiga¬
tions used to reduce such losses.

Examination of the annual amortized
costs of implementing each alternative loss-
reducing strategy resulted in the finding that
many strategies are not cost-effective; their
annual principle repayment and annual
interest requirements exceed the projected
value of their loss-reducing potential. The
data generated by this study suggest clearly
that imprudent and overzealous application
of risk-reducing mitigations could actually
increase net annual expected natural hazard
costs in 2000 from 38.4 to 90.0 per cent
above the levels that would be experienced if
current policies remain unaltered.

Not all costs and benefits associated with
implementation of mitigation strategies were
included in the study. For example, the study
did not include estimates of hazard-induced
loss of public infrastructure. Perhaps more
importantly, the study did not place an eco¬
nomic value on the reduction in human mor¬
tality that might result from application of
more rigorous hazard management strate¬
gies. The authors do not attempt to place
economic values on human life; they prefer
to analyze the cost required to avert deaths.
Such costs are often more meaningful to pol¬
icy makers.

The procedures used to estimate losses
were based on assumed, but empirically-
supported, relationships between the magni¬
tude of dollar loss associated with hazardous
occurrences and the loss of life associated
with such occurrences. This method resulted
in annual expected life loss estimates which
were substantially greater for 1970 than the
annual average life loss from natural hazards
actually reported for any of the decades in
the current century. Moreover, both hazard-
induced death rates and the absolute annual

average number of deaths has been declining
rather steadily throughout the century.
Thus, even though the estimates of life loss
were probabilistically derived and therefore
reflect the intermittent and large losses of
life which may be expected from major
catastrophes, the annual expected estimates
of life loss may overstate the consequences
of natural hazard exposures. Past mitiga¬
tions, including installation of warning
systems, may be working effectively. On the
other hand, since the estimates are probabil¬
istic, and since the events are intermittent
and characterized by massive losses, we may
simply have been fortunate so far this
century.

Even if the expected hazard-induced mor¬
tality predicted in the study were to occur,
the annual expected estimates of life loss
reported in the study are not as impressive as
the mortality from other causes in our soci¬
ety. Examination of evidence suggests that
the cost per death averted in natural hazard
risk reduction programs can well be esca¬
lated to levels substantially in excess of those
associated with other death and injury
reducing programs which currently may be
under-funded. Although this inference is not
intended to suggest that life loss reduction
should not be an objective of natural hazard
management programs, neither does it seem
appropriate to overstate the benefits and to
understate the costs associated with such
programs.

Notes

1 The studies which resulted in this report were sup¬
ported, in part, by National Science Foundation Grant
Number ERP-09998, and by National Science Foun¬
dation Purchase order 78-SP-0620. In a substantially
expanded form, the data reported here are also included
in William J. Petak and Arthur A. Atkisson, Natural
Hazard Risk Assessment and Public Policy , New York:
Springer-Verlag, Inc., 1982.

2 See, for example: (1) William J. Petak, Arthur A.
Atkisson, Paul H. Gleye. Natural Hazards: A Public
Policy Assessment. Redondo Beach, California, J. H.
Wiggins Company, 1978 NTIS #PB297361/AS A23; (2)
Arthur A. Atkisson, William J. Petak, Daniel J.

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

Alesch, et al, Natural Hazards and Public Policy:
Recommendations for Public Policies to Mitigate the
Effects of Natural Hazard Exposures in the United
States, Green Bay, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin-
Green Bay Papers in Public Policy and Administration,
78-2 (December 1978); (3) Arthur A. Atkisson and
William J. Petak, Seismic Safety Policies and Practices
in U.S. Metropolitan Areas. (A Report to the Federal

Emergency Management Agency), Redondo Beach,
California: J. H. Wiggins Company, January 1981.

3 William J. Petak, Arthur A. Atkisson, Paul Gleye,
op. cit.

4 J. Hirschberg, P. Gordon, and W. J. Petak.
Natural Hazards: Socioeconomic Impact Assessment
Model. Redondo Beach, California: J. H. Wiggins
Company, 1978. NTIS # PB294681/AS A10.

MEDIA OF EXCHANGE

Edward E. Popp
Port Washington , Wisconsin

The term “medium of exchange’’ is
applied to any thing, object, or document
given and taken in the process of exchanging
goods or services. The phrase “medium of
exchange’’ describes the function of the
thing. The thing that people agree to give
and take to facilitate the exchanging of their
goods and services is, by its function, a
medium of exchange.

In the United States today an informed
business or professional man will say our
media of exchange consists of the following:

1. Federal Reserve notes

2. United States token coins

3. A few United States notes

4. Checks written against demand deposits
in commercial banks.

An economist is very likely to say these
four items make up our purchasing media.

A banker would say these four items make
up our money supply.

So the phrases, media of exchange , pur¬
chasing media , and money supply , all mean
the same things: the things we give and take
in the process of exchanging our goods and
services.

Goods and services can be exchanged
either directly or indirectly. When the
exchanges are made directly without any
medium to facilitate the exchange, such
exchanges are called direct bartering. When
the exchanges are made indirectly, i.e., by
the use of a medium to facilitate the ex¬
changes, such exchanges are called indirect
bartering or buying and selling.

The items that serve as media of exchange
in direct bartering are items with exchange
value in themselves, such as: full bodied gold
and silver coins, salt, grain, nails, soap,
tobacco, beaver skins, etc. The items given

and taken have about equal exchange value.
Neither the item given nor the item taken
gives evidence that it is a claim for any other
goods or services. They do not have to be re¬
deemed for anything.

However, governmental bodies, private
corporations, and individuals may declare
that they will accept such items as payments
due them. Any item the government will re¬
ceive as a payment will be received by almost
everyone as a payment. That is why people
will choose to use it as a medium of ex¬
change.

The items that serve as media of exchange
in indirect bartering, i.e., buying and selling,
are documents, bills, certificates, and tokens
which give evidence that they are a claim for
some goods or services or that they will be
received as a payment due the issuer.

If a governmental body will receive these
items as payments due it, everyone else will
receive them as payments also. The people
will then choose to use such items as media
of exchange. That is, the people will choose
to use such items as media of exchange, if
they are issued in denominations and in a
form convenient for making payments. If
they are not issued in denominations and in a
form convenient for making payments,
people will not choose to use them as media
of exchange.

For example, at the present time the U.S.
government will issue to the people in
exchange for Federal Reserve notes or in ex¬
change for demand deposits of bank credit
all the present U.S. coins the people want.
The coins are legal tender for the payment of
all debts to governmental bodies, private
corporations, and individuals. They are
brought into circulation without incurring
interest-bearing debts. But people choose to
use them only for small payments. They

113

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

could be used for large payments, but they
are not used for large payments because they
are not issued in denominations and in a
form that is convenient for making large
payments.

We should note from what has been said,
that of all the items we mentioned, none
were issued for the sole purpose of serving as
a medium of exchange. Grain, salt, nails,
tobacco, and beaver skins were produced for
some other use. People chose to use them as
media of exchange because they were accept¬
able and useful for some need of the people.

When our first full-bodied gold and silver
coins were made, they were not issued by the
U.S. government to serve as payments for
the expenditures of the government. The
people brought gold and silver to the U.S.
Mint. The mint made the metal into stan¬
dard coins as a service to the people.

After the metal was made into coins, the
coins were given to the persons who brought
the metal to the mint. The coins belonged to
them. They could use the coins for any pur¬
pose they wished. The coins were not gov¬
ernment owned coins.

When the U.S. government agreed to ac¬
cept the coins as payments due it (by declar¬
ing them to be legal tender at or above the
market value of the metal in the coins),
everyone else also accepted them as pay¬
ments. Thus the people chose to use them as
media of exchange.

Note well, the U.S. government officials
did not tax the people to buy the gold and
silver to make the full-bodied coins. The
officials said in effect, “All who want gold
and silver coins, bring the metal to us. We
will make it into standard coins for you. And
we will receive such coins for all payments
due the U.S. government at or above the
market value of the metal in the coins.”

These were not the exact words of the
government officials, but the effects that
took place were as if those words were said.

As we see it, any government in the world
can do that. Such action will not be any bur¬
den on the taxpayers. But that alone will not
give the people debt-free purchasing media.

We stated that the items that serve as
media of exchange in the process of buying
and selling (indirect bartering) consists of
documents — certificates and tokens — which
give evidence that they are a claim for some
goods or services or that they will be received
as a payment due the issuer.

Who Can Issue Such Documents?

Any governmental body that levies taxes
can issue such documents. It can issue tax
credit certificates in denominations conveni¬
ent for small and large payments. It can pay
them out for its needed goods and services.
It can levy a tax in a dollar amount equal to
the dollar amount of the certificates paid
out. It can receive them for all payments due
it. It must redeem them when they are pre¬
sented as the payment for the taxes levied for
the expenditure for which they were issued as
a payment. Any certificate or token that a
governmental body will receive as a payment
the people will choose to use as a medium of
exchange.

Private corporations can also issue and
pay out certificates of credit in exchange for
goods and services. If they are issued in
convenient denominations for making large
and small payments, they too can serve to a
limited extent as media of exchange.

But the main point we wish to bring out
here is to show what items the U.S. govern¬
ment can issue to serve as media of ex¬
change.

Many times we read or hear the statement
that the government should issue our money.
By the word “money” is meant the items to
serve as media of exchange. So let us exam¬
ine the power the U.S. Constitution gives
Congress regarding the issuing of items to
serve as media of exchange.

Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1, reads, “The
Congress shall have Power to lay and collect
taxes . . .” It is this section of the
Constitution that gives Congress the power
to decide what items it will receive as pay¬
ment for the taxes levied. This is the section
of the Constitution that gives Congress the
power to issue the tax credit certificates that

1984]

Popp— Media of Exchange

115

will be received as the payment for the taxes
levied. If the government issues them in
denominations convenient for making large
and small payments, the people will use them
as media of exchange.

Article 1, Section 8, Clause 5, reads, “The
Congress shall have Power to coin money.”
The word money at that time meant coins
and only coins to the writers of the U.S.
Constitution.

So Congress can issue only two things that
the people could use as media of exchange,
tax credit certificates and coins.

Tax credit certificates can be issued in
good faith only if the Congress levies a tax in
a dollar amount equal to the dollar amount
of the certificates issued.

Full-bodied gold and silver coins can be
issued in good faith only in the amount that
can be made from the gold and silver
brought to the mint by the people who want
the metal made into coins. They will pay
them into circulation.

Token coins and certificates in lieu of
coins can be issued in good faith only in the
amount the people are willing to buy in
exchange for their other currency or bank
credit already in circulation.

Note, all the above coins and certificates
are either paid or sold into circulation. The
Constitution does not give Congress the
power to loan into circulation any coins,
certificates, or credit to serve as media of
exchange.

So if, and when, the people ask Congress
to supply them with media of exchange, they
must tell Congress the specific items they
have in mind and they must tell Congress
how those items are to be brought into circu¬
lation. Remember, they must be brought
into circulation without anyone incurring an
interest-bearing debt.

Face Value of the Currency

Let us explain on which items of the
currency the face value should be written.
We have previously stated that full-bodied
gold and silver coins have exchange value in
themselves. They are commodities. They are

not documents giving evidence of a claim for
anything. Their exchange value may change
from day to day.

No one, not even a governmental body
can with honesty and justice put a set or a
fixed market exchange value on a com¬
modity that is being bought and sold all over
the world and have it remain fixed over a
period of time.

The writers of the U.S. Constitution were
fully aware of that fact. That is why they did
not authorize the Congress to put a fixed
value on the full-bodied gold and silver
coins. They gave the Congress the power to
regulate — to adjust— the value of the yet to
be minted U.S. gold and silver coins in the
same manner as was being done with foreign
gold and silver coins.

The value of the foreign gold and silver
coins was being regulated or adjusted to the
market value of their metal content at the
time the coins were used as payments.

Therefore, we conclude that full-bodied
gold and silver coins should not have a fixed
value stamped on them. They, however,
should have stamped on them the weight of
the pure metal in the coins.

Gold and Silver Coins are Commodities

Full-bodied gold and silver coins are
commodities used in direct bartering. In
direct bartering the exchange value of the
items bartered is established at the time the
transaction takes place. So the proper time
to establish the exchange value of full bodied
coins is at the time they are exchanged for
other goods or for services or used as a pay¬
ment.

From what we have said, we can see that
foreign full-bodied gold and silver coins can
serve as media of exchange just as well as the
domestic gold and silver full-bodied coins.

In the United States, at the present time,
there are many full bodied gold and silver
U.S. and foreign coins. All that is necessary
to bring them into circulation to serve as
currency is for the U.S. Congress to an¬
nounce that all U.S. and foreign full-bodied
gold and silver coins will be received by the

116

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

U.S. government for all payments due the
government at the market value of their
metal content at the time they are offered as
the payment.

The Congress should also announce that
the government will pay out these same coins
for its needed expenditures at the market
value of the metal in the coins at the time the
coins are paid out. This is the way the for¬
eign gold and silver coins served as currency
in the early days of our country.

This is the way they would have continued
to serve as currency, if the U.S. government
had not placed a fixed exchange value on the
U.S. gold and silver coins and then later
refused to receive and pay out foreign gold
and silver coins.

There is another way to bring the U.S. and
foreign gold and silver coins into circulation
to serve as currency. That is, for one or more
of the individual states to declare by law that
it will receive U.S. and foreign gold and
silver coins for all payments due the state at
the market value of the metal in the coins at
the time the coins are received as payment.
And also that the state will pay out these
same coins for its needed expenditures at the
market value of the metal in the coins at the
time the coins are paid out.

While we know that it is not necessary to
use gold and silver coins as currency, we
have to illustrate how they can be used suc¬
cessfully.

We have shown that if full-bodied gold
and silver coins are to be successfully used as

currency, a fixed exchange value cannot be
placed on the coins. But that is not true for
all other types or purchasing media.

All token coins, certificates, notes, and
bills used as currency must have a fixed
exchange value placed on them because they
are documents. They give evidence. They
give evidence of the value of the payment or
article for which they will be received or
redeemed. For example, the U.S. Congress
has declared that all token coins are legal
tender for the payment of all debts, public
and private. The face value of the token
coins is the amount of the payment for
which the coin will be received by the
government and others. The amount of the
payment must be written on the coin.

The Federal Reserve notes also are docu¬
ments. They also given evidence of the legal
tender law passed by Congress. Part of the
law is written on the notes.

Gold certificates, silver certificates, tax
credit certificates, certificates in lieu of
coins, and certificates of credit are all
documents. They give specific evidence of
the amount of the claim or the payment for
which they will be received.

They are like postage stamps. Postage
stamps give evidence of the amount of the
payment that was made for postal services.
That amount is printed on the face of the
stamps.

So it is necessary that the token coins,
notes, and certificates have their exchange
value stamped or printed on them.

BOTANISTS AND NATURALISTS AT
DEVIL’S LAKE STATE PARK, WISCONSIN

Kenneth I. Lange
Devil's Lake State Park
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources

A traveler north-bound on Interstate
Highway 90-94 in south-central Wisconsin
notices a range of hills high and massive
against the skyline for some time before the
Baraboo-Devil’s Lake exit. This is the
Baraboo Range, an anomalous outcrop of
pre-Cambrian, metamorphic rock amid
otherwise younger, sedimentary rock.
Generally called the Baraboo Hills or
Baraboo Bluffs, this outcrop, actually a
syncline, consists of an elliptical ring of
quartzite rock extending for a west-east dis¬
tance of 25 miles and enclosing the canoe¬

shaped Baraboo valley, with a north-south
distance averaging 5 miles. Devil’s Lake and
Devil’s Lake State Park are located in the
southern half of the quartzite ring, three
miles south of Baraboo, in Sauk County.
Greatest relief is attained at Devils’s Lake,
where three 500 foot bluffs with talus slopes
(west, east and south) flank a spring-fed
body of water approximately 360 acres in
area (Fig. 1).

The Baraboo Range is rich in geologic his¬
tory and features, and has been visited by
geologists since 1848 and school classes since

Fig. 1. Devil’s Lake and the surrounding country as seen from an airplane. The west bluff is in the upper part of the
picture, the east bluff is to your right, and the south bluff to your left. Notice the railroad track through the middle of
the lower half of the picture, the talus slopes, and the prairie strip along the upper edge of the south end of the east
bluff.

117

118

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

the late 1800s. Black (1968) and Dalziel and
Dott (1970) detail the geology of the area,
and Lange and Tuttle (1975) and Lange and
Berndt (1980) discuss park history, including
educational use.

The land cover in 7400 acre Devil’s Lake
State Park is primarily red oak woods with
red maple understory, but because of the
relief and varying exposure it also includes
sugar maple woods, stands of yellow birch,
white pine groves, boreal fern gardens on
north-facing talus slopes, thickets of red
elder and mountain maple and pockets of
northern herbaceous plants at the bases of
the bluffs (such as in the linear depression at
the base of the east bluff called “Alaskan
Grotto’’), marshy areas, and dry prairie
relicts on top of the bluffs. Mossman and
Lange (1982) discuss pre- and post-settle¬
ment vegetation of the Baraboo Hills, in¬
cluding Devil’s Lake State Park.

With such a varied land cover, one would
expect a rich flora. The vascular plant list for
the park now stands at 798 species, approx-

Fig. 2. Wisconsin’s pioneering naturalist, Increase
Allen Lapham. From the collections of the State His¬
torical Society of Wisconsin.

imately 40 % of the total vascular flora of
Wisconsin. An addition 233 species occur in
the Baraboo Hills only outside of the park
(Lange, unpublished ms; Crataegus spp. are
not distinguished).

Devil’s Lake has consequently been a
magnet for botanists and naturalists, as well
as geologists. In the early years they came by
wagon, then, beginning in 1873 when the
main passenger line of the Chicago and
Northwestern was completed, also by train.

Wisconsin’s pioneering naturalist, In¬
crease Allen Lapham (1811-75), seems to
have been the first botanist to have explored
Devil’s Lake, doing so in 1849 with several
companions: “A large body of broken frag¬
ments have accumulated along the edge of
the water rendering it very difficult to walk
along shore: yet two of our party made a
circuit of the lake, jumping from rock to
rock as best they could” (Lapham, 1849).
On Lapham’s 1850 map of Wisconsin,
Devil’s Lake is called “Lake of the Hills,” a
local name he heard on the 1849 trip.

Lapham (Fig. 2) was the true naturalist: he
had to explore and understand. As a young¬
ster in Palmyra, New York, he was once sent
to fetch the family cow: in his diary, he
recorded a variety of natural happenings,
but “didn’t find the cow” (Milwaukee Free
Press , 8 March 1911). As an adult he
apologized to a brother for not writing
sooner: “. . . my head has been so full of
topography, geography, etc., etc., that it
would not contain the material for a letter
besides” (Milwaukee Sentinel 16 October
1895, Part 2, page 12). In the last entry in his
notebook, dated the day before he died,
Lapham referred to a plant that he had never
found before (Hawks, 1960, p. 277).

When asked his speciality, Lapham re¬
plied, “I am studying Wisconsin” (Sher¬
man, 1876, p. 51). Lapham was a generalist,
not a specialist, yet despite his diversity of
interests and lack of formal education, he
associated scientifically with his con¬
temporaries in a variety of fields and was
accorded universal respect by his peers

1984]

Lange — Botanists and Naturalists at Devil's Lake

119

(Hawks, 1960, p. 279; Sherman, 1876, pp.
50-51). To Asa Gray of Harvard, for exam¬
ple, Lapham was thoroughly reliable, a
“modest, retiring, industrious, excellent
man” (Sherman, 1876, p. 21). Lapham and
Gray met several times, for example in 1847
when Lapham traveled east where in Boston
he had supper at Gray’s with John Carey
and William Oakes, and “didn’t we four
great Bostonians have fine times” (Hawks,
1960, p. 136).

Lapham wrote at one time or another to
literally dozens of botanists, American and
foreign, some of whom are now unknown,
although others continue to be familiar
names. He also had a national reputation as
a “good exchanger,” that is, someone who
exchanged plant specimens generously and
promptly (Hawks, 1960, pp. 149-150, 155).

Speaking as a botanist, Lapham preferred
“spring and summer all year.” By 1841 he
had a “very handsome collection of dried
plants, numbering something over 2,000
species,” and was adding to it by exchanges
(Milwaukee Sentinel , loc. cit.). Asa Gray by
1840, for example, had received plants from
a total of 78 Americans of whom Lapham
was his only contributor from Wisconsin
Territory (Dupree, 1959, p. 96). These were
the years when John Torrey and Gray were
working on their Flora of North America
(now in its 8th edition as Gray's Manual of
Botany). Lapham sent plant specimens to
Torrey and procured subscriptions for the
Flora (Rodgers, 1965, p. 125).

In 1849 Lapham offered the University of
Wisconsin his collection of plants if the
University would preserve them properly, but
he was refused (Noland, 1950, p. 83). Lap¬
ham also corresponded with the Wisconsin
Natural History Association about his
scientific collections, but here too the
negotiations collapsed (Schorger, 1947,
p. 174). The year after he died, Lapham’s
extensive scientific collections, including a
24,000 specimen herbarium of approxi¬
mately 8000 species, was purchased for
$10,000 by the State for the University

(Arthur, 1881, p. 52; Bryan, 1950, p. 13).
Lapham’s plant collection was the beginning
of today’s University of Wisconsin Her¬
barium, as the other University botanical
collections of the time were consumed by the
1884 Science Hall fire (Davis, 1925).
Recently a series of lichens collected by
Lapham has emerged from the past, but this
has a different history (Thomson, 1973).

Sixteen years after his death, Lapham
received special recognition as the most
distinguished past citizen of the State of
Wisconsin in a contest judged by the State
Agricultural Society (Winchell, 1894, p. 1), a
fitting epitaph to a remarkable individual.

Another exceptional naturalist, Thure
Ludwig Theodore Kumlien (1819-88), was
the first person to actually collect plants at
Devil’s Lake, insofar as extant herbarium
specimens attest. The Milwaukee Public
Museum has Kumlien specimens collected at
Devil’s Lake in 1860, and he very likely was
here at other times also. “Camping trips” by
Kumlien to Devil’s Lake (for “preglacier
flowers”) are mentioned in her biography of
her grandfather by Main (1944, pp. 333-
334).

Kumlien, the oldest of fourteen children,
was born in Sweden. Young Thure showed
an early interest in natural history and was
entrusted to a private tutor, later graduating
from the University of Upsala where he
studied under the renowned botanist, Elias
Fries. Coming to America in 1843, he settled
near Lake Koshkonong in southeastern Wis¬
consin because he had concluded from
studying maps that this region would be rich
ornithologically.

Kumlien hoped to make a living by selling
natural history specimens to museums,
American and foreign, and he wanted to
travel (Kumlien, 1859). He did collect
intensively around Lake Koshkonong and on
a few trips but his income from these
endeavors typically was meagre, so despite a
background ill-prepared for farming he
continued to work his land, albeit in a
desultory way.

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

Like Lapham, he was the complete
naturalist, being familiar with the fauna of
his chosen homeland and its plant life,
vascular and non-vascular. Kumlien
authored only one paper under his name, a
two-page note on the disappearance of wild-
flowers in the Lake Koshkonong area (Kum¬
lien, 1876). Owing to his diffidence, he was
well known to very few scientists, although
they typically had heard of him and Lake
Koshkonong.

In the latter years of his life, Kumlien
taught at the nearby Albion Academy, col¬
lected birds for several schools, and was taxi¬
dermist and conservator at the Milwaukee
Public Museum when he died (Greene, 1888;
Lawson, 1921; Schorger, 1946).

A visit to the site of the original Kumlien
homestead, a log cabin, reveals lilac bushes,
several kinds of planted trees, a ground
cover of periwinkle and lily of the valley,
and a depression where the building stood.
The Kumliens moved from the cabin into a
frame house in 1874. Among her grand¬
father’s papers in a trunk in the cabin, Main
(1944, p. 337) found some lines written in
pencil on an envelope by Kumlien after his
wife had died: “We now have fine weather
again and when I have time to spare I spend
it in the old house ... It reminds me ... of
old times and as much as says to me, ‘Look
at me now, we are old friends though of late
you seem to not have cared so much about
me as you used to. But I tell you that there is
a great deal of similarity between us two. We
both belong to the past, our present isn’t
much and our future prospects still less, my
timbers are partly gone up, so are yours —
age is upon me — so with you. With a little
tender care I may last and be good for some¬
thing yet a little while — so may you. I wasn’t
cut out for pretensions and show in the
world, nor were you. Circumstances put me
in a kind of out of the way place not very
conspicuous to the public, yet many are they
who have visited me. So with you. At the
same moment we both lost our best friend,
one who did more for us both than anyone

else ever did. I have after all, been a comfort
to some— perhaps you have too. I have
served the purpose for which I was made.
Have you?’”

One of Kumlien’s children, Aaron Ludwig
(1853-1902), was also a well rounded
naturalist (Schorger, 1945). He taught in
southern Wisconsin at Albion Academy and
Milton College where one of his students was
Arlow Burdette Stout (1876-1957). Stout was
born in Ohio and grew up on a farm near the
Kumliens, where he spent countless hours
afield and attended a one-room country
school. In 1903 he rescued a number of
Thure Kumlien plants, including a Devil’s
Lake sedge ( Carex leptalea ), which had been
left in the garret of the old log cabin. These
undated specimens, apparently 37 in all, are
now at the University of Wisconsin (Uni¬
versity Herbarium, Collectors’ Files).

Stout graduated from the State Normal
School at Whitewater, then taught science at
Baraboo High School from 1903-07, spend¬
ing weekends and parts of his vacations in
field work, mainly in the Baraboo area. The
University of Wisconsin has specimens,
mostly pondweeds (Potamogeton spp.), col¬
lected by Stout at Devil’s Lake in 1904, 1905,
and 1906.

Stout’s early interests included ornithol¬
ogy and archeology. As a young man, Stout
mounted birds and collected bird skins and
eggs, and in the summer of 1904 invited a
Baraboo High School student, Alexander
Wetmore, to spend several weeks with him at
Lake Koshkonong. Soon after this, Wet-
more left Wisconsin to eventually become
Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution and
an internationally known ornithologist.
Stout’s archeological field work in the
Baraboo area resulted in a 60-page paper on
the archeology of eastern Sauk County
which appeared in the Wisconsin Archeol¬
ogist.

Stout was an instructor in botany at the
University of Wisconsin when he accepted
the position of Director of Laboratories at
the New York Botanical Garden in 1911, a

1984]

Lange — Botanists and Naturalists at Devil’s Lake

121

position he held until his retirement in 1947.
He is best known for his studies on the steril¬
ity and fertility of seed plants, especially the
day lily (Robbins, 1958; Stout, 1939).

In 1882 “Miss Remington” collected the
only known specimen of twin-flower (Lin-
naea borealis) from the Baraboo Hills; the
locality is “Baraboo.” The locality has
intrigued me more than the identity of “Miss
Remington” (the collector might have been
May Belle or Maud Estelle Remington,
graduates of the University of Wisconsin in
1881 —Sauk County Democrat , 25 June
1881). Science classes from Baraboo High
School have been coming to Devil’s Lake for
field trips since the 1800s, for example the
botany class to Pine Hollow (Pine Glen
Scientific Area) in 1898 (Baraboo Republic ,
11 May 1898). Possibly the plant was found

in this locality, a steep, wooded gorge in the
park, but deliberate search by the author for
twin-flower in Pine Hollow has been unsuc¬
cessful.

Devil’s Lake was becoming a popular
place to search for plants by the late 1800s
and early 1900s. C. H. Sylvester did so in
1886, collecting both on the bluffs and in the
lake, and William Finger was here in 1903;
the herbaria of Sylvester and Finger are at
the Milwaukee Public Museum. Will Sayer
Moffat (born in 1847) was an M.D. and ac¬
tive student of the flora of the Chicago re¬
gion for many years; he collected at Devil’s
Lake in 1895 (specimens at the University of
Wisconsin).

Levi M. Umbach (1853-1918), a science
instructor at North-western College (now
North Central College) in Naperville, Illinois,

Fig. 3. An “excursion” of University of Wisconsin students on the west bluff overlooking Devil’s Lake in the 1890s,
Lellen Sterling Cheney (marked with an x) the instructor. From the University of Wisconsin Herbarium, Collectors’
Files.

122

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

was an avid plant collector who compiled a
herbarium of some 45,000 plants. The
Umbach Herbarium was purchased by the
University of Wisconsin in 1927 (Williams,
1929, p. 1). Umbach visited Devil’s Lake
every year from 1895 through 1900 and
among his Devil’s Lake specimens are the
only collection of a dryland sedge (Bul-
bostylis capillaris) and the first collection of
an uncommon gerardia (Agalinis gattingeri).
H. S. Pepoon’s Flora of the Chicago Region
is dedicated to Umbach, “best of friends and
most enthusiastic of plant collectors.”

Several University of Wisconsin faculty
members visited Devil’s Lake around the
turn of the century, specifically, Lellen Ster¬
ling Cheney (1858-1938), Rodney Howard
True (1866-1940), and Edward Kremers
(1865-1941).

Cheney was the pioneer of systematic
botany in Wisconsin. He was in charge of
the University Herbarium from 1891-1903
and undertook botanical surveys of the Lake
Superior shore and the Upper Wisconsin
River valley. Transportation was by canoe
or some other type of boat in a Wisconsin
more primeval than any of us can ever know.
Mosses were his main interest; in fact, he
was preparing a catalogue of Wisconsin

mosses at the time of his death (Cheney,
1938; Conklin, 1941, p. 6), but he also added
many vascular plants to the University
Herbarium. His vascular plant collections
from Devil’s Lake (1891-1900) include such
species as rock fern (Polypodium vulgare ),
twisted-stalk ( Streptopus roseus ), mountain
maple (Acer spicatum), red elder (Sambucus
racemosa subsp. pubens ), and bladdernut
(Staphylea trifolia). Cheney taught a number
of courses and in at least one of them “ex¬
cursions” (Fig. 3) were offered (Anon.,
1900, pp. 125-126).

True was from Baraboo, a son of John M.
True who at one time was a state senator
(Baraboo Republic, 28 July 1892; Baraboo
Weekly News, 22 April 1926). He and
Cheney often took field trips together, e.g.
to Wisconsin Dells (Lange, 1981, 1982) and
Devil’s Lake (Fig. 4). True’s collections
from Devil’s Lake (1889-93) include green
dragon (Arisaema dracontium ), a wetland
arum that no longer can be found here; the
scarce Hooker’s orchid (Platanthera hook¬
er i); and a southern bush-clover (Lespedeza
virginica ), known in Wisconsin only from a
few localities in the Baraboo Hills and a
rhyolite outcrop approximately 30 miles
northeast of Baraboo. True concluded his

Fig. 4. Lellen Sterling Cheney
(left) and Rodney Howard
True (right) at Devil’s Lake,
with part of a plant press
between them. A handwritten
note on the back of the original
picture reads: “Devil’s Lake
May 13. 1897 Annual Long
Excursion with Pharmacy
classes.” This picture and Fig.
3 were a 1966 gift to the Uni¬
versity of Wisconsin Depart¬
ment of Botany by Monona L.
Cheney, a daughter of L. S.
Cheney. From the University
of Wisconsin Herbarium, Col¬
lectors’ Files.

1984]

Lange — Botanists and Naturalists at Devil's Lake

123

academic career at the University of Penn¬
sylvania where he was instrumental in initiat¬
ing an updated state flora (Fogg, 1982, p.
20).

Kremers was in the Pharmaceutical De¬
partment of the University and his herbar¬
ium of economic plants included some from
Devil’s Lake. In 1892 he expanded the 2-year
course in pharmacy to 4 in pharmaceutical
chemistry, the first of its kind in the United
States ([Smith] 1941; Urdang, 1945).

John Ronald Heddle, a Nebraskan, is the
next botanist to appear on the Devil’s Lake
scene. He received his Bachelor’s degree in
botany from the University of Wisconsin in
1910, and both the University and the Mil¬
waukee Public Museum have Heddle speci¬
mens from Devil’s Lake (1907-17), including
a quillwort ( Isoetes macrospora) and several
species of Juneberries ( Amelanchier ).
Heddle in more recent years was living in
Racine, Wisconsin, where apparently he died
in the 1970’s (Mary C. Bell, Valley County
Genealogical Society, Ord, Nebraska, in
litt.).

At the time that Heddle was collecting at
Devil’s Lake, a committee of local citizens
was agitating for a Devil’s Lake State Park.
On a spring day in 1907, for example, state
legislators and guests had a picnic and lun¬
cheon at the lake: they listened to speeches,
heard the Baraboo Marine Band, and many
of them climbed the bluffs where residents
pointed out choice views and rare plants
(Baraboo Weekly News , 8 May 1907). The
park was established in 1 9 1 1 .

In the same year that the park was becom¬
ing reality, a man was retiring as a medical
doctor at age 59 and embarking on a new
career — Curator of the University of Wis¬
consin Herbarium, a position he would hold
until his death. This was John Jefferson
Davis (1852-1937), who had already been
collecting plants as a young man (Wad-
mond, 1956, p. 77). His first botanical
interest was in collecting and naming seed
plants he observed on his medical travels in
the country, but his training as a physician

Fig. 5. John Jefferson Davis, Curator of the Uni¬
versity of Wisconsin Herbarium, 1911-37. From the
U.W. Herbarium.

led to curiosity about diseases and finally to
the fungi producing the diseases (Jones,
1972). Davis (Fig. 5) brought his plant col¬
lection with him to Madison and supervised
the herbarium’s growth for the next quarter-
century, during which time he became
acknowledged as an authority on parasitic
fungi. The University of Wisconsin has
vascular plants, e.g. squawroot ( Conopholis
americana ), collected by Davis at Devil’s
Lake from 1913-29.

Rollin Henry Denniston (1874-1957) was
another University of Wisconsin figure who
collected in the park, e.g. arrow-leaved
violet ( Viola lanceolata) in 1930. Denniston
was an instructor in pharmaceutical botany
and botany.

Albert M. Fuller (1899-1981) of the Mil¬
waukee Public Museum was at Devil’s Lake
State Park on 28 July 1930, looking for
ladies ’-tresses orchids (< Spirant hes ), “but
saw no plants” (Fuller, 1930). In the
following January he was writing Norman

124

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

Fig. 6. Norman Carter Fassett, Curator of the
University of Wisconsin Herbarium, 1937-54. From
Taxon 4:51, 1955.

Carter Fassett at the University of Wisconsin
for the ladies ’-tresses orchid that “Umbach
collected at Devil’s Lake, Wisconsin August
23, 1900” (Fuller, 1931). Fuller’s Orchids of
Wisconsin , a Milwaukee Public Museum
bulletin, was published in 1933.

Fuller joined the Milwaukee Public
Museum staff in 1923, following his gradu¬
ation from the University of Wisconsin, and
was the Museum’s Curator of Botany from
1933 until his retirement in 1964. Some of his
field work on orchids was done in the Baileys
Harbor area of Door County, Wisconsin,
and he was much involved in the establish¬
ment of the Ridges Sanctuary there (Traven,
1981). His concern for the preservation of
natural areas is evidenced by the nine years
he served as Chairman of the Scientific
Areas Preservation Council of Wisconsin.

Emil P. Kruschke (1907-76) was another
Milwaukee Public Museum figure of these
years. He was Assistant Curator of Botany
from 1938-64, and Curator from 1964-74

when he retired. Kruschke specialized in the
taxonomy of hawthorns ( Crataegus ), and
advised poison control centers, the city
health department and the police on poison¬
ous plants. Like Fuller, he served on the
Scientific Areas Preservation Council of
Wisconsin (Pease, 1974; Anon., 1976). In
1933 he was at Devil’s Lake State Park
where he collected such plants as pale
corydalis ( Corydalis sempervirens).

As a result of correspondence in 1934
between Fuller and N. C. Fassett (Fuller,
1934), Richard W. Pohl, now Distinguished
Professor and Curator of the Herbarium at
Iowa State University, decided to work on
the angiosperm order, Rhamnales. He at¬
tended Marquette University from 1935-39,
when he was also a volunteer at the Milwau¬
kee Public Museum. Pohl, a grass specialist,
first learned to identify grasses when he
worked one summer as a Civilian Conserva¬
tion Corps enrollee at Interstate State Park
in northwestern Wisconsin and made a few
field trips to Devil’s Lake State Park (Pohl,
in litt.). The Milwaukee Public Museum has
a panic-grass ( Dichanthelium xantho-
physum ) collected by Pohl at Devil’s Lake
State Park in 1937.

Norman Carter Fassett (1900-54) followed
Davis as Curator of the University of
Wisconsin Herbarium. Fassett (Fig. 6) was
born in Massachusetts and attended Harvard
University where he studied estuarine plants
for his Ph.D. under Merritt Lyndon Fernald
(Peattie, 1954). Aquatic plants became an
abiding interest, as he surveyed aquatic
vegetation first in Wisconsin and later in
Central America, and wrote A Manual of
Aquatic Plants. His other books are Spring
Flora of Wisconsin , Leguminous Plants of
Wisconsin , Grasses of Wisconsin , Ferns and
Fern Allies of Wisconsin (one of four
authors) and Flay fever Plants of the Middle-
west (one of three authors); his bibliography
(Bruch and litis, 1966) also includes approx¬
imately 100 papers. Fassett became a leader
of taxonomic thought in North America and
at the time of his death was President of the

1984]

Lange— Botanists and Naturalists at Devil’s Lake

125

American Association of Plant Taxonom¬
ists, an organization of which he was a
founder (Thomson, 1955).

Fassett was also a major figure in the con¬
servation movement in Wisconsin (Anderson
and Tryon, 1955). He sparked field botany
and ecological work at the University, was
active in the establishment of the Arbore¬
tum, served as the first chairman of the
committee for preserving natural areas, and
very likely introduced many botanical ideas
to Aldo Leopold (Bean, et. al., 1954;
Thomson, 1955).

Fassett came to Wisconsin in 1925 as an
instructor in botany. Within a year he was
adding specimens to the University Herbar¬
ium from a number of places, including
Devil’s Lake State Park, e.g. a sedge ( Carex
artitecta) new to the park and still known in
Wisconsin only from here, and Selkirk’s
violet ( Viola selkirkii). The following year
(1927) he found another northern violet
( Viola septentrionalis) in the park. Fassett
personally collected some 28,000 specimens
for the University Herbarium, which grew
several-fold during his years at Wisconsin.

Under Fassett’ s guidance, James Hall
Zimmerman (Fig. 7) in the summer of 1946
conducted a botanical survey of the park,
which included mapping vegetation, locating
rare species, and recommending sensitive
areas (Zimmerman, 1947). Zimmerman re¬
ceived a small stipend from the Wisconsin
Department of Natural Resources for this
project. He reported the first park records
for a number of species, including a quill-
wort ( Isoetes echinospora ), a sedge ( Carex
prasina), two grasses (Aristida dichotoma,
known in Wisconsin only from the park
where apparently it is disjunct from central
Illinois, and Poa nemoralis ), and certain
dicots; he also collected here in succeeding
years. His compilation of ferns and seed
plants (Zimmerman, 1962) has been the
foundation of the park’s current vascular
species list.

Zimmerman has many fond memories of
that summer. He rode the train back and

Fig. 7. James Hall Zimmerman, naturalist and con¬
sulting ecologist. Photo courtesy of J. H. Zimmerman.

forth from Madison, his home, staying in an
upstairs room above the park’s garage. On
his first day the park superintendent drove
him to the top of the east bluff and Zim¬
merman then proceeded to follow Fassett’s
advice — collect everything you don’t know
and also everything you think you know. By
the time he staggered back with a stuffed
vasculum and put the plants in a press, it was
early the next morning. Thirty- five years
later, Zimmerman (in litt.) recalled that
sunny June day: “I remember seeing the
Peregrine Falcons stoop from their eyrie,
how the bluff looked, and many of the
plants ...”

Zimmerman is an instructor in the Univer¬
sity of Wisconsin’s Department of Land¬
scape Architecture and a consulting ecolo¬
gist. His current projects include sedges
(Carex) of Wisconsin and an ecology book.

For more than half a century up to 100 or
more University of Wisconsin students came
to Devil’s Lake State Park for a one-day
field trip in the spring as a review for the

126

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

final exam in the second semester botany
course. At first they came by train, but later
by bus. The tradition was started by George
Smith Bryan (1879-1958) of Charleston,
South Carolina, who taught the course until
his retirement in 1949, and was continued by
Herbert M. Clarke (1909-81) of Indiana until
his retirement in 1974.

Bryan, with his duck hunter’s cap, was a
colorful story teller with a southern accent.
Former students now in their senior years
continue to recall him with fondness, and
this is also true of Clarke who always tried to
reach each student. These leaders strove to
make the field trip a true sharing experience.
The class broke into groups at the park.
Both faculty and teaching assistants guided
in earlier years when the group was larger,
but in later years with smaller groups only
Clarke and one or two assistants guided.
They started at the south end of the lake,
along the railroad tracks, and headed for
Koshawago Springs near the southwestern
corner of the lake. Here they always stopped
for coffee. For lunch each student brought
something to share, rather than an in¬
dividual meal. The instructor, Bryan or
Clarke, fried small pig sausages and bacon in
a 12-inch skillet. After lunch they sometimes
climbed a bluff. Since the course was a sur¬
vey of all plants, the students were shown
examples of all major plant groups; by the
springs, for example, they looked for red
algae (Clarke, pers. comm.).

Botanists and other scientists continue to
visit the park. Thomas G. Hartley, now in
Australia with the Division of Plant Industry
in Canberra, studied the flora of the driftless
area for his Ph.D thesis (Hartley, 1962,
1966) and his collecting stations included
Devil’s Lake State Park (Hartley, 1962, pp.
126, 127). Robert C. Koeppen, now with the
U.S. Forest Service in Washington, D.C.,
collected in the park for his report on the
mints of Wisconsin. William E. Tans, then
with the Wisconsin Department of Natural
Resources’ Scientific Areas Preservation
Council, added a plant to the park’s list

when in 1968 he discovered the three birds
orchid (Triphora trianthophora). Michael
Nee and Robert K. Peet in 1969 found ebony
spleenwort {Asplenium platy neuron), a new
species for the park; Nee is a Botany Curator
at the New York Botanical Garden, and Peet
is in the Department of Botany at the Uni¬
versity of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Theodore S. Cochrane, a Curator at the Uni¬
versity of Wisconsin Herbarium, collected
marsh plants along the lake shore in 1975
with J. H. Zimmerman on a sedge class field
trip. William S. Alverson, then with the
Scientific Areas Preservation Council, made
a 1981 collection of the sedge {Car ex arti-
tecta) known in Wisconsin only from the
park. Sylvia A. Edlund studied the ecology
of pale corydalis in the park (Edlund, 1970),
and F. Christopher Baker surveyed littoral
macrophytes in the lake (Baker, 1975). Hans
Ris, a geneticist in the University of Wiscon¬
sin Zoology Department specializing in
chromosomal studies, collected quillworts in
Devil’s Lake. W. Carl Taylor, a pteridolo-
gist at the Milwaukee Public Museum, has
also collected quillworts in the lake and in
1978, with Neil T. Luebke, Assistant Cura¬
tor of Vascular Plants at the Museum, found
Christmas fern (Polystichum acrostich-
oides), a first record for the park. In recent
years still other botanists, e.g. Philip B.
Whitford and Forest Stearns of the Univer¬
sity of Wisconsin- Milwaukee, have led field
trips for school classes in the park.

Four scientific areas have been designated
in the park. One of these, the Red Oak
Scientific Area, was recommended by Wis¬
consin’s pioneering ecologist, John T. Curtis
(1913-61). Gary Birch, then with the Scien¬
tific Areas Preservation Council, compiled a
quantitative data sheet of this scientific area
in 1976, using the point quarter method of
Grant Cottam and Curtis.

Another scientific area in the park is
Parfrey’s Glen, a narrow, rocky gorge four
miles east of Devil’s Lake. Its beauty and
unusual plants have long attracted botanists.
Among them, as determined by vascular

1984]

Lange — Botanists and Naturalists at Devil's Lake

127

plant collections in the University of Wis¬
consin Herbarium, have been Samuel
Christensen (S.C.) Wadmond of Racine,
Wisconsin; Edgar T. Wherry (1885-1982)
and Arthur N. Leeds (1870-1939) for the
Academy of Natural Sciences of Phila¬
delphia; Douglas W. Dunlop, now Prof.
Emeritus of U.W. -Milwaukee and one of the
authors of Ferns and Fern Allies of Wiscon¬
sin ; Frederick J. Hermann, now in Fort
Collins, Colorado, a moss specialist; Henry
C. Greene (1904-67), who succeeded Davis
as the University of Wisconsin’s authority
on parasitic fungi; John W. Thomson, of the
University of Wisconsin-Madison Depart¬
ment of Botany, a lichen specialist; Hugh H.
litis, Curator of the University of Wisconsin
Herbarium since Fassett’s death; Donald
Ugent, Curator of the Southern Illinois Uni¬
versity Herbarium; and Marsha Waterway,
who studied clubmosses ( Lycopodium ).

The most extensive survey of the crypto¬
gams of the park has been the study of the
boulder fields of the Devil’s Lake bluffs by
Patricia Armstrong (1968); she found 35
species of mosses and 43 species of lichens,
including a new state record, the boreal
lichen, Parmelia substygia (Armstrong,
1970). Armstrong is an educator at the
Morton Arboretum in Lisle, Illinois. Irving
Halsey Black (1941) compared the mosses
and liverworts on sandstone and quartzite
in the Baraboo Hills, including Devil’s Lake
State Park; bryophytes in the park have also
been investigated in recent years by Richard
I. Evans, Frank D. Bowers, James A.
McCleary, and (lichens also) Marietta S.
Cole.

The author of this paper has been the park
naturalist at Devils Lake since 1966, and has
recommended scientific areas, initiated
prairie restoration projects, compiled
vascular plant lists for a number of park
areas, added a number of species to the
park’s vascular plant list, including such
uncommon natives as bush-clover {Lespe-
deza violacea) and purple milkweed ( Asclep -
ias purpurascens ), and rediscovered others,

notably maidenhair-spleenwort ( Asplenium
trichomanes) in 1978, which Fassett had first
found in the park in 1926. An herbarium of
vascular plants, mostly from the park and
the Baraboo Hills, is located in the Nature
Center.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to the curatorial staffs at the
herbaria of the University of Wisconsin-
Madison, especially Theodore S. Cochrane,
and the Milwaukee Public Museum, espe¬
cially Neil T. Luebke, for all their patience
with my many inquiries. James H. Zimmer¬
man kindly shared his memories of his field
work in the park, and Herbert M. Clarke, on
a pleasant afternoon shortly before his
death, shared his reminiscences of the
botany field trips in the park. Michael J.
Mossman, John W. Thomson, and Glenn
Sonnedecker referred me to sources that I
would otherwise have missed.

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7 pp.

HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN
ARBORETUM PRAIRIES

Thomas J. Blewett and Grant Cottam
Department of Botany
University of Wisconsin — Madison

The University of Wisconsin Arboretum
was started with a grand and almost impos¬
sible idea— to recreate in 1200 acres the vege¬
tation of an area extending beyond Wiscon¬
sin’s borders. It was not to be merely a
collection of trees and flowers in formal beds
and with carefully manicured lawns. It was
to be a collection of biotic communities.
Aldo Leopold first gave voice to this idea at
the dedication ceremonies for the Arbore¬
tum in 1934. He said the Arboretum should
be a “sample of what Dane county looked
like when our ancestors arrived here.”
(Sachse, 1965). That basic idea was subse¬
quently enlarged to include the vegetation of
the entire state, and later to include such
exotic communities as Ohio valley hard¬
woods, and a Rocky Mountain forest com¬
plex. The initiators of this plan were un¬
doubtedly unaware of the magnitude of the
task they had set for themselves. A biotic
community is an exceedingly complex thing,
with thousands of different kinds of plants
and animals, most of them too small to see
with the naked eye but all of them influ¬
encing each other in some way. At the time

Fig. 1. Land ownership at the time of acquisition in
1932 (Curtis 1951).

of the beginning of the Arboretum, ecology
at Wisconsin was in its infancy, and the
knowledge of the complex communities that
were to be created was grossly inadequate.
Nevertheless, the basic philosophy stated by
Leopold in 1934 continues today as the guid¬
ing principle on which the development of
the Arboretum is based.

Curtis Prairie

According to the original Government
Land Survey records of 1835, the presettle¬
ment landscape of the Arboretum was dom¬
inated by oak openings and marsh. Large
bur and white oaks were scattered over the
uplands at a density of 15 to 20 trees per
acre, and the ground cover was prairie
grasses, prairie forbs, some shrubs and
scattered oak brush or “grubs” which were
mostly black oaks (Curtis 1951).

The area was first settled in 1836 and by
1860 the land had passed through eleven
owners. The Bartlett family farmed the land
from 1863 until about 1920 when cultivation
was abandoned. Apparently, the land was
regularly plowed and planted with corn, oats
and pasture in rotation. This cropping seems
to have been restricted largely to the western
two-thirds (i.e. west of the dividing fire lane)
of Curtis Prairie, while the wetter eastern
third was probably not plowed. The north¬
ern half of the unplowed section, was undis¬
turbed (or perhaps lightly grazed in dry
years), while the southern half was a mowing
meadow (Figure 1) (Curtis 1951).

After remaining fallow for about six years
the land was leased in 1926 or 1927 to a
veterinarian named West, who pastured 35
to 40 horses on the present Curtis Prairie,
including the previously “undisturbed” area

130

1984]

Blewett and Cottam — Arboretum Prairies

131

and the mowing meadow, until 1932. The
Bartlett farm was part of the Bartlett-Noe
estate purchased by the University of Wis¬
consin regents for an Arboretum in 1933. A
small part of the Curtis Prairie was acquired
in 1932 as part of the Nelson farm (Figure 1).
At the time of purchase the fields were domi¬
nated by quackgrass (Agropyron repens ),
which gave way to bluegrass species {Poa
pratensis and P. compressa) within a few
years.

The Prairie Experiment

The restoration of the prairies benefited
greatly from the presence at the Arboretum
of a Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC)
camp. This camp of about 200 young men
was active from 1934 to 1941 and was re¬
sponsible for many of the physical structures
on the arboretum and most of the early
plantings. The camp was run by the army,
but planning and direction of the work was
the responsibility of the National Park
Service, and during this period the Arbore¬
tum was officially designated a park. The
Park Service hired Dr. Theodore Sperry to
direct the prairie plantings. Sperry worked
under the technical direction of Aldo Leo¬
pold and William Longenecker. The availa¬
bility of a large labor force and trucks and
other machinery enabled the prairie restora¬
tion work to be accomplished much more
rapidly than would have otherwise been pos¬
sible. Indeed, the methods used would have
been impossible without this assistance of
the CCC.

Norman Fassett is credited with being the
first to have the idea for creating a prairie in
the Arboretum (Thomson and Cottam
1978). In 1935 Fassett assigned two students,
John Thomson and Roger Reeve, to study
through a series of experiments the feasibil¬
ity of prairie re-establishment on old pasture
in the Arboretum.

When Fassett and Thomson began their
experimental work (Reeve was apparently
less involved), little was known about plant¬
ing procedures for developing a characteris¬

tic complement of prairie plants in old field
or meadows. The experiments were con¬
ducted mostly in upland plots near the
present Leopold pines though a few plots
were located in the lowlands of the prairie.
At the time the experiment was initiated, the
upland plots were in old pasture dominated
by bluegrass, quackgrass, mullein and thistle
while the lowland plots had been in corn.

The soil was prepared in three ways: 1) the
ground surface was scalped (everything was
removed), 2) the soil was plowed, or 3) the
bluegrass sod was burned. Superimposed on
the three types of soil preparation were three
types of planting methods: 1) the introduc¬
tion of prairie sods, 2) planting of seed, and
3) placement of prairie hay collected from
area remnant prairies. In addition some
small shrubs were transplanted (Thomson
1937, Thomson and Cottam 1978).

Planting materials were collected in the
fall of 1935. Hay and sods were collected in a
low prairie near Mazomanie, on a dry hill-
slope and a wet meadow between Sauk City
and Mazomanie, on a dry hillslope 4 Vi miles
west of Middleton, on the sand plains near
Arena and on the sand plains northwest of
Spring Green. To acquire western prairie
species Dr. Fassett assisted with the
collection of shrubs and seeds on the bluffs
of the Mississippi River at Hager, and addi¬
tional seeds were collected on the Mississippi
River terraces near Lake Pepin and north of
Portage (Thomson 1937).

A series of experimental plots which were
usually 30 ' x 30 ' were established in the fall
of 1937. On these quadrats different com¬
binations of soil preparation and plant intro¬
ductions were tried. Thomson summarized
the experimental methods of 1937 and by
then it was apparent that the best survival of
plantings was with the 1935-1936 sodding
technique.

The first major effort at developing a
prairie was made under the direction of Dr.
Theodore Sperry. A total of 42 species were
planted in large pure blocks (Figure 2) by the
use of seeds, seedlings and sod transplants.

132

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

Fig. 2. Examples of Sperry’s block planting of species (Arboretum file map).

1 . Andropogon gerardi

2. Andropogon scoparius

3. Baptisia leucantha

4. control area

5. Koeleria cristata

6. Lepachys pinnata

7. Liatris scariosa

8. Liatris spicata

The seeds and sods were collected from
prairie remnants near the Wisconsin River
(e.g. Thomson above) and seedlings were
raised in nursery plots maintained within the
area being restored to prairie. There is no
precise estimate available of the number of
plants involved in the Sperry plantings
because Sperry’s notes on the plantings (on
file at the Arboretum) often indicate only the
number of clumps, tons or truck loads. For
example, over 40 tons of big bluestem ( An¬
dropogon gerardi) sods were transplated
(Curtis 1951).

A large map detailing the planting loca¬
tions of all 42 species between 1936 and 1940
was left by Sperry and is now on file in the
Arboretum. In 1950 the Arboretum Botan¬
ist, David Archbald, ranked the success rate

9. natural revegetation

10. nursery

1 1 . Petalostemum purpureum

12. Solidago rigida

13. Sorghastrum nutans

14. Spartina pectinata

15. Stipaspartea

16. Tradescantia reflexa

for each of the planting methods for all
species (appended to Curtis 1951). The
success was evaluated by plot without regard
to the number of individuals planted in each
plot. The success of each of the three plant¬
ing methods (seeds, seedlings and sods) was
very similar, but the sod technique appeared
to have a slight edge. In Curtis’ view the
expense of the sod technique out-weighed its
slight advantage over the other planting
methods.

Under adversely dry conditions the sods
may have the best advantage, but, as Curtis
(1952) later noted, for large scale efforts
such as the Arboretum projects “there is a
need for inexpensive methods because of the
large number of individuals’’ required to
establish the prairie landscape. This led

1984]

Blewett and Cottam — Arboretum Prairies

133

Curtis to recommend broadcast seeding after
spring burns as the most economical method
for large scale efforts. This method, of
course, is very much dependent on good
weather and viable seed.

Additional planting experiments were ini¬
tiated by Dr. John Catenhusen in 1942 on a
10' x 30' plot that was subdivided into
three 10' by 10' blocks. These efforts con¬
sisted of direct seeding on desodded and un¬
treated ground. In the first block only big
bluestem and Indian grass ( Sorghastrum
nutans) were planted, in the second block the
grasses were planted in mixture with forbs
and in the third block only forbs were
planted. Catenhusen left for military service
and his plantings suffered the misfortunes of
poor climatic conditions (McCabe 1980).
Following Catenhusen, Robert McCabe was
appointed Arboretum Biologist and he re¬
peated the Catenhusen experiment on new
soil adjacent to the original plot in the spring
of 1943 (Figure 3). McCabe’s plantings were
successful and the pure grass block was
eventually invaded by forbs resulting in a
mixture that persists today. The mixed block
did not change much except as new species
entered by natural propagation. The forbs
block, however, remained almost pure forbs
for many years and is still identifiable today.
The beneficial value of desodding was af-

Fig. 3. Locations of some experiments: 1 — Fassett and
Thomson, 2 — Catenhusen and McCabe, 3 — Curtis and
Cottam, 4— Burn plots of the 1940’s, and 5— Robocker
(Curtis, 1951).

firmed as part of the Robocker experiments
(Curtis 1951, Robocker et al. 1953), but this
method cannot be used without destroying
already established vegetation such as the
Sperry plantings.

Supporting Research

During the 1940’s a series of research
projects was conducted to learn more about
the planting requirements and ecology of
prairie plants. During this time Dr. Henry
Greene began his large scale prairie experi¬
ment in the Grady Tract (see Greene Prairie
below). McCabe remained as the Arboretum
Biologist for about two and one-half years
and then left for a lecture appointment at the
University, but from the beginning of his
appointment at the Arboretum until about
1950 he continued to conduct experiments in
the Arboretum. Another of his experiments
tested different methods of soil preparation
before planting a mixture of prairie grasses.
The test included a control (no preparation),
raking the soil, burning and raking, and
burning only. The combination of burning
and raking the soil gave the best results for
the establishment of big bluestem and little
bluestem. (Andropogon gerardi, A. Scopar-
ius) and Indian grass. In another unpub¬
lished experiment McCabe tested the estab¬
lishment success of wild indigo ( Baptisia
leucanthd) using three different seed treat¬
ments. One set of seed was treated with
sulfuric acid, a second set was collected
while still green in the pod and the third set
was “normal” seed from the dry pods. The
green seed was found to give the best germi¬
nation and establishment success. McCabe
hypothesized that this was an adaptation to
the green pods being eaten by large herbi¬
vores such as the bison and being passed
through the digestive tract before the seeds
had dried in the pod.

The most significant management experi¬
ment conducted in this period was the re¬
search on the effect of fire on competition
between bluegrass and some prairie plants by
Curtis and Partch (1948). From 1941

134

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

through 1946 under the direction of McCabe
a strict burning schedule was established for
burns in March, May and October on both
an annual and biennial basis. The treatment
areas included both planted and unplanted
prairie in 25' x 220' plots with adjacent
controls that were not burned. After six
years the density of the blue grass sod was
reduced to one-fifth its original condition
and bare ground was greatly increased in the
burn plots. Species that were able to increase
in the burn plots include the prairie peren¬
nials of rattlesnake master (Eryngium yucci-
folium), Big bluestem, Stiff goldenrod
{Solidago rigida) and blazing star ( Liatris
aspera) and certain weedy forbs such as
ragweed {Ambrosia artemisiifolia ), heath
aster {Aster ericoides) and daisy fleabane
{Erigeron annuus). Wild indigo showed no
response while purple cone-flower {Echin¬
acea purpurea) which is a more southern
species, out of its range in Madison, was set
back by fire. In this experiment the bluegrass
was perceived as out-competing prairie
plants for water, light and space and its
removal or limitation by fire was considered
necessary to reduce competition and permit
other species to advance.

Further research was done by Curtis and
Partch (1950) on the factors affecting flower
production in big bluestem. In this study it
was found that the most important factor
limiting flower production was the presence
of a cover of old litter on the crowns.
Effective removal of this cover could be
obtained either by burning or by clipping
and the result was a six-fold increase in
flowering and a 60 percent increase in plant
height. Additional evidence on the impor¬
tance of fire was found in the comparison of
the Sperry plantings with the Archbald
plantings of the 1950’s (see below). A decade
after the Sperry plantings the original
planting blocks were still clearly evident
while a decade after the Archbald plantings
the plots were no longer distinguishable. The
only treatment difference between the two
plantings was the use of fire after the

Archbold plantings and not after the Sperry
plantings (Wilson 1964).

Between 1937 and 1948, Green and Curtis
(1950) conducted germination studies on 91
species of prairie plants using seed that had
been collected from southern and western
Wisconsin remnant prairies. In a group of 51
species where various stratifications (cold
treatments) were tested, 73 percent appeared
to benefit by some stratification treatment.
In a group of 12 species, mostly having hard
seed coats, 83 percent were benefited by
scarification techniques. Sometimes year-to-
year differences were similar in both strati¬
fied and non-stratified seeds indicating that
physiological conditions may be an impor¬
tant factor in germination success from any
one year’s seed crop. In general it appears
that prairie grasses and composites need cold
treatment or overwintering for successful
germination, and most Wisconsin prairie
plants are absolutely dependent on strati¬
fication.

From 1947 to 1949 Curtis and Cottam
(1950) studied clones of four species of
Helianthus (sunflowers) in the Curtis Prairie
(Figure 3). Two species, stiff sunflower {H.
laetiflorus (= H. rigidus)) and naked stem
sunflower {H. occidental is), were observed
to have probable antibiotic and autotoxic
effects and most other species did poorly
where grown next to them. They found a
reduction of flowering and vigor of blue-
grass and bergamot {Monarda fistulosa) as
well as of H. laetiflorus itself in the center of
the sunflower clone. They concluded that the
antibiotic and autotoxic effects exhibited by
stiff sunflower were due to chemical toxins
derived from the underground plant parts.
The toxin was produced in the spring of each
year during the period of most rapid decom¬
position of old rhizomes, and did not persist
until the next year.

The Robocker experiments (Robocker et
al. 1953) were another contribution to the
understanding of requirements for establish¬
ing prairie plants (Figure 3). They studied
grass seedling emergence and growth in the

1984]

Blewett and Cottam — Arboretum Prairies

135

greenhouse. Using seeds that had been dry
stored, they found that the optimum plant¬
ing time following harvesting was species
specific. For example, little bluestem suc¬
ceeded best the first year after harvest, big
bluestem was more successful in the second
season after harvest and Indian grass seed¬
ling production was equally successful over
each of the three seasons of planting follow¬
ing harvest. In a field study of the effects of
weed cover on establishment of prairie seed¬
lings, they found 80 percent and 60 percent
reductions in seedling density of big blue¬
stem and switchgrass ( Panicum virgatum ),
respectively, in unclipped plots compared to
plots where competition was minimized by
clipping.

Additional Plantings

After the first comprehensive burning of
Curtis Prairie in 1950, the second major
planting program was begun under David
Archbald, then Arboretum Botanist. Most
of the plantings were done between 1950 and
1955, but additional plantings were made
through 1957. A total of 156 species were
introduced into select portions of Curtis
Prairie (Figure 4).

A number of methods were employed for
plantings including seed casting after a burn,
hand insertion of large seeds such as needle
grass ( Stipa spar tea ), discing with seed cast¬
ing and cover crop, and importation of sods
as had been done by Thomson and Sperry.

Fig. 4. Major planting areas of the Archbald years
(1950-1957).

The use of stratified seed on disced ground
under a cover crop gave best results (Wilson
1964). Wilson concluded that the present
occurrence of species in the Curtis Prairie
was due primarily to 1) the spread of existing
plants following the initiation of periodic
burning in 1950 and 2) the intensive planting
program begun under Archbald in the
1950’s.

The Contribution of John T. Curtis

Curtis became interested in the University
of Wisconsin Arboretum shortly after his
arrival as a graduate student in 1934, only
two years after the initial property acquisi¬
tions for the Arboretum, and maintained his
intense interest and concern for the develop¬
ment of a broad spectrum of Wisconsin and
North American communities in the Arbore¬
tum until his death in 1961 .

In 1937 J. T. Curtis was appointed as
instructor in Botany where his research
interest in orchids was reflected in his
publications from 1936 to 1946. In 1939 he
was added to the Arboretum staff as Direc¬
tor of Plant Research and member of the
Arboretum Committee, serving with Aldo
Leopold who was then Director of Animal
Research (Greene 1961, Sachse 1965). Dur¬
ing this time Curtis began his research on the
ecology of plant communities, including
some work in Arboretum forests and
prairies.

Curtis’s development as an ecologist in
Wisconsin was interrupted by his service in
Haiti during World War II, but upon his
return he resumed his position in Botany and
was appointed to the newly formed post of
Arboretum Research Coordinator. His
research in prairie ecology in the Arboretum
and around the state moved into full swing
with numerous papers (Curtis and Partch
1949, Curtis and Greene 1949, Greene and
Curtis 1950, Curtis and Partch 1950, Curtis
and Cottam 1950, Robocker, Curtis and
Ahlgren 1953, Greene and Curtis, 1953).
Curtis also developed a unique seed ex¬
change with other arboreta and botanical

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

gardens around the U.S. and the world.
Unlike most seed exchanges, Curtis’ idea
was to offer seeds of desirable native plants.
This resulted in a great demand for Arbore¬
tum seed (Greene 1961).

Because of the many changes in staff that
had taken place since the drafting of a
master plan in 1939, a new master plan was
issued in 1949 which covered plans for the
entire Arboretum. The main objective of the
new plan was the development of “an out¬
door demonstration and research area in
which native plants, animals and landscapes
can be studied under natural or nearly
natural conditions’’ which would provide
many research opportunities for biological
sciences. So as not to exclude other academic
disciplines, it was also intended to provide
“living models or dioramas of the pre-settle¬
ment Wisconsin landscapes for the study and
inspiration of many students of art, litera¬
ture, history, geography, hydrology and
other disciplines outside the scope of tech¬
nical biological science” (Sachse 1965). This
plan also called for specific master plans for
each of the major plant community projects
in the Arboretum. Curtis fulfilled that
requirement for the Curtis Prairie project
with a detailed accounting of history,
research, results and management proposals
in 1951, the same year in which he achieved
the rank of full professor in the Botany
Department.

Fig. 5. Burn management units of Curtis Prairie. Unit
E was a control that has been lost to the berm that has
been constructed in its place.

During the 1950’s Curtis was deeply in¬
volved in continued prairie restoration work
and other Arboretum research projects as
well as directing many thesis projects in the
Botany Department. Most of these thesis
projects involved the study of natural Wis¬
consin plant communities, from which data
essential for the establishment of these com-

Table 1. Known burn record of Arboretum prairies
from an addendum to Curtis (1951) and Arboretum
files.

Curtis

Greene

1950

A,B (burn units)

all?

1951

—

—

1952

C,D

—

1953

B

—

1954

A

all

1955

C,D

—

1956

B

—

1957

A

—

1958

C,D

all

1959

B

—

1960

A

— r

1961

C,D

all

1962

B

—

1963

A

—

1970

D*

—

1971

—

all

1972

A

—

1973

A,B,C,D

—

1974

B,C,D

—

1975

A

all

1976

—

—

1977

A**,B,C,D

—

1978

A,C

all

1979

A

1980

—

—

1981

B,C

—

1982

A***

—

* October burn, other burns usually in March or
April.

** Fire set by vandals burned part of A.

*** Fall burn.

Note: Beginning in 1977, a major sweet clover control
experiment was conducted which involved several dif¬
ferent burning and mowing regimes in Section B. These
treatments included April, May, and Fall burns and
July mowing. The experiment terminated in 1982.

1984]

Blewett and Cottam— -Arboretum Prairies

137

munities in the Arboretum were acquired.
These studies also formed the basis for his
greatest work, The Vegetation of Wisconsin \,
finished in 1959. Curtis not only supervised
the extensive planting work which was done
by Archbald in the early 1950’s, but searched
the state to find prairie remnants and rare
plants that might provide additional seed
sources for the prairie plantings. He was
helped in this search by his botanist wife,
Jane Kurtenacker Curtis, and his students.
Some of Curtis’ students conducted their re¬
search in the Arboretum prairie, for example
Dave Archbald’s work on the effects of
legumes on the establishment of grasses and
Bonita Miller’s study of differential re¬
sponses of various grass species to clipping.

Using the results of the experimental work
on the effects of fire in prairie restoration
and management in the 1930’s and 1940’s a
schedule of prairie burns was initiated. The
first comprehensive burn was in 1950 in the
western part of Curtis Prairie (A in Figure
5). Through the first decade of burning man¬
agement the burn frequency for any part of
the prairie, including Greene Prairie, was
about three years with different parts of
Curtis Prairie being burned almost every
year. The record of burns can be recon¬
structed for the period 1950 to 1963 and 1970
to present (Table 1), but the period 1964 to
1969 was not well recorded. It was appar¬
ently during the 1960’s that the burn fre¬
quency tended toward a biennial rotation
rather than the earlier three year rotation.

The objectives of the burning according to
Curtis’ 1951 Master Plan included preven¬
tion of invasion by woody plants such as oak
(Quercus spp), boxelder (Acer negundo) and
dogwood (Cornus spp) and the weakening of
the dominant blue grass sod so that native
prairie species would be able to advance
more readily. At the same time Curtis recog¬
nized that in addition to blue grass other
problem weeds included white sweet clover
(Melilotus alba), wild parsnip (Pastinaca
sativa ), and Canada thistle (Cirsium arvense)
and he projected that leafy spurge (Euphor¬

bia esula) could become a problem. In the
plan Curtis recommended that a three year
burning rotation be used. It is ironic that as
the three year rotation turned into a two year
rotation, white sweet clover populations
seemed to be enhanced until recent efforts of
Dr. Virginia Kline, Arboretum Ecologist, to
resort to a more variable rotation time. The
blue grass sod is gone, but the species occurs
as abundant scattered individuals through¬
out the prairie and sweet clover, wild pars¬
nip, and leafy spurge continue to be a prob¬
lem today.

Curtis had the foresight to provide excel¬
lent documentation of the development of
the prairies. In 1946 he initiated a system for
surveying the two Arboretum prairies con¬
sisting of a permanent baseline from which a
grid of regularly spaced quadrats could be
established. Every five years since that time,
the prairies have been re-surveyed. The 1946
survey was from a “closed” list, and only
those species that had been planted on the
prairies were surveyed. Since that time every
species, including the weeds, has been
recorded. Major papers reporting on the
results of these surveys are those of Wilson
(1964), Cottam and Wilson (1966), Ander¬
son (1968), Anderson and Cottam (1970)
and Blewett (1981). Blewett focused on
identification of prairie species that appear
to have the most reliable success in establish¬
ment on restored prairies. The research was
also directed at identifying the environ¬
mental factors that appear to have the great¬
est influence in determining whether or not a
planted species will survive. Some species,
including yarrow (Achillea millefolium ), lit¬
tle bluestem, rattlesnake master, and prairie
dock (Silphium terebinthinaceum) , were
consistently successful while other prairie
species, including purple coneflower and
gay feather (Liatris pycnostachya ), did not
show any pattern of success or failure. Still
other species such as quackgrass (Agropyron
repens ), whorled milkweed (Asclepias verti-
cillata) and cordgrass (Spartina pectinata)
had consistent declines in their populations.

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

After examining a number of soil charac¬
teristics including texture, depth of the Ax
horizon, soil color, soil nutrients and pH, it
was found that patterns of soil pH and long
term moisture regime corresponded most
closely with species distributions. Long term
moisture regime was based on soil drainage
characteristics which are influenced by soil
texture, soil structure and topography. Soil
texture alone was not a useful predicter of
species distributions.

The Curtis Prairie experienced several
damaging physical changes during this time.
The increased drainage across the prairie
resulting from construction of the beltline
caused erosion problems. So serious was the
problem that in 1954 one of the gullys in the
west end of the prairie had to be regraded
and replanted. In 1956 the beltline was
widened from a two lane road to a four lane
highway with a median strip. This roadwork
resulted in a substantial loss of the conif¬
erous buffer on the south side of the prairie
and, worse, resulted in erosion-deposition
that buried some of the prairie soil. Addi¬
tional road work in 1959 again caused some
runoff and erosion problems.

In 1959, just as Curtis finished his book,
he was appointed Chairman of the Arbore¬
tum Committee. In this year a lime prairie
project was initiated on the south side of the
prairie. Limestone gravel and boulders were
brought in and emplaced in a manner that
might have led some to believe that there was
a new gravel parking lot under construction.
The work was done under the direct supervi¬
sion of Ed Cawley, then Arboretum Botan¬
ist, and included the introduction of such
dry lime prairie species as blazing star (Lia-
tris cylindracea ), pasque flower (Anemone
patens ), birds foot violet (Viola pedata) and
silky aster (Aster sericeus).

In 1961 the lime prairie as well as many
other parts of the Arboretum were damaged
as a result of repeated “human invasions’’
prompted by a radio WISM treasure hunt
publicity stunt. The lime prairie survived and
additional plantings were made including

side-oats grama grass (Bouteloua curti-
pendula ), prairie dropseed (Sporobolis
heterolepis ), and little bluestem while the
persistent weeds included wild (poison)
parsnip and pilose aster (Aster pilosus) .

1961 also brought a great loss to the
Arboretum and the University of Wisconsin
as John T. Curtis died at age 47 on June 7.
The man had made monumental contribu¬
tions to the Arboretum and to the field of
ecology and had proposed theories about the
nature of plant communities that became
widely recognized and accepted.

The Curtis philosophy was not lost with
his death, but was carried on by Professor
Grant Cottam, successor to Curtis as
Chairman of the Arboretum Committee
(Sachse 1965). Under Cottam many students
have learned elements of community ecology
and field sampling techniques through the
classes he has conducted ever since the
1950’s in the Arboretum woods and Curtis
Prairie. During Cottam’s chairmanship the
only significant impacts that affected the
prairie were additional road work on the
beltline highway and the building of an
earthen berm to retain runoff waters and
sediment from the beltline in the late 1960’s.
In 1976 and 1977 a utility corridor was
implaced and more berm work was done.

Recent Research

During the 1960’s and early 1970’s more
research was conducted on the establishment
of artificial prairies. Cameron Wilson, who
was a graduate student under Grant Cottam,
began by completing the 1961 vegetation sur¬
vey of the Arboretum prairies. On the basis
of the 1951 and 1961 surveys, Wilson exam¬
ined community dynamics in Curtis Prairie
(Wilson 1964). Using Curtis’ indicator spe¬
cies, Cottam and Wilson (1966) defined in
the prairie five stands having different com¬
positions and compared these reestablished
prairie stands to native prairie stands. On the
basis of prairie species, parts of the Curtis
Prairie were comparable to native stands. A
notable difference, however, was the greater

1984]

Blewett and Cottam — Arboretum Prairies

139

presence of non-prairie species in the planted
prairies in comparison to the native stands.
They concluded that the nonprairie species
are gradually diminishing in importance and
that the Curtis Prairie is becoming very sim¬
ilar to native prairies.

In 1969 Jerry Schwarzmeier initiated
experimental plots on Wingra Overlook that
were designed to test potential benefits of
planting prairie seed and seedlings with
companion crops (Schwarzmeier 1971, Zim¬
merman and Schwarzmeier, 1978). The ideal
companion crop would persist for several
years and provide competition for weed
species, but would have minimal interference
with the establishment of the prairie species.
Wild rye ( Elymus canadensis ), oats (Avena
sativa ), and Indian grass were tested individ¬
ually as companion crops with plantings of
prairie seed and seedlings.

The experimental results (Zimmerman and
Schwarzmeier, 1978) showed consistent
success with mowed wild rye as a companion
crop and with mowing of the weeds in
planted plots that used the invading weeds as
a cover crop. The oat companion crop ap¬
parently was beneficial to the establishment
of most prairie species with the exception of
legumes, and Indian grass was found to be
too competitive to be a good companion
crop. Zimmerman (1972) reported on the
propagation of spring prairie plants. Four
species, pasque flower, prairie smoke (Geum
triflorum ), downy phlox ( Phlox pilosa) and
shooting star (Dodecatheon meadia) were
examined in detail.

Greene Prairie

Greene Prairie, in contrast to the Curtis
Prairie, was a carefully planted prairie that
evolved through the monumental efforts of a
single individual, Henry Campbell Green,
who almost singlehandedly planted the en¬
tire prairie. Greene came from long-estab¬
lished and prominent Indiana families that
provided financial independence for Henry,
allowing him to pursue his interests with
little interruption or interference. He studied

at Wabash College in Indiana for two years
before moving to Washington State Univer¬
sity where he completed first a B.A. degree
and then a Master’s degree in mycology in
1929. That year he came to Madison to
continue his graduate studies and in 1933
completed his Ph.D. in botany (Backus and
Evans 1968).

For the next few years he remained on
campus conducting research on molds with
people from the agriculture campus. In 1937
he accepted an instructorship in the Depart¬
ment of Botany at Madison which gave him
staff privileges for conducting research and
informally assisting graduate students with¬
out the cumbersome responsibilities of a
professorship. In 1941 he was appointed
Curator of the Cryptogamic Herbarium
which housed one of the most distinguished
collections of parasitic fungi of any state
university. Dr. Greene took on the responsi¬
bility of the position with great vigor,
collecting all over the state and writing
nearly 40 professional papers. His uncanny
ability to note detail of not only the fungi
but their hosts as well led him to become
expert in the flowering plants of Wisconsin
in addition to parasitic fungi. In fact his
knowledge of the higher plants led some
taxonomists to seek his assistance in their
identifications (Backus and Evans 1968).

Perhaps there was a symbiotic effect that
resulted from the close association of John
Curtis and Henry Greene. Both men were
graduate students at approximately the same
time and both were appointed to the Botany
Department at about the same time. Curtis
started as an orchid physiologist and Greene
started as a parasitic mycologist, yet both
men became significant ecologists, each in a
different way. Together they began to pub¬
lish their first ecological papers in the 1940’s.
While Curtis went on to become well known
in ecological research literature, Greene
became remarkably knowledgeable on the
ecological requirements of individual
species. Greene’s abilities and commitment
were clearly illustrated in his 15 year prairie

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

project on the Grady Tract. Greene served
for many years as secretary of the Arbore¬
tum Committee and as editor of the “Arbo¬
retum News” for ten years.

A Sand Prairie Dream

Greene began to develop a compelling
interest in prairies around 1940 when he was
spending summers near Eagle, Wisconsin,
which was located near the extensive Wau¬
kesha County prairies. These remnants of
the once extensive prairie that covered
southern Wisconsin impressed Greene by the
variety and beauty of the vegetation in the
low prairies. Together, Greene and Curtis
visited these and other remnants around the
state, gathering collections and observations
(Anon. 1966).

Greene conceived the idea of establishing
a sand prairie on the arboretum. He found a
level portion of the Grady tract which was
adjacent to the Lancaster Branch of the
Chicago and Northwestern Railroad. This
seemed an ideal place to establish an experi¬
mental sand prairie for it had many of the
general attributes that Greene had observed
in sand prairies. North of the opening stood
a series of sand hills that were formed at the
edge of a glacier and were now covered by
scrub oak and some of the characteristic
sand prairie species (from communication
between Greene and Professor Thwaites of
the Geology Department). This resulted in
nearly pure sand soils on the adjacent prairie
opening which sloped gently toward the
south where the sand became buried by a
sheet of clay. On the west end was a con¬
siderable amount of blackish sedge peat and
there were several ephemeral ponds that pro¬
vided refuge for some prairie plants (Greene
1949).

The original land survey records indicate
that the area was originally a brushy oak
opening with an understory of prairie grasses
and herbs which apparently included such
things as prairie dock, New Jersey Tea
( Ceanothus americanus), ticktrefoil
( Desmodium illinoense) and wild indigo.

When the land was first viewed by Greene in
1942, it was only a few years removed from a
long period of “ill-advised” attempts at
cultivation. Perhaps as recently as 1937, the
land was still planted in corn. There were, in
1942, protected pockets of prairie plants
around the ponds and in the southeast cor¬
ner where a parcel was isolated by a deep
drainage ditch. In addition, the railroad
right-of-way supported many prairie plants
which provided more clues about the origi¬
nal vegetation of the area. All together, there
seemed to be sources for seed that would
permit the gradual re-establishment of the
prairie if returned to natural conditions
(Greene 1949). In preliminary vegetation
surveys in 1944 and 1945 Greene listed the
species present before major introductions.

In his report to the Arboretum Committee
in 1944 Greene specified the terms under
which he was willing to pursue the experi¬
mental establishment of a sand prairie. The
project was to be exclusively Greene’s and
there were to be no other planting experi¬
ments on his site. He anticipated that the
project would take many years of intense
and careful work, and he did not want the
use of unskilled labor as had been done with
the CCC in the Curtis Prairie project. It was
nearly 20 years before public access was pro¬
vided to the interior of Greene Prairie.

The Planting of Greene Prairie

A few plants were introduced into the
prairie in 1943 and 1944, but the major
planting effort began in 1945 and continued
until 1952. From 1953 to the early 1960’s
plantings were continued but gradually
tapered off. The last period for which
Greene left detailed notes in the Arboretum
files was 1954 to 1955. The variety of plant¬
ing methods used can be summarized as
follows:

1) Transplanting of mature plants or
sods,

2) Transplanting of seedlings started from
stratified seed in the greenhouse,

1984]

Blewett and Cottam — Arboretum Prairies

141

3) Direct sowing or casting of seed,

a) Planting of individual seed of large
deep-rooted species such as Sil-
phium ,

b) Spot planting of seed mixtures at
select points,

c) Broadcasting seed mixes over large
areas after discing and then drag¬
ging to cover some seed (Anon.
1966, Green 1949).

There remained an uneven surface which re¬
sulted largely from the plow furrows, and
these surfaces were intentionally left by
Greene to create a diversity of microclimatic
conditions that would increase the opportun¬
ities for various species to develop in suitable
microhabitats (Allsup 1978, Greene 1949).

Watering was required for many of the
transplants, and this was facilitated by the
presence of an old well on the north side of
the plantings. Greenhouse transplants in¬
cluded paper pot and bare root plantings,
the latter requiring special attention for
watering. With some of the more sensitive
species such as the ladyslippers ( Cypriped -
iums) and gentians ( Gentiana ) mature plants
in sods were carefully placed and watered to
improve chances for survival (Greene 1949).

The plantings were initiated in the east end
and progressed westward with a slight de¬
crease in planting densities to the west. Much
of the seeding was done with seed that
Greene had collected himself. The 35 acres
of the first plantings were extended to 40
acres in 1946 as the west boundary was
advanced by 500 feet to the fire lane. This
western segment had been cultivated up
through 1946 and after haying had the usual
complement of agricultural weeds such as
quack grass, timothy, ragweed, red clover,
alsike and others. In this western addition
Greene introduced a total of 28 species by
seeding in 1946 and by 1949 most species
appeared to have survived (Greene 1949).

Between 1945 and 1949 about 10,000 ma¬
ture plants and seedlings were planted by
Greene, including a total of 133 species when

all planting types are considered together. Of
the 133 species, not all were planted in great
numbers. The number of individuals intro¬
duced ranged from 2 small seedlings for
coreopsis ( Coreopsis tripteris) to about 1,824
more mature individuals of blazing star
(Greene 1949). By 1951 Greene had planted
an additional 2,000 individuals bringing the
total number to 12,000 seedlings and mature
plants introduced by hand (Greene 1951).
This number excludes the vast number of
seeds collected and cast by Greene.

In the end Henry Greene developed a
preference for seed casting methods. Like
Curtis he felt that the intense labor required
for introducing sods or seedlings was not
justified by the slight advantage in terms of
survival. Some species that were started
from seed such as Lupine ( Lupinus perennis)
and Indian paintbrush (Castilleja coccinea )
have shown excellent success. Other species
such as prairie drop seed and blazing star
were established more successfully using
seedling transplants.

It is evident from the Greene Prairie today
that Henry Greene was meticulous in placing
each species in the prairie so that it would
have the proper set of environmental condi¬
tions for survival. True to his original word
he carefully planted the entire prairie with¬
out the unskilled labor force that planted the
Curtis Prairie. Greene Prairie is more spec¬
tacular than Curtis Prairie in its display of
huge patches of color through the season
with such species as lupines, Indian paint¬
brush, phlox, puccoon and blazing star. In
fairness, however, it should be noted that
part of the reason for the greater rate of
success (at least aesthetically) with Greene
Prairie over Curtis Prairie is its relative free¬
dom from disturbance during restoration
and the sandy soil types which make it more
difficult for some of the weed species to
persist. It has not suffered from the erosion
and sedimentation caused by construction
projects adjacent to its border and has not
had as much visitor pressure.

Part of Greene’s meticulous method was a

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

detailed record of his plantings. He prepared
eight annual reports (Greene 1943 to 1951),
one biennial report (Greene 1955), and one
six-year summary report (Greene 1949).
Greene mapped the prairie with a baseline
and grid system that permitted him to record
the location, number and type of all his
plantings. So detailed is his record that one
could reconstruct a data set equivalent to the
prairie surveys that have been conducted on
Greene and Curtis prairies once every five
years since 1951.

A Study of Greene Prairie

Following the Wilson study of Curtis
Prairie another of Cottam’s students,
Rebecca Anderson, studied Greene Prairie
(Anderson 1968, Anderson and Cottam
1970). Anderson participated in the 1966
prairie vegetation survey and then in the fall
of 1967 conducted a soil survey of Greene
Prairie which provided information on the
depth of the Ax horizon and percent sand,
silt and clay. Communities were defined on
the basis of compositional indices that were
calculated for each quadrat sample by using
Curtis’ (1959) indicator species. The dry-
mesic vegetation was found to occur mostly
on sandy loam while the wet-mesic to wet
prairie vegetation was found on silt loam at
the west end and sandy loam at the east end.
Available moisture seems to have been the
determining factor. Some relationship was
also shown between depth of Ax and the
prairie continuum, where the shallowest Ax
occurred only under dry prairie vegetation
and the deepest Ax occurred only under the
wet or wet-mesic vegetation.

An analysis of changes in frequency be¬
tween 1952 and 1966 showed that groups of
species within each of the wet, mesic and dry
segments of the continuum had increases in
frequency that were sufficient to make the
species in each group most abundant within
the most suitable segment of the environ¬
mental gradient. The weed species were
found to disappear most rapidly from the
driest sites. Anderson concluded that the

Greene Prairie was not yet equivalent to a
natural prairie, but was progressing toward
such a state.

Conclusions

The Curtis Prairie restoration has been
much more successful than it had any right
to be. This was the first real effort to re¬
construct a prairie and it was started at a
time when little was known about prairies in
Wisconsin. There was no clear picture of the
species composition of the different kinds of
prairies and even less was known about the
life history characteristics and ecological re¬
quirements of most of the species involved.
The availability of a large work force, the
CCC, was mixed blessing. It provided the
labor and facilities with which to accomplish
a large amount of work, but it came at a time
when the state of knowledge about prairie
reconstruction was almost nil. Theodore
Sperry, who directed the initial efforts, took
a philosophical approach to the problem. He
went to prairie remnants, mostly located for
him by Norman Fassett and John Thomson,
and literally lifted the plants out of the
ground and replanted them in the Arbore¬
tum. Even more of a shotgun approach was
the prairie hay experiment of Fassett. Fassett
mowed prairie remnants, brought the hay
back to the Arboretum, and “planted” it.
The first year results were very disappointing
to Fassett, but he didn’t realize how slowly
prairie-plants mature and the prairie hay
experiments were eventually much more suc¬
cessful than Fassett initially believed
(Sperry, 1982). There is no question that the
efficiency of the restoration of Curtis Prairie
would have been improved were this restora¬
tion to be started today, but for its time, the
experiment was remarkably successful.

From the array of individual experiments,
the conclusion seems clear that careful
planting of stratified seeds on soil that has
been cultivated to reduce weeds is the most
economical way to re-establish a large
prairie. Planting of individual prairie sods
has a greater chance of success and is per-

1984]

Blewett and Cottam — Arboretum Prairies

143

haps the method of choice for rare or deli¬
cate plants, but it is not possible to plant a 60
acre prairie entirely by transplanting sods,
since there are about one million plants per
acre on a typical prairie. The major lesson to
be learned from the Greene plantings is that
success improves when careful attention is
paid to the environmental requirements of
each species. Greene’s spectacular success is
attributable to his meticulous matching of
the plants with the environment, and also to
the fact that prairie plants do relatively
better than weeds on sites such as the Grady
Tract that are nutrient poor and either too
wet or too dry for good crop production.

The two Arboretum prairies present a
marked contrast in restoration technique.
The Curtis Prairie was planted in a hurry,
with more than adequate labor and with a
marked uncertainty about how long this
labor force would be available. The Greene
Prairie was planted after the Curtis Prairie
and benefited from the Curtis experiment. It
was planted without the massive labor input
and was done with extreme care. Both meth¬
ods worked and both prairies are things of
beauty and rich resources for further study
of the dynamics of prairies and the ecolog¬
ical life histories of prairie species.

Theodore Sperry, when asked how long it
would take to reconstruct a prairie, an¬
swered, ’ ‘about a thousand years” (Sachse,
1974). Sperry was probably an optimist. The
conditions that gave rise to prairies no longer
exist in the Arboretum. The Arboretum is
surrounded by urban areas and bisected by a
major highway. The large prairie mammals
are gone, and are replaced by just one
species, humans, whose impact on the
prairie is entirely different than that of the
large mammals. Fire, an essential com¬
ponent of the prairie environment in this
climate, is difficult to use in the Arboretum,
and the opportunity for exotics to invade
disturbed areas is greatly increased. It is
doubtful that it is possible to really restore a
prairie in all its complexity. The best we can
do is provide the higher plants, and perhaps

some of the small prairie animals that cannot
be expected to migrate into this isolated
area, introduce enough soil in the form of
sods to provide an inoculum of the micro¬
flora and fauna, and hope that this facsimile
of a prairie habitat will attract the birds and
invertebrates that should be there. After
that, we wait. But in the meantime, the
Arboretum prairies look like the real thing
and they provide, for all but the most sophis¬
ticated, an experience of the presettlement
landscape that is almost impossible to obtain
elsewhere.

References Cited

Allsup, Mark, 1978. Henry Greene’s Prairie.

Arboretum News 27(4): 1-4.

Anderson, M. R. 1968. Vegetational changes on
the Greene Prairie in relation to soil charac¬
teristics. Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison. M.S.
Thesis. 50 pp.

Anderson, M. R. and G. Cottam. 1970. Vegeta¬
tional change on the Greene Prairie in relation
to soil characteristics. In: Proceedings of a
symposium on prairie and prairie restoration.
Knox College Field Station Pub. 3. pp. 42-47.
Anderson, Roger C. 1972. The use of fire as a
management tool on the Curtis Prairie. Univ.
of Wisconsin Arboretum, Madison. 8 pp.
Anonymous. 1966. Evolution of a prairie — the
Grady Tract. Arboretum News 15(2-3):4-6.
Backus, M. P. and R. I. Evans. 1968. H. C.

Greene (1904-1967). Mycologia 60:994-998.
Blewett, T. J. 1981. An ordination study of plant
species ecology in the Arboretum prairies.
University of Wisconsin-Madison. Ph.D.
Thesis.

Cottam, G. and H. C. Wilson. 1966. Community
dynamics on an artificial prairie. Ecol. 47:
88-96.

Curtis, J. T. 1951. Arboretum master develop¬
ment plan: I — The prairie. Univ. of Wisconsin
Arboretum files.

_ . 1952. Prairie re-establishment at the

University of Wisconsin Arboretum. Wise.
Gardens 3:14-16.

_ 1959. The vegetation of Wisconsin: An

ordination of plant communities. Univ. of
Wisconsin Press, Madison. 657 pp.

Curtis, J. T. and G. Cottam. 1950. Antibiotic

144

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

and autotoxic effects in prairie sunflower.
Bull. Torr. Bot. Club 77:187-191.

Curtis, J. T. and H. C. Greene. 1949. A study of
relic Wisconsin prairies by the species-presence
method. Ecol. 30:83-92.

Curtis, J. T. and R. P. McIntosh. 1951. An up¬
land forest continuum in the prairie-forest
border region of Wisconsin. Ecol. 32:476-496.

Curtis, J. T. and M. L. Partch. 1948. Effect of
fire on the competition between blue grass and
certain prairie plants. Amer. Midi. Nat. 39:
437-443.

_ .1950. Some factors affecting flower

production in Andropogon gerardi. Ecol. 31:
488-489.

Greene, H. C. 1943-1951. Annual reports: Report
on the Grady Tract Prairie for (year). Univ. of
Wisconsin Arboretum files.

_ . 1949. Notes on revegetation of a Wis¬
consin sandy oak opening, 1943-1949. Univ. of
Wisconsin, Botany Department (Arboretum
files). 64 pp.

_ . 1955. Record of plantings and seedings

in the Grady Prairie. Univ. of Wisconsin
Arboretum file report.

Greene, H. C. and J. T. Curtis. 1950. Germina¬
tion studies of Wisconsin prairie plants. Amer.
Midi. Nat. 43:186-194.

_ . 1953. The re-establishment of an

artificial prairie in the University of Wisconsin
Arboretum. Wild Flower 29:77-88.

McCabe, Robert. 1980. Personal communica¬
tion.

Miller, B. and J. T. Curtis. 1956. Differential
responses to clipping of six prairie plants in
Wisconsin. Ecol. 37:355-365.

Robocker, W. C., J. T. Curtis and H. L. Ahl-
gren. 1953. Some factors affecting emergence
and establishment of native grass seedlings in
Wisconsin. Ecol. 34:194-199.

Sachse, N. D. 1965. A thousand ages. Univ. of
Wisconsin Arboretum. 149 pages.

Schwarzmeier, J. 1972. Competitional aspects of
prairie restoration in the early stages. In:
Proceedings of the second Midwest prairie
conference, pp. 122-139.

Sperry, Theodore M. 1982. Personal Communi¬
cation.

Thomson, J. 1937. Experiments with prairie
plants. Univ. of Wisconsin Arboretum files.

Thomson, J. and G. Cottam. 1978. The Arbore¬
tum prairies. Univ. of Wisconsin Oral History
Archives. Taped Interviews.

Wilson, H. C. 1964. Vegetational history of the
Curtis Prairie, 1934-1961. Univ. of Wisconsin-
Madison. M.S. Thesis. 62 pp.

Zimmerman, J. H. 1972. Propagation of spring
prairie plants. In: Proceedings of the second
Midwest prairie conference, pp. 153-161.

Zimmerman, J. H. and J. A. Schwarzmeier.
1978. Experimental prairie restoration at
Wingra Overlook. In: Proceedings of the fifth
Midwest prairie conference, pp. 125-130.

SOIL SURFACE DYNAMICS IN SELECTED PRAIRIES
OF THE ALDO LEOPOLD MEMORIAL RESERVE

Bruce R. Herrick
Institute for Environmental Studies
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Francis D. Hole
Department of Soil Science
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Abstract

Pedophenology is the study of the relation between seasonal climatic and
biological events and periodic phenomena in the soil. Knowledge of the dynamics
or the soil surface is necessary to understand the behavior of soils. Two ex¬
periments were conducted at the Aldo Leopold Memorial Reserve in which
physical changes in the surfaces of soils were monitored during the summer of
1982. Short-term changes in the micro-topography and cover of the soil were
studied on three prairies on the reserve. Changes in the relative frequencies of
components of the soil surface (litter, plants, and bare ground) and in micro¬
relief of that cover were measured during four observation periods using a point
frame. Because erosion and deposition were equal, there was no difference be¬
tween the means of the prairies in this regard, but variances were significantly
different (a= 0.10). The point frame showed that any point may be exposed or
covered with various materials over short periods, contributing stochastic effects
to soil dynamics. Evidence of micro-erosion and sedimentation was observed over
a nine-week period by the device of inserting nails flush with the soil surface and
noting their burial or exposure. Changes observed in both experiments reflected
biological and physical processes.

Introduction

Micro-topography and cover are
important components of the soil environ¬
ment. To examine short-term changes in the
micro-topography and cover of the soil
surface, I conducted two experiments on the
Aldo Leopold Memorial Reserve during the
summer of 1982. The first experiment
employed a point frame to measure surface
cover and micro-relief. The other was
designed to record micro-erosion and
deposition using twenty-penny (20 d) nails
inserted into the soil.

To understand a terrestrial ecosystem it is
necessary to understand its soil, which is the
home of the detritus food chain, the reser¬
voir of the sedimentary nutrient cycles, and

an important interface between the biotic
community and the abiotic environment.
The ecology of the soil can be known only by
studying it over time; yet such phenological
studies are rare compared with such research
on birds and plants.

Pedophenology is the study of the relation
between seasonal climatic and biological
events and periodic phenomena in the soil.
One study along these lines was conducted
by Nielson and Hole (1964), who examined
earthworm populations and their manipu¬
lation of forest litter over time.

The surface is the most dynamic part of
the soil. Here organic matter accumulates,
providing energy and nutrients for a vast
array of organisms. Biotic and abiotic corn-

145

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

ponents lie closely intermixed. The edge
effect is evidenced in the soil surface by the
great quantity and diversity of organisms
present.

Changes in the soil surface are the result
of both biological and physical processes.
Hole (1981) discusses twelve categories of
animal activity that affect the soil: mound¬
ing, mixing, forming voids, backfilling
voids, forming and destroying peds, regulat¬
ing soil erosion, regulating movement of air
and water in soil, regulating plant litter,
regulating nutrient cycling, regulating biota,
and producing special constituents. The ef¬
fects of many of these activities are evident
on the surface. The soil surface may be
further altered by raindrop impact, mud
cracking, and heaving caused by frost. Even
over a short time the effects of these pro¬
cesses can be observed and analyzed to pro¬
vide useful information about the soil envi¬
ronment.

The Study Area

The study sites were located on three
restored prairies on the Aldo Leopold Mem¬
orial Reserve. The reserve is in Fairfield
Township, Sauk County, north of Baraboo,
Wisconsin (43°35' N, 89°40' W). The pre¬
settlement vegetation of the reserve is dis¬
cussed by Liegel (1982).

The EBL Prairie is adjacent to the Bradley
Study Center and Center Pond, off Levee
Road (R. 7E, T. 13 N, Sec. 33). The original
soil was a Gotham, sandy, mixed, mesic
Psammentic Hapludalf (USDA 1980). This
was covered by dredge spoil from Center
Pond early in the summer of 1976. After
draining all summer, the spoil was spread
with a bulldozer to a depth of approximately
one meter in the fall. In November half of
the area was seeded with prairie species, each
in a circular patch with a 5 m radius. The
remaining area was planted to oats. In the
late fall of 1977 strips of oats were disked,
leaving rows of oat stubble for soil conserva¬
tion. Mixed prairie seeds were then scattered
across both disked and fallow areas.

East of the EBL Prairie, situated on a

sandy ridge, lies the Coleman Prairie (Sec.
33). The experimental plot was located on a
Plainfield loamy sand, mixed, mesic, Typic
Udipsamment. Draba Prairie is located on
Levee Road (Sec. 33) on a Brems loamy
sand, mixed, mesic, Aquic Udipsamment.
Both Draba and EBL Prairies were burned
in the spring of 1982; Coleman Prairie was
not.

The climate is continental. Of the 822 mm
of annual precipitation, typically 60% falls
from April through September. The most
rain falls in June, with an average of 127
mm. As spring advances, “the frequency of
precipitation is less and the intensity
greater” (USDA 1980).

The Point Frame Experiment

The point frame has been employed in
botanical studies to measure the relative
abundance and ecological importance (as per
cent cover) of plants in a community. The
same instrument was used to measure
changes in a Wisconsin forest soil by Nielson
and Hole (1964). As with their experiment,
the point frame I constructed enabled me to
measure the relative frequencies of compo¬
nents of the soil surface and to observe
temporal changes in these frequencies. In
addition, I was able to measure the micro¬
topography and its changes over time.

Materials and Methods

The key part of the point frame is the
horizontal piece with its ten holes, spaced 10
cm apart. Through each hole a measuring
rod is passed. The remaining parts are used
to position the instrument so that the same
points are sampled at each observation
period. At each recording station two
wooden stakes are hammered into the soil
and holes drilled into the tops of both stakes.
The position of these holes corresponds to
two locator pins at the ends of the horizontal
beam.

Before measurements are taken at each
location, the apparatus is positioned so that
the locator pins descend into the holes in the
stakes, and the horizontal beam is levelled.

1984]

Herrick — Soil Surface Dynamics

147

The rod is then passed through the first hole
until it contacts either the mineral soil or
something lying or growing on the surface.
The object struck is recorded, and the dis¬
tance between the horizontal beam and the
top of the rod is measured to the nearest
mm. The rod is passed successively through
each of the ten holes. Then the sequence is
repeated twice and the distances averaged.
The height of the locator pins is used as a
reference for comparison of measurements
made at different times. After correcting for
differences in the height of the horizontal
beam at each observation period, and after
subtracting the smallest integer for each
location from all the other values from that
location, this procedure yields relative values
for the micro-topography of the soil surface.

Measurements were taken over four obser¬
vation periods: June 23, July 7, July 28 and
August 18, 1982. This experiment was con¬
ducted on the EBL Prairie alone. There were
four positions, A, B, C and D, along the
slope of the hillside, and there were three
replicates of each position. The line that
contained all three of the A positions was
termed “row A,” and rows B, C and D were
indicated similarly. Row A was 0.5 m from
the edge of Center Pond. The soil there was
wetter and sandier than the other soils and
supported abundant vegetation. Row B, 11
m upslope, was drier, with considerably less
vegetation. Row C was 11 m further up¬
slope. The soil contained more clay and less
sand than the soil downslope. Each of these
three rows was in the five year old portion of
the prairie. Row D was placed in the four
year old portion, 5 m from the division
between the two. Except for its younger
prairie vegetation and the fact that it lay on
the opposite side of the hill crest, Row D was
similar to Row C.

Results and Discussion

The point frame experiment yielded quan¬
titative data (per cent cover and relative
elevation), as well as a record of nominal
changes. Figure 1 presents the frequency
data for the distribution of bare soil, litter,

ROW

A B C D

1234 1234 1234 1234

Observation times

Fig. 1. Average frequencies and standard deviations
of litter, bare soil and living plants contacted by the
point frame rod along rows A, B, C and D. These
measurements were taken during the few days on or
after (1) June 23, (2) July 7, (3) July 28, and (4)
August 18. (n = 3).

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

and living material during each of the obser¬
vation periods. The term, “bare,” includes
mineral soil, ant hills, stones, and burnt
organic matter left from the prairie fire.
“Litter” includes dead plant material and
occasional fragments of insect exoskeleton,
and deer droppings. Grass, forbs, and moss
constitute the “living” category. Each bar in
the figure is the average across the row (con¬
taining three replicates of ten points each)
with its corresponding standard deviation.
Because most of the standard deviations are
large, most of the differences are not signif¬
icant, although trends are suggested.

For example, the per cent of the soil
surface covered by litter declined over the
summer on rows C and D, but not on A and
B. The reduction on row C was significant.
The loss of litter on rows C and D was
accompanied by an increase in proportion of
bare soil, which the litter had previously
covered. Rows C and D were upslope, where
vegetation was less dense than in rows A and
B, indeed sometimes sparse. Exposure to
direct sunlight and consequent higher tem¬
peratures at the soil surface might account
for higher rates of decomposition, given

Fig. 2. Differences in relative elevation with changes
in type of soil cover, (A) ant hills, (B) bare soil, (I) in¬
sect exoskeleton, (L) plant litter, and (M) moss, at

three points on the EBL Prairie, BA. 6 ( _ ), CA.2

( - ), and CC. 8 (—•—).

adequate moisture for microbial activity.
Also, the more abundant vegetation on the
lower two rows yielded more dead plant
material. The decrease in living plants on
row B was accompanied by an initial rise in
litter and, ultimately, led to exposure of the
soil. Naturally, when vegetation dies, its
debris remains on the surface for awhile,
until broken down or removed by wind,
water or animals. Row A showed a decline in
living material; bare ground and litter were
more variable. The results from all four rows
indicate that the soil surface was most
protected from erosion in June, which is the
month of greatest rainfall. Bare soil, favor¬
ing increased erosion, became increasingly
frequent over the summer.

That the soil cover is dynamic can be
illustrated by following its nominal record
over time at specific locations. Figure 2
shows the changes in the cover and corres¬
ponding changes in micro-topography for
three points at different stations. At BA. 6
the litter that was initially present was not
observed two weeks later, on July 7. This
removal from the soil surface also repre¬
sented a drop in elevation. Subsequently,
ants, by bringing subsoil to the surface,
created an increase in the micro-topography.

The interesting thing about point CA.2 is
that it shows a different kind of input to the
soil surface than one might normally con¬
sider. Here the rod of the point frame fell on
one of the many insect exoskeletons lying on
the ground, seemingly from a mass molt.
These were gone on July 7 when bare soil
was recorded for this point. Subsequently,
plant litter covered the same point.

The very small changes in topography at
point CC.8 are evidence of an important
phenomenon that was occuring over large
parts of the EBL Prairie: the soil’s mossy
mantle had dried up and was cracking. The
increased elevation of the moss on July 28
was due to the rod’s striking the curled,
upturned edge of the dry moss. By August 18
the moss had curled to such an extent that
the rod went by it and struck the bare soil
that it had covered.

1984]

Herrick — Soil Surface Dynamics

149

There were almost as many different
sequences as there were points, most of
which showed changes in cover over time.
The types of surface changes observed may
be categorized as (1) deposition (of litter,
insect skeletons, and feces), (2) removal (of
anything on the surface), (3) mound build¬
ing, and (4) cracking and curling of mud and
moss. Any given point may be successively
exposed, covered, or transformed over very
short periods of time. The amount and type
of plant cover will affect such physical
conditions as soil temperature, rate of
evaporation, and erosion potential, as well
as biological actions— from ant mounding to
root growth. It would follow that these
processes are highly variable in this young
soil.

The Erosion Pin Experiment

Erosion and deposition are important in
soil formation. Several researchers have
measured these processes using erosion pins
(Leopold, Emmett and Myrich 1966; Imeson
1971; and Imeson and Jungerius 1974). In
this study erosion pins were used to deter¬
mine whether the rate of surface change was
affected by the age of the prairie.

Materials and Methods

I pushed each 20 d nail (10.3 cm long) into
the soil until the base of the head lay against
the soil surface. This was done on June 29
through July 1. Because the experiment was
conducted over one summer, with only small
changes expected and no danger of frost
action, 20 d nails worked well. Bridges and
Harding (1971), who also used nails as ero¬
sion pins, noted that the nails rusted suffi¬
ciently to form an effective bond with the
soil, which helped to reduce disturbance.

The erosion pins were placed along four
transects, parallel to the contours of the
hillsides: the five and four year-old portions
of the EBL Prairie (rows C and D, respec¬
tively), Draba Prairie, and Coleman Prairie.
On each transect were five replicate clusters
of nails. The clusters were arranged in a
rectangular pattern, which facilitated find¬

ing the nails at the end of the experiment.
Rows C and D of the EBL Prairie had sim¬
ilar slopes on opposite sides of the crest of
the hill. The transect on Draba Prairie was
similar to those of the EBL Prairie with
respect to slope and proximity to the crest of
a gentle rise. The slope of the Coleman
Prairie was slightly greater than the others.
In contrast to the EBL Prairie, which had
been recently planted on a newly-created
soil, Draba and Coleman Prairies had sup¬
ported prairie vegetation for a considerably
longer time and had been managed as prair¬
ies since 1968. The amount of erosion or
deposition was measured to the nearest mm
on September 7.

Results

Although the means of data sets for the
four transects are essentially the same, dis-
similiarities in the ranges of values cause
differences among the variances. According
to the analysis of variance (Table 1), there is
no evidence to reject the hypothesis that the
means are equal. Furthermore, one can see
from Table 2 that the standard deviations

Table 1 . Analysis of variance for the erosion
pin experiment.

Source

df

SS

MS

F

Significance

Replicates

4

12.33

3.08

.285

NS a = .005

Treatments

3

27.52

9.17

.849

NS a = .005

Experimental

Error

12

129.62

10.80

Sampling

Error

180

827.87

4.60

Total

199

997.35

Table 2. Means (x) and standard deviations (Sx) of
erosion pin measurements (n = 50).

Prairies

x (mm)

sx

EBL row C

-0.18

2.64

EBL row D

-0.09

2.59

Draba

0.46

1.89

Coleman

-0.58

1.37

150

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

c

<D

O

<u

CL

Coleman

10 864202468 10 10 864202468 10

(mm) (mm)

erosion deposition erosion deposition

Fig. 3. Frequency of various amounts of erosion and deposition recorded by the erosion pins on each transect

(50 nails per transect).

are greater than the differences between any
of the means. The means are all close to
zero, indicating that on each transect erosion
and deposition were nearly equal. The most
commonly observed event, as shown by the
histograms in Figure 3, is no change. Despite
the similarity of the means, Figure 3 suggests
differences among the variances. The range
of values for erosion and deposition is much
greater on the two rows of the EBL Prairie
than on the other two prairies. Indeed, the
chi-square test of the homogeneity of vari¬

ances indicates differences at the 10% level
of significance.

Discussion

It is generally agreed that erosion is
greatest on bare soil. In plotting surface
erosion and deposition against vegetation
height, Imeson (1971) notes that the greatest
variability is found where the vegetation (in
his case, Calluna vulgaris L.) is the shortest,
an observation which Imeson attributes to
the more variable amount of soil cover in the

1984]

Herrick — Soil Surface Dynamics

151

young, short stands. Others (Bridges and
Harding 1971, and Imeson and Jungerius
1974) report that erosion is limited to
unvegetated areas. Vegetation protects the
soil, they say, by absorbing the kinetic
energy of falling rain, which otherwise
would be sufficient to dislodge and move soil
particles.

The unvegetated area need not be large for
erosion to occur. Imeson and Jungerius
(1974) state that the only parts of their forest
experiencing measurable erosion are the
small areas exposed by animal activity, in
their case moles and wild pigs. On prairies
the mound-building activity of ants can be
significant (Baxter and Hole 1967). Al¬
though these ants expose patches of soil to
rain drop impact, they also increase the
porosity of the soil, which reduces the
amount of water flowing over the soil
surface after a rainfall. The mounds and
tunnels of ants and moles were evident on all
four of my sites. The most commonly mea¬
sured effect of ants in this experiment was
the deposition of soil on the erosion pins.

To a greater extent than the activity of
ants, the degree of prairie development
seemed to bear on the amount of exposed
soil. Whereas the older prairies, Draba and
Coleman, were well covered by vegetation
and plant litter, the younger EBL Prairie was
spotted with numerous bare areas. The
irregular cover of the EBL Prairie correlated
with the greater variance in erosion and
deposition there.

While it is not statistically significant,
there is an apparent trend toward slightly
greater net erosion on the Coleman Prairie
than on other sites (Table 2 and Figure 3),
which may be related to the fact that
Coleman Prairie has a greater slope. Draba
Prairie shows a tendency toward more depo¬
sition, although, again, this trend is not
significant.

Many of the recorded losses on the EBL
Prairie were due to the formation of dessica-
tion cracks in the soil. The depth of some of

the cracks contributed to the variability of
the data for these two transects.

One might expect to find increased erosion
due to exposure of the soil immediately
following a prairie burn. To observe this
effect it would be necessary to carry out this
experiment shortly after the fire. By the time
my experiment was initiated, the prairie
species were growing in both the burned and
unburned sites, and no difference was ob¬
served between the two with respect to
means or variances.

Conclusions

Interesting in themselves, these
phenological observations of the soil surface
have ecological implications. For example,
with regard to the interaction of the biotic
community with its physical environment
several examples were noted. For instance,
the vegetation shields the soil from the
impact of falling rain. The soil, in turn, acts
as substrate for plants and animals. Ants
and moles acted as soil mixers and tunnelers
that created conduits for air, water and
various soil animals.

Primary succession was also observed on
the soil that was dredged from the pond.
Moss began to grow on previously bare soil.
Older patches of moss dried out and
cracked, and higher plants sprouted in the
fissures.

Evidence of nutrient cycling was recorded.
The deposition of plant litter and wastes of
animals and insects was followed by their
subsequent disappearance. The decomposi¬
tion of the organic matter represents the
release of nutrients and energy.

These processes occur over time. There¬
fore a phenological approach to their study
is appropriate. By careful observation the
dynamic nature of the soil surface is notice¬
able over relatively short periods of time.

Acknowledgements

The hospitality of Nina and Charles
Bradley and of Jane and Reed Coleman was

152

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

deeply appreciated. Support for this study
was provided by the Sand County Founda¬
tion (nee Head Foundation) of Madison,
Wisconsin.

Literature Cited

Baxter, F. P. and F. D. Hole. 1967. Ant {Formica
cinerea) pedoturbation in a prairie soil. Soil
Sci. Soc. Amer. Proc. 31:425-428.

Bridges, E. M. and D. M. Harding. 1970. Micro¬
erosion processes and factors affecting slope
development in the Lower Swansea Valley.
Institute Of British Geographers. Special
Publication Nr. 3, 65-79.

Hole, F. D. 1981. Effects of animals on soil.
Geoderma 25:75-1 12.

Imeson, A. C. 1971. Heather burning and erosion
on the North Yorkshire moors. J. Applied
Ecology 8:537-542.

Imeson, A. C. and P. D. Jungerius. 1974. Land¬
scape stability in the Luxembourg Ardennes as
exemplified by hydrological and (micro)pedo-
logical investigations of a catena in an
experimental watershed. Catena 1:273-295.

Leopold, L. B., W. W. Emmett and R. M.
Myrick. 1966. Channel and hillslope processes
in a semi-arid area, New Mexico. Prof. Paper
U. S. Geological Survey 352G.

Liegel, K. 1982. The pre-European settlement
vegetation of the Aldo Leopold Memorial
Reserve. Trans. Wis. Acad. 70:13-26.

Nielson, G. A. and F. D. Hole. 1964. Earth¬
worms and the development of coprogenous
A1 horizons in forest soils of Wisconsin. Soil
Sci. Soc. Amer. Proc. 28:426-430.

U.S.D.A., Soil Conservation Service. 1980. Soil
survey of Sauk County, Wisconsin. U.S. Gov¬
ernment Printing Office, Washington, D.C.

PHYTOCHEMICAL AND MORPHOLOGICAL DIFFERENTIATION
BETWEEN MYRIOPHYLLUM SPICATUM L. AND MYRIOPHYLLUM
EXALBESCENS FERN IN TWO WISCONSIN LAKES

Stanley A. Nichols

Wisconsin Geological and Natural History Survey
Madison

Abstract

M. spicatum and M. exalbescens from a common environment were suc¬
cessfully separated using phytochemical techniques and by using the mor¬
phological characters of leaf length and numbers of pairs of leaflets. An ordina¬
tion technique using 25 morphological characters could not successfully separate
the two species.

Introduction

Fernald (1919) described Myriophyllum
exalbescens Fern as a species distinct from
Myriophyllum spicatum L. However, Patten
(1954) and Nichols (1975) have shown that
the two display great phenotypic plasticity
and are very difficult to differentiate using
morphological characters. Jepson (1925) and
Fernald (1945) reduced M. exalbescens to a
variety of M. spicatum.

More recently Aiken (1981) is convinced
of the distinction between the two species
and she found that M. exalbescens , pre¬
viously thought to be a North American
species, exists in northern Europe (Aiken
and McNeill, 1980). In addition, Ceska
(1977) has developed chemotaxonomic tech¬
niques which separate the two species.

Aiken and Picard (1980) believe that most
of the phenotypic plasticity documented by
Nichols (1975) could be explained by habitat
variation. This is a valid observation as the
plants collected by Nichols were collected
from three different lakes and from different
habitats within those lakes.

Based on past collections and observa¬
tions, Fish Lake and Lake Wingra in Dane
County, Wisconsin “were thought to” con¬
tain populations of both species growing in
close proximity to each other so that the
morphology and phytochemistry of plants

from a common environment could be com¬
pared. The question to be answered is
whether the M. spicatum and M. exalbescens
like plants from a common environment are
morphologically and phytochemically dis¬
tinct. If the plants are distinct, variations
previously observed could be attributed to
the environment. If they are not distinct, the
variations are attributed to other causes.

Methods

A mass collection of Lake Wingra milfoil
plants already existed in the University of
Wisconsin herbarium. This collection was
made by the author on August 5, 1970 from
a common depth, over a common substrate,
and from an area about 10 m in diameter. A
similar collection was made from Fish Lake
on July 7, 1982 from a common depth, sub¬
strate and from an area about 10 m in diam¬
eter. From field observation both collections
were throught to contain both M. spicatum
an M. exalbescens plants. The plants were at
similar stages of their life cycle when they
were collected (i.e. they were mature plants
with flowering spikes).

The morphological characters of all suit¬
able plants were measured according to the
criteria used by Nichols (1975). A total of 28
specimens were analyzed. These specimens
were ordinated on a two axis, R type ordina-

153

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

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tion using the Axis I and Axis II R values
developed by Nichols (1975) for each charac¬
ter.

The ordination array for each lake was
divided into quarters and one specimen from
each quarter was selected for chemotaxo-
nomic studies. Initial positive results from
Lake Wingra caused the selection of four

AAA A A A A A

5 10 15 20

Number of pairs of leaflets

• - Fish Lake - M. spicatum
a - Lake Wingra - M. spicatum
a - Lake Wingra - M. exalbescens

Fig. 1. Numbers of pairs of leaflets for selected
Myriophyllum plants.

A A A A

10 15 20 25

Leaf length (mm)

• - Fish Lake - M. spicatum
a - Lake Wingra - M. spicatum
A - Lake Wingra - M. exalbescens

Fig. 2. Leaf length of selected Myriophyllum plants.

20

more specimens from the center of the Lake
Wingra ordination. In total 12 specimens
were sent to O. Ceska, of Ceska Geobotan-
ical Research Co. Victoria, British Columbia
to analyze the phytochemistry of the plants
using techniques which she developed
(Ceska, 1977).

Aiken and Pickard (1980) state that mean
internode length, mean leaf length and mean
number of leaf divisions can be used to
separate the two species from a common
environment. Since mean values of the
characters for these specimens were not
calculated in a fashion similar to Aiken and
Picard, leaf length, numbers of pairs and
leaflets, and internode lengths as described
by Nichols (1975), and combinations of
these characters taken two at a time were
displayed graphically along with an R-
ordination of the 12 specimens to see if they
correlate with results from the phyto¬
chemical analysis.

Results

Ceska (in. Litt.) reported that all the Fish
Lake samples were M. spicatum but that
three of the eight Lake Wingra samples were
M. exalbescens. In addition she reported
that the differentiation between the two

E 10

300

5 - 1 - 1 - 1 - ' - ' - 1 - 1 - 1 - 1 - ' - 1 - ‘ - 1 - 1 - 1

10 15 20 25

Leaf length (mm)

• - Fish Lake - M. spicatum

a - Lake Wingra - M. spicatum

* - Lake Wingra - M. exalbescens

Fig. 3. Leaf length vs. number of pairs of leaflets for
selected Myriophyllum plants.

• - Fish Lake - M. spicatum

a -Lake Wingra - M. spicatum

* - Lake Wingra - M. exalbescens

200 300 400 500

Axis I

Fig. 4. R type ordination of selected Myriophyllum
plants based on 25 morphological characters.

1984]

Nichols — Differentiation of Myriophyllum

155

species in Lake Wingra was distinct. There
was no appearance of intergradation of
phytochemical characters (chromatograms
are on file at the author’s office).

Leaf length and number of pairs of leaf¬
lets were both useful characters for separat¬
ing M. spicatum from M. exalbescens from a
common habitat (Figures 1 and 2). The plot
of leaf length vs. number of pairs of leaflets
successfully separated M. exalbescens from
all M. spicatum plants (Figure 3).

Ordination was not a successful method of
separating the species. The two species from
a common habitat could not be separated
using this technique (Figure 4). In fact M.
exalbescens plants occupy both ends of the
Lake Wingra ordination.

Likewise internode length was not a good
separating character. Used alone it couldn’t
separate the two species from a common
habitat and when used with either leaf length
or pairs of leaflets it would separate the
species from a common environment but it
would not separate M. exalbescens from all
M. spicatum plants.

Using the limited number of samples
available the ratio of leaf length divided by
numbers of pairs of leaflets was calculated.
The mean and 95% confidence limits were
3.0 ± 0.5 for M. exalbescens and 1.3 ± 0.3
for M. spicatum. These means were signifi¬
cantly different at the 95% confidence level
using a Student’s T test.

Discussion and Conclusions

This study showed that at least during
1970 there were two distinct species of mil¬
foil present in Lake Wingra. These species
were phytochemically and morphologically
distinct. Whether both species still exist
together in Dane County lakes is open to
question. The author searched lakes Wingra,
Mendota, Monona, Waubesa and Fish dur¬
ing the summer of 1982 looking for both
species. Fish Lake was the only place both
species appeared to be growing together.
Phytochemical analysis showed that these
specimens were all M. spicatum. If the

author had not spent a great amount of time
on Lake Wingra during the summer of 1970
he probably would not have discovered the
M. exalbescens because its growth was
extremely limited. In addition the author
searched Lake Wingra and Fish Lake for
milfoil turions in mid-April, 1984. Turions
would indicate the presence of M. excal-
bescens. No turions were found.

These findings concur with Aiken and
Picard (1980) that leaf length and numbers
(or pairs) of leaf divisions are useful
characters for separating the species. It is
interesting to note that Aiken and Picard
found that M. exalbescens leaves were
shorter than M. spicatum leaves. This study
showed just the opposite.

The ratio of leaf length divided by the
number of pairs of leaflets might be a useful
criterion to use for separating the species.
This criterion would have to be developed by
measuring a large number of plants that
were known to be from each species from a
broad geographical range. The numbers and
geographical range of the plants used in this
report are much too limited to be considered
representative.

This study also shows that the ordination
technique based on 25 morphological char¬
acters is not a useful technique for separat¬
ing the species. These characters are
apparently too variable to be useful. This
variability is not entirely environmental,
however, as the ordination technique could
not separate the two species from a common
habitat.

In conclusion it appears that M. spicatum
and M. exalbescens from the common envi¬
ronment studied can be separated phyto¬
chemically and by using the morphological
characters of leaf length and numbers of
pairs of leaflets. The variability of many
morphological characters of plants from a
common environment is such that they are
not useful in separating the species using
ordination technique. Much larger popula¬
tions of known plants will have to be exam¬
ined to see if leaf length and leaflet pair

156

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

criteria can be developed which can be used
to separate the species over a broad geo¬
graphical range.

Acknowledgement

Susan Aiken, Biosystematics Research
Institute, Agriculture Canada, is gratefully
acknowledged for reviewing the manuscript
and for making helpful editorial suggestions.

Literature Cited

Aiken, S. G., 1981. A conspectus of Myriophyl-
lum (Haloragaceae) in North America. Brit-
tania 33:57-69.

Aiken, S. G., and J. McNeill, 1980. The discov¬
ery of Myriophyllum exalbescens Fernald
(Haloragaceae) in Europe and the typification
of M. spicatum L. and M. verticillatum L.
Bot. J. Linn. Soc. 80:213-222.

Aiken, S. G. and R. R. Picard, 1980. The in¬
fluence of substrate on the growth and
morphology of Myriophyllum exalbescens
and Myriophyllum spicatum. Can. J. Bot.
58:1111-1118.

Ceska, O., 1977. Phytochemical differentiation
of Myriophyllum taxa collected in British
Columbia. Studies on aquatic macrophytes
part XVII. British Columbia Ministry of the
Environment. Victoria. 33 p.

Fernald, M. L. 1919, Two new Myriophyllums
and a species new to the United States.
Rhodora 21: 120-124.

Fernald, M. L. 1945. Incomplete flora of Illinois.
Rhodora 47:204-219.

Jepson, W. L. 1925. Manual of the Flowering
Plants of California, Assoc. Students Store.
University California, Berkeley, 1238 p.

Nichols, S. A., 1975. Identification and

management of eurasian water milfoil in
Wisconsin. Trans. Wis. Acad., 68:116-128.

THE CADDISFLIES (TRICHOPTERA)
OF OTTER CREEK, WISCONSIN*

Jeffrey C. Steven and William L. Hilsenhoff
Department of Entomology
University of Wisconsin , Madison

Abstract

By collecting and rearing larvae, sweeping bank vegetation, and using a black-
light trap, 79 species or genera of caddisflies were identified or tentatively identified
from collections made at Otter Creek. We believe that all except 9 may have
developed in the stream. Six species, Hydroptila valhalla, H. virgata, Oxyethira
anabola , Lepidostoma libum , L. vernale , and Triaenodes dipsius have not been
recorded previously from Wisconsin. Most species are univoltine with relatively
short emergence periods, but several have many cohorts and extended emergence
periods.

Introduction

Caddisflies or Trichoptera are insects with
aquatic larvae, aquatic pupae, and terrestrial
adults. They comprise one of the largest
orders of aquatic insects. Within the United
States there are 18 families, 142 genera, and
at least 1213 species (Merritt and Cummins,
1978), Wiggins (1977) estimated more than
10,000 species worldwide. Based mostly on
studies by Longridge and Hilsenhoff (1972,
1973), Hilsenhoff (1981) reported 16
families, 71 genera, and 218 species from
Wisconsin.

Trichoptera are holometabolous with five
larval instars, and most species are uni¬
voltine. The larvae are known for their
variety of cases, although some build nets
and retreats instead. Through a small open¬
ing at the tip of the labium caddisfly larvae
emit silk that is used either to cement to¬
gether cases or to construct nets and retreats.
Cases aid in respiration, protect against
abrasion, and provide camouflage to protect
from predation. Nets are used as retreats or
to collect food from flowing water. Caddis¬
fly larvae have evolved to exploit resources
in a variety of running and still waters
ranging from cool to warm streams, and

* Research supported by the College of Agricultural
and Life Sciences, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

from lakes and permanent ponds to tempor¬
ary ponds (Wiggins 1977). Because of this
broad diversification, caddisfly larvae are
important indicators of water quality, as
well as an important source of food for fish.

Adults are cryptically colored and re¬
semble moths, but their wings have hairs
instead of scales, hence their name Tri¬
choptera (trichos = hair, ptera = wings).
They are relatively short-lived, with most
species living less than a week or two. Some
species may feed, but most only drink water.
They are active at night, and most species are
attracted to lights, but during the day they
are inactive and stay in cool areas. Eggs are
laid in masses in or above the water.

Previous collections indicated that Otter
Creek has a diverse caddisfly fauna. The
purpose of our study was to determine the
species of caddisflies and their distribution
in this small, spring-fed, woodland stream
on the south slope of the Baraboo Range in
south-central Wisconsin. Otter Creek has
excellent water quality and is one of the
cleanest streams in southern Wisconsin (Hil¬
senhoff 1977). Because of this and other
considerations, The Nature Conservancy has
purchased much of the land through which
the headwaters flow to protect it for future
generations.

157

158

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

Within North America in recent years
there have been several similar studies of
caddisflies in streams or small watersheds.
The objectives of these studies have varied as
have techniques used to sample the caddisfly
fauna. Larval collections have been fre¬
quently used (Mingo et al. 1977, McElravy
and Foote 1978, Karl and Hilsenhoff 1979,
Mingo and Gibbs 1980), but only about 39%
of the larvae of North American caddisfly
species are known (Wiggins 1977). Rearing
larvae to the better known adults, supple¬
mented by net collections of adults (Karl and
Hilsenhoff 1979, Mingo and Gibbs 1980), or
net collections of adults from along the
stream (Ellis 1962, Mingo et al. 1977), are
other techniques that have been used, but
some species are difficult to capture by these
methods. Light-traps, especially those using

kings corner ro.

_ .3 Ml Lb _

.8 KILOMETER

100 FT CONTOUR INTERVAL

Fig. 1 . Location of sampling sites.

black-light, were employed by Ellis (1962),
Resh et al. (1975), McElravy and Foote
(1978) and Morse et al. (1980) to capture
adult caddisflies from streams being studied,
but there are two serious problems with
relying on this technique. Some species are
not attracted to light and most are excellent
fliers that disperse widely, so that individuals
from nearby streams, ponds, lakes, and
marshes may be captured along with those
from the study stream.

Emergence traps placed over the stream
provide a technique that assures capture of
adult caddisflies from the study stream
(Corbet 1966b, Anderson and Wold 1972,
Flannigan 1977, Mingo and Gibbs 1980,
Masteller and Flint 1980). The only problem
with this technique is vandalism to the large
and conspicuous traps, and this is often so
serious that it precludes the use of traps on
streams frequented by the public. In any
study, however, it is advantageous to use as
many collecting techniques as possible.

Materials and Methods

Our study was conducted on the
headwaters of Otter Creek in the northeast
corner of Wisconsin’s driftless area (T11N,
R6E, S-28, 29, 32, 33). This stream descends
rapidly, 107 m in 4 km (Narf and Hilsenhoff
1974), from the Baraboo Range onto a flat
outwash plain and then flows south about 25
km into the Wisconsin River. The substrate
of the creek varies from muck, sand, and
accumulated vegetative debris in pools, to
boulders, cobbles, pebbles, gravel, and sand
in the riffles. Water depths and stream
widths depend upon the season and rainfall.
Otter Creek is a soft-water stream with low
total alkalinity (16 ppm), low total nitrogen
(0.30 ppm), low total phosphorous (0.03
ppm), low total solids (62 ppm), and a pH
varying from 6. 3-7. 3 during the year (Hilsen¬
hoff 1977).

Six sampling sites were chosen to represent
various ecological habitats within the stream
(Fig. 1). Site 1 is a 6 m long spring seep that
feeds into Otter Creek. It flows out between

1984]

Steven and Hilsenhoff—Caddisflies of Otter Creek

159

two large sandstone boulders under a large
oak tree, dropping 1 m over its 6 m length.
The average width and depth are 0.4 m and 5
cm respectively. The substrate is predom¬
inantly fine sand and muck with scattered 5
to 12 cm cobbles. Leaf packs line the mar¬
gins, with up to 20 cm of oak leaves covering
the seep in the fall. Site 2 is a 50 m portion of
the creek above and below site 1 . Its average
width is 4 m and average depth 15 cm, with
riffles predominating over pools. The sub¬
strate consists of scattered boulders, cob¬
bles, pebbles, gravel, and sand, with leaf
mats tending to wedge between larger rocks.
Site 3 is 20 m upstream from the third bridge
north of Kings Corner Road. It is dominated
by pools averaging 5.5 m wide and 0.5 m
deep. The substrate is fine to coarse sand
and muck with accumulations of tree
branches and logs along the margins. Site 4
is 10 m upstream from the second bridge
north of Kings Corner Road. It is a 3 m wide
rocky riffle composed mostly of 12 to 25 cm
cobbles, with an underlying substrate of
coarse gravel and sand. Leaf packs are
common between the rocks. The average
depth is about 15 cm. In the fall, filamentous
green algae occurs at this site as well as at
sites 2 and 3. Site 5 is a 50 m long run with
scattered riffles and is located at a wayside
about 0.2 km north of the first bridge. The
predominant substrate is large boulders with
gravel and sand along the bottom. Leaf
packs are numerous along the margins and
the tree canopy is more open than at other
sites. It is the widest (about 8 m) and deepest
site (0.6 m average). Site 6 is 6 m upstream
from the first bridge north of Kings Corner
Road. It has a moderate deciduous tree
canopy. Most samples were taken from a
riffle with large boulders, cobbles, leaf
packs, and a sand and gravel base. Shallow
pools are located just above and below the
riffle. The average width is about 5 m and
average depth about 0.4 m.

Using a D-frame aquatic net with 0.7 x 0.9
mm mesh openings, larvae were collected
from each study site every two weeks from

19 March 1980 to 14 September 1980, and
monthly from 17 October 1980 to 31 March
1981. Samples were collected from riffle,
pool and bank areas at each site. Large rocks
and logs were inspected, and caddisfly larvae
were removed. Larvae from each site were
preserved in a single jar of 70% ethanol and
returned to the laboratory for identification
and enumeration.

From 2 April 1980 to 14 September 1980,
a second set of larval samples was collected
at each site. This composite of riffle, pool,
and bank samples was placed in a polyethy¬
lene bag half-full of water, leaves, and
aquatic vegetation. In addition, one or two
2-gallon polyethylene pails were filled 3/4
full with typical substrate and aquatic
vegetation from the site. Both pails and bags
were returned to the laboratory in large
coolers containing ice to keep the organisms
cool. Approximately 120 liters of stream
water were also returned to the laboratory.

Upon returning to the laboratory, sub¬
strates from each site were put into a 10-
gallon glass aquarium along with enough
stream water to fill the aquarium 3/4 full.
Predators that were seen were removed. The
substrate covered about the bottom 5 cm of
each aquarium and was arranged to simulate
the stream bottom, with additional vegeta¬
tion or rocks piled above the water to aid
emergence. The contents of the polyethylene
bags were then gently poured into each
aquarium. A high flow of compressed air
through two air stones at one end of each
aquarium provided water movement and
oxygenation. A screen was placed over each
aquarium to retain emerged adults.

The aquaria were maintained at a tem¬
perature and photoperiod similar to that of
Otter Creek. Material from each sample date
was usually reared for 2 months, after which
the aquaria were cleaned and remaining
caddisfly larvae were preserved in 70%
ethanol.

During each visit to Otter Creek, about 10
minutes were spent at each site collecting
adult caddisflies with a 30.5 cm diameter

160

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

sweep net. Tree bark, large rocks and under¬
sides of bridges were visually checked for
adult caddisflies. All adults were preserved
in 70% ethanol for later identification.

A black light was used every two weeks
during the summer of 1980 to trap adult
caddisflies, mostly at Site 4. A 6-watt black-
light (G.E. F6T5/BL) was placed in the
center of a 24 x 21 cm baffle attached above
a 20 cm diameter funnel below which a pint
mason jar containing 70% ethanol was at¬
tached. A 12 volt car battery, which was kept
inside a 10-gallon trash can, provided elec¬
tricity. The light-trap was set on top of the
trash can at the midpoint of a white twin¬
sized bed sheet stretched between two poles.
It was turned on about 1/2 hour before
sunset and run about 4 hours. Caddisflies
flying down the funnel were trapped in the
alcohol, and aspirators were used to collect
them from the sheet. They were also col¬
lected by sweeping vegetation around the
sheet and along the creek.

Larvae and adults in the University of
Wisconsin Insect Collection that were
collected from Otter Creek between 1963
and 1979 were also examined. Most adults
had been reared by Richard Narf during his

study of the stoneflies (Narf and Hilsenhoff
1974), and most larvae had been collected by
students taking the aquatic insects course.
Wayne K. Gall loaned to us additional larvae
and adults from his personal collection.

Results and Discussion

Seventy-nine species or genera were
identified or tentatively identified from
collections made at Otter Creek (Table 1).
This represents more than one-third of the
species known to occur in Wisconsin (Hil¬
senhoff 1981). Six of them, Hydroptila
valhalla , H. virgata, Oxyethira anahola,
Lepidostoma libum , L. vernale, and Triae-
nodes dipsius are new records for Wisconsin.
In addition, a female Pseudostenophylax
was reared and tentatively identified as P.
sparsus, which would also be a new record
for Wisconsin. It differed from two other
females we tentatively identified as P.
uniformis. Unfortunately larvae and female
adults of many caddisfly species cannot be
identified, and male adults frequently had to
be relied upon for positive identification.

In addition to the 43 species positively
identified from Otter Creek as larvae or
reared adults, larvae of at least 6 more

Table 1 . Occurrence of species of Trichoptera at Otter Creek.

Species

Collections

Number

Dates

Habitat

HYDROPSYCHIDAE

Cheuma topsyche spp.

larvae

464

year-around

throughout stream

Wallengren, 1891

Cheuma topsyche gracilis

reared

22m Ilf

18May-09Jul

boulder riffles

(Banks, 1899)

light- trap

41m 598f

05 Jun-02Sep

at site 6

Cheuma topsyche oxa

reared

19m 13f

09May-29Aug

rock riffles

Ross, 1938

light- trap

22m 368f

25Jun-02Sep

at sites 2 & 4

Cheuma topsyche pasella

light- trap

lm If

09Jul , 14Aug

Ross, 1941

1984]

Steven and Hilsenhoff— Caddis flies of Otter Creek

161

Table 1 . Occurrence of species of Trichoptera at Otter Creek. — (Continued)

Species

Cheuma topsyche pettiti

Collections

1 igh t- trap

Number

9m 23f

Dates

05Jun- 19Aug

Habitat

(Banks, 1908)

Diplectrona modes ta

larvae

90

08Jul-24Apr

rock riffles at

Banks, 1908

reared

1m

28May

si te 2

Hydropsyche betteni

larvae

71

27Aug- 18Jun

rock, boulder

Ross, 1938

reared

lm

If

25Jul

riffles at

light- trap

8m

98f

05Jun-02Sep

sites 2 & 6

sweep

lm

12 Jun

Hydropsyche bidens

light- trap

lm

If

05Aug, 05Jun

probably from

Ross, 1938

Wisconsin River

Potamyia flava

1 ight- trap

lm

05Aug

probably from

Banks, 1900

Wisconsin River

Cera topsyche bifida

light- trap*

2f

2 5 Jun

(Banks, 1905)

Cera topsyche bronta

light- trap

2f

09Jul

(Ross, 1938)

Cera topsyche riola

larvae

185

12Jul-23May

rock riffles at

(Denning, 1942)

reared

lm

27May

sites 4 & 6

1 ight- trap

7m

05Jun-22Jul

Ceratopsyche slossonae

larvae

821

year-around

rock, boulder

(Banks, 1905)

pupae

2m

04Jun , 02 Jul

riffles at

reared

34m

37f

28May-22Aug

sites 2-6

light- trap

55m

614f

05Jun-02Sep

Ceratopsyche sparna

larvae

20

24Jul-20Jan

rock riffles at

(Ross, 1938)

reared

If

24May

sites 2 & 4-6

light- trap

2m

54f

05Jun- 19Aug

sweep

If

23May

162

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

Table 1 . Occurrence of species of Trichoptera at Otter Creek. — (Continued)

Species

Collections

Number

Dates

Habitat

PHILOPOTAMIDAE

Chimarra aterrima

larvae

556

year-around

rock, boulder

Hagen, 1861

pupae

lm

1

31Jul- 14 Aug

riffles at

reared

7m

9f

30May- 18Aug

sites 2 & 4-6

light- trap

2m

3f

05Jun- 19Aug

sweep

56m

60f

25May-08Sep

Dolophilodes distinctus

larvae

22

03June- 14Jun*

*

(Walker, 1852)

light- trap

lm

19Aug

sweep

lm

19Apr

POLYCENTROPODIDAE

Nyctiophylax moestus

larvae

5

24Apr-02Aug

pools, reduced

Banks, 1911

reared

3f

30Jun- 13Jul

current at site

1 ight- trap

250m

936f

05Jun- 19Aug

Phy locentropus placidus

light- trap

9m

7f

05 Jun- 19Aug

sites 1 & 3

(Banks, 1905)

sweep

lm

2f

04Jun- 18 Jun

Polycentropus aureolus

light- trap

lm

09Jul

(Banks, 1930)

Polycentropus centralis

larvae*

13

02Jul-02Apr

riffles at

Banks, 1914

light- trap

82m

84f

05Jun-02Sep

sites 2-4

sweep

lm

If

02Jun, 18Jun

Polycentropus flavus

larvae*

9

05Nov- 19May**

(Banks, 1908)

Polycentropus pentus

reared

lm

08Sep

pools at site 3

Ross, 1941

light- trap

5m

7f

05Jun-05Aug

Polycentropus remotus

larvae*

5

31Aug-20Apr

pools at

Banks, 1911

sites 2 & 3

1984]

Steven and Hilsenhoff— Caddis flies of Otter Creek

163

Table 1 . Occurrence of species of Trichoptera at Otter Creek. — (Continued)

Species

Collections

Number

Dates

Habitat

PSYCHOMYIIDAE

Lype diversa

larvae

18

27Aug- 18Jun

decaying wood at

(Banks, 1914)

reared

4m

1 1 Jun-01 Jul

site 3

reared (6-Mo.)

49m

20f

17Dec-23Apr

light- trap

13m

22f

05Jun-09Jul

sweep

16m

15f

04Jun- 18Jun

Psychomyia flavida

larvae

1

19Mar

boulder riffles

Hagen, 1861

light- trap

197f

05Jun-02Sep

at site 6

sweep

3f

12Jun- 18Jun

GLOSSOSOMATIDAE

Glossosoma intermedium

light- trap

lm

3f

04May-05Jun

( Kapalek, 1892)

Glossosoma nigrior

larvae

1031

year-around

rock riffles in

Banks, 1911

reared

116m

112f

30Apr- 19Sep

moderate current

light- trap

7m

28f

05Jun- 19Aug

at sites 2-6

sweep

4m

12f

23May- 14Aug

HYDROPTILIDAE

Ag ray lea mul tipunc ta ta

light- trap

3f

05Jun

probably from

Curtis, 1834

lakes or ponds

Hydroptila consimilis

light- trap

12m

166f

05Jun-05Aug

Morton, 1905

Hydroptila grandiosa

light- trap*

13f

05Jun-09Jul

Ross, 1938

Hydroptila hama ta

light- trap*

4f

09Jul

Morton, 1905

164

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

Table 1 . Occurrence of species of Trichoptera at Otter Creek. — (Continued)

Species

Collections

Number

Dates

Habitat

Hydroptila jackmanni

light- trap

2m

25 Jul

Blickle , 1963

Hydroptila valhalla

1 ight- trap

5m

09 Jul- 22Jul

Denning, 1947

Hydroptila virgata

reared

2m

OlJul

rock riffles,

Ross, 1938

and pools

Hydroptila waubesiana

1 ight- trap*

23f

05Jun- 19Aug

Betten, 1934

Hydroptila wyomia

light- trap*

393f

25Jun-05Aug

Denning, 1947

Ochrotrichia spinosa

light- trap

3m

4f

09Jul-22Sep

(Ross, 1938)

Orthotrichia aegerfasciella light-trap*

2f

09Jul

probably from

(Chambers, 1873)

lakes or pond;

Oxyethira anabola

larvae*

2

04Apr**

rock riffles

Blickle, 1966

light- trap

5f

05Jun-25Jun

Stactiobiella palmata

light- trap

lm

Ilf

05Jun- 25Jun

(Ross, 1938)

BRACHYCENTRIDAE

Micrasema kluane

larvae

83

27Aug-05May

large moss-

Ross and Morse, 1973

reared

41m

38f

27Apr-08Jun

covered rocks

reared (5 Mo.)

10m

5f

lODec- 18Dec

at site 2

reared (8 Mo.)

3m

If

03Apr-23May

light- trap

lm

If

05Jun

sweep

29m

17f

23May- 12 Jun

1984]

Steven and Hilsenhoff— Caddis flies of Otter Creek

165

Table 1 . Occurrence of species of Trichoptera at Otter Creek.— (Continued)

Species

Collections

Number

Dates

Habitat

Micrasema rusticum

larvae

70

14Sep-09May

rock riffles at

(Hagen, 1868)

reared

36m

50f

14May- 15 Jul

si te 4

light- trap

45m

230f

05Jun-22Jul

sweep

39m

12f

04Jun- 12 Jun

Micrasema wa taga

larvae

17

23May-05Jun

boulder riffles

Ross, 1938

1 igh t- trap

3m

25Jun

at site 5

HELICOPSYCHIDAE

Helicopsyche borealis

larvae

170

year-around

rock riffles

(Hagen, 1861)

reared

1m

4f

01Jul-09 Jul

at site 4

reared (5 Mo.)

1m

29Dec

light- trap

10m

8f

25 Jun-05Aug

sweep

2m

If

12Jun- 18Jun

LEPIDOSTOMATIDAE

Lepidos toma bryanti

larvae

39

18Jan-09May

leaf packs in

(Banks, 1908)

reared

4m

2f

HMay-25Jul

pools at

reared (8 Mo.)

3m

23Mar-07Apr

sites 2, 3,

light- trap

29m

245f

05Jun-25Jun

5 & 6

sweep

3m

25May- 12 Jun

Lepidos toma costal is

larvae

12

12Dec-28Jan

stones in

(Banks, 1914)

reared

3m

2f

28Jul-05Aug

moderate current

at sites 2 & 6

Lepidos toma griseum

larvae

20

28Jan-08 Jul

pools at

(Banks, 1911)

pupa

1

24 Jul

sites 2, 4 & 6

reared

1m

20Aug

Lepidos toma libum

larvae

656

year-around

leaf packs in

Ross, 1941

pupae

111

17 Jun-26Aug

spring seep at

reared

402m

403f

30Apr-08Sep

site 1

sweep

2m

4f

14Aug-02Sep

166

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

Table 1 . Occurrence of species of Trichoptera at Otter Creek. — (Continued)

Species

Collections

Number

Dates

Habitat

Lepidostoma sackeni

larvae*

10

20Jan-29Jul

leaf packs in

(Banks, 1936)

reared

2m

lOf

30Jul-26Aug

spring seep at

sweep

2m

If

14Aug-08Sep

site 1

Lepidostoma vernale

larvae*

18

07Nov-3 IMar

leaf packs in

(Banks, 1897)

reared

4m

07Apr- 13Apr

seep at site 1

LEPTOCERIDAE

Ceraclea tarsipunc ta ta

light- trap

29m

42f

25Jun-09 Jul

(Vorhies, 1909)

Ceraclea transversa

light- trap

21m

2 If

09Jul-19Aug

(Hagen, 1861)

Leptocerus americanus

light- trap

3f

09Jul

probably not

(Banks, 1899)

from Otter Cr.

Mystacides sepulchralis

larvae

17

14Aug-05Jun

reduced current

(Walker, 1852)

reared

10m

9f

23Jun-27Aug

at sites 2,

reared (6 Mo.)

If

06Apr

3 & 5

light- trap

If

19Aug

sweep

6m

If

12Jun-16Jul

Nectopsyche sp.

light- trap

If

09Jul

probably not

from Otter Cr.

Nectopsyche pavida

light- trap*

If

05 Aug

probably not

(Hagen, 1861)

from Otter Cr.

Oecetis avara

larvae

123

02Jul-23May

sandy, swift

(Banks, 1895)

reared

3m

2f

09Jun- 23 Jun

water at

1 ight- trap

186m

7 5f

05Jun-22Jul

sites 2 & 4

sweep

9m

16f

04Jun- 13Jul

1984]

Steven and Hilsenhoff— Caddis flies of Otter Creek

167

Table 1 . Occurrence of species of Trichoptera at Otter Creek. — (Continued)

Species

Collections

Number

Dates

Habitat

Oecetis cinerascens

reared

lm

USep

pools at site 3

(Hagen, 1861)

Oecetis inconspicua

light- trap

28m

25f

05Jun- 19Aug

probably from

(Walker, 1852)

nearby ponds

Triaenodes dipsius

light- trap

If

02Sep

Ross, 1938

Triaenodes tardus

light- trap

5f

25Jun- 19Aug

Milne, 1934

LIMNEPHILIDAE

Anabolia consocia

larvae

12

12Dec- 18Jun

pools, margin

(Walker, 1852)

reared

2m

2f

05 Jun-07Aug

of creek at

light- trap

lm

If

08Sep , 25Jun

sites 2, 3 & 5

Frenesia missa

larvae

8

15 Jul-300c t

spring seep at

(Milne, 1935)

pupa

1

030c t

site 1

sweep

2m

05Nov, 20Jan

Hesperophylax designatus

larvae

9

24Jan-28Jan

intermi ttent

(Walker, 1852)

1 ight- trap

lm

2f

05 Jun

feeder

Hydatophylax argus

larvae

46

3 lAug-02Apr

pools, in leaf

(Harris, 1869)

light- trap

8f

05Jun-25Jun

packs at

sweep

If

12 Jun

sites 2, 3 & 5

Ironoquia lyrata

larvae

27

23Apr- 1 lJul

muck areas near

(Ross, 1938)

banks at

reared

lm

If

llAug

sites 2, 4 + 6

1 ight- trap

lm

19Aug

Limnephilus sp.

larvae

3

09Mar-23Apr

pools at site 3

168

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

Table 1 . Occurrence of species of Trichoptera at Otter Creek.— (Continued)

Species

Neophy lax concinnus
McLachlan, 1871

Neophy lax oligius
Ross, 1938

Pla tycen tropus radla tus
(Say, 1824)

Pseudos tenophy lax spp.
Martynov, 1909

Pseudos tenophylax sparsus
(Banks, 1908)

Pseudos tenophylax uniformis
(Betten, 1934)

Pycnopsyche guttif er
(Walker, 1852)

Collections Number

larvae

281

pre-pupae

29

pupae

26

reared

2m

4f

sweep

4m

3f

larvae

262

pupae

20

reared

30m

22f

light- trap

3m

3f

sweep

5m

2f

larvae

80

reared

lm

If

light- trap

lm

If

larvae

125

reared*

If

pupa

lm

reared*

2f

larvae*

745

pupae

69

reared

330m

3 18f

light- trap

69m

38f

Dates

Habitat

09Mar-28Jan

rock riffles at

02Jul-31Jul

12Aug-030c t

10Sep-22Sep

10Sep-030c t

sites 2, 4 & 6

20Jan- 1 lSep

rock riffles at

14Aug-27Aug

08Aug- 22Sep

02Sep

08Sep

sites 2, 4 & 6

170c t-04Jun

29Jul , 2 lJul

09 Ju 1 , 05Aug

pools at site 3

07Nov- 26Aug

spring seep at

si te 1

09Jun

spring seep at

si te 1

OlJul

25Jun, 16Jul

spring seep at

si te 1

12Dec- 170c t

pools, reduced

current at

1 lAug- 27Aug

22Aug- 14Sep

02Sep- 110c t

sites 2-6

1984]

Steven and Hilsenhoff—Caddisflies of Otter Creek

169

Table 1 . Occurrence of species of Trichoptera at Otter Creek. — (Continued)

Species

Collections

Number

Dates

Habitat

Pycnopsyche lepida

larvae*

94

09Dec-22Aug

pools, reduced

(Hagen, 1861)

reared

3m

lOf

18Aug-03Sep

current at

1 ight- trap

27m

51f

19Aug-08Sep

sites 2-5

Pycnopsyche scabripennis

larvae*

411

12Dec-24Jul

pools, reduced

(Rambur, 1842)

pupae

2

31Jul , 14Aug

current at

reared

3m

4f

17Aug- 29Aug

sites 2-6

reared (5 Mo.)

lm

6f

13Apr- 27Apr

1 ight- trap

21m

lOf

05Aug-08Sep

MOLANNIDAE

Molanna blenda

larvae

16

14Sep- 18May

sand in moderate

Sibley, 1926

reared

3m

6f

1 1 Jun-0 lAug

to slow current

reared (4 Mo.)

lm

23Mar

at sites 2-4

light- trap

3m

05Jun-09Jul

sweep

lm

05Jun

ODONTOCERIDAE

Psilotreta indecisa

larvae

144

12Jul-30Apr

sand in

(Walker, 1852)

pupa

1

15Jul

moderate current

reared

13m

9f

30Mar- 13 Jun

at sites 2-6

light- trap

6m

15f

05Jun

sweep

5f

12Jun-02Jul

PHRYGANEIDAE

Banksiola crotchi

light- trap

lm

09Jul

probably from

Banks, 1943

lakes or ponds

Oligostomis ocelligera

larvae

2

170c t, 1 2Dec

pools at site 2

(Walker, 1852)

Ptilostomis ocellifera

larvae*

54

14Sep-06May

pools at site 2

(Walker, 1852)

♦Identification tentative.
♦♦Collected in previous years

, but not during

s tudy

170

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

species were collected from Otter Creek.
Three Limnephilus larvae were collected, but
could not be identified to species. The 54
Ptilostomis larvae were throught to be P.
ocellifera, but no confirming adults were
reared or collected, and the Oxyethira larvae
were probably O. anabola, the only Oxy¬
ethira species collected as an adult. Larvae
of 3 species of Polycentropus were collected
and tentatively identified as P. centralis, P.
flavus, and P. remotus using the key by Ross
(1944), while adults of P. centralis, P.
aureolus, and P. pentus were collected and
positively identified. This indicates that P.
centralis larvae were correctly identified, but
suggests that since larvae of P. aureolus and
P. pentus are unknown, they may have been
collected and incorrectly identified as P.
flavus or P. remotus. Similarly, Hydroptila
jackmanni and H. valhalla were identified
only from males; their females and those of
some other species of Hydroptila have not
been described. Females of H. jackmanni
and H. valhalla may have been collected and
incorrectly identified as H. grandiosa, H.
hamata, H. waubesiana, or H. wyomia, four
species that were tentatively identified only
from collections of females. Several other
species that are known to live in streams
similar to Otter Creek were collected in
significant numbers, but identified only as
adults. These include Cheumatopsyche
pettiti, Hydroptila consimilis, Stactobiella
palmata, Ceraclea tarsipunctata, C. trans-
versa, Oecetis inconspicua, and Phylo-
centropus placidus, all of which probably
developed in Otter Creek. It therefore
appears that a minimum of 56 species of
caddisflies live in Otter Creek, and that 10 to
14 more species that were collected only as
adults may also develop in the stream.

Although most species of caddisflies were
attracted by the black-light, some obviously
were not. Chimarra aterrima, Glossosoma
nigrior, Micrasema kluane and the species
of Lepidostoma except L. bryanti, and both
species of Neophylax did not appear to be

attracted to light. In addition, females of
several species were much more attracted to
light than males. These include Cheumato¬
psyche gracilis, C. oxa, Hydropsyche bet-
teni, Ceratopsyche slossonae, Nyctiophylax
moesta, Hydroptila consimilis, H. wyomia,
Micrasema rusticum, and Lepidostoma
bryanti. We must point out, however, that
males of some species of caddisflies fly
mostly just before dawn while females fly in
the evening (personal communication: David
S. White, University of Michigan). Special
mention should also be made of the fact that
only females of Psychomyia flavida were
collected, supporting Corbet’s contention
(1966a) that populations of this species are
frequently parthenogenic. In Oecetis avara,
males were more attracted to light than
females.

Most of the species in Otter Creek are
apparently univoltine, some with short
periods of emergence and others with several
cohorts that emerge over a prolonged
period. A few species may be bivoltine, and
one, Psilotreta indecisa, is probably semi-
voltine.

The fauna of the spring seep (Site 1) is of
special interest. Larvae of Frenesia missa,
Pseudostenophylax uniformis and/or
sparsus, Lepidostoma libum, L. sackeni,
and L. vernale were collected only from this
seep. Larvae of the other 3 species of Lepi¬
dostoma, L. bryanti, L. costale, and L.
griseum were never found in the seep and
occurred only in the stream. Ours is only the
second North American record for L. libum,
which was abundant in the spring seep. Its
absence from collections since its discovery
in Illinois by Ross (1944) probably results
from adults not being attracted to light-
traps, which are widely used to collect
caddisflies.

Two observations related to terrestrial
pupae deserve special mention. Hydato-
phylax argus larvae constructed cases of
circular leaf pieces in early autumn, and
moved to cases they constructed of bulky

1984]

Steven and Hilsenhoff— Caddis flies of Otter Creek

171

wood chunks as winter approached. Larvae
with both types of cases were readily
collected in the autumn, but were never
found in the 2 months prior to their
emergence in June. Is it possible that this
species has a terrestrial pupa as reported by
Flint (1958) for Ironoquia parvula? We
collected larvae of another species of
Ironoquia , I. lyrata , and reared them to
adults on submerged substrate in an aquar¬
ium, showing for the first time that unlike /.
parvula this species has an aquatic pupa.

Specimens collected in this study are
deposited in the University of Wisconsin
Insect Collection, except for Cheumato -
psyche pasella, which is at Florida A & M
University, Tallahassee, Florida, and Iro¬
noquia lyrata, which is at the Royal Ontario
Museum, Toronto, Ontario.

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank Dr. Elizabeth Gordon,
Florida A & M University, for verification of
Cheumatopsyche gracilis, C. pasella, C.
pettiti, and C. oxa, Dr. Glenn B. Wiggins,
Royal Ontario Museum, for verifying Platy-
centropus radiatus, Ironoquia lyrata, Neo-
phylax oligius, and Anabolia consocia, Ms.
Patricia Schefter, Royal Ontario Museum,
for verifying Ceratopsyche riola, C. sparna,
and C. slossonae, Dr. Kenneth Manuel for
verifying Triaenodes dipsius and T. tardus,
Dr. Steven Hamilton, Clemson University,
for verifying Nyctiophylax moestus Dr.
John Weaver, Clemson University, for
verifying Lepidostoma libum, L. sackeni
and L. vernale, and Mr. Robert Kelley,
Clemson University, for verifying the species
of Hydroptilidae. We also wish to thank Mr.
Wayne Gall for loaning us specimens and
Mr. Bryn Tracy for his valuable assistance in
light-trap collections.

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Creek, Erie County, Pennsylvania, U.S.A.
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along the upper portion of the West Branch of
the Mahoning River in northeastern Ohio.
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Toronto Press, Toronto. 401 p.

GRAY PARTRIDGE IN NORTHWESTERN WISCONSIN

James O. Evrard

Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
Baldwin

Abstract

Gray partridge {Perdix perdix) were first released into St. Croix County in 1923
with the last known release in 1959. The bird is now established in St. Croix and
adjacent counties in northwestern Wisconsin at a low but apparently stable
population density.

Introduction

The history of gray or Hungarian
partridge in Wisconsin has been reported by
Leopold (1940), McCabe and Hawkins
(1946), Lemke (1957), Basadny (1965) and
Dumke (1977). Briefly, Colonel Gustav
Pabst introduced the species into Waukesha
County in southeastern Wisconsin from
1908-29 through a series of releases totaling
5,000 birds imported from western Czecho¬
slovakia. These introductions and additional
private and Wisconsin Conservation Depart¬
ment releases were responsible for the suc¬
cessful establishment and spread of the
partridge throughout the southeastern third
of the state (Fig. 1).

An isolated population of gray partridge
has existed in northwestern Wisconsin for
more than 50 years. The earliest release of
partridge in this area was in 1923, when 20
partridge were released near Hudson in St.
Croix County by Andrew Hope (Leopold
1940). During the period 1925-31, about 300
partridge reared by Joseph Burkhart from
eggs bought in Alberta, were released in
Polk County by the Rock Creek Trout Club
(Leopold 1940). Colonel Pabst was involved
in the planning of this effort. In 1930, 20
partridge imported from Europe and 30
birds produced at the State Game Farm were
released in St. Croix County by the Wis¬
consin Conservation Department (Leopold
1940). Leopold stated that 2 coveys were
seen in St. Croix and adjacent Pierce
Counties in 1932 and 1934, but no partridge

existed in the area in 1937. Other early
releases in northwestern Wisconsin were in
Eau Claire County in 1934 and Dunn
County in 1941 (Lemke 1957).

A 1943 survey by McCabe and Hawkins
(1946) revealed the existence of small,
isolated populations of gray partridge in
Polk, St. Croix and Buffalo Counties.
However, these populations were not
delineated on the range map drawn for
Wisconsin in their publication. Leopold
(1940) and McCabe and Hawkins (1946)
were not sure of the origin of the birds and
thought they originated from either the early
releases or eastward drift of Minnesota
populations.

Lemke (1957) reported additional releases
of gray partridge in Barron and Buffalo
Counties in 1951. In 1957, 254 partridge
hatched and raised at the Poynette State
Game Farm were released in St. Croix
County (L. E. Hanson pers. commun.).
Another 80 birds were released in adjacent
Dunn County. The last known stocking
effort occurred in 1959 when 40 birds from
the State Game Farm were released in St.
Croix County, about 3 miles south of
Baldwin (E. P. Ruetz pers. commun.).

In the mid-1960s, Besadny (1965) reported
that small numbers of gray partridge still
existed in Polk, St. Croix and Buffalo
Counties although little was known about
the populations. A decade later, Faanes and
Goddard (1976) stated that the gray par¬
tridge was a rare resident of St. Croix and

173

174

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

FIGURE 1. Range of gray partridge in Wisconsin (Dumke 1977). Year of first known introductions given for Polk,
Barron, Dunn, Eau Claire, Buffalo, and Trempealeau Counties.

1984]

Evrard — Gray Partridge in Northwestern Wisconsin

175

Pierce Counties with small coveys occasion¬
ally observed northwest of Hammond in St.
Croix County. Dumke (1977) also reported
the continued existence of the St. Croix and
adjacent Pierce County population and its
range was delineated on a state map for the
first time. The most recent published report
was by Faanes (1981) of a small population
largely restricted to several townships in
central St. Croix County near Roberts.

Status and Range

A search of the Wisconsin Society for
Ornithology files produced records only for
St. Croix and Pierce Counties and not for
Polk, Barron, Dunn or Eau Claire Counties
(R. K. Anderson pers. commun.). Kemper
(1973) stated that the gray partridge was
extremely rare in Eau Claire County with the
only record being a covey he saw during the
winter of 1962 near Fairchild.

Wisconsin Department of Natural Re¬
sources (WDNR) Wildlife Managers J. L.
Porter, J. A. Cole and R. K. Bahr working
in Barron and Dunn Counties could provide
only two records. One observation, made
just north of Menonomie in Dunn County
by R. K. Bahr, lacked written documenta¬
tion and the second, reported by J. L.
Porter, was a group of 2-3 birds seen near
Chetek, Barron County by WDNR Conser¬
vation Warden O. A. Anderson sometime
during the period 1975-77. A second record
for Barron County was a single bird seen
near Prairie Farm during the fall of the same
period of 1975-77 (J. Pederstuen pers.
commun.). These scattered records suggest
an extremely low population or juvenile
birds dispersing in the fall from the estab¬
lished range in adjacent St. Croix County.

WDNR personnel working in southern
Polk, St. Croix and Pierce Counties in
1980-84 recorded observations of gray
partridge made incidental to other work.
The range delineated by these observations
falls within the 1975 limits drawn by Dumke
(1977) (Fig. 1).

Table 1 . Gray partridge coveys seen
per 100 miles by rural mail carriers.0

Year

Poor Rangeb

Good Rangec

1974

0.4

3.9

1975

0.4

4.1

1976

0.3

9.6

1977

0.3

2.7

1978

0.3

6.1

1979

0.6

11.1

1980

0.4

2.1

1981

0.3

6.1

1982

0.9

10.1

1983

0.4

1.4

Mean

0.4

5.7

° DNR Technical Services Section
b St. Croix, Polk, Pierce, Barron and Dunn Counties
(Dumke 1977).

c Manitowac, Calumet, Brown, Kewaunee and Outa¬
gamie Counties (Dumke 1977).

During the winters of 1982-83 and 1983-
84, gray partridge seen incidental to
conducting road transects to census ring¬
necked pheasants ( Phasianus colchicus) in a
portion of St. Croix County were also re¬
corded. Results of 0.3 and 0.1 coveys seen
per 100 miles of road transect were within
the density range classified as “poor” by
Dumke (1977) and compares to the densities
recorded by rural mail carriers in January
for northwestern Wisconsin (Table 1). The
mail carrier observations in some counties
might not be reliable due to ruffed grouse
(. Bonasa umbellus ), colloquially known as
“partridge,” being confused with gray par¬
tridge.

The gray partridge has been a member of
the wildlife community in the farmlands of
St. Croix and adjacent Pierce Counties for
more than 50 years. The bird should con¬
tinue to exist in this region, albeit at a low
population density, if present agricultural
practices do not intensify dramatically in the
future.

I acknowledge the efforts of B. A. Moss,
former WDNR Wildlife Manager at Bald-

176

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

win, for providing the 1980-82 gray par¬
tridge observation locations, A. J. Rusch,
WDNR Technical Service Section, for the
use of unpublished rural mail carrier survey
data, and R. A. Hunt and R. T. Dumke,
WDNR Bureau of Research, for critical
review of the manuscript.

References Cited

Besadny, C. D. 1965. Huns on the move. Wise.
Cons. Bull. 30(6):21-23.

Dumke, R. T. 1977. Gray partridge distribution
and relative abundance. Wis. Dept. Nat. Res.
Res. Rpt. No. 93.

Faanes, C. A. 1981. Birds of the St. Croix River

Valley. Minnesota and Wisconsin. U.S.D.I.
Fish and Wildl. Serv., N. Am. Fauna No. 73.
Faanes, C. A. and S. V. Goddard. 1976. The
birds of Pierce and St. Croix counties, Wis¬
consin. Passenger Pigeon 38:19-38, 57-71.
Kemper, C.A. 1973. Birds of Chippewa, Eau
Claire and neighboring counties. Passenger
Pigeon 35:55-91, 107-129.

Leopold, A. 1940. Spread of the Hungarian
partridge in Wisconsin. Trans. Wis. Acad.
32:5-28.

Lemke, C. W. 1957. The Hungarian partridge.

Wis. Cons. Bull. 22(10): 19-22.

McCabe, R. A. and A. S. Hawkins. 1946. The
Hungarian partridge in Wisconsin. Am. Midi.
Nat. 36:1-75.

CHARACTERISTICS OF RUFFED GROUSE
DRUMMING SITES IN NORTHEASTERN WISCONSIN

Stephen DeStefano1

Wisconsin Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit 2
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Donald H, Rusch

Wisconsin Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Abstract

The vegetative characteristics around ruffed grouse (Bonasa umbellus)
drumming sites were sampled and compared among five different cover types.
Forty-two drumming logs were located on the Navarino Wildlife Area in north¬
eastern Wisconsin, and the density, height and species of shrubs, saplings and
trees around each were recorded by the point-centered quarter method. Vegetation
measurements around drumming logs were compared to 40 random points within
each cover type. Highest densities of drummers were found in alder (Alnus rugosa)
and aspen (Populus tremuloides and P. grandidentata). High shrub density,
regardless of species, was the most crucial factor involved in distribution of drum¬
ming sites within each cover type. Drumming site characteristics and drummer
densities throughout the range of the ruffed grouse were compared to our findings
in northeastern Wisconsin.

Introduction

The densest populations of ruffed grouse
reported in the literature are usually associ¬
ated with aspen forests (Dorney 1959, Gul-
lion 1970, Rusch and Keith 1971, Rusch et
al. 1978). Within this forest type, males
usually select a drumming site with a dense
shrub layer (Boag and Sumanik 1969, Boag
1976, Kubisiak et al. 1980). However, ruffed
grouse also live in a variety of habitats where
aspen is scarce or absent (Marshall 1946,
Hardy 1950, Lewis et al. 1968, Hein 1970,
Porath and Vohs 1972, Hale et al. 1982) and
drumming site selection and drummer den¬
sities in these habitats are less well

1 Present address: Idaho Cooperative Wildlife Re¬
search Unit, Moscow, ID 83843

2 In cooperation with University of Wisconsin-
Madison, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Wisconsin
Department of Natural Resources, and Wildlife Man¬
agement Institute.

documented. In Wisconsin, drumming male
grouse are also found in oak (Quercus spp.),
mixed northern hardwoods, and alder cover
types (Dorney 1959, Kubisiak et al. 1980,
Rodgers 1980). We compared drumming site
characteristics and drumming male densities
among these various cover types in Wiscon¬
sin and with other habitats in the ruffed
grouse range.

The Navarino Wildlife Area (NWA) in
Shawano and Waupaca Counties, Wiscon¬
sin, encompasses a variety of vegetative
communities. Our objectives were (1) to
determine which forest types were used by
drumming male grouse; (2) to determine the
drumming male densities in each forest type;
(3) to describe the vegetative characteristics
around drumming logs in each of these for¬
est types; and (4) to compare these charac¬
teristics and densities with other published
studies. We used presence and densities of
drumming males and characteristics of

177

178

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

drumming sites to make inferences about
factors which may have been involved in
habitat selection.

Our thanks to T. M. Bahti and G. G.
Kloes of the Wisconsin Department of
Natural Resources for assistance and
support in the field. R. Draves and D. A.
Buehler helped with the field work, and J. R.
Cary assisted in computer programming.
Financial support was provided by the
Bureaus of Wildlife Management and
Research of the Wisconsin Department of
Natural Resources, the Federal Aid in
Wildlife Restoration Act under Pittman-
Robertson Project W-141-R, the Depart¬
ment of Wildlife Ecology of the University
of Wisconsin-Madison, and the Ruffed
Grouse Society of North America. L. B.
Keith, D. A. Rusch, R. E. Trost, and W.
Vander Zouwen reviewed the manuscript.

Study Area and Methods

The 6,500-ha NWA is owned by the
Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
(WDNR) and is managed primarily for
forest wildlife. About 55% (3,600 ha) of
NWA is forested with 1,800 ha of aspen,
1,400 ha of hardwoods, and 400 ha of
conifers. The predominate hardwoods are
red maple (Acer rubrum), oaks, and white
birch (Betula papyrifera ), and the major
conifers are white and red pine (Pinus
strobus and P. resinosa ) and tamarack
(Larix laricina). In addition, there are 800 ha
of brush, predominantly speckled alder and
willow (Salix spp.; WDNR, unpubl. rep.,
NWA master plan concept elements, Madi¬
son, Wis., 1978). Topography is flat except
for several high (10-15 m) sandy ridges
separated by marshes of sedge ( Carex spp.).

From late March to late May 1980 and
1981 we searched for drumming logs by
following the drumming sound and locating
piles of grouse droppings. Vegetation at 42
of the logs located in 1980 was sampled by
the point-centered quarter method (Cottam
and Curtis 1956). The drumming stage

served as the center point and the distances
to the nearest shrub (single- or multi¬
stemmed woody growth between 1-2 m tall),
sapling (stems < 10 cm dbh), and tree in
each quarter were measured. The heights of
shrubs and saplings, the basal areas of trees
and the species of each plant were recorded.
Densities of shrubs, saplings, and trees were
calculated from distance data (Cottam and
Curtis 1956). Herbaceous ground cover was
not measured because it was not present at
the initiation of the drumming season and
probably did not influence selection of
drumming sites.

We recognized five forest types within
potential ruffed grouse habitat on NWA: (1)
mature oak and aspen with witch-hazel
(Hamamelis virginiana ) dominant in the
understory, (2) mature hardwoods, predom¬
inately red maple and white birch, and aspen
with variable understory growth, (3) young
(10-15 years) upland aspen with cherry
( Prunus spp.), blackberry (Rubus spp.),
hazelnut (Corylus americana ), and white
birch shrub layer, (4) young (10-15 years)
offsite (wet lowland) aspen with dogwood
(Cornus spp.) shrubs predominating, and (5)
alder thickets. Estimates of densities of
drumming males in each forest type were
calculated from numbers of activity centers
(Gullion 1967) located within a sample plot
of known size. Some drummers were cap¬
tured in mirror traps (Tanner and Bowers
1948) and marked with numbered leg bands
to facilitate identification of primary and
alternate logs and activity centers (Gullion
1967).

Within each forest type we sampled vege¬
tation at 40 randomly selected points, using
the same sampling procedure as at the drum¬
ming logs. We then compared the vegetation
at random points with the vegetation on
drumming sites in each of the five forest
types. When plants are aggregated, density
estimates computed from point samples by
usual methods tend to be low (Cottam and
Curtis 1956); thus we used the modified

1984]

DeStefano and Rusch — Ruffed Grouse Drumming Sites

179

Table 1. Density estimates of drumming male ruffed grouse in 5 forest types, calculated from a sample plot of
known size on the Navarino Wildlife Area (NWA), Wisconsin, 1980 and 1981.

Forest Type

Area (ha)

No. drummers on
sample plot

Drummers/ lOOha

NWAa

Sample plot

1980

1981

1980

1981

Mature oak-aspen

150

65

2

2

3.1

3.1

Mature hardwoods-aspen

600

39

1

1

2.6

2.6

Young upland aspen*

900

103

9

5

8.7

4.8

Young offsite aspen*

900

119

7

6

5.9

5.0

Alder thicket

550

90

6

6

6.7

6.7

Totals

3100

416

25

20

“ Approximate total ha of each forest type on NWA.
* Aspen of approximately 10-15 years of age.

Table 2. Comparison of ruffed grouse drumming male densities with forest types and understory densities on several
areas of the ruffed grouse range. Alder and aspen habitats appear to support the highest male densities, but when not
available other forest types may support relatively high densities (e.g., young hardwood stands with shrub understory in
Iowa, balsam fir in northern Wisconsin). Thick understory cover generally supports high male densities, but dense
shrubs and saplings devoid of overstory apparently do not support drumming males (e.g., early successional aspen in
Minnesota, northeastern Wisconsin and Alberta).

Drumming males

Area of Study

Forest type

Understorya

per 100 hab

Reference

Northeastern

Early successional aspenc

16,582 stems/ha

0

DeStefano and Rusch

Wisconsin

Alder

15,645 stems/ha

6.7d

(this study)

Young upland aspen

12,553 stems/ha

6.7

Young offsite aspen

32,810 stems/ha

5.4

Mature oak-aspen

914 stems/ha

3.1

Mature hardwoods-aspen

2,305 stems/ha

2.6

Minnesota

Early successional aspenc
Mature aspen with

29,652 aspen stems/ha

0

Gullion 1970

hardwood shrubs

Mature aspen with

14,826 aspen stems/ha

48.6

hardwood shrubs and
saplings

7,413 aspen stems/ha

48.6

Mature aspen with
hardwood saplings

Mature hardwoods and

2,471 aspen Stems/ha

12.3

mature aspen

494 aspen stems/ha

5.0

Mature hardwoods; aspen

0 aspen stem/ha

0-2

Alberta

Early successional aspenc

2,822 stems/ha

0

Rusch and Keith

Aspen

4,542 stems/ha

46.3

1971

Spruce woods

2,624 stems/ha

4.7

Rusch et al. 1971

Georgia

Oak-hickory with

ericaceous shrubs

10,550 stems/ha

1.2

Haleetal. 1982

° Usually includes shrub and sapling growth except where noted.

* Drumming male densities extrapolated to males/ 100 ha from original data.
c No canopy or forest cover perse existed at the early successional aspen stage.
d Drumming male densities averaged between 1980 and 1981 (see Table 1).

180

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

method of calculation described by Rusch
and Keith (1971) to estimate plant densities.

Results and Discussion

In 1980 and 1981, 73 and 85 activity
centers, respectively, were located on NWA,
46 of which were used both years by the
same or a different bird. In both years,
drumming male ruffed grouse were found in
all five forest types. Highest densities of
drummers were consistently found in alder
thickets and young upland and offsite aspen
(Table 1). These habitats provided shrub and
sapling cover > 3 times denser than that in
mature oak-aspen or mature hardwoods-
aspen. In the latter habitats, only two and
three activity centers, respectively, were
located on all of NWA. Alder and aspen also
supported high grouse densities throughout
much of the central portion of the ruffed
grouse range (Table 2).

Within alder and upland aspen habitats,
male ruffed grouse selected drumming sites
with denser shrubs than were found at
random points (P < 0.05). In young offsite
aspen, shrubs were uniformly dense at drum¬
ming logs and random points. The three logs
in hardwoods-aspen were also located in
shrub growth unusually dense for that type.
Shrubs were uniformly scarce in the oak-
aspen forest, and shrub densities at the two
drumming logs were similar to those at ran¬
dom points. However, these logs were found
in areas of unusually dense sapling growth.
In this forest community with sparse under¬
story, saplings may have provided the neces¬
sary understory cover near drumming logs.
In all other cover types, sapling densities at
random points and drumming logs were
similar (Table 2).

Shrub and sapling heights, tree basal area,
and tree density were generally not different
for random points and drumming logs in
each of the 5 cover types, indicating that
these characteristics probably did not
influence drumming site selection on NWA
(P > 0.2). However, there were 3

exceptions: (1) sapling heights were greater

around random points than around drum¬
ming logs in mature oak-aspen (P < 0.05),
(2) average tree basal area was significantly
larger around drumming logs in alder than at
random points (P < 0.05). and (3) tree
density was significantly greater around
drumming logs than at random points in
young offsite aspen (P < 0.01). Shorter
saplings indicate younger, and therefore
denser, growth in the oak-aspen type where
saplings were more important as cover than
shrubs. As the saplings got older, natural
thinning reduced the amount of vertical
cover. The latter two differences might be
related to active selection for drumming sites
with some overstory in young forests and
brushy habitats, or they may be incidental
consequences of sites near habitat edges.

Gullion et al. (1962), Berner and Gysel
(1969), and Kubisiak et al. (1980) suggested
that drumming logs are often located on or
near habitat edges. All of the logs in alder
located by Kubisiak et al. (1980) in central
Wisconsin were within 40 m of a cover type
edge, and 91% were within 20 m. On NWA,
timber cutting and topography often created
sharp lines of demarcation between habitat
types, such as aspen-field edges and lowland
alder-upland aspen. Of the drumming logs
we found, 91% were within 40 m of an edge,
and 58% were within 20 m. In addition,
drumming logs in young upland aspen had
significantly fewer aspen saplings around
them than did random points, and signif¬
icantly more hazelnut shrubs and white birch
saplings (P < 0.05). Drumming logs in alder
thickets had significantly fewer alder shrubs
and saplings and significantly more aspen
saplings than did random points in alder (P
< 0.05). This intermixing of species and the
proximity of drumming logs to adjacent
cover types would seem to indicate that
grouse on NWA selected drumming sites
near habitat edges. However, drumming log
locations were not significantly closer to
edges than were randomly located points (P
> 0.5). Most coverts on NWA were in small,
highly interspersed patches, and most drum-

1984]

DeStefano and Rusch — Ruffed Grouse Drumming Sites

181

ming sites were consequently near an edge.
Drumming site selection thus seemed more
dependent upon shrub cover than proximity
of edg c perse.

Four species of shrubs made up 55% of
the shrub cover around drumming logs on
NWA (Table 3). Dogwoods and winterberry
( Ilex verticil lata) were found more
frequently around drumming logs than at
random points, and witch-hazel and cherry
shrubs less frequently (Table 3). Dogwood
and winterberry shrubs were significantly
nearer sampling points .than were witch-
hazel and cherry shrubs (x = 1.2 ± 1 .6 m vs.
4.3 ± 3.4 m, respectively, t = 8.87, P <
0.01), even though the former were less
abundant than the latter (Table 3). This may
indicate that dogwood and winterberry
shrubs grew in denser clumps and provided
better cover. In alder thickets, hazelnut and
slippery elm ( Ulmus rubra) formed the shrub
layer more often around drumming logs
than at random points (P < 0.01), and their
proximity to sampling points (0.6 ± 0.2 m
and 0.6 ± 0.5 m, respectively) indicated that
these species also may have grown in dense
clumps.

Four sapling species made up 71% of the
sapling cover around drumming logs (Table
3). Cherry and white birch were found more
frequently around drumming logs than at
random points, and aspen saplings less so
(Table 3). However, mean distance of cherry
and white birch from sampling points was
significantly greater than aspen (4.9 ± 5.1m
vs. 2.7 ± 4.2 m, respectively, t = 3.40, P <
0.01). Optimal sapling growth on drumming
sites may be dense enough to provide pro¬
tection from avian predators, yet open
enough to allow detection of mammalian
predators (Gullion 1970). In contrast, Boag
and Sumanik (1969) suggested that cover
selected by drumming males may represent
an evolutionary compromise between cover
dense enough for full protection against
predators and sparse enough to allow
exposure of the visual and auditory displays
to conspecifics. Available data on ruffed

Table 3. Percent frequency of shrub and sapling
species around 42 drumming logs and 200 random
points in 5 forest types used by ruffed grouse on the
Navarino Wildlife Area, Wisconsin. Four shrubs and
4 saplings per point or log were recorded by the point-
centered quarter method.

Species a

Random points

Drumming logs

Witch-hazel

16

4C

Speckled alder

16

16

Cherries

11

4C

Dogwoods

10

156

Blackberry

9

11

Winterberry

5

13c

Other shrubs

33

37

Total shrubs

100

100

Aspen

42

24c

Speckled alder

17

17

Red maple

14

14

Oaks

9

6

White birch

5

9b

Cherries

3

16c

Other saplings

10

14

Total saplings

100

100

° Scientific names given in text.
bc Significantly different (P <0.05, <0.01, respec¬
tively) frequencies at drumming logs than at random
points.

grouse habitats and densities in North
America supported the idea that abundance
of grouse was generally related to the density
of the forest understory (Table 2). Con¬
sidering the potential bias and variance in
estimates of grouse density, the relationship
was surprisingly consistent. Early succes-
sional aspen without forest overstory did not
support ruffed grouse in Minnesota, Alber¬
ta, or northeastern Wisconsin (Table 2). We
have witnessed, but not documented, a simi¬
lar instance in Manitoba. We conclude that
understory stem density alone does not
govern site selection by drumming male
ruffed grouse. Forest overstory also seems to
be required, perhaps for protection from
avian predation as suggested by Gullion
(1970). Although forest understories which
are too dense for adequate detection of
mammalian predators or too dense for
satisfactory auditory and visual communi¬
cation among ruffed grouse may exist in

182

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

North America, as implied by hypotheses of
Gullion (1970) and Boag and Sumanik
(1969), we have not found this documented
in the literature.

Dense shrub-like growth, regardless of
species, is probably the most crucial factor
involved in drumming site selection in any
forest type. Alder and aspen cover types
appear to support the highest densities of
drumming male grouse, but when not avail¬
able other forest types may provide suitable
cover, such as young hardwood stands with
shrub understory in Iowa (Porath and Vohs
1972) and balsam fir in northern Wisconsin
(Kubisiak et al. 1980). Thick understory
cover generally supports high male densities,
but dense shrubs and saplings devoid of
overstory apparently do not (Rusch and
Keith 1971).

Literature Cited

Berner, A., and L. W. Gysel. 1969. Habitat
analysis and management considerations for
ruffed grouse for a multiple use area in
Michigan. J. Wildl. Manage. 33:769-778.

Boag, D. A. 1976. The effect of shrub removal on
occupancy of ruffed grouse drumming sites. J.
Wildl. Manage. 40:105-110.

_ , and K. M. Sumanik. 1969. Character¬
istics of drumming sites selected by ruffed
grouse in Alberta. J. Wildl. Manage. 33:
621-628.

Cottam, G., and J. T. Curtis. 1956. The use of
distance measures in phytosociological sam¬
pling. Ecology 37:451-460.

Dorney, R. S. 1959. Relationship of ruffed
grouse to forest cover types in Wisconsin. Wis.
Cons. Dept. Tech. Bull. No. 18. 32 pp.

Gullion, G. W. 1967. Selection and use of
drumming sites by male ruffed grouse. Auk
84:87-112.

_ 1970. Factors influencing ruffed grouse

populations. Trans. N. Am. Wildl. and Nat.
Resour. Conf. 35:93-105.

_ , R. T. King, and W. H. Marshall. 1962.

Male ruffed grouse and thirty years of forest
management on the Cloquet Forest Research
Center, Minnesota. J. Forestry 60:617-622.
Hale, P. E., A. S. Johnson, and J. L. Landers.
1982. Characteristics of ruffed grouse drum¬
ming sites in Georgia. J. Wildl. Manage.
46:115-123.

Hardy, F. C. 1950. Ruffed grouse studies in
eastern Kentucky. Kentucky Div. of Fish and
Game, Prelim. Rep. 26 pp.

Hein, D. 1970. The ruffed grouse near the
southeast edge of its range. J. Elisha Mitchell
Scientific Soc. 86:139-145.

Kubisiak, J. F., J. C. Moulton, and K. R.
McCaffery. 1980. Ruffed grouse density and
habitat relationships in Wisconsin. Wis. Dept.
Nat. Res. Tech. Bull. No. 118. 16 pp.

Lewis, J. B., J. D. McGowan, and T. S. Baskett.
1968. Evaluating ruffed grouse reintroduction
in Missouri. J. Wildl. Manage. 32:17-28.
Marshall, W. H. 1946. Cover preferences, sea¬
sonal movements, and food habits of Richard¬
son’s grouse and ruffed grouse in southern
Idaho. Wilson Bull. 58:42-52.

Porath, W. R., and P. A. Vohs. 1972. Popula¬
tion ecology of ruffed grouse in northeastern
Iowa. J. Wildl. Manage. 36:793-802.

Rodgers, R. D. 1980. Ecological relationships of
ruffed grouse in southwestern Wisconsin.
Trans. Wis. Acad. 68:97-105.

Rusch, D. H., M. M. Gillespie, and D. I. McKay.
1978. Decline of a ruffed grouse population in
Manitoba. Can. Field-Nat. 92:123-127.

_ , and L. B. Keith. 1971. Ruffed grouse-

vegetation relationships in central Alberta. J.
Wildl. Manage. 35:417-429.

_ , L. B. Keith, and E. C. Meslow. 1971.

Natural vegetative communities near Roches¬
ter, Alberta. Alberta Dept. Lands and Forests,
Wildl. Tech. Bull. 22 pp.

Tanner, W. D., and G. L. Bowers. 1948. A
method for trapping male ruffed grouse. J.
Wildl. Manage. 12:330-331.

BROOK LAMPREYS

{ICHTHYOMYZON FOSSOR AND LAMPETRA APPENDIX) IN THE
WISCONSIN PORTION OF THE ILLINOIS RIVER DRAINAGE

Philip A. Cochran
Center for Limnology
University of Wisconsin-Madison

The distribution of Wisconsin fishes has
been recently detailed by Becker (1983), with
additional work conducted by the Wisconsin
Department of Natural Resources Fish Dis¬
tribution Survey (Fago 1982, 1983). The
purpose of this note is to provide new
locality information for two species of
nonparasitic brook lampreys in southeast
Wisconsin. Both species were collected on
April 25, 1982, in the Mukwanago River, a
tributary to the Fox River in the upper
Illinois River drainage.

Northern Brook Lamprey

Two adult northern brook lampreys
( Ichthyomyzon fossor) were captured with a
seine at the County Road E crossing, just
downstream from Eagle Spring Lake in
Waukesha County (T-5-N, R-17-E, Sec. 36).
The stream at this site was 3-5 meters wide
and less than 1.5 meters deep throughout,
with many shallower riffles. The bottom was
variable with some gravel, boulders, and silt.
Fantail darters (Etheostoma flabellare ),
banded darters (E. zonale ), a common shiner
(Notropis cornutus), and a hornyhead chub
(Nocomis biguttatus) also were collected.
Total lengths of the two lampreys after
preservation were 131 and 132 mm. Both
specimens were deposited in the fish
collection of the University of Wisconsin
Zoology Museum (UWZM # 8266).

Northern brook lampreys have not been
reported previously from the Illinois River
drainage in Wisconsin (Becker 1983), al¬
though they were collected recently at one
location in the adjacent Rock River drainage
(Fago 1982). They also have been collected
recently in the Kankakee River in the upper

Illinois River drainage in Illinois, the only
known locality for that state (Smith 1979).
The upper Illinois River drainage may have
been reached by direct dispersal up the
Illinois River from the Mississippi River,
since locality records in the lower Missouri
River drainage (Rohde and Lanteigne-Cour-
chene 1980) indicate that northern brook
lampreys were present at one time near the
mouth of the Illinois. Alternately, northern
brook lampreys may have gained access to
the upper Illinois River drainage through
recent secondary connections, as postulated
by Bailey (1954) for the brassy minnow
(Hybognathus hankinsoni).

American Brook Lamprey

American brook lampreys (Lampetra
appendix) were collected at the County Road
CP crossing in Waukesha County (T-5-N, R-
18-E, Sec. 32). Several spawning aggrega¬
tions of 8-10 individuals were observed in the
early afternoon at a water temperature of
15.4 C and a depth of 26-40 cm. Bottom sub¬
strate was gravel and pebbles, and stream
width was 8-10 meters. Other fish species
collected were hornyhead chubs, blacknose
shiners (Notropis heterolepis), fantail
darters, banded darters, johnny darters
(Etheostoma nigrum ), and rock bass
(Ambloplites rupestris). Three lampreys
were deposited in the University of Wis¬
consin Zoology Museum (UWZM # 8368).

American brook lampreys were not re¬
ported from the Wisconsin portion of the
Illinois River drainage by Becker (1983), but
they recently have been collected in this
drainage by the Wisconsin Department
of Natural Resources (D. Fago, personal

183

184

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

communication). They also have been re¬
corded in the Fox River drainage in Illinois
and elsewhere in the Illinois River system
(Smith 1979), and like the northern brook
lamprey, have been recorded recently in the
adjacent Rock River drainage in Wisconsin
(Fago 1982).

Discussion

Brook lampreys may be difficult to detect,
even in heavily collected areas (e.g., see
Trautman 1981, p. 149). For example, the
southern brook lamprey (. Ichthyomyzon
gagei) only recently was discovered in the St.
Croix River drainage in northwest Wisconsin
(Cochran 1984). That /. fossor and L.
appendix have not been recorded previously
from the vicinity of the most densely popu¬
lated area of Wisconsin is therefore not sur¬
prising. It is noteworthy, however, that both
species have persisted in this region; popu¬
lations of brook lampreys have declined near
some urban areas (Eddy and Underhill 1974;
Trautman 1981). Judging from recent collec¬
tion records, the American brook lamprey is
more commmon than the northern brook
lamprey in southeastern Wisconsin.

Brook lampreys often are perceived nega¬
tively by the general public, perhaps through
association with the sea lamprey ( Petro -
myzon marinus) and other parasitic species.
Unfortunately, misinformation in certain re¬
cent popular Wisconsin publications1 may
serve to perpetuate this tendency. Vladykov
(1973) provided ecological, economic, and
ethical reasons for the conservation of this
relatively vulnerable component of our
ichthyofauna.

Acknowledgements

John Lyons and Frank Rahel assisted with
the field collections, and John Lyons made
several suggestions that improved the
manuscript.

Note

1 Smith (1977) found a “brook lamprey” in the
Kickapoo River and stated that ”... it attaches itself to
living fishes and rasps their flesh. It also eats worms and

insects.” Brook lampreys are not parasitic and no
lamprey is known to prey on invertebrates. Also, in a
recent newspaper review of Becker’s (1983) monograph,
Eisner (1983) referred to “detested lampreys.” Half of
Wisconsin’s lamprey species are nonparasitic and do not
deserve such a reputation.

Literature Cited

Bailey, R. M. 1954. Distribution of the American
cyprinid fish Hybognathus hankinsoni with
comments on its original description. Copeia
1954:289-291.

Becker, G. C. 1983. Fishes of Wisconsin. Uni¬
versity of Wisconsin Press, Madison. 1052 pp.
Cochran, P. A. 1984. Bicuspid brook lampreys of
the genus Ichthyomyzon in northern Wis¬
consin: Ichthyomyzon gagei ? Pages 111-129
in: P. A. Cochran. The foraging behavior of
parasitic lampreys. Ph.D. thesis, University of
Wisconsin, Madison.

Eddy, S. and J. C. Underhill. 1974. Northern
fishes. University of Minnesota Press, Min¬
neapolis, 414 pp.

Eisner, C. 1983. Fish volume exhaustive. Wiscon¬
sin State Journal, October 9, Section 9, page 2.
Fago, D. 1982. Distribution and relative abun¬
dance of fishes in Wisconsin. I. Greater Rock
River basin. Wisconsin Department of Natural
Resources Technical Bulletin No. 136. 120 pp.
Fago, D. 1983. Distribution and relative abun¬
dance of fishes in Wisconsin. II. Black, Trem¬
pealeau, and Buffalo River Basins. Wisconsin
Department of Natural Resources Technical
Bulletin No. 140. 120 pp.

Rohde, F. C., and J. Lanteigne-Courchene. 1980.
Ichythomyzon fossor Reighard and Cum¬
mins, Northern brook lamprey, p. 17 in D. S.
Lee et ah (eds.), Atlas of North American
Freshwater Fishes. N.C. State Mus. Nat. Hist.,
Raleigh. 854 pp.

Smith, J. 1977. Nature walks in the Kickapoo
Valley. Richland Center Publishers, Inc.,
Richland Center, Wisconsin. 256 pp.

Smith, P. W. 1979. The fishes of Illinois. Illinois
State Natural History Survey. University of
Illinois Press, Urbana. 314 pp.

Trautman, M. B. 1981. The fishes of Ohio. Ohio
St. Univeristy Press. 782 pp.

Vladykov, V. D. 1973. North American nonpara¬
sitic lampreys of the family Petromyzonidae
must be protected. Canadian Field-Naturalist
87:235-239.

LONG TERM COMPARISON OF THE POPULATION STRUCTURE OF
THE CISCO ( COREGONUS ARTEDII LE SUEUR) IN SMALLER LAKES

Lars G. Rudstam
Center for Limnology
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Abstract

Comparisons of the population structure of essentially non-exploited cisco
populations in three Wisconsin lakes in 1981-82 with data from 1928-32 revealed
that growth has increased significantly in all three lakes and that density appears to
have declined since the 1930’s. The magnitude of the increase in growth in two of the
lakes was comparable to the largest reported differences in growth among years
within exploited cisco populations. This change in population structure is consistent
with an explanation based on increased predation pressure from introduced
piscivores, primarily walleye and muskellunge. Other possible contributing factors
are discussed.

Year class strength was variable and asynchronous among lakes both in the
1930’s and in the 1980’s. This persistent asynchrony among lakes supports Hile’s
(1936) suggestion that variable year class strength of cisco depends primarily on

local conditions within each lake; intrasj

Introduction

After Van Oosten’s (1929) pioneering
work on the age and growth of the cisco or
lake herring, Coregonus artedii, there was a
proliferation of studies describing age and
growth of this species in different lakes
(Bajkov 1930, Hile 1936, Fry 1937, Car-
lander 1937 and 1945, Cooper 1937, Smith
1956, Dryer and Beil 1964, Smith 1972 and
others (see review by Carlander, 1969).
These studies have shown the cisco to be a
variable species with large differences in
growth rates and condition factors among
populations. Investigations dealing with
changes within one population over time are
not as numerous and the majority of such
studies involve exploited cisco populations
from the Laurentian Great Lakes (Scott
1951, Smith 1956, Dryer and Beil 1964,
Selgeby 1982). Few long term studies have
been made on populations in smaller lakes
(but see Carlander 1945, Clady 1967, and
Hoff and Serns 1983).

The Wisconsin Geological and Natural
History Survey’s investigations in northern

ific competition may be a major factor.

Wisconsin during the 1920’s and 1930’s
included a thorough study by Hile and co¬
workers on the cisco populations in four
lakes and shorter notes on the populations in
three other lakes (Hile 1936, Couey 1935,
Hile and Juday 1941). These studies pro¬
vided an opportunity to investigate long
term changes in the structure of cisco
populations in smaller lakes. Five lakes,
including three of Hile’s primary lakes, were
re-investigated in 1981 and 1982 as part of
the Long Term Ecological Research — North¬
ern Lakes project. Of these populations,
only the one in Pallette Lake had been
studied since the 1940’s (Engel and Mag-
nuson 1976, Engel 1976, Hoff and Serns
1983). The populations in Big Muskellunge
and Sparkling Lakes are especially inter¬
esting, since these populations are currently
not exploited and historically have been
exploited only to a limited extent if at all.
Information on long term changes of unex¬
ploited populations is nonexistent.

In the 1930’s, the year class strength of
cisco was variable but not synchronized

185

186

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

Fig. 1. Map of the study area in Wisconsin’s Northern Highland Lake District. The lakes investigated by Hile in the
1930’s and re-investigated in 1981-82 were: (1) Trout Lake, (2) Sparkling Lake, (3) Big Muskellunge Lake, (4) Alle-
quash Lake, and (5) Pallette Lake. Note that all the lakes are within eight km of the Trout Lake Station of the Univer¬
sity of Wisconsin. The other two lakes investigated by Hile, Clear Lake and Tomahawk Lake, are situated approx¬
imately 22 km south of the Trout Lake Station.

1984]

Rudstam— Population Structure of Cisco

187

among lakes (Hile 1936). Hile, therefore,
suggested that year class success depends
more on the local conditions within a lake
than on weather. Correlations of weather
events with year class success have, however,
been at least partly successful for other
coregonids (Lawler 1965, Christie 1963-
temperature ; Jarvi 1942a, Jarvi 1947, Miller
1952—" wind); although some investigators
have failed to obtain such correlations
(Svardson 1956, Aass 1972). Detailed
investigations of the year class structure of
cisco populations in lakes in close vicinity to
each other are rare. Weather events should
affect such lakes in similar ways, although
different lake morphometries may modify
the effect of storms or air temperature. A
persistent asynchrony among strong year
classes in these lakes would be consistent
with Hile’s suggestion and would not sup¬
port a hypothesis directly relating cisco year
class strength to storm events or tempera¬
ture.

Study Area

The five lakes investigated are located in
Vilas Co., in Wisconsin’s northern highland
lake district. They are surrounded by conifer
and aspen-birch forests and all are within
eight km of the Trout Lake Station of the
University of Wisconsin— Madison (Figure

1). The geology and general topography of
the area is described by Juday and Birge
(1930). Morphometric and limnological
characteristics of the lakes are summarized
in Table 1.

Current exploitation of cisco in the lakes
investigated is limited or nonexistent. Ice
fishing and some seining at spawning time,
which includes cisco as an incidental catch,
occurs on Trout Lake only. Historically, the
Pallette Lake population and to a limited
extent the Big Muskellunge and Trout Lake
populations have been exploited by seining
at the spawning grounds (Serns, DNR-
Woodruff, pers. comm., Hoff and Serns
1983).

Methods

Fish sampling

The five lakes were sampled between July
13 and August 18, 1981, and between July 27
and August 19, 1982, with seven vertical gill
nets, each with a different mesh size (19mm,
32mm, 38mm, 51mm, 64mm, and 89mm
stretch mesh in both years, with a 127mm net
in 1981 and a 25mm net in 1982). The nets, 4
m wide and 18 m deep, were made of multi¬
filament nylon twine and mounted on foam
rollers following the description by Kohler et
ah (1979). The seven nets were set in a
straight line for 48 hours per lake along the

Table 1 . Morphometric and limnological characteristics of the lakes investigated. All lakes are located in Wisconsin’s
northern highland lake district.

Lake

Water

source

(5)

Area

(ha)

Max

depth

(m)

Mean

depth

(m)

Alkalinity Conductivity

1979-81 1928-42 1979-81

(mmol/1) (fts/cm at 20C)

P

pH

Pallette

S

69

19.8

9.7

0.15

21

20

N.S.

7.3

Sparkling

S

81

20.0

11.3

0.61

68

74

<.05

7.9

Big Musk.

s

396

21.4

7.0

0.39

45

48

N.S.

8.2

Trout

D

1605

35.7

13.8

0.82

83

90

<.05

8.3

Allequash

D

164

8.0

2.9

0.79

76

81

__

7.9

Source*

i

1,3

1,3

2,3

4

4

4

4

3,4

* 1) Black etal. (1963)

2) Juday and Birge (1941)

3) LTER— -Northern Lakes (1981 and 1982)

4) Bowser et al. (1982), P = significance level of conductivity changes (two-tailed t-test)

5) S = seepage lake, D = drainage lake.

188

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

18 m depth contour (14 m depth contour in
Pallette Lake and in the deepest part of
Allequash Lake). In 1981, Trout Lake was
fished for an additional 24 hours with the
nets suspended from 13 to 30 m depth, after
a large number of fish targets were observed
on sonar in water deeper than 18 m in that
lake. In 1982 the nets were elongated to
allow fishing in Trout Lake from the surface
to 30 m depth. The nets were checked
approximately every six hours, between
0300-0500, 0900-1100, 1500-1700, and

2100-2300 central standard time in 1981 and
once every 24 hours in 1982. Pallette Lake
was sampled only in 1 98 1 .

All fish caught were identified, total
length measured to the nearest mm and
depth of catch noted in one meter intervals.

Scales and otoliths were collected from up to
ten ciscoes of each 10 mm length group.
Scales were collected from above the lateral
line between the dorsal and adipose fin in
1981 and above the lateral line between the
dorsal and pectoral fin in 1982.

Aging

Scales were used for aging to be consistent
with historical data. Impressions of larger
scales were made on acetate slides. Smaller
scales were mounted on microscope slides.
The scales or their impressions were read on
a microfiche reader (25x magnification). The
age determined for the sample of ten fish
from each 10 mm size class was assigned to
the remainder of the fish of that size. Over¬
lap in sizes of different year classes occurred

Table 2. Comparison between ages assigned from scales and from otoliths for cisco from five Wisconsin lakes sam¬
pled in 1981 . Encircled numbers indicate correspondence between the two aging methods.

Otolith Age

Lake

Scale Age

0

1

2

3

4

5

6 7 Older Total #

Pallette

1

1

1

3

1

6

2

©

4

5

3

13

3

1

1

Big Musk

0

©

©

3

1

2

13

2

©

©

3

3

1

Sparkling

0

@

4

1

1

21

2

©

3

7 1 1

Trout

3

4

5

6
7

1

2

6

2

2

3

1

3

2

1984]

Rudstam — Population Structure of Cisco

189

only in Trout Lake. The relative numbers of
the different size groups were corrected for
gill net size selectivity by taking both the
selectivity of different mesh size and size
dependent changes in locomotory activity
into account (Rudstam et al. in press).

Though the scale method has been used
for cisco since Van Oosten (1929), this
method has recently been criticized for a lack
of accuracy in aging some populations of
coregonids, especially for older fish (Aass
1972, Power 1978, Mills and Beamish
1980). To test the validity of scale aging, a
representative sample of 20 fish from each
lake was aged using both scales and otoliths.
Otoliths were heated on a hot plate until

brown, cracked in median cross section
through the nucleus, and viewed submerged
in glycerine under a dissecting microscope
(modified from Christensen 1964 and Power
1978). The annulus characters were dis¬
cussed with Olle Enderlein (Freshwater Insti¬
tute, Drottningholm, Sweden), who has used
otoliths extensively for age determinations
of the vendace, Coregonus albula.

No difference in the age assigned by scales
and otoliths was found in the lakes with the
fastest growing populations (Big Muskel-
lunge and Sparkling Lakes, Table 2). Older
fish from the slow growing populations in
Pallette and Trout Lakes were difficult to
age due to crowding of annuli on both scales

Table 3. Catch per unit effort (CPUE) of cisco in gill nets in 1930-32 and in 1981-82. The CPUE was calculated
as the number of ciscoes caught in 100 square yards of netting of each mesh size set for 24 hours to allow
comparisons with historical data. Only depths where the cisco were abundant were included. The catches in 1981
and 1982 are adjusted assuming the nylon nets are 1.33 times more efficient than cotton nets (Berst 1961). Source:
Hile (1936) Table 44 and LTER— Northern Lakes (1981 and 1982).

Lake

Year

Date

(MM/DD)

Depth (m)
included

Nets used

CPUE

(1)

CPUE

(2)

CPUE

(3)

Big

1930

08/28-29

9 -11

(4)

106.1

—

106.1

Muskellunge

1931

08/04-23

9.5-10

(4)

143.9

—

143.9

1932

07/01-08/05

11 -13

(5)

93.4

135.4

135.9

1981

07/31-08/02

9-11

(6)

86.5

121.8

444.0

1982

08/17-19

11-13

(7)

13.8

18.4

41.5

Sparkling

1930

08/9-10,

08/15

10.5-15.5

(4)

81.6

—

81.6

1931

07/17,08/22

10.5-15.5

(5)

75.0

137.0

213.0

1981

08/07-09

10 -16

(6)

19.6

38.0

136.2

1982

08/03-05

10 -16

(7)

38.4

73.8

75.3

Trout

1930

07/29-31

15 -33.5

(4)

104.8

_

104.8

1931

07/22-08/31

15 -33.5

(5)

75.8

136.8

137.8

1981

08/10-12

08/18

15 -28

(6)

47.1

105.5

126.9

1982

07/27-29

15 -31

(7)

76.1

121.1

122.2

Allequash

1930

07-08?

_

not reported

total catch 70 cisco

1981

08/04-06

0 - 7

(6)

0

0

0

1982

08/01 03

0-7

(7)

0

0

0

1) CPUE in two nets with mesh sizes 38 and 51 mm stretch mesh.

2) CPUE in five nets with 32, 38, 51, 64, and 89 mm stretch mesh.

3) CPUE in all nets used.

4) 38 and 51 mm stretch mesh horizontal cotton nets.

5) 32, 38, 44, 51, 57, 64, and 89 mm stretch mesh horizontal cotton nets.

6) 19, 32, 38, 51, 64, 89, and 127 mm stretch mesh vertical nylon nets.

7) 19, 25, 32, 51, 64, and 89 mm stretch mesh vertical nylon nets.

190

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

and otoliths. Otolith readings often resulted
in age assignments 1 to 3 years older than
scale readings (Table 2). Older age assign¬
ments using otoliths have been observed else¬
where (Aass 1972, Erickson 1979). The Pal-
lette Lake otoliths were unusually difficult to
read (Enderlein pers. comm.). Since scale
ages better corresponded to size frequencies,
scales were considered to be more reliable
than otoliths in that lake. The use of scales in
the present study may have resulted in a bias
towards 2 year olds in Pallette Lake and
towards 3, 4 and 5 years olds in Trout Lake.
Scales were, however, adequate for younger
fish in these lakes and for all fish from Big
Muskellunge and Sparkling Lakes.

Comparison with historical data

Size at capture in 1928-1932 was tabulated
for comparisons with recent data. The sam¬
pling seasons for 1928-32 and for 1981-82
did overlap (Table 3). The standard lengths
reported by Hile were converted to total
length using a conversion factor of 1.18
(Hile 1936). Standard errors for the his¬
torical data were calculated from length
frequencies (Hile 1936, Tables 21, 22, and
23).

Differences in fishing methods between
the two studies could introduce systematic

errors in comparisons of catch per unit
effort (CPUE). Hile used 46 m wide and 2 m
deep horizontal gill nets made of cotton,
which were set along the bottom at specified
depths. In 1981-82, 4 m wide and 18 m deep
multifilament nylon nets set from surface to
bottom were used. To minimize possible
errors, only catches in identical mesh sizes
were compared, and the CPUE were calcu¬
lated according to Hile (1936). Hile reported
the numbers of cisco caught in each mesh
size per 24 hours and 100 square yards of
netting in the water depth with the highest
density of fish. This depth interval included
most of the hypolimnion in Sparkling and
Trout lakes, but only one to two meters at
the bottom of the metalimnion in Big
Muskellunge Lake. Thus, the CPUE values
reported here are an index of maximum den¬
sity during summer stratification. In addi¬
tion, a correction factor for the documented
higher efficiency of nylon versus cotton nets
was introduced. Multifilament nylon nets
have been reported to be from 1.33 to 3.2
times more efficient for coregonids as com¬
pared to cotton nets (Lawler 1950, Molin
1951 and 1953, McCombie and Fry 1960,
and Berst 1961). Only one of these studies,
however, involved cisco, and the ratio from
that study (1.33, Berst 1961) was used to

Table 4. Number of fish of different species caught in gill nets during the two time periods. Only fish caught at
depth occupied by cisco are included. Note that the sampling effort varies among lakes and time periods. Source:
Hile (1936, Table 70) and LTER-Northern Lakes (1981 and 1982).

Lake

Year

Big Musket.
28-31 81-82

Sparkling
28-31 82-82

Trout

28-31 81-82

Allequash

30 81-82

Pall. Clear

81 31-32

Species:

Cisco

1863

209

524

181

1197

449

70

143

465

Lake whitefish

—

—

—

—

32

5

—

—

—

—

Lake trout

—

—

—

—

32

—

—

—

—

—

Rainbow smelt

—

—

—

11

—

—

—

—

—

—

Yellow perch

1543

361

1

—

—

—

182

15

—

5

Walleye

—

—

—

—

—

—

22

—

—

37

Centrarchids 1)

22

—

—

—

—

—

23

1

—

1

Other sp. 2)

130

—

—

—

1

—

15

2

—

—

1) Centrarchids include: Rock bass, Large mouth bass, Small mouth bass, Bluegill, and Black crappie.

2) Other species includes: Burbot, Muskellunge, Golden shiner, and White sucker.

Table 5. Total length (mm) at capture of cisco from three Wisconsin lakes in 1928-32 and 1981-82. Mean and standard deviations of the lengths from
1928-32 were calculated from length frequency distributions. Standard lengths were converted to total lengths by multiplying with 1.18 (Hile 1936). The
significance levels (P) are for the comparison of 1981 and 1982 with the year with the largest mean size 1928-32 using a two-tailed t-test. Source: Hile (1936)
Tables 21, 22, and 23, and LTER— Northern Lakes (1981 and 1982).

1984]

Rudstam— Population Structure of Cisco

191

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192

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

adjust the catches in 1981-82. Identical mesh
sizes caught similar sizes of cisco in both
studies.

Results

Cisco populations are still present in four
of the five lakes investigated (Table 4). In
Allequash Lake, however, the species has
disappeared. The results on changes in
growth and abundances are, then, from
Trout, Sparkling and Big Muskellunge
Lakes. The results from Pallette Lake were
used primarily for the comparison of year
class structure since Hile (1936) did not
report size at capture or CPUE from this
lake. Other information on the cisco
population in that lake has been analyzed by
Hoff and Serns(1983).

The lengths at capture of ciscoes I + and
older (Sparkling and Big Muskellunge) and
II H IV ■+■ (Trout) were significantly greater
both in 1981 and in 1982 compared to 1928-
32 (Table 5, Figure 2). The significance levels
given are for the comparison of 1981 and
1982 with the year having the largest length
at capture in 1928-32 (2-tailed t-test, Table
5). Differences in age assignments of larger
cisco may account for some of the differ¬
ences observed in Trout Lake, but not in the
other two lakes.

Catch per unit effort (CPUE) in gill nets
appears to have declined in all three lakes
(two way ANOVA, fixed model, Table 6 and
Figure 3). Although an attempt was made to
account for differences in fishing methods
between the two studies, some bias may still
be present. There are reasons to believe,
however, that existing bias should be
towards higher CPUE in 1981-82. Since
growth has increased, the mesh sizes used in
the comparison were more efficient for
younger fish in 1981-82 than in 1928-32,
which would tend to increase the CPUE in
1981-82. Thus, the observed decline in
density may be underestimated. Another
possible source of bias is that somewhat
different areas within each lake were
sampled. However, sonar charts showed an

apparently uniform layer of ciscoes across
the lake at night (Rudstam 1983). The
ciscoes were caught almost exclusively at
night in 1981.

Hile’s (1936) findings of non-synchronous
year class structure in four lakes in Vilas
Co., were supported by this study (Figure 4).
Although the populations in both Big
Muskellunge and Sparkling Lakes were

+ + + + + + + +

Fig. 2. Differences between 1928-32 and 1981-82 in
the lengths at capture of cisco at each age in three Wis¬
consin lakes. Bars indicate the range of means for the
two time periods.

1984]

Rudstam — Population Structure of Cisco

193

dominated by a strong 1981 year class, the
population in Trout Lake had a strong 1979
year class while the population in Pallette
Lake had a strong 1978 year class. The 1981
year class was weak in Trout Lake. These
results are based on younger fish where
errors in aging should be minimal.

Discussion

The reasons for the disappearance of the
Allequash cisco are not known. This lake
was probably the least suited for a cold water
fish such as cisco. It has a maximum depth
of 7 m and can go anoxic below the
epilimnion (occurred in 1981, LTER-

Table 6. Results from a two way ANOVA (fixed model) of catch per unit effort along lakes and between two time
periods, 1930-31 and 1981-82. Log-transformed data give the same P- values.

Source of variation

DF

SS

MS

F

P

Among lakes

2

1716

858

1.14

N.S.

Between time periods

1

6833

6833

9.06

<.05

Interaction lake x time

2

1163

581

0.77

N.S.

Within groups

6

4523

753

DF - degrees of freedom
SS = sum of squares
MS mean square
N.S. = not significant

30 31 32 81 82 30 31 81 82 30 31 81 82

YEAR YEAR YEAR

Fig 3. Catch per unit effort (CPUE) of cisco in three Wisconsin lakes in 1930-32 and 1981-82. CPUE is measured as
catch per 100 square yards of gill net of mesh size 38 and 51 mm stretch mesh set for 24 hours. Only depths where the
ciscoes were abundant are included. Thus, the CPUE is an index of maximum density during summer stratification.
The catches in the 1980’s are corrected for the documented higher efficiency of nylon nets compared to cotton nets (see
text). The ranges for two sampling periods in 1981 and in 1982 are indicated with bars.

194

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

CO

yj

co

CO

<

_l

o

<

L±J

>-

LU

cr

LU

Ll_

U-

o

>-

o

LU

3

O

LU

a:

1981 1982

Fig. 4. Age structure of the cisco populations in
four Wisconsin lakes in 1981 and 1982 as deter¬
mined by the scale method. The numbers are cor¬
rected for gill net size selectivity. The lack of 0 +
in Pallette Lake may be due to an earlier sampl¬
ing date.

Northern Lakes 1981). Such conditions have
been observed to cause summer mortalities
of cisco in other lakes (Cahn 1927, Frey
1955, Colby and Brook 1969). However,
cisco persist in similar lakes in Indiana (Hile
1936, Frey 1955). Also, recolonization from
Trout Lake through Allequash Creek should
be possible even if the whole population was
eliminated through a summer kill. Condi¬
tions causing summer mortalities may occur
too frequently to be offset by recolonization.

Growth and Density

An inverse relationship between growth
and density of fish populations is well estab¬

lished and has been documented experi¬
mentally by Healey (1980) in a study involv¬
ing different degrees of exploitation of lake
whitefish ( Coregonus clupeaformis) popula¬
tions. Hoff and Serns (1983) observed a
decrease in growth of Pallette Lake cisco
following a substantial decrease in exploita¬
tion. Density was the only factor Hile (1936)
found to correlate with the differences in
growth observed among lakes in the 1930’s.
The decrease in density indicated by CPUE
data is correlated with the observed increase
in growth (r = 0.776, 4 df, p < . 10, Figure 5).
The decrease in CPUE is largest in Sparkling
and Big Muskellunge Lakes where the in-

1984]

Rudstam — Population Structure of Cisco

195

i 250
E

+
t=l

LU
CD
<

X
J—

200
z

LsJ

150

\

\

\

\

SP

TR

30

\

80 / V

BM

30

\

\

TR t 30 \

t ' \

\

50 100

CPUE

_l

150

Fig. 5. Size at capture of age 11+ cisco in July- August plotted against CPUE in
Trout, Sparkling, and Big Muskellunge Lake (r = .776, 4 df, p < .10). CPUE is an
index of maximum density during summer stratification (see text). Bars indicate two
standard errors for the length measurement and the range for the CPUE. Abbrevia¬
tions: SP = Sparkling Lake, BM = Big Muskellunge Lake, TR = Trout Lake, 30 =
1928-1932, 80= 1981-82.

crease in growth is most dramatic. The
CPUE and growth in these two lakes ap¬
proach the values obtained from Clear Lake,
Oneida Co, in 1931 and 1932 (Hile 1936),
where, in the 1930’s, the cisco were less
dense and had a faster growth than any ob¬
served in 1981-82.

The increase in growth could be the result
of other factors, such as more favorable
temperature and oxygen regimes, increased
productivity, and/or decreased inter-specific
competition. None of these factors are, how¬
ever, likely to have changed enough to have
had a large effect on growth. The tempera¬
ture and oxygen profiles measured in
1981-82 (LTER-Northern Lakes 1981 and
1982) are similar to the profiles reported by
Juday and Birge (1932) and Hile and Juday
(1941). Some increase in productivity may

have occurred, since conductivity in two of
the lakes has increased since the 1930,s
(Table 1, Carl Bower, UW Dept, of Geol¬
ogy, pers. comm.). However, this increase is
a small fraction of the differences observed
in conductivity among lakes. Preliminary
analyses of zooplankton samples from the
1930’s and 1981-82 show no significant
differences in abundances of most taxa in
the three lakes (T. Kratz and T. Frost, Trout
Lake Station, pers. comm.). Inter-specific
competition is unlikely to have decreased.
Yellow perch, Perea flavescens, the other
main planktivore in these lakes, were caught
in large enough numbers to warrant any con¬
sideration of inter-specific competition only
in Big Muskellunge Lake. Although Hile did
not present any CPUE data for perch, he did
give the number of perch caught with cisco

196

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

in gill nets. These numbers are similar per
cisco caught in both time periods (Table 4).
Rainbow smelt, Osmerus mordax, have been
introduced into Sparkling Lake, which
should increase rather than decrease inter¬
specific competition in that lake.

Hence, a decrease in cisco density is prob¬
ably the principal explanation for the in¬
crease in growth of cisco in the lakes studied
here. However, since exploitation is limited
or nonexistent, other explanations are neces¬
sary for this decrease in density.

The decrease in cisco density is most
apparent in big Muskellunge and Sparkling
Lakes, where the increase in growth rates is
most dramatic. Predation pressure on these
populations probably has increased. Preda¬
tory fish species have been stocked in these
lakes on a number of occasions since the
1930’s (Table 7). This has resulted in the
establishment of a walleye, Stizostedion
vitreum, and a muskellunge, Esox mas-
quinongy, population in Sparkling Lake.
Neither of these species were caught in

Sparkling Lake in the 1930’s (Hile and Juday
1941). Both species were present in the
1930’s in Big Muskellunge Lake, but appar¬
ently in low numbers. Extensive gill net fish¬
ing caught only two walleyes and one
muskellunge in the 1930’s (Hile and Juday
1941). The density of these predators has
probably increased. Hile (1936) hinted at the
importance of walleye as a cisco predator,
since substantially more walleyes were
caught in Clear Lake (Table 4), where the
cisco population was less abundant than in
the other lakes. Clady (1967) observed an
increase in growth of cisco when rainbow
trout, Salmo gairdneri, were stocked in
Birch Lake, Michigan, although few ciscoes
were found in trout stomachs.

The density could also have been affected
by a series of poor year classes that may or
may not be the result of abiotic factors.
Smelt, recently introduced to Sparkling Lake
(Table 4), are thought to have contributed to
the decline of cisco in the Great Lakes
through resource competition (Christie 1974)

Table 7. Fish species stocked in Sparkling, Big Muskellunge and Trout lakes prior to 1931 and from 1932 to 1981.
Stars indicate species that were not known from the lake prior to stocking. Source: Wisconsin Department of Natural
Resources, Woodruff.

Lake

Sparkling

Big Muskellunge

Trout

Species

Year # of occ.

Year # of occ.

Year

# of occ.

Prior to 1931:

Salmon (Salmo salar)

*1906

1

Lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush)

1920

1

1932-1981:

Lake trout

*1966-68 3

1942-80

25

Rainbow trout (Salmo gairdneri)
Whitefish (Coregonus

*1956

1

clupeaformis)

1975

1

Muskellunge (Esox masquinongy)

*1939-77 10

1934-80 43

1949-67

8

Walleye (Sizostedion vitreum)

*1933-59 9

1934-81 6

1952-78

17

Perch (Perea flavescens)

Largemouth bass (Micropterus

1936 1

salmoides)

Smallmouth bass (Micropterus

*1933-43 2

1942-45,64 4

dolomieui)

1952 1

1950 1

Bluegill (Lepomis macrochirus)

1936 1

1984]

Rudstam— Population Structure of Cisco

197

or through predation on cisco larvae
(Crowder 1980). This species does not occur
in Big Muskellunge Lake, but the same
mechanism may not have caused the changes
in population structure in both lakes.

The magnitude of the increases in growth
observed in Sparkling Lake and Big Muskel¬
lunge Lake are quite large, comparable to
the largest differences among years reported
from other lakes (Carlander 1945, Dryer and
Beil 1964, Clady 1967). There is, therefore,
no indication that non-exploited cisco popu¬
lations have a more stable population struc¬
ture over time than exploited populations.
However, the populations studied here can¬
not be considered unaffected by human
activity. It is well known from the Great
Lakes that introductions of new species may
cause dramatic changes in native fish
populations (see e.g. Christie 1974).

A posteriori explanations for historic
changes are of necessity speculative. I con¬
sider a decrease in density to be the most
parsimonious explanation for the observed
increase in growth since the 1930’s. The
comparisons of CPUE’s are consistent with
this explanation. Several factors could have
contributed to a decrease in density. The
presently available information is consistent
with an explanation based on increased pre¬
dation pressure. However, other explana¬
tions can not be ruled out, and there is no
guarantee that the same mechanism has
caused the changes in both Sparkling and
Big Muskellunge Lake. The changes in Trout
Lake are of smaller magnitude and can prob¬
ably be considered the result of “natural”
fluctuations in abundance of cisco without
larger changes in that system. Variations in
growth of similar magnitude as observed in
Trout Lake are commonly reported from
long term studies on coregonids (Carlander
1945, Jarvi 1942a, 1942b, 1947, Dryer and
Beil 1964, Clay 1967). Unfortunately, it is
not possible to know if the observed changes
are the result of long term trends or part of a
cycle, nor if the changes occurred slowly

over the last 50 years or quickly over a few
years. Complete time series are necessary for
such detailed analysis.

Year class structure

The persistent asynchrony of year class
strength among lakes in northern Wisconsin
supports Hile’s (1936) suggestion that year
class strength of cisco is dependent on local
conditions within each lake. This is also con¬
sistent with the lack of correlation between
year class strength and weather found by
some authors for the vendace, Coregonus
albula (Svardson 1956, Aass 1972, Hamrin
1979), an ecologically similar species (Smith
1957). Comparative studies among lakes can
be criticized for not accounting for dif¬
ferences in the response of different lakes to
weather events. A storm could, for example,
affect lakes with a large fetch more than
smaller lakes. However, the two lakes in this
study with the most similar morphometries,
Sparkling and Pallette Lakes, show different
year class patterns. It appears, therefore,
that variations in year class strength of cisco
in lakes in northern Wisconsin are not pri¬
marily a response to weather events. Aass
(1972) and Hamrin (1979) observed regular
periods between strong year classes of ven¬
dace, that were not correlated with weather.
Both authors invoked intra-specific compe¬
tition as a possible mechanism for variations
in year class success of this fish, since both
adults and juveniles feed on zooplankton.
This is also true for cisco in northern Wis¬
consin (Couey 1935, Engel 1976, Rudstam
pers. obs.). Longer time series, however, are
necessary to evaluate this proposition.

Acknowledgments

Many of the students and staff associated
with the Center for Limnology at the Univer¬
sity of Wisconsin — Madison helped with
parts of the field sampling and laboratory
work. A large thanks to them all. Michael
Hoff and Olle Enderlein assisted with their
expertise in aging cisco. Paul Rasmusen and

198

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

Tim Kratz helped with the LTER data bases.
John Magnuson, John Lyons, Hannah Hill,
Steven Serns and Michael Hoff provided
valuable comments on the manuscript.
Cheryl Hughes drew the figures.

The study was supported by a Wisconsin
Alumni Research Foundation Fellowship
and by the National Science Foundation’s
Long Term Ecological Research Project —
Northern Temperate Lakes (#DEB 8012313),
Principal Investigator John J. Magnuson.

References Cited

Aass, P. 1972. Age determination and year class
fluctuations of cisco, Coregonus albula L., in
the Mj0sa hydroelectric reservoir (Norway).
Rep. Inst. Freshwater Research Drottningholm
52:5-22.

Bajkov, A. 1930. Fishing industry and fisheries
investigations in Prairie Provinces. Trans. Am.
Fish. Soc. 60:215-237.

Berst, A. H. 1961. Selectivity and efficiency of
experimental gillnets in South Bay and
Georgian Bay of Lake Huron. Trans. Am.
Fish. Soc. 90:413-418.

Black, J. J., L. M. Andrews, and C. W.
Threinen. 1963. Surface water resources of
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Bowser, C., J. Eilers, M. Gage, W. Horns, C.
Lehner, and J. Magnuson. 1982. A 50 year
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Cahn, A. R. 1927. An ecological study of
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Bio. Monographs vol 1 1 , No 1 , 1 5 1 pp.
Carlander, K. D. 1937. Age, growth and mor¬
phometry of the cisco, Leucichthys artedii
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Carlander, K. D. 1945. Growth, length-weight
relationship and population fluctuations of the
tullibee, Leucichthys artedii tullibee
(Richardson), with reference to commercial
fisheries, Lake of the Woods, Minnesota.
Trans. Am. Fish. Soc. 73:125-136.

Carlander, K. D. 1969. Handbook of Freshwater
Fisheries Biology Vol 1. The Iowa State Uni¬
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Christensen, J. M. 1964. Burning of otoliths, a
technique for age determination of soles and
other fish. J. Cons. Perm. Int. Explor. Mer.
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Christie, W. J. 1963. Effect of artificial propa¬
gation and the weather on recruitment in the
Lake Ontario whitefish fishery. J. Fish. Res.
Board Can. 20:597-646.

Christie, W. J. 1974. Changes in fish species
composition of the Great Lakes. J. Fish. Res.
Board Can. 31:827-854.

Clady, M. D. 1967. Changes in an exploited
population of the cisco Coregonus artedii
LeSueur. Pap. Mich. Acad. Sci. Arts Lett.
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Colby, P. J. and L. T. Brooke. 1969. Cisco
{Coregonus artedii) mortalities in a southern
Michigan lake July 1968. Limnol. Oceanogr.
14:958-960.

Cooper, G. P. 1937. Age, growth and morphom¬
etry of cisco, Leucichthys artedii LeSueur in
Blind Lake, Washtenaw Co., Michigan. Pap.
Mich. Acad. Sci. Arts Lett. 22:563-571.

Couey, F. M. 1935. Fish food studies of a num¬
ber of northeastern Wisconsin lakes. Trans.
Wis. Acad. Sci. Arts Lett. 29:131-172.

Crowder, L. B. 1980. Alewife, rainbow smelt and
native fishes in Lake Michigan: competition or
predation ? Env. Biol. Fish. 5(3):225-233.

Dryer, W. R. and J. Beil. 1964. Life history of
lake herring in lake Superior. Fish. Bull.
63:493-530.

Engel, S. 1976. Food habits and prey selection of
coho salmon ( Oncorhynchus kisutch ) and
cisco {Coregonus artedii) in relation to zoo¬
plankton dynamics in Pallette Lake, Wiscon¬
sin. Trans. Am. Fish. Soc. 105:607-614.

Engel, S. S. and J. J. Magnuson. 1976. Vertical
and horizontal distribution of coho salmon
{Oncorhynchus kisutch ), yellow perch {Perea
flavesceus), and cisco {Coregonus artedii) in
Pallette Lake, Wisconsin. J. Fish. Res. Board
Can. 33:2710-15.

Erickson, C. M. 1979. Age differences among
hard tissue structures observed in fish
populations experiencing various levels of
exploitation. Manitoba Department of Natural
Resources Ms report no 79-77.

1984]

Rudstam — Population Structure of Cisco

199

Fry, F. E. J. 1937. The summer migration of the
cisco, Leucichthys artedi (Le Sueur), in Lake
Nipissing, Ontario. Univ. Toronto Studies
Biol. Ser. 44:1-91.

Frey, D. G. 1955. Distributional ecology of the
cisco, Coregonus artedii, in Indiana. Invest.
Indiana Lakes and Streams 4:177-228.

Hamrin, S. F. 1979. Populationsdynamik, verti-
kalfordelning and fodoval hos sikloja,
Coregonus albula L., i sydsvenska sjoar.
(Population dynamic, vertical distribution and
food selection by cisco, Coregonus albula L.,
in lakes in the southern part of Sweden, in
Swedish with English summary). Ph.D. Thesis,
Institute of Limnology, Univ. of Lund,
Sweden.

Healey, M. C. 1980. Growth and recruitment in
experimentally exploited lake whitefish
( Coregonus clupeaformis) populations. Can.
J. Fish. Aquatic Sci. 37:255-267.

Hile, R. 1936. Age and growth of the cisco,
Leucichthys artedii, (Le Sueur), in the lakes of
northeastern highlands, Wisconsin. U.S. Bur.
Fish. Bull. 48(19):21 1—3 17

Hile, R. and C. Juday. 1941. Bathymetric dis¬
tribution of fish in lakes of the northeastern
highlands, Wisconsin. Trans. Wise. Acad. Sci.
Arts Lett. 33:147-187.

Hoff, M. H. and S. L. Serns. 1983. Changes in
the harvest, mean size-at-age, length-weight
relationship and condition of cisco in Pallette
Lake, 1946-1980. Wis. Dept. Nat. Resour.
Res. Rept. No 122, 11 p.

Jarvi, T. H. 1942a. Die bestande der kleine
Maranen ( Coregonus albula) und ihre
Schwankungen. 1. Pyhajarvi (Sudkarelien)
Acta Zool. Fenn. 32:1-89.

Jarvi, T. H. 1942b. Die bestande der kleine
Maranen ( Coregonus albula) und ihre
Schwankungen. 2. Ober and Mittel-Keitele.
Acta Zool. Fenn. 33:1-145.

Jarvi, T. H. 1947. Uber den Kleinmaranen-
bestand ( Coregonus albula L.) in dem See
Vesijarvi (Stidfinnland). Acta Zool. Fenn.
48:1-43.

Juday, C. and E. A. Birge. 1930. The highland
lake district of northeastern Wisconsin and the
Trout Lake limnological laboratory. Trans.
Wise. Acad. Sci. Arts Lett. 25:337-352.

Juday, C. and E. A. Birge. 1932. Dissolved
oxygen and oxygen consumed in the lake

waters of northeastern Wisconsin. Trans.
Wise. Acad. Sci. Arts Lett. 27:415-486.

Juday, C. and E. A. Birge. 1941. Hydrography
and morphometry of some northeastern Wis¬
consin lakes. Trans. Wise. Acad. Sci. Arts
Lett. 33:21-72.

Kohler, C. C., J. J. Ney, and A. A. Nigro. 1979.
Compact, portable vertical gill net system.
Prog. Fish Cult. 41(l):34-35.

Lawler, G. H. 1950. The use of nylon netting in
the gill-net fishery of Lake Erie whitefish.
Canadian Fish Culturist 7:22-24.

Lawler, G. H. 1965. Fluctuations in the success
of year classes of whitefish ( Coregonus
clupeaformis) populations with special refer¬
ence to Lake Erie. J. Fish Res. Board Can.
22:1197-1227.

LTER-Northern Lakes of Wisconsin. 1981 and
1982. From Chemistry, Fish and Historical
data bases, Long Term Ecological Research
program, NSF, J. J. Magnuson, P.I., Center
for Limnology, University of Wisconsin-
Madison.

McCombie, A. M. and F. E. J. Fry. 1960. Selec¬
tivity of gill nets for lake whitefish,
Coregonus clupeaformis. Trans. Am. Fish.
Soc. 89:176-184.

Miller, R. B. 1952. The relative strength of
whitefish year classes as affected by egg
plantings and weather. J. Wildl. Management
16:39-50.

Mills, K. H. and R. J. Beamish. 1980. Compari¬
son of fin-ray and scale age determinations for
Lake Whitefish ( Coregonus clupeaformis) and
their implications for estimates of growth and
annual survival. Can. J. Fish. Aquatic Science
37:534-544.

Molin, G. 1951. Nylon conta cotton. Rep. Inst.
Freshw. Res. Drottningholm 32:59-65.

Molin, G. 1953. Test fishing with nets made of
monofilament nylon thread. Rep. Inst.
Freshw. Res. Drottningholm 34:73-77.

Power, G. 1978. Fish population structure in
arctic lakes. J. Fish. Res. Board Can.
35:53-59.

Rudstam, L. G. 1983. Cisco in Wisconsin Lakes:
long term comparison of population structure
and an analysis of their vertical distribution.
M. Sc. thesis, University of Wisconsin-
Madison.

Rudstam, L. G., J. J. Magnuson and W. T.

200

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

Tonn. In Press. Size selectivity of passive
fishing gear: A correction for encounter proba¬
bility applied to gill nets. Can J. Fisheries
Aquatic Science.

Scott, W. B. 1951. Fluctuations in abundance of
the Lake Erie cisco ( Leucichthys artedii)
population. Contrib. Roy. Ont. Mus. Zool.
32:1-41.

Selgeby, J. H. 1982. Decline of lake herring
( Coregonus artedii) in Lake Superior: An
analysis of the Wisconsin herring fishery
1936-78. Can. J. Fish. Aquatic Sci. 39:
554-563.

Smith, S. H. 1956. Life history of lake herring of
Green Bay, Lake Michigan. Fish. Bull. 57:
87-138.

Smith, S. H. 1957. Evolution and distribution of
the coregonids. J. Fish. Res. Board Con. 14:
599-604.

Smith, D. B. 1972. Age and growth of the cisco in
Oneida Lake, New York. N.Y. Fish Game J.
19:83-91.

Svardson, G. 1956. Lambarfjardens siklOja (In
Swedish). Svensk Fiskeri Tidskrift 65:73-80.
Van Oosten, J. 1929. Life history of the lake
herring {Leucichthys artedii) of Lake Huron
as revealed by its scales, with critique of the
scale method. U.S. Bur. Fish. Bull. 44:
265-428.

THE DISTRIBUTION AND ZOOGEOGRAPHY
OF LAKE TROUT, LAKE WHITEFISH, AND NINESPINE
STICKLEBACK IN VILAS AND ONEIDA COUNTIES, WISCONSIN

John Lyons
Center for Limnology
University of Wisconsin , Madison

Abstract

Populations of lake trout, lake whitefish, and ninespine stickleback are
uncommon in the Mississippi-Missouri watershed, and in many lakes their origin
(native, introduced or recently invaded) is unclear. In the Mississippi basin of north-
central Wisconsin at least eight lakes contained lake trout at some point during the
last 80 years. In two of the lakes, Black Oak and Trout (Vilas Co.), the lake trout are
probably native. Trout Lake also contains a native population of lake whitefish, and
three ninespine stickleback have recently been captured there, the first record of the
species in an inland lake in Wisconsin and only the fourth for the entire Mississippi-
Missouri basin. There is some evidence that Trout Lake ninespine stickleback differ
morphologically from the nearest other populations examined. Unlike in north¬
eastern North America, the distributions of ninespine stickleback and two other
deepwater species in the Mississippi-Missouri watershed are not strongly correlated
with the former distribution of large proglacial lakes, suggesting active dispersal into
the area following deglaciation.

In addition to lake trout, lake whitefish, and ninespine stickleback, Trout Lake
contains native populations of five other deepwater animals, giving it one of the
most diverse deepwater assemblages in the Mississippi-Missouri basin. Future
management of the lake should emphasize the preservation of this fauna, and
particular effort should be made to prevent the introduction of rainbow smelt,
which has become established in several lakes in the area.

Introduction

Although generally believed to have sur¬
vived Wisconsin (late Pleistocene) glaciation
in a Mississippian refugium, populations of
lake trout Salvelinus namaycush, lake
whitefish Coregonus clupeaformis, and
ninespine stickleback Pungitius pungitius are
today found in only a few deep lakes at the
northern and western edges of the Missis¬
sippi-Missouri watershed (Lindsey, 1964;
Nelson, 1968; McPhail and Lindsey, 1970;
Martin et al., 1980; McAllister and Parker,
1980; Parker et al., 1980). Widespread intro¬
ductions, possible recent invasions, mixing
of stocks, local extinctions, and errors and
omissions in the literature have obscured

pre-Columbian distributions but it is almost
certain that these species existed in only a
handful of lakes in the basin before the
advent of European settlement (Greene,
1935; Vincent, 1963; Nelson, 1968; Eddy
and Underhill, 1974).

Factors affecting the post-glacial dispersal
and distribution of these three deepwater
fishes have been reviewed for northern and
northeastern North America and the
Laurentian Great Lakes basin (McPhail,
1963a; McPhail and Lindsey, 1970; Dads-
well, 1972, 1974; Bailey and Smith, 1981). In
the upper Mississippi drainage their zoo¬
geography has received relatively little
attention, primarily due to a scarcity of

201

202

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

records and uncertainty and confusion over
origins of current populations (Greene,
1935; Lindsey, 1964; Eddy and Underhill,
1974; Becker, 1983). Historical records of
lake trout and lake whitefish exist from a
small number of lakes in the upper Missis¬
sippi basin of north-central Wisconsin
(Birge, 1907; Wagner, 1910; Koelz, 1930;
Green, 1935), but several general distribu¬
tion studies on these species have disagreed
over whether these populations were native
or introduced (Lindsey, 1964; Martin et al.,
1980; Parker et al., 1980; Becker, 1983;
Black, 1983). Recent collecting has also

revealed the presence of ninespine stickle¬
back in the area. In order to clarify the status
and origin of these populations, this paper
summarizes the current and historical dis¬
tribution of the three species in north-central
Wisconsin and presents evidence that at least
some of the populations were native. Partic¬
ular attention is given to Trout Lake, Vilas
Co., which has an unusually rich deepwater
fauna.

Sources of Data

Current locality data for north-central
Wisconsin (Figure 1) are based on 20 years

Fig. 1. Map of north-central Wisconsin, showing lakes mentioned in text, and watershed divides. Most of the many
lakes and rivers in the area have been omitted for clarity. Labeled lakes are as follows:

AL = Allequash
BA = Big Arbor Vitae
BC = Big Carr
BO = Black Oak
CL = Clear

CR = Crystal
ES = Escanaba
LL = Long
LT = Little Trout
LS = Little Star

MI = Minocqua
PA = Pallette
SP = Sparkling
TO = Tomahawk
TR = Trout

Table 1 . Location and selected physical, chemical and biological characteristics of lakes in the Mississippi basin of north-central Wisconsin which currently
or historically had populations of lake trout, lake whitefish and/or ninespine stickleback. Origin of these three species is as follows: N = Native, NS =
Native, but historically or currently stocked, I = Introduced, ? = Uncertain, ( ) = No longer present. Location and physical/chemical data from Black et al.
(1963) and Andrews & Threinen (1966).

1984]

Lyons — Lake Trout , Whitefish and Stickleback

203

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Trout Vilas 41N/7E 1548 36 27 63 NS NS N? Cisco, Burbot,

Troutperch,
Slimy Sculpin,
Mysis relicta

204

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

of fish collecting by the Wisconsin Depart¬
ment of Natural Resources (DNR) and Uni¬
versity of Wisconsin (UW) students and
faculty. The bulk of sampling has been on
Trout Lake, Vilas Co., and has included
bottom trawling, deepwater minnow trap¬
ping, gill netting, SCUBA observation, and
examination of stomach contents of pis-
civores captured in deep water, as well as
extensive netting and observation in littoral
areas. Voucher specimens for all deepwater
species collected can be found in the UW-
Madison Zoological Museum, the UW-Ste-
vens Point Museum of Natural History, the
Milwaukee Public Museum and/or the Uni¬
versity of Michigan Museum of Zoology.
Native distributions have been determined
from early literature reports, unpublished
museum records, and communication with
university and DNR biologists and geologists
familiar with the region (see Acknowledg¬
ments).

Current and Historical Distributions

The lake trout is currently found in four
lakes in the Mississippi basin of north-
central Wisconsin. All are located in Vilas
Co. and are relatively deep and unproductive
(Table 1). Lake trout have been present con¬
tinuously for at least 75 years in Trout and
Black Oak Lakes, the only lakes in the upper
Mississippi basin which currently support
successfully reproducing populations (Birge,
1907; Daly et al., 1962; Becker, 1983; D.
Fago, DNR Madison, pers. comm.; J.
Underhill, University of Minnesota, pers.
comm.). However, both lakes have been
regularly stocked during this time period
(Daly et al. 1962, McKnight 1977). In
Crystal and Pallette Lakes current lake trout
populations are due to recent stocking and
natural reproduction is probably not signif¬
icant. There were no records of lake trout in
Pallette Lake prior to introduction in 1982
(S. Serns, DNR Woodruff, pers. comm.).
Records from Crystal Lake date from the
early 1900’s, but there were apparently long
periods between then and the present when

lake trout were absent (Fago, pers. comm.).
Lake trout were also recorded from Little
Trout Lake, Vilas Co., in the early 1900’s,
but no longer occur there (Rahel 1982, Fago
pers. comm.). In recent years several other
lakes in the area, including Long and
Sparkling Lakes, Vilas Co. & Tomahawk,
Clear, & Big Carr Lakes, Oneida Co., have
been stocked without notable success
(Becker 1983, DNR Woodruff lake survey
files).

The only lake whitefish population cur¬
rently reported from the upper Mississippi
basin of north-central Wisconsin is in Trout
Lake, Vilas Co.; the earliest reports are from
around the turn of the century (Birge 1907,
Wagner 1910). The population reproduces
naturally (Hile & Deason 1934) and has been
stocked sporadically (DNR Woodruff lake
survey files). In the last 40 years there have
been single records of lake whitefish from
Allequash and Little Star Lakes, Vilas Co.
(Fig. 1), both of which are likely to have
been strays from Trout Lake (McKnight et
al. 1970, Becker 1983, Serns pers. comm.).
In Minnesota and other parts of Wisconsin
lake whitefish have been reported 25 km or
more from established populations (Eddy &
Underhill 1974, Becker 1983).

Previously there have been no confirmed
records of the ninespine stickleback any¬
where in the Mississippi watershed in Wis¬
consin, and only three reports of it the entire
Mississippi-Missouri basin (Nordlie et al.
1961, Nelson 1968, Underhill pers. comm.).
A published report from Escanaba L., Vilas
Co. (Kempinger et al. 1975) is erroneous (G.
Becker, UW-Stevens Pt. pers. comm.). Dur¬
ing the last 20 years collections in Trout L.,
Vilas Co., have yielded three specimens, one
in 1965 and two in 1968. Recent intensive
sampling of both shallow and deepwater
habitats has failed to capture further
individuals, suggesting that the species is
present at low densities or has been extir¬
pated. There are also reports of single nine-
spine sticklebacks from Big Arbor Vitae
Lake, Vilas Co. and Minocqua Lake,

1984]

Lyons— Lake Trout , Whitefish and Stickleback

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Lake Superior Gratiot Lake UMMZ No Data 1.7 2 10.1 12.9

KeweenanCo. #13301 (N= 11) (1.4-1. 8) (0.4) (10-11) (12-14)

Michigan

206

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

Oneida Co. (R. Steuck, H. Carlson, DNR,
Woodruff, pers. comm.) (Fig. 1). Specimens
are not extant, and thus cannot be con¬
firmed, but if populations do exist in these
lakes, it suggests that ninespine sticklebacks
are present in at least small numbers in
several lakes in this area.

Native Distributions

Lake trout are clearly not native to
Pallette Lake and, given its small size and
historical absence of reproduction, probably
also not native to Crystal Lake. However,
there is evidence that lake trout populations
existed in Trout and probably Black Oak
Lakes prior to European settlement of Wis¬
consin. Most recent literature reports con¬
sider lake trout native to these two lakes
(Daly et al. 1962, Lindsey 1964, McKnight
1977, Becker 1983, Black 1983), which are
unique in the upper Mississippi drainage in
having naturally reproducing populations.
In Trout Lake the earliest fish studies
reported that lake trout were “native fish,
not the result of artificial planting” (Juday
& Wagner 1908, p. 19). Trout Lake was
named by 1866 (Map of Federal Land Sur¬
vey plots of Towns 40-43N, R1-8E Wise,
State Historical Society, Madison), well
before any introductions were likely to have
been made into the area (Jones 1924). Brook
trout ( Salvelinus fontinalis ) are native to
tributaries of Trout Lake, but are restricted
to small streams and spring ponds in the area
(Anonymous 1973, personal observations),
so the name ‘Trout Lake’ probably arose
due to the presence of lake trout. A similar
‘name’ argument can be made for nearby
Little Trout Lake, which had lake trout in
1907 and 1909 (Fago, pers. comm.). How¬
ever, the lake’s name was changed from
‘Sand’ to ‘Little Trout’ sometime between
1866 and 1895 (Federal Plot Maps for Town¬
ships 40-43N, R1-8E) and it does not contain
lake trout today (Rahel 1982), so the origins
of the early records from this lake are
uncertain.

The lake whitefish population in Trout
Lake is also likely to have been present prior
to settlement of the Vilas Co. area by Euro¬
peans. Lake whitefish were apparently not
stocked as widely or as early in inland lakes
as lake trout (Becker 1983), so early records
are more likely to to give an accurate repre¬
sentation of their original distribution. The
lake whitefish in Trout Lake currently repro¬
duce naturally and have not been stocked in
many years (DNR lake survey files). All
early authors considered the population
native (Wagner 1910, Koelz 1930, Hile &
Deason 1934, Green 1935). Koelz (1930)
recognized Trout Lake whitefish as a
separate subspecies (C. clupeaformis dustini)
from those in L. Michigan & L. Superior (C.
clupeaformis clupeaformis ), the most likely
source of fish for any introductions into
Trout Lake. Morphological differences be¬
tween Trout Lake and Great Lake popula¬
tions support a long isolation of Trout L.
whitefish, but do not conclusively prove that
Trout Lake fish did not recently come from
the Great Lakes, as many of the morpholog¬
ical characteristics Koelz used in his cor-
regonid taxonomy were shown to be caused
by differing environmental conditions rather
than by genetic differences between popula¬
tions (Hile 1936).

The ninespine sticklebacks in Trout Lake
were probably not introduced. Because of
their small size and difficulty of capture, this
species is not likely to be stocked, either
intentionally or accidently as bait. Although
only three specimens have been collected, the
Trout L. population appears somewhat dis¬
tinct morphologically from the nearest
populations examined (Table 2). Trout Lake
fish seem to have a relatively low ratio of
pectoral fin length to pelvic spine length, and
are similar to those of two small inland lakes
in the Great Lakes basin, Gull and Gratoit,
in that respect. However, they tend to have
fewer dorsal spines then those from Gratoit
Lake, and somewhat different numbers of
dorsal spines and gill rakers than those from

1984]

Lyons — Lake Trout , Whitefish and Stickleback

207

Gull Lake. As in the lake whitefish, morpho¬
logical differences support the native status
of Trout Lake ninespine sticklebacks, but do
not prove that they were not introduced into
the lake, particularly given the small samples

being compared. Among other species of
sticklebacks nearby populations in the same
drainage are often quite different morpho¬
logically (Reist, 1981; Bell, 1982) and some
population characteristics, such as frequency

Fig. 2. Map of extent of glacial lakes (Stippled Areas) in the north central United States during late Wisconsin glacia¬
tions (after Flint 1969). Current localities for ninespine stickleback (•). trout-perch (■) and the crustacean My sis
relicta (A) are plotted. Unconfirmed records, strays, or possibly introduced populations have an open symbol. Not all
trout-perch records have been plotted.

Sources of records: Eschmeyer, (1950); Nelson, (1968); Eddy & Underhill, (1974); Becker, (1976), McKnight,
(1976); Gammon et al., (1978); Smith, (1979); Gilbert & Lee, (1980); McAllister & Parker, (1980); Rahel, (1982);
Becker, (1983); personal observations.

208

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

of certain pelvic-complex phenotypes,
change rapidly in response to environmental
changes (Kynard, 1979; Reist, 1981).

Origins of Native Populations

In northeastern North America Dadswell
(1972, 1974) found that the distribution of
several small deepwater fishes and crus¬
taceans agreed closely with the former dis¬
tribution of large proglacial lakes. In that
area these animals dispersed northward
following glaciation via interconnected
proglacial lakes and their outlet channels,
although several fishes later moved up to 60
km upstream from the boundaries of these
former lakes.

Three of the species considered by Dads¬
well (1972, 1974), ninespine stickleback,
trout-perch ( Percopsis omiscomaycus) and
the crustacean Mysis relicta , are present in
the upper Mississippi basin of north-central
Wisconsin. The trout-perch clearly is not
distributed in accordance with former pro¬
glacial lakes in the Mississippi basin (Fig. 2).
With the exception of northern Wisconsin
and Minnesota it is primarily a river fish,
and is found several hundred km south of
the southern edge of the Wisconsin ice sheet
(Gilbert & Lee 1980). In north-central Wis¬
consin it is distributed sporadically in
scattered rivers and lakes (Rahel 1982,
Becker 1983), and appears to have dispersed
following deglaciation using lotic pathways.

Mysis relicta is known from only three or
four lakes in the Mississippi basin of Wis¬
consin, including Trout and Black Oak
Lakes (Juday & Birge 1927, McKnight 1976).
Its distribution, along with that of the
ninespine stickleback, does not correspond
with that of large proglacial lakes in the
Mississippi basin (Fig. 2). Geological studies
of north-central Wisconsin indicate that
large proglacial lakes were absent following
glaciation, and that most lakes in the region
were formed by the melting of ice blocks
deposited in the glacial till as the ice with¬
drew (Thwaites 1929, Broughton 1941, J.
Attig U.W. Dept, of Geology pers. comm.).

Dadswell (pers. comm.) has suggested that
short-lived narrow proglacial lakes may have
been present along large areas of the ice
margin in relatively flat areas such as
northern Wisconsin. However, the local
topography in Vilas Co. makes formation of
such lakes unlikely, and recent core and
sediment samples provide no evidence that
such lakes ever existed (J. Attig, pers.
comm.).

While several of the lake trout, lake white-
fish, and ninespine stickleback populations
in the Mississippi basin of north-central Wis¬
consin were probably not the result of stock¬
ing, it is possible that they may have arisen
from a relatively recent invasion into the
Mississippi drainage from the Great Lakes
basin. The ninespine stickleback population
in Lake Winnibigosh MN may have entered
the Mississippi drainage by moving through
a marshy connection with the Hudson’s Bay
watershed (Nordlie et al. 1961) while several
other species have crossed the Mississippi-
Great Lakes boundary in Wisconsin and Illi¬
nois during the last 100 years (summarized in
Smith 1979, Becker 1983). Black Oak Lake is
less than 2 km from the Great Lakes drain¬
age (Fig. 1), so a movement of lake trout
into the lake across the watershed boundary
might not be unlikely. However, by current
drainage patterns Trout Lake is over 30 km
from the nearest likely crossover point (Fig.
1). Most of this distance is unsuitable habitat
for deepwater species, although the probable
movement of lake whitefish from Trout
Lake to Little Star Lake indicates that it
might be traversed during colder parts of the
year.

Geological studies indicate that in the
period immediately following the recession
of the glaciers, the drainage divide was 20-30
km further north, and that its current posi¬
tion is probably as far south as it has ever
been (J. Attig pers. comm.). There have
been no major connections between the two
watersheds since deglaciation, and any
recent connections have almost certainly
been small, shallow and marshy. These

1984]

Lyons — Lake Trout , Whitefish and Stickleback

209

factors argue against movement of deep¬
water fishes from the Great Lakes Basin into
the upper Mississippi drainage in this area.
Deepwater fishes most likely actively fol¬
lowed the glaciers northward from southern
refugia using lotic pathways and colonized
lakes in north-central Wisconsin soon after
they were formed. Native populations in this
area have persisted since then and have prob¬
ably been isolated from Great Lakes popula¬
tions since glaciers left the Vilas Co. area,
10-12,000 yrs. before present (J. Attig pers.
comm.).

Trout Lake

Trout Lake has one of the most diverse
native deepwater faunas in the entire Mis-
sissippi-Missouri basin. In addition to lake
trout, lake whitefish, ninespine stickleback
and Mysis relicta , there are reproducing
populations of cisco ( Coregonus artedi ),
trout-perch, burbot (Lota lota), and slimy
sculpin (Cottus cognatus). Cisco, trout-
perch and burbot are common in many deep
lakes in northern Wisconsin and Minnesota,
but in the upper Mississippi watershed the
slimy sculpin is usually restricted to small
cold headwater streams 300 to 500 km to the
southwest (Johnson 1972, Eddy & Underhill
1974, Becker 1983). Slimy sculpins from
Trout Lake are somewhat different morpho¬
logically from most Great Lakes and Mis¬
sissippi basin populations (Lyons, in prep.).

Future fisheries management policy for
Trout Lake should take into account the
uniqueness of its deepwater fauna and
attempt to preserve it. Efforts should be
made to keep the numbers of piscivores and
prey fairly stable, and in the future the DNR
should not introduce lake trout except those
derived from Trout Lake brood stock.
Horns (1983) has shown that hatching and
developmental characteristics of Trout Lake
lake trout are different from those of Lake
Superior and Lake Michigan fish. Further
dilution of the particular genetic character¬
istics of the Trout Lake population through
mixing with other populations may lead to

reduced reproductive success, as suggested
by the failure of recent efforts to reestablish
a reproducing population of lake trout in
Lake Michigan (Krueger et al. 1981). The
introduction of exotic deepwater species into
Trout Lake should be avoided at all costs.
Rainbow smelt (Osmerus mordax) have
become established in several lakes in north-
central Wisconsin (Becker 1983), including
adjacent Sparkling Lake (pers. observation,
Fig. 1). In the Great Lakes rainbow smelt,
along with other exotic fishes, are believed to
have contributed to the decline, and in some
cases the extirpation of the native deepwater
fish fauna (Christie 1974, Crowder 1980).
During highwater years there is a temporary
connection between Sparkling and Trout
Lakes (present for 3 mos. in 1983) which
rainbow smelt might traverse during their
spawning period. To prevent them from
entering Trout Lake fish barriers should be
installed and the connection should be moni¬
tored when flowing. Efforts also should be
made to educate the public about the dan¬
gers of intentionally or accidently intro¬
ducing rainbow smelt into other lakes in the
area.

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to the
following people for making available un¬
published records and specimens, and/or
providing advice and encouragement:
George C. Becker, UW-Stevens Point; Har-
land Carlson, DNR Woodruff; Alexandra
Creighton, Univ. of Michigan Museum of
Zoology; Michael J. Dadswell, Dept, of
Fisheries and Oceans, N. B., Canada; Don
Fago, WI DNR Fish Distribution Survey,
Madison; William Le Grande, Museum of
Natural History, UW-Stevens Point; Donald
E. McAllister, National Museums of
Canada, Ottawa; Terry McKnight, DNR
Rhinelander; Liz Pillaert, UW-Madison
Zoological Museum; Steve Serns, DNR
Woodruff; Randy Steuck, DNR Woodruff;
and James C. Underhill, Univ. of Min¬
nesota, Minneapolis. John Attig, UW-

210

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

Madison, provided geological information
about the Vilas Co. area. Phil Cochran,
UW-Madison, commented on a draft of this
paper. John J. Magnuson, UW-Madison,
captured two of the sticklebacks from Trout
Lake and supported recent collecting efforts
through NSF Grant #DEB8012313.

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Bailey, R. M. and G. R. Smith. 1981. Origin and
geography of the fish fauna of the Laurentian
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Becker, G. C. 1976. Inland fishes of the Lake
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Becker, G. C. 1983. Fishes of Wisconsin. Univ.

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Bell, M. A. 1982. Differentiation of adjacent
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Birge, E. A. 1907. The oxygen dissolved in the
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Black, G. A. 1983. Origin, distribution and post¬
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Black, J. J., L. M. Andrews, and C. W.
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Christie, W. J. 1974. Changes in the fish species
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Crowder, L. B. 1980. Alewife, rainbow smelt and
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Dadswell, M. J. 1972. Post-glacial dispersal of
four deepwater fishes on the basis of new
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545-553.

Dadswell, J. J. 1974. Distribution, ecology and
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Eddy, S. and J. C. Underhill, 1974. Northern
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Flint, R. F. 1959. Glacial map of the United
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Gannon, J. E., D. J. Mazur and A. M. Beeton.
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5-18.

Gilbert, C. R. and D. S. Lee. 1980. Percopis
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Freshwater Fishes. N. C. State Mus. Nat.
Hist., Raleigh 854 pp.

Greene, C. W. 1935. The distribution of Wis¬
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Hile, R. 1936. Summary of investigations on the
morphometry of the cisco, Leucichthys artedi
(Le Suer), in the lakes of the northeastern
Highlands, Wisconsin. Pap. Michigan Acad.
Sci. Arts Letters 21 :619-634.

Hile, R. and H. Deason. 1934. Growth of the
whitefish Coregonus clupeaformis in Trout
Lake, northeastern highlands, Wisconsin.
Trans. American Fish Soc. 64:231-237.

Horns, W. H. 1983. A comparison of four stocks
of lake trout with respect to early development.
Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, Univ. of Wise.,
Madison. 202 pp.

Hubbs, C. L. and K. F. Lagler. 1958. Fishes of
the Great Lakes Region. Univ. of Michigan
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Johnson, M. 1972. Distribution of sculpins
(Pisces: Cottidae) in Iowa. Proc. Iowa Acad.
Sci. 78:79-80.

1984]

Lyons — Lake Trout, Whitefish and Stickleback

211

Jones, G. 1924. A history of Lincoln, Oneida and
Vilas counties, Wisconsin. H. C. Cooper, Min¬
neapolis.

Juday, C. and G. Wagner. 1908. Dissolved oxy¬
gen as a factor in the distribution of' fishes.
Trans. Wise. Acad. 16:17-22.

Juday, C. and E. A. Birge. 1927. Pontoporeia
and Mysis in Wisconsin lakes. Ecology.
8:445-452.

Kempinger, J. J., W. Churchill, G. Priegel, and
L. Christenson. 1975. Estimate of abundance,
harvest, and exploitation of the fish population
of Escanaba Lake, Wisconsin, 1946-69. Wise.
Dept. Nat. Res. Tech. Bull. #84.

Koelz, W. 1930. The coregonid fishes of north¬
eastern North America. Pap. Michigan Acad.
Sci. Arts, Letters. 13:303-432.

Krueger, C. C., A. J. Gharrett, T. R. Dehring,
and R. W. Allendorf. 1981. Genetic aspects of
fisheries rehabilitation programs. Can. J. Fish.
Aq. Sci. 38:1877-1881.

Kynard, B. F. 1979. Population decline and
change in frequencies of lateral plates in
threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus acule-
atus). Copeia. 1979:635-658.

Lindsey, C. C. 1964. Problems in the zoogeog¬
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Lyons, J. In prep. Meristic and morphological
variation in slimy sculpins (Cottus cognatus)
from the north-central United States.

Martin, B., S. P. Plantania, and D. E.
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(Walbaum) Lake Trout, pp. 117-118 in D. S.
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854 pp.

McAllister, D. E. and B. Parker. 1980. Pungitius
pungitius (Linnaeus) Ninespine Stickleback, p.
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Freshwater Fishes. N. C. State Mus. Nat.
Hist., Raleigh. 854 pp.

McKnight, T. C. 1976. Opossum shrimp ( Mysis
oculata relicta: Loven) discovered in Stormy
Lake, Wisconsin. Trans. Wise. Acad. 64:
154-155.

McKnight, T. C. 1977. Investigations of lake
trout and whitefish management in Trout

Lake, Vilas Co., Wisconsin. Wise. Dept. Nat.
Res. Fish Management Rep. #98.

McKnight, T. C., R. W. Wendt, R. L. Theis, L.
E. Morehouse and M. E. Burdick. 1970. Cisco
and whitefish sport netting in northeast Wis¬
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Rep. #41.

McPhail, J. D. 1963a. The postglacial dispersal
of freshwater fishes in North America. Un¬
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McPhail, J. D. 1963b. Geographic variation in
North American ninespine sticklebacks Pun¬
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Drainage, Crooked L., Indiana. Copeia 1968:
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New distributional records of some Minnesota
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North American Freshwater Fishes. N.C. State
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Culaea inconstans, in Redwater drainage,
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Vilas Cty, Wisconin. Trans. Wise. Acad. 24:
109-125.

Vincent, R. E. 1963. The native range of lake
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Soc. 8:132-134.

THE CRYSTALLINE MONADNOCKS
OF NORTH-CENTRAL WISCONSIN

Gene E. Musolf

University of Wisconsin-Marathon County
Wausau

Abstract

Located within ten miles of Wausau, Wisconsin are three crystalline quart¬
zite monadnocks — Rib Mountain, Mosinee Hill and Hardwood Hill. This paper
is a geographical analysis of these hills stressing their physical and economic
features. A review of existing literature preceded map study, air photo examina¬
tion, personal interviews and field work of these unique landforms.

Composed of resistant Rib Mountain quartzite, the monadnocks exhibit
higher elevations, greater relief and steeper slopes than the surrounding land¬
scape. Metamorphosed from ancient sandstones, the quartzite was later
recrystallized by igneous intrusions and exhibits great purity. Glaciation of the
area apparently occurred in Pre-Wisconsinan time and deposited a shallow drift.
Surveyor’s notes indicate the original vegetation was a dense hemlock/northern
hardwood forest. However, a fire destroyed most of the cover in 1910 and the
resultant growth was largely aspen, birch and shrubs. Shallow, moderately-steep,
stony silt loam soils (Typic Glossboralf) dominate the hills.

Use of the monadnocks for agriculture has been generally precluded by the
steep slopes and stony soils. The lumbering “boom” of the late 1800’s largely
avoided the hills. Occasional forestry operations by private owners have been car¬
ried on in recent years. Mining of quartzite commenced in 1893 and several com¬
panies have been involved over the years.

It is in the fields of recreation and communications that the monadnocks
have had the greatest economic impact. Rib Mountain State Park dates from
1927 and served 189,000 visitors in 1979. The Rib Mountain Ski Area with four
major slopes entertained 97,000 skiiers in a recent year. Serving as a hub for a
complex communication network, the “mountain” supports a number of
transmitters and microwave facilities for television, radio and telephone.

Introduction

As one approaches Wausau, Wisconsin,
from any point of the compass, even the
most casual observer soon becomes aware of
three brooding, heavily-forested, steeply
sloping prominences which dominate the
landscape of the area. Projecting above the
flat-topped upland of the Precambrian pene¬
plain, they are the sharp, ridge-like Rib
Mountain, the twin-peaked Mosinee Hill
and the smaller, conical Hardwood Hill (Fig.
1). These unique landforms consist of the

very coarse Rib Mountain quartzite, perhaps
the most resistant rock in nature, and for
this reason they maintained their presence
during the general degradation of the sur¬
rounding area in Precambrian time and re¬
main as remnant hills, or monadnocks, to¬
day. The hills are in marked contrast to the
relatively level tops of the upland forming
the peneplain. They are the remnants of a
land surface older than the present peneplain
and are typical monadnocks like their name¬
sake, Mount Monadnock in New Hamp¬
shire, which bears a similar relationship to

212

1984]

Musol f— Monad n ocks

213

Fig. 1 . The crystalline monadnocks of north-central Wisconsin
(from USGS Wausau and Marathon Quadrangles, Scale-1 :62, 500).

the peneplain of erosion in southern New
England. It will be the major purpose of this
paper to provide a geographical analysis of
the hills which emphasizes their physical and
economic characteristics. In addition, a brief
review of the geology of the area is included.

Physical Environment

Landform Geography

Largest of the monadnocks is Rib
Mountain which is located in central
Marathon County approximately four miles
southwest of downtown Wausau (Fig. 2).
Formerly called Rib Hill, then Rib “Moun¬
tain,” this prominence is now called Rib
Mountain. Less than a mile from the
Wisconsin River (i.e., Lake Wausau), the
“Mountain” extends four miles east- west

and one and one-half (1 Vi) miles at its
maximum width north-south. Slightly arc¬
like in form, which has been likened to a
human “rib,” its total area is 3.63 square
miles. The fame accorded Rib Mountain,
however, tends to be based rather on its
vertical dimensions — elevation and local
relief. For many years it was recognized as
the highest point of elevation in the State of
Wisconsin at 1,940 feet above sea level.
However, a number of years ago U.S. Geo¬
logical Survey investigators identified two
hills northwest of this area (Tim’s Hill and
Pearson Hill in Price County) which have
slightly higher elevations. Rib Mountain still
enjoys the distinction of possessing the
greatest local relief in the state as it rises 780
feet above Lake Wausau and about 650 feet

214

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

Fig. 2. Rib Mountain, from the northeast.

Fig. 3 . Mosinee Hill, from the tower on Rib Mountain to the northwest.

1984]

Musol f — Monadn ocks

215

above the average level of the crystalline
peneplain. This landform feature also in¬
cludes some of the steeper slopes to be found
in northern Wisconsin. Areas near the sum¬
mit on both the north and south flanks are
covered by a talus of quartzite blocks and
exhibit slopes of 20 to 30% with the north
slope being steeper. A majority of the
“Mountain’s” total area displays 12 to 20%
slopes while near the base 6 to 12% is more
common.

Located one and one-half (1 Vi) miles
south-southeast from the eastern end of Rib
Mountain and only several hundred yards
from the west bank of the Wisconsin River is
the second of the monadnocks, Mosinee Hill
(Fig. 3). Two summits, located about one
mile apart, are seen on the hill which led
them to be identified in earlier times as
Upper and Lower Mosinee Hills. They are
connected by a continuous stretch of
quartzite although separated from Rib
Mountain by a lower area of quartz syenite

bedrock. The northern summit is the larger
of the two and reaches an elevation of 1,610
feet above sea level and rises 465 feet above
the alluvial plain of the Wisconsin River
nearby, while the southern summit has an
elevation of 1,472 feet and a relief of only
325 feet. Both of these hills are more gently-
sloping on their western flanks (i.e., 2 to
12%), while their eastern sides adjacent to
the river possess steeper slopes (i.e., 12 to
20%). Like Rib Mountain, Mosinee Hill’s
upper levels are covered with a talus deposit
of quartzite blocks, but its total area is
considerably smaller occupying 1.18 square
miles. Aligned north-south its maximum
length is one and three-quarters (\3A) miles
and varies from 3A to one mile in width.

Smallest of the three monadnocks is Hard¬
wood Hill which is located three and one-
half (3 Vi) miles in a west-southwesterly
direction from the summit of Rib Mountain
(Fig. 4). While the two hills previously
described are largely in the Town of Rib

Fig. 4. Hardwood Hill, from the east.

216

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

Mountain, Hardwood Hill is in the Town of
Marathon. Dome-like in form and covering
only one-half ( Vi ) square mile, the top of the
hill has an elevation of 1,610 feet which is
300 feet above the peneplain surface and
about 400 feet from the valley floors within a
mile or two of the summit. Slopes vary from
12 to 20% near the summit to 6 to 12% on
the flanks of the hill. Quartzite blocks are
frequently seen near the summit.

Quartzite bedrock with its superior resis¬
tance to erosion is certainly responsible for
the higher elevations and considerable relief
of the hills. The three monadnocks give to
the Wausau area Wisconsin a rather unique
topography that may be better described as
“plains with high hills” instead of as a
rolling plain which is more characteristic of
most of northern Wisconsin.

Geology Review

The geologic formation responsible for
the three monadnocks is Rib Mountain
quartzite, an extremely resistant Early
Proterozoic (Middle Precambrian) meta-
morphic rock. Metamorphosed from ancient
sandstones and recrystallized more recently,
the quartzite is remarkably pure
(99.07%Si02), white to pale pink in color,
vitreous and firmly cemented (Weidman
1907). It varies from medium-grained to
coarse-grained with the latter predom¬
inating. Quartz crystals range from 3 to 8
millimeters in size. Nevertheless, though
being extremely resistant to weathering, the
quartzite is somewhat brittle and because of
this is often seen as talus on the steeper
slopes. Jointing in the quartzite is common
but no persistent pattern of jointing is noted.
The monadnocks are composed of masses of
nearly vertical south-dipping quartzite with
an estimated thickness of from 1,000 to
4,000 feet (Weidman 1907). Age of the
formation is placed from 1 .45-1.50 billion to
1.64-1.67 billon years, probably nearer the
latter (LaBerge and Meyers 1972). The large
quartzite block at Rib Mountain, and several

others nearby, were once part of the roof
rock above a syenite intrusion (i.e., Wausau
quartz syenite — 1.45 to 1.50 billion years
old) (Pauli and Pauli 1980). When erosion
breached the roof rock, the underlying
intrusive was removed much more rapidly
than the resistant quartzite. In time, isolated
masses of quartzite stood high above the
general erosional surface. It has also been
hypothesized that the three monadnocks
may be connected at sub-surface levels but
no substantive evidence has yet been pre¬
sented.

Samuel Weidman, author of “Geology of
North-Central Wisconsin” (1907), the
definitive work on this region, was con¬
vinced that this locality was part of the
Driftless Area and so mapped it. The ab¬
sence of quartzite boulder trains marginal to
the three monadnocks furnished, he
thought, the strongest kind of evidence of
the non-glaciated character of the vicinity.
Later research by Thwaites (1943) and Hole
(1943) suggested that the extension of the
Driftless Area along the Wisconsin River
valley from Stevens Point to Merrill was
glaciated in early Wisconsinan time, possibly
Altonian, but as a result of severe erosion by
the Wisconsin River and its tributaries most
of the drift had been removed. More recent
investigations indicate that a pre-Wiscon-
sinan glacial advance moved eastward across
this area (Mickelson, Nelson and Stewart
1974). Wausau Drift is the name applied to
the thin, discontinuous till deposited by this
ice sheet that rests directly on deeply
weathered, Precambrian rocks (LaBerge and
Meyers 1972).

Vegetation

Federal land surveyors’ notes reported
that the natural vegetation of Rib Mountain
in 1840 was a hemlock/northern hardwood
forest. Presumably, Mosinee and Hardwood
Hills supported a similar forest community.
Included among the hardwoods were yellow
birch, sugar maple, red maple, white ash,

1984]

Musolf—Monadn ocks

217

basswood and white birch. Due to their steep
and rocky slopes, the monadnocks were
largely bypassed by the loggers of the late
1800’s, and the forest remained essentially in
its native state until 1910. In late July of that
year, however, following a severe drought
period, a disastrous crown fire destroyed
nearly all of the canopy trees on the “Moun¬
tain” (Schaetzl 1980). Mosinee and Hard¬
wood Hills were not affected by this conflag¬
ration.

Vegetation growth after the fire was
dominantly aspen, with considerable white
birch and various shrub species. The vege¬
tation remained in this state for nearly
twenty years. Upland hardwoods fringed the
base of the hill and continued to gain in
importance. In 1927, Rib Mountain State
Park was established, and the natural succes¬
sion of vegetation has been encouraged
within its boundaries.

A map of forest types prepared for the
park in 1971 revealed the continued advance
of northern hardwoods up the slopes of the
hill. Yet, many areas were still dominated by
white birch and aspen. A map compiled by
Schaetzl (1980) confirmed the nearly com¬
plete dominance of northern hardwood com¬
munities on the more gentle slopes while
white birch/mountain maple and aspen/
white birch/yellow birch communities were
predominant on the steeper north and south
slopes, respectively. Well over three-quarters

of the total area of the monadnocks still
supports a forest cover today.

Soils

Soil mapping of Marathon County is cur¬
rently in progress, and coverage of the three
monadnocks is complete. In the area is a
group of soils that have developed in part
from weathered bedrock or shallow till. A
silty covering about two feet thick often
overlies these parent materials and probably
originated as a local, non-calcareous loess.
As a result, moderately-deep to deep, mod-
erately-steep to steep, stony, Gray-Brown
Podzolic (mostly Typic Glossoboralf) soils
cover the hills. Ribhill, Fenwood, Rietbrock
and Sherry are the principal soil series. A
summary of the major soil types of the
monadnocks including land use capability
ratings and current uses appears in Table 1 .

Economic Geography

Agriculture and Forestry

Utilization of the monadnocks for
agriculture has largely been precluded by the
steep slopes, stony soils and dense forest
vegetation. Only along the base of the hills
have the farmers cropped and pastured the
land. They cultivate up to the level where the
soils become too shallow or stony. A number
of stump pastures are present around the
base of Rib Mountain and while some have
been cleared for cropland most of the acre-

Table 1. Major Soils of the Crystalline Monadnocks of North-Central Wisconsin.

Soil Type

Topographic Position

Capability

Rating

Current

Use

Ribhill stony silt loam

Summit and steep talus slopes

6,7

Woodland

Fenwood stony silt loam

Intermediate slopes

6,7

Woodland

Rietbrock stony silt loam

Lower slopes

5

Woodland

Sherry stony silt loam

Lower slopes

5

Woodland

Fenwood silt loam*

Lower slopes, marginal

2,3

Cropland,

Woodland

Mosinee loam*

“Sag” area, Mosinee Hill

3,4

Cropland

Limited acreage

218

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

age remains in permanent pasture. Many
farmers own land farther up the slopes but
since they cannot utilize it for crops or
pasture they have wisely left it in forest. At
the present time there are four farmsteads on
Rib Mountain (all near the western end),
four on Mosinee Hill (located on the gentler
western slopes and “sag” area) and none on
Hardwood Hill.

Following the ruinous forest fire of 1910,
loggers moved in and by the latter part of
1911 had removed all of the salvable timber
from Rib Mountain (Schaetzl 1980). An
inventive operator devised a wooden chute
that made it possible to slide large logs down
the steeper slopes allowing for more rapid
removal. Occasional forest harvesting
operations have been carried on by private

owners in recent years. Minnesota Mining
and Manufacturing Company (3M) has cut
timber selectively on its two properties on
Rib Mountain, and the Tigerton Lumber
Company owns 144 acres of forest land on
the western end of the “Mountain.” A
private owner has engaged in selective cut¬
ting of timber on Hardwood Hill recently
(Brechler 1981, personal communication). A
fire tower was constructed on Hardwood
Hill to serve central Marathon County but is
now abandoned.

Mining

Mining (or quarrying) of quartzite on Rib
Mountain and Mosinee Hill began near the
end of the last century, and several com¬
panies have subsequently been engaged in

Fig. 5. Quartzite quarry on the northwestern slope of Rib Mountain.

1984]

Musolf—Monadnocks

219

this activity until quite recently. The Wausau
Sandpaper Company commenced produc¬
tion in 1893 using quartzite blocks hauled
from Rib Mountain to their factory in Wau¬
sau (Marchetti 1913). Later they opened a
small quarry on the northeastern section of
the hill. By 1910 the company was producing
9,000 sheets of sandpaper a day based on the
excellent quality of the ground quartzite. In
1901 the Wausau Quartz Company started
production of crushed quartz at their ball
mill in Wausau (Marchetti 1913). All grades
from finest powder up to Va inch diameter
were ground from quartzite obtained from
their two properties on Rib Mountain. The
various abrasive purposes for which the
quartz was utilized included the manufacture
of flint sandpaper, sand blasts, sand belts,
pumice stone, marble cutting and match
sand. Additional uses for the crushed quartz
were for filters, bird grit, wood fillers and
stone facing.

Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing
Company (3M) purchased 281 acres on the
north slope of Rib Mountain in 1929 in order
to establish a quarzite quarry (part of the
acreage had been owned by the Wausau
Quartz Company) (Fig. 5). Operation of the
quarry was continuous until 1976 and in that
period about one million tons of quartzite
were removed to be ground into sandpaper
grit. Company officials indicate that pro¬
duction may resume at some future date if
the need arises. Duffek Sand and Gravel
Company of Antigo operated a quarry on
the south end of the northern summit of
Mosinee Hill for a short time to procure
road aggregate. It was closed after a petition
of nuisance was circulated by nearby land
owners.

Five exploratory shafts and drifts were
opened on Rib Mountain in attempts to
strike gold ore of commercial richness; the
first as early as 1897 (Berger 1979). One of
the abandoned shafts is located just north of
the State Park road. Unfortunately, none of
the ventures “panned” out although one of
the mines was reported to have been salted

with California gold dust in an attempt to
lure unwary investors.

Recreation

The heart of recreational development is
Rib Mountain State Park which occupies 860
acres on the summit and north and south
slopes. Inception of the park dates from
1923 when forty acres were given to the state
by the heirs of the Jacob Gensman estate for
that purpose. Four years later in 1927, it
officially became a state park. Completion
of a winding three-mile road up the east side
of Rib Mountain in 1931 gave the public
access. Six subsequent gifts of land by indi¬
viduals, a club, corporations and Marathon
County plus Department of Natural Re¬
sources land purchases totalling $164,000
expanded the park to its present size. The
park includes a 31 -unit campground, 3.1-
acre picnic area, 3,200-foot nature trail with
signs, 1.25-mile snowmobile trail, 2.5-mile
hiking trail and a forty-foot tower with three
observation platforms that affords a 30-mile
view. Table 2 summarizes attendance at Rib
Mountain State Park in recent years (Wis¬
consin Blue Book 1981).

A newly-proposed master plan for Rib
Mountain State Park calls for a $1,000,000
expansion and improvement over the next
two decades. Total area of the park would be
increased from the present 860 acreas to
1,219 acres at an estimated cost of $500,000.
However, private development is encroach¬
ing on some boundary areas of the park and
causing land values to soar. Improvements
called for include expanded day use, new
water system, expanded picnic area, new

Table 2. Visitor Attendance at
Rib Mountain State Park*

1966—115,571

1972—251,807

1978—271,061

1967—142,624

1973—204,400

1979—189,475

1968—163,266

1974—199,837

1980—199,224

1969—211,613

1975—195,216

1981—204,743

1970—221,149

1976—240,871

1982—221,333

1971—262,137

1977—221,782

1983—194,995

* Includes skiers at Rib Mountain Ski Area

220

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

parking lot, open shelter, playground
equipment, observation deck adapted to
wheelchairs, expanded trail system, new
office/visitor entrance station, road repairs
and rebuilt park entrance. Total cost of the
above would be $500,000 and take at least
ten years to complete.

Also located within the state park on a
160-acre tract on the north slope is the Rib
Mountain Ski Area (Fig. 6). Cleared of
timber and rocks by the Civilian Conserva¬
tion Corps in the 1930’s, it features a 550-
foot drop between the elevations of 1,250
feet and 1,800 feet. For many years the ski
area was operated by the Wisconsin Con¬
servation Department (now the Department
of Natural Resources) who later turned the
operation over to a group of local business¬
men, who in turn, worked directly under the
supervision of the Marathon Civic Corpora¬

tion. The latter group, a division of the
Wausau Area Chamber of Commerce, holds
the ski concession and in 1964 contracted
with a private concessionaire, the Rib
Mountain Ski Corporation, to run the ski
area. Between 1965 and 1976, a total of
$780,000 in improvements were instituted at
the ski area by the concessionaire.

Skiing at Rib Mountain Ski Area offers
fifteen slopes which vary from gradual to
steep, to suit each skier from beginner to
expert. Included are four major slopes that
are groomed by an extensive snow-making
system which is employed when necessary to
compensate for nature’s deficiencies.
Ownership of facilities at the ski area is a
cooperative venture. The state owns the
land, the main chalet and eight other build¬
ings, four rope tows and a T-bar while the
concessionaire owns two chairlifts (one is

Fig. 6. Rib Mountain Ski Area, from the north.

1984]

Musolf—Monadnocks

221

Table 3. Skier Attendance at
Rib Mountain Ski Area

1964- 65—13,000 1971-72—66,000 1978-79—85,000

1965- 66—15,000 1972-73—52,000 1979-80—51,000

1966- 67—27,000 1973-74—65,000 1980-81—38,000

1967- 68—28,000 1974-75—78,000 1981-82—57,000

1968- 69—30,000 1975-76—85,000 1982-83—40,000

1969- 70—57,000 1976-77—65,000

1 970- 7 1—61,000 1 977-78—95,400

3,300 feet long), a T-bar and several build¬
ings. Services available at the area include a
ski shop, rental shop, repair shop, ticket
sales shop, sun porch, cocktail lounge and
cafeteria. Drawing heavily on southern Wis¬
consin and Chicago areas for its clientele,
the ski area has suffered at times from the
lack of natural snow. Following the record
1977-78 season, the attendance dropped
dramatically in the 1979-80, 1980-81 and
1982-83 seasons when the winters were ab¬
normally mild with meager snowfalls. Table
3 indicates the numbers of skiers using the
ski area in recent seasons (Oliva 1983, per¬
sonal communication).

Communications

While Mosinee Hill supports a single
corporate radio tower and Hardwood Hill
an abandoned fire tower, Rib Mountain is
the hub of a complex communications net¬
work. As one of the state’s highest points of
elevation plus having its greatest local relief,
it lends itself well to this type of economic
activity. A 746-foot television tower, looking
like a gigantic toothpick stuck into the
“Mountain,” dominates the electronic
apparatus atop the hill. The tower is jointly
owned by WSAW-TV (Channel 7-CBS) and
WAOW-TV (Channel 9-ABC), and its high¬
est point serves as the antenna for the two
stations. Somewhat lower on the tower is the
antenna for WHRM-TV (Channel 20-PBS)
which went on the air in October of 1975.
Farther down are the antennas for WIFC-
FM radio and WHRM-FM radio. Below that
are various governmental communications
antennas such as NOAA’s 24-hour radio and

the Wisconsin State Patrol network plus a
radio repeater that receives signals from
amateur radio operators and rebroadcasts
them to a 60 to 70 mile radius. Closer to the
bottom of the tower is a series of cone-
shaped antennas to receive microwave sig¬
nals for all incoming television network
programming. At the base of the tower are
the transmitter facilities for the three
television stations which although they
appear to be in one building are separate.
The transmitter produces about 35,000 watts
of power which concentrates into 316,000
watts at the tip of the tower and allows the
stations to serve some seventeen counties in
northern Wisconsin.

Rib Mountain is the key to communi¬
cations for Marathon County agencies
through a smaller tower that controls radio
traffic of the sheriff’s department, highway
department, park department, office of
emergency government and Wausau fire
department. Also on top of the “Mountain”
are microwave facilities of General Tele¬
phone and Electronics and American Tele¬
phone and Telegraph that handle long-dis¬
tance telephone calls for the area. From two
rather small buildings at the base of two
bulky microwave towers, the GT&E facility
can handle about 7,000 conversations and
the AT&T equipment upwards of 20,000
conversations at a given moment.

Conclusions

Having traversed Rib Mountain, Mosinee
Hill and Hardwood Hill on foot, the author
can attest to their unique character and
scenic beauty. Largely due to stony soils and
steep slopes, agriculture and forestry have
only marginally touched the monadnocks. It
is in the fields of recreation, communica¬
tions and mining that the hills have had the
greatest economic impact in the past and,
most likely, in the future.

Acknowledgments

Research was supported by the University
of Wisconsin-Marathon County Founda-

222

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 72

tion, Inc., during the summer of 1981.
Special thanks is extended to Professor
Marcel Grdinic, UW-Marathon County, for
the photography used in the figures. I also
thank Professor Francis D. Hole, UW-
Madison, for constructive criticism of the
manuscript.

References Cited

Berger, T. 1979. Mineral Fever Nothing New.
Wausau Daily Herald Focus. November 30,
1979:2-3.

Brechler, F. E. 1981. Personal Communication.
Hole, F. D. 1943. Correlation of the Glacial
Border Drift of North-Central Wisconsin.
American Journal of Science 241 : 498-516.
LaBerge, G. L. and P. E. Myers. 1972. Progress
Report on Mapping of Precambrian Geology
of Marathon County, Wisconsin. Wis. Geol.
and Nat. Hist. Survey, Madison, Wisconsin.
Marchetti, L. 1913. History of Marathon County

and Representative Citizens. Richmond-
Arnold Co. Chicago, Illinois.

Mickelson, D. M., A. R. Nelson and M. T.
Stewart. 1974. Glacial Events in North- Cen¬
tral Wisconsin. In Late Quaternary Envi¬
ronments of Wisconsin. Wis. Geol. and Nat.
Hist. Survey, Madison, Wisconsin.

Oliva, C. 1983. Personal Communication.

Pauli, R. K. and R. A. Pauli. 1980. Wisconsin
and Upper Michigan. Kendall/Hunt Pub¬
lishing Co. Dubuque, Iowa.

Schaetzl, R. J. 1980. A Vegetation Analysis of
Rib Mountain, Wisconsin. B. S. Thesis
(Honors). University of Wisconsin-Madison.
Thwaites, F. T. 1943. The Pleistocene of Part of
North-eastern Wisconsin. Geol. Soc. of Am.
Bull. 54: 87-144.

Weidman, S. 1907. The Geology of North
Central Wisconsin. Wis. Geol. and Nat. Hist.
Survey (Bulletin XVI). Madison, Wisconsin.
Wisconsin Legislative Reference Bureau. 1981.
Wisconsin 1981-1982 Blue Book. State of Wis¬
consin. Madison, Wisconsin.

ADDRESSES OF AUTHORS: Transactions Wisconsin Academy, 1984

Alesch, Daniel J.

Public and Environmental
Administration
University of Wisconsin-GB
Green Bay, WI 54302

Alexander, James
Department of English
University of Wisconsin-
Wood County Center
P.O. Box 150
Marshfield, WI 54449

Atkisson, Arthur (Deceased)

Blewett, Thomas J.

Biology Department
Clarke College
Dubuque, I A 52001

Brito, Silvester J.
Department of English
University of Wyoming
Laramie, WY 82071

Cochran, Philip A.

Division of Natural Sciences
St. Norbert College
De Pere, WI 54115

Cottam, Grant
Department of Botany
University of Wis. — Madison
Madison, WI 53706

DeStefano, Stephen
Idaho Cooperative Wildlife
Research Unit
Moscow, ID 83843

Evrard, James O.

Wetlands Wildlife Research
Wisconsin D.N.R.

P.O. Box 61
Baldwin, WI 54002

Gramm, Kent
Department of English
Ottawa University
Ottawa, KS 66067

Graybosch, Anthony J.
Department of Philosophy
Mount Senario College
Ladysmith, WI 54848

Herrick, Bruce R.

Institute for Environmental
Studies, 70 Science Hall
University of Wis. -Madison
Madison, WI 53706

Hill, Dennis Auburn
Memorial Library
University of Wis. -Madison
Madison, WI 53706

Hilsenhoff, William L.
Department of Entomology
237 Russell Laboratories
University of Wis. -Madison
Madison, WI 53706

Hole, Francis D.
Department of Soil Science
University of Wis. -Madison
Madison, WI 53706

Lange, Kenneth I.

Park Naturalist
Devil’s Lake State Park
Route 4, Box 36
Baraboo, WI 53913

Lindborg, Henry J.

English Department
Marian College of
Fond du Lac
Fond du Lac, WI 54935

Lyons, John
Center for Limnology
University of Wis. -Madison
Madison, WI 53706

Musolf, Gene E.
Department of Geography
and Geology
University Wisconsin-
Marathon County Center
Wausau, WI 54401

Nichols, Stanley A.
Wisconsin Geol. &

Nat. Hist. Survey
University of Wis. -Extension
Madison, WI 53706

Petak, William J.

Institute for Safety and
Systems Management
University of Southern
California

Los Angeles, CA 90007

Piehl, Kathy
410 Clark Street
Mankato, MN 56001

Popp, Edward E., D.D.S.

543 N. Harrison Street
Port Washington, WI 53074

Rhodes, Benjamin D.
Department of History
University of Wisconsin-
Whitewater
Whitewater, WI 53190

Rudstam, Lars G.

Ask5 Laboratory
Institute of Marine Ecology
University of Stockholm
Stockholm, SWEDEN 106 91

Rusch, Donald H.

Wis. Cooperative Wildlife
Research Unit
University of Wis. -Madison
Madison, WI 53706

Schultz, Frederick H. C.
Department of Physics
University of Wisconsin-EC
Eau Claire, WI 54701

Singer, Marcus G.
Department of Philosophy
Helen C. White Hall
University of Wis. -Madison
Madison, WI 53706

Steven, Jeffrey C.
Metropolitan Sewerage District
1610 Moorland Road
Madison, WI 53713

Thurin, Susan Schoenbauer
Department of English
University of Wisconsin-Stout
Menomonie, WI 54751

Turcheneske, John A., Jr.
Rural Route One
River Falls, WI 54022

223

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TRANSACTIONS

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Volume 73
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TRANSACTIONS

OF THE

WISCONSIN ACADEMY
OF SCIENCES, ARTS
AND LETTERS

Volume 73, 1985

Funds for this issue of the Transactions
have been provided by
the Elizabeth F. McCoy Memorial Fund

Co-editors

PHILIP WHITFORD
KATHRYN WHITFORD

Copyright © 1985

Wisconsin Academy of Science, Arts and Letters.
Manufactured in United States of America.

All Rights Reserved.

TRANSACTIONS OF THE
WISCONSIN ACADEMY

Established 1870
Volume 73, 1985

SEVERE THUNDERSTORM HAZARD IN WISCONSIN 1

Waltraud A. R. Brinkmann

PREGLACIAL RIVER VALLEYS OF MARQUETTE,

GREEN LAKE AND WAUSHARA COUNTIES 12

Charles M. Fleming

SPATIAL ATTRIBUTES OF UW UNDERGRADUATE ATTENDANCE PATTERNS 26

J. B. Foust

LAND CHARACTERISTICS ASSOCIATED WITH DIVERSE HUMAN
HEART AND DIGESTIVE SYSTEM CANCER DEATH RATES

AMONG WISCONSIN COUNTIES 35

Marion L. Jackson, Ji Z. Zhang, and Chang S. Li

WISCONSIN’S ELECTRIC UTILITY INDUSTRY SINCE THE ENERGY CRISIS 42
Richard A. Walasek

THE SOUTHERN SOCIAL ART OF ROBERT GWATHMEY 54

Charles K. Piehl

PIONEERING WITH PLANS AND PLANTS: H. W. S. CLEVELAND
BRINGS LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE TO WISCONSIN 63

William H. Tishler and Virginia Luckhardt

THE PUNJAB BOUNDARY FORCE 1 AUGUST- 1 SEPTEMBER, 1947 70

Thomas J. Awen

THE GREEK DOCTRINE OF ETHOS MANIFESTED IN THE PYTHAGOREAN
AND EQUAL TEMPERAMENT INTERVALS IN THE TERTIAN HARMONIC
SYSTEM OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY AND SOME SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS 79

Peter Ayer

IS THERE A MORAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ACTIVE

AND PASSIVE EUTHANASIA? 85

Tom Tomlinson

SOME DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN ACTIVE AND PASSIVE EUTHANASIA 92

Daniel A. Putman

FAINT SCREAMS: SWIFT’S “A BEAUTIFUL YOUNG NYMPH”

AND THE CRITICS 96

William R. Drennan

EMOTION AND PHILOSOPHY OF MIND:

D. H. LAWRENCE’S NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE 100

Raymond J. Wilson III

SAMUEL MILLER: A TARGET FOR WASHINGTON IRVING 108

Henry J. Lindborg

INTEGRATING FINITUDE: THE EXPERIENCE OF TIME

IN PROUST AND EINSTEIN 1 12

Saad N. Ahmed

MARK TWAIN IN PERSON, 1885: READING IN WISCONSIN 116

Thomas Pribek

SOME EFFECTS OF CLEARCUTTING ON SONGBIRD POPULATIONS

IN THE NORTHERN HARDWOOD FOREST 123

James F. Steffen

RELATIVE NESTING SUCCESS OF YELLOW-HEADED

AND RED- WINGED BLACKBIRDS 133

Michael E. Minock

BIRD BEHAVIOR IN RESPONSE TO THE WARMTH OF BLACKTOP ROADS 135
Philip Clason Whitford

THE BIOLOGY OF CLASTOPTERA ARBORINA BALL

(HOMOPTERA: CERCOPIDAE) IN WISCONSIN 144

F. M. Kuenzi and H. C. Coppel

FEEDING SITE AND SPITTLE OF CLASTOPTERA

ARBORINA BALL (HOMOPTERA: CERCOPIDAE) 154

F. M. Kuenzi and H. C. Coppel

EFFECTS OF RECENT ECOSYSTEM CHANGES

ON LAKE WINGRA BLUEGILLS 160

James Jaeger

ZOOPLANKTON DYNAMICS IN LAKE MENDOTA: ABUNDANCE AND

BIOMASS OF THE METAZOOPLANKTON FROM 1976 TO 1980 167

Carlos Pedros-Alio, E. Woolsey and T. D. Brock

A STABLE ARTIFICIAL SUBSTRATE DEVICE

(TRI-BASKET SAMPLER) FOR COLLECTING MACROINVERTEBRATE

SAMPLES FROM STREAMS AND RIVERS 186

Michael W. Mischuk and David L. Rades

A HISTORY OF OLIVER LAKE #2, CHIPPEWA COUNTY, WISCONSIN,

BASED ON DIATOM OCCURRENCE IN THE SEDIMENTS 189

Rodney Gont and Lloyd Ohl

THE AQUATIC MACROPHYTE COMMUNITIES

OF TWO STREAMS IN WISCONSIN 198

John D. Madsen and M. S. Adams

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SEVERE THUNDERSTORM HAZARD IN WISCONSIN

Waltraud A. R. Brinkmann
Department of Geography
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Abstract

This paper presents the results of a study of the spatial and temporal variations
in severe thunderstorms and of two of the components — tornadic storms and hail —
in Wisconsin. Results of factor analyses of the seasonal variations in the storm in¬
dices for each of the nine climatological divisions show that the seasonal migration
patterns — from the southern portion of the state in spring toward the northwest in
summer and back south in fall — are similar for thunderstorms in general, tornadic
storms, and hailstorms, and reflect the seasonal migration and seasonal changes in
the importance of different cyclogenetic regions and associated storm tracks across
Wisconsin. The influence of these storm tracks is also reflected in the spatial
distributions of the average annual storm indices by county which show two general
regions of maximum activity for severe thunderstorms and the two components.
Although lightning is the overall number one severe thunderstorm killer (total
deaths/yr) for the state, the April tornado is highest in deaths per storm day.

Introduction

Severe thunderstorms generally occur in
conjunction with squall lines ahead of cold
fronts of extratropical cyclones. Since the
development and direction of motion of cy¬
clones is closely linked to the location of the
jet stream, cyclone and severe thunderstorm
activity and associated hazards— such as tor¬
nadoes, hail, and lightning — migrate with
the season. Thus, maximum activity is lo¬
cated over the Gulf Coast in winter, it is in
the central Great Plains in spring, and in the
northern Great Plains and southern Canada
in summer. The temperature contrast be¬
tween polar and tropical air masses begins,
however, to weaken in late spring which, in
turn, is reflected in a weakened jet stream
and reduced extratropical cyclone intensity.
Consequently, the intensity as well as fre¬
quency of severe thunderstorms decreases as
the area of maximum activity migrates
northward. Thus, at the time of maximum
thunderstorm frequency over the Canadian
portion of the Great Plains, the number of
days with thunderstorms observed there is
only about three-quarters the number ob¬

served over the southern Great Plains of the
United States. In fall, the temperature con¬
trast intensifies again, and severe thunder¬
storm activity quickly retreats south toward
the Gulf Coast (Kelly et ah, 1978; McNulty
et ah, 1979).

Lightning kills more people in the United
States — about 200 annually — than any other
component of the severe thunderstorm haz¬
ard (Mogil and Groper, 1977). This may
come as a surprise to some since lightning
fatalities usually are single events that do not
make national headlines. Most lightning
deaths occur in the open where a person can
serve as a relatively easy target; large struc¬
tures and cars provide important protection
from lightning strikes in urban areas. Tor¬
nadoes, on the other hand, account for only
about 140 deaths annually (Mogil and Gro¬
per, 1977). Tornadoes vary, however, in
their intensity and destructiveness: While ex¬
tremely intense and violent tornadoes make
up only about three percent of all tornado
occurrences, they account for almost 70 per¬
cent of the deaths (Wilson and Morgan,
1971; Kessler and Lee, 1978; Kelly et al.,

1

2

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

1978); and violent tornadoes tend to occur
most frequently in spring.

The spatial and seasonal variations of the
severe thunderstorm hazard components in
the United States and some of their social
costs are thus known in general terms. In ad¬
dition, some studies have provided informa¬
tion on the climatology of hazard compo¬
nents at the state level, such as the work on
tornadoes in Illinois (Wilson and Changnon,
1971), in Wisconsin (Burley and Waite,
1965), and in Michigan (Snider, 1977), or the
work on hailstorms in Illinois (Changnon,
1960) and in Wisconsin (Burley et al., 1964).
Many of the regional studies were, however,
done more than a decade ago and have, simi¬
lar to national studies, tended to focus on a
single component of the severe thunderstorm
hazard. The purpose of the present study is
to develop a more comprehensive descrip¬
tion of the spatial and seasonal variations in
severe thunderstorms in Wisconsin by (1)
analyzing these variations not only for
severe thunderstorms in general but also for
the two most reliably and widely reported
components — tornadic storms and hail¬
storms; and by (2) interpreting the results in
terms of the seasonal and spatial variations
in their common generating mechanism — ex-
tratropical cyclones — and their tracks across
Wisconsin. The state of Wisconsin is located
near the northeastern margin of the center of
severe thunderstorm activity; strong gradi¬
ents across the state should therefore be pre¬
sent and make patterns relatively easily iden¬
tifiable.

Data and Method

The source of the basic data used in this
study was Storm Data (NOAA, 1959-)
which provides information on all reported
severe weather events by state and county.
All Wisconsin events described as having
been caused by or having occurred in asso¬
ciation with thunderstorms were noted and
comprise the basic data for this study. All of
these events were, for the purpose of this
study, considered ‘severe thunderstorm’

events. ‘Tornadic storm’ events, a subset of
the ‘severe thunderstorm’ events, include all
reports of tornadoes and/or funnel clouds.
‘Hailstorm’ events, also a subset of the
‘severe thunderstorm’ events, consist of all
reports of hail. Excluded are winter storms
that produced snow, freezing rain, or wide¬
spread strong winds, and flooding that was
at least partly caused by snow melt.

The study covers the 24-year period
1959-1982. This period does not include the
early 1950s when nationwide changes in
reporting procedures and increased public
awareness resulted in an abrupt increase in
the reporting of weak tornadoes and thus in
an increase in the total number of tornadoes
(McNulty et al., 1979; Tecson et al., 1979).
In the early 1970s, the reporting responsibil¬
ity moved from the State Climatologist Of¬
fice to the National Weather Service Fore¬
cast Office; there are, however, no signifi¬
cant changes in the number of reported
storms for Wisconsin at that time.

The quality of the Storm Data listings
has been questioned, particularly that for
tornadoes. However, while the results of
some investigations have suggested that not
all tornado occurrences are observed and
thus reported (Eshelman and Stanford,
1977; Snider, 1977; Schaefer and Galway,
1982) others have indicated that some
reported tornadoes were actually straight-
line winds associated with severe thunder¬
storms (Changnon, 1982). In spite of the
limitations of Storm Data, it is still the best
severe weather data base available.

The basic analysis of the spatial and tem¬
poral distribution of severe storms was done
at the county level since Storm Data lists
severe weather events by county. At the next
level of aggregation, county data were sum¬
med over all counties within each of the nine
climatological divisions of Wisconsin (Fig.
1); at the highest level of aggregation, county
data were summed over all counties within
the state.

For the present analysis, storm event re¬
ports were first converted into storm days

1985]

Brinkmann — Severe Thunderstorm Hazard

3

per county. This was done because of dif¬
ferences in the size and duration of different
types of storms which, for instance, permit
very specific information on the location of
tornadoes but only very general information
for a line of thunderstorms moving across a
portion of the state. Furthermore, there are
occasional problems even with tornado re¬
ports: It is not always clear whether two
separate reports from the same county ac¬
tually represent two different tornadoes. If a
storm affected more than one county, it was
counted once for each county affected.

The probability of an event occurring in a
county is a function of county size, while the
probability of it being observed and reported
is affected by rural population density.
County size in Wisconsin ranges from about
600 km2 to about 4000 km2. In general,
counties in the northern half of the state are
larger than counties in the southern half
(Fig. 1). Rural population density ranges
from about 3 people per km2 to about 48
people per km2. Rural population density is
generally highest in the southeastern portion
of Wisconsin, reflecting the proximity of
Milwaukee and Chicago; a secondary peak

Fig. 1 . The nine climatological divisions of Wisconsin.

in rural population density is found in the
west-central portion, reflecting the prox¬
imity of Minneapolis. In a nationwide study
of population biases in tornado reports,
Schaefer and Galway (1982) have found that
Wisconsin’s most densely populated coun¬
ties report 1.25 times the number of tor¬
nadoes that would be expected if they were
distributed uniformly across the state, while
the least densely populated counties report
only one-third the expected number. Each
storm day was therefore standardized by
converting it into a storm index, which was
defined as

. , storm day

storm index = -

county area * rural population density

Since rural population has in some cases
increased by as much as 50 percent between
1960 and 1980, an estimate of the rural
population for the year of the storm day was
used to compute the storm index. Rural
population for years between population
census years was estimated by interpolating
between years with census data.

The number of injuries and fatalities
caused by a given storm is a function of the
population-at-risk, or the total population
density, of the county. Injuries were there¬
fore standardized by converting each injury
into an injury index, which was defined as

. . injury

injury index = -

total county population density

Deaths were standardized in the same way.
Total population for the year in which the
injury or death occurred was again estimated
by interpolating between census years.

For some parts of Wisconsin — particu¬
larly Door County and North-Central Wis¬
consin — the population density increases
considerably during the summer vacation
season. Rough estimates by the Door Coun¬
ty Chamber of Commerce and researchers at
the University of Wisconsin-Extension (pers.
comm.) of the size of the tourist population
of Door County on the bases of the number

4

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

of hotel rooms and summer homes and esti¬
mates of the average number of occupants of
these rooms and homes suggest that it could,
at times, be the size of the total permanent

Fig. 2. Average annual severe thunderstorm index by
county.

population of Door County. However, since
neither average annual nor average monthly
data on tourist population per county is
available for the state of Wisconsin, it was
not possible to include this population in the
computation of the indices.

Severe Thunderstorms

The spatial pattern of the average annual
severe thunderstorm index by county (Fig. 2)
shows two regions with relatively high val¬
ues: A southern one which extends from the
SW and WC divisions eastward and north¬
eastward (hereafter referred to as the
Southern Track), and a northwestern region
which extends from the WC division north¬
eastward (hereafter referred to as the North¬
western Track). One area of relatively low
values, extending across the central and
northeastern portion of the state, divides the
two regions of maximum activity; another
area of relatively low values covers portions
of the western shore of Lake Michigan.

The seasonal variation in the severe thun¬
derstorm index for the state is shown in Fig.
3. (This curve was obtained by summing the
average index over all counties for each half-

Fig. 3. Average semi-monthly storm indices for the state, adjusted for unequal number of days.

1985]

Brinkmann — Severe Thunderstorm Hazard

5

month: days 1-15 and days 16-the end. The
data were adjusted for unequal length of the
two halves. Since the index for the state is a
summation over county-day indices, a high
state index represents frequent and/or
widespread activity.) The severe thunder¬
storm index for the state increases rapidly
from late March through April and May,
reaching its peak in early June. A relatively
constant high level of activity persists
through late June, July, and early August. It
then decreases during late August and early
September to a level similar to that of late

Fig. 4. Loadings for the first four factors of the severe
thunderstorm index.

spring. A drastic increase in activity to a
summer-like level occurs briefly in late
September. Another, but minor, peak occurs
in early December.

There are, however, regional variations in
the timing of the peak in severe thunder¬
storm activity. To quantify these regional
variations, the average semi-monthly severe
thunderstorm index was summed over all
counties within each of the nine climato¬
logical divisions. The nine time series of the
semi-monthly indices for the severe thunder¬
storm season, April through September,
were then subjected to factor analysis to
identify the most predominant temporal pat¬
terns. (More specifically, orthogonally ro¬
tated (varimax) factors were extracted from
the covariance matrix.)

The first four factors of the divisional
severe thunderstorm indices explain 84 per¬
cent of the total variance; the associated
loadings are shown in Fig. 4. The first factor
represents a July peak in severe thunder¬
storm activity; the second represents a
May/early June and a late August peak; the
third represents an early July and a late

Fig. 5. Seasonal shifts in severe thunderstorm activity
(LS = late September; based on the scores of the first
four factors).

6

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

September peak; and the fourth represents a
late June peak. (Minor peaks in the factor
loadings, although important in the modula¬
tion of the divisional seasonal variations, are
not considered here since the emphasis is on
the most predominant temporal and spatial
patterns.) The curve for the state (Fig. 3) is
thus the result of several divisional curves
with different seasonal peaks. The spatial
patterns of the scores associated with each of
the factors not only show these divisional
differences but they can also be used to
delineate seasonal shifts in the location of
severe thunderstorm activity (Fig. 5; the lines
delineate the general area experiencing a
peak in activity at the indicated time or
times).

In Wisconsin, severe thunderstorm activ¬
ity begins in early spring over the southern
portion of the state, but because of the still
fairly low level of activity at that time, this
beginning is not captured by the first four
factors. In May and early June, the area of
maximum activity is over the northern por¬
tion of the Southern Track; activity over the
Northwestern Track is just beginning. In late

Fig. 6. Average annual tornadic storm index by
county.

June, it is over the southeastern portion of
the Northwestern Track. By July, the region
of maximum severe thunderstorm activity
has reached its most northerly position, run¬
ning across the northwestern portion of the
state. By late August, it has shrunk back in
the north but is quickly expanding south¬
ward and eastward across the northern por¬
tion of the Southern Track, to a position
similar to its late spring position of May and
early June. The southward migration of
severe thunderstorm activity is, however, in¬
terrupted in late September when activity
moves briefly back to a more northerly posi¬
tion, similar to that of mid-summer. This
brief northward jump lacks, however, spa¬
tial uniformity; and the drawing of isolines is
therefore not possible. Instead, divisions
with late September peaks are labeled ‘LS’ in
Fig. 5.

Tornadic Storms

The spatial pattern of the average annual
tornadic storm index by county (Fig. 6)
shows two regions with relatively high values
which are similar to the two regions of maxi-

Fig. 7. Seasonal shifts in tornadic storm activity
(EA = early August, LS = late September, based on the
scores of the first four factors).

1985]

Brinkmann — Severe Thunderstorm Hazard

1

mum severe thunderstorm activity. A belt of
minimum values runs southwest-northeast
across the state, separating the two regions
or tracks; another belt of minimum tornadic
storm activity covers the western shore of
Lake Michigan.

The seasonal variation in the tornadic
storm index for the state is shown in Fig. 3.
The index increases rapidly during the spring
to a secondary peak in May and the main
peak in June; this is followed by a gradual
decrease during July, August, and early
September. A small increase in the tornadic
storm index occurs in late September.

The time series of the average semi¬
monthly tornadic storm indices for each of
the nine climatological divisions were sub¬
jected to factor analysis to identify divisional
variations in seasonality. The loadings for
the first four factors, which explain 89 per¬
cent of the variance, indicate that the tor¬
nado season peak for the state consists of
several divisional peaks which are similar to
the severe thunderstorm peaks. Early spring
activity is, again, not captured by the first
four factors because of the generally low tor¬

Fig. 8. Average annual hail storm index by county.

nado activity at that time of year. The spatial
distribution of the factor scores (Fig. 7) in¬
dicate the following seasonal migration of
tornadic storm activity: In May, maximum
activity is located over the northern portion
of the Southern Track. (When comparing
the patterns in Fig. 7 with those for severe
thunderstorms in Fig. 5, the slight dif¬
ferences in timing need to be considered.) In
early June, the area of maximum activity has
begun to shrink in the south and to expand
in the north across the southern portion of
the Northwestern Track. By July, it has
reached its most northerly position, running
from the WC division northeastward across
the northwestern portion of the state. In
early August, tornadic activity is rapidly
shifting southward, In late September, how¬
ever, it moves briefly back to a more north¬
erly position.

Hailstorms

The spatial pattern of the average annual
hail index by county (Fig. 8) is very similar
to that for severe thunderstorms, consisting
of a Southern Track and a Northwestern

Fig. 9. Seasonal shifts in hail storm activity (LA = late
August; based on the scores of the first four factors).

8

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

Track; an area of minimum activity divides
the two tracks, another area of minimum ac¬
tivity covers portions of the western shore of
Lake Michigan.

The seasonal variation in the hail index for
the state is shown in Fig. 3. The index is low
in spring. In early June, there is an abrupt
increase in hail activity to a level that is
maintained through most of June and early
July. The main peak in hail activity occurs in
late July and is followed by a relatively rapid
decrease during August and September. A
small increase occurs in late September.

Factor analysis of the nine divisional time
series of the hail index indicate a seasonal
migration similar to that for severe thunder¬
storms and tornadic storms (Fig. 9): During
the early part of the main hail season (May/
early June), maximum activity is over the
Southern Track. In late June, activity de¬
creases in the south while activity in the
northern portion expands eastward. By July,

J FMAMJ JASOND

Fig. 10. Monthly severe thunderstorm death and in¬
jury indices for the state.

it has reached its most northerly position,
running across the northwestern portion of
the state. By August, hail activity is rapidly
migrating southward again.

Deaths and Injuries

Of the average annual severe thunder¬
storm death index for the state, over 50 per¬
cent is caused by lightning, 34 percent by
wind and rain, and only 15 percent by tor¬
nadic storms. This reflects not only the fre¬
quency and severity of severe thunderstorms
in Wisconsin but also the state’s many lakes
and the vast forested regions of northern
Wisconsin. There are, however, some re¬
gional variations in the cause of death.
While lightning is the main cause of death
for the northern divisions (where fishing,
boating, and hunting are major tourist at¬
tractions), rain and wind — particularly
drowning — tend to be more important in the
more densely populated southern divisions.

TORNADIC STORMS

Fig. 1 1 . Monthly death/storm and injury/storm ratios
for the state for tornadic and non-tornadic storms.

1985]

Brinkmann — Severe Thunderstorm Hazard

9

Tornadic storms are a secondary cause of
death everywhere in the state, but they are
the primary cause of injuries. Of the average
annual severe thunderstorm injury index for
the state, over 50 percent is caused by tor¬
nadic storms, 32 percent by wind and rain,
and only 16 percent by lightning. These pro¬
portions are about the same everywhere in
the state.

The average monthly severe thunderstorm
death and injury indices (Fig. 10) increase
during spring, reach a peak in summer, and
then decrease again in fall. These changes
reflect, to a large degree, the seasonal
changes in the occurrence of severe storms.

To remove the effect of seasonal varia¬
tions in the occurrence of storms, death-
storm and injury-storm ratios were com¬
puted, defined as the death or injury index
for the state divided by the storm index for
the state (Fig. 11). Both the death-storm and
injury-storm ratios are highest for tornadic
storms occurring in April. During the re¬
mainder of the severe thunderstorm season,
the death-storm ratios for tornadic and non-
tornadic storms are comparable in magni¬
tude while the injury-storm ratios for tor¬
nadic storms are somewhat higher than those
for non-tornadic storms.

Summary and Discussion

The severe thunderstorm season starts in
Wisconsin in early spring and reaches its
peak in June, July, and early August. A
secondary maximum occurs in late Septem¬
ber. During the storm season, the area of
maximum activity migrates across the state.
The migration pattern is, however, not a
simple north-south shift as would be ex¬
pected from the generalized and simplified
view of a north-south migration of the jet
stream and cyclone tracks across the coun¬
try. Instead, the migration pattern — which is
very similar for severe thunderstorms in
general, for tornadic storms, and for hail¬
storms — is from the southern portion of the
state toward the northwest and back, which
reflects seasonal changes in the degree of ac¬

tivity over the two main cyclone tracks affec¬
ting Wisconsin (Whittaker and Horn, 1984).
In spring, cyclones generated over the Great
Basin and Colorado move northeastward
and affect the southern and eastern portion
of the Great Lakes Basin; in summer, cy¬
clones generated over Wyoming and Alberta
affect the northwestern portion of the Great
Lakes Basin before heading northeastward
to James Bay.

Activity begins in early spring when one of
the primary North American extratropical
cyclone tracks, extending from the Great
Basin/Colorado cyclogenetic area eastward,
shifts northward and reaches southern Wis¬
consin. Severe thunderstorm activity is still
fairly low at that time of year, and severe
thunderstorm-related deaths and injuries are
therefore also still fairly low. Tornadic storm
and hail storm activity is also low but, be¬
cause of the relatively low severe thunder¬
storm activity, as much as one-third of the
severe thunderstorm index is tornado activ¬
ity and another one-third is hailstorm activ¬
ity. The tornadic storms are, furthermore,
extremely intense and destructive at that
time of year. No severe thunderstorm com¬
ponent at any other time during the season
causes as many deaths and injuries per storm
day as the tornadic storm in April.

By May, the area of maximum activity ex¬
tends from the southwest and west eastward
across the southern portion of the state.
Severe thunderstorms are increasing, but
tornadic storms and hailstorms are increas¬
ing as well so that each still comprises about
one-third of the severe thunderstorm index.
Severe thunderstorm-related deaths and in¬
juries are still relatively low; and tornadic
storms become less intense and destructive as
the temperature contrast between polar and
tropical air masses decreases.

By June, the Great Lakes Basin comes in¬
creasingly under the influence of eastward
and southeastward tracking Alberta and
Northwest Territory cyclones. The severe
thunderstorm activity pattern in Wisconsin
takes on a two-pronged appearance, with ac-

10

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

tivity over the Southern Track decreasing
and activity over the Northwestern Track in¬
creasing. Severe thunderstorm activity is
thus widespread and high; hailstorm activity
represents about 37 percent of the severe
thunderstorm activity; while tornadic storm
activity, although at its peak, comprises only
about 20 percent of the total activity. Severe
thunderstorm-caused deaths and injuries are
also high. Drowning and other water-related
deaths (an important cause of death in the
southern third of the state) reaches its peak
in June, while lightning deaths continue to
increase into July.

In July, the Colorado and Great Basin cy-
clogenetic areas become inactive, and only
Montana and Alberta cyclones, swinging
eastward and southeastward before converg¬
ing over James Bay, affect the northwestern
portion of the Great Lakes region. In Wis¬
consin, maximum severe thunderstorm ac¬
tivity is located in a belt running across the
northwestern portion of the state. Severe
thunderstorm activity as a whole is still high;
hail activity is at its maximum and now com¬
prises more than half the severe thunder¬
storm activity; while tornadic storm activity
is declining. Deaths and injuries caused by
severe thunderstorms are at their peak; in
particular, deaths caused by lightning — the
number one severe thunderstorm killer for
the state and particularly for the northern
third of the state— are most frequent in July.
Tornadic storms, on the other hand, are
responsible for only 15 percent of the deaths
but over 50 percent of the injuries in July.

In August, cyclogenetic activity along the
Rocky Mountains begins to extend south¬
ward again and the more southern tracks
across the country become increasingly ac¬
tive. Severe thunderstorm activity in
Wisconsin begins a rapid and irregular
retreat to a late spring-early summer posi¬
tion: Activity decreases over the North¬
western Track and expands eastward in the
south. Severe thunderstorm activity is still
relatively high but declining. Hailstorm and
tornadic storm activity are also rapidly

decreasing, with hail representing about 38
percent of the total storm activity and tor¬
nadic storms making up 10 percent. Deaths
and injuries are decreasing as well.

By early September, there is a drastic de¬
crease in severe thunderstorm activity. Ac¬
tivity increases, however, briefly in late
September to a mid-summer level and shifts
northward to a mid-summer like pattern.
But the activity is not very intense: Little of
it produces tornadic storms or hail, and
deaths and injuries per storm day are much
below their mid-summer levels.

Not only is this seasonal migration pattern
a reflection of the influence of the two ex-
tratropical cyclone tracks across Wisconsin
but the spatial patterns of the average annual
severe thunderstorm activity are also a re¬
flection of these two tracks. The patterns for
severe thunderstorms in general as well as
those for tornadoes and hail show two gen¬
eral areas of maximum activity: one across
the southern portion of the state, the other
across the northwest. An important region
of activity for severe thunderstorms, tor¬
nadic storms, and hail storms is the WC divi¬
sion where the influence of the two cyclonic
storm tracks appears to overlap.

A belt of minimum activity separates the
two maxima. This belt could be the northern
end of the slanted ‘trough’ line identified by
Tecson et al. (1982). This line is a slanted
narrow line of minimum tornado occur¬
rence — extending from southern Texas to
Upper Michigan and dividing Wisconsin into
a northwestern and a southeastern half —
that separates ‘eastern’ from ‘western’ tor¬
nadoes. Eastern tornadoes become active in
Mississippi in February; from there they
spread northward; peak activity is in March
and April. Western tornadoes, on the other
hand, become active in the Tornado Alley in
April and reach their peak in May; activity
then decreases while they spread northward
toward the Canadian border. The present
results, which show such a trough line not
only in the distribution of tornadoes but also
in the distribution of hail and severe

1985]

Brinkmann— Severe Thunderstorm Hazard

11

thunderstorms in general, suggest that the
cause of this line may have a synoptic basis,
rather than topographic or population-re¬
lated bases as has been suggested.

Another area of minimum activity in se¬
vere thunderstorms in general as well as in
tornadic storm and hailstorm activity,
extending along the western shore of Lake
Michigan, is caused by the relatively low
temperature of the surface water during
spring and summer which suppresses convec¬
tive activity.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Wiscon¬
sin Alumni Research Foundation.

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for four mid-season months. Journal of Clima¬
tology 4:297-310.

Wilson, J. W., and Changnon, S. A., Jr. 1971. Il¬
linois tornadoes. Illinois State Water Survey,
Circular 103.

_ , and Morgan, G. M., Jr. 1971.

Long-track tornadoes and their significance.
American Meteorological Society, 7th Con¬
ference on Severe Local Storms, p. 183-86.

PREGLACIAL RIVER VALLEYS OF MARQUETTE, GREEN LAKE

AND WAUSHARA COUNTIES

Charles M. Fleming
Greendale, Wisconsin

Abstract

Buried preglacial river valleys lying in three Wisconsin Counties were identified
and mapped. Their physical dimensions were obtained by way of a mathematical
model that was used to describe a valley cross section. The network of buried valleys
that was discovered corresponds in part with the successive damming of the ancient
Wisconsin River by the advancing and most recent glacier. The underlying Precam-
brian bedrock apparently influenced the glacier’s direction of movement as well as
the courses of some of the preglacial rivers in this region.

Introduction

In preglacial times, the ancient Wisconsin
River flowed from the northern highland of
Wisconsin and Michigan southward into
central Wisconsin. There it had carved out
of the Baraboo hills the famous Devils Lake
gorge and, turning westward at Merrimac,
concluded its journey at Prairie du Chien
where it met the ancient Mississippi River
(Martin, 1932). If glaciation had never oc¬
curred, the modern Wisconsin River would
still be following this course, but the inva¬
sion of the last continental glacier squeezed
the Wisconsin River out of its ancient valley
in central Wisconsin and permanently di¬
verted its flow to its modern valley bordering
Adams and Juneau Counties (Alden, 1918).
Prior to glaciation, the ancient river made a
great loop in central Wisconsin which ex¬
tended from the vicinity of Friendship to
Green Lake before it entered the gorge at
Devils Lake. Neither the loop nor the gorge
are used by the river today.

Even though glaciation had significantly
scoured the land, the buried bedrock under¬
lying Marquette, Green Lake, and Waushara
Counties still has etched in it the preglacial
river valleys that once contained the Wiscon¬
sin, Wolf, and Fox Rivers. The existence of
these buried preglacial valleys has been
known for more than one hundred years;

their presence, however, is inconspicuous
and their exact locations can only be found
by means of well drillings and borings. Occa¬
sionally, the top of an ancient valley is visi¬
ble, but, generally, the valleys are completely
buried beneath glacial drift. On top of the
drift lacustrine deposits have created, along
practically all these ancient valleys, the
wetlands that abound in these three counties.

Immediately prior to the four Pleistocene
glaciations that are known to have touched
Wisconsin (USGS, 1976), most of the lime¬
stone bedrock that once uniformly covered
this region had already eroded away (Mar¬
tin, 1932). Rolling hills of sandstone dotted
with crags, buttes, and pinnacles were
features of the preglacial landscape as they
are in the landscape of the Driftless Area of
Wisconsin today. In preglacial times, the
Wisconsin River was one of the largest rivers
in Wisconsin. In central Wisconsin, its valley
was approximately 600 feet deep and 4 miles
wide at the crests. The river entered Mar¬
quette County from the west in the town of
Westfield, at an elevation of 503 feet above
sea level with respect to the bottom of its
channel, and proceeded eastwardly on the
first leg of a great loop as shown in Fig. 1.
The Wisconsin River met the ancient Wolf
River at Neshkoro and the ancient Fox River
at Green Lake, the eastern extreme point of

12

1985]

R8E

R9E

Fleming — Preglacial River Valleys

I R10E I R11E I

13

R12E

R13E

Fig. 1 . Map of preglacial river valleys of the Wisconsin, Wolf, Fox, and Grand Rivers. The three wells A, B, and C are
listed in Table 1 . The twenty two cross sections of the river valleys and channels are listed in Table 2.

Table 1 . Important Wells Marked in Figure 1 .
Well Elevation of bottom above sea level

A

B

C

473 feet

462

420

14

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

the loop. Turning abruptly to the west at
Green Lake, the Wisconsin River, on its
westward course, dug the basins in which
Green Lake and Lake Puckaway lie. It re¬
entered Marquette County on the last leg of
the loop and, in the town of Douglas, left the
county at an elevation of 382 feet above sea
level enroute to the Devils Lake gorge 20
miles away.

History

The history of the Fox River in central
Wisconsin was probably first discussed by
John Petitval in 1838. In his report to Con¬
gress of the survey of the Fox River, he
speculated that the upper Fox River valley
had at one time been a chain of lakes which
suddenly drained, leaving the Fox River as a
meandering stream. In 1876, Warren sub¬
mitted to Congress a more comprehensive
geologic report of the Fox River. In that
report, Warren asserted that the Fox River in
preglacial times had flowed in the opposite
direction and had actually been a tributary
of the ancient Wisconsin River. According
to Warren, their confluence was located at
Portage, while the ancient Wisconsin River,
as Warren tacitly assumed, followed the
same course as the modern Wisconsin River
follows.

In 1877, Irving’s treatise on Wisconsin
geology was published, yet it did not contain
any more information than Warren’s report
about the history of either the Wisconsin or
Fox Rivers. Forty years later, though,
William Alden squarely addressed the topic
of ancient river valleys in The Quaternary
Geology of Southeastern Wisconsin, pub¬
lished in 1918, and his opinion about the an¬
cient Wisconsin River has been the authori¬
tative one ever since. He offered two conjec¬
tures pertaining to the course of that ancient
river. The first was that the confluence of the
ancient Wisconsin and Fox Rivers was
located in the town of Oxford where the
Wisconsin River, flowing southeastwardly
through the village of Oxford, joined the
Fox which was flowing westwardly through

Rush Lake, Green Lake, and Lake Pucka¬
way. The second conjecture was that the
Wisconsin River had flowed directly south
from Stevens Point through Wautoma and
Neshkoro to meet the Fox in Oxford. Rely¬
ing on Alden’s work, E. F. Bean apparently
incorporated Alden’s second conjecture into
his Geologic Map of Wisconsin, published in
1924, by drawing a narrow trigger shaped
contour depicting an extension of the ex¬
posed Precambrian bedrock of Portage
County through Waushara County and well
into Marquette County as if that extension
was the exposed granite of the ancient Wis¬
consin River bottom. (For an illustration,
see Martin, p. 35). This narrow trigger
shaped contour of Precambrian rock is a
characteristic mark of Bean’s map and has
been reproduced in many publications since;
nevertheless, the existence of it can not be
substantiated and it no longer appears on the
latest map of the geology of Wisconsin
(Mudrey, 1985). The erroneous belief that
the ancient Wisconsin River had flowed
south from Stevens Point through Waushara
County and Neshkoro Township to meet the
Fox River in Oxford, as Alden had hypothe¬
sized and to which Bean alluded, was reiter¬
ated by Lawrence Martin in The Physical
Geography of Wisconsin, published in 1932.
There the issue remained at rest until 1976,
when Mark Stewart wrote his doctoral
thesis. In that thesis, Stewart presented a
map of the preglacial Fox-Wolf River basin
that finally delineated the course of the an¬
cient Fox and Wolf Rivers in Green Lake
and Marquette Counties with a good deal of
accuracy.

Discussion of the Data

For the purpose of this article, the infor¬
mation obtained from the Wisconsin De¬
partment of Natural Resources well con¬
structor’s reports, from the Wisconsin
Department of Transportation highway test
borings, and from Alden (1918) provided
780 data points upon which the locations of
the preglacial river valleys were deduced.

1985]

Fleming — Preglacial River Valleys

15

The data points were scattered over an area
encompassed by the mapping of the bedrock
topography shown in Fig. 2 and which
equaled approximately 1,000 square miles.
Even though very few wells ever reached the
bottom of a river valley, the information ob¬

tained from many other neighboring wells
provided sufficient circumstantial evidence
to permit, by means of an appropriate
mathematical model and standard statistical
methods, an accurate description of the sizes
and locations of the preglacial river valleys.

| R8E

Mat

Fig. 2. Topographic map of the bedrock of Marquette, Green Lake, and southern Waushara Counties. It is based on
data found primarily in well constructor’s reports.

16

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

Knowing the dimensions of the river valleys
helped to discriminate between what was a
tributary, a glacier induced channel, and the
main Wisconsin River valley itself. The anal¬
ysis revealed a complex network of buried
river valleys which was a result, in part, of
the glacier’s movement across this region.

The direction of glacial striae, the axes of
drumlins, and the trend of surface soil types
and features are telltale signs indicating a
glacier’s direction of movement. Soil surveys
of Marquette and Green Lake Counties,
published by the United States Department
of Agriculture, delineated the boundaries of
soil types and soil features on aerial photo¬
graphs. (The soil survey of Waushara Coun¬
ty (1909) is out of print and was not avail¬

able). The direction of the longitudinal axis
of a drumlin and the trend of soil features as
outlined on the aerial photographs represent
vectors of the glacier’s movement.

The soil surveys of Green Lake and Mar¬
quette Counties utilized 69 non-overlapping
aerial photographs. Each photograph was
divided into two equal parts and each half
constituted a separate sample area. On the
average, seven vectors were drawn at ran¬
dom from each sample area. Some sample
areas were rejected because they happened to
cover an area too small to conduct a satisfac¬
tory sampling. The number of useful sample
areas totaled 134 from which 921 vectors
were drawn and used to ascertain the direc¬
tion of the glacier’s advance.

R8E | R9E I R10E I R11E I R12E I RISE

Fig. 3. Movement of the Green Bay Lobe of the continental glacier. Surface soil features indicated on USDA soil
survey aerial photographs were used to map the direction of movement of the glacier. The glacier moved on a bearing of
approximately 46° west of north through Marquette County.

1985]

Fleming — Preglacial River Valleys

17

The horizontal township lines of the Wis¬
consin coordinate system served as the
reference lines throughout the task of
measuring the direction of each vector. The
angle which a vector made with one of these
lines was considered a random variable with
a common variance. Actually a different
variance could have been associated with
each sample area but, because the surface
soil features indicating the direction of the
glacier’s movement were made by the same
ice sheet, a common variance was assumed.
In each sample area, A jf the i'* vector made
an angle 0(7, with a township line. For each
Ay, the sample mean, 6jf was computed by

— i

the formula: Oj = £ £ 6ijt where n y is the

number of vectors drawn from the sample
area, Ay. Parallel lines of slope tan (0y) were
assigned to each Ay for every j in order to
make a field of tangents. The resulting
envelope of these lines is represented by the
lines of movement which are outlined in Fig.
3. The direction of the glacier’s movement,
obtained in this manner by piecing together
the trend of surface soil features of one sam¬
ple area with another, still retains the uncer¬
tainty inherent to the data. The variance, a2,
of the random variable, 6, j9 was assumed, as
previously noted, to be the same for all i and
j. It was estimated by the mean sum of
square errors, as follows:

5!=!^rt | (*«-&>*

k

where N = En, and k is the number of Sani¬
ya1

pie areas; specifically, k = 134, N = 921,
and o2 = 75.4. The standard deviation of
± 8.7° indicates how much the direction of a
vector varies about the mean direction of a
sample area.

Presumably, the surface soil features in
this region owe their existence to the most re¬
cent glaciation and subsequent weathering.
If previous glaciers had covered the area,

then the soil features made by them would
have been obliterated by a succeeding
glacier. The Wisconsin stage of glaciation is
the most recent of the four Pleistocene
glaciations that have touched Wisconsin.
According to Maher (1982), the Green Bay
Lobe of that glaciation disappeared from
Marquette and Green Lake Counties ap¬
proximately 12,400 years ago.

Based on the orientation of drumlins and
other surface features which the Green Lake
Lobe created, the direction of movement of
the glacier in Marquette and Green Lake
Counties, as outlined in Fig. 3, agrees with
the direction of glacial striae reported by
Alden (1918) at a level of significance of
0.05. This high degree of correlation be¬
tween the direction of glacial striae reported
by Alden and the surface soil features form¬
ing the basis of Fig. 3 suggests that both the
striae and soil features were made by the
same glacier.

As the Green Bay Lobe moved south from
Green Bay, it simultaneously expanded
laterally to the west, so that in Marquette
County the glacier actually moved from the
southeast to the northwest (Fig. 3). In so do¬
ing, as the ice advanced, it encountered the
eastern extent of the Wisconsin River and
dammed it (Fig. 4). When the resulting im¬
poundment overflowed, the water cut a new
channel. In time, a total of eight drainage
channels were cut (Fig. 1). The presence of
well defined channels indicates that each was
used for many years, perhaps for centuries at
a time, in order for the impounded Wiscon¬
sin River to erode away an average of 200
feet of sandstone for each drainage channel.

Mathematical Model

To find the physical dimensions of a
valley, the shape of each valley cross section
was described by a mathematical model
from which the depth, width, and other
characteristics were found. The model con¬
sists of three parabolas joined together in a
manner that ascribed a parabolic shape to
the sides and bottom of a hypothetical valley

18

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

Fig. 4. Stages portraying the sequential damming of the ancient Wisconsin River by the advancing glacier. Stage 1
shows the course of the Wisconsin River before glaciation; it is the same course shown in Fig. 1. Stages 2 to 9 depict a
possible association of each drainage channel with the terminus of the glacier. The glacier is shown by the dotted pat¬
tern. The dashed lines show the valleys buried under the ice. The area in this figure covers Marquette and Green Lake
Counties.

cross section. The model cross section was

defined by the following equations:

y, = a(x-b)2 + c

b<x<x2

(1)

y // = P(x-e)2 + q

x2<x<s

(2)

ym = a(x-d)2 + c

s<x<d

(3)

where s = 2e-x2 and is based on the stipula¬
tion that the cross section be bilaterally sym¬
metrical. The purpose for dwelling on the
derivation of a mathematical model arises
from the chance to exploit the information
supplied by that special circumstance
wherein a buried valley is spanned by three
water wells (Fig. 5). In this particular situa¬
tion, the wells happen to bracket the location
of the bottom of a valley and the elevations
of the bottoms of the wells indicate the
degree of curvature of a valley wall.

As will be seen, there is not enough data
available to obtain a complete mathematical
description of a hypothetical valley cross sec¬
tion as proposed via equations (1), (2), and
(3), unless some artificial constraint is im¬
posed upon the model. There are many con-

Y

Fig. 5. Hypothetical valley cross section. The relative
locations of the wells must be observed when using the
equations found in the text.

1985]

Fleming — Preglacial River Valleys

19

ceivable constraints that could be used to
make the model work, but the one given
below by equation (7) worked very well.

The model so described by equations (1)-
(3) requires the numerical solution of seven
unknown parameters and hence the formula¬
tion of seven independent equations from
which a unique solution may be obtained.
From time to time, three water wells did line
up to span a valley as illustrated in Fig. 5 and
gave rise, thereby, to three equations. To ob¬
tain the necessary seven equations, four con¬
straints were imposed on the model so as to
complement the equations already provided
by the three wells. The first two constraints
that were chosen impose on the model the
continuity from A to E (Fig. 5) which would
naturally exist and the bilateral symmetry
needed to make a simple second order model
simpler. (The bilateral symmetry which was
sought for the cross section warranted the
condition, e = (b + d)/2). For the third con¬
straint, parabolas I and II were appropriate¬
ly joined at C to make the first derivative
continuous all along the curve.

At this point, we have imposed three con¬
straints on the model with one more to go.
If, by good fortune, the buried river valleys
were to have been spanned geographically by
four wells lying in a straight line instead of
the three, then all of the necessary informa¬
tion would be at hand. But, since the chance
of having four wells drilled as such did not
occur and because an arrangement of that
kind frequently did occur with three water
wells, a special constraint had to be found
that would fulfill the requirement needed to
arrive at seven independent equations and
which would at the same time reasonably in¬
corporate into the mathematical model some
aspect of nature.

Recognizing that the forces acting on a
valley wall must balance in order to preserve
static equilibrium, the internal forces that
bind the wall together were presumed to be
equal and opposite to the outward forces
that act to tear the wall apart. The outward
forces acting on a valley wall are, in general:

where P(x,y) is the cumulative effect of the
weathering and the pressure pushing out¬
wardly at (x,y) due to the weight of the wall.
The resultant force is dF = P(x,y) dS, where
dS = Vdx2 + dy2. Taking into account the
assumption that the outward forces are
equal and opposite to the internal binding
forces, the resultant shearing force, dV, is:

dV = -P(x,y)dS

The function P(x,y) took the form of

P(X y) = P (Si + S3)2
n ’y) 0 4S,S3

where Pc is a constant and Si is the length of
arc AB and S3 is the length of DE. For exam¬
ple.

s,= -^VTTW- sin»1'1(2ab)

2 4a

It was reasoned that the nearer the points B
and D lie to one of the valley’s crests, the
more pronounced the shape of the valley,
and therefore the greater P(x,y) ought to be.
In the other extreme case, it was reasoned
that P(x,y) should approach some constant,
P0, when the valley becomes very shallow.
Consequently,

dV =

-Po

(Si + S3)2
4SiS3

dS

or V(x) = -PQ S(x) b<x<d (4)

4SiS3

20

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

X

where S(x) = f dS and is the length of the arc

D

(Fig. 5) beginning with abscissa b and ending
with x; S(x) = x-b.

Drawing upon the study of the strength of
materials, the energy, U, associated with the
deformation of the valley walls due to shear¬
ing is:

U = i fV2(x)dx (5)

A J
b

where k is some constant, V,(x) is the vertical
component of V(x), and A is the cross sec¬
tional area above the bottom of the valley;

V,(x)=-£^-V(x)

(e-b)

A = a(x2-b)(e-b)2 (6)

The final and fourth constraint that we want
to impose on the model dictates that the
energy, U, be a minimum.

In the course of the mathematical develop¬
ment, it was convenient to express the
parameters of equations (l)-(3) in terms of
e, the mid-point of the valley, as follows:

a_(y3-yi)x2 + (y2-y1)(x3-2e)
x2(x3-2e)(x2 + x3-2e)

b=i/2 (y3-yi)x^-(y2-yi)(x3-2e)2
(y3-yi)x2 + (y2-y1)(x3-2e)

c = y3 - ab2

d = 2e-b

q= a(x2-b)(e-b) + c

where yu y2, and y3 are the elevations above
sea level of the bottoms of wells 1, 2, and 3
respectively. The relative locations of the
water wells to e shown in Fig. 5 must be met
in order to make the above expressions valid.

With the parameters expressed in terms of
e, the task of obtaining the physical dimen¬
sions of a valley reduces to choosing e such
that U, from equation (5), is minimized. In

other words, the problem amounts to solving
the equation

where, from equations (4)-(6),

T T _ kP0(d-b-x3)4 a(x2-b)(e-b)

6 b2(d-x3)2

The solution of equation (7) which requires
the use of numerical analysis pertains to that
situation when, according to the model, the
locations of three water wells are co-linear
and they happen to span a buried valley.

To check whether or not the model ade¬
quately explains the data, a diagnostic plot
of residuals versus predicted values gener¬
ated by the model was made and is given in
Fig. 7. The observed values are the eleva¬
tions above sea level of the bottom of those
wells that came into the path of a rotated
cross section. The original cross sections
were all rotated about their mid-points to
make them perpendicular to a valley. Some¬
times one of the nearby wells would intersect
the rotated cross section and as a result
would supply a data point with which to
check the adequacy of the model. The funnel
shaped pattern exhibited in Fig. 7 indicates a

y - y

30 1 -

20

10

-20 -

-30 -

Fig. 7. Plot of the residuals versus predicted elevations
above sea level from the model. An observed value is
denoted by y and a predicted value by y. Both coor¬
dinate axes are marked in units of feet. The funnel
shaped pattern indicates a possible correlation between
the expected elevation and variance.

1985]

Fleming — Preglacial River Valleys

21

Table 2. Parameters of Valley Cross Sections

Cross

section 1

a2

Elevation of
crests above
sea level

Elevation of
bottom above
sea level

Width

at crests

/

- 30.4 feet/mi2

760 feet

475 feet

6.3 miles

2

-64.3

699

515

4.2

3

-67.9

731

486

4.1

4

-183.0

788

447

3.0

5

-154.0

696

535

2.3

6

-125.0

721

485

3.5

7

-36.1

935

576

6.6

8

-77.0

807

469

4.3

9

-48.0

787

429

6.0

10

-86.7

654

491

2.8

11

-77.0

723

549

3.5

12

-47.3

687

552

3.5

13

-1152.0

991

All

1.4

14

- 1140.0

681

442

1.0

15

-723.1

638

519

1.4

16

-267.0

805

577

1.9

17

-95.0

837

674

2.7

18

-241.0

831

492

2.5

19

-302.0

813

592

1.7

20

-90.3

767

538

3.6

21

-99.0

814

394

4.3

22

- 130.0

788

389

4.1

1 . Corresponds to cross sections labeled in Fig. 1 .

2. Refers to the leading parameter of equations (1) and (3).

possible correlation between the expected
elevation and variance. The standard devia¬
tion of the elevations based on the mean sum
of square errors is ± 12 feet.

The twenty two cross sections listed in
Table 2 and labeled in Fig. 1 reflect the
benefits of the mathematical analysis. For
some of the buried valleys, cross sections
could not be obtained because the wells did
not lie in a straight line or there were not
enough wells in the area. Using the available
cross sections and certain wells, the slope of
the ancient Wisconsin River was found to be
1.6 ± 0.1 feet/mile and that of the ancient
Wolf River, 1.8 ± 0.8 feet/mile. Further¬
more, the results listed in Table 2 show that
the depths of the glacier induced channels
are approximately 200 feet deep. In one case,
for instance, cross sections 13 and 14 reveal
the existence at Montello of a 520 foot deep,

1 mile wide channel which as it exists today
drops 35 feet in 0.5 miles.

In addition to the results of the mathe¬
matical analysis, information from several
wells proved to have been particularly im¬
portant in locating the buried valleys and it is
tabulated below (Table 3).

Techniques Used in
Constructing the Maps

Information obtained from well con¬
structor’s reports provided most of the data
used in constructing the map of the pre-
glacial river valleys and the topographic map
of the bedrock. The location, annotated with
the depth of bedrock, of each well was
plotted on graph paper at a scale of 1 mile to
a half inch. Centered at the location of the
deepest wells, a circle was inscribed having a
radius such that the circumference equaled

22

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

Table 3. Important Wells

Location

T.N.-R.E.-Sec.

Owner

Material at

bottom

Elevation of
bottom above

sea level

14-8-25

Endeavor Farms

SS1

485 feet

14-9-21

Turner

SS

552

14-10-1 1 2

SS

575

15-8-172

Creamery

SS

610

15-9-21

Vanearn

Granite

488

15-9-34

Preuss

Sand

436

15-10-6

Quinn

SS

558

15-10-16

Hauserman

Granite

485

15-10-36

Lettuce Cooling Plant

Granite

490

15-11-22

Klawitter

SS

420

15-11-30

Tidd

SS

717

16-8-1 52

L. Kruger

Granite

512

16-9-25

Shimpack

Granite

485

17-11-4

Doiro

SS

462

17-13-6

Berlin Conservation Club

SS

473

18-11-34

Bartol

Clay

486

18-13-222

SS

475

1 . SS = Sandstone

2. Obtained from Alden (1918), otherwise obtained from DNR well constructor’s reports.

the contour level of 700 feet. In effect, each
of these wells was placed at the bottom of an
imaginary bowl whose rim stood at 700 feet
above sea level and whose bottom equaled
the depth of the well. The radius of the bowl
was obtained from the mathematical model
in the following way. In those special cases
where three wells fell in a straight line while
spanning a valley, the shape of that cross
section was estimated according to the pro¬
cedure described earlier. The parameter a
and the parameter c of all the cross sections
were averaged together and the result served
to describe a typical cross section. Knowing
the depth of a well and height of the rim, in
this case 700 feet, the radius was found by
using equations (l)-(3) with the averaged
parameters. The radius found in this manner
can not account for the variability from one
valley to another, nonetheless, following the
path of the overlapping circles traced out a
rough picture of where the preglacial river
valleys existed.

Wells lying in the vicinity of the valleys
were used in a triangulation method to locate

as accurately as possible the bottom of a
valley. Before taking that step, however, it
was necessary to estimate the slopes of the
ancient Wisconsin and Wolf river beds. Em¬
ploying the method of least squares, esti¬
mates of the slopes were obtained based on
the cross sections and wells marked in Fig. 1 .
Knowing the elevation of the river bottom at
any point along a valley and the elevation of
the bottom of a well lying on a valley’s
fringe, the distance of a well from the bot¬
tom of a valley was found by again using the
model this time with the parameters asso¬
ciated with the cross section nearest to the
well. From these wells an arc was swung with
a radius corresponding to that distance
which the valley’s bottom was supposed to
lie from a given well. Three intersecting arcs
give a fix for the location of the bottom of a
valley. Two intersecting or almost intersect¬
ing arcs were also used, if they were on op¬
posite sides of a valley. And as a final resort,
usually to compensate for gaps that some¬
times occurred in the mapping of the valleys
especially in the towns of Neshkoro and

1985]

Fleming — Preglacial River Valleys

23

Seneca, a single arc was used to reckon a
position of where the bottom of a valley
ought to be. Based upon the fixes, the mid¬
points of the valley cross sections, and the
locations of certain wells that happened to
reach the bottom of a valley, the locations of
the preglacial river valleys were ascertained.
The result was translated to the pertinent
section of the Wisconsin Department of
Transportation 1984 District Highway Map.

The method of contouring could have
been used to accomplish the same end in¬
stead of the triangulation method that was
actually employed. The contouring that was
done is shown in the topographic map of the
bedrock (Fig. 2). The levels were drawn free¬
hand so that the accuracy of the levels is only
about ±100 feet, whereas the accuracy of
the elevations based on the mathematical
model is ±12 feet. Because of that greater
degree of accuracy, the method of triangula¬
tion was adopted for use in making the map
of the preglacial river valleys. Once the map
was made, approximately half of the map¬
ping was field checked ^s time permitted.
The map was also checked against aerial
photographs and USGS topographic maps.
In general, it was found that the wetlands in
these three counties lie in the remnants of the
ancient valleys.

The technique used in constructing the
map of the glacier’s movement was already
explained earlier in the section pertaining to
the discussion of the data.

Influence of the Precambrian Bedrock

To what degree the Precambrian bedrock
influenced the courses of the ancient rivers
and the glacier’s movement in this region is
largely a matter of conjecture. The Precam¬
brian bedrock that underlies the sandstone
and limestone is composed of granite and
rhyolite. These igneous rocks were formed
1.765 billion years ago during a period of
volcanic activity occurring to the northwest
of Marquette County (Smith, 1978b). In
subsequent ages, the sedimentary rocks of
sandstone and limestone were formed on top

of the Precambrian rock as a result of suc¬
cessive cycles of sedimentation associated
with advancing and retreating seas (USGS,
1976). In a few instances, the Precambrian
bedrock protrudes to the surface and is ex¬
posed as granite at Montello and Red
Granite and the rhyolite of Observatory Hill
in Marquette County and at Endeavor.
Whereas the rhyolite forms the Precambrian
bedrock in southeastern Marquette and
Green Lake Counties, granite constitutes the
bedrock in the northwestern section of the
counties. The boundary between the two
types of rocks bears 50° east of north
(Smith, 1978b), and is essentially perpen¬
dicular to the direction of flow of the molten
rock. The dashed line labeled T in Fig. 8

N

Fig. 8. Relation between aspects of the Precambrian
bedrock and the direction of the glacier’s movement and
the courses of ancient rivers.

T = Axis of the contact between granite and rhyolite
(Smith, 1978b).

L = Axis of the direction of flow of the molten
igneous rock (Adopted from Smith, 1978b).

G = Direction of movement of the glacier in
Marquette and most of Green Lake Counties.

R = Course of the ancient Grand River.

W = Course of the abandoned south branch of the
ancient Wisconsin River.

The close associations of T and W and of L, G, and R
suggest that the Precambrian bedrock influenced the
courses of preglacial rivers and the glacier’s direction of
movement in Marquette and Green Lake Counties.

24

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

shows the direction of the contact between
the granite and rhyolite, the granite being to
the left and the rhyolite to the right. The
dashed line labeled L in the same figure
shows the direction of flow of the molten
rock. The direction of the glacier’s move¬
ment, G, and the course of the ancient
Grand River, R, lie very close to L and ap¬
pear to be correlated with the direction of
flow of the molten rock. Also the course of
the abandoned southern branch of the an¬
cient Wisconsin River, W, seems to be cor¬
related with the contact between the granite
and rhyolite, T. Although the topography of
the Precambrian bedrock is unknown, it ap¬
pears from Fig. 8 that the bedrock affected
the courses of preglacial rivers and the
glacier’s movement in this area.

Summary

Evidence suggests that the Precambrian
bedrock played a role in determining the
courses of the ancient rivers and the direc¬
tion of the glacier’s movement. Prior to
glaciation, the physical geography was
dominated in this region by the Wisconsin,
Wolf, and Fox Rivers that had flowed
through a country which would be un¬
familiar to anyone living today. Glaciation
radically altered the preglacial landscape.
The thick layer of sand which is found in
these counties came from the pulverizing ac¬
tion of the glacier on the sandstone. The
lacustrine deposits left behind by the
retreating glacier helped to create the many
and extensive wetlands remarkable to this
region. Marquette County, in 1938, had the
greatest proportion, 29%, of wetlands to its
size of any county in the state (WCD, 1963).

The eight drainage channels associated
with the successive damming of the ancient
Wisconsin River were created by the advance
of the Green Bay Lobe through Green Lake
and Marquette Counties during the Wiscon¬
sin stage of Pleistocene glaciations. The net¬
work of buried valleys was discovered pri¬
marily by means of well constructor’s
reports and mapped with the aid of a

mathematical model that was designed to
describe a hypothetical valley cross section.
All of the preglacial river valleys in these
counties are buried as a result of glaciation.
What once were deep river valleys are now
hidden. Only the muck farms and wetlands
most visibly mark the locations of those
valleys today.

Acknowledgements

Helpful comments for improving the
quality of the manuscript were given to me
by Lee Clayton of the Wisconsin Geological
and Natural History Survey, Esta Lewin,
David Mickelson of the University of Wis-
consin-Madison Geology Department, and
Mary Zellmer. I want to thank Christine
Reinhard, Assistant Wisconsin State Cartog¬
rapher, for her very helpful suggestions for
making the illustrations.

Literature Cited

Alden, W. C. 1918. Quaternary Geology of
Southeastern Wisconsin. U.S. Geological
Survey Professional Paper 106. 356 pp.

Bean, E. F. 1924. Geologic Map of Wisconsin. In
Edward Steidtmann, Limestones and Marls of
Wisconsin. Wisconsin Geological and Natural
History Survey Bulletin No. 66. 208 pp.

Dazieal, I. W. D., and Dott, R. H., Jr. 1970.
Geology of the Baraboo District, Wisconsin.
Wisconsin Geological and Natural History
Survey. Information Circular 14. 162 pp.
Irving, R. D. 1877. Geology of central Wiscon¬
sin. In Geology of Wisconsin 1873-77. Wiscon¬
sin Geological Survey, v. 2.

Maher, Louis J., Jr. 1982. The palynology of
Devils Lake, Sauk County, Wisconsin. In
Quaternary history of the Driftless Area.
Wisconsin Geological and Natural History
Survey. Field Trip Guide Book 5:1 19-135.
Martin, Lawrence. 1932. The Physical Geog¬
raphy of Wisconsin. 2nd Ed. Wisconsin Geo¬
logical and Natural History Survey Bulletin 36.
608 pp. Reprinted 1965. University of Wiscon¬
sin Press. Madison, Wisconsin.

Mudrey, M. G., Jr. 1985. Verbal communica¬
tion. See also M. G. Mudrey, Jr., B. A. Brown,
and J. K. Greenberg. 1982. Geologic Map of

1985]

Fleming — Preglacial River Valleys

25

Wisconsin. Wisconsin Geological and Natural
History Survey.

Petitval, J. B. 1839. Survey Neenah or Fox River,
&c. Letter from the Secretary of War, Trans¬
mitting a Report and Map of the Survey of the
Neenah or Fox River, in compliance with a
resolution of the House of Representatives of
the 14th Instant. January 19, 1839. House
Docs. 25 Cong. 3 Sess. Ex Doc. No. 102, Ser.
No. 346.

Smith, Eugene I. 1978a. Introduction to Precam-
brian rocks of south central Wisconsin. In
Geoscience Wisconsin, v. 2.

- . 1978b. Precambrian rhyolites and

granites in south-central Wisconsin: Field rela¬
tions and geochemistry. Geological Society of
America Bulletin. 89:875-890.

Stewart, Mark Thurston. 1976. An Integrated
Geologic, Hydrologic, and Geophysical Inves¬
tigation of Drift Acquifers, Western Outa¬
gamie County, Wisconsin. Ph.D. thesis, Uni¬
versity of Wisconsin, Madison. 165 pp.

Thwaites, F. T. 1940. Buried Precambrian of
Wisconsin. Transactions of the Wisconsin

Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 32:
233-242.

- . 1963. Outline of Glacial Geology. Ed¬
wards Brothers. Ann Arbor, Michigan. 142 pp.

U.S. Department of Agriculture. Soil Conserva¬
tion Service. 1977. Soil Survey of Green Lake
County, Wisconsin. Washington, D.C.

- . 1975. Soil Survey of Marquette County,

Wisconsin. Washington, D.C.

U.S. Geological Survey. 1976. Mineral and
Water Resources of Wisconsin. United States
Geological Survey in collaboration with the
Wisconsin Geological and Natural History
Survey U.S. Government Printing Office.
Washington, D.C.

Warren, Gouverneur, K. 1876. Report on the
Transportation Route along the Wisconsin and
Fox Rivers, in the State of Wisconsin between
Mississippi River and Lake Michigan. U.S.
Government Printing Office. Washington,
D.C.

Wisconsin Conservation Department. 1963. Wis¬
consin Wetland Inventory. Marquette County
Wetlands.

SPATIAL ATTRIBUTES OF UW UNDERGRADUATE
ATTENDANCE PATTERNS

J. B. Foust

Department of Geography
University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire

Abstract

At first glance, the attendance pattern of undergraduates in the UW system ap¬
pears to be very complex. It is often assumed that socioeconomic variables such as
income and education are the major causal factors involved, but these do very little
to “explain” UW undergraduate attendance patterns. A simple model based on
distance (and variations thereof) yields much better results. Such a model can ac¬
count for a very large percentage of the variation in undergraduate attendance pat¬
terns for individual campuses and most of the anomalies that remain are easily ex¬
plained. This unconventional explanation of attendance patterns can be extended to
consider the “locational efficiency” of campuses and programs.

Introduction

More than 100,000 residents of Wisconsin
are enrolled as undergraduates at the thir¬
teen four-year campuses of the UW System,
but why does an undergraduate from a given
county choose a specific campus? Many ex¬
planations could be offered. When indi¬
vidual undergraduates are polled, they cite
the amount of financial aid available, the
presence of specialized programs, family/
friendship ties, the academic reputation of a
campus or department, or reasons as trivial
as the “party” reputation of a campus or the
male/female ratio. Initial career decisions
certainly play a role. A beginning under¬
graduate from Green Bay, for example, who
wants to major in industrial arts, nursing,
engineering, or agriculture has a more
limited choice of potential campuses than
one who intends to major in mathematics.
On the other hand, most campuses offer
“pre” programs (pre-engineering, pre-med,
etc.) and many, if not most, undergraduates
enter their college career undecided and
often change their major more than once.
Many select their field of study because a
single course, taken to meet general educa¬
tion requirements, gets them interested in a
major which may not be available on all

campuses. These individuals did not choose
a particular campus initially because it of¬
fered their eventual major. Had they begun
their academic career at another campus,
they might have selected another field of study.

We cannot predict with unerring accuracy
the UW campus that will be chosen by a
given Joe/Jane Freshman from a given place
in the state. There may be as many reasons
as there are individual undergraduates, but a
consideration of student origins raises an in¬
teresting set of questions. Is there a general
model which can predict attendance patterns
at UW campuses with a high degree of ac¬
curacy? Is the location of UW campuses
“equitable” or “efficient” given the popula¬
tion distribution of the state? Could a con¬
sideration of important variables and geo¬
graphic patterns be used to make better deci¬
sions about the location of future facilities
and programs or the termination of others?
In this study, only undergraduates from
Wisconsin enrolled in the Fall Semester of
1983 at the thirteen four-year campuses are
considered.

Correlation with Population

Common sense suggests that the number
of UW undergraduates from a given county

26

1985]

Foust — UW Undergraduate Attendance

27

Table 1 . Partial correlation results.

Campus

1980

Population °

Controlling for

Median Family
Income b

Education

Level c

Bothd

UW-TOTAL

0.973

0.966

0.980

0.981

MSN

0.217

0.045

0.036

-0.007

MIL

0.796

0.736

0.764

0.744

EAU

-0.205

-0.028

-0.151

-0.056

GBY

-0.023

-0.039

0.046

0.004

LAC

-0.125

-0.056

-0.097

-0.062

OSH

-0.013

-0.095

0.032

-0.046

PKS

0.118

-0.010

0.121

0.034

PLT

-0.113

-0.076

-0.089

-0.075

RVF

-0.137

-0.103

-0.170

-0.130

SPT

-0.139

-0.076

-0.087

-0.067

STO

-0.020

-0.057

-0.176

-0.092

SUP

-0.101

0.007

-0.093

-0.024

WTW

-0.116

-0.085

0.064

-0.052

° r12, where 1 = # of UW undergraduates at campus from each county and 2 = 1980 population.
b r123, where 3 = 1980 median family income for each county.
c r12 4, where 4 = per cent of county population with more than 16 years of education.

d Tl2.34

Source (demographic data): 1980 Census of Population.

should be strongly correlated with the
population of the county. The greater the
population, the greater the number of
undergraduates. Within this general trend,
however, there might be other factors caus¬
ing counties with similar populations to send
different numbers of undergraduates to the
UW System. Secondary variables which im¬
mediately come to mind are income and edu¬
cation. The assumption is that counties with
higher incomes and educational levels will
send a higher proportion of their population
on to college. Simple and partial correlation
coefficients were calculated to test this
hypothesis and are given in Table 1 .

For total UW undergraduates, the correla¬
tion between the number of undergraduates
from a county and its population is very high
(r = 0.973). The relationship is positive, i.e.,
as population increases, the number of un¬
dergraduates also increases. In partial cor¬
relation, one or more variables can be “held
constant” to examine the relationship be¬
tween variables without the intrusion of
other factors. If income and education are

important, the correlation with population
should decline when they are considered, but
the partial correlation coefficients in Table 1
show that controlling for income and educa¬
tional levels (both individually and collec¬
tively) produces almost no change in the
relationship between the total number of
UW undergraduates from a county and its
population. The individual campuses listed
in Table 1, however, show very different
results. Positive relationships are found only
for the Madison, Milwaukee, and Parkside
campuses. For the other campuses, the rela¬
tionship is negative indicating that as
population increases, the number of under¬
graduates from a county to that campus de¬
creases. In addition, with the exception of
Milwaukee, the correlation with population
is rather weak and controlling for income
and educational levels reduces it even more.
There is a very high correlation in Wisconsin
between population and income/education.
The counties with the largest populations
(urban counties) also have the highest in¬
comes and the highest educational levels.

28

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

Madison, Milwaukee, and Parkside are lo¬
cated in the densest urban cluster of the
state, hence the positive correlation with
population (and education/income). The
outstate campuses are distant from the con¬
centration of population and controlling for
education and income does little to over¬
come this distance handicap.

Campus Capture Areas

Within the context of the “Wisconsin
Idea,” campuses were established over the
state to provide greater accessibility to
higher education for all citizens. This sug¬
gests that each campus serves its “regional”
market which could account for a large
amount of the variation in the origin pattern
of its undergraduates. Like other types of
market areas, these should reflect the “at¬
traction” or drawing power of individual
campuses. The ability of a campus to attract
students was assumed to be its “theoretical
target capacity.” These targets are given in a
1976 in-house UW System study which rec¬
ommended potential enrollment limits for
each campus (UW System, 1976). Target ca¬
pacities were based on physical facilities and

Fig. 1. Campus “capture areas” based on 1977 target
capacities.

faculty/staff sizes and are directly propor¬
tional to enrollments which existed in the
late 1970’s. Enrollment itself, of course,
could be used as a surrogate for “drawing
power” because enrollments reflect physical
capacities and availability of programs and
majors. System targets, however, were as¬
sumed to reflect a more consistent estimate
of drawing power. How can the boundary
between two competing campuses be drawn?
In this study, the “breaking point” between
campus pairs was based on the following
model:

BP*y = - D" ,

i + Vc/c,

where: BPxy = the “breaking point”be-

tween campus x and cam¬
pus y.

Dxy = the distance between x and

y-

CxCy = the target capacities of x
and y.

If two competing campuses have the same
enrollment capacities, the “breaking point”
will occur exactly half-way between them. A
larger capacity, however, shifts the breaking
point toward the smaller campus and ex¬
pands the capture areas of larger campuses
at the expense of their smaller competitors.
The market areas in Figure 1 were derived by
applying the above formula between each
campus and its nearest competitors to deter¬
mine breaking points. A straight line was
drawn from a campus to its competitors and
a perpendicular line was then extended from
each breaking point. The connection of the
perpendicular lines produces the “capture
area” polygons.

How well do empirical attendance pat¬
terns match these theoretical capture areas?
Actual capture patterns cannot be accurately
mapped with the raw number of under¬
graduates from each county to each campus.
A county with a large population like
Milwaukee may send a greater number of

1985]

Foust — UW Undergraduate Attendance

29

undergraduates to a campus than a smaller
county. The number from Milwaukee, how¬
ever, can be a very small percentage of the
total UW undergraduates from Milwaukee.
The absolute number of undergraduates
from Milwaukee at a campus is large, but the
campus “captures” a relatively small
percentage of the Milwaukee’s undergradu¬
ate population. For example, Milwaukee
sent 417 undergrtaduates to UW-Eau Claire
in Fall 1983 and was the fourth leading coun¬
ty in terms of the raw number of under¬
graduates at Eau Claire. This total, however,
represented less than two per cent of the
total UW undergraduates from Milwaukee
County. Using the percentage of total UW
System undergraduates captured by a given
campus from each county gives much more
comparable estimates of capture rates. These
percentages were used to derive the “actual”
capture areas shown in Figure 2. The iso-
pleths were based on the campus which
“captured” the greatest percentage of total
UW undergraduates from a county. Where
capture rates in a county were almost the
same for two campuses, the lines were inter¬
polated based on the magnitudes of the com¬
peting capture rates.

Actual “capture areas” generally follow
the theoretical patterns developed in Figure
1, but there are several exceptions. Stout’s
actual capture area is much smaller than its
theoretical while Eau Claire’s is larger.
Madison’s actual capture area extends into
Sheboygan and Manitowoc counties at the
expense of UW-Oshkosh. Madison is also
the dominant campus in Marathon County
and is the only example of an “enclave”
within the capture area of another campus.
This is not surprising given its size, status,
and location, but in all three counties
(Manitowoc, Sheboygan, and Marathon),
UW-Center campuses capture almost twice
as many UW undergraduates as any four-
year campus. For most campuses, however,
there is a remarkable similarity between ac¬
tual and theoretical capture areas.

Capture percentages vary considerably

among campuses. For example, UW-Park-
side captures sixty-five per cent of all UW
undergraduates from Kenosha County, but
attracts zero undergraduates from many dis¬
tant counties. Madison captures eighty-two
per cent of all UW undergraduates from
Dane County and some undergraduates
from every county in the state. Capture rates
in home counties varies from a high of
eighty-six per cent for UW-Superior to a low
of forty-seven for UW-Green Bay.

The Distance/Intervening
Opportunities Model

The pattern presented in Figure 2 suggests
two “hidden” explanations of UW atten¬
dance patterns. They are hidden in the sense
that they are rarely (if ever) mentioned as ex¬
planatory variables yet are capable of pre¬
dicting the capture pattern with high degree
of accuracy. First, capture rates are an
inverse function of distance: the greater the
distance, the lower the capture rate for a
given campus. Distances used in this study
were measured between county centers. Sec¬
ondly, the amount of competition or “inter¬
vening opportunity” in a specific direction
plays a very important role. For example,

30

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

Eau Claire’s capture area extends a much
greater distance to the northeast where there
is little competition than due west where
there is considerable competition from UW-
Stout. The relationship between capture
rates and intervening opportunity should
also be inverse. For a given campus, in¬
tervening opportunity (“competition”) was
measured by:

IO*y = (D*y — Dcy) + D*y,

where: IOxy = intervening opportunities

between campus x and
county y.

Dxy = distance between campus
x and county y.

Dcy = distance to the UW cam¬
pus closest to county y.

For the home county of each campus, of
course, the value of IO equals zero [IO =
(0-0) + 0]. The value of IO, however, be¬
tween a given campus and a county which
has another UW campus is twice the value of
the distance between county centers. For ex¬
ample, if the distance between two counties
is thirty miles and each has a UW campus,

the value of intervening opportunities is sixty
[IO = (30 - 0) + 30]. This effect is used as
a surrogate for competition. Both hypoth¬
eses can be tested with simple correlation.

A visual inspection of distance (X) and
capture percentages (Y) scattergrams in¬
dicated that the form of the relationship was
not linear. Capture rates decreased with in¬
creases in both simple distance and interven¬
ing opportunities, but at a decreasing rate.
This effect was adjusted for by using both
the square root and common log of each.
Correlation coefficients are shown in Table
2. Both distance and intervening opportunity
values (unconverted) produce statistically
significant (.0001 level) results. All signs are
negative as hypothesized indicating that as
distance (or intervening opportunity) in¬
creases, the rate of capture decreases. In all
cases, converting the independent variables
to square root and common logs yields
higher correlations than raw values and, in
most cases, the square root gives slightly bet¬
ter results than conversion to common logs.
Coefficients of determination (squares of
correlation coefficients) are a measure of the
per cent of variation in the dependent vari¬
able (capture rates) which is “explained” by

Table 2. Simple correlation coefficients.*

DIST

yjDIST

LOG (DIST)

IO

flcT

LOG (IO)

MSN

-0.619

-0.734

-0.666

-0.650

-0.758

-0.730

MIL

-0.468

-0.621

-0.564

-0.465

-0.624

-0.635

EAU

-0.720

-0.803

-0.751

-0.734

-0.832

-0.825

GBY

-0.541

-0.654

-0.606

-0.537

-0.663

-0.67 4

LAC

-0.649

-0.778

-0.731

-0.658

-0.794

-0.797

OSH

-0.668

-0.790

-0.760

-0.668

-0.804

-0.823

PKS

-0.338**

-0.504

-0.479

-0.325

- 0.494

-0.552

PLT

-0.577

-0.713

-0.835

-0.611

-0.749

-0.878

RVF

-0.567

-0.680

-0.812

-0.568

-0.682

-0.829

SPT

-0.622

-0.744

-0.629

-0.666

-0.748

-0.733

STO

-0.614

-0.732

-0.625

-0.616

-0.735

-0.698

SUP

-0.531

-0.698

-0.632

-0.503

-0.659

-0.660

WTW

-0.613

-0.720

-0.698

-0.625

-0.749

-0.788

DIST = distance (measured between centers of counties).

IO = intervening opportunities as defined in text.

* All coefficients significant at the 0.0001 level unless noted.
** Significant at 0.002 level.

1985]

Foust — UW Undergraduate Attendance

31

variation in the dependent variable. The best
predictor for each campus yields “explana¬
tion” rates which range from a low of about
twenty-five per cent for Parkside (square
root of distance) to a high of seventy-seven
percent for Platteville (log of intervening op¬
portunities). The statistical results indicate
that distance (and its variation, intervening
opportunities) is a very important variable in
determing UW attendance patterns.

Once again, income and education levels
were added to see if the predictive power of
the model could be improved; if income and
education are the important variables, the
correlation with distance should decline
when they are considered. Results are shown
in Table 3. In general, correlations between
student origins and distance remained re¬
markably constant when the effects of in¬
come and educational levels were added.
The two exceptions to this generalization
are Milwaukee and Parkside. For both,
the correlation with distance drops appre¬

ciably when controlling for the effects of in¬
come and income and education combined.
These two campuses are different from the
other campuses in the System in that com¬
muters are much more important than a resi¬
dential student population. The daily driving
distance limit of each “commuter shed” is
very small and, beyond this limit, other fac¬
tors take over. Parkside gets 92 per cent of
its Wisconsin undergraduates from Racine
and Kenosha Counties while Milwaukee gets
84 per cent from Milwaukee and Waukesha
Counties. Only Green Bay and Superior
come close to these levels from their home
county (both 65%). Most of the other cam¬
puses hover around 25 per cent. The over¬
whelming importance of close student popu¬
lations for these four campuses is supported
by Table 3. The greater the importance of
the “home” counties, the lower the simple
correlation with distance. When variations
in potential undergraduate populations are
factored out by using percentage (of total

Table 3. Partial correlation results* undergraduates with distance.

Campus

Distance0

Controlling for

Median Family
Incomeb

Education

Level*

Both d

MSN

-0.619

-0.528

-0.591

-0.603

MIL

-0.468

- 0.027 1

-0.420

-0.2382

EAU

-0.720

-0.657

-0.711

-0.650

GBY

-0.541

-0.574

-0.544

-0.545

LAC

-0.648

-0.637

-0.646

-0.637

OSH

-0.668

-0.681

0.676

-0.652

PKS

-0.3383

-0.2164

-0.354s

-0.1596

PLT

-0.577

-0.624

-0.591

-0.624

RVF

-0.576

-0.613

-0.603

-0.609

SPT

-0.622

- 0.644

-0.624

-0.651

STO

-0.614

-0.550

-0.609

-0.534

SUP

-0.531

-0.520

-0.538

-0.505

WTW

-0.613

-0.508

-0.604

-0.486

* All coefficients significant at the 0.0001 level unless noted.

Significance levels: ‘0.0043 "0.0024 "0.002 "0.036 50.002 60.096
° r12, where 1 = per cent of UW undergraduates at a campus from each county and 2 = raw distance measured be¬
tween county centers.

b r12 3» where 3 = 1980 median family income.

c r12.4, where 4 = per cent of county population with more than 16 years of education. (1980).

d Til. 34

Source: 1980 Census of Population.

32

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

UW undergraduates) capture rates, distance
accounts for a very large proportion of the
total variation in attendance patterns. Ad¬
justing for income and educational levels
(via partial correlation) does little to improve
the accuracy of prediction. The distance/
intervening opportunity model “explains”
the UW undergraduate attendance pattern
with a high degree of accuracy.

Residuals from Regression

What factors account for the variation not
“explained” by distance and its variations?
Some understanding can be gained by con¬
sidering the residuals from regression which
fall outside one standard error of estimate.
When positive and negative residuals are
mapped, it is immediately apparent that two
different factors are involved. UW-Eau
Claire is used as an example with residuals
greater than one standard error of estmiate
shown in Table 4. Competing campuses ac¬
count for most of the counties for which the
model overpredicts the capture rate by more

than one standard error. For Eau Claire, the
negative counties either contain a competing
campus or are contiguous to one with the
lone exception of Marquette County (equi¬
distant between MSN and SPT). This expla¬
nation of negative residuals also holds true
for all other UW campuses.

Three of the positive residuals (model
underpredicts the capture rate) are in Eau
Claire’s capture area. This is also the general
rule for all campuses. Two of the remaining
positive residual counties (Burnett and
Ashland) are fairly close. Only Door County
is difficult to understand. The positive
residual counties are also a mixed bag for
other campuses as well. Some have high in¬
come levels and some low. Some have high
educational levels while others are well
below the state average. Some are rural and
others urban. These anomaly counties seem
to be the result of “random” factors.
Friendship/kinship ties may very well play
an important role. Certain high schools seem
to be better represented at Eau Claire, for

Table 4. Residuals from regression.1 UWEC capture rates and distance.2

Negative County Residuals Positive County Residuals

Counties with UW Campus

In UW-Eau Claire ‘‘Capture” Area

Douglas

- 1.0071

Chippewa

+ 2.5437

Dunn

- 1.5890

Eau Claire

+ 2.7411

Grant

- 1.0556

Rusk

+ 1.4386

La Crosse

-2.4686

Taylor

+ 1.6693

Pierce

-2.2689

Other

Portage

- 1.6156

Ashland

+ 1.3380

Counties Contiguous to UW Campus County

Burnett

+ 1.3901

Adams

- 1.3380

Door

+ 1.0986

Crawford

-1.4282

Richland

-1.1316

St. Croix

-1.1334

Wood

-1.0243

Vernon

-1,1262

Other

Marquette

- 1.2391

1 Greater than one standard error of estimate (8.76017).

2 For Y = a + bX, where Y = UW-Eau Claire undergraduates from county as a per cent of total UW undergradu¬

ates from county.

X = square root of distance of county from Eau Claire (measured between county cen¬
ters).

a = 57.02226, b = 24.76499, r = 0.803.

1985]

Foust— UW Undergraduate Attendance

33

example, than others in the same distant
county. Once a few undergraduates from a
high school or small town go to a particular
campus and have success there, the process
may snowball so that the tradition of under¬
graduates from Place X attending Campus Y
is carried on through time. Capture rates
(per cent of total UW undergraduates) are so
low in distant counties that only a few
undergraduates one way or the other can
throw a county outside the limits of one
standard error of estimate. In distant coun¬
ties, alumni who are high school guidance
counselors or coaches or the experiences of
siblings and parents may also be critical.

Locational Efficiency

The role that distance plays in determining
UW enrollment patterns, raises the question
of the “locational efficiency” of the respec¬
tive campuses. One way to consider this is to
map the centers of the undergraduate popu¬
lations for each campus (Figure 3). The
center of population for all UW undergradu¬
ates is remarkably close to the center of the
total population of the state as would be ex¬
pected from the simple correlation coeffi¬
cient for this relationship. For individual

Fig. 3. Mean centers of campus populations.

campuses, however, undergraduate popula¬
tion centers are shifted away from the cam¬
pus locations toward the total population
center. The degree of displacement varies
from campus to campus. Milwaukee, Park-
side, Whitewater, and Madison are shifted
the least, while Stout, Eau Claire, La Crosse,
and River Falls are shifted the most. Gen¬
erally, the closer a campus is to the major
population concentration of the state, the
less the shift of its undergraduate population
center and vice versa. In Figure 3, the
closeness of the center of total UW under¬
graduates to the population center of the
state would seem to indicate that the cam¬
puses are well located to serve the population
of the state, but this idea is less credible
when individual campuses are considered.
The amount of spatial displacement of the
smaller UW campuses is somewhat a func¬
tion of the degree of specialization. For ex¬
ample, UW-Stout, with its very specialized
programs, is more displaced toward the
center of state population than is UW-Eau
Claire. The more specialized the campus, the
more it should draw its undergraduates from
the entire state as opposed to more “gen¬
eral” campuses. Stout has the “poorest”

Table 5. Theoretical and actual capture rates.

Campus

Per Cent of State
Population in
Theoretical Capture
Area

Per Cent of Total
UW-System
Undergraduate
Enrollment

MSN

13.80

23.67

MIL

33.04

18.86

EAU

5.60

8.27

GBY

7.58

3.69

LAC

4.16

6.36

OSH

9.05

8.06

PKS

4.45

4.08

PLT

1.93

4.21

RVF

2.16

2.62

SPT

8.97

6.67

STO

2.57

4.08

SUP

1.94

1.20

WTW

4.75

7.50

34

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

location of all campuses in this respect.
Another simple way to consider locational
efficiency is to compare the proportion of
the state’s population in the theoretical cap¬
ture areas of Figure 1 with the proportion of
the total UW undergraduate populations ac¬
tually captured by each campus. This is done
in Table 5. Madison captures a proportion
of the total UW undergraduate student body
which is almost twice the proportion of the
state’s population found in its theoretical
capture area. This is to be expected from the
“flagship” campus of the System. UW-Mil-
waukee, on the other hand, has an enroll¬
ment “capacity” which is half that of its
tributary population. The creation of UW-
Parkside seems to have been an “efficient”
action in that it captures almost exactly its
theoretical tributary area and “soaks up” an
excess population that would otherwise seek
to go to the already “saturated” campuses
of Madison, Milwaukee, or Whitewater. The
equitability of Parkside is also demonstrated
by the small displacement of its mean stu¬
dent center from its actual location (Figure
3). Both Superior and River Falls face the
stiff competition from nearby Minnesota
campuses with reciprocal tuition rates (UM-
Duluth and the University of Minnesota)
and each just captures its expected share of
the state’s undergraduates as estimated by
market areas.

Specialized programs should be located so
as to serve their target populations best. To
accomplish this, the target population must
be carefully identified. For example, agricul¬
tural or veterinary science programs may
serve agricultural concentrations rather than
the general population. Agricultural pro¬
grams are required at Madison of course
because it is the land grant institution, but
consider the “secondary” agricultural cam¬
pus of River Falls. How well is it located

with respect to the state’s agriculture? The
per cent of total county land in agriculture
was used as a surrogate for agricultural ac¬
tivity in the state. This measure factors down
the importance of counties with little agri¬
cultural activity such as Milwaukee or
Forest. The mean center of this distribution
is in southern Adams County, which sug¬
gests that Stevens Point would be a “better”
location for such programs. Of course, other
factors, such as economies of scale and ex¬
isting facilities, must also play a role and are
usually considered by decision makers.

Conclusions

In conclusion, the attendance pattern of
the UW-System campuses is, at first glance,
complex and would seem to require an intri¬
cate and complicated system of equations to
unravel the puzzle. The simple geographic
variable of distance, however, can be used to
predict most of the variation in the pattern
with a high degree of accuracy. This study
highlights the utility of the geographic ap¬
proach. Most of the data summarized in this
study are usually considered only in tabular
form by the gnomes of Van Hise Hall and it
is very rare to see any policy statement from
System Administration which contains a
map or considers the geographical ramifica¬
tions of decisions. Both the efficiency and
equitability of such decisions might be im¬
proved by such considerations.

Bibliography

University of Wisconsin System, Office of
Analysis Services and Information Systems,
Student Statistics, Fall 1983 (Madison: UW
System), 1984.

University of Wisconsin System, Annual Budget
Policy Paper ft ABA. 0, 1976-77 Enrollment
Target Capacities and Stabilized Resource Pat¬
tern (Madison, Mimeographed) March 5, 1976.

LAND CHARACTERISTICS ASSOCIATED WITH DIVERSE
HUMAN HEART AND DIGESTIVE SYSTEM
CANCER DEATH RATES AMONG WISCONSIN COUNTIES

Marion L. Jackson
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Ji Z. Zhang

Anhui Agricultural College , Hefei, P.R.C.

Chang S. Li

Institute of Environmental Chemistry
Academia Sinica, Beijing, P.R.C.

Abstract

Among Wisconsin counties, the highly diverse land characteristics, such as
northern and central sandy soils, silty and clayey soils, shallow glacial till depth to
bedrock, and the industrialized areas are associated with diverse age-adjusted
human heart death rates (HDR) and digestive system cancer death rates (CDR) per
100,000 persons per year, as reported by the Wisconsin Division of Health. For
Wisconsin, the mean for HDR is 321 ±33 and for CDR is 38.4 ±4.5, an eight-fold
difference. Maps of Wisconsin were prepared with HDR and CDR in each county
on a whole-life basis. The 15 counties with the lowest HDR (less than 315) and CDR
(less than 35) occur in the selenium-rich loessial silt along the Mississippi River (ex¬
cept where erosion has exposed bedrock sands). The 15 counties with the highest
HDR (343 to 406) and CDR (42 to 52) are widely distributed among the land
characteristics. Intermediate rates counties are similarly widely scattered. Recogni¬
tion of the geographic diversity of HDR and CDR among Wisconsin counties may
lead to hypotheses as to causation which will be helpful in further research.

Introduction

A commonly held view is that transporta¬
tion of foodstuffs and migration of people
should preclude, or obscure, any local effect
of land characteristics on human nutrition or
health differences among counties. Land
variations such as soil sandiness, permeabil¬
ity, and other geographic land factors that
affect food quality are, however, readily ob¬
servable. Land low in selenium (Se) contents
are indicated by low plant Se contents (below
50 ng g"1) in many Wisconsin counties
(Kubota et al., 1967). The need to supple¬
ment selenium (Se) in livestock feed to pre¬
vent cardiomyopathy (“white muscle dis¬
ease’’) in Wisconsin is well-established
(Hoekstra, 1974, 1975; Ullrey, 1974). Since

crops do not need Se but take it up in the
yield to the extent that is available, the Se
deficiency in livestock is understandable. An
inadequate remaining Se in the Wisconsin
soil-plant-animal-human nutrition chain is
possible (Jackson and Lim, 1982). Counties
along north central Wisconsin and upper
Michigan are shown in the “Atlas of Cancer
Mortality of U.S. Counties, 1950-1969”
(Mason et al., 1975) as having unusually
high rates of stomach and other cancers. The
land where this occurs in northern Wisconsin
and upper Michigan is dominated by sandy
soils developed in ancient quartzite rocks
(Stose, 1960) and sandy till transported by
several glaciations. The objective of this
paper is to show that the age-adjusted

35

36

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

Fig. 1. Heart death rates in Wisconsin counties vary
greatly, with a pattern related to land characteristics,
being minimal in the deepest, loessial covered counties,
but medium to high where erosion has exposed sandy
strata in Trempealeau and Vernon counties, and in
counties which are located in sandy glacial deposits.

Fig. 2. Cancer death rates in Wisconsin counties vary
greatly, with a pattern related to land characteristics,
being minimal in highly loessial Pierce county and other
deep-loess counties and up to twice as high in counties
with sandy soils or intensively farmed silty land, eroded
land, and land with shallow soils over bedrock.

Table 1. Mortality in Wisconsin counties from digestive tract cancers and from heart disease,
age-adjusted per 100,000 persons per year.

Heart

disease

Cancer deaths , 1968-1982 deaths

County

Stomach

Colo-rectal

Pancreas

Total

1979-1981

Adams

6.1

28.2

7.9

42.2

295

Ashland

11.1

27.3

8.8

47.2

363

Barron

7.5

21.8

8.2

37.5

272

Bayfield

5.9

29.4

7.6

43.0

374

Brown

6.7

23.2

7.4

37.3

321

Buffalo

6.9

19.8

6.7

33.4

295

Burnett

8.6

18.6

10.6

37.9

318

Calumet

6.1

24.8

8.5

39.5

345

Chippewa

6.6

21.8

8.7

37.1

320

Clark

6.9

21.2

6.2

34.2

273

Columbia

4.3

22.8

7.1

34.2

311

Crawford

6.6

20.0

9.7

36.4

283

Dane

5.8

19.4

7.2

32.3

266

Dodge

5.9

26.0

9.7

41.7

324

Door

10.2

17.8

9.1

37.1

265

Douglas

10.8

23.6

11.1

45.5

406

Dunn

6.1

16.6

8.6

31.4

284

Eau Claire

8.6

26.3

6.6

41.4

317

Florence

15.2

18.2

4.4

37.8

234

Fond du Lac

5.1

24.7

7.0

36.8

350

Forest

7.5

19.4

8.1

35.0

386

Grant

4.5

21.2

00

31.5

284

1985]

Jackson , Zhang and Li — Land Characteristics and Death Rates

37

Table 1 . Mortality in Wisconsin counties from digestive tract cancers and from heart disease,
age-adjusted per 100,000 persons per year. (Continued)

County

Stomach

Cancer deaths, 1968-1982
Colo-rectal Pancreas

Total

Heart

disease

deaths

1979-1981

Green

7.7

22.6

6.6

36.8

326

Green Lake

6.6

28.6

7.3

42.4

316

Iowa

5.5

23.4

9.3

38.2

302

Iron

11.2

16.6

10.1

37.9

400

Jackson

7.6

23.5

9.2

40.3

318

Jefferson

5.8

24.2

8.2

38.2

317

Juneau

6.4

26.1

8.2

40.7

345

Kenosha

7.1

22.2

6.8

36.1

367

Kewaunee

8.6

24.6

7.1

40.4

336

La Crosse

5.9

23.2

8.4

37.5

286

Lafayette

7.2

21.6

8.2

37.0

326

Langlade

9.8

18.2

7.6

35.7

333

Lincoln

10.3

31.0

11.1

52.4

322

Manitowoc

5.3

22.9

7.7

35.9

309

Marathon

8.8

23.8

9.3

41.9

322

Marinette

7.8

22.8

8.0

38.6

333

Marquette

7.6

23.6

6.1

37.3

338

Menominee

8.2

33.5

10.0

51.8

399

Milwaukee

7.3

24.7

8.7

40.7

343

Monroe

6.4

19.1

7.5

33.0

312

Oconto

8.0

21.6

9.4

39.0

325

Oneida

5.8

25.2

11.1

42.1

323

Outagamie

6.2

21.3

8.2

35.8

324

Ozaukee

7.2

20.6

6.4

34.2

312

Pepin

7.1

22.7

6.3

36.1

313

Pierce

3.7

17.4

6.5

27.7

315

Polk

8.0

17.6

7.3

32.8

317

Portage

8.8

23.1

11.2

43.0

311

Price

8.1

24.6

7.6

40.3

362

Racine

7.6

20.9

10.0

38.5

344

Richland

6.3

19.1

7.3

32.7

274

Rock

6.6

23.3

8.9

38.7

330

Rusk

8.4

19.5

6.2

34.0

334

St. Croix

6.4

18.5

8.7

33.6

294

Sauk

6.1

20.5

10.0

36.6

370

Sawyer

8.6

25.6

10.7

45.0

319

Shawano

6.9

21.5

7.2

35.6

296

Sheboygan

7.8

25.9

9.1

42.7

259

Taylor

10.5

20.1

12.2

42.9

300

Trempealeau

7.8

26.6

7.8

42.2

317

Vernon

6.5

18.8

6.2

31.5

344

Vilas

9.5

29.7

10.3

49.5

297

Walworth

6.6

23.6

7.6

37.8

348

Washburn

8.6

22.0

8.2

38.7

298

Washington

7.5

22.0

7.2

36.7

316

Waukesha

7.8

22.9

8.3

36.7

325

Waupaca

5.9

23.7

8.8

39.0

381

Waushara

7.5

24.1

6.1

38.4

307

Winnebago

7.0

21.5

7.5

36.1

296

Wood

8.8

24.4

7.9

40.6

305

Wisconsin (State)

7.1

23.0

8.3

38.4±4.5

321 ±3

38

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

human heart death rate (HDR) and gastro¬
intestinal cancer death rate (CDR), per
100,000 persons per year, varies among
counties of Wisconsin, a cool temperature
state. These studies were parallel to studies
showing even wider variance of HDR and
CDR in counties of the humid subtropical
state of Florida (Jackson et al., 1985) and in
regions of USA and China (China News
Agency, 1985; Li and Jackson, 1985).

Methods

Because the human HDR and CDR are
high in Wisconsin (as well as eastern USA,
China, and elsewhere) the epidemiology for
the years 1979 to 1981 for the HDR and 1968
to 1982 for CDR are presented on an age-
adjusted rate per 100,000 persons per year in
each Wisconsin county, as supplied by the
Wisconsin Division of Health, Madison. The
HDR rates were grouped into low, medium,
and high rate groups and plotted. The CDR
were considered as to increments over the
rate in Pierce county (27.7 10'5 y1, the
lowest rate in any Wisconsin county). Land
characteristics, such as bedrock diversity,
soil sandiness, erosion, fertility and suitabil¬
ity for intensive agriculture as mapped by the
U.S. Geological Survey (Stose, 1960) and the
Wisconsin Geological and Natural History
Survey, Madison (Hole, 1976) were com¬
pared in an effort to interpret the great dif¬
ferences in HDR and CDR among Wiscon¬
sin counties.

Results

Land characteristics such as sandy soils,
clay content, and glacial till depth to
bedrock appear to be associated with dif¬
ferent age-adjusted human whole-life heart
death rates (HDR) and digestive system
cancer death rates (CDR) per 100,000 per¬
sons per year (10~5 y"1) among Wisconsin
counties as mapped (Fig. 1 and 2). The an¬
nual age-adjusted HDR and CDR in Wis¬
consin are 321 ±33 and 38.4 ±4.5 10“5 y1,
respectively (Table 1). The HDR varies from

234 in Florence county to 406 10"5 y1 in
Douglas county (173% greater in the latter)
and the CDR range from 27.7 in Pierce
county to 52.4 10"5 y1 in Lincoln county
(nearly a two-fold difference).

Heart death rate

To facilitate discussion of land
characteristics in relation to human HDR,
the age adjusted county rates were grouped
as follows:

(1) Lowest rates, <315 .. . 29 counties,

(2) Intermediate rates, 315-340 ... 28
counties,

(3) Highest rates, >340 ... 15 counties.

The 29 counties which fall in the lowest
HDR group are well-distributed throughout
the state (Fig. 1). With the lowest county
first: Florence, 234; Sheboygan, 259; Door,
265; Dane, 266; Barron, 272; and Richland,
274 10-5 y1 are the six with the lowest HDR.
Of these, only Sheboygan and Florence
counties are in the high to medium CDR
categories (Table 1, Fig. 2). The other four
counties have silty and clayey soils which
would be expected to be moderately well
supplied with essential trace nutrient
elements. The thick high-Se loess belt from
Grant county north to St. Croix county has
low HDR, except for those in which sand¬
stone bedrock has been exposed by erosion.
Vilas county with HDR 297 10"5 y1 is
noteworthy because the other northern acid,
sand-rich counties are nearly all in the high
HDR category. Infusion of trace elements
has occurred by deep-seated mineralization
of ore-bearing rocks (Mudrey et al., 1982),
including copper, with which Se is asso¬
ciated. These rocks have been worked over
by several glaciations.

Those 15 counties falling in the highest
HDR group are, in decreasing order:
Douglas, 406; Iron, 400; Menomenee, 399;
Forest, 386; Waupaca, 381; Bayfield, 374;
Sauk, 370; Kenosha, 367; Ashland, 363;
Price, 362; Walworth, 348; Juneau, 345;

1985]

Jackson, Zhang and Li — Land Characteristics and Death Rates

39

Racine, 344; Vernon, 344; and Milwaukee,
343 10"5 y"1. Acid sandy land characterizes
ten of these counties, including Juneau
county. Kenosha, Racine, and Milwaukee
are the most industrialized counties, with
generally higher HDR risks. Vernon county
has highly eroded land, induced by the
erosiveness of the St. Peter sandstone cap-
rock (Strose, 1960), even though it occurs in
the deep loess belt. The land of Walworth
county is high in glacial moraines and sandy
outwash, and over half of it is intensively
farmed.

Cancer death rates

To facilitate discussion of land charac¬
teristics in relation to variation in gastro¬
intestinal cancer death rates (CDR) among
Wisconsin counties, the counties were map¬
ped (Fig. 2) in three age-adjusted CDR rates:

(1) Lowest CDR (28 to 35) ... 15 coun¬
ties,

(2) Intermediate CDR (36 to 41) . . . 42
counties,

(3) Highest CDR (42 to 52) ... 15 coun¬
ties.

Those 15 counties falling in the lowest
CDR group are, in increasing order: Pierce,
27.7; Dunn, 31.4; Grant, 31.5; Vernon,
31.5; Dane, 32.3; Richland, 32.7; Polk,
32.8; Monroe, 33.0; Buffalo, 33.4; St.
Croix, 33.6; Rusk, 34.0; Columbia, 34.2;
Clark, 34.2; Ozaukee, 34.2; and Forest,
35.0 10"5 y'1. The first ten counties occur in
the portion of western Wisconsin in which
loess (windblown silt) was deposited from
the Mississippi flood plain during the
Wisconsinan glacial age 14,000 to 16,000
years ago. This deposit came from the
Cretaceous sea-bottom clays of Minnesota
and South Dakota (U.S. National Research
Council, 1952). Rusk, Columbia and Clark
county soils received appreciable loess from
various nearby glacial sources. Ozaukee
county soils received shale clay pushed by
glaciers from the Lake Michigan basin.

Forest county soils received some glacial till
from Ordovician dolomite and shales from
the northeast and in addition lies near metal
ore deposits intruded from below.

Those 15 Wisconsin counties falling in the
highest CDR group are, in decreasing order:
Lincoln, 52.4; Menominee, 51.8; Vilas, 49.5;
Ashland, 47.2; Douglas, 45.5; Sawyer, 45.0;
Bayfield, 43.0; Portage, 43.0; Taylor, 42.9;
Sheboygan, 42.7; Green Lake, 42.4; Trem¬
pealeau, 42.2; Adams, 42.2; Oneida, 42.1;
and Marathon 41.9. The agricultural lands
of the 8 counties highest in CDR are pre¬
dominantly covered by acid sandy soils
developed in glacial outwash. Acid sandy
soils predominate in the other counties of the
group, except for Sheboygan and Marathon
counties which have shallow silt over till and
granite, respectively.

Medial heart and cancer death rate counties

The medium HDR and CDR counties are
well-distributed throughout Wisconsin. The
major fertilizer elements (phosphorus, po¬
tassium, and nitrogen) are routinely used to
increase the yields of various crops. A rapid
draw-down of trace elements in intensively
cropped counties is inevitable, while acid
sandy land is initially low in available trace
elements. Zinc (Zn) is deficient in a majority
of tests of sandy soils. For example, soil
tests show 100% Zn deficiency for Lincoln
county. Selenium (Se), which is not needed
by plants, is taken up in the crop and the
available supply drawn down in cropped
land but not necessarily in forested counties.

A fairly low correlation (r = 0.27) between
heart death rates (HDR) and digestive
system cancer death rates (CDR) among the
72 Wisconsin counties suggests variation in
causation. This situation contrasts greatly
with that among the 67 Florida counties
where a correlation, r = 0.73 (p <0.001), oc¬
curs between HDR and CDR (Jackson et al.,
1985). Because of the wide distribution in
medial HDR and CDR counties in Wiscon¬
sin, the pattern of causation can only be fully

40

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

explained by additional data on the geo¬
chemical and other locality characteristics of
land and people.

Discussion

The soil-food-nutrition chain should carry
adequate amounts of each of the 13 or so
essential trace elements (Mertz, 1981). A
well-established model is the role of iodine
(I) supplementation in the prevention of
human goiter in Wisconsin. An essential
deoxidizing Se-enzyme (Hoekstra, 1974)
helps prevent lipid oxidation in cell mem¬
branes and other cell-damaging oxidization
reactions (Draper and Bird, 1984). Wiscon¬
sin is one of the high human HDR states (Li
and Jackson, 1985). Few data have been
gathered on human blood Se levels in vari¬
ous localities, even though heart deaths ac¬
count for nearly half of all deaths (U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services,
1974-1981).

Adequate Se is a chemopreventive anticar¬
cinogen (Thompson, 1984). Active peroxides
and epioxygen groups that promote cancer
(Cerutti, 1985) are suppressed by Se enzymes
and vitamin E (Hoekstra, 1975). Soils Se, as
measured by plant uptake of Se, varied be¬
tween localities within the states of Arizona,
Arkansas, California, Missouri, Montana,
and New Mexico; CDR varied inversely with
the soil Se level within each state (Sham-
berger and Willis, 1971; Schrauzer et ah,
1977). Ammonium molybdate application to
soil lowered the incidence of human esoph¬
ageal cancer in a low molybdenum area in
China (Li et ah, 1980). Cancer types have
distinctive land distribution patterns among
counties of China (Li et ah, 1979), as found
in Wisconsin. Trace element supplementa¬
tion in human nutrition is available “over-
the-counter,” with expert dosage guidelines
from the U.S. National Academy of Sciences
(1980).

Conclusions

Diversity of land characteristics corre¬
sponds to a considerable extent with the wide

HDR and CDR variations among Wisconsin
counties. Status of essential trace elements
such as Se and Mo show relationships to
HDR and (or) CDR within regions of some
states, between U.S. states, and between
provinces of several countries. The diversity
of human HDR and CDR among Wisconsin
counties may come to be understood in
terms of land (soil, water, and crops, dietary
trace elements and toxic substances) with the
accumulation of more data on localities.

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Academy
of Sciences, P.R.C. and the College of Agri¬
cultural and Life Sciences, University of
Wisconsin-Madison. Ji Z. Zhang and Chang
S. Li are Honorary Fellows at the University
of Wisconsin-Madison. Earlier, M. L. Jack-
son, The Franklin Hiram King Professor,
was visiting scholar in China, sponsored by
Academia Sinica. Special thanks are ex¬
tended to Gregory Ruark for his assistance
with the statistical analyses. Soil clay data
were gathered with the assistance from the
National Science Foundation grant EAR-
8405422. Gratitude is expressed to Ms.
Chrystie Jackson for her editorial and typing
assistance.

Literature Cited

Cerutti, P. A. 1985. Prooxidant states and tumor
promotion. Science 227:375-381.

China News Agency. 1985. Persons with low Se
in their hair more likely to develop cancer.
People’s Daily. March 5, 1985, page 3. Beijing,
P.R.C.

Draper, H. H., and R. P. Bird. 1984. Antiox¬
idants and cancer. J. Agric. Food Chem.
32:433-435.

Hoekstra, W. G., 1974. Biochemical role of
selenium. Trace Element Metabolism in Ani-
mals-2. Eds., W. G. Hoekstra, J. W. Suttie,
H. E. Ganther, and W. Mertz, pp. 61-77.
University Park Press, Baltimore, MD.

_ . 1975. Biochemical function of selenium

and its relation to vitamin E. Federation Proc.
34:2083-2089.

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Hole, F. D. 1976. Soils of Wisconsin. The
University Press, Madison, 233 pp.

Jackson, M. L., C. S. Li, and D. F. Martin. 1985.
Do land characteristics affect heart and
gastrointestinal cancer death rates among
Florida counties? Fla. Sci. (in press).

_ , and C. H. Lim. 1982. The role of clay

minerals in environmental sciences. Proc. Int.
Clay Conf., Bologna and Pavia, 1981. Eds. H.
van Olphen and F. Veniale, Elsevier, Amster¬
dam, pp. 641-653.

Kubota, J., W. H. Allaway, D. L. Carter, E. E.
Cary, and V. A. Lazar. 1967. Selenium in
crops in the United States in relation to
selenium-responsive diseases of livestock. J.
Agr. FoodChem. 16:448-453.

Li, C. S., and M. L. Jackson. 1985. Selenium in
human blood affects heart death rates in China
and USA. Trace Substances in Environmental
Health-XIX, Ed. D. D. Hemphill, University
of Missouri, Columbia, MO (in press).

Li, M., P. Li, and B. Li. 1980. Recent progress in
research on esophageal cancer in China. Adv.
Cancer Res. 33:173-249.

Li, J., B. Lui, G. Li and others (Editorial Com¬
mittee). 1979. Atlas of Cancer Mortality in the
People's Republic of China, 1973-1975. China
Map Press, Shanghai, 100 pp.

Mason, T. J., F. W. McKay, R. Hoover, W. J.
Blot, and J. F. Fraumeni, Jr. 1975. Atlas of
cancer mortality for U.S. counties: 1950-1969.
DHEW Pub. No. 75-780, Washington, D.C.,
103 pp.

Mertz, W. 1981. The essential trace elements.
Science 213:1332-1338.

Mudrey, M. G., B. A. Brown, and J. K. Green¬
berg. 1982. Bedrock geologic map of Wiscon¬

sin. Wis. Geol. and Natural Hist. Surv.,
Madison.

Schrauzer, G. N., D. A. White, and C. J. Schnei¬
der. 1977. Cancer mortality correlation
studies. Ill — Statistical associations with
dietary selenium intakes. Biolnorg. Chem.
7:23-34.

Shamberger, R. J., and C. E. Willis. 1971.
Selenium distribution and cancer mortality.
CRC Clinical Reviews in Clinical Lab. Sci.
2(1):21 1-221.

Stose, G. W. 1960. Geologic map of the United
States. U.S. Geological Survey, Washington,
D.C.

Thompson, H. J. 1984. Selenium as an anticar¬
cinogen. J. Agric. Food Chem. 32:422-425.

Ullrey, D. E. 1974. The selenium deficiency prob¬
lem in animal agriculture. In: Trace Element
Metabolism in Animals, Edition 2, edited by
W. G. Hoekstra, J. W. Suttie, H. E. Ganther
and W. Mertz, University Park, Baltimore,
MD, p. 275.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,
Public Health Services, Office of Health
Research, Statistics, and Technology, and Na¬
tional Center for Health Statistics, Vital
Statistics of the United States. Volume II —
Mortality, Part A, 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977,
1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, section 1:60-71,
Hyattsville, MD.

U.S. National Academy of Sciences. 1980.
Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA), 9th
Ed., Washington, D.C.

U.S. National Research Council, Committee for
the study of eolian deposits. 1952. Map —
Pleistocene eolian deposits of the United
States, Alaska and parts of Canada. Geol. Soc.
Am., Washington, D.C., p. 337.

WISCONSIN’S ELECTRIC UTILITY INDUSTRY SINCE THE

ENERGY CRISIS

Richard A. Walasek
University of Wisconsin-Parkside

In the ten years following the Arab oil em¬
bargo of 1973-74, much upheaval and
change occurred in the nation’s electric util¬
ity industry. Foremost among the changes
were rapid increases in electric rates, which
induced conservation and a dramatic drop in
the historical annual rise in electricity con¬
sumption. Between 1950 and 1973, electric¬
ity use grew an average of 8.2 percent every
year, but between 1973 and 1982 the annual
growth averaged only 2.3 percent [14]. The
decline in consumption growth combined
with the long lead times required to plan and
construct new generation capacity left many
utilities with overly ambitious and expensive
expansion plans. The many canceled nuclear
power plants in recent years exemplify this
situation. Rapid increases in electric rates
caused much consumer unrest, but rate in¬
creases did not prevent substantial deteriora¬
tion of the financial condition of many elec¬
tric utilities across the United States. Fuel
and construction costs exacerbated by infla¬
tion and high interest rates grew faster than
the revenues generated by the higher electric
rates. The high rates, overly ambitious
plans, poor utility finances, and the need to
conserve energy have induced a variety of ef¬
forts to tighten regulation of utilities, im¬
prove public relations, and use innovative
rate designs like time-of-day rates. The
changes in the electric utility industry since
the “energy crisis” of 1973-74 have been ma¬
jor, but more fundamental change during
the 1980s and 1990s is probable.

National trends and statistics often mask
variations within the nation. The purpose of
this paper is to examine the status of the elec¬
tric utility industry in Wisconsin, and in par¬
ticular, to assess the extent to which national
conditions have affected the state. The

assessment is accomplished by comparing
Wisconsin to the nation and to several neigh¬
boring states which compete with Wisconsin
economically. These states, like Wisconsin,
also obtain a majority of their electricity
from coal. Variables relating to prices, con¬
sumption, and financial health are compared
using two years, 1972 and 1982. (It should be
noted that 1982 was a year of recession
which would be reflected in this data). To
assess patterns within Wisconsin, individual
utility companies are compared, but data
constraints limit this analysis to the major
privately-owned utilities. This is not a major
drawback because the privately-owned util¬
ities serve approximately 83 percent of the
state.

The literature concerning electricity con¬
tains several studies which examine the
status of the electric utility industry. A re¬
cent Department of Energy study finds that
the electric utility industry has not per¬
formed as well financially as other major in¬
dustries [15]. Browne concludes that utilities
have faced a difficult period since 1973, but
problems are likely to continue because of
uncertainty in demand growth and economic
conditions [2]. Lastly, an argument that
utilities are not planning enough generating
capacity to meet long range needs (i.e. 15-20
years hence) because of regulatory con¬
straints is made by Navarro [11]. These
studies along with most of the related
literature share the characteristic of being
national in scope, but with the homogeneity
of the national electric utility industry
diminishing, it is increasingly essential to
focus on smaller areas. This paper focuses
on a smaller area by concentrating on a
single state.

Another aspect of this paper relates to the

42

1985]

Walasek — Wisconsin ’s Electric Utility

43

SMALL PRIVATE COMPANY
MUNICIPAL SYSTEM
RURAL ELECTRIC COOPERATIVE
FOSSIL FUEL POWER PLANT
NUCLEAR POWER PLANT

D

LS

M

NS

NW

LARGE PRIVATE COMPANIES

DAHLBERG LIGHT & POWER
LAKE SUPERIOR DISTRICT POWER
MADISON GAS & ELECTRIC
NORTHERN STATES POWER (WIS.)
NORTHWESTERN WISCONSIN ELECTRIC

Fig. 1 . Wisconsin’s electric utility industry.

44

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

widely held perception that Wisconsin has a
“poor business climate. ” Whether or not
Wisconsin actually has a poor business
climate can not be answered here, but it
would seem that the quality of the utility in¬
dustries in the state needs to be part of
business climate evaluation. Since this
paper’s conclusions about the electric utility
industry are positive, statements regarding
Wisconsin’s business climate should be
upgraded to reflect this fact. Among other
considerations sound electric utilities with
relatively low prices should be a strong fac¬
tor attractive to businesses considering Wis¬
consin as a place to locate.

Electric Utility Industry in Wisconsin

In Wisconsin, the electric utility industry
is composed of 13 privately-owned com¬
panies, 83 systems owned by municipalities,
and 30 rural electric cooperatives [4]. Except
for municipal systems serving towns smaller
than 1,000 population, Figure 1 indicates the
locations of these utilities. Many of the
municipal systems and cooperatives are
found in the service areas of Northern States
Power (Wisconsin) (NS) and Wisconsin
Power and Light (WPL). Wisconsin Electric
Power (WE), which is the state’s largest util¬
ity with over 800,000 customers, dominates
the more populous southeastern portion of
the state. In contrast, the state’s smallest
utility, Footville Water and Electric Com¬
mission, serves only 340 customers.

Another aspect complicating the utility
pattern is a North American Electric
Reliability Council (NERC) boundary which
divides the state between two NERC regions.
NS, Lake Superior District Power (LS), and
Superior Water, Light and Power (S) are
part of the Mid-Continent Area Power Pool,
while the rest of the major utilities in the
state belong to the Mid-American Interpool
Network. These two NERC regions are two
of the nine regions in the United States
which are multi-state groups of utilities hav¬
ing a purpose of enhancing the reliability
and adequacy of electric power supplies [5].

Effects of this division include the lack of
transmission line interconnections between
utilities in the two regions and the absence of
joint ventures that combine utilities from
different NERC regions. Wisconsin’s elec¬
tric utility industry has had many joint ven¬
tures to construct power plants, but none,
for example, have had NS and WPL work¬
ing together.

Besides being divided by a NERC boun¬
dary, several additional characteristics im¬
pact operations of Wisconsin’s utilities.
First, several of the private utilities serve
portions of adjacent states. Northwestern
Wisconsin Electric (NW) serves a small part
of Minnesota and LS, WE, and Wisconsin
Public Service (WPS) each cover parts of
Upper Michigan. WPL has a subsidiary
company, South Beloit Water, Gas and Elec¬
tric, operating in Illinois. Second, three of
the utilities in Wisconsin are separate sub¬
sidiaries of companies based in Minnesota.
Northern States (Minnesota) controls NS
and LS, while Minnesota Power and Light
controls S. These interstate relationships
complicate utility operations, especially in
terms of regulatory differences. Third, the
service areas of WE and WPL are frag¬
mented and most of the major utilities have
tortuous inefficient boundaries. A fourth
characteristic is the multi-product nature of
Wisconsin’s electric utilities; besides elec¬
tricity, many of the utilities provide other
products like natural gas, water, and steam
heat.

As the above information indicates, Wis¬
consin’s electric utility industry is quite com¬
plicated. This complexity occasionally leads
to problems and suggests the desirability of
simplifying the situation. For example, the
cancellation of the NS Tyrone nuclear power
plant created jurisdictional problems which
led to several court battles [12]. The Tyrone
plant, which was planned to provide power
for the entire Northern States system (parts
of Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota,
and South Dakota), was halted by the
Wisconsin Public Service Commission

1985]

Walasek — Wisconsin ’s Electric Utility

45

(WPSC) in 1979 after about $75 million had
been spent. The problems and litigation de¬
veloped over Northern States’ efforts to
recover the $75 million. The public service
commissions in the three non-Wisconsin
states, feeling that the plant and its abandon¬
ment costs were Wisconsin issues, balked at
allowing higher electric rates to pay for any
abandonment costs. Ultimately the courts
ruled that the customers in the non-Wis¬
consin states would have to pay proportional
shares of the $75 million because Tyrone was
going to produce electricity for the entire
Northern States system. The situation would
have been much simpler if only the WPSC
and a unaffiliated Wisconsin utility had been
involved.

The locations of power plants with a
capacity of 100,000 kilowatts or more are
also indicated in Figure 1. The process of
siting power plants involves the analysis of
many factors like rail and water transporta¬
tion possibilities, proximity to population
centers, cooling water supplies, environmen¬
tal impacts, and the existing transmission
network. In Wisconsin, the distribution of
power plants demonstrates the importance
of closeness to population and cooling
water. Almost all the power plants are in or
near cities and areas associated with either
the Mississippi River, Wisconsin River, or
Lake Michigan. Fossil fuels are used by all
the major power plants except for the Ke¬
waunee and Point Beach nuclear stations.
Among the fossil fuels, the overwhelmingly
predominate fuel, representing 65.8 percent
of total generation in 1982, is coal [14].
Comparable percentages for oil and natural
gas are 0.3 and 0.6 percent, respectively. The
remaining generation (33.3 percent) is
nuclear with 27.5 percent of the total, and
water power, where approximately eighty
hydro plants scattered over central and
northern Wisconsin contribute 5.8 percent.

Prices

Although electricity prices are determined
by state regulatory commissions and are

largely based on fuel costs, electricity prices
still reflect utility management and opera¬
tion. Relatively low prices commonly indi¬
cate sound planning including proper timing
of construction projects and use of strategies
to reduce costs. In addition, relatively low
prices are sometimes the result of good for¬
tune related to events beyond the utility’s
control. Conversely, bad planning and ill
fortune contribute to relatively high prices.

While electricity prices throughout the na¬
tion grew rapidly between 1972 and 1982,
Wisconsin’s electricity prices increased
relatively slowly and currently compare
favorably with nearby states (Table 1).
While national averages of residential and
business prices grew 211 and 258 percent
respectively, residential and business prices
in Wisconsin increased by 156 and 166 per¬
cent respectively. The slower growth in
Wisconsin is reflected in changes in national
rankings. Especially noteworthy is the im¬
provement in the business price ranking
from 43 to 21. This improvement in relative
electricity prices between 1972 and 1982
makes Wisconsin business prices much lower
than business prices in Illinois, Michigan,
and Ohio and competitive with the other
nearby states except for Indiana. In the
residential sector, Wisconsin has the lowest
prices of the eight states. These relatively low
electricity prices reduce the costs of living
and doing business in Wisconsin, and even
though electric bills are usually only a small
portion of total expenses for a household or
business, the low prices are beneficial to the
state.

Table 1 also contains information for
several individual companies as well as an
average for the larger municipal systems.
Considerable price variability exists within
the state with the ratio of highest to lowest
price ranging between 1.25 to 1.45 for the
different sectors and years. In extreme in¬
stances, the locations of service area boun¬
daries cause price variability to be much
greater and to occur over short distances.
For example, Kimberly and Little Chute are

46

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

Table 1. Interstate and Intrastate Comparisons of Electricity Prices — 1972 and 1982 (Dollars)

1972

1982

Area

Residential 1

Business 2

Residential

Business

United States

16.55

4269

51.40

15286

Wisconsin

15.84

4408

40.54

11710

Wisconsin’s Rank3

25

43

12

21

Illinois

17.15

4329

48.33

15748

Indiana

15.19

3818

45.03

9990

Iowa

18.38

4235

45.64

11697

Michigan

14.91

5023

40.93

14762

Minnesota

16.40

4275

43.09

10408

Missouri

16.79

4241

41.99

11137

Ohio

15.90

4083

53.54

14937

LS4

16.28

NA

43.91

NA

M

13.32

3301

35.56

13483

NS

14.72

3743

39.22

10034

S

14.95

NA

41.19

NA

WE

16.58

4641

42.41

11419

WPL

13.91

3799

41.19

12699

WPS

17.73

4189

40.56

12662

Municipal5

Average

13.73

NA

34.55

NA

1 Monthly residential bill for 750 kilowatt-hours.

2 Monthly business bill for 200,000 kilowatt-hours and 1,000 kilowatts.

3 1 equals state with lowest price.

4 Refer to Figure 1.

5 Average of larger municipal systems.

Source: Typical Electric Bills. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Energy Information Administration, 1972, 1973, 1982, 1983.

Wisconsin towns of similar size located one
mile apart, but Kimberly is served by WE
and Little Chute by a municipal system.
Thus, in 1982, households in Kimberly paid
$15.62 more than households in Little Chute
for the same monthly 750 kilowatt-hours of
electricity.

Relatively low electricity prices for the
state as a whole and for several of the in¬
dividual utilities are the result of several
interrelated factors which have evolved,
especially since 1972. The more important of
these factors include (1) increased use of less
expensive Western coal, (2) no ongoing
nuclear power construction projects, (3)
slow growth in electricity demand related in
part to slow population and economic
growth but also in part to strong energy

conservation campaigns, (4) widespread ap¬
plication of new rate schedule designs, (5)
judicious regulation by the WPSC, and (6)
consumer advocacy by the recently formed
Citizens Utility Board.

Coal produced by surface mining in Mon¬
tana, Wyoming, and other Western states
usually has a lower delivered price and con¬
tains less sulfur than Eastern coal. These ad¬
vantages have led utilities to use more
Western coal. In 1973 (data are not available
for 1972), utilities in the eight states in Table
1 obtained 10.3 percent of their coal from
the West, but by 1982 this percentage had in¬
creased to 26.9 percent [3]. Wisconsin (5.4
percent in 1973 to 50.2 percent in 1982),
along with Iowa (26.6 percent to 78.4 per¬
cent), exhibited the greatest relative shift to

1985]

Walasek — Wisconsin's Electric Utility

47

Western coal among the eight states. In addi¬
tion to heavy use of Western coal, electricity
prices in Wisconsin are held down by the ex¬
istence of two nuclear stations which were
completed before nuclear power costs sky¬
rocketed. The Point Beach station was com¬
pleted in 1972 at a cost of $172 million and
the Kewaunee station was finished in 1974
for $215 million. Costs of around $200
million are much less than the $1 to $6
billion range of costs for finishing, or in
some cases, canceling current nuclear proj¬
ects. While having Point Beach and Ke¬
waunee lowers generating costs, decisions by
Wisconsin utilities to not carry through with
additional nuclear projects were crucial in
keeping current and future prices relatively
low. Wisconsin’s utilities in the early 1970s,
anticipating continued growth in demand,
did plan to build more nuclear plants and
three projects at Haven, Koshkonong, and
Tyrone went beyond the early planning
stages. These plants were eventually canceled
because state mandated power plant plan¬
ning along with WPSC urging caused the
utilities to realize that demand growth was
going to be much less than anticipated and
that nuclear projects faced many economic
and regulatory uncertainties.

Iowa and Minnesota have a situation like
the one in Wisconsin. These two states each
have at least one operating nuclear station
and no current projects, while all the other
nearby states are facing substantial costs
related to nuclear projects. For example, the
Marble Hill station in Indiana was canceled
in early 1984 after $2.5 billion had been
spent on the project.

The paucity of power plant construction
of all types in Wisconsin helps the utilities
keep electricity prices low. Since low levels
of power plant construction are the result of
projections of continued slow growth in elec¬
tricity demand (peak demand), this means
that slow demand growth contributes to
lower prices. Economic problems and
limited population increases, aspects largely
beyond the utilities’ control, are two reasons

for slow growth in demand, but in addition,
the utilities and the WPSC have made
substantial efforts to reduce demand.
Foremost among these efforts are time-of-
day rates. Time-of-day rates employ higher
prices during peak demand periods and
lower prices during off-peak periods to en¬
courage customers to shift consumption
from peak periods during the day to off-
peak periods during the night. In Wisconsin
approximately 40 percent of the electricity
sold in the state is billed under these rates,
whereas a recent national study found that
only a tiny percentage of customers chooses
to use time-of-day rates [7]. Also, several
Wisconsin utilities have extensive load man¬
agement programs. For example, WE has a
program in which residential customers
receive a monthly credit of $4.50 on their
electric bill in return for letting the utility in¬
stall a remote control device which allows
the utility to turn off the customer’s water
heater when peak demand conditions arise.
This WE program covers approximately 65
percent (93,000) of the customers who pos¬
sess electric water heaters. Overall, Wis¬
consin’s efforts to shift demand away from
peak periods are greater than those of other
states and are large enough to lower the need
for new power plants.

The WPSC and Citizens Utility Board
(CUB) are the final two contributors to
Wisconsin’s relatively low prices. The
WPSC is well regarded nationally and has
already been cited for discouraging overly
ambitious construction plans and for en¬
couraging wide use of time-of-day rates.
More will be said about the WPSC in the sec¬
tion on financial health.

CUB is a consumer group which grew out
of the concern that residential customers
were poorly represented in regulatory pro¬
ceedings. The Wisconsin legislature estab¬
lished CUB in 1979 with a mandate to repre¬
sent consumer interests on utility issues
before the WPSC and the legislature [13].
CUB has a growing statewide membership of
over 100,000 in 1984 and receives no state

48

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

Table 2. Interstate and Intrastate Comparisons of Electricity Consumption — 1972 and 1982 (Kilowatt-hours)

Area

1972

1982

Residential'

Business2

Residential

Business

United States

641

10145

725

10521

Wisconsin

604

7977

657

9738

Wisconsin’s Rank3

24

21

17

24

Illinois

529

11820

589

12940

Indiana

655

11594

808

12934

Iowa

606

6029

731

7746

Michigan

543

11992

533

10473

Minnesota

586

8381

696

10139

Missouri

565

7362

736

8214

Ohio

583

16083

664

13544

LS4

336

3262

476

5120

M

559

5982

508

6614

NS

654

5289

786

6492

S

387

12840

464

17490

WE

582

10140

601

11480

WPL

611

6417

666

7404

WPS

527

9100

589

10813

' Monthly residential consumption per customer.

2 Monthly business consumption per customer.

3 1 equals state with lowest consumption.

4 Refer to Figure 1 .

Source: Statistical Yearbook of the Electric Utility Industry. Washington, D.C.: Edison Electric Institute, 1973, 1983.

funding. CUB’s contributions to lower elec¬
tricity prices are its continual and strong op¬
position to utility requests for rate increases
and its efforts to change utility accounting
and tax procedures to ones that are more
favorable to consumers. CUB claims a num¬
ber of cases where the WPSC reduced the
amount of the rate request because of CUB
intervention, but it is difficult to determine
the accuracy of these claims. Critics of CUB
argue that the group is too antagonistic
toward utilities and does not always have the
best interests of the consumer in mind
because it tends to emphasize short term
goals over long term benefits. Also, Wiscon¬
sin’s CUB is somewhat experimental because
it is a relatively young organization and it
was the first state citizens utility board to be
established in the country (by 1984, Illinois
was the second state to form a CUB). In any
event, CUB has withstood these problems to

become a strong voice supporting lower elec¬
tricity prices.

Consumption

Information concerning consumption of
electricity is presented in Table 2. The
business consumption data encompass com¬
mercial, industrial, governmental, and other
non-residential uses of electricity. Wiscon¬
sin’s relative consumption, in contrast to
relative electricity prices, exhibits less
dramatic change between 1972 and 1982 and
more median positions among the nearby
states. Looking at residential consumption,
Wisconsin grew more slowly than the nation
as a whole with its ranking changing to
seventeenth. Minnesota, Missouri, and Ohio
moved ahead of Wisconsin. Although there
are many interrelated factors which influ¬
ence electricity consumption, Wisconsin’s
relatively low but still higher residential elec-

1985]

Walasek — Wisconsin's Electric Utility

49

tricity prices and demand reduction efforts
as mentioned in the previous section are two
reasons for Wisconsin’s slow consumption
growth. In addition, relative shifts among
the states are influenced by income gains and
by greater increase in use of air conditioners
in the South and West.

Residential consumption within the state
shows all of the utilities except for M in¬
creasing from 1972 to 1982 and much vari¬
ability among the utilities. Colder weather
(which reduces the use of air conditioning),
somewhat higher electricity prices, and
generally lower incomes are reasons for low
residential consumption in areas served by
LS and S. NS has the highest consumption
even though its service area generally has
lower incomes and less air conditioning than
the service areas of M, WE, WPL, and
WPS. The reason for this situation is that
NS has proportionally more customers who
use electricity instead of natural gas or fuel
oil for water heating and home heating.

Examination of interstate variations in
business consumption shows a different situ¬
ation. Wisconsin’s business consumption
grew relatively rapidly, but its national rank
did not change much and its relative position
among the nearby states did not change at
all. The results for Wisconsin and some of
the other states are especially surprising
because the economy was strong in 1972 and
weak in 1982. Part of the explanation is re¬
lated to Wisconsin having a weak 1982 econ¬
omy, but not as weak as several of the major
industrial states. Michigan and Ohio, two
states with worse economic problems than
Wisconsin, continue to have large amounts
of business consumption in spite of reces¬
sion-induced declines in per customer con¬
sumption. These states and others bring
down the 1982 national value relative to the
value for Wisconsin. Another reason for
relatively rapid business consumption
growth in Wisconsin is electricity price. In
the residential sector, Wisconsin’s 1982
prices, relatively low but still much higher
than 1972, lead to conservation. In the

business sector, where price increases can be
passed on to the consumer, the same price
situation does not slow consumption growth
as much.

Discussion of business consumption in
states or in utilities is complicated further by
the effects of a few customers or a single in¬
dustry. For example, S in 1982 has the
largest number in Table 2 because this utility
serves a small number of industrial cus¬
tomers which use very large amounts of elec¬
tricity. Another city may have as much
business activity as Superior, but its con¬
sumption per customer may be much less
because its businesses are not as electricity¬
intensive. Also, if a large customer of S
should happen to move or be hit by a strike,
the figure for S could be much smaller.
These aspects help explain why business con¬
sumption is much more variable than resi¬
dential consumption.

A final point with respect to consumption
is that it is difficult to judge the desirability
of different levels of consumption. Wiscon¬
sin has low to medium levels of consump¬
tion, but one cannot make a strong argu¬
ment either way that these levels are ap¬
propriate.

Financial Health

Given Wisconsin’s combination of
relatively low electricity prices and low to
medium consumption, one might expect the
financial health of the state’s utility industry
to be low, but it is not. In actuality, Wis¬
consin utilities are in excellent financial con¬
dition. Utility revenues are relatively
modest, but operating and capital costs are
relatively low, meaning that Wisconsin util¬
ities possess strong cash flows and do not
have to keep asking for rate increases to try
to catch up with escalating costs. Also, the
strong cash position allows the companies to
use internal financing for capital projects
and to avoid the more expensive credit
markets.

Although measurement of electric utility
financial health is complicated and some-

50

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

times controversial, the items presented in
Tables 3 and 4 collectively provide an ac¬
curate picture of financial status. The results
in Tables 3 and 4 are based on simple aver¬
ages of values for the privately-owned
utilities in a given area. The Moody’s ratings
of bonds and preferred stocks represent the
financial community’s opinion concerning
the quality of a utility’s offerings. Short and
long term risk to the investor is the most
important determinant in the ratings. In
1972, Wisconsin was among the top group of
states, whereas by 1982 many states had suf¬
fered ratings declines leaving Wisconsin tied
with Texas in the bond ratings and alone at
the top in the preferred stock ratings. More
recent information from early 1984 indicates
that WE, WPL, and WPS are the highest
rated electric utilities in the country. It is
ironic that Wisconsin’s superior ratings are

partially the result of not having to borrow
heavily for construction projects, while at
the same time the superior ratings mean that
the utilities could borrow funds more inex¬
pensively.

For the next two measures in Tables 3 and
4, Wisconsin shows mixed results. Both rate
of return on common equity (ROE) and in¬
terest coverage ratio before taxes (IC) are
defined completely in Kanhouwa [9], but
basically these statistics compare a utility’s
net earnings or income to: (1) the total value
of the utility’s common stock shares for
ROE and (2) the utility’s total interest ex¬
pense for IC. Larger values of ROE and IC
imply higher relative earnings and stronger
financial condition. Even though WE in
1972 and 1982 along with WPL in 1982 have
high ROE values, the other utilities bring the
average down to a level below the national

Table 3. Interstate and Intrastate Comparisons of Electric Utility Financial Health — 1972

Area

Bond

Rating'

Preferred

Stock

Rating

Rate of
Return on
Common Equity
(%)

Interest

Coverage Ratio
Before Taxes

Regulatory

Climate

United States

A

NA

12.22

3.08

NA

Wisconsin

AA

NA

10.27

3.32

NA

Wisconsin’s Rank2

1*

NA

40

16

NA

Illinois

AA

NA

13.18

2.97

NA

Indiana

AA

NA

15.00

3.60

NA

Iowa

AA

NA

12.32

3.74

NA

Michigan

A

NA

11.20

2.78

NA

Minnesota

A

NA

13.08

3.40

NA

Missouri

A

NA

10.61

2.65

NA

Ohio

AA

NA

14.06

3.05

NA

LS3

A

NA

11.20

3.91

NA

M

AA

NA

8.40

2.03

NA

NS

AA

NA

9.40

4.41

NA

S

NA

NA

9.50

3.77

NA

WE

AA

NA

11.90

3.94

NA

WPL

AA

NA

10.10

2.58

NA

WPS

A

NA

11.40

2.62

NA

' Ratings from high to low: AAA, AA, A, BAA, BA.

2 For all variables, 1 equals highest rank.

3 Refer to Figure 1.

* Wisconsin tied for first with 14 other states.

Sources: Moody’s Public Utility Manual. 1973. Statistics of Privately Owned Electric Utilities in the United States
1972. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Federal Power Commission, 1973.

1985]

Walasek — Wisconsin's Electric Utility

51

average. This is true for both 1972 and 1982.
Wisconsin’s ROE is low, but this does not
mean that earnings are too low, since the low
ROE results from having relatively large
amounts of common equity and from the
WPSC feeling that utility costs and finances
warrant the granting of overall rates of
return that are below the national average.
Although ROE is low, earnings are more
than sufficient to provide an ample margin
of safety in covering interest expenses.
Careful management of debt has allowed
Wisconsin to move from sixteenth nationally
to second in 1982 (Colorado was first).

Taken as a whole, the four measures dis¬

cussed here demonstrate improved financial
health for an already solid group of utilities.
Wisconsin’s electric utility industry was
strong financially in 1972, but is even
stronger in the 1980s. This is especially
noteworthy because during the same period
many states and utilities experienced in¬
creased financial problems. Among the near¬
by states, Illinois, Iowa, and Minnesota are
above average and far better off than
Michigan and Missouri, but do not rank as
high as Wisconsin.

Part of the credit for the excellent finan¬
cial health of Wisconsin’s utilities belongs to
the WPSC. The final item in Tables 3 and 4,

Table 4. Interstate and Intrastate Comparisons of Electric Utility Financial Health — 1982

Area

Bond
Rating 1

Preferred
Stock
Rating 1

Rate of
Return on
Common Equity
(%)

Interest

Coverage Ratio
Before Taxes

Regulatory 2
Climate

United States

A2

A3

14.03

2.60

C

Wisconsin

AA2

AA1

13.44

3.73

B

Wisconsin’s Rank3

1 *

1

26

2

5**

Illinois

AA3

AA2

14.48

2.83

C +

Indiana

A2

A3

13.00

2.46

A

Iowa

AA3

A2

18.30

2.82

C-

Michigan

BAA3

BA1

9.66

1.85

C-

Minnesota

Al

AA3

14.18

2.86

C

Missouri

BAA1

BAA2

13.33

2.54

E

Ohio

A3

BAA1

13.16

2.15

B-

LS4

A3

NA

12.90

5.27

NA

M

AA2

NA

11.30

3.69

NA

NS

AA2

NA

9.80

2.93

NA

S

NA

NA

14.80

2.55

NA

WE

AA1

AA1

15.90

4.22

NA

WPL

AA1

AA1

15.80

3.88

NA

WPS

AA1

AA1

13.60

3.55

NA

1 Ratings from high to low: AAAI, AAA2, AAA3, AA1, AA2, AA3, Al, A2, A3, BAA1, BAA2, BAA3, BA1,
BA2, BA3.

2 Climate rating: A (highest) to E (lowest).

3 For all variables, 1 equals highest rank.

4 Refer to Figure 1.

* Wisconsin tied for first with one other state.

** Wisconsin tied for fifth with one other state.

Sources: Luftig, Mark D. and Scott Sartorius. Salomon Brothers Electric Utility Regulation — Semiannual Review.
February 1983, August 1983.

Moody ’s Public Utility Manual. 1983.

Financial Statistics of Selected Electric Utilities 1982. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Energy Information
Administration, 1984.

52

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

labeled regulatory climate, is an assessment
of how favorable the public service commis¬
sion rulings are to the utilities and their
stockholders. The WPSC, considered to be
fairly favorable to the electric utilities, has at
the same time closely monitored capital ex¬
penses (power plants), encouraged good util¬
ity management, and used sophisticated ap¬
proaches to resolving utility issues [8]. The
results of this regulatory environment pro¬
vide Wisconsin with solid utilities that are
able to sell electricity at below average
prices. Among the other nearby states, there
is surprisingly little correspondence between
regulatory climate and electricity price
levels. Missouri’s public service commission
does not grant large rate increases and is very
unfavorable to utilities, but Missouri’s elec¬
tricity prices are similar to those in Wiscon¬
sin and Missouri’s utilities have much poorer
financial health. One explanation for this
situation is that more favorable regulation
allows the utilities borrow at lower interest
rates and to be more flexible in controlling
costs.

Another issue related to financial health is
utility diversification. Utilities throughout
the country, wanting to grow and expand in
spite of slow growth in electricity demand,
are increasingly interested in becoming in¬
volved in other businesses besides selling
electricity. Some minor diversifying has oc¬
curred in Wisconsin, but the principal issue
in the state revolves around legislation to
allow the state’s utilities to organize utility
holding companies [1]. Utility holding com¬
panies, which would permit utility and non¬
utility activities to be kept separate, are
desired by the utilities so that WPSC regula¬
tion would not cover the non-utility activ¬
ities. The utilities argue that non-utility
enterprises need to be free from regulation in
order to be competitive. The utilities also
emphasize strongly the possibility of creating
new jobs when the non-utility businesses are
established. Opponents of utility holding
companies (like CUB) object to the increased
potential for deterioration in the cost and

quality of utility service and to the possibility
of unfair competition adversely affecting
small business. There have been instances in
other parts of the nation, where utility hold¬
ing companies have shed lackluster utility
subsidiaries leaving the utility subsidiaries
with financial problems. Also, occasionally
the better managers migrate to the “more
glamorous” non-utility businesses, and
thereby, worsen utility management. These
drawbacks reduce the attractiveness of util¬
ity holding companies so that it is difficult to
decide whether they should be allowed in
Wisconsin.

The Wisconsin legislature has not reached
a final decision about utility holding com¬
panies. In 1983, the bill authorizing holding
companies was tabled in the Senate by a
close vote. During 1984, the bill has not been
reintroduced primarily because the bill’s
complex language is being rewritten to try to
satisfy some of the bill’s opponents. Utility
diversification in Wisconsin, at least in terms
of holding companies, is presently at a
standstill.

Conclusion

This paper examines the status of Wiscon¬
sin’s electric utility industry by focusing on
the state’s major privately-owned electric
utilities. The examination finds the utility in¬
dustry to be spatially and jurisdictionally
complex. Per customer consumption of elec¬
tricity in the state is relatively modest. In ad¬
dition, the industry along with the WPSC is
able to combine relatively low electricity
prices and financial strength. Wisconsin’s
situation is significant in terms of emphasiz¬
ing time-of-day rates, developing the first
citizens utility board, and showing the im¬
pact of having no expensive new nuclear
projects under construction. Wisconsin’s
electric utilities represent a high quality por¬
tion of the state’s infrastructure which
should help to attract new businesses to the
state. Efforts to promote economic growth
in Wisconsin need to stress the character of
its electric utility industry.

1985]

Walasek — Wisconsin's Electric Utility

53

The future of Wisconsin’s electric utility
industry shows two possible causes of con¬
cern, but on the whole the future seems
bright. One concern is the potential for util¬
ity diversification to be allowed without suf¬
ficient safeguards for utility customers. A
second concern relates to acid rain [10]. Acid
rain, caused in part by sulfur oxides emitted
from coal power plants, is a major environ¬
mental issue. There is a strong likelihood
that stricter air pollution regulations will be
enacted, which would substantially increase
pollution control costs for utilities and their
customers. Wisconsin’s utilities, using much
coal, would be adversely affected by acid
rain regulations, but at least much of the
coal being used is low sulfur Western coal.

On the positive side for the future, Wis¬
consin’s utilities expect to be able to avoid
construction of new power plants until the
middle 1990s and to maintain relatively low
electricity prices. Evidence of the last point
occurred in early 1984 when the WPSC
lowered rates for WE. Another possible
development which could lower costs is the
importation of electricity from Canada [6].
Manitoba, in particular, has hydro power
potential which could be developed for Mid¬
western markets including Wisconsin. These
positive factors combined with continued
careful management and regulation should
outweigh any future concerns, thereby main¬
taining the state’s strong electric utility
industry.

Literature Cited

1. Binstock, Sherwynn L. “Utility Diversifica¬
tion.” Wisconsin Business Journal. Vol. 2,
No. 12, 1983, pp. 9-17.

2. Browne, Lynn E. “Electric Utilities’
Finances since the Energy Crisis.” New
England Economic Review. March/April
1983, pp. 28-44.

3 . Cost and Quality of Fuels for Electric Utility
Plants. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Energy In¬
formation Administration, 1975, 1983.

4. Electrical World Directory of Electric
Utilities. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1983.

5. Electric Power Annual. Washington, D.C.:
U.S. Energy Information Administration,
1983.

6. “Fuels Outlook.” Electrical World. Vol.
197, No. 3, March 1983, p. 100.

7. “Given a Choice, Few Customers Choose T-
o-d Rates.” Electrical World. Vol. 196, No.
9, September 1982, p. 126.

8. Hyman, Leonard S. and Rosemary Avellis.
Utility Industry Quarterly Regulatory
Report. New York: Merrill Lynch, Pierce,
Fenner & Smith, March 1984.

9. Kanhouwa, Suraj P. Historical Financial
Analysis of the Investor-Owned Electric
Utility Industry. Washington, D.C.: U.S.
Energy Information Administration, 1984.

10. Magnet, Myron. “How Acid Rain Might
Dampen the Utilities.” Fortune. Vol. 108,
No. 3, 1983, pp. 58-64.

11. Navarro, Peter. “Our Stake in the Electric
Utility’s Dilemma.” Harvard Business
Review. Vol. 60, No. 3, 1982, pp. 87-97.

12. “News Beat.” Electrical World. Vol. 193,
No. 10 and Vol. 198, No. 3, May 1980 and
March 1984, pp. 15-16 and p. 16.

13. State of Wisconsin. Statutes, c. 199, 1979.

14. Statistical Yearbook of the Electric Utility
Industry. Washington, D.C.: Edison Electric
Institute, 1973, 1983.

15. U.S. Department of Energy. A Comparison
of the Electric Utility Industry with Other
Major Business Sectors. Washington, D.C.:
Booz- Allen & Hamilton, 1982.

THE SOUTHERN SOCIAL ART OF ROBERT GWATHMEY

Charles K. Piehl
Mankato State University
Mankato, Minnesota

“All serious creative work must be at bot¬
tom autobiographical,” wrote the Southern-
born novelist Thomas Wolfe in 1936.* “A
man must use the material and experience of
his own life if he is to create anything that
has substantial value.” Wolfe wrote these
words in the middle of what has become
known as the Southern Renaissance, a
cultural movement that produced William
Faulkner, Robert Penn Warren, Eudora Wel-
ty, Erskine Caldwell, and many other skilled
and influential authors. Not only the quality
of their writing but also the subject matter
dealt with by Southern writers of this era has
intrigued literary critics throughout the
world. Southern writers struggled with the
heritage of slavery, intense racial interac¬
tion, brutal poverty, and the Lost Cause of
the Confederacy. The “sense of place” and
the mixing of individual identity with social
and geographic surroundings, have fascin¬
ated both Southerners and non-Southerners,
with the former group developing an intense
self-consciousness over the years. Thomas
Wolfe’s comments about the importance of
autobiographical expression in literary work
could have come just as readily from the pen
or typewriter of many other Southern writers
of this era. 1

Recent work by literary and cultural
historians has shed considerable light on
writers during the Southern cultural awaken¬
ing, but surprisingly little attention has been
given to artists of the same period. The dis-

*Previous versions of this paper were presented at the
11th Biennial History Conference on New Approaches
to Social and Cultural History at Kutztown, Pa., on
March 26, 1979, at the 85th Annual Meeting of the
Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters at Ann
Arbor, Mi., on March 20, 1981, and at the 5th Annual
Meeting of the American Culture Association in Wich¬
ita, Ks., on April 26, 1983.

cussion of Southern art in The Encyclopedia
of Southern History virtually ignores
Southern painting in the middle third of the
twentieth century. Even George B. Tindall’s
massive survey, The Emergence of the New
South, 1913-1945, fails to discuss the visual
arts even though he devotes two full chapters
to literature. The cultural historian Henry
Nash Smith recently questioned whether the
term “Southern Renaissance” could ac¬
curately be used because “the record shows
no outstanding Southern achievement in the
graphic arts . . . during this period ...” His
conclusion reflects the current consensus on
Southern art in the mid-twentieth century.2

“An artist is motivated by the fact that he
sees something worthy of recording,”
Robert Gwathmey once observed. “How¬
ever, in the final analysis, if it is not to a
great extent autobiographical ... it will lack
conviction.” The similarity between Gwath-
mey’s observations and those of Thomas
Wolfe is more than coincidental, for the two
shared sentiments about the creative process.
They differed because Gwathmey expressed
his ideas most often with paint on canvas
rather than with typewriter or pen. In doing
so, Gwathmey exemplified the visual expres¬
sion of Southern culture in the middle years
of the twentieth century.3

As Gwathmey himself suggested, the keys
to his art are his personal experiences as a
white Southerner who encountered the stark
contrasts of race and caste that characterized
society in his region. The influence that this
social context had on his art developed slow¬
ly and did not manifest itself until well into
Gwathmey’s adult years. He was born in
Richmond, Virginia, in 1903, into a re¬
spected white family that traced its roots
eight generations back into Virginia history.

54

1985]

Piehl — Robert Gwathmey

55

Although his home environment was com¬
fortable during his early years, it was not af¬
fluent. His father, a railroad engineer, died
in a train accident before Gwathmey was
born and left only a small death benefit from
the railroad. He was raised in an environ¬
ment dominated by a mother and sisters who
contributed to the maintenance of the family
welfare and ultimately to Gwathmey’ s pur¬
suit of a career as an artist. Despite their lack
of wealth, the family maintained a veneer of
gentility in what Gwathmey called a “middle
class neighborhood.” He found time to en¬
joy sports, reading, and fishing with friends
and relatives.4

In this period of the early twentieth cen¬
tury, racial segregation was hardening in the
South, and Gwathmey developed an aware¬
ness of class and racial distinctions that he
later depicted in his art. “As a youth I was
conscious of harsh inequalities in my com¬
munity,” he recalled of his high school years
in Richmond, during which he worked in a
lumberyard, a florist shop and a department
store. The structure of Southern society in¬
trigued but also disturbed him. He remem¬
bered hearing Norman Thomas speak when
the Socialist leader stopped in Richmond
during summer speaking tours. But Gwath¬
mey’ s interest in social protest proved little
more than curiosity during these years. 5

The 1920s were a critical period for
Gwathmey as he developed an interest in art
and in the wider world outside the South.
After graduating from high school he spent
two years as a railway clerk. In 1924 he
decided to enroll in a business course at
North Carolina State in Raleigh, but after
only a year he left and obtained a summer
job on an American freighter that took him
far from home for the first time. When his
ship stopped at major European ports,
Gwathmey occasionally took time to visit art
galleries and museums. On board ship, he
used his free hours to sketch fellow crew
members at work. Clearly, this was an influ¬
ential time in the development as an artist,
for when the twenty-two year old returned to

the United States he abandoned plans for a
career in business and enrolled in the art pro¬
gram at the Maryland Institute in Balti¬
more.6

Whereas his visit to Europe had opened
his eyes to a world of culture not widely
available in the South, his experience in
Baltimore provided him a different vantage
point on society in his native region. He later
described his arrival in the Maryland city:
“When I went to Baltimore to study art, the
first thing I saw was Negro policemen and
statues of Yankee generals. It was my first
trip North, the farthest North I’d ever been,
and I was 22 years old.” Returning to Rich¬
mond from Baltimore allowed him to look
anew at his region. “When I got back
home,” he observed, “I was shocked by the
poverty. The most shocking thing was the
Negroes, the oppressed segment. If I had
never gone back home, perhaps I would
never have painted the Negro.”7

Appropriately for an artist, he remem¬
bered his new perspective on Southern soci¬
ety in very visual terms: “I was shocked at
the red clay. The green pine trees and red
clay were everywhere. The Negro seemed to
be everywhere, too. . . . But he was a thing
apart, so segregated.” While this new
awareness of the racial and caste system of
the South did not influence Gwathmey’ s art
for at least another decade, it started him
thinking about ways of portraying blacks
that would avoid quaintness of the kind
sometimes found in the works of the nine¬
teenth-century painters Eastman Johnson
and Winslow Homer. “The Negro never
seems picturesque to me,” he later
observed.8

In 1926, after a year in Baltimore,
Gwathmey went to Philadelphia to study at
the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts,
one of the most prestigious art schools in the
nation. Part-time jobs he held while studying
there, including one teaching art at a settle¬
ment house in an immigrant neighborhood,
gave him a chance to work closely with peo¬
ple from cultural backgrounds different

56

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

from his own. Summer fellowships in 1929
and 1930 allowed him to travel and to study
art in Europe, where he also deepened his
appreciation of issues of social class, espe¬
cially as the effects of the Great Depression
were being felt.9

Gwathmey’s artistic stance at this time
reflected the formal training he had received
under Franklin Watkins, Daniel Garber, and
George Harding at the Pennsylvania
Academy. He had not yet settled on the sub¬
ject matter nor on the distinctive style that he
developed in his mature paintings. He re¬
membered the Thirties as a time of economic
problems and as a period when he worked to
define his own art. “It takes about ten years
to wash yourself of academic dogma,’’ he
later explained. In 1938 he made an artistic
break with his past and destroyed virtually
all of his previous work, leaving only those
pieces consistent with the themes and tech¬
niques he was adopting as his own. One of
his earliest surviving works, The Hitchhiker,
reflects both his new interest in timely social
subject matter of the Depression era but also
some of the latent artistic influences of
Watkins.10

From the late Thirties onward Gwath¬
mey’s art drew heavily on his life experience,
focusing to a great degree on Southern sub¬
jects, particularly those revealing the lives of
common people and their relationships to
others in society. His frequent portrayal of
blacks as a group and as individuals has
sometimes caused him to be categorized in¬
correctly as a single-minded painter of racial
scenes. In reality, Gwathmey’s paintings
were explorations of the nature of Southern
life and community which often expressed
his belief in the dignity of people so often
taken for granted. His artistic expressions of
the simple beauty of everyday life and labor
of blacks and whites were sometimes made
more effective by the use of juxtaposition
and satire of the dominant class of the
region.11

During the Thirties Gwathmey taught art
at Beaver College near Philadelphia. While

teaching did not pay very well and ended in a
messy dispute with the college’s administra¬
tion, the position gave him more security
and income than many artists had during the
Depression and it required him to be in the
classroom only two days each week. This
schedule allowed him time to travel to New
York City, where he absorbed the ideas of
and became increasingly active in left wing
artistic and political worlds. Although
Gwathmey did not depend on government
arts projects for his livelihood, he became
friends with many artists who were desperate
and depended on federal art programs in
order to survive. He often traveled to Wash¬
ington and New York on behalf of govern¬
ment support for cultural projects and
became an active member of the Artists’
Union movement in Philadelphia. These ac¬
tivities heightened his commitment to social
change, particularly in race relations. In the
Philadelphia Artists’ Union “for the first
time I met Negroes on an equal plane,’’ he
remembered.12

Despite the attraction of northern cities
such as Philadelphia, Pittsburgh and New
York, where Gwathmey eventually held
teaching positions, he continued to be pulled
back to and influenced by the South. During
the Thirties, he made periodic trips back
home to Virginia that caused him to main¬
tain an interest in Southern social conditions
that otherwise he might have lost. In 1935 he
married Rosalie Hook, an art student from
Charlotte, North Carolina, where he re¬
treated after being fired from Beaver Col¬
lege. A Rosenwald Foundation fellowship in
1944 allowed him to spend a year living and
working on a North Carolina tobacco farm,
where he worked with three different share¬
croppers three days a week. Although his
schedule was clearly not as backbreaking as
that of the men and women with whom he
worked, his experience served as a symbolic
link between his life as an artist and the
world of the South from which he had
emerged.13

Even though he lived in the North for

1985]

Piehl — Robert Gwathmey

57

most of the rest of his life, he regularly
visited the South until his later years to make
working drawings or to put final details on
canvases. Each trip renewed his interest in
Southern social conditions as a focus for his
art. In fact, a year spent in Paris during the
late Forties proved artistically unproductive
because he found it impossible to be moti¬
vated as he was when he experienced the
Southern environment. “You go home,” he
later recalled. “You see things you had
almost forgotten. It’s always shocking.”
Most disturbing were what he called “the
acute blind spots” of his “boyhood friends
and associates.”14

While Gwathmey’s style evolved over the
years, a remarkable consistency ran through
his art for over forty years. Angular,
elongated human figures are often found in
his paintings; flat planes of color give many
of his works from the Fifties onward a feel¬
ing of cubism. The major significance of
Gwathmey’s painting lies in his use of this
style to treat social subjects, including the
racial and caste system of the South. “When
people ask me why I paint the Negro,” he
observed in 1946, “I ask ‘Don’t artists have
eyes?’” His answer reveals not just a
preference for art as social criticism but also
a belief that an artist ought to devote himself
to recording everyday reality as he sees it.
Although his wife was an accomplished
photographer, Gwathmey himself believed
painting could more effectively convey real¬
ity and used photographs only to stimulate
ideas he would later develop on canvas. For
him, rural blacks were a part of Southern life
as he had known it during his formative
years. Paul Robeson speculated that
“Gwathmey’s identification with the South,
brought him close to the culture of Africa
and its classic sculpture. ... He succeeded in
adopting the elements of African sculpture
and adding his own broader conception of
social art.” Indeed, many of Gwathmey’s
figures resemble African sculpture, with its
accentuated height and angularity. The
Observer (fig. 1), done in 1960 and one of his

most famous works, could just as well be a
scene from Africa as from the American
South. The influence of black art is ap¬
parent. Gwathmey’s strength as a painter
comes not from photographic realism but
from his being a critical observer of life in
the rural South and a skillful portrayer of
the emotional impact of the images he saw in
society around him. 15

His paintings include two major subject
categories. In one group he used satire and
caricature as a technique of social criticism.
The painting called Poll Tax Country (fig. 2)
depicts a white Southern orator haranguing
from a bandstand. Below him, blacks ignore
his speech and go about their work of hoe¬
ing. On the platform, lending unspoken sup¬
port to the racist talk, are five figures: one
black — an educator in academic garb — and
four whites— a society woman, a clergyman,
a hooded clansman, and a man who may be
a sheriff or a representative of the poor class
of whites who are asked to stand by the up¬
per class racists. On the roof of the speaker’s
platform is a black crow, a frequent symbol
in Gwathmey’s art that may depict the per¬
vasiveness and inevitable decay of the segre¬
gation system that Southerners called Jim
Crow.

Another painting where Gwathmey uses
satire and caricature focuses on a single
white man. Titled The Standard Bearer (fig.
3), this work strikes even more clearly at
what Gwathmey saw as the hypocrisy of the
Southern political system. The rotund politi¬
cian holds aloft symbols of justice and
equality while at his feet lies a lynching rope,
the instrument of the suppression of blacks.
At the top of the standard rests the black
crow of segregation. Other paintings contain
striking uses of satire and caricature. In
Hoeing , done in 1943, Gwathmey contrasts
languid whites on one side of the painting
with a young and powerful black laborer
who dominates the center of the work.

The second category of Gwathmey’s
works may be called social documentaries.
They occasionally contain an element of

58

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

Figure 1 The Observer, oil on canvas, 1960, 48-1/8"
x 34" National Museum of American Art,
Smithsonian Institution, Gift of S. C. John¬
son and Son, Inc.

Figure 2 Poll Tax Country, oil on canvas, n.d., 41 " x
28" Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture
Garden, Smithsonian Institution.

Figure 3 Standard Bearer, oil on canvas, 1946, 33 3A"
x 24" Museu de Arte Contemporanea da
Universidade de Sao Paulo. Photograph by
Gerson Zanini.

Figure 4 Sun-Up, oil on canvas, c. 1955, 16" x 11"
Philadelphia Museum of Art, Louis E. Stern
Collection.

1985]

Piehl— Robert Gwathmey

59

Figure 5 Playing, oil on canvas, n.d., 15" X 10" Figure 7 Self Portrait, lithograph, n.d., 2614" x
Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, 23/2", Flint Institute of Arts, Gift of Jack B.

Smithsonian Institution. Pierson in memory of Robert Martin Purcell.

Figure 6 The Countryside, post office mural at Eutaw, Alabama, 1941, 13 '4" x 4'8", General Services Administra¬
tion, Public Building Service.

social protest with graphic depiction of the
starkness of the lives of Southern blacks. But
more often his documentaries focus on the
gentle theme of the dignity of Southern
laborers and their families as they go about
their daily tasks. Among his favorite sub¬
jects were men and women at work as indi¬
viduals or in groups as in Sun-Up (fig. 4).

The details of his paintings of tobacco and
cotton field workers demonstrate a familiar¬
ity with the subject matter so that overalls,
hoes, buckets, and even weeds in the fields
are authentic. He described one painting as
“part of a scene I know intimately.”16 His
beautiful painting of Queen Anne's Lace ,
which contains no human figures, revealed

60

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

his concern with carefully documenting the
details of nature.

Gwathmey portrayed more than just the
work experience. Among his best paintings
are those that reveal other facets of Southern
life. Family Portrait offers a strong state¬
ment about the strength of the black family.
Music has frequently appeared as a subject
of Gwathmey’s paintings, as in Playing (fig.
5). Some of his most powerful images result
from the juxtaposition of a single black
figure with an arrangement of flowers. Por¬
trait of a Farmer's Wife and Field Flowers
speak elegantly of the value of natural
beauty in the life of the common laborer.

During the late 1930s Gwathmey began to
advance in the American art world. In 1938
he became an instructor at the Carnegie In¬
stitute of Technology in Pittsburgh and won
a competition to hold a one-man exhibition
at the American Contemporary Art Gallery
in New York City. In 1939 he received a
commission from the federal Section of Fine
Arts to paint a mural in the post office at
Eutaw, Alabama, in the heart of the black
belt. Rejecting suggestions of the local
postmaster that he depict scenes of the Con¬
federacy and the greatness of Eutaw, Gwath¬
mey toured surrounding Greene County and
did a mural called The Countryside (fig. 6),
which reflect the social reality of the region.
It contained three white men, two black
men, and focused on the rural laborers of
the area.17

Gwathmey received his greatest acclaim
during the Forties. Galleries and individuals
acquired his works as soon as he painted
them, and he exhibited at shows that high¬
lighted the best of contemporary American
painting, including one organized during
World War II by Artists for Victory. In 1942
he moved to a position at the Cooper Union
in New York City, where he remained on the
faculty until 1968. He called it “the best
place in the world to teach — just as New
York is the best place in the world for a
painter to live.” By 1950, when Gwathmey
was invited to teach for a summer at the ex¬
perimental Black Mountain College in North

Carolina, he was clearly one of the most in¬
fluential American artists. Although he con¬
tinued to exhibit and to win prizes, the in¬
creasing domination of Abstract Expression¬
ism during the Fifties pushed Gwathmey’s
painting out of the mainstream of American
art.18

Gwathmey’s art continued to develop into
the 1980s, when a return of critical interest in
realism brought him new attention. Al¬
though he still exhibited the dual tendencies
of social criticism and social documentation,
he also occasionally recorded images of the
mainstream of American life. Gwathmey did
a sequence of paintings on the 1957 World
Series in Milwaukee for Sports Illustrated,
which said the artist “was impressed . . . that
much of the crowd [at the games] was com¬
prised of family units, often including
grandparents and grandchildren.” The
sports magazine also described him as hav¬
ing “a positive attitude toward life.” None¬
theless, he reflected bitterly in the 1974 social
surrealistic painting Late Twentieth Century
on real and potential violence in contem¬
porary life.19

Even though Gwathmey’s paintings still
recalled his Southern origins, his life became
more remote from them. He eventually
became a moderately wealthy member of the
New York artistic community. “It’s fearful
to think that today’s times are so affluent for
me,” he told interviewer Studs Terkel in the
late Sixties. “I live real well, real well.” To¬
day he resides and works at a home and
studio in Amagansett, Long Island, designed
by his son, the post-modernist architect
Charles Gwathmey. Since retiring in 1968
from his position at Cooper Union, where he
was an extremely influential and popular in¬
structor, he has been a visiting professor at
several universities and received many
awards in art and design. He remains active
in New York artists’ and writers’ groups and
continues to devote himself to social and
political protest; although he recently has
been slowed by Parkinson’s disease.
Throughout his life, Gwathmey was at¬
tracted to the social function of art and the

1985]

Piehl— Robert Gwathmey

61

artist. His own activities during the Cold
War and Vietnam eras demonstrated a will¬
ingness to defend unpopular causes. In the
middle of the Abstract Expressionist vogue
of the Fifties, he deplored what he believed
was the meaninglessness of much abstract
art. He preferred to portray living things in
his art.20

Until very recently when Southerners
talked about art in their region they most
often meant literary art. This dominance of
literature has convinced some of today’s
Southern visual artists that they have no
forebears. “We are the first generation of
Southern artists,” one of them proudly
declared. The Southern cultural Renaissance
of the mid-twentieth century focused in¬
tensely on the decadence and hypocrisy that
pervaded Southern society, but it also em¬
phasized the power of the history that
Southerners shared. Robert Gwathmey re¬
vealed that Southern social history could
create remarkable visual as well as literary
images. His use of paint and canvas to depict
the Southern racial and social system now
deserves some of the attention that has been
given to Southern writers.21

Only once did Gwathmey do a self-por¬
trait (fig. 7). It was a lithograph done for the
opening of the gallery of his friend and
dealer Terry Dintenfass. Gwathmey, the art¬
ist, is seated on the floor with brush or pen in
hand. A partially complete canvas rests on
its side in front of him. In the room with him
is a Southern fieldworker similar to those
who appeared frequently in his works. On
the studio wall, along with other mysterious
and intriguing symbols, he placed the figure
of a crow of the kind that rested above the
heads of white Southerners in some of his
paintings. It is deformed but still recogniz¬
able, perhaps an acknowledgement that he,
too, carried the heritage of his race and
region.

Notes

1 Thomas Wolfe, The Story of a Novel (New York,
1936), p. 21.

2 David C. Roller and Robert W. Twyman, eds., The

Encyclopedia of Southern History (Baton Rouge, La.,
1979), pp. 80-81; George B. Tindall, The Emergence of
the New South, 1913-1945 (Baton Rouge, La., 1967),
pp. 285-317; among the recent studies are Morton
Sosna, In Search of the Silent South: Southern Liberals
and the Race Issue (New York, 1977); Michael O’Brien,
The Idea of the American South, 1920-1941 (Baltimore,
1979); Richard H. King, A Southern Renaissance; The
Cultural Awakening of the American South, 1930-1955
(New York, 1980); Daniel Joseph Singal, The War
Within: From Victorian to Modernist Thought in the
South, 1919-1945 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1982); Fred Hob¬
son, Tell About the South; The Southern Rage to Ex¬
plain (Baton Rouge, La., 1983); Henry Nash Smith,
“Fathers and Sons Southern-Style,” New York Times
Book Review (June 1, 1980), p. 12; also C. Vann Wood¬
ward, “Why the Southern Renaissance?” Virginia
Quarterly Review, 51 (1975), 222-239.

3 Gwathmey quoted in Roland F. Pease, Jr.,
“Gwathmey,” in Art USA Now, ed. Lee Nordness, vol.
1 (New York, 1963), unpag. insert between pp. 122-123.

4 Elizabeth McCausland, “Robert Gwathmey,”
Magazine of Art (April 1946), p. 149; Harry Salpeter,
“Gwathmey ’s Editorial Art,” Esquire (June 1944), p.
83.

5 McCausland, “Robert Gwathmey,” pp. 149-150;
Pease, “Gwathmey,” unpag.; Paul Robeson, Introduc¬
tion to Robert Gwathmey, ACA Gallery exhibition
catalog (New York, 1946), unpag.

6 Current biography: Who's News and Why, 1943,
ed. Maxine Block (New York, 1944), p. 261; Salpeter,
“Gwathmey ’s Editorial Art,” p. 83.

7 Gwathmey quoted in McCausland, “Robert
Gwathmey,” p. 149.

8 Gwathmey quoted in Ibid., p. 149-150.

9 Ibid; Current Biography, 1943, p. 261.

10 Gwathmey quoted in Current Biography, 1943, p.
262; Salpeter, “Gwathmey ’s Editorial Art,” p. 131.

" Daniel Grant, “Compassion Colored By a
Lifetime,” Newsday Part II (July 22, 1984), p. 4.

12 Studs Terkel, Hard Times: An Oral History of the
Great Depression (New York, 1970), p. 373; Gwathmey
quoted in McCausland, “Robert Gwathmey,” p. 149.

13 Grant, “Compassion Colored By a Lifetime,” p. 5;
McCausland, “Robert Gwathmey,” p. 150; Terkel,
Hard Times, p. 374; Pease, “Gwathmey,” unpag.

14 Barbara Delatiner, ‘“He Paints What Is in His
Heart,’” New York Times (July 22, 1984), Long Island
Section, p. 13; Gwathmey quoted in McCausland,
“Robert Gwathmey,” p. 150.

15 Delatiner, “‘He Paints What Is in His Heart,’” p.
13; Robeson, Introduction to Robert Gwathmey, un¬
pag.; McCausland, “Robert Gwathmey,” p. 147.

16 Gwathmey quoted in College of Fine and Applied
Arts, University of Illinois Exhibition of Contemporary
American Painting (Urbana, Ill., 1951), p. 184. The
painting was The Cotton Picker.

17 Current Biography, 1943, p. 262.

62

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

18 Quoted in Ibid.; Gwathmey turned down the invi¬
tation to Black Mountain because of prior commit¬
ments. Martin Duberman, Black Mountain: An Experi¬
ment in Community (Garden City, N.Y., 1973), p. 347.

19 “Fervor in Milwaukee,” Sports Illustrated (April
14, 1958), pp. 102-106.

20 Terkel, Hard Times, p. 375; John Hejduk, “Arma¬
dillos,” John Hejduk: 7 Houses, ed. Kenneth Frampton
(New York, 1980), p. 4; Grant, “Compassion Colored
By a Lifetime,” p. 5; Elaine Benson, “Robert

Gwathmey, Artist, Gentleman, Political Activist, A
Hamptons Favorite, The Hamptons (August 1984), p.
13; Robert Gwathmey, “Art for Art’s Sake?” Paper
delivered at the International Design Conference in
Aspen on Design and Human Problems, 1958.

21 For example, Donald Davidson, “A Mirror for
Artists, “77/ Take My Stand: The South and the
Agrarian Tradition (New York, 1930), pp. 28-60; Bill
Dunlap quoted in Mary Lynn Kotz, “The Southern
Muse, ” ArtNews (February 1983), p. 78.

PIONEERING WITH PLANS AND PLANTS: H.W.S. CLEVELAND
BRINGS LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE TO WISCONSIN

William H. Tishler and Virginia Luckhardt
Department of Landscape Architecture
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Horace William Shaler Cleveland was the
first professional landscape architect to
practice in Wisconsin. His work in this state
preceded that of such better-known col¬
leagues as Frederick Law Olmsted, who
designed important parks in Milwaukee;
Jens Jensen, who shaped landscapes
throughout the Midwest and founded “The
Clearing” in Door County; and John Nolan,
who developed the proposal for Wisconsin’s
state park system and planned important
public open space projects in Madison,
Milwaukee, Janesville, Green Bay and
LaCrosse.1 Yet, relatively little is known of
this visionary environmentalist, and he has
not received the scholarly attention his ac¬
complishments justify.

During his professional career spanning
more than fifty years, Cleveland pioneered
significant contributions to the planning,
design and management of the land. Not
only did he provide an important link be¬
tween the American West and the fledgling
field of landscape architecture beginning in
the East; he also was perhaps the most per¬
sistent and articulate nineteenth century
spokesman regarding the comprehensive
scope of his new profession. This activity, as
he perceived it, extended far beyond the

. . adornment of professedly ornamental
grounds . . . and the private estates of men
of wealth,”2 to encompass, as he so elo¬
quently wrote, . . the art of arranging
land so as to adapt it most conveniently,
economically and gracefully, to any of the
varied wants of civilization.”3

The descendent of an early New England
seafaring family, Horace William Shaler
Cleveland was born in Lancaster, Massachu¬
setts in 1814. His grandfather and father had

prospered from an active maritime business
and, as a young man, Cleveland received not
only a formal education, but benefited from
his father’s broad literary interests and sail¬
ing experiences.

At the age of fourteen, Cleveland’s family
moved to Cuba, where his father became
Vice-Counsel. Here, young Horace worked
on a coffee plantation, where he learned
native mulching techniques that he would
later utilize on his own farm and in many
aspects of his landscape architectural prac¬
tice, particularly those concerned with forest
management.

Two years later, Cleveland returned to
Massachusetts where he took up the study of
civil engineering. This training led to
employment as a land surveyor in central
Illinois and Maine. The Illinois work, start¬
ing in 1833, provided his first opportunity to
visit the Midwest — at that time a wild, vir¬
tually undeveloped frontier.4 This adventure
undoubtedly left a lasting impression upon
the twenty-one year old and the area’s poten¬
tial influenced his later decision to move
west. After returning to New York on horse¬
back, Cleveland turned to a career in agri¬
culture and horticulture, buying a farm near
Burlington, New Jersey, in 1841. During this
period he also founded the New Jersey Hor¬
ticultural Society and served as the organiza¬
tion’s Corresponding Secretary.5

The combination of experience in civil
engineering, agriculture and horticulture
served as a springboard for Cleveland’s long
and productive career in landscape architec¬
ture, or landscape gardening as it was known
in the 1840’s. Returning to New England in
1854, he established an active landscape
architectural practice with Robert Morris

63

64

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

Copeland. The two men set up an office in
Boston and engaged in work to . . furnish
plans for the laying out and improvement
of Cemeteries, Public Squares, Pleasure
Grounds, Farms and Gardens.”6 Seeking the
prestigious commission to plan Central Park
in New York, they submitted a design for the
1857 competition, but it was not chosen as
the winning entry.

Little is known of Cleveland’s work dur¬
ing the ensuing decade. However, in 1868, he
went to work with Frederick Law Olmsted,
the founder of landscape architecture in
America, where he worked on plans for
Prospect Park in Brooklyn.7 During this
time, the Olmsted office was actively en¬
gaged in preparing a new, innovative sub¬
division layout for Riverside, Illinois, only
nine miles from Chicago. This project may
have revived Cleveland’s interest in the
West, developed more than thirty years
earlier. In 1869 he established his landscape
architectural practice in Chicago. He could
now become more intimately involved with
new and exciting professional opportunities
in this young and dynamic city and also with
the rapid development occurring throughout
the Midwest.

It was from Chicago that Cleveland, with
missionary zeal, worked to extend the fron¬
tier of landscape architectural practice into
America’s heartland. A prolific writer and
engaging speaker, he appealed for orderly
development of the land and set forth his
philosophies of land planning and design in
a variety of pamphlets, articles, letters, and
his remarkably perceptive book Landscape
Architecture as Applied to the Wants of the
West.6

In this publication, he eloquently stressed
the landscape architect’s social role and
responsibility in the newly-developing
region, where a surge in homesteading activ¬
ity and the efforts of railroad companies and
land speculators stamped, with mechanical
regularity, the gridiron plan upon the land.

By 1871, he had formed a loose partner¬
ship with William M. R. French, a creative

civil engineer who later became Director of
the Chicago Art Institute. Cleveland’s work
now began to assume important new dimen¬
sions and encompassed the design of ceme¬
teries, suburban residential developments,
vacation resorts, parks, university grounds
and other institutional projects, and the sites
for several new state capitol buildings. Their
active practice eventually extended through¬
out the region to include projects in Illinois
and Wisconsin, as well as work in Iowa,
Indiana, Kansas, Minnesota and Nebraska.

ADVERTISEMENT.

Cleveland & French,

‘y

andscape J^rchitects and Engineers,

38 PORTLAND BLOCK,

S. E. cor. Dearborn & Washington Sts.,

CHICAGO, ILL

Fig. 1 . Title from a pamphlet advertising the profes¬
sional services of Cleveland and his civil engineer part¬
ner William M. R. French, after they had established an
office in Chicago in 1871. (Photo from the author’s
private collection.)

Cleveland’s work in Wisconsin began in
1870 — just one year after he opened his
Chicago office. At this time, the Board of
Public Works of the City of Milwaukee
authorized Cleveland, whom the Milwaukee
Sentinel called “. . . an eminent landscape
gardener whose works are all over the coun¬
try . . .”9 to prepare plans for a new park in
the Seventh Ward, on the city’s east side.

His design for Juneau Park, named after
Milwaukee’s founder Solomon Juneau, was
submitted on October 15, 1870, along with
lengthy and thorough instructions explaining
how the park was to be constructed. The en¬
tire communication was of such popular in¬
terest that several days later, it was printed in
full in the Milwaukee Sentinel. 10 The article

1985]

Tishler and Luckhardt — H. W. S. Cleveland

65

reflected Cleveland’s expertise in implement¬
ing all aspects of the project.

The site for this important park consisted
of a strip of narrow, steep terrain en¬
compassing the bluff and shoreline along
Lake Michigan. Cleveland’s plan called for a
simple, restrained design that respected the
area’s indigenous natural features. He noted
that

“. . . the position and character of the tract . . .
confine the whole scope of its possible decoration
. . . and yet its features are so peculiar, and com¬
prise so much that is picturesque . . . that no arti¬
ficial ornamentation was required, beyond the
simple development of their natural character.”11

His design provided for a roadway at the top
of the slope flanked with rows of trees and a
sidewalk paralleling the upper edge of the
bank. At convenient points, informal mean¬
dering paths of varying grade and width
descended the bluff. Where the slope was
favorable, small level landings were to be
constructed to accommodate rustic seats.
The natural ridges and hollows on the face
of the cliff would remain almost undisturbed
except for the minor changes necessary in
building the paths and planting the beds of
shrubbery to be located on the ridges to in¬
crease their apparent height.

Along the base of the slope, at a distance
of about 20' from the water’s edge, a 3'
high protective wall was to be constructed
adjacent to a proposed meandering pedes¬
trian promenade. At appropriate intervals,
steps would lead down to the beach. Toward
the south end of the park, two or three pools
of water were proposed, fed by springs flow¬
ing from the sides of the bluff.

In arriving at this solution, Cleveland
sought to avoid using a costly series of arti¬
ficial terraces which would be expensive to
maintain, would interupt natural drainage
patterns and would not fit in with the sur¬
rounding natural scenery. As one study of
Milwaukee’s architectural history put it “. . .
the concern for drainage and shoreline con¬
trol revealed the advanced ability which

Cleveland was able to offer his clients at a
time when most landscape gardeners knew
little of these issues. ’ ’ 1 2

Two years later, in 1872, land for the park
was acquired and construction began. How¬
ever, early in 1900, the adjacent shoreline
was filled extensively and the character of
the park was greatly changed. Today the
park is extremely popular, though with the
passage of years, Cleveland’s design for the
site has been altered to provide for addi¬
tional landfill, the introduction of the
automobile, the construction of a rail cor¬
ridor and other changes. Historically, it is
significant for two reasons: it was Milwau¬
kee’s first real park, and it is the earliest ex¬
ample of the work of a professional land¬
scape architect known to exist in Wisconsin.

So progressive and stimulating were
Cleveland’s planning ideas, that he was fre¬
quently sought out as a lecturer. In February
of 1872, he was invited to address the Madi¬
son Horticultural Society in the Agriculture
Room of the State Capitol.13 The title of his
talk “Landscape Gardening As Applied to
the Wants of the West,’’ was essentially the
same highly-acclaimed address he had given
the previous week in both Minneapolis and
St. Paul, Minnesota.14 In it, he emphasized
that “. . . Landscape Gardening, or more
properly, Landscape Architecture, is the art
of arranging land so as to adapt it most con¬
veniently, economically, and gracefully to
any of the varied wants of civilization.”15
This may be the first time that the title
“landscape architect” was used in Wiscon¬
sin by a member of this new profession. He
went on to give special “. . . reference to the
laying out and beautifying of cities, parks,
. . . and other outdoor features, and decried
the monotonous results of the widespread
use of the gridiron street plan in city after
city. He further emphasized the urgent need
for setting aside more park areas to accom¬
modate the extensive urban growth he pre¬
dicted would occur in the emerging Midwest¬
ern cities. At the end of the lecture, the
Secretary of the Society indicated his hope

66

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

that Cleveland would come to Madison
again “. . . in a professional capacity, for he
knew of no city that nature had done so
much for and man so little.”16

A short time later, in the spring of 1872,
the Governor of Wisconsin, Cadwallader C.
Washburn, and members of his Park Board,
called upon Cleveland to help design the
grounds of the newly-constructed State
Capitol. The Senate had passed an Act in
March of that year which gave the Governor
authority to appoint a three-member Park
Board to see that the Capitol Park was
“surveyed, asthetically designed, laid out
and platted, and hereafter improved and

beautified in accordance with some fixed
plan.”17

A city-wide controversy on the placement
of a fence to surround the capitol grounds
had begun before Cleveland was called into
service, and he started his work in the midst
of the turmoil. The squabble began when
Governor Washburn proposed extending the
fence surrounding the square out to the edge
of the streets. A new sidewalk would then be
built outside the fence in the space used for
horse and wagon parking. This would nar¬
row the streets, dispel the offensive presence
of vehicles and provide a more serene pedes¬
trian environment where citizens could “. . .

Fig. 2. View of the south-west side of the Wisconsin State Capitol about 1875. The fence and trees reflect the plans
and recommendations Cleveland had prepared for the grounds several years earlier. (Photo courtesy Iconographic
Division of the State Historical Society.)

1985]

Tishler and Luckhardt — H. W. S. Cleveland

67

escape from the din and turmoil of the
streets.”18 After examining the area,
Cleveland supported Washburn’s proposal
noting the . . incongruity of an ornamen¬
tal park surrounded by a stable yard.”19 The
following is Cleveland’s description of the
situation, contained in a letter dated May 1,
1872 to his partner, Wm. French:

“I took the cars for Madison at night and spent
yesterday there with the Governor and the com¬
mittee. The town is or was in a violent state of
perturbation in regard to the position of the iron
fence and I settled the question in a manner which
may subject me to a coat of tar and feathers if I
go there again. But I know I am right and they
will think so when they see it done and the Gover¬
nor and committee agreed with me. I have agreed
also to furnish a plan of the capitol grounds (12
acres) at $20.00 per acre . . . My visit was a pleas¬
ant and gratifying one.”20

True to his inherent egalitarian beliefs,
Cleveland suggested that the capitol grounds
become an enclosed park area to be enjoyed
by all and separated from the hustle of com¬
mercial life on the surrounding square by a
see-through Victorian iron fence. His plan
showed serpentine walks, a music stand, a
summer house, numerous fountains, statu¬
ary and urns of flowers and plants. Un¬
fortunately, Cleveland’s design was not
completely executed. “Only one fountain
was built, and the landscaping was confined
mostly to trees. Some of the walkways were
constructed, but not as many as Cleveland
wanted.”21 The square remained essentially
a rigidly geometrical setting for the hand¬
some Capital building rather than a “more
personalized public space.”22 Ironically, the
recent redevelopment of the square captures
some of the spirit for the place that Cleve¬
land envisioned well over one-hundred years
ago.

Four years later, in August of 1876, Pres¬
ident John Bascom of the University of
Wisconsin wrote to Frederick Law Olmsted
asking him to come to Madison to advise on
“. . . the proper position in which we should
. . . place our (new) chapel,” and “. . . give

us suggestions on other points.”23 Regarding
other planning for the campus, he went on to
say that “. . . we are moving rapidly forward
to a first class institution and your work will
not be lost.”24 Unable to make the trip to
Wisconsin, Olmsted recommended the ser¬
vices of his friend Cleveland “. . . in whose
judgement and taste ... (he had) learned by
considerable experience to have much confi¬
dence.”25 Unfortunately no correspondence
of the University of Wisconsin Presidents
before 1886 nor records of the University of
Wisconsin Board of Regents between 1867
and 1887 exists. Therefore, it is difficult to
verify what became of the chapel building
proposal mentioned by Bascom, or whether
Cleveland actually worked on the Wisconsin
campus. However, Music Hall, originally
the Assembly Hall and Library building, was
constructed three years later, in 1879, and
the possibility of Cleveland’s involvement
with the site development of this building
cannot be ruled out.

Nearly five years passed before Cleveland
returned to Wisconsin for another profes¬
sional commission. In a letter dated
November 27, 1881, he stated: “I finished
my work last week at Geneva Lake . . .”26
Another source also briefly notes that he was
active in Rice Lake.27 Both of these commis¬
sions were probably for estate grounds.

Although he had as much work as he
could handle out of his Chicago office,
Cleveland decided to move to Minneapolis.
When he left Chicago in the Spring of 1886,
this seventy-two year old landscape architect
was not moving into retirement, but into his
major professional triumph. Here, he helped
lay the foundations for the Minneapolis-St.
Paul metropolitan park system— perhaps the
finest urban open space network in America.

From his new office, Cleveland main¬
tained an involvement with several projects
in Wisconsin. In 1887, he was called to
Waukesha by Mr. Alfred Miles Jones to lay
out the grounds of Bethesda Spring Park—
the famous source for medicinal spring
water. Jones, a former politician and active

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

entrepreneur, became manager of the area in
1885 and was eager to make improvements
so that the Park might become a paying
business venture.28 According to an article in
the July 25, 1889 issue of the Waukesha
Freeman:

“Two years ago . . . (Bethesda Springs Park)
was a shady place with good walks and drives,
but utterly without system or real beauty. The
first thing . . . (Jones) undertook was the better
and more tasty arrangement of the park grounds.
For this purpose he brought Mr. H. W. S. Cleve¬
land here from Chicago, the gentleman who
planned the famous South Park, and this resulted
in a complete and systematic survey of the tract
. . . (and) a more artistic plan of the shading,
drives, walks, and especially of the miniature
lake. Facilities were also provided for handsome
croquet and lawn tennis courts etc., and right
here we may say that the old-fashioned and
healthful game of quoits is specially provided for
with an apparatus that will no doubt entice many
to take it up anew.”29

After Bethesda Spring Park was rebuilt
according to Cleveland’s plan, Jones devel¬
oped it into a popular and profitable recrea¬
tional spa known widely for the healing
qualities of its spring water.

Cleveland’s last known work in the State
of Wisconsin was in Menomonie in 1892.
According to the Proceedings of the Dunn
County Board of Supervisors for that year,
H. W. S. Cleveland and Son were paid
$376.50 for laying out the Dunn County
Asylum grounds.30 The site for this project
was entirely barren and Cleveland’s plan
provided for driveways, footpaths and the
planting of some 400 native trees, evergreens
and shrubs. An unusual aspect of this proj¬
ect was the appeal he made to farmers in the
timbered portion of the county to furnish at
least 250 elm, basswood, white ash and box
elders from three to five inches in diameter
with roots from 15 to 30 inches in length.31
Cleveland stated “that if farmers would re¬
spond to his appeal . . . the asylum grounds
would have a selection of trees that could not
be excelled.”32

The most significant surviving feature of
his work there is the sweeping entry turn¬
around in front of the main building. Many
of the original trees donated by the local
farmers also remain.

In the early 1890’s, perhaps because of his
advanced age or the beginning of the 1893
financial recession, Cleveland was experienc¬
ing a steady decline in work. Yet, he man¬
aged to travel to Chicago to see the fruits of
his earlier activity in the South Parks and en¬
joy his friend Frederick Law Olmsted’s work
at the Columbian Exposition. He later
moved back to Chicago, presumably to live
with his son’s family for his remaining years.

In 1898, his good friend Charles Loring,
the distinguished former President of the
Minneapolis Park Board, visited Cleveland
in Chicago and “found him, in his eighty-
sixth year, the same genial, pleasant, un¬
selfish character that he had known for so
many years.”33 Loring invited him to write a

Fig. 3. H. W. S. Cleveland during a reflective moment
late in his long and productive career. (Photo from the
author’s private collection.)

1985]

Tishler and Luckhardt — H. W. S. Cleveland

69

paper for the Park and Art Association con¬
vention to be held in Minneapolis. Although
he at first declined, Cleveland quickly recon¬
sidered and wrote his last article, “Influence
of Parks on the Character of Children.”34

Cleveland died in Hinsdale, Illinois, De¬
cember 5, 1900, within a fortnight of his
86th birthday. He was buried in Minneap¬
olis, the city he had grown to love.

H. W. S. Cleveland’s long and productive
professional life spanned almost the entire
last half of the nineteenth century. This
period, marked by unprecedented urban and
industrial growth, produced great changes in
the American environment. Perhaps Cleve¬
land’s greatest achievement was his ability to
foresee this physical change and develop
concepts and plans to deal with it in ways
that would enrich the lives of countless
Americans.

Notes

1 Other pioneering landscape architects whose work
can be found in Wisconsin include: Franz A. Aust, An¬
nette Hoyt Flanders, Henry V. Hubbard, G. William
Longenecker, Annette E. McCrea, Frederick Law
Olmsted, Jr., Elbert Peets and Ossian Cole Simonds.

2 H. W. S. Cleveland, Landscape Architecture as Ap¬
plied to the Wants of the West, ed. Roy Lubove (Pitts¬
burgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1965), pp. ix-x.

3 Ibid. 5.

4 H. W. S. Cleveland, The Aesthetic Development of
the United Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis (Minne¬
apolis: A. C. Bauman, 1888), p. 10.

5 Theodora Kimball Hubbard, “H. W. S. Cleveland:
An American Pioneer in Landscape Architecture and
City Planning,” Landscape Architecture, 20 (January
1930), 94. This was the first comprehensive attempt to
examine Cleveland’s career and shed light on his many
contributions to landscape architecture and city
planning — professions that both were in their infancy at
the time.

6 Ibid. 94.

7 Norman T. Newton, Design on the Land (Cam¬
bridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press,
1971), p. 310.

8 Originally published as H. W. S. Cleveland, Land¬
scape Architecture as Applied to the Wants of the West;

with an essay on Forest Planting on the Great Plains
(Chicago: Jansen, McClurg&Co., 1873).

9 Milwaukee Sentinel, October 19, 1870.

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid.

12 Landscape Research, Built in Milwaukee (Mil¬
waukee: 1981), p. 1 19.

13 Madison Daily Democrat, February 23, 1872.

14 Wisconsin State Journal, February 24, 1872.

15 Ibid.

16 Ibid.

17 John O. Holzhueter, ‘‘The Capital Fence of 1872,”
Wisconsin Magazine of History, 53 (1970), 245.

18 H. W. S. Cleveland, The Public Grounds of
Chicago: How to Give them Character and Expression
(Chicago, 1869), pp. 15-16.

19 H. W. S. Cleveland, Letter to Hon. C. C.
Washburn, July 6, 1872, Olmsted Papers, The Library
of Congress.

20 H. W. S. Cleveland, Letter to W. M. R. French,
May 1, 1872, Olmsted Papers, The Library of Congress.

21 Holzhueter, p. 248.

22 The Capital Times, June 7, 1977.

23 John Bascom, Letter to F. L. Olmsted, August 24,
1876, Olmsted Papers, The Library of Congress.

24 Ibid.

25 Frederick Law Olmsted, Letter to John Bascom,
August 31, 1876, Olmsted Papers, The Library of Con¬
gress. On the same day Olmsted also wrote to Cleveland
informing him of this correspondence.

26 H. W. S. Cleveland, Letter to W. W. Folwell,
November 27, 1881, Olmsted Papers, The Library of
Congress.

27 The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography,
ed. numerous authors, 63 vols. (New York: James T.
White & Company, 1907), V, 540.

28 Waukesha Freeman, October 20, 1898.

29 Waukesha Freeman, July 25, 1889.

30 Proceedings of the Board of Supervisors of Dunn
County, Wisconsin : Annual Session: November, 1892,
and Special Sessions of 1891-2-3 (Menomonie: Flint and
Weber, 1893) p. 11.

31 Dunn County News, April 20, 1983. Original
source, Dunn County News, April 29, 1892.

32 Ibid.

33 Board of Park Commissioners of the City of Min¬
neapolis, Thirteenth A nnual Report (Minneapolis: Har¬
rison & Smith, Printers, 1896), pp. 25-26.

34 H. W. S. Cleveland, “Influence of Parks on the
Character of Children,” Introduction by C. M. Loring,
Second Report of the American Park and Outdoor Art
Association (Minneapolis: 1898), pp. 105-106.

THE PUNJAB BOUNDARY FORCE
1 AUGUST -1 SEPTEMBER, 1947

Thomas J. Awen
Carroll College
Waukesha , Wisconsin

On the 8th of May, 1947, the Maharaja of
Patiala visited the Viceroy at his palace in
New Delhi and voiced the concerns of his
people, the Sikhs, concerning the forthcom¬
ing partition of their homeland in the Pun¬
jab between the Hindus and Muslims. When
the Viceroy informed him that there was no
way of preventing the forthcoming partition
the Maharaja replied:

Patiala: In that case I greatly fear the Sikhs will
fight.

Viceroy: If they do . . . they will have to fight
the Central Government; for I and my
Government are determined to put down any
communal war with a ruthless iron hand;
they will be opposed not only by tanks and
armored cars and artillery, but they will be
bombed and machine-gunned from the air.
You can tell your Sikhs that if they start a
war they will not be fighting the Muslim
League, but the whole might of the armed
forces.1

So did the last Viceroy of India, Admiral
the Right Honorable the Viscount Mount-
batten of Burma and cousin to King George
VI, promise a terrible response from the
military forces under his command. Yet,
three months later, as Hindus, Sikhs, and
Muslims were killing each other in the Pun¬
jab, the group of infantry brigades which
formed the Punjab Boundary Force could
not fulfill Mountbatten’s promise of retribu¬
tion. Great Britain’s failure to ensure a
peaceful transition for India from a colony
to an independent dominion paved the way
for bloody events to come: three major con¬
flicts between India and Pakistan; a bitter
religious hatred which includes both Mohan¬

das K. Gandhi (d. 1948) and Prime Minister
Indira Gandhi (d. 1984) amongst its list of
victims.

What happened? Why did Mountbatten’s
words count so little in stopping a civil war
which left hundreds of thousands of dead
and millions of refugees? Why could not the
Punjab Boundary Force prevent or at the
very least suppress the civil war which
destroyed the prosperous Punjab?

The Punjab Boundary Force was the last
remnant of the old Imperial Indian Army.
The Indian Army in 1947 mustered over
500,000 troops and its existence as a unified
force of Hindus, Sikhs, Muslims, and British
personnel was threatened by independence
and partition. The British element, over
60,000 strong in 1939 would be withdrawn.
The British Officer Corp of over 10,000 of¬
ficers would also leave. Finally, the Muslim
contingent, representing 33.89/0 of the en¬
listed ranks and 23.7% of the officer corp
would be extracted and organized into the
new Pakistani Army.2 Partition meant that a
large portion of the army could not be used
in any military action until the reorganiza¬
tion was complete. In a paper compiled on
the division of the armed forces, the
Commander-in-Chief in India, Field Mar¬
shal Claude Auchinleck, pointed out that
while some infantry battalions and armored
regiments were entirely Muslim or Hindu
(Sikh included), most were mixed and in
none of the formations were all of the of¬
ficers Muslim or Hindu. All of the units
would have to be broken down and gradual¬
ly rebuilt. His concluding statement made
this point: “During the process of division
India will be virtually undefended.’’3

70

1985]

Awen — Punjab Boundary Force

71

India would be “virtually undefended”
from any external or internal threat. The
only protection India would have consisted
of a small reserve of mixed troops to be used
in case of emergency. One of those units not
communally divided was the 4th Indian (In¬
fantry) Division. The commander was Major
General T. W. Rees, and he had been in
command for about two years. The division
had seen major combat action in North
Africa, Italy, and Greece. In late May of
1947, in response to the Governor of the
Punjab’s pleas for additional troops, the
headquaters of the 4th Division and two in¬
fantry brigades were ordered to the north.
The 4th Indian Division would become the
nucleus of the Punjab Boundary Force.

“The whole might of the armed forces”
was what Mountbatten had promised to use
against the Sikhs should they start civil war.
The 4th Division did not represent the
“whole might” of the armed forces. How¬
ever a full strength infantry division would
be a powerful arm for the government to use
against the violent Sikhs and Muslims. Un¬
fortunately none of the brigades under its
command were at full strength. Most of the
battalions were at half strength and in the
reorganization process the division had lost
its British battalions; its artillery contingent
had been withdrawn, and both the division’s
armored reconnaisance regiment and one of
its infantry brigades (7th) were omitted from
the division’s marching orders.4

The order of battle, despite the low com¬
bat strengths appeared impressive. The Pun¬
jab Boundary Force mustered the Head¬
quarters of the 4th Division, the 5th Infantry
Brigade, 11th Infantry Brigade, 14th Para¬
chute Brigade, 42nd Lorried Brigade, 114th
Infantry Brigade, and the 18th Cavalry Regi¬
ment (a tank formation). The five infantry
brigades deployed sixteen infantry bat¬
talions. They were to police the Punjab, an
area with thirty administrative districts of
which eleven required “special military
measures.” The eleven districts alone

covered an area of 37,500 square miles with
a population of over 14,500,000. 5

Traditionally, the military was used to
supplement, not replace, the civil ad¬
ministration during times of crisis. The
massive rioting in Calcutta the previous year
had had infantry battalions assisting the
police in clearing the streets. The situation in
the Punjab was very different from the vio¬
lence that plagued Calcutta. The population
was spread all across the province and while
local police corps were responsible for vast
areas they were usually understaffed. The
police in Calcutta had been reinforced by
Gurkha (Nepalese) Gendarmerie and were
fairly reliable. The police in the Punjab, who
in August numbered over 24,000 constables,
began to lose their impartiality under the
barrage of propaganda from the various
religious communities. Over 74% of the
police force was Muslim and as indepen¬
dence approached large bodies of constables
began to desert.6 On the 10th of August, in
Jullundar district 7,000 constables fled their
posts and demanded safe conduct to
Pakistan.7

The loss of the police represented the
physical disintegration of the civil ad¬
ministration in the Punjab. Troops could
not replace police since very few of them
were properly trained to arrest or search
within the limits set by civil law. Within a
week after the first mass desertions by the
police (August 14th) the violence in the Pun¬
jab changed from peasant armies attacking
military units to a campaign of mass terror¬
ism. In the cities, people were being knifed
or shot down in the streets or market places.
In the countryside, whole villages were
burned and scores of bodies littered the
ground. The absence of the police meant
that troops had to take over safeguarding
refugees from attack. The elaborate plans
for crushing resistance with the use of tanks
and bombers were now irrelevant in stopping
the violence.

However, the Viceroy had ordered the

72

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

Chief of the General Staff, Lieutenant Gen¬
eral Sir Arthur Smith, to send mechanised
units to the Punjab:

. I wished to have tanks, armoured cars,
and aircraft used so that the poorly armed in¬
surgent armies would feel that their resistance
was futile since they were being mown down
without a chance of killing any of the armed
forces . . .”8

At first, Sikh and Muslim Jathas (battle
groups of several hundred or more men) did
attack mechanized army units and conse¬
quently suffered enormous casualties. In one
encounter, an army detachment supported
by a tank killed 69 Sikhs, wounded 10 and
captured mortars, machine guns, sub¬
machine guns, and rifles from the enemy
dead.9 Once the Jathas realized the futility in
attacking armored units they stopped, and
instead began attacking trains or ambushing
refugee columns.

Why were the Sikhs and Muslims killing
each other? History reveals that the Punjab,
while peaceful during the century of British
rule, was a violent region before the British
Army arrived in the 1840s. The Mogul
Emperors in the sixteenth century oppressed
the Sikhs to the extent that their 5th Guru
(spiritual leader) led a revolt against the
Muslim rulers. Upon his death in 1606, a
period of constant war persisted as both
faiths fought to achieve martial supremacy.
When the Sikhs conquered the Muslims in
1767 their rule was so oppressive that the
Muslims in turn rose in revolt. Despite the
arrival of the British, religious tensions were
exacerbated during the Sepoy Mutiny in
1857. While Muslims joined Hindus in the
mutiny the Sikhs remained loyal to the
British and had many opportunities to kill
rebel Muslims.10

A century of peace did not dissipate com¬
munal fears as the populations of both faiths
(Sikh-Hindu and Muslim) abandoned their
homes rather than live under the rule of their
new masters. Hindus and Sikhs abandoned
over 6.7 million acres of land worth over 5

billion rupees in the West Punjab (Pakistan).
Conversely, Muslims abandoned over 4.7
million acres of land worth over 1 billion
rupees.11 The number of refugees, by early
October totalled over 8 million people. With
the desertion of the police the Punjab Boun¬
dary Force had to protect these refugees
from attack. Tanks and bombers can make
up for any deficiency in numbers when it
comes to suppressing poorly armed peasant
Jathas. Now the crisis demanded large
bodies of troops to protect these refugees.
The Governor of the Punjab revealed how
weak the P.B.F. had become.

“. . . I estimated that we should need at least
two divisions of full strength and on a War
footing — i.e. a minimum of about 20,000 ef¬
fective fighting men. The effective strength of
the P.B.F. is at present about 7,500 or in¬
cluding static troops and training centres about
9,000. . . . Fire power is really less important
than numbers.”12

Sir Jenkins went on the say that neither the
railways nor the main roads were safe and
that it was impossible to control the village
raiding without a great display of force.

Reinforcements were needed: the question
was where they would come from. The
General Officer Commanding of Eastern
Command, Lieutenant General Sir Francis
Tuker (and former commander of the 4th
Division), sent as reinforcements the 123rd
Infantry Brigade (3 infantry battalions), the
1st Mahar battalion, the Headquarters of
the 161st Infantry Brigade, and an artillery
regiment. Field Marshal Auchinleck also
ordered the movement of another infantry
brigade and a mixed (tanks and armoured
cars) armored squadron to the Punjab but in
his report to the Viceroy he stated that no
amount of troops could stop the indiscrimin¬
ate butchery nor could additional reinforce¬
ments be sent since the Army was stretched
to its fullest extent and it would be difficult,
if not impossible to find more troops. 13

Sikh and Muslim Jathas inflicted consid¬
erable losses amongst the packed groups of

1985]

Awen — Punjab Boundary Force

73

refugees and every effort to protect them
seemed beyond the capacity of the P.B.F.
The Intelligence Officer (GSO 1) of the 4th
Indian Division, Lieutenant Colonel P.S.
Mitcheson, counted between 400 and 600
corpses along a fifty mile stretch of highway
and witnessed an ambush against some refu¬
gees:

“In a few minutes fifty men, women and
children were slashed to pieces while thirty
others came running back towards us with
wounds streaming. We got up a tank of 18
Cavalry which killed six Sikh attackers . . .’”4

Even in refugee columns escorted by troops,
refugees (whether Muslim or Sikh-Hindu)
were cut down by their attackers. General
Rees, in his report described how the Jathas
were deployed in ambushing Indian refu¬
gees:

“As the crops were high it was simple to am¬
bush marching columns of refugees. The at¬
tackers would remain concealed until the last
moment and then pour in a stampeding volley,
usually in North-West Frontier fashion ... In
spite of the best efforts of the escorts to hold
them together the refugees would scatter in
panic; whereupon the ambush parties would
dash in with sword and spear. With attackers
and attacked inextricably intermingled the
escort usually was unable to protect its
charges.”15

It was no safer travelling by train. There
were numerous incidents where mobs, as
large as 3,000 in number, halted trains and
butchered their passengers. Field Marshal
Auchinleck reported that over 324 people
had been killed in train attacks during the
morning hours of the 15th of August. Train
crews did not report to duty for fear of los¬
ing their lives. Despite the placement of
escorts, the mobs would either overwhelm
the guards, or worse, the guards would per¬
mit the mobs to enter the trains unopposed.
On the 22nd of August, the military picket
near Khalsa College, Amritsar, and the
escort of a Muslim refugee train was over¬
whelmed by a Sikh-Hindu Jatha. The com¬

bined unit (2 officers, 2 NCOs, and 27
enlisted men) expended all of its ammunition
before being overrun.16 All of the refugees
were either killed or injured. On the early
morning of the 1st of September when a
refugee train arrived in Ampala, the escort
of 1 NCO and 14 enlisted men permitted a
Hindu mob to attack the train. Over 183
people were killed. When the 2/ 1st
Gurkhas17 arrived, the escort was put under
arrest.

A major fear was that communalism
would affect the troops of the P.B.F. Ap¬
parently it did not occur to high ranking
commanders that troops who might have
originated from the Punjab were unlikely to
remain impartial after seeing their homes
burned or their families murdered. Of the
troops in the twenty-three infantry bat¬
talions in the Punjab Boundary Force: 20%
were Sikhs, 25% were Hindu, and Muslims
the remaining 55%. Almost all of the Sikh
personnel originated from the Punjab and a
majority of the Muslim troops were Punjabi
Muslims. An officer in a brigade head¬
quarters noted that many Sikh troops had
asked for help for their families marooned in
Pakistan while many Muslim troops had
families trapped on the Indian side of the
province. In a telephone report from
General Rees on the 11th of August, he
reported (optimistically) that the troops were
unaffected by the communal tension. Field
Marshal Auchinleck did not share his op¬
timism. He commented to Rees’ statement,
“troops are unaffected’’ with the question
“How Long?’’18 Reports began to arrive at
Supreme Headquarters that Hindu or Sikh
officers and men were becoming unreliable.
It required the direct intervention of British
officers before the troops would open fire on
mobs of their own faith. Muslim officers
and men also become reluctant to shoot their
own kind. Open mutiny was considered a
serious possibility.19

When it became evident that the P.B.F.
was no longer an effective military force the
Partition Council decided to dissolve the

74

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

force and allow the armies of both Domin¬
ions to accept responsibility for escorting
refugees. On the 1st of September, 1947, the
Punjab Boundary Force was officially dis¬
banded. The last Indian Army units under
British command came under Indian
(Hindu) or Pakistani Army control.

The P.B.F. faced major difficulties that
were not foreseen by the Supreme Com¬
mand. Its problems included: Army battal¬
ions which were understrength; mechanised
units unable to adapt to their new duties;
communalism; lack of training to handle
police duties. These were major problems
that affected the Punjab Boundary Force.
How could the Viceroy’s Government have
acted differently in preventing this disaster?

A larger military force would have eased
some problems. The P.B.F. mustered seven
infantry brigades, a tank regiment, air and
artillery support. It is questionable whether
the force reached 55,000 troops but it is like¬
ly the conclusion would have been the same.
Thousands of troops were needed to pacify
the Punjab. Had the P.B.F. and the police
been at full strength, they would have
mustered 79,000 men (55,000 troops, 24,000
police) to police an area (the eleven districts
requiring “special military measures”)
covering over 37,500 square miles. That
would be a ratio of two men per square mile.
In comparison, the population of 14,500,000
would average 386 people per square mile.
The actual number of troops and police
deployed were 17,000 (9,000 troops, 8,000
police) or a ratio of two men per five square
miles.

With the disintegration of the police and
the collapse of the civil administration the
number of troops needed to keep order were
immense. To appreciate how understrength
the P.B.F. was one can look to another
British Colonial post that was plagued by
civil war: Palestine. Palestine covered an
area of over 8,000 square miles. There were
70,000 troops and 5,000 police guarding the
Colonial administration in 1947 and the
ratio was nine men per square mile.20 Yet the

Army was unable to suppress the Irgun, the
Jewish terrorist army which harassed and
bombed the British Government in Pales¬
tine. To equal the commitment in Palestine
the Supreme Command needed to deploy
over 300,000 troops to achieve an equal nine
men per square mile ratio.

Did the Viceroy and his council really
believe that seven brigades were sufficient to
suppress the civil war? Was the Governor of
the Punjab negligent in informing New Delhi
of the serious situation in the province? On
the contrary, Sir Evan Jenkins, the Gover¬
nor of the Punjab, informed the Viceroy’s
Chief of staff, Field Marshall Lord Ismay of
the need for more troops. Sir Jenkin’s army
advisor had told him that it would require
four operational divisions (i.e. at wartime
strength) with an army headquarters to deal
with the civil war. The Punjab Boundary
Force had seven weak brigades and a divi¬
sional headquarters to execute its duties.
Lord Ismay felt he could speak for the
Viceroy and concluded that the appeal for
additional troops had no merit to be re¬
viewed by the Viceroy and it never reached
his desk. While Ismay had been Chief of the
Imperial General Staff under Prime Minister
Winston Churchill, it was the Viceroy and
not he who had the last word in any major
decision. Still, Mountbatten took no action
to countermand Ismay’s decision nor was
there any record of a reprimand by the
Viceroy either in Ismay’s memoirs or in
Mountbatten’s personal log.

Ismay had turned down Sir Jenkin’s re¬
quest for more troops on the basis that there
were none available. Great Britain was no
longer at war. It is true that Great Britain
was war weary and military garrisons were
deployed in Palestine and Western Europe
but reserves were available. 1947 was a year
when troops were withdrawn from occupa¬
tion duties and reserve battalions from the
Territorial Army were demobilized. In
Palestine alone, seven infantry battalions
and an armoured regiment were withdrawn
and returned to Great Britain. Five of those

1985]

A wen — Punjab Boundary Force

75

seven battalions were demobilized by Octo¬
ber, 1947, after the War Office had ordered
all line regiments to demobilize to battalion
strength.21 They were a potential pool of
reserves that could have bolstered the under¬
strength formations in India but neither the
Viceroy nor his generals considered petition¬
ing the War Office for reinforcements.

There was also the British Army in India.
The Army in India was weakened due to
peacetime demobilization and while many of
the troops and officers were recent con¬
scripts or newly commissioned they repre¬
sented a formidable military force. Ac¬
cording to the accords set by the British
Government, the British contingent in India
would after 15 August no longer be used in
suppressing communal affairs. Thus these
troops were available for other duties. The
British contingent deployed six independent
brigade groups, twelve independent infantry
battalions, four armoured regiments, and
other support units.22 Four infantry divi¬
sions equal forty infantry battalions, four
armoured regiments, and other support
troops. The British Army in India plus the
reserves from Palestine would have fielded a
force of thirty-seven infantry battalions and
five armoured regiments. However, the en¬
tire British contingent in India and the
reserves from Palestine would still not have
brought the Punjab Boundary Force to a
force of 300,000 troops.

If there was no solution militarily, what
other alternatives were available to the
Viceroy’s Government that could have
averted the civil war?

The Sikhs of the Punjab had the most to
lose from the partition of their native home¬
land. They are a small, religious, tribal peo¬
ple who, during the course of history pro¬
duced disciplined warriors who fought off
many invaders. After the British Army
crushed the Sikh forces at the end of the
1840s the sons of those earlier warriors
enlisted in the ranks of the Imperial Co¬
lonial Army to continue the tradition in¬
herent in their religious-military society.

With the end of British rule the Sikhs real¬
ized that the Viceroy’s Government had
made no provision to protect their interests
in the Punjab. Partition would place over
50% of the province in Muslim hands. Many
religious shrines and temples, including the
birthplace of their first Guru (teacher) would
be defiled by Muslim Pakistani control. The
Sikhs responded to this potential blasphemy
by waging total war against the Muslims.
The Sikhs maintained a small but efficient
army which evenly matched the larger but
less disciplined Muslim League National
Guards. In Amritsar district alone, by 25
August nearly 100 Muslim villages were at¬
tacked by Sikhs while only 7 Sikh villages
had been attacked by Muslims. In one case a
Muslim village of 350 people was attacked
by a Sikh Jatha (battle group); there were
only 40 survivors.23 General T. W. Rees
commented that the organization of the
Sikhs was superior to the Muslim League
National Guards and that:

“. . . both during and after the war there had
been heavy smuggling of modern arms into In¬
dia .. . The Jathas therefore possessed hard
cores of skilled fighters armed with rifles,
grenades, tommy guns and machine guns.
Although the Punjab Mussalmans (Muslims)
also possessed firearms and trained men . . .
they lacked the cohesiveness of the Sikhs.”24

Had the Sikhs not been abandoned by the
British and had a plan been conceived ensur¬
ing that some of the Sikhs’ demands could
be met the religious hatred might have been
mitigated. Throughout the official papers of
the Viceroy’s Government and including
Mountbatten’s personal log there is not a
single mention of an attempt to assist the
Sikhs nor a plan to ease the agony over the
partition of their homeland.

Why did not the Viceroy’s Government
commit the available British Army units in
India to the Punjab? The transition of power
on the 15th of August meant that British
troops were no longer part of the Indian
Army, but the Punjab Boundary Force was

76

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

the last Imperial Indian Army force still
under direct British control. The P.B.F.
commander did not hand over his command
to a native Indian (or Pakistani) Army
General nor did lower ranking British Indian
Army officers relinquish their commands to
equivalent native Indian Army officers. The
P.B.F. was under the supervision of the
Commander-in-Chief in India, Field Marshal
Auchinleck, who, in turn, reported directly
to the Viceroy. Neither the Hindu Indian nor
Muslim Pakistani civilian or military author¬
ities had any jurisdiction over the Punjab
Boundary Force. There would have been no
problem in placing British troops under
P.B.F. control. Why was it not done?

The Chief of the General Staff, Lieuten¬
ant General Sir Arthur Smith, issued a secret
Army directive dated 29 July 1947 for all
British Army officers in command from Bat¬
talion level to Army level. No more than
sixty British officers ever saw this directive.
It dictated that under no circumstances
could British Army units be used in sup¬
pressing communal riots to save native In¬
dian lives. The only exception was in situa¬
tions where British lives were in danger.25
All copies of his directive were to be de¬
stroyed and no native Indian Army officers
were to gain access to the directive. Both
Field Marshal Auchinleck and the Viceroy
knew of its existence. Both could have over¬
riden the “no circumstances” policy since
they had the authority to commit British
troops to the Punjab. While defendants of
British policy could argue that it was not
proper to shoot one’s hosts, i.e. citizens of
the new India and Pakistan, at the same time
it also meant that the Viceory’s Government
would not sacrifice the lives of British troops
to save the lives of thousands of their former
crown subjects, i.e. the Indians.

The Punjab Boundary Force had to stop
the civil war with its own limited resources
and without reinforcements. The P.B.F. was
sent to the Punjab to support the civilian
government of Sir Evan Jenkins. When the
government collapsed was it not the respon¬

sibility of the Army to assume control of the
government and declare martial law? Was
Sir Jenkins negligent in reporting the state of
the government in the Punjab to the Vice¬
roy?

The P.B.F. was a peacekeeping boundary
force, not a group of heavily armed and
mechanised police. Neither was it an army of
judges, lawyers, or civil servants nor was it
ever meant to be one. When the military
declares an area to be under “Martial Law”
the military judicial system integrates with
the civilian judicial system. The reason is
that the military judicial system deals with
violations of Military Law, not civilian law.
While certain rights and privileges under
civilian law are suspended during martial law
the civilian courts still try and convict
civilian miscreants under the established pro¬
cedures of civil law. Both Sir Jenkins and
General Rees advised against the declaration
of martial law. In his report of 4 August,
1947, Sir Jenkins wrote:

“We are not at present dealing with a situation
in which Troops can act decisively- . . . There is
no short-cut by Civil or by military procedure;
for neither a Civil Governor nor a General ad¬
ministering Martial Law can properly shoot in¬
nocent people merely because they . . . live near
the scene of an outrage.”26

Martial Law was useless since without an
existing civilian court system there was no
way for military officers to legally convict
and sentence people for crimes that were not
applicable under Military Law or nor to
establish criteria for criminal convictions
that met civilian requirements.

If martial law could not be declared then
how could the Punjab Boundary Force deal
with the civil war? Did not the Governor, Sir
Evan Jenkins, inform the Viceroy of the im¬
pending collapse of the government? Indeed,
he had informed the Viceroy that not only
the civilian administration was collapsing
but also that the police was becoming scan¬
dalously corrupt and negligent, and dis¬
cipline was disintegrating. The courts were

1985]

A wen — Punjab Boundary Force

77

unable to convict felons since magistrates
refused to sentence law breakers of their own
faith. This report was sent to the Viceroy on
the 25th of June, 1947. Mountbatten had
five weeks to prepare for the upcoming state
of chaos and yet nothing special in terms of
orders or personnel was prepared to counter
the collapse of the civilian government.

A prosperous province was laid waste and
old religious hatreds were reawakened in a
civil war which brought nothing but death
and destruction to its inhabitants. While the
victims were Indian, key Government
leaders were British. The Viceroy, most of
his staff officers, most of the provincial
governors, and all of the Senior Army offi¬
cers were British. With the withdrawal of
British sovereignty these people no longer
had a future in the new India or Pakistan.
Mountbatten personified that feeling.
Mountbatten had been anxious to set a time
limit in his appointment since he feared that
he would lose seniority by his appointment
to India and that being the last Viceroy
would not count favorably towards promo¬
tion.27 Over 10,000 British Indian Army of¬
ficers, 1,600 British Indian Civil Service of¬
ficials, and 50,000 civilians faced a future in
which Indians, not British, would be the
rulers. Very few were willing to be part of
the new India’s future. Sir Evan Jenkins, in
his report to the Viceroy dated 16 April,
1947 read:

“Every British official in the I.C.S. and I.P.
(Indian Police) in the Punjab including myself,
would be very glad to leave it ... no British of¬
ficial intends to remain in the Punjab after the
transfer of power. Six months ago the position
was quite different”28

The civil war had a major influence in the
decisions of these men, but the feeling was
similar in the British Officer Corp. Out of
11,400 officers in the pre-partition Army,
8,200 were still serving in the ranks by Inde¬
pendence. Yet fewer than 2,800 volunteered
to remain with their units in the new Indian
and Pakistani Armies. Many of these offi¬

cers could not accept the lack of a British In¬
dian Army.29

Mountbatten personified the withdrawing
British by his lack of proper direction,
organization, and preparation in the crea¬
tion of the Punjab Boundary Force. Mount-
batten’s failure to deal with the Sikhs meant
that there was no peaceful option to prevent
the civil war. Mountbatten’s failure to assert
his privilege as Viceroy and countermand the
secret Army directive forbiding British
troops to save Indian lives crippled the
P.B.F. in its attempt to find reinforcements.
Defenders of the Viceroy may argue that the
P.B.F. was no longer under British Army
control but that argument is invalid since the
evidence indicates the P.B.F. was still under
British, not Indian or Pakistani, control.

The Punjab Boundary Force was not a
special army that was sent to reinforce the
formations already in the Punjab. Rather, it
was a title conferred on formations already
deployed in the Punjab. There was no con¬
sideration concerning the religious composi¬
tion of the troops, the weak formation
strengths, the imminent collapse of the Pun¬
jab Government, nor contemplation of an
alternate plan in mustering army rein¬
forcements for the Punjab (aside from
mobilising the British Army units in India).
Proponents defending the Viceroy could
argue that Mountbatten did not know of the
situation in the province nor have any con¬
trol in the Boundary Force’s mandate. How¬
ever, the evidence suggests otherwise.
Mountbatten was updated every week by the
Governor and he personally visited the
devastated areas. The intelligence was ac¬
curate, its analysis of the forthcoming
violence precise, but the Viceroy’s Govern¬
ment chose to ignore or reject it.

The civil war in the Punjab was perhaps
unavoidable but the British Government did
little to mitigate the consequences. Instead
of preparing for the worst in the Punjab,
Senior Government and Army officials were
concerned about the unknown future that
lay before them. It was understandable that

78

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

to have one’s career swept away by Inde¬
pendence was traumatic but these men for¬
got one important thing: their duty. Their
negligence permitted 8,000,000 people to
become refugees and over 200,000 (some
estimates total 600,000) people to lose their
lives. Perhaps no sizable body of troops
could have suppressed the civil war, but the
Viceroy and his generals did not attempt to
find additional reinforcements (e.g. from
Britain). Instead they did only what was ab¬
solutely necessary in crushing the civil war.
Unfortunately it was not enough to mitigate
the tragedy in the Punjab nor prevent the
failure of the Punjab Boundary Force.

Notes

1 Nicholas Mansergh, The Transfer of Power in India
1942-1947 . (Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, London,
1981, Vol. X), 686.

2 Lome J. Kavic, India’s Quest for Security . (Univer¬
sity of California Press, Berkeley, 1967), 82.

3 Nicholas Mansergh, The Transfer of Power in India
1942-1947. Vol. X, 1008.

4 G. R. Stevens, Fourth Indian Division. (Mclaren
and Son Ltd., Toronto, 1948), 403.

5 Ibid., 405.

6 S. Gurbachan Singh Talib, Muslim League Attack
on Sikhs and Hindus in the Punjab 1947. (Shiromani
Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee Amritsar, 1950),
73-74.

7 G. R. Stevens, Fourth Indian Division, 408.

8 Nicholas Mansergh, The Transfer of Power in India
1942-1947. Vol. X, 828.

9 Ibid., Vol. XII, 704, 735.

10 H. V. Hodson, The Great Divide. (Hutchinson of
London, London, 1969), 18.

1 1 Penderel Moon, Divide and Quit. (Chatto & Win-
dus, London, 1961), 270.

12 Nicholas Mansergh, The Transfer of Power in In¬
dia 1942-1947. Vol XII, 702.

13 Ibid., 737.

14 G. R. Stevens, Fourth Indian Division. 408.

15 Ibid., 406.

16 Francis Tuker, While Memory Serves . (Cassell,
London, 1950), 483.

17 2nd Battalion, 1st Gurkha Rifles (Regiment).

18 Nicholas Mansergh, The Transfer of Power in In¬
dia, 1942-1947. Vol. XII, 667.

19 Francis Tuker, While Memory Serves. 448-449.

20 Gregory Blaxland, The Regiments Depart.
(William Kinger, London, 1971), 49.

21 Ibid., 8.

22 Ibid., 20.

23 SIKHS’ “JUST RIGHTS,’’ The Times (London),
(August 27, 1947), 4.

24 G. R. Stevens, Fourth Indian Division. 406.

25 Nicholas Mansergh, The Transfer of Power in In¬
dia 1942-1947. Vol. XII, 625-626.

26 Ibid., 526.

27 Michael Edwardes, The Last Years of British India.
(World Publishing Co., Cleveland/New York, 1963),
156.

28 Nicholas Mansergh, The Transfer of Power in In¬
dia 1942-1947. Vol. X, 283.

29 H. V. Hodson, The Great Divide. 416.

THE GREEK DOCTRINE OF ETHOS MANIFESTED IN THE
PYTHAGOREAN AND EQUAL TEMPERAMENT INTERVALS IN THE
TERTIAN HARMONIC SYSTEM OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
AND SOME SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS

Peter Ayer

UW Center-Washington County
West Bend

Since music is an eternally present mode
of human expression, it follows that certain
factors which governed the human response
to music over 2,000 years ago may still be
operable today given the premise that both
music and man are the result of particular
natural phenomena with some common
origins.

It is part of the theoretician’s task to ex¬
plain not only the conventions and practices
inherent in music but to examine and explain
the origin, logic and paideutic reasons for
them. If the following ideas seem to develop
into a tacit defense of the tertian system, it
should also be borne in mind that there is no
implicit rejection of any other system.

The fact that one can rarely turn on a
radio randomly tuned at any time and hear
anything but music consisting of melodic
and harmonic material derived from the
most traditional tonic and applied dominant
tertian sonorities, seems to indicate that
there may be some cosmic or at least ter¬
restrial physical phenomenon governing this
state of affairs. Notwithstanding the ex¬
istence of a few stations specializing in the
classics or the esoteric, the preponderant
musical fare traveling the air waves is tonal
and based on the system derived from Zar-
lino’s “harmonia perfetta” further refined
and codified by Rameau’s fundamental bass
and theory of invertibility and subsequent
functional harmonic principles.

The Pythagorean ratios and consequent
intervals were known long before the har¬
monic age, and it is a curious fact that it
took so long, nearly 2,000 years for the ter¬
tian system to evolve and assert itself as the

predominant organizing factor in harmonic
structure.

A possible reason for the late emergence
of harmonic polyphony was the fact that the
ear of the ancient musician seemed to be
much more perceptive of subtle melodic
variations, variations consisting of all the
possible combinations of melodic intervals
within the Greek Greater Perfect System of a
15 tone-2 octive diatonic sequence. Some of
these intervals may have been lost to modern
usage. Other authorities on Greek music
state that the tones within the tetrachord
could be fixed by any one, two, or three of
an infinite number of intervalic possibilities
and while Pythagoras advocated the fixing
of these intervals by mathematical propor¬
tion, Aristoxenus asserted that the ear
should determine the proper placement.
Nonetheless, with the infinite number of
melodic possibilities available, perhaps the
ancient ear was not seeking additional com¬
plexities of sound.

The Greek modes, while still not very well
understood by contemporary musicologists,
seem to have been constructed from sets of
intervals which were not arbitarily deter¬
mined but were derived from observable, or
rather, experienced phenomena. It can be
reasonably assumed that the interval en¬
compassing the tetrachord of the Greek
system was easily derived from and observed
as the ratio 4:3 since this interval can easily
be produced by damping a vibrating string at
appropriate nodes i.e., the second and third
which produce the third and fourth partials
of the overtone series.

It is still not certain if the whole and half-

79

80

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

tone intervals within the tetrachord were the
9:8 and 16:15 ratios we use today in the
diatonic system. That the intervals used were
probably derived from the upper partials
seems reasonable.

Although the production of partials above
the 9th, 10th, 12th and 16th are difficult to
produce on a single string, it is probable that
the smaller interval, the 16/15 ratio semi¬
tone, was accepted as a logical extension of
the series. It also was needed to complete the
sequence of proportions necessary to the
perfect octave.

Much has been written about the sup¬
posedly vast differences between the har¬
monic conventions of western music and
those of other cultures which do not share
the use of the tonic-dominant tertian system.
However, these differences are not so great
as they seem when it is taken into account
that many of the so-called microtones and
intervals less than the 16:15 semi-tone are ac¬
tually inflections, or a sort of musica ficta,
as it were, and embellishments of a subtle
nature too slight to lend themselves to pre¬
cise notation. Certain oriental instrumental
music while employing a rather diverse set of
scale intervals at the same time uses drone
string accompaniment of perfect 5ths and
major thirds.

To think that the tonality of the tertian
system has run its course and is ready to give
way to a new atonality or new tonal system is
to deny the cosmic nature of the harmonic
series and man’s natural response to it,
whether he understands it or not.

The acceptance of the perfect 5th as the
first harmonic interval (the octave not quali¬
fying as an harmonic interval since it does
not progress) appears to be the result of the
universal nature of its occurrence in the har¬
monic series. The series will occur in a string
set in motion in Siam, Bangkok, and Cal¬
cutta in precisely the same way it will in
Madrid, Berlin, or Chicago. Its cosmic
nature is as certain as that of the color spec¬
trum which will result when light is passed
through a prism in the orient or the Occident.

Vocal music of primitive cultures employs
intervals of the harmonic series through the
sixth partial quite extensively and perhaps
was doing so at a time when the polyphonic
composers of the 13th and 14th centuries
were still reluctant to allow the 5:4 major
third to occur in a final cadence. Why were
composers so long in accepting these con¬
sonances and why was tertian homophony so
long in arriving? And since its arrival and
full acceptance in the 16th century why was
there such an active movement to reject it in
the early 20th century?

There are in use throughout civilization in¬
tervals of the major and minor third for
practical applications. Consider the train
whistle and the auto and truck horn. These
devices are usually tuned to a major or
minor third, never a perfect 5th or 8th. The
sound of the WW II CD warning siren was
distinctive for its minor third interval. Why
not an augmented 4th? Certainly the dis¬
sonance of this interval would have carried a
note of alarm. However, the affinity of the
human ear for the third interval seemed to
give it a priority over the more dissonant in¬
terval even for such drastic uses.

Natural tonality needed some adjustment
in the 17th and 18th centuries, not because
there was anything inherently wrong with it,
but because of the limitations of the key¬
board in accommodating a circle of pure fif¬
ths. A vocal ensemble singing perfectly in
tune starting in the key of A and modulating
through the eleven remaining keys through a
circle of absolutely perfect fifths will, upon
returning to the key of A, be only 6 cps sharp
(446/440). This translates to only Vi a cps
per key and few pieces progress through
more than 3, 4, or 5 in the standard reper¬
toire. Many choral directors would be happy
if their choruses, performing a lengthy work
modulating through three keys ended up
within 1 Vi cps of the starting pitch on page
one. Given the differences between indi¬
vidual tone quality and vibrato of most
voices in a mixed chorus, this discrepancy is
hardly noticeable, (and, it might be added,

1985]

Ayer — The Greek Doctrine of Ethos

81

preferable to some vibratos) Disregarding
for the moment the practical discrepancies
of the pure and tempered intervals, there is
room for consideration of the harmonic
series on the basis of its universal appeal to
the human ear. The first eight partials of the
series contain the essentials of the tertian
system. The primary harmonic progression
I-IV, V-I, IV-V, embody the logic contained
in the return to the fundamental of the third
and fourth partials, second and third par¬
tials, and the 7th and 8th, although the step¬
wise progression IV-V is not precisely the 8:7
ratio but rather the 9:8. However, it is possi¬
ble that the tertian system is not as closely
linked to the diatonic major scale as is
customarily thought. The diatonic scale is
derived and constructed from the series in a
manner which suits its own melodic pur¬
poses. But, the triad 4:5:6 — the harmonia
perfetta, is inherently logical, being an in¬
tegral and contiguous part of the series, and
hence, its universal appeal.

The ethos of Greek music was exclusively
related to melodic structures and never to the
harmonic aspect since, to the best of our
knowledge, all music of the period was
monophonic. More specifically, melodies of
Greek music supposedly each had their own
peculiar ethos or power to act upon man’s
sensibilities in such a way as to affect his
character or ethical behavior. To what extent
a person was thought to be affected or sim¬
ply emotionally responsive is not altogether
clear, although the manner in which they
were affected was carefully defined.

The ethos of a melody was dependent on
three factors: mode, genus, and rhythm. In
our time, it seems that another factor, har¬
mony, enters the picture. One should prob¬
ably not discount one other factor which has
crept into the picture in the decades since
WW II — electronically induced volume, a
dimension which, in many instances, tends
to obscure melody, harmony, and rhythm
and may even have an ethos of its own.

Now if we are to ascribe ethos to any of
the musical sounds of the contemporary

scene we should isolate those musical sounds
which seem to be most natural, or the result
of natural phenomena rather than those
which have been contrived, since Greek
melodies were constructed from supposedly
natural scales — or at least scales derived
from natural proportions.

The scales of Didymus, Pythagoras and
Ptolemy are all derived from certain propor¬
tions and ratios found in the harmonic series
but none of them are from a sequence of
contiguous tones in the series. Consequently,
the ear seems not to perceive these as natural
as the triad since the triad does occur in
natural contiguous order.

The acceptance of harmonic intervals oc¬
curred chronologically in precisely the same
order as their occurrence in the series. If this
process continues, and there is no reason to
believe it will not, intervals smaller than the
minor 2nd may become accepted as har¬
monic as well as melodic intervals.

A composition in traditional tertian har¬
mony is now thought of as in one or the
other of the only two harmonic modes left to
us in popular use; major and minor. Melodic
structures are born of these two primary
tonalities and the three forms of the minor
mode available to us do little to effect the
overall harmonic impact of minor sound.
That is to say, the triads derived from the
different modes are identical. The minor
triad cannot be found in the series at all in
contiguous form, only by omitting certain
tones 10-(1 1)-12-(13-14)-15, etc. Therefore,
it might be thought that the minor triad is
more a child of a contrived scale than an in¬
tegral part of the natural series.

Redfield, in “Music: a Science and an
Art,” says, “for purposes of melody alone,
it is probable that one scale is as good as
another — and the various scales that have
arisen at different times the world over prove
conclusively that the human ear can learn
almost any kind of scale.”

Consider the probability of a scale such as
the one in figure 1 resulting from the ex¬
periments of a fictitious ancient musician.

82

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

.Ql "
£1“ -

Given man’s predilection for symmetry in
other art forms, it seems not improbable that
someone at some time attempted construct¬
ing a scale or sequence of tones for melodic
purposes by this method of equipartition.

Kathleen Schlesinger discussed scales of
equipartite spacing in “The Greek Aulos,”
published in 1939. For the purposes of this
discussion, a fretboard on a single stringed
instrument serves as an example.

Stopping the string on frets spaced equal
distances apart produces certain tones which
can be used in our present diatonic system
and some that cannot. It is also apparent
that such a spacing produces a series which is
identical to the natural series; but inverted!
It is also apparent that the minor triad oc¬
curs here contiguously. Could not some
theorist, a counter-part of Zarlino’s, say,
studying this series, have declared the minor
triad the “harmonia perfetta’’ on the ground
that it does occur in a natural sequence of
tones in this inverted series? That someone
did not is probably due to the fact that an
equipartite spacing does not produce a
natural series, a natural series always
generating from the fundamental, and only
occurring in a medium left to freely vibrate
in a manner not affected by outside influ¬
ences (such as arbitrarily placed frets.)

The question now arises: what can the
discrepancies between equal temperament
intervals and pure intervals have to do with
ethos, if indeed there is any such thing, in
this day and age?

In the first place, few people today are
aware of the sensations of pure intervals.
Nearly all popular and commercial music is
heard in conjunction with keyboard har¬
monies and a great deal of the concert reper¬
toire is associated with equal temperament.
In fact, there are so few opportunities to
hear purely tuned intervals that the listener
must rely on other dimensions for the ethos
experience.

Some of the discrepancies existing be¬
tween equal temperament and true porpor-
tional tuning can be seen in figure 2. The
16/15 Pythagorean semi-tone cannot be used
to construct a chromatic (12-tone) scale. Nor
can the 9:8 whole tone.

There does not appear to be a name for
the discrepancy between the octave derived
from twelve 16/15 semi-tones and a pure 2/1
octave. Since the difference between four
perfect fifths and two octaves plus a major
third is distinguished by the name “comma
of Didymus,’’ perhaps this other difference
could be called the “comma of La Crosse,’’
or “West Bend,’’ the discrepancy being

1985]

Ayer — The Greek Doctrine of Ethos

83

greater than that of Didymus and therefore
deserving of a name.

At any rate, singing an ascending chro¬
matic scale starting at A220 and continuing
through 12 pure 16/15 semi-tones will result
in an octave nearly 1 Vi semi-tones sharp. We
do much better with the 9/8 whole tone
scale, the resulting octave in this case is iden¬
tical to the octave derived from the circle of
pure fifths, 6 cps sharper than A440.

It seems the closest we can come to a 12-
tone chromatic scale within an octave using
true natural proportions is to use the 18/17
semi-tone. This, however, gives us some¬
thing short of a perfect octave. Curiosity
compelled the investigation of a proportion
which would come close enough to give a
semi-tone accurate enough to produce a true
octave— or at least one true enough to have
practical use— the result was a highly im¬
practical 180,000:169,897 giving a factor of
1.0594654 (23 ten millionths greater than
12^2).

Certainly the tables in figure 2, with the
exception of the last column, are familiar to

everyone. The similarities and discrepancies
between the other columns have been dealt
with many times.

The point of these observations is that
since ethos was manifest in modes and inter¬
vals of pure and natural origin, then it
should presently be manifest in phenomena
of natural origin. In spite of the fact that
triads of the tempered system are no longer
pure, they still originate from — that is — their
tertian essence — originates from a purely
natural phenomena.

If music is to merely reflect man’s condi¬
tion, then we need not be concerned with its
ethos at all. On the other hand, if it is to
exert some manner of influence, then should
it not embody that essence most likely to
result in an ethos to which man— listeners —
might respond?

Hindemith felt that music should be used
— that is — serve some purpose other than
that of being performed in an esoteric
vacuum — Gebrauchs musik.

This requirement necessitates the use of a
recognizable harmonic vocabulary. He fur-

16/15

17/16

18/17

12vr

9/8

7/6

6/5

5/4

3/2

Ptolemy

Didymus

Equipartite

A

220

220

220

220

220

220

220

220

220

220

220

220

A#

234.66

233.75

232.94

233.08

234.93

9/8

9/8

234.66

B

250.31

248.36

246.64

246.94

247.5

247 . 5

247.5

247.5

251.43

C

266.99

263.88

261.15

261.63

256.66

264

264.3

10/9

10/9

c#

284.79

280.37

276.51

277.18

278.44

275

278.44

275

275

270.76

16/15

16/15

D

303.78

297.9

292.78

293.66

297.33

293.33

293.33

293.33

D#

324.04

316.52

310.00

311.13

313.24

299.44

316.8

313.24

9/8

9/8

320.00

E

345.64

336.30

328.23

329.63

330

330

330

F

368.68

357.32

347.55

349.23

352.4

343.75

352.4

10/9

9/8

352.

F#

393.26

379.65

367.99

369.99

349.35

380.16

371.25

366.66

371.25

G

419.48

403.38

389.64

392.00

396.45

396.45

9/8

10/9

391

G#

447.44

428.59

412.55

415.31

417.66

412.5

412.5

A

477.27

455.37

436.82

439.99

446.003

407.57

456.19

429.68

446.003

440

440

440

A#

466.16

493.88

704

880

1173

1760

3520

Fig. 2

84

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

ther asserted that tonality was as inevitable
as the law of gravity.

Composer Lou Harrison’s philosophy is
in the motto “—the overtone series is the
rule — world music is the font.”

Robert Baksa, in the Musical Heritage
Review makes several rather sensible
statements: 1) as a language, the tonal
system allows a wide range of expression; 2)
some composers who would prefer to work
with traditional materials and harmonic
vocabulary, avoid doing so because they ac¬
cept, as fact, statements that older tradi¬
tional, conventional methods, systems and
tonalities have been totally exhausted — and
finally; 3) he is convinced that after 25 years
of composing, only a little cleverness is
needed to come up with a convincing experi¬
mental piece — but to write a memorable
work within traditional means calls upon a
much more intense level of creativity.

Composers who have at their disposal
musicians of professional caliber to perform
their works have a factor working for them
which has little to do with the tonal system
they may have chosen for an experimental
piece. Certain instrumental and vocal tones
can be of such inherent beauty that combina¬
tions of tones having nothing to do with
natural proportion have an appeal based on
the quality of the tones alone and not their
tonal relationships.

Webber’s recently televised “Requiem”
received widely divergent reviews — some
positive — others negative— but aside from
the merits of the work itself, it seems to this
listener that any composition would have
seemed to have merit based simply on the
quality of sounds produced by the assembled
musicians of world-class caliber.

The infinite possibilities outside the tertian
tonal system present the composer with such
freedom that it requires considerable disci¬
pline to set some limitations and boundaries
in order to know where one might intend to
go. On the other hand, the very limitations
of tonality help assign some boundaries and
challenge the composer to say something
profound in a language that more than a
handful can understand — let alone enjoy. If
the contemporary composer sincerely wishes
to say something to a listening world —
would it not be well to say it at least part of
the time, in the mother tongue, so to speak.

Without a doubt, there are valid, naturally
generated principles waiting to be discovered
and upon which new tonalities and tech¬
niques will be built — and there still is a lot to
be said which has remained unspoken— in
the language we already know so well — and
with an ethos — however misunderstood — all
its own.

IS THERE A MORAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ACTIVE
AND PASSIVE EUTHANASIA?

Tom Tomlinson, Ph.D.
Medical Humanities Program
Michigan State University
East Lansing , Michigan

The purpose of this paper is to answer the
question whether there is a moral difference
between active and passive euthanasia. So
long as a competent, informed, adult patient
has requested it, does it matter whether what
he has requested is active euthanasia instead
of passive euthanasia?

Certainly institutionalized, traditional
medical ethics holds that there is a difference
between active and passive euthanasia. For
example, the American Medical Associa¬
tion’s House of Delegates has issued the rul¬
ing that “The intentional termination of the
life of one human being by another — mercy
killing— is contrary to that for which the
medical profession stands and is contrary to
the policy of the AM A (House of Delegates,
1973). The opposition to active euthanasia in
medical ethics goes back much further than
the AMA. When the physician pledges the
Hippocratic oath he promises that “I will
neither give a deadly drug to anybody if
asked for it nor will I make a suggestion to
this effect.”

It is interesting to note that these uncom¬
promising stands against active euthanasia
may be lagging somewhat behind important
shifts in public opinion. A series of Gallup
organization surveys between 1950 and 1973
asked the question “When a person has a
disease that cannot be cured, do you think
doctors should be allowed by law to end the
patient’s life by some painless means if the
patient and his family request it?” In 1950
60% of respondents thought that the doctor
should not be allowed to fulfill the patient’s
request whereas 40% thought that he
should. Twenty-three years later the distri¬
bution of opinion had flip-flopped, so that

in 1973 only 43% believed that physcians
should not have that discretion, while 57%
thought that the physician should be allowed
to end the patient’s life by painless means
(Public Opinion, 1983). Within society as a
whole there is clearly a sharp division of opi¬
nion about the relative acceptability of vol¬
untary active euthanasia.

So is there “a moral difference” between
active and passive euthanasia? First of all we
have to be clear about what question we are
asking. One way of getting clearer about that
is to be clear about what kind of answer we
may be looking for. There are two kinds of
“NO” answers that might be given. The first
kind of “NO” answer would say that active
euthanasia and passive euthanasia are “mor¬
ally equivalent.” That is, in any situation in
which passive euthanasia would be justified
active euthanasia would be justified also,
and vice-versa.

The other kind of “NO” answer that
might be given to the question is to say that
there is no moral difference between active
euthanasia and passive euthanasia that can
justify permitting the use of passive eutha¬
nasia, but absolutely prohibit the use of ac¬
tive euthanasia. In this second sense of the
question we are asking a question about pol¬
icy: whether the current policy absolutely
prohibiting active euthanasia can be morally
justified.

When I ask the question whether there is a
moral difference between active euthanasia
and passive euthanasia I will be asking it in
the second of these two senses. I will be
focusing on this second sense for two rea¬
sons. First of all the claim of moral equiva¬
lence of active and passive euthanasia is

85

86

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

probably false, since we can readily think of
circumstances under which passive eutha¬
nasia would be justified, but active eutha¬
nasia would not be. For example, we might
imagine a patient who while competent made
a clear request for some form of passive
euthanasia. She subsequently lapses into un¬
consciousness from which she will not re¬
cover. Perhaps the patient asked that she not
be put on a respirator under certain circum¬
stances. Such a request might well justify a
decision to withhold the respirator under the
circumstances specified by the patient. But
the administration of active euthanasia
would not thereby also be justified. The pa¬
tient might, for example, have strong reli¬
gious objections against “mercy killing,” in
which case the administration of active
euthanasia would be an affront to her
values. The other problem with the first
sense of the question is that it does not
directly address the social policy that aims to
allow some forms of passive euthanasia but
absolutely prohibits active euthanasia. Cer¬
tainly if it were true that active and passive
euthanasia were morally equivalent, it would
follow that we could not justify a policy that
allows one but prohibits the other. But if ac¬
tive and passive euthanasia should turn out
not to be morally equivalent in the sense that
I have described, it does not follow that the
policy of prohibiting one but allowing the
other is morally or socially justifiable. For
example, it might be argued that active and
passive euthanasia are not “morally equiva¬
lent” because active euthanasia offers op¬
portunities for abuse — only active eutha¬
nasia can be abused by killing healthy people
who don’t want to die (More on this argu¬
ment later). But even if this is true, it doesn’t
follow that it is impossible to develop an ac¬
ceptable policy permitting active euthanasia.
All that follows is that it will have to address
some additional concerns than those dealt
with by the current policy permitting passive
euthanasia.

In what follows I will want to argue that
there is no systematic moral difference be¬

tween active and passive euthanasia that will
justify allowing some acts of passive eutha¬
nasia, but at the same time prohibit all acts
of active euthanasia. To show that I intend
to use the following strategy.

The first step in the strategy is to establish
that if there is a moral difference between ac¬
tive and passive euthanasia, then acts of ac¬
tive euthanasia must meet two conditions:
Condition 1 . Acts of active euthanasia must
have some characteristic not shared by acts
of passive euthanasia. Clearly, if active and
passive euthanasia were exactly alike in all
respects there could be no justification for
taking a different moral or social attitude
toward active euthanasia. If we continued to
have a different attitude, it would be a dif¬
ference for which no reasons could be given.
Our rejection of active euthanasia would
then have the character of a superstition or
taboo. Condition 2. Such a unique charac¬
teristic of active euthanasia must imply a
significant moral difference between the
two. The reason for this second condition is
to rule out the use of morally irrelevant or
insignificant differences. A hyperbolic ex¬
ample of this would be if someone were to
claim that the difference rested on the fact
that active euthanasia was abbreviated AE
and passive euthanasia was abbreviated PE.
This is a difference that satisfies the first
condition, but it is not a morally significant
difference that would justify a different
social policy on one than on the other.

If these two conditions are accepted (I
won’t argue for them any further), then the
second step in the strategy is to show that
none of the reasons which have been given to
justify the prohibition of active euthanasia
meet both conditions. If this can be accom¬
plished, then we will have all the steps of an
argument which shows that there is no moral
difference:

1. If there is a moral difference between
active and passive euthanasia, then
conditions 1 and 2 must be met.

2. Conditions 1 and 2 cannot be met

1985]

Tomlinson — Euthanasia

87

(none of the reasons put forward sat¬
isfy both conditions).

3. Therefore, there is no moral difference
between active and passive euthanasia.

It should be noted that this is an “open-
ended” form of argument, since not every
possible difference can be canvassed. In the
remainder of the paper, I intend to describe
some of the arguments that have been of¬
fered for making the distinction between ac¬
tive and passive euthanasia and show why
they fail the conditions that I have set forth.

Probably the argument that’s offered
most frequently points out that passive
euthanasia is “letting die” whereas active
euthanasia is active “killing.” Since it is
always wrong to kill an innocent human be¬
ing, active euthanasia but not passive eutha¬
nasia must always be wrong.

I think that this argument meets condi¬
tion 1 but not condition 2. This can be
demonstrated using an example provided
by James Rachels (Rachels, 1975). Rachels
describes two evil uncles named Smith and
Jones. Each of these uncles has a young
cousin and each of the uncles stands to gain
a considerable inheritance if the young boy
suffers an unfortunate accident. Each of the
evil uncles therefore forms the intention of
drowning the child when he is taking his
bath. And each of the evil uncles enters the
boy’s bathroom fully intending to hold his
head under water until he drowns. The one
evil uncle Smith goes into the bathroom and
forces the child’s head under water until the
child dies from drowning. The second evil
uncle Jones enters his cousin’s bathroom
with the same intention, but just as he walks
in the door the young boy slips on a bar of
soap and hits his head on the side of the tub
so that he is knocked unconscious. Since this
fits in very neatly with Jones’ plans he just
stands by, does nothing, and lets the boy
drown.

As Rachels points out there is a difference
between what Smith and Jones did. What
Smith does is an active killing but what

Jones does is a passive letting die. But
Rachels asserts— and I agree— that that
makes no difference to our moral evaluation
of Smith and Jones. We think that what each
of them did is equally reprehensible. The
bare fact that one is a “killing” does not
make it morally worse than the other and the
bare fact that the other can be described as a
“letting die” does not make it less morally
objectionable.

The example is not an attempt to draw a
direct analogy between what Smith or Jones
did and what doctors do when they allow
passive euthanasia. Doctor’s intentions are
almost always more benevolent. All that the
example is intended to show is that the dis¬
tinction between killing and letting die is by
itself not a reliable guide to what’s morally
justifiable or defensible. If indeed the exam¬
ple shows that this distinction is not a moral¬
ly reliable one, then we should not use it un¬
critically to try to mark a moral difference
between active and passive euthanasia. There
must be some other difference beyond the
bare fact that one is a killing and one is a let¬
ting die if indeed we are to justify our dif¬
ferent moral attitudes toward active eutha¬
nasia.

This leads me to a second argument which
is sometimes brought forward to articulate a
bit more what the difference is between kill¬
ing and letting die in the medical context.
When we let a patient die, it is said, it is the
disease or the condition that is the cause of
the patient’s death and so the physician is
not responsible for the death in the same
way that he or she would be if death were
caused by a lethal injection (as in active
euthanasia).

This argument meets condition 1 , but not
condition 2: if this identifies a difference, it
is not a morally relevant difference. Even if
we admit that there is a difference in the
“causes” of the patient’s death this cannot
show that passive euthanasia is permissible
whereas active euthanasia is not. This con¬
clusion would follow only if we equivocate
with the word “responsible.” The following

88

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

argument is an example of how this equivo¬
cation works.

(a) When a patient is allowed to die it is
the disease that is responsible! for his
death.

(b) When the disease is responsible! for
the death, then the physician is not
responsible2 for the death.

(c) Therefore when the patient is allowed
to die (passive euthanasia), the physi¬
cian is not responsible2 for the death.

In the first premise of this argument the
word “responsible” is being used as a syno¬
nym for “causes.” This use of the word “re¬
sponsible” is morally neutral, just as it’s
morally neutral in the sentence “spontane¬
ous combustion was ‘responsible’ for last
night’s fire.” However, when we get down
to the conclusion of the argument, the word
“responsible” is not being used in a morally
neutral way and is not being used as merely a
synonym for “causes.” “Responsible” in
the conclusion is a synonym for “blamewor¬
thy.” The only way we can link these two
distinct senses of “responsible” is by the use
of a claim like premise (b). But such a claim
is clearly false. Cases of gross negligence by
physicians would be an example in which the
disease or underlying lethal condition was
the cause of the patient’s death and yet in
those cases the physician would remain
blameworthy for that patient’s death. The
fact then that in passive euthanasia the
disease rather than the physician is the im¬
mediate cause of the patient’s death does not
by itself provide us any grounds for relieving
the physician of moral responsibility and
certainly cannot provide any grounds for
justifying a physician’s decision to withhold
a potentially life saving medical treatment.
The physician’s merely indirect causal role in
passive euthanasia does not relieve him of
moral responsibility. A physician who lets a
patient die can be morally blameworthy for
that action just as much as a physician who
deliberately kills a patient.

A third argument that is often heard
points out that in medicine one can never be
sure of the diagnosis or prognosis for any
particular patient. Medicine is not an exact
science and physicians are the first to admit
that they make mistakes. Every physician as
well as every subscriber to Reader’s Digest
can report anecdotes describing cases of pa¬
tients who miraculously recovered. The
argument is then made that the moral differ¬
ence between active and passive euthanasia is
that in active euthanasia such a lucky break
(the miraculous recovery) is denied the pa¬
tient who has been killed by his doctor. The
philosopher Tom Beauchamp presents a ver¬
sion of this argument when he points out
that if we prohibit active euthanasia we will
save those people who are wrongly diag¬
nosed as hopeless, but who would have sur¬
vived with a good outcome even if treat¬
ment had been stopped. (Beauchamp)

I think this alleged moral difference fails
both conditions 1 and 2. It fails condition 1
if the significant difference is supposed to be
the fact that there will be a greater number
of unnecessary or tragic deaths if we permit
active euthanasia than if we permit only pas¬
sive euthanasia. If this is a real difference
between active and passive euthanasia, it’s
also a real difference between passive eutha¬
nasia and aggressive treatment. That is, we
can make exactly the same kind of compari¬
son between permitting passive euthanasia
and prohibiting passive euthanasia. Beau¬
champ admits that a policy that permits
passive euthanasia runs the risk of allowing
tragic deaths. If avoiding unnecessary or
tragic deaths justifys a policy prohibiting ac¬
tive euthanasia, it would seem on exactly the
same score to justify a policy of prohibiting
passive euthanasia as well. This alleged dif¬
ference marks no real difference between ac¬
tive and passive euthanasia.

It also fails condition 2, because even if we
assume that the “tragic deaths” are con¬
nected only with active euthanasia, this
would not be a morally significant difference
that would justify prohibiting active eutha-

1985]

Tomlinson — Euthanasia

89

nasia on request. The patient who is re¬
questing active euthanasia can knowingly ac¬
cept the risk of false diagnosis and prog¬
nosis, which is just what well-informed pa¬
tients do when they are asked to make any
kind of medical treatment or non-treatment
decisions.

A third argument that is offered against
permitting active euthanasia claims that ac¬
tive euthanasia offers a much greater likeli¬
hood of abuse than passive euthanasia,
where abuse means killing patients who
don’t want to die. We can find this argu¬
ment, for example, in a letter to the New
England Journal of Medicine from Dr. Fer¬
nando Vescia, in response to James Rachel’s
article: “Central to the condemnation of ac¬
tive euthanasia is the lack of protection from
when this choice would be motivated by
other than charitable purposes.” (Vescia,
1975)

This argument may meet condition num¬
ber 2, because certainly the likelihood of
abuse is a morally relevant consideration in
deciding whether or not to permit a certain
practice. If indeed active euthanasia offers
a much greater likelihood of abuse than
passive euthanasia, we would have reason
not to allow active euthanasia even on re¬
quest. At least this would be so if in addi¬
tion there were no practical mechanisms
for reducing the additional threat of abuse
that active euthanasia might pose. But even
if this argument meets condition 2, it does
not meet condition 1, because the potential
for abuse does not mark a real difference
between active and passive euthanasia.

The worst abuse would be to cause the
death of patients whose death was avoidable
or forestallable, and who didn’t want to die.
But one can do this with passive euthanasia
as well as with active euthanasia simply by
withholding potentially life-prolonging
treatments from people who want to con¬
tinue to live. Indeed, you might argue that
abuse of this kind would be easier with
passive euthanasia since it would often be
plausible in the circumstances to attribute

the death to the patient’s grave condition,
rather than to a physician’s decision not to
act. I think there is indeed evidence of this
kind of abuse of passive euthanasia.

There may, for example, be reason to be¬
lieve that there is some abuse of passive
euthanasia in the institutionalized elderly. In
a study appearing in the New England Jour¬
nal of Medicine by Brown and Thompson
(1979) it was found that of a hundred and
ninety patients in nine nursing homes who
had suspected bacterial infections (probably
pneumonia, in most cases) antibiotics which
probably would have resolved the bacterial
infection were withheld from 81 patients.
Predictably, of those 81 who were not
treated a much larger proportion subse¬
quently died of that infection. In how many
of these 81 cases had permission to withhold
treatment been granted by the patient
and/or the patient’s family? Unfortunately
Brown and Thompson don’t ask the ques¬
tion directly but some of the other informa¬
tion they gather can provide some grounds
for making an inference. Usually when per¬
mission to withhold a treatment has been ex¬
plicitly sought by the physician and granted
by the patient and/or the patient’s family,
that permission is noted in the patient’s
medical records as a very important form of
legal protection. Brown & Thompson did
determine the cases in which a notation had
been made in the patient’s medical records
of the physician’s intention to withhold the
antibiotic treatment, which is still not quite
the same as a documentation of consent. As
it turned out in only 23 of the 81 cases was
there such a notation. The proportion 23/81
probably represents a liberal estimate of the
proportion of cases in which consent had ex¬
plicitly been granted. That leaves a very large
proportion of cases in which abuse of pas¬
sive euthanasia should at least be strongly
suspected.

Despite abuse such as this, the response
has not been (and should not be) to call for
the prohibition of voluntary passive eutha¬
nasia. The more defensible approach is to

90

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

develop ways to prevent or lessen the abuse.
Active euthanasia is just like passive eutha¬
nasia in that it, too, poses a threat of abuse.
But if the real and present threat of abuse
can’t justify prohibiting passive euthanasia,
then neither can it justify prohibiting active
euthanasia.

The final argument that I wish to consider
is one that I myself made a couple of years
ago but have come to reject (Tomlinson,
1981). The argument points out that permit¬
ting voluntary passive euthanasia of compe¬
tent adults is justified by the existence of a
right to refuse treatment which physicians
must recognize whether they agree with the
decision of the patient or not. There is by
contrast no analogous “right to be killed’’
that would justify active euthanasia because
such a “right” would require that physi¬
cians actively participate in an action that
they may deem immoral. The patient, how¬
ever, can’t have a “right” that the doctor
violate his or her conscience. The upshot of
the argument is that the moral difference
between active and passive euthanasia is that
patients have a right to passive euthanasia,
which they can demand of physicians, but
they don’t have any such right to active
euthanasia which entitles them to physician
cooperation.

Although I once thought that this was a
very significant difference between active
and passive euthanasia, I no longer believe
so. I think that the argument violates both
conditions 1 and 2.

First of all I think it fails condition 1
because it does not mark a real difference
between active and passive euthanasia.
Notice that the argument proposes that the
morally relevant distinction between active
euthanasia and passive euthanasia is based
on the degree of moral responsibility placed
upon the physician. When the responsibility
is solely the patient’s (as in passive eutha¬
nasia) it is more defensible to permit it as a
matter of policy than when responsibility is
“shared” with the physician or thrust upon
him (as in active euthanasia). But if this is a

genuine distinction that justifies us in accep¬
ting one form of euthanasia but in rejecting
another it seems to condemn most passive
euthanasia as well. The only form of eutha¬
nasia that would involve no supporting ac¬
tivity or cooperation from the physician or
the hospital is when the patient is permitted
to haul himself out of bed and stagger to the
elevator under his own power. As a matter
of fact, however, we think that patients have
a right to something more than this when we
advocate a policy permitting passive eutha¬
nasia, even though anything more than this
is going to require some supporting activity
or cooperation from the physician. If the
logic of this argument was acceptable, for
example, the policy of the University of
Southern California Burn Center would
have to be rejected. There, burn victims
who have burns so severe that their survival
is unprecedented are fully counseled on the
alternative of no treatment, and if they elect
that option they are provided with a private
room, unlimited visitation, and full pain
relief. (Imbus and Zawacki, 1977)

I also think this argument fails condition
2. Even if there is a real distinction here be¬
tween active and passive euthanasia so that
all and only forms of passive euthanasia are
protected by a right that obligates physicians
to respect the patient’s request, how can that
show that only passive euthanasia should be
permitted? It shows only that a patient can’t
justifiably demand that a physician kill him
as he can demand to be left alone. But this
doesn’t show at all what would be objection¬
able about a mutually agreed upon active
euthanasia. That is, the argument doesn’t
show why we shouldn’t or couldn’t have
policies regarding active euthanasia which
would be similar to those we now have gov¬
erning abortions and sterilizations. With
abortion and sterilization we can also point
out that no patient has a right to demand of
a particular physician that he or she perform
an abortion or sterilization when that would
violate that physician’s conscience. But all
this point justifies is policies permitting peo-

1985]

Tomlinson — Euthanasia

91

pie to refuse to perform abortions or sterili¬
zations. Conscientious refusals cannot jus¬
tify the prohibition of abortions or steriliza¬
tions, any more than they could justify the
prohibition against active euthanasia.

These are all the arguments I have space to
review. I believe I have successfully shown
that each of them fails one or both of the
conditions I’ve set out. If the same is true of
any other plausible arguments that might be
offered, then I think we will have a well-
grounded basis for changing our moral at¬
titude regarding active euthanasia.

Notes

1 House of Delegates of the American Medical
Association, statement issued December 4, 1973.

2 Rachels, James, “Active and Passive Euthanasia,’’
1975: New England Journal of Medicine 192, pp. 78-80.

3 Beauchamp, Tom L., “A Reply to Rachels on Ac¬
tive and Passive Euthanasia,” 1979: revised for Medi¬
cal Responsibility, Wade L. Robison and Michael S.
Pritchard, eds., Humana Press, pp. 181-194.

4 Vescia, Fernando, correspondence, 1975: New
England Journal of Medicine 292, p. 865.

5 Brown, Norman K. and Donovan J. Thompson,
“Nontreatment of Fever in Extended Care Facilities,”
1979: New England of Medicine 300, pp. 1246-1250.

6 Public Opinion, December/January 1983, p. 39.

7 Ernie W. D. Young, correspondence, 1975: New
England Journal of Medicine 292, pp. 864-865.

8 Tomlinson, Tom, “The Moral Difference Between
Active and Passive Euthanasia,” 1981: Unpublished
manuscript.

9 Imbus, Sharon H. and Bruce E. Zawacki,
“Autonomy for Burned Patients When Survival is Un¬
precedented,” 1977: New England Journal of Medicine
297, pp. 308-311.

SOME DISTINCTIONS BETWEEN ACTIVE
AND PASSIVE EUTHANASIA

Daniel A. Putman
Department of Philosophy
University of Wisconsin-Fox Valley

I wish to argue that there is a significant
moral difference between passive euthanasia
(PE) and active euthanasia (AE). In doing so
I will deal in various ways with the issues of
intentions, responsibility, uncertainty in
prognosis, and the effects of actions on a
person’s overall character.

Two questions stand out regarding the
issue of intentions. Are the intentions in AE
and PE the same? And, even if they were the
same, or very similar, does that fact make
each of the means equal? In other words,
does a good intention (wanting to help the
patient die a peaceful death) imply that there
is no moral difference in the actions used to
achieve that goal? Let’s look at the second
question first. In the Smith-Jones example
cited by Professor Tomlinson, “killing” and
“letting die” have the same intention, the
death of a boy. 1 The analogy is supposed to
imply that the intention of a physician (in
this case, a morally good one — the peaceful
end of suffering) makes “killing” and “let¬
ting die” equal as means to achieve the goal.
In the Smith-Jones case, it does seem clear
that there is no moral difference between
killing and letting die. Both Smith and Jones
are equally culpable. But I would argue that
a physician’s situation is different. We can
assume the physician wants to be ethical,
and moral integrity means both means and
ends must be examined. In the literature,
analogies used to equate AE and PE are
almost always blatantly immoral acts in
which the end makes all means equal. This
skews the discussion because if we assume
moral integrity to begin with, the end does
not automatically justify the means. If I
want to deceive you, how I do it is simply a
matter of how best to achieve my immoral

goal. The means is already completely
tainted by the end. But if I want to be honest
with you, the means I use is independently
very important because the means itself may
have moral dimensions. For example, con¬
sider a physician telling a patient he or she is
terminally ill. The goal, honesty and respect
for a person’s right to know, does not mean
it is morally all right for the physician to use
any means of telling the patient. The means
itself could be very harmful and destructive.
Compare this with a physician who wants to
cover up negligence, and one can see how
immorality links means and end as one unit
while moral consciousness puts an obligation
on the person to view each independently.
The example of Smith and Jones killing a
child in the bathroom by one of two means
sheds very little light on a situation where an
individual with moral integrity is trying to
decide the most moral means to bring about
a person’s death. Examples of immorality
tend to flatten out distinction in means.

What then are some of the differences in
the means? The intention of the active eutha-
nizer is expressed by a very clear end-in-
view, the death of the individual at a time
and place ultimately under the control of the
physician. John Dewey pointed out perhaps
better than anyone that ends-in-view express
the character of the individual as well as
form that character in the future.2 If I
choose to steal, I am expressing both the
character I have and at the same time form¬
ing my character. Part of a reflective moral
decision is to consider the effect on one’s
own moral integrity. There is a very selfish,
narrow way of interpreting this — how can I
best feel smug about myself or give a good
impression? I do not mean that. What I

92

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Putman — Active and Passive Euthanasia

93

mean is reflection at a very deep level about
what kind of person you want to become. As
Sartre said time and time again, we become
our choices. I think one of the things that
bothers many physicians about active eutha¬
nasia is the potentially formative effect on
character and what it will do to their overall
view of human life if AE somehow became
an accepted, even standard part of their ac¬
tions. Active euthanasia can be a genuine ex¬
pression of the need to relieve suffering, but
what will it do to the character of an in¬
dividual whose moral ideal is dedicated to
preserving human life if it becomes part of
his or her intention to actively take life?
What does a physician become when his or
her empathy lies in caring for life and he or
she becomes an active agent in taking it?
Moral conservatism is justified when it
comes to killing because of the formative ef¬
fect of the means on the character of in¬
dividuals. This is far more than a “public
image” problem for the physician. Are they
actually going to be morally better people by
taking someone’s life— regardless of the
reason? (Does the social approval of the ex¬
ecutioner’s action make what he does irrele¬
vant to his moral character?) Because of the
effect on the agent of killing another person,
our intuitions imply that, even in a tragic
situation, such an act must be a last-ditch ef¬
fort of desperation. My point here is that
this intuition is justified.

The effect on an individual can be directly
tied to the moral tradition of the West. It is
useful here to borrow W. D. Ross’s distinc¬
tion between prima facie and actual moral
duties.3 A prima facie moral duty is one that,
all other things being equal, ought to be
followed. For example, all other things being
equal, lying is morally wrong and ought not
be done. The moral tradition of the West has
as one of its basic principles the sanctity and
preservation of human life. The prima facie
rule against taking life ranks higher than
probably all other such principles and is
countermanded only in certain specified
situations such as self-defense. Even in self¬

defense it is generally agreed that killing the
aggressor should be a last resort and that, if
killing is not necessary, other forms of self¬
protection are clearly morally superior. The
end, though it may be morally good — pro¬
tection of self or family — does not make all
means equal. In a situation such as physi¬
cians face in which the moral agent is forced
to choose between actively taking life and
letting someone die and these are the only
two options to achieve the same goal (a
peaceful “good death”), other factors being
equal, not doing anything is the morally
superior act. There may be times when AE is
the only genuine moral alternative. But this
does not make killing and letting die morally
the same any more than killing someone as a
last resort to protect the lives of one’s
children makes killing as a principle morally
equal with other ways of protecting one’s
family. Where AE and PE are both options,
PE recognizes the moral principle of the
sanctity of life in the only way available to
the person in that situation and, based on
that principle, does not actively violate the
integrity of the self. Respect for the moral
principle of preserving life translates in con¬
crete circumstances into a prima facie rule
against AE whenever life cannot be main¬
tained and PE is a viable alternative.

The intention of the active euthanizer ties
into the causal nature of the act. We normal¬
ly see the causal feature of moral agency as
critical. Degrees of responsibility have
always had important ethical implications.
Active euthanasia makes the doctor the suf¬
ficient condition for the death of the other
person. The intention serves to pull together
and put under the control of the physician all
the conditions necessary for bringing about
death. On the other hand, the role of the
physician in passive euthanasia is as a
necessary condition only. The patient’s
death requires that the physician not do
anything and that act of omission is only one
(and frequently it is not even certain it is one)
of the necessary conditions. Passive eutha¬
nasia puts the physician in the role of being

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[Vol. 73

one of a number of necessary conditions for
the death of the other; active euthanasia re¬
quires the physician to be the sufficient con¬
dition.

The difference between being a necessary
or a sufficient condition and the link be¬
tween intention and sufficiency in an act is at
the heart of many of the objections to AE.
In a situation involving moral uncertainty,
active euthanasia usurps all options. Pro¬
fessor Tomlinson’s claim that both PE and
AE foreclose an indefinite number of op¬
tions for the patient deliberately blurs the
meaning of “indefinite.” In AE all options
are closed. In PE almost all options close for
the patient. When one is talking about end¬
ing someone’s life, that distinction is
crucial. Decisions involving PE are fre¬
quently clouded by a number of factors.
Physicians have told me that in many cases
of PE length of life and quality of remaining
life are not at all certain. Moreover, cases of
people who were “allowed to die” but
recovered are known to most physicians and
the rare but actual possibility of this occur¬
ring makes for an enormous difference in the
moral texture of a large number of cases.
The lack of infallibility is real for physicians.
To be the sufficient condition for the loss of
someone’s future is more than enough to
rule out AE in which possibilities are never
even allowed.

Are the intentions in AE & PE really the
same? I have implied above that they may
not be. I think the strongest case for the dif¬
ference in intentions has been made by Phi¬
lippa Foot.4 Pulling the plug on a respirator
will allow a patient to die but if the patient
lives we do not sense that we have failed.
Because the individual did not die we do not
subsequently feel an obligation to kill the
person; the original intention was to allow to
die. On the other hand, the failure of an in¬
jection to kill someone is a failure to produce
the result directly intended by the agent. Be¬
ing what it is, the moral intention would
oblige us to try again. Foot’s point is that

having a role in the apparent inevitability of
someone else’s death varies significantly
from directly intended causal agency.5
Foreseeing death, allowing it to happen, is a
fundamentally different intention from be¬
ing the sufficient condition for death. It is
simplistic to equate in principle the inten¬
tions in active and passive euthanasia and
completely unjust to attribute a failure of
moral nerve to someone opting for passivity
rather than action. Examples such as the
Smith-Jones case or those that equate the
responsibility involved in negligence to that
of PE assume the intentions in AE and PE
are the same. My point is that they are not
identical and that the difference between
them has critical moral connotations. My
further point is that, even in cases where the
actual intentions are clearly synonymous
(and clearly good), that does not make all
means morally equal.

Finally, what should be the physician’s
role if a patient requests active euthanasia?
The situation is essentially the same as any
other request of a morally complex and dif¬
ficult act. Since it is a request for a second
party to counter a basic moral principle and
since the request involves the integrity of the
agent’s moral self, patients should assume
no prior claim on physicians’ cooperation.
The cooperation of a physician or loved one
in helping a person die would depend on the
agent evaluating a number of factors, in¬
cluding the request to die as an expression of
the patient’s autonomy. Autonomy alone
may be sufficient for having someone not do
anything to your body but autonomy alone
is not sufficient to require another person to
actively perform an action, especially when
the action may countermand a long-standing
moral principle. Contrary to Professor Tom¬
linson, the difference in causal responsibility
between AE and PE makes this issue a real
one in cases of voluntary euthanasia. Be¬
cause of this difference and the implications
cited earlier in the paper, passive euthanasia
is much more easily justifiable by request

1985]

Putman — Active and Passive Euthanasia

95

than active euthanasia. Put another way, in
the physician-patient relationship, just as the
patient cannot assume on the physician to
actively take life, the physician cannot force
on the patient full medical treatment against
his or her wishes. Both physician and patient
have prior claims to say “no” for the same
reason — the integrity of the self. In practice
passive euthanasia is frequently a compro¬
mise between the physician and patient as
distinct autonomous agents.

I have tried to show that there are signifi¬
cant moral distinctions to be made between
AE & PE and that, if correct, these distinc¬
tions are relevant in cases of voluntary re¬
quests for AE. While it’s possible that AE
may be the most necessary and humane act
at times (just as lying may be), I think it

critical that the moral distinctions be made
manifest before any action is taken in a par¬
ticular situation.

Notes

1 James Rachels, “Active and Passive Euthanasia,”
in Thomas Mappes and Jane Zembaty, Biomedical
Ethics ( New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981), pp. 349-50.

2 See John Dewey, Theory of the Moral Life (New
York: Irvington Press, 1980), especially chapter 1, sec¬
tions 4 & 5, and chapter 6.

3 W. D. Ross, The Right and the Good (Oxford: Ox¬
ford University Press, 1930), pp. 18-33.

4 Philippa Foot, “The Problem of Abortion and the
Doctrine of Double Effect” and “Euthanasia” in Phi¬
lippa Foot, Virtues and Vices (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1978), pp. 19-32 and 33-61 .

5 See Foot’s example of the driver of a runaway tram
in “The Problem of Abortion . . . ,” pp. 23-24.

FAINT SCREAMS:

SWIFT’S “A BEAUTIFUL YOUNG NYMPH” AND THE CRITICS

William R. Drennan
English Department

University of Wisconsin Center — Baraboo/Sauk County

The proposal behind this essay is modest
enough: I hope to demonstrate, by means of
a close look at the strategies of the text itself,
that the appropriate affective response to
Swift’s “A Beautiful Young Nymph Going
to Bed” is one of revulsion toward the
poem’s central character, rather than em-
pathetic and sentimental compassion for
her. Of course, this is not to deny the possi¬
bility of other readings. Good poetry is suffi¬
ciently ambiguous to evoke a variety of
significant responses, some of which may
have been quite unforeseen by the poet; the
text outlives the writer and thereby becomes
subject to critical attitudes which may vary
widely from those of the age in which it was
produced. But my purpose is to uncover that
reading of the poem which Swift himself
most likely intended us to have, so that when
we deviate from that reading, we have at
least some idea of the primal Swiftian tenets
we are manipulating.

“A Beautiful Young Nymph” is common¬
ly linked to three other so-called “excremen-
tal” poems — “The Lady’s Dressing Room,”
“Strephon and Chloe,” and “Cassinus and
Peter”— all produced by the poet during
1730 and 1731. 1 It seems to me that this con¬
nection is a tenuous one, although the ways
in which the poems are thematically similar
do deserve some comment.

Swift’s mad persona in A Tale of a Tub
observes that happiness resides in “a per¬
petual Possession of being well Deceived.”
But it is always and everywhere the role of
the satirist to force us to look beyond those
comfortable constructs by which we seek to
delude ourselves into a facile happiness.
These four poems are allied in aiming at a
stripping away of such obfuscation. They

are similar as well as in their overt physical-
ity, in their insistence upon rubbing the
reader’s nose in the most vile (and funda¬
mental) aspects of the human body, and in
their common horror at the rank grossness
of human flesh when it is divested of all
ornament and is operating in its natural
state.

But there are important differences among
the poems as well. “The Lady’s Dressing
Room,” “Strephon and Chloe,” and “Cas¬
sinus and Peter” all have as their “heroes”
sentimentally-inclined poetasters who derive
ultimately from the romantic Petrarchan tra¬
dition. They are characters who so deceive
themselves about the supposedly angelic
natures of their lovers that they leave them¬
selves open to being psychologically shat¬
tered by the contravening evidence of the
ladies’ stark physicality. Excrement in these
poems serves the purpose of what we might
call rhetorical gravitation. By means of
substituting parodic images of physicality
and elimination for the anticipated romantic
description, Swift undercuts these swains’
delusive notions — notions which were sup¬
ported by the sentimental literary conven¬
tions of the day. Women here are not so
much castigated for defecating, as are their
lovers for supposing them incapable of it.

Excrement in these three poems therefore
helps to fulfill the traditional corrective aims
of satire. When, at the close of “The Lady’s
Dressing Room,” we see Strephon “blind/
To all the charms of Female kind” (11.
129-30), we understand that he is a satiric
victim who parallels the condition of Lemuel
Gulliver at the end of his Travels. Both
characters are ridiculed for having posited a
vision of mankind which is finally supra-

96

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Drennan — Faint Screams

97

human and which belies the essential nature
of the race. A recent article tries to deny this
thematic kinship between Strephon and Gul¬
liver by arguing that “Gulliver entertains no
illusions about the beastly Yahoos while
Strephon has been misled by romantic
love.”2 But this misses the point entirely.
Just as the discovery of Celia’s excremental
aspects leads to Strephon’s misogyny, so
Gulliver’s discovery of his own kinship with
the Yahoos — most clearly expressed in the
swimming hole incident of Book IV— leads
to an unreasonable misanthropy. Gulliver’s
world-view is so blighted by this stripping
away of illusion that he is blind to the merits
of a thoroughly good man, Don Pedro; sim¬
ilarly, Strephon can finally approach even
the most beautiful women only by stopping
his nose. Denied the numbing lies of roman¬
tic idealism, Strephon takes to woman-
hating with the alacrity that Gulliver takes to
the stables.

The movement from the romantic to the
satiric world-vision, therefore, is seen to be
fraught with danger. As Nora Crow Jaffe
notes, the satiric writer “makes a bargain
with the devil” when he seeks to blast com¬
fortable illusions and uncover the damnable
facts;3 an eye, once jaundiced, may come to
view everything as being irreversibly tainted,
as Swift himself warns in “Strephon and
Chloe”:

But, e’er you sell yourself to laughter,

Consider well what may come after,

For fine ideas vanish fast,

While all the gross and filthy last. (11.231-4)

Therefore the satirist buys the accuracy of
his vision at a frightful price; for that
reason, perhaps, he intends to rock the com¬
placent and to disrupt the status quo by hit¬
ting at us precisely where we are most vul¬
nerable and most repressed. Where is that?
“The history of Swiftian criticism,” replies
Norman O. Brown, “. . . shows that repres¬
sion weighs more heavily on anality than on
genitality.”4 The violence of the reaction
prompted by these poems only substantiates

their point of view; when we lose our critical
perspective and attack Swift for informing
us of Celia’s defecation, we merely recapit¬
ulate the error of Strephon and reveal the
depths of our own illusions.

“A Beautiful Young Nymph,” then,
shares with these other poems the informing
theme of sham versus reality and romantic
delusion versus satiric accuracy. But there
the similarities end. The poem, while grossly
physical, contains no mention of excrement
per se (save that of a cat). Nor is the poem
much concerned with deriding or parodying
romantic literary conventions, although the
title and Corinna’s name do make allusions
in that direction, and a parodic similarity
between this poem and Donne’s elegy, “To
His Mistris Going to Bed,” has been argued
by several scholars.5

Unlike “Strephon and Chloe,” for exam¬
ple, “A Beautiful Young Nymph” depends
very little on its narrative content. Rather,
what we get is a sort of Hogarthian engrav¬
ing — or a series of them — which portrays a
Drury Lane prostitute in the privacy of her
bedchamber. Swift etches three separate por¬
traits: the lady’s preparations for bed (11.
1-38), her fitful dreams (39-59), and her
waking to disaster (58-64). The “I” of a
persona — Swift himself? — then intrudes (65-
74) to provide a sort of moral coda (to mix
the metaphor) to the whole composition.

The long passage which relates Corinna’s
getting ready for bed has elicited some
predictible squeals from what Jaffe calls the
“shocked school of criticism.” John Mid¬
dletown Murry, for example, refers to the
“horror” and “nausea evoked by the hid¬
eous detail” of the passage, and he chides
Swift for his “total lack of charity, his cold
brutality, towards the wretched woman who
is anatomized. ... It is utterly inhuman.”6

Perhaps. But what happens in this section
of the poem must strike the general reader,
unless he is either saint (and therefore in no
need of Swift’s corrective satire) or prude
(and therefore beyond its help), as being
genuinely hilarious. The prostitute’s ills are

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

so calamitous and her prosthetic efforts after
beauty are so patently absurd that she calls
forth much more laughter than empathy;
and this is as it should be. While any of us
might respond with the milk of human kind¬
ness toward a “beautiful nymph” with, say,
a glass eye, that milk becomes distinctly
clabbered when we learn that the same
woman is bald, has eyebrows made from the
skin of mice, has no teeth, props up her
breasts with rags, and wears a steel-ribbed
corset and artificial hips. The whole sketch is
so purposefully and grotesquely overdone as
effectively to block any empathetic response
on our part. For Corinna is not real: she is
neither drawn realistically nor is her body so
much flesh and blood as it is steel, ivory,
glass and wire. Real people may be tragic;
Corinna, a character out of a bizarre Satur¬
day matinee cartoon or a slapstick farce, can
never be either real or tragic. And when
Murry refers to this preposterous stick
figure, this uproarious demi-machine, as a
“wretched woman” — that is, as if she were
someone we might actually know — we find
ourselves laughing at him, too.7

The second section of the poem does pro¬
vide some problems, and one assumes that it
is this passage which especially prompts pro¬
tective urges within the manly breasts of cer¬
tain critics. Corinna is now in bed, and she

With Pains of love tormented lies;

Or if she chance to close her Eyes,

Of Bridewell and the Compter dreams

And feels the lash, and faintly screams. (39-42)

But it is likely that Corinna’s “pains of
love” are less the pangs of unrequited pas¬
sion than the surely-requited symptoms of
venereal disease, one of her many occupa¬
tional hazards. Further, if she screams
“faintly,” it is because she is, after all,
asleep; the adverb should not provoke us
into unwarranted pathos. It has been noted
that dreams, in Swift, are consistently in ac¬
cord with the character of the dreamer, so
that the lurid nature of Corinna’s phantasms
only underscores her own moral wretched¬

ness.8 Her slumber does call up scenes of
deportation, abandonment, and constables,
but she also

. . . seems to watch on lye

And snap some Cully passing by. (49-50)

The imagery of this couplet is decidedly
predatory, and we should recall that even
gentle Gay, Swift’s friend, used a similar
trope in his Trivia to warn against contact
with the ladies of Drury Lane:9

She leads the willing victime to his doom,

Through winding alleys to her cobweb room.

{Trivia, 3, 11. 291-2)

The most palpable result of such contact
is, of course, the “pox” with its “cancers,
issues, [and] running sores”— symptoms
which Corinna herself helps to disseminate.
Further, we learn at the end of this part of
Swift’s poem that she numbers among her
clients those clergymen

Whose favor she is sure to find,

Because she pays ’em all in kind. (55-6)

So Corinna actively corrupts the represen¬
tatives of established religion. To be sure,
she is as much sinned against as sinning in
these unholy relationships, and Swift’s prin¬
cipal satiric target here is probably the
clergy, not the bawd. It is clear, however,
that the intimacy is corrosive on both sides.
Downtrodden and oppressed in most aspects
of her life, Corinna nonetheless has the
power to contribute to the undoing of the
priests of God’s Church. Therefore she must
not be viewed sympathetically: as Swift em¬
phasizes at the poem’s end, Corinna repre¬
sents an outright social menace.

Lest we be lulled into empathy by social or
moral ambiguity, Swift abruptly returns us
in the poem’s third section to the disjointed
world of Max Sennett farce. Corinna wakens
to find her glass eye stolen by a rat, her wig
infested with her dog’s fleas, and her
“plumpers” soiled by her incontinent cat.
The reader needs only to visualize this scene
to capture its overt hilarity. Further, the in¬
sistent animal imagery of the passage should

1985]

Drennan— Faint Screams

99

serve to warn us against taking Corinna’s
“mangled plight” too much to heart.

The fourth and final section at last intro¬
duces the narrator, the “I” who presumably
has told the story thus far. He is at the point
of giving up the task:

But how shall I describe her Arts

To Recollect the scattered Parts?

Or show the Anguish, Toil, and Pain. . . .

Like Humpty-Dumpty, Corinna here
becomes a literal embodiment of the frag¬
mented personality: her “self” is veritably
strewn all over the floor, appropriately
soiled by rats, fleas, and animal excrement.
The “anguish, toil and pain” she must
undergo to restore her mechanical, factitious
body is, we must remember, effort aimed at
moral and physical corruption: 10

Corinna in the morning dizen’d

Who sees, will spew; who smells, be poison’d.

(73-4)

This closing couplet recalls that other
Corinna — Pope’s in the Dunciad — who
“chanced that morn to make” the puddle of
urine in which Curll falls. (In fact the name
Corinna was used by Dryden, Pope and
Swift to refer variously to Mrs. Manley,
Mrs. Eliza Haywood, Mrs. Elizabeth
Thomas and Martha Fowke; in all cases the
name is attached to a woman who is sub¬
jected to savage Juvenalian satire.)11 Fur¬
ther, the couplet re-emphasizes the point
that Corinna is a sort of walking contagion
at loose in the city. Whoever approaches her
is indelibly blighted. Pope’s Sappho at least
offers one an alternative between libel and
infection; Swift’s Corinna imparts only the
latter.

In summary, Swift in this poem presents
us with what Maurice Johnson has called a
picture of “the wages of sin . . . [like] a
preacher shouting hell-fire and brimestone,
or the photographs in a medical treastise.”12
There is little in what we know of Swift the
man or Swift the satirist to persuade us that

this poem is other than the “pure invective
against vice” that Jaffe takes it to be.13 I
have sought to demonstrate that neither does
the poem itself, as an artistic entity, contain
evidence to convince us that Corinna is any
more like Moll Flanders than Swift’s sen¬
sibilities are like Defoe’s.

Notes

1 This grouping is found in Jaffe (see citadons
below), who adds “The Progress of Beauty” to the list.
Brown includes only three of these poems under the
“excremental” heading: “The Lady’s Dressing Room,”
“Strephon and Chloe,” and “Cassinus and Peter.”
Johnson groups the poems similarly. Murry conforms
to Jaffe, but omits “The Progress of Beauty” from his
discussion.

2 Rev. of “Swift’s ‘The Lady’s Dressing Room,’” by
Douglas Calhoun, Scriblerian, 3.2 (Spring 1970), 56.

3 Nora Crow Jaffe, The Poet Swift (Hanover, NH:
Univ. Presses of New England, 1977), p. 112.

4 Norman O. Brown, Life Against Death (Middle-
town, Conn.: Wesleyan Univ. Press, 1959), p. 180.

5 For example, see Irwin Ehrenpreis, The Personality
of Jonathan Swift (London: Methuen, 1958), p. 42; and
Robert Hunting, Jonathan Swift (New York: Twayne,
1967), p. 48.

6 John Middleton Murry, Jonathan Swift (London:
Jonathan Cape, 1954), p. 439. See Ehrenpreis, p. 33.
(Lady Pilkington reportedly vomited upon reading the
poem and saw it as “all the dirty ideas in the world in
one piece”; see Ehrenpreis, p. 37, and Hunting, p. 74.)

7 “Corinna,” writes Denis Donoghue, “is a machine,
her bedroom a factory; when she goes to bed, the fac¬
tory is shut down”; see Donoghue’s Jonathan Swift: A
Critical Introduction (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ.
Press, 1969), p. 207. As Ehrenpreis (p. 46) notes, the
depiction of such mechanical women is a “staple motif
in American humorous literature.” Hunting (p. 48) ob¬
jects that the whore is “not funny” and is “horrible to
contemplate”; he accuses (p. 77) Swift of exaggeration:
“Surely no such ‘heroine’ as Corinna ever lived.” This,
of course, is exactly my point in the present study.

8 Donoghue, p. 199.

9 It seems likely to me that Swift, in his couplet,
makes a scriptural allusion: cf Proverbs 7.

10 Donoghue (p. 207) rightly refers to Corinna, in her
efforts to reassemble her personhood, as “a resourceful
mechanic.”

11 Marcia Heinemann, “Swift’s ‘Corinna’ Again,”
Notes and Queries, 1 9 (June 1 972), 218-21.

12 Maurice Johnson, The Sin of Wit (Syracuse:
Syracuse Univ. Press, 1950), p. 115.

13 Jaffe, p. 105.

EMOTION AND PHILOSOPHY OF MIND: D. H. LAWRENCE’S

NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE

Raymond J. Wilson III
Department of English
Loras College
Dubuque , Iowa

D. H. Lawrence reveals emotion through
at least six narrative methods, three drawn
from Philosophy of Mind and three trans¬
cending it. Considerations drawn from
Philosophy of Mind provide titles for three
of Lawrence’s methods: (1) descriptions of
bodily feeling; (2) descriptions of behavior
which directly reveals emotion; (3) descrip¬
tions of states of consciousness. In addition,
Lawrence relies upon three “literary” nar¬
rative techniques which transcend those
identified through Philosophy of Mind; the
literary methods for revealing emotion are:
(4) the loading of a scene with overtones of
emotion felt but not recognized by the char¬
acters; (5) descriptions of external objects
and other people which actually reveal emo¬
tion in character; (6) symbolic action —
behavior of characters which reveals emo¬
tion indirectly by reference to a system of
ideas established elsewhere in the work.

Controversies in Philosophy of Mind pro¬
vide the context for these categories.
Philosophy of Mind contains the study of
emotions; and in this pursuit, Jean-Paul
Sartre identifies three categories that we can
apply to Lawrence: bodily reaction, be¬
havior, and states of consciousness. Phi¬
losophers of Mind split into two groups
depending on whether they consider these
categories as sources for facts or as directly
intuited phenomena. Philosophers seeking
to study emotion through isolating facts as
in any other scientific investigation fall into
the psychological school of Philosophy of
Mind; those seeing emotions as self-sig¬
nificant phenomena fall into the category of
the Phenomenologists. In seeking to estab¬
lish relationships among the three basic

categories, the psychological school splits:
theorists of the intellectualist persuasion
hold that there is “a constant and irreversi¬
ble succession between the inner state con¬
sidered as antecedent and the physiological
disturbance considered as consequents.”1 In
contrast, the second psychological theory,
called the peripheric theory, which holds
that “a mother is sad because she weeps,”
reverses the order of the factors, claiming
that bodily disturbances cause the mental
states which we recognize as emotions. The
reliance of both branches of the psychologi¬
cal school upon facts, which have no signifi¬
cance in themselves, says Sartre, led to the
reaction known as Phenomenology. Its
founder Hussrl (and also Heidegger and
Kierkegaard) directed attention toward emo¬
tion as phenomena the significance of which
can be directly and intuitively known.

In arguing against the position of the
Phenomenologists, Moreland Perkins relates
the theme to literature and specifically to
Lawrence’s narrative techniques. Perkins’s
argument appears in an article in The
Philosophical Review (1966); while not
holding with William James the extreme
peripheric position that emotion is merely
our awareness of bodily feeling, Perkins
does argue that “bodily feeling occupies a
central place in emotional experience.”2 To
support his claim, Perkins contends that
novelists who are noted for “their power to
convey to us the emotions felt by their ‘char¬
acters,’ ” gain their power by including
mention of the characters’ bodily feelings.
Perkins’s first example comes from Law¬
rence’s The Rainbow in the scene where Tom
Brangwen proposes to Lydia Lensky: “She

100

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Wilson III — D. H. Lawrence's Narrative Technique

101

quivered, feeling herself created, will-less,
lapsing into him, into a common will with
him.”3 Perkins points out that the sentence
is about emotion although there is no emo¬
tion word in it or near it in the text. “The
emotion has no common name and it needs
none,” says Perkins (p. 156). In Sartre’s ter¬
minology, “quivered” refers to a bodily
reaction while “feeling herself lapse . . .’’in¬
dicates a state of consciousness. However,
according to Perkins, “the participle ‘feel¬
ing’ modifies the verb ‘quivered,’ follows
fast upon ‘quivered,’ and depends upon
‘quivered.’ ” Perkins says that the word
“quivered” is needed to “convince the
reader that at this very moment this woman
felt what the rest of the sentence explains”
(p. 157). On such examples rests Perkins’s
argument that emotion is best conveyed
through bodily feeling.

However, a wider examination of Law¬
rence’s technique for revealing emotion in¬
dicates that Perkins overemphasizes bodily
feeling as Lawrence’s narrative technique.
For example, in the opening pages of
Women in Love we see elements of exterior
behavior used alone and in combination with
states of consciousness. In such combina¬
tions they form an exterior/interior counter¬
point that multiplies, rather than merely
adds their effects. In the novel’s opening
scene, two sisters, Ursula and Gudrun, dis¬
cuss marriage, especially the unhappy situa¬
tion by which a woman must marry in order
to be “in a better position.”4 Gudrun, who
is sketching, picked up her eraser “almost
angrily,” according to the author. Here,
Lawrence puts the reader into the position of
someone in the room, observing the conver¬
sation; he implies that we at times detect
emotions by observing simple bodily ges¬
tures such as Ursula’s picking up the eraser.
This assumption, underlying the narrative
technique, continues as Lawrence says that
“Gudrun flushed dark.” Here we are to
draw whatever conclusions about her emo¬
tions that we might draw if we were present
in the room and saw her blush. In these ex¬

amples Lawrence primarily relies on describ¬
ing behavior which is assumed to directly
reveal emotion. However, Lawrence does
not limit himself to external signs. When Ur¬
sula says that she has turned down a mar¬
riage offer that would have meant “a thou¬
sand a year, and an awfully nice man,” she
says she was not tempted; “I’m only tempted
not to,” she says, and we then find the
following sequence:

The faces of both sisters suddenly lit up with
amusement. “Isn’t it an amazing thing,” cried
Gudrun, “how strong the temptation is, not
to!” They both laughed, looking at each other.
In their hearts they were frightened. ( Women
in Love, p. 2)

Lawrence describes emotion through be¬
havior in the passage: the faces “lit up” and
the sisters laughed. As a person present in
the room, one could only assume that the
women felt delight and amusement. But in
the last sentence Lawrence introduces the
counterpoint, claiming that both also felt
fear, and Lawrence uses what Sartre called
state-of-consciousness terminology to intro¬
duce this contrasting, tension-producing fact
of secret fear. Bodily feeling, which Perkins
stresses, is absent, yet the passage gains
strength through the tension between out¬
ward amusement and inward fear.

An amplifying example comes later in the
novel. In describing the complex relationship
between Gerald Crich and Rupert Birkin in
Women in Love , Lawrence resorts to exter¬
nals of behavior and to bodily feeling in the
well-known “Gladiatorial” chapter in which
the two men strip and wrestle “swiftly, rap¬
turously, intent and mindless at last, two
essential white figures working into a tighter,
closer oneness of struggle” (Women in
Love , p. 263). But Lawrence has no reserva¬
tion about also having his character Birkin
later explain in state-of-consciousness ter¬
minology that “to make it complete, really
happy, I wanted eternal union with a man
too: another kind of love” (Women in Love,
pp. 472-73). In such subtle interaction of

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behavior and state-of-consciousness, Law¬
rence’s narrative technique serves him well.
Birkin’s expression, “another kind of love,”
would communicate little if Lawrence had
not preceded it with active depictions of both
behavior and bodily feeling which give flesh
to the skeleton provided by the concept
word, “love.”

Perkins’s contention is that Lawrence re¬
lies on bodily feeling because this narrative
technique is intrinsically the best way to pre¬
sent emotion. This is not the case; complex
literary considerations dictate Lawrence’s
choice. Furthermore, Lawrence could not re¬
ly exclusively on state-of-consciousness
techniques for narrative presentation of
emotion because one of Lawrence’s central
situations is that in which the character
denies or refuses to become conscious of an
emotion. In his story, “The Prussian Of¬
ficer,” for example, Lawrence describes an
officer’s “passion” for his enlisted man.
The officer, according to Lawrence, “was a
gentleman, with long, fine hands and culti¬
vated movements, and was not going to al¬
low such a thing as the stirring of his innate
self. He was a man of passionate temper,
who had always kept himself suppressed.”5
Although Lawrence does not specify the
emotion as homosexual passion, he does
stress the officer’s barren emotional sex life
with women and his bachelorhood at age
forty. “He would not know that his feeling
for his orderly was anything but that of a
man incensed by his stupid, and perverse ser¬
vant,” says Lawrence. “So, keeping quite
justified and conventional in his consci¬
ousness, he let the other thing run on” (p.
100, my emphasis).

Lawrence readily uses state-of-conscious¬
ness words such as “anger” and “hate” in
this story. But, writing in the early twentieth
century, Lawrence may have been reticent to
openly broach the topic of homosexuality;
thus, in addition to the problem of depicting
an emotion being internally censored by the
character, Lawrence was himself contending

with external forces of censorship. In such a
situation, Lawrence turns to Sartre’s first
category, bodily sensation, to reveal emo¬
tion. The young soldier’s presence “was like
a warm flame upon the older man’s tense,
rigid body,” (p. 97) and later: “The officer’s
heart was plunging” (p. 101). The situation
is even more subtle than we have so far ex¬
plained. It is not that the captain felt homo¬
sexual desire and covered it with feigned
anger, but that, in blocking himself from
awareness of the nature of his passion, the
officer really did feel anger instead. Further¬
more, the officer’s primary defense against
recognizing his emotion has apparently been
to withdraw from the animal instincts, to
become abstract and intellectual. And it is
with state-of-consciousness “emotion
words” like “hate” that Lawrence reveals
how the soldier’s presence unintentionally
weakened the captain’s defense: “To see the
soldier’s young, brown, shapely peasant’s
hand grasp the loaf or the wine bottle sent a
flash of hate or of anger through the elder
man’s blood (p. 97). Later in the story it is
the youth’s unconscious animality in putting
that same arm around the soldier’s girlfriend
that incenses the officer. That Lawrence de¬
scribes the young soldier’s reciprocal hatred
and anger in terms of intense bodily feeling
may be because Lawrence has introduced the
youth as a person who “seemed never to
have thought, only to have received life
direct through his senses, and acted straight
from instinct” (p. 97). The use of bodily
feeling is thus not dictated by the absolute
notion that this is the “best” way of depict¬
ing emotion as Perkins suggests, but by the
requirements of a complex narrative situa¬
tion.

Lawrence resorts to a more purely literary
technique in solving a similar problem when
he describes the beginning of sexual attrac¬
tion between Paul and Miriam in Sons and
Lovers. The education of both children has
been so restrictive that neither would recog¬
nize a sexual feeling in him or herself. There-

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Wilson III—D. H. Lawrence' s Narrative Technique

103

fore neither could think of the emotion in
what Sartre called state-of-consciousness ter¬
minology. One solution to this problem is
revealed by a study of the swing scene in the
chapter entitled “Lad and Girl Love” in
Sons and Lovers. The external behavior is
nothing beyond an innocent exchange of
swinging on a rope and pushing each other;
there is no state-of-consciousness language
in either Lawrence’s words or the characters’
minds to indicate sexuality; and, although
the bodily-feeling language is much more in¬
tense than one would expect for a mere
swing ride, this language standing alone does
not necessarily indicate sexual emotion.
Lawrence, therefore, resorts to having the
conversation and description carry overtones
of sexuality that are unintended by the
characters though almost certainly intended
by Lawrence. Consider the following se¬
quence:

. . . the youth and girl went forward for the
great thick rope . . . then immediately he rose .

. . she made the swing comfortable for him.
That gave her pleasure. . . . Almost for the first
time in her life she had the pleasure of giving
up to a man ... in a moment [he] was flying . . .
she could feel him falling and lifting through
the air . . . “Now I’ll die,” he said, in a de¬
tached, dreamy voice . . .6

The youth and girl are completely unpre¬
pared to think in concepts about sexual emo¬
tions and know only that they are feeling
something.

Lawrence’s narrative method of loading
the scene with sexual overtones becomes
even more evident when Miriam takes her
turn:

“It’s so ripping!” he said, setting her in mo¬
tion. “Keep your heels up, or they’ll bang the
manger wall.”

She felt the accuracy with which he caught
her, exactly at the right moment, and the ex¬
actly proportionate strength of his thrust, and
she was afraid. Down to her bowels went the
hot wave of fear. She was in his hands. Again,
firm and inevitable came the thrust at the right

moment. She gripped the rope, almost swoon¬
ing. {Sons and Lovers, p. 151)

When Paul “mounted again,” the sexual
parallel continues although this time from
the perspective of Miriam as she watches
Paul:

Away he went. There was something fascinat¬
ing to her in him. For a moment he was nothing
but a piece of swinging stuff; not a particle of
him that did not swing. She could never lose
herself so, nor could her brothers. It roused a
warmth in her. It were almost as if he were a
flame that had lit a warmth in her whilst he
swung in middle air. {Sons and Lovers, p. 151)

In the swing scene Lawrence avoids state-of-
consciousness language where sexuality is
concerned but does not hesitate to name
states-of-consciousness when speaking of
fear or fascination. There is also no overtly
sexual behavior, yet sexual attraction in an
innocent “Lad-and-Girl Love” is surely the
topic. Bodily feeling depicted by the “hot
wave” and “flame” images, though ex¬
cessive for a mere swing ride, would not be
enough in themselves to communicate sexual
attraction, so Lawrence sprinkles the pas¬
sage with words and phrases that would be
appropriate for the description of adults
making love: “pleasure . . . giving up to a
man . . . flying . . . falling and lifting . . .
‘Now I’ll die’ . . . ‘Keep your heels up’ . . .
firm and inevitable came his thrust . . .
mounted again . . . he was nothing but a
piece of swinging stuff.” Thus we see, not a
Lawrence favoring bodily feeling over the
other two categories, but an author choosing
his narrative strategies among the three
Philosophy of Mind alternatives, combining
them in various ways according to the situa¬
tion and adding purely literary techniques
that go beyond Sartre’s three categories.

The relationship between Gertrude and
Walter Morel in Sons and Lovers is another
such complex interaction of emotions where
Lawrence uses a purely literary technique —
the description of an external object to

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reveal emotion. Lawrence certainly does not
shrink from depicting emotion through
bodily feeling in this book; after one argu¬
ment, the pregnant Gertrude Morel “walked
down the garden path, trembling in every
limb, while the child boiled within her”
(Sons and Lovers, p. 23); however, in this
novel we also see Lawrence using external
objects to correlate with internal emotion.
At the very moment Gertrude is having the
baby, Walter works in the mine on a rock
“that was in the way of the next day’s work.
As he sat on his heels, or kneeled, giving
hard blows with his pick, ‘Uszza — uszza!’ he
went,’’ says Lawrence. Walter’s workmate
advises him to avoid “hackin’ thy guts out,’’
but Morel insists on overworking himself in¬
to a frenzy (Sons and Lovers, pp. 30-31). He
is the last to quit the mine and when he ar¬
rives home he finds to his surprise that Ger¬
trude has given birth to his son, Paul. Law¬
rence does not comment on the physical par¬
allel between the birth struggle and the effort
to dislodge the rock from the coal seam, but
the parallel works subtly to inform the
reader that both of these people are besieged
by frustrating emotional conflicts.

A similar, but even more revealing use of
an external object occurs in Women in Love
as Ursula walks through the woods:

She started, noticing something on her right
hand, between the tree-trunks. It was like a
great presence, watching her, dodging her. She
started violently. It was only the moon, risen
through the thin trees. But it seemed so
mysterious, with its white and deathly smile.
And there was no avoiding it. Night or day,
one could not escape the sinister face, trium¬
phant and radiant like this moon, with high
smile. (Women in Love, p. 237)

While Lawrence ostensibly describes the
moon as an external object, he is really open¬
ing the reader to depths of Ursula’s emotion.
In Ursula’s violent start, Lawrence does give
us a behavioral component of her emotion
but this would be far less meaningful if it
were not combined with attributing to the

moon a deathly smile, a sinister and trium¬
phant face, and a desire to watch Ursula.
These are obviously not realistic attributes of
the moon but projections of the woman’s
emotion.

A similar concept of projection helps pro¬
vide the rationale for explaining several pro¬
foundly emotional scenes in The Rainbow.
Two kissing scenes — involving Anna Bran-
gwen and, after the span of a generation, her
daughter Ursula — reveal the subtle effect of
projection when the projection is applied not
to an object but to another person. Law¬
rence narrates both scenes in third person
from the point of view of the male partner of
the encounter. In the first, Lawrence em¬
ploys bodily feeling to reveal the young
man’s emotion; the scene thus parallels the
one explicated by Professor Perkins. The
second contains projection in contrast to the
earlier scene between Tom and Anna Bran-
gwen. In the scene with Anna and Tom:

“My love,” she said, her voice growing rap¬
turous. And they kissed on the mouth, in rap¬
ture and surprise, long, real kisses. The kiss
lasted, there among the moonlight. He kissed
her again, and she kissed him. And again they
were kissing together. Till something happened
in him, he was strange. He wanted her. He
wanted her exceedingly. She was something
now. They stood there folded, suspended in the
night. And his whole being quivered with sur¬
prise, as from a blow. He wanted her, and he
wanted to tell her so. But the shock was too
great to him. He had never realized before. He
trembled with irritation and unusedness, he did
not know what to do. (The Rainbow, p. 120)

The passage continues mostly with repetition
for effect and with Lawrence’s depiction of
Tom’s gradual return to awareness of their
surroundings in a moonlit field. Although
the opening sentences could be interpreted as
a neutral third-person narrative from outside
the actors, the latter part makes clear that
Lawrence is telling us what Tom feels, the
words “quivered’’ and “trembled’’ provid¬
ing a component of bodily feeling.

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Wilson III—D. H. Lawrence's Narrative Technique

105

The following similar passage contains a
decisive difference; here Lawrence describes
the kiss of Anton and Ursula, Anna’s daugh¬
ter:

Then there in the great flare of light, she
clinched hold of him hard, as if suddenly she
had the strength of destruction, she fastened
her arms round him and tightened him in her
. . . increasing kiss, till his body was powerless
in her grip, his heart melted in fear from the
fierce, beaked, harpy’s kiss. The water washed
again over their feet, but she took no notice.
She seemed unaware, she seemed to be pressing
in her beaked mouth till she had the heart of
him. {The Rainbow, p. 479)

This passage expresses Anton’s fear of Ur¬
sula’s passion. Using a state-of-consci-
ousness term, Lawrence clearly states that
the man was in “fear.” This fear becomes
evident to the reader, however, more
through attributes ostensibly attributed to
Ursula: her “strength of destruction,” for
example, and her harpy’s beak. Like the
grinning moon of the earlier quoted passage,
these supposed attributes of Ursula tell us
more of Anton’s emotion than they do about
Ursula. Anton may notice the lapping of the
wave about their feet but she “seemed
unaware,” terminology which indicates that
Lawrence is narrating the passage from out¬
side of her mind. And, since they are not
realistic descriptions, the best assumption is
that such depictions reveal the emotion that
Anton felt toward Ursula.

After this kiss, Ursula initiates a sexual en¬
counter with Anton Skrebensky, and then
she breaks off with him, finding the ex¬
perience utterly unfulfilling. Subsequently
discovering herself with child, Ursula thinks
she might write to Skrebensky in India where
he has been posted and, unbeknownst to her,
been married to his colonel’s daughter. Ur¬
sula tries to convince herself that “Only the
living from day to day mattered,” that she
“had been wrong, she had been arrogant
and wicked, wanting that other thing, that
fantastic freedom, that illusory, conceited

fulfillment which she had imagined she
could not have with Skrebensky” ( The Rain¬
bow, pp. 483-84). She asks whether it is not
enough that she be satisfied with “her man,
her children, her place of shelter under the
sun” {The Rainbow, p. 484). Ursula has
tried through her part of the novel to break
the bounds of such conventionality, and
been thwarted at every turn; she now con¬
siders giving in to the pressure to be a con¬
ventional wife: “Was it not enough for her,
as it had been enough for her mother?” she
asks (p. 484). This would run totally con¬
trary to Ursula’s emotional needs. Lawrence
has thus set himself the task of revealing the
emotion of a character who is, herself, deny¬
ing those emotions.

Behavior and state-of-consciousness are
inappropriate narrative methods for this
situation; and, since the character is stead¬
fastly deceiving herself about her bodily feel¬
ings there is little chance that the reader will
correctly understand the emotional implica¬
tions of Ursula’s bodily feeling.

To solve this problem Lawrence again
goes beyond the three basic tactics laid down
by Sartre and employs a literary tactic
unrelated to Philosophy of Mind: symbolic
action. In a depressed state, Ursula wanders
into a field. It is raining, and thunder and
lightning begin. Suddenly she hears horses’
hoofs beating on the path ahead of her; she
turns but the riderless horses head her off.
Each way she turns they are waiting for her,
blocking her back. The horses roar very
close, terrorizing her; “in a flame of agony,
she darted, seized the rugged knots of the
oak tree and began to climb” {The Rainbow,
p. 489). We do not need to evoke Lawrence’s
frequent use of trees as male sex symbols to
see the episode as a microcosmic recapitula¬
tion of Ursula’s emotional development in
the novel; both in the scene and in the novel
at large she has made determined efforts and
been brought to bay. But she uses the
branches of the oak to reach the hedge and
to fall in a heap on the other side. The horses

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

were stopped by the hedge: “They were al¬
most pathetic now. Her will alone carried
her” across the bare field, “till, trembling,
she climbed the fence” ( The Rainbow , p.
489).

After this experience, Ursula “was very ill
for a fortnight” {The Rainbow, p. 490). She
experiences the illness as a compression,
finally realizing that the “compression was
Anton and Anton’s world . . . She fought
and fought and fought all through her illness
to be free of him and his world” and at last
succeeded (p. 491). Thus Lawrence contin¬
ues the parallel, and the episode in the field
with the horses serves not only to recapitu¬
late but to forecast Ursula’s assertion of her
will over the forces that are trying to block
her into a conventional existence. Not only
does the scene reveal Ursula’s emotion sub¬
tly and intensely, it also serves, along with
the ensuing illness, as the catalyst for her
decision not to marry Anton. The child is
lost through miscarriage but she knows “it
would have made little difference” to her
decision (p. 493). Anton’s telegram revealing
the fact that he is married comes only as a
relief to Ursula.

Symbolic action forms a literary strategy
in the “Moony” chapter of Women in Love,
where Ursula watches from hiding as Birkin
moves near the mill pond. She first hears
him address the Near-Eastern moon god¬
dess: “Cybele — curse her!” He thus evokes
an entire mythology of the Virgin goddess of
the moon, as well as centuries of associated
commentary and philosophy. Birkin then
collects rocks and begins stoning the image
of the moon in the mill pond. When Birkin
finally relents from his temporary state that
Lawrence says is like “a madness,” Ursula
reveals herself from her hiding place and
asks Birkin, “Why should you hate the
moon? It hasn’t done you any harm, has it”
{Women in Love, pp. 238-241). But Birkin
answers with his own question, “Was it
hate?” Neither can answer and they lapse
into silence. The mythological allusion and

Birkin’s symbolic action evoke in the reader
a complex reaction to an extremely intricate
set of emotions. Birkin’s question points
out that our existing “emotion” terminology
is inadequate to handle such a situation
through abstract concepts.

Moreland Perkins’s thesis that Lawrence
derives his power in communicating emotion
primarily from his use of the bodily-feeling
component of the emotion is thus not an ac¬
curate description of Lawrence’s practice.
As we have seen in this paper, Lawrence uses
the bodily-feeling component when that is
the most appropriate, but he also uses the
other two categories laid out by Sartre —
state-of-consciousness and behavior— -when
they are most appropriate. Lawrence not
only uses these three categories in various
combinations, but he also goes beyond the
categories taken from Philosophy of Mind
to create more purely literary methods of
narration, such as loading a scene with over¬
tones, the description of objects and even of
other characters to reveal emotion, and the
working out of elaborate symbolic actions
such as the horses in The Rainbow and the
stoning of the moon in Women in Love.

A scene from Sons and Lovers perhaps
provides an insight into Lawrence’s oper¬
ating principle. Miriam looks at one of
Paul’s paintings and asks, “Why do I like
this so?” Paul answers:

It’s because — it’s because there is scarcely any
shadow in it; it’s more shimmery, as if I’d
painted the shimmering protoplasm in the
leaves and everywhere, and not the stiffness of
the shape. That seems dead to me. Only this
shimmeriness is the real living. The shape is a
dead crust. The shimmer is inside really. {Sons
and Lovers, p. 152)

These are the relatively inarticulate words of
the young Paul Morel, but if expanded they
could perhaps be considered somewhat of a
creed for Lawrence in his narrative method.
Human emotion, revealed and projected
outward, stands at the center, at times giving

1985]

Wilson III — D. H. Lawrence's Narrative Technique

107

meaning, “shimmeriness,” to the landscape,
the rocks in Walter Morel’s mine, and the
remote moon.

Notes

1 Jean-Paul Sartre, The Emotions: Outline of a
Theory, tr. Bernard Fechtman (New York:
Philosophical Library, 1948), p. 7-8.

2 Moreland Perkins, “Emotion and Feeling,” The
Philosophical Review, 75, 2 (April 1966), p. 155.

3 D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow (1915; rpt. New

York: Viking, 1961), p. 40. Further references to The
Rainbow are to this text.

4 D. H. Lawrence, Women in Love (1920; rpt. New
York: Viking, 1960), p. 1. Further references to Women
in Love are to this text.

5 D. H. Lawrence, “The Prussian Officer,” The
Complete Short Stories of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. 1 (New
York: Viking, 1961), p. 98. Further references to “The
Prussian Officer” are to this text.

6 D. H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers (1913; rpt. New
York: Viking, 1968), p. 150. Further references to Sons
and Lovers are to this text.

SAMUEL MILLER: A TARGET FOR WASHINGTON IRVING

Henry J. Lindborg
Marian College of Fond du Lac

Knickerbocker's History of New York
(1809), Washington Irving’s first book,
secured fame for its twenty-six-year-old
author and created the enduring persona of
Diedrich Knickerbocker, whose account of
the Dutch settlement has remained vivid
while the works of more sober historians
fade. Though critics have counted the
History among Irving’s most effective crea¬
tions, even firm admirers have been impa¬
tient with its Book One; written in collabora¬
tion with Washington’s brother Peter, it re¬
counts competing theories of creation while
tracing New York’s history back to the
origins of the world. Richard Henry Dana,
for example, thought it “laborious and up
hill,”1 and Edwin W. Bowen described the
first chapters as “somewhat stilted, pom¬
pous and pedantic,” and felt that they made
“the unhappy impression that the authors
were feeling their way and were not yet sure
of their footing.”2 This view is lent support
by literary historians’ failure to find clear
targets for the satire of Book One; for the
vigor of the History , as Henry S. Canby
remarked, depends upon Irving’s “own
observation, his own prejudice and rooted
dislike, to add to the documents he drew
upon.”3

How the learned affectation of Book One
might reflect anything more than some
general Swiftian pretensions at first seems
baffling. The 1809 edition announced that
Book One was, “like all introductions to
American histories, very learned, sagacious,
and nothing at all to the purpose.”4 All
American histories are rather an amorphous
target, though in his 1848 “Author’s
Apology,” Washington suggests a slightly
narrower aim:

“To Burlesque the pedantic lore displayed in

certain American works, our historical sketch

was to commence with the creation of the
world; and we laid all kinds of works under
contribution for trite citations, relevant or ir¬
relevant, to give it the proper air of learned
research.”5

However, Irving editors Stanley T. Williams
and Tremaine McDowell were puzzled, ask¬
ing, “Who were these writers with their
pompous rhetoric and their learned notes?
No book can be named with certainty.”6

For a work “above all . . . written with a
home town audience in mind”7 to resort to
such scholarly display without a clear local
target suggests indeed that the authors had
not yet found their footing, and that at best
they were diminishing their subject, employ¬
ing the manner of a mock chronicle to place
their little society at the end of cosmic pro¬
cesses. A more sophisticated view might add
that the Irvings were also positing that their
history’s prelude does not rest on the rock of
shared myth but upon the shifting sands of
18th century cosmological speculations.
Though this interpretation fits nicely
William Hedges’ claim that the “ History of
New York consistently ridicules the possibil¬
ity of acquiring certain or reliable knowl¬
edge,” finally “reducing history almost to
blank enigma,” it does not address that nag¬
ging historical question.8 The Irvings
claimed to have histories in mind. If they did
not, why did they make the claim, and why
did Washington repeat it when he revised the
book almost forty years later?

Is there no author in the Irving neighbor¬
hood whose pedantic display might have
provoked that satire-producing admixture of
“prejudice and rooted dislike”? Since the
History is dedicated to the New York
Historical Society, that venerable institution
is a good place to look for someone addicted
to amassing scholarly references. Samuel L.

108

1985]

Lindborg — Samuel Miller

109

Mitchell may be a candidate, since he was an
eccentric historian with broad academic
interests; however, while he may have repre¬
sented the pedantic mental cast of the estab¬
lishment to the Irvings, his The Picture of
New York , which is cited in the History ,
does not contain the sort of notation used in
Book One. While Mary W. Bowden may be
correct in asserting that there is significant
“satire in Knickerbocker’s History of the
type of men who founded the New York His¬
torical Society, if not the founders them¬
selves,”9 the Irvings specified works rather
than types; therefore, further search for one
whose scholarly practices in a published
volume approximate those attacked in the
History is necessary.

Besides Mitchell, another prominent
member of the New York Historical Society
was the Rev. Samuel Miller (1769-1850), an
important Presbyterian clergyman. In 1797
he began to collect materials for a history of
New York, and he was given permission to
make copies of documents without fee by an
act of the legislature in 1798. According to
his son, he “labored long in a desultory
way” on the project and only gave it up in
1813 when he departed for Princeton, where
he had a distinguished career as professor of
church history.10 This research interested
him in founding the New York Historical
Society (1804), for which he was Corre¬
sponding Secretary at the time of Washing¬
ton Irving’s appointment to membership.
One of his discourses was the first historical
article published by the Society.11 Since
Miller never finished his history, Michael
Black has advanced a cogent argument that
“Irving . . . was competing historically with
an official historian, and when he won, or
realized he was going to win, he laughed at
the loser and those who supported him.”12
Thus Miller may be seen as a target, not on
the basis of what he wrote, but because of
what he didn’t write: a definitive history of
New York, for which he had collected
masses of information.

An additional reason for Miller to have

been attacked may have been his loyalty as
“a warm partisan of Mr. Jefferson’s politics
and administration as President,” a point of
view likely to spark “rooted dislike” in the
Irvings.13 But more significantly, he did pro¬
duce a major work which contains all of the
scholarly apparatus mocked in the History:
the two-volume A Brief Retrospect of the
Eighteenth Century (1803), which gave its
author a local and international reputation
and a legitimate claim to the title of
America’s first intellectual historian. 14

Originally the Retrospect , which was con¬
ceived as a sermon on the turn of the cen¬
tury, was to have covered all aspects of the
eighteenth century, including theology,
morals, and politics; though this design was
never completed, the two volumes encom¬
pass twenty-four areas, including such sub¬
jects as physiognomy and Oriental literature.
It was necessarily a patchwork job, an en¬
cyclopedic compilation which compensated
for lack of depth with extensive notes, which
the Irvings may be parodying in Book One.
In applying the methods of the intellectual
historian Miller comments that science in the
eighteenth century “led to the erection and
successive demolition of more ingenious and
splendid fabrics” {Retrospect, I, 417). The
Irvings make an interestingly similar remark
that “philosophers demolish the works of
their predecessors, and elevate more splen¬
did fantasies in their stead, which are in turn
demolished and replaced by the air castles of
a succeeding generation” {History, p. 33).
Though Miller expended great energy in the
effort to compare these theories as a worth¬
while historical enterprise, the Irvings re¬
duced the endeavor to absurdity, through
both the context of the mock chronicle and
its tone.

All of the speculations on the origin of the
earth mentioned in the History, with one ex¬
ception, are also found in the Retrospect . 15
Note the likeness of the treatments of Buf-
fon’s ideas: “A comet falling into the body
of the sun with great force, struck from its
surface a large mass of liquid fire . . . This

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[Vol. 73

fragment forms the globe we inhabit”
( Retrospect , I, 165). “This globe was
originally a globe of liquid fire scintillated
from the body of the sun by the percussion
of a comet” ( History , p. 29). Difference in
tone may be noted in discussions of Whis-
ton’s theory: According to Miller, Whiston
supposed “the earth in the beginning to be
an uninhabitable comet, ... in the form of
chaos.” The flood came about on account of
another comet, which “involved our globe in
its atmosphere and tail for a considerable
time, and deposited its vapours on its sur¬
face, which produced violent and continuous
rains” {Retrospect, I, 160). The History
states, the earth “was originally a chaotic
comet . . . The philosopher adds, that the
deluge was produced by an uncourteous
salute from the watery tail of another comet;
doubtless through sheer envy of its improved
condition” {History, p. 29).

Miller concluded that eighteenth century
science provided orthodox religion with
tools to defend the Bible as an historical
document: “Every sober and well-directed
inquiry into the natural history of man, and
of the globe we inhabit,” he writes, “has
been found to corroborate the Mosaic ac¬
count of the Creation, the Fall, the Deluge,
the Dispersion, and the important events
recorded in the sacred volume” {Retrospect,
I, 434). While the History also supports the
Mosaic account (pp. 24, 37), its tone in
discussing exploration’s contribution to
revelation is markedly different from
Miller’s. The Retrospect concluded that

“the geographical discoveries of the last age
have contributed to illustrate and confirm
Revelation. Behring and Cook were before-
mentioned as throwing light on the population
of the New World, and thus tending to sup¬
port sacred history. But besides these, the
knowledge gained by modern voyagers and
travellers, of the manners, customs, and tradi¬
tions of different nations, especially those on
the Eastern Contient, has served to illustrate
the meaning and unfold the beauty of many

passages of scripture, before obscure, if not
unintelligible” {Retrospect, I, 357).

The Irvings

“should not be surprised if some future
writers should gravely give us a picture of men
and manners as they existed before the flood,
far more copious and accurate than the Bible;
and that, in the course of another century, the
log-book of the good Noah should be as cur¬
rent among historians as the voyages of Cap¬
tain Cook, or the renowned history of Robin¬
son Crusoe” {History, p. 39).

Circumstantial and textual evidence, then,
point to A Brief Retrospect of the Eigh¬
teenth Century as a likely target for the Irv¬
ings: In subject matter and method it closely
parallels sections of Book One and is
authored by a local historian of importance.
But what was their point? Perhaps, follow¬
ing Professor Black’s lead, it was that were
Miller ever to finish his history of New York,
his pedantry would drive him to preface it
with the history of the world. In fact, this is
what he had done, since for six years prior to
the Retrospect he had been working on a
history, but produced instead a compendium
of virtually every area of human acivity ex¬
cept what went on in New York.

The satire may also strike yet closer to
home. Miller was the pastor of Irving’s
father’s church. Young Washington — and
presumably his brother Peter — disliked the
gloom of the frequent prayer sessions to
which his father subjected the family.
Though Washington never mentioned
Miller, it may also be likely that he rebelled
against some of the minister’s attitudes
toward the vocation which drew him:
writing. For example, at the same time that
Miller accurately analyzed the failure of
America to excel in the arts owing to its com¬
mercial spirit, he contended that only one
novel out of a thousand might be worth¬
while, and the others constituted a criminal
waste of time {Retrospect, II, 173-74).

If, as Charles Dudley Warner wrote, “The
bent of Irving’s spirit was fixed in his youth,

1985]

Lindborg — Samuel Miller

111

and he escaped the desperate realism of his
generation,” it was in reaction to a society
which would value him more as a lawyer or
businessman than as a writer of fiction.16
Though he would escape family pressures to
go into law or business and turn writing itself
into a business during his seventeen year so¬
journ in Europe, in 1809 Washington Irving
was a young man for whom Samuel Miller
probably represented established, practical
values. In the seemingly irrelevant passages
on the creation of the world the two brothers
may have been quietly rebelling against an
intellectual, religious, and social order which
excluded so much of the fun which the His¬
tory provided, mocking a figure of authority
for the New York Historical Society, the
church, and perhaps the Irving household.

Notes

1 ‘“The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.,’”
The North American Review , 9 (September, 1819),
p. 345.

2 “Washington Irving’s Place in American Litera¬
ture,” The Sewanee Review, 14(1906), p. 174.

3 “Washington Irving” in Classic Americans (New
York, 1931), p. 86.

4 Washington Irving, Deidrich Knickerbocker’s (A
History of New York, ’ ed. Stanley T. Williams and Tre¬
maine McDowell (New York, 1927), p. 15. References
within this paper are to this edition.

5 Knickerbocker’s History of New York (New York,
1848), p. 1.

6 Williams and McDowell, p. xxi.

7 Mary Witherspoon Bowden, “Knickerbocker’s
History and the “Enlightened” Men of New York
City,” American Literature, 47 (May, 1975), p. 159.

8 Washington Irving: An American Study, 1802-1832
(Baltimore, 1965), pp. 72, 108.

9 “Knickerbocker’s History,” p. 163.

10 Samuel Miller, Jr., The Life of Samuel Miller
(Philadelphia, 1869), I, 110.

11 Life, 1,276.

12 Michael L. Black, “Political Satire in Knicker¬
bocker’s History ” in The Knickerbocker Tradition:
Washington Irving’s New York, ed. Andrew B. Meyers
(Tarrytown, 1974), p. 80.

13 Life, I, 131.

14 The best study of the Retrospect is Gilbert
Chinard’s “Progress and Perfectibility in Samuel
Miller’s Intellectual History” in Studies in Intellectual
History, ed. George Boas (Baltimore, 1953).

15 The Irvings recount the theories of Buffon, Hut¬
ton, Whiston and Erasmus Darwin with some detail.
Burnet, Woodward and Whitehurst are mentioned.
Only Darwin is not found in Miller.

16 “Washington Irving,” The Atlantic Monthly, 45
(March, 1880), p. 408.

INTEGRATING FINITUDE:

THE EXPERIENCE OF TIME IN PROUST AND EINSTEIN

Saad N. Ahmed
Department of English
Augustana College , Rock Island, Illinois

Time for you and time for me,

And time yet for a hundred indecisions,

And for a hundred visions and revisions,

Before the taking of a toast and tea.

T. S. Eliot, “The Song of J. Alfred Prufrock,”
1915

Everywhere, this second has already been
replaced by another second, in a sequence
frozen forever. Such a view appeared all the
more convincing with the establishment of
Standard Time at the turn of the century —
all around the globe time was coordinated.1
From an unused future, existence moves
universally towards a shadowy past and
ultimately dissolves in the darkness of the
forgotten.

In the era that established Standard Time,
the work of a novelist, Marcel Proust, and a
physicist, Albert Einstein, liberated time
from its foreordained tracks. After an active
social life in the Parisian salons, Proust, in
1909, began his novel, A la recherche du
temps perdu , and devoted the rest of his life
to its writing. In 1905, the unknown Ein¬
stein, working in the Swiss Patent Office,
published a short paper, “On the Electro¬
dynamics of Moving Bodies,” which ini¬
tiated the special theory of relativity.
Although Proust was aware of Einstein’s
theories, which gained popularity in France
after the First World War, they did not exer¬
cise a direct influence on him for the follow¬
ing reasons: 1. he conceived his work before
they were popularized; 2. in spite of his ad¬
miration for Einstein, he found the language
of his theories too unfamiliar.2 Affinity,
rather than influence, defines the relation
between these two thinkers.

For both Proust and Einstein, time does

not flow in a neutral course but depends on
the experiencer. Here, experience means
more than just what is empirically present to
the perception; it refers to the way man
situates himself in the world. Keeping this
distinction in mind, the present study pur¬
sues the question: how, in the work of
Proust and Einstein, does one experience
time? While Proust’s novel describes qual¬
ities of time — the past, present, and future,
as related in memory, Einstein’s theory de¬
limits quantities of time as measured by a
clock. Nevertheless, both present time as an
experience of finitude, a finitude which in¬
tegrates the experiencer in his history and
world.

In the long tradition of the quest theme in
Western literature, Proust entitles his work,
A la recherche du temps perdu, which one
critic translates, freely but significantly, as
Quest of Time Lost . 3 Proust once told an
interviewer that, “we have both plane and
solid geometry — geometry in two-dimen¬
sional and three-dimensional space. Well,
for me the novel means not just plane (or
plain) psychology but psychology in time. It
is this invisible substance of time that I have
tried to isolate.”4 Proust’s quest unfolds
within three perspectives: those of the pro¬
tagonist, narrator, and author. Suffering,
changing, and growing, the protagonist,
called Marcel, has an immediate interaction
with the present. The narrator recounts the

112

1985]

Ahmed — Integrating Finitude

113

growth of Marcel. Throughout the narra¬
tive, he observes him moving in the past like
a man watching at night the light which left a
star years ago. In the last volume, the nar¬
rator and his former self, Marcel, merge.
The author, Proust, describes Marcel’s
movement towards the narrator, and then,
their merging at the moment when he can
pronounce the quest successful.

All three, Marcel, the narrator, and
Proust, encounter time through memory.
The importance of memory becomes evident
in the English title of the novel, Remem -
berance of Things Past. Neglect of memory
and the different kinds of memory affect the
experience of time. Thus, unaware of its
power, Marcel feels imprisoned in time: he
lives the hours, days, and years, as they
come and pass by, leaving him with a sense
of emptiness and waste. But in certain unex¬
pected moments, through the grace of invol¬
untary memory, he relives past events as if
they were taking place in the present. When
he realizes the significance of these
moments, he reaches the insight which the
narrator has: now, both have the same expe¬
rience of time. Although Proust depreciates
voluntary memory in favor of involuntary
memory, to create a novel of such structural
magnitude requires both kinds.5 The quest
which starts with remembering ends with
creation.

Time is regained in the creative act.
Marcel relives the past as an actuality within
the context of the present — this relation be¬
tween the past and present endows both with
a new meaning, for, to use the words of T. S.
Eliot, “the past should be altered by the
present as much as the present is directed by
the past.”6 This active experience of the past
in the present influences Marcel’s future.
Discovering his vocation, to be the artist
who writes down his quest, he takes hold of
the future. Created by his past, the artist
recreates this past. His work of art grounds
the shifting perspectives of the past, present,
and future.

Unlike Proust, Einstein, the physicist,

defines time with a measuring instrument.
For this purpose, an object with a rhythmic
motion may serve as a kind of clock. From
this viewpoint, the human body contains
many clocks such as the one established by
the heart beat. In the famous example of the
time traveller who journeys in space at high
speed, he returns to find his world has grown
much older than he did. One may speak, in
this context, of the human body or a clock
interchangeably: the relativity of time affects
both in a similar way. However, the present
study, because it deals with experience, will
refer to a human observer and not a clock.

Time, argues Einstein, depends on the
observer measuring it. For an illustration, he
stages a scene with three observers: the first
one stands on a railway embankment; the
second is inside a very long moving train; the
third, whom Einstein does not mention, is
the physicist himself who observes the other
two.7 The observer on the embankment,
with whom the reader identifies, sees a flash
of lightning at each end of the train at the
same time. He supposes that if the observer
in the train faced him at exactly the same
point when he saw the lightning, then, the
observer in the train too should be able to see
both flashes at the same time. The observer-
physicist finds fault with this supposition:
for him, the two observers measure time dif¬
ferently because they have different frames
of reference.

What the observer on the embankment
overlooks is motion: “we cannot attach any
absolute significance to the concept of
simultaneity, but that two events which,
viewed from a system of co-ordinates, are
simultaneous, can no longer be looked upon
as simultaneous events when envisaged from
a system which is in motion relatively to that
system.”8 Since the universe has no absolute
fixed point, one always needs a frame of
reference: “Every reference-body (co¬
ordinate system) has its own particular time;
unless we are told the reference-body to
which the statement of time refers, there is
no meaning in a statement of time of an

114

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

event.”9 Thus, the physicist has to define the
frame of reference of every observer.

Within each frame of reference, time
flows uniformly because all that exists within
that frame undergoes the same degree of
change in time. In the case of the time
traveller, he and those he left on earth do not
perceive the difference in their aging rate un¬
til they meet. Within the frame of reference
of the ordinary observer on earth, a frame
defined for practical reasons as the same for
the whole planet, he can be deceived into be¬
lieving that his experience of time refers to
the ticking of his watch which must be uni¬
form for everyone and everything. He values
this measurement as reality and dismisses as
subjective lived time (temps vecu), that pri¬
mordial experience which precedes measure¬
ment.10

Einstein does not deal with lived time
either; he too wants to measure, so to speak,
an objective time, albeit a time that depends
on a frame of reference. Nevertheless, for
him, experience can play a role. At the age of
sixteen, he wondered about the paradoxical
experience of how light would look to him if
he travelled with it at the same speed. The
older Einstein concludes that “in this para¬
dox the germ of the special relativity theory
is already contained.”11 That a scientist for¬
mulates his conception in an abstract theory
does not mean that it did not find its source
in a representational, even if imaginary, con¬
struction.

Experience conceals as well as reveals
time. Einstein usually illustrates his theories
with representational constructions to show
how experience may be deceptive; but then,
in explaining the reason behind the illusion,
the experience becomes illuminating. In the
example under discussion, the observer,
from his limited perspective on the embank¬
ment, supposes that his counterpart in the
train sees the two flashes of lightning at the
same time. Actually, the latter, because he is
moving towards one flash and away from
the other, sees the first flash and then the
second. For the observer on the embank¬

ment to realize his mistake, he has to adopt
the perspective of different frames of
reference: his own and that of the train.
This, of course, is what the observer-
physicist does except that he seems to be
nowhere and everywhere. How does he ex¬
perience time? He can situate himself within
the frame of reference of any observer,
measuring time as his own but also relative
to another frame of reference. If the uni¬
verse were empty except for one observer,
clearly, he could not notice any change in the
flow of time. Measuring time in Einstein’s
theory is a participatory activity which joins
interdependent perspectives.

For Proust and Einstein, man experiences
time as the horizon of his finitude. In order
to be aware of this finitude, he must have
opened to him the possibility of seeing
through it. The perspectives of Marcel and
the narrator parallel that of the observer in
the train and the one on the embankment:
Proust structures his novel through the view¬
points of Marcel and the narrator; Einstein
accounts in his theory for both observers.
For the novelist and the physicist the experi¬
ence of time does not annihilate the finitude
of perspectives in one absolute flux but inte¬
grates them. Proust becomes the subject and
author of his own life. He traces in thou¬
sands of pages the labor under finitude. In¬
deed, finitude dominates his work and life:
he died before finishing the last volume,
Time Regained. But he regains time, not just
because, in the usual way, an artist seals his
life in a work that may immortalize him, but
more suggestively, because the life which the
novel depicts discloses a vocation that
changes that very life and makes the novel
itself possible. The novel points to the inte¬
gration of a fragmented self in a self-deter¬
mined history.

Einstein’s physicist dwells in an ordered
finitude. Time does not stand over against
him as an object but pertains to the process
of observation itself. Nevertheless, he can
measure the time of another observer,
systematically. From within his perspective,

1985]

A hmed — Integrating Finitude

115

he realizes that the other observer must see
one, then, another flash of lightning. Ein¬
stein’s theory insists on the observer’s per¬
spective, not as a contingent limit, but as a
limit binding him to the world.

Both the writer and the scientist encounter
in time their integrated finitude. Man
belongs to a frame of reference from which
he can never escape. Yet, from within this
frame, he integrates himself in his history
and world. He recognizes that his mode of
existing is temporalized.

Notes

1 On the establishment of Standard Time, see Stephen
Kern, The Culture of Time and Space: 1880-1918 (Cam¬
bridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Univ. Press, 1983), pp.
11-15.

2. For a detailed discussion of the question of in¬
fluence, see John D. Erickson, “The Proust-Einstein
Relation: A Study in Relative Point of View” in Marcel
Proust: A Critical Panorama , ed. Larkin B. Price
(Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1973), pp. 247-76.

3 Robert Champigny, “Proust, Bergson and Other
Philosophers,” in Proust: A Collection of Critical
Essays, ed. Rene Girard (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey:
Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1962), p. 123.

4 Roger Shattuck provides the complete text of the in¬
terview, in English, in the appendix to his Marcel Proust
(New York: The Viking Press, 1974), p. 169.

5 See Shattuck, pp. 119-24.

6 T. S. Eliot, “Tradition and the Individual Talent”
in The Great Critics: An Anthology of Literary Crit¬
icism, 3rd ed., eds. James H. Smith and Edd W. Parks
(New York: W. W. Norton and Company, Inc., 1967),
p. 715.

7 Relativity: The Special and the General Theory, A
Popular Exposition, trans. Robert W. Lawson (New
York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1961), pp. 25-7.

8 Albert Einstein, “On the Electrodynamics of Mov¬
ing Bodies” in The Principle of Relativity: A Collection
of Original Memoirs on the Special and General theory
of Relativity by H. A. Lorentz, A. Einstein, H.
Minkowski and H. Weyl, trans. W. Perrett and G. B.
Jeffery (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 1923), pp.
42-3.

9 Relativity, p. 26.

10 On how one learns to live time as defined by a
clock, see Leroy Troutner, “Time and Education” in
Existentialism and Phenomenology in Education: Col¬
lected Essays, ed. David E. Denton (New York: Teach¬
ers College, Columbia University, 1974), pp. 159-81.

11 “Autobiographical Notes” in Albert Einstein:
Philosopher-Scientist, ed. Paul A. Schilpp (Evanston,
Illinois: The Library of Living Philosophers, Inc.,
1949), p. 53.

MARK TWAIN IN PERSON, 1885: READING IN WISCONSIN

Thomas Pribek
English Department
University of Wisconsin-La Crosse

Mark Twain and his performing partner
George Washington Cable devoted a week of
their four-month tour during the 1884-85
lecture season to cities in Wisconsin:
Janesville, Madison, LaCrosse, and Mil¬
waukee. They appeared in Wisconsin only
three weeks before the publication of The
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Interest in
Twain’s new book was growing as a result of
the long and highly successful lecture cam¬
paign, and Cable too was quite a sensation
with his popular novels of Creole life and his
vigorous public campaign for Black equal¬
ity. Consequently, the two spoke to packed
houses across the state and consistently
received enthusiastic reviews from their au¬
diences and from the newspaper writers who
described the literary event in superlative
phrases. The Janesville Daily Gazette called
their performance “one of the best appreci¬
ated given in this city for a long time’’; the
Wisconsin State Journal in Madison said
“the entertainment pleased all”; the La¬
Crosse Morning Chronicle pronounced the
reading “decidedly the leading success of the
winter.” One critic has called the tour “the
most celebrated reading tour of the decade”;
this is the same as calling it the entertainment
event of the 1880s.1

It is no coincidence that we are observing
the centennial of Huck Finn's publication
and a major lecture tour of Twain’s career.
This tour, his first lengthy stage schedule in
fifteen years, was intended to generate sales
for Huck Finn and raise money for his new
publishing house. American publication
came on February 18, 1885; Huck Finn had
been published in England and Canada two
months earlier in order to secure the foreign
copyrights. Several chapters were serialized
by Century in December and January to

whet the appetites of readers. The lecture
tour extended from the middle of November
1884 to the end of February 1885. After a
weekend performance in Chicago, Twain
and Cable then read in Janesville on January
20th, Madison the 21st, LaCrosse the 22nd,
St. Paul, Minnesota the 23rd, Minneapolis
the 24th (Sunday the 25th was an off-day),
Winona, Minnesota the 26th, Madison again
on the 27th, and Milwaukee the 28th and
29th; they then returned to Illinois for
readings in Rockford and Chicago. In larger
cities like Milwaukee and Chicago, the two
would speak on consecutive nights; other¬
wise, they performed an exhausting schedule
of one-nighters. Even Sundays, when Cable
refused to work or travel, were hardly restful
for Twain. He complained bitterly that
Cable’s piety actually aggravated the
tiresome routine, because Twain could never
rest on a day when he performed. During the
week the authors usually were traveling and
working every day. Twain did make money
on the tour and, more importantly, helped
stimulate a large first-sale for Huck Finn,
but he worked considerably harder on the
tour than he had planned and, understand¬
ably, refused his business manager’s pro¬
posal to extend it another month. There was
never any problem in finding bookings.

Twain’s stage performances, part of the
marketing for Huck Finn, suggest how he
wanted the book received. His selections
from it are exclusively humorous: Huck and
Jim discussing the wisdom of Solomon or
the logic of having a separate language for
Frenchmen; Huck and Tom planning their
ridiculous “evasions” for freeing Jim; and
the episode of the river tough fighting,
already printed in Life on the Mississippi.
Twain had considered a program from Huck

116

1985]

Pribek — Mark Twain in Wisconsin

117

Finn alone but decided for more variety.2
Still, he emphasized local color and humor,
but not exactly satire. Notice that Jim is
likely to be simply a clown in these stage
readings. Twain on stage seemed rather like
the man who wrote the headnote to Huck
Finn demanding no serious moral interpreta¬
tions.

The emphasis on humor from Twain was
wise publicity, of course. But in larger con¬
text, the tour itself was still part of the long
creative process that produced Huck Finn , a
book which transcends mere entertainment,
and marks a change in the direction of
Twain’s career. He was revisiting his youth
in towns where he once lived — Hannibal,
Missouri and Keokuk, Iowa, for example—
as he had done in 1882 to finish Life on the
Mississippi . Furthermore, Cable, a friend
for two years now, was certainly an in¬
fluence on Twain’s thought. He was best-
known, in fact, as a Southerner speaking out
against the South for its racism. His latest
book had suggested that the South’s losing
the Civil War was a fortunate outcome.
Moreover, Cable actually had helped set the
groundwork for Huck Finn's reception by
breaking from the unofficial literary tradi¬
tion of Southern apology for slavery and the
war. Two years earlier Twain’s most biting
comments on Southern culture written for
Life on the Mississippi had been suppressed.
(Cable also encouraged Twain to read Mal¬
ory’s Morte D' Arthur, and some of his first
notebook entries on A Connecticut Yankee
in King Arthur's Court appear during the
tour.) Cable’s part in sharpening Twain’s
social criticism has never been fully ex¬
plored. Shortly after the tour was finished,
Twain wrote a letter, recently discovered, in
which he promises to pay tuition and board
for one of Yale University’s first Black law
students.3

This lecture tour of the two reconstructed
Southerners is also interesting as a portrait
of Twain, not just as a footnote to the publi¬
cation history of Huck Finn. It was one of
the few (and maybe last) times in Twain’s

life when everything seemed to be going well
for him. His marriage was happy, his reputa¬
tion as a writer was established, and he was
socially and financially secure. At age fifty,
Samuel Clemens was a success, before fam¬
ily tragedies and financial difficulties im¬
pelled his creative talents toward social in¬
vective. A middle-aged man now, everything
he wrote sold. He was comfortable with his
work and his audience, and they were com¬
fortable with him. He was “Mark Twain’’ to
them, the humorous writer from the Ameri¬
can frontier, recognized as such and gen¬
erally pleased by his reputation. He did
once, at least, complain to Cable that he was
cheapening himself as the humorist only, but
any dissatisfaction with his public role never
came through his stage performances.4 At
the height of his career as Mark Twain the
funnyman, the author had no trouble stay¬
ing with that public persona. His creative
talents, too, were at a high point all through
this four-month tour.

Twain varied his readings somewhat so
that his performance was always fresh and
so that he would not repeat himself too
much for return audiences. He was espe¬
cially unhappy and bored when Cable did
not change his readings. In his Wisconsin ap¬
pearances, Twain’s selections from Huck
Finn were read with “The Awful German
Language,’’ “The Jumping Frog,’’ “A Des¬
perate Encounter with an Interviewer,’’ and
the ghost story of “The Golden Arm.’’ Ad¬
vertisements and programs usually left his
concluding piece open, and Twain often
tried to choose something appropriate to his
audience’s particular responsiveness. After a
few unsuccessful attempts at simply reading
early in the tour, Twain spoke from mem¬
ory, a delivery which reviewers usually noted
with compliments. On stage, before this
tour, Twain had presented original lectures
and read sparingly.5 Now, he intended main¬
ly to read material published or already set in
print, but he was always careful to adapt his
material for a vocal stage delivery.

This off-hand manner of delivery in-

118

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

creased his casualness and spontaneity and
also helped audiences perceive him — as he
wished — as a natural story teller, a born wit.
His humor was “dry, unconscious, appar¬
ently spontaneous,” said the Janesville Daily
Recorder. “He never smiles when telling a
story that causes his audience to laugh until
tears trickle down their cheeks, but on the
contrary, pulls his iron gray moustache and
scowls,” but, “He put his audience in good
humor with the first sentence and it con¬
tinued until the last.” The Janesville Daily
Gazette published a preview which described
Twain’s delivery as “a dry, earnest manner,
as though he really believed ... the ludicrous
situations . . . and expected his listeners to.”
The Wisconsin State Journal said Twain was
“active in his movements . . . [but] care¬
lessly,” like “some awkward overgrown
boy. The expression of his face scarcely
changes during an entertainment, though
when the audience laughs intrude there is the
greatest air of injury about it.”

His delivery was always studied, however,
just as he describes his formula in “How to
Tell a Story.” Twain was a careful per¬
former, and he received enthusiastic re¬
sponses which justified the rather steep ad¬
mission prices of fifty cents, seventy-five
cents, and a dollar. Incidentally, the prices
never varied, except that sometimes a good
auditorium had no fifty-cent seats. Twain
was going out to make money. Now, a river
city like LaCrosse was probably economi¬
cally more prosperous in 1885 than in 1985,
compared to other cities in the state; but,
even so, packing the local opera house with a
thousand people strained more people’s in¬
comes there than in Chicago or Milwaukee.
Still, not one newspaper writer anywhere in
the state complained about the admission
cost; in fact, writers usually complained
about the audiences or auditoriums, if they
were not suitable for such an important lit¬
erary event. The LaCrosse Chronicle and
Milwaukee Evening Wisconsin particularly
noted that people arriving fashionably late
were disturbing the performers and disrupt¬

ing the show. The Wisconsin State Journal
and Janesville Daily Recorder said the
theater was too hot or too cold. But no one
ever said that the spectators did not get their
money’s worth, even though Twain himself
privately expressed doubts on occasion.

Cable usually spoke first (Twain par¬
ticularly hated to work to an unsettled
house). The two then took turns on stage
and varied the tempo and tone of the pro¬
gram. Twain was the humorist and Cable the
serious social commentator. The Janesville
Daily Recorder said Cable’s appearance and
delivery denoted “intelligence . . . and the
gestures and movements of a polished gen¬
tleman,” while “Twain’s every moment [on
stage] was indicative of the droll humor that
was fairly bubbling out of him.” The paper
concluded, “They are both stars of no little
magnitude in their specialties.”

These roles were deliberately complemen¬
tary. By design, Cable was to portray moral
sentiment and edifying thought, Twain to
evoke uncontrolled laughter. Twain was the
better-known personality, but he was known
principally as a comedian and performer,
and Cable actually enjoyed the reputation of
being the more literary man.6 Reviews often
sounded as though they were paraphrasing
the advertisements, which promised “superb
fun” and “wit” from Twain and “exquisite
humor and pathos” from Cable. The La¬
Crosse Chronicle dutifully reported on
Twain’s “grotesque humor” and Cable’s
“delicate pathos.” the Janesville Daily
Gazette promised viewers “sentiment,
pathos, and delicate touches of humor”
from Cable and “the wildest flights of
hyperbole” from Twain, “superbly droll
and outrageously extravagant.”

Twain always received top billing in the
advertisements; it was his tour, of course,
and Cable worked on salary from him. In
addition, Twain always received more praise
as an entertainer when the two were reviewed
together, but Cable was not slighted or criti¬
cized. It was not uncommon for a reporter to
give more space in a review to Mark Twain’s

1985]

Pribek — Mark Twain in Wisconsin

119

doing and sayings but to reserve his chief
accolade for the art of Cable’s writing and
reading — appropriate for their intended
roles, Cable the thoughtful literary artist and
Twain the natural “character.”7 For in¬
stance, the Janesville Daily Recorder called
Cable “a good elocutionist and a man of lit¬
erary ability,” but Twain was simply unique
“in his inimitable style.” Occasionally, there
was feature material in papers on Cable’s
social thought. Both the Wisconsin State
Journal and the Milwaukee Sentinel printed
some correspondence between a Black resi¬
dent of Wisconsin and Cable in which he (by
implication, the papers too) stressed the
necessity for cultural assimilation. In addi¬
tion, the Madison Daily Democrat reviewed
only Cable to emphasize his social beliefs.

This lecture tour was a literary event, but
one finds that local papers showed their
biases in characterizing and complimenting
the performers. The tour was front-page
news both in Madison and LaCrosse, for ex¬
ample, but in the state capital it was Cable
the reformer featured on page one, and in
the river town it was the unruly former
steamboat pilot. The LaCrosse Republican
and Leader, for instance, wrote about
Twain’s restlessness, his constant smoking,
talking, and moving among train cars as
though he was particularly uncomfortable
about traveling in civilized society. How¬
ever, in Milwaukee, the Evening Wisconsin
and Sentinel featured stories on Cable
because he had based characters in his Civil
War novel on people then living in that city.
The largest press coverage, about two col¬
umns each, was in papers for LaCrosse and
Milwaukee. Twain had been in LaCrosse as
a traveler and described it favorably in Life
on the Mississippi, although this is not men¬
tioned by the Chronicle reporter. Three
years earlier the paper had written about
Twain’s brief stop. It is easier to explain the
interest of the Milwaukee Sentinel and
Evening Wisconsin. In addition to whatever
civic pride they may have had, the two
dailies competed for news and feature ma¬

terial about the season’s biggest literary
event, one interviewing Cable and the other
Twain.

The critical reviews were always uniformly
favorable although some of the uniformity
borders on plagiarism. One of the stories in
the Wisconsin State Journal contains a para¬
graph that is copied almost word-for-word
from the Janesville Daily Gazette of the day
before. Of course, this was within the limits
of usual journalistic practice a hundred years
ago and constitutes only an endorsement of
the first review. Twain’s selections usually
were reviewed at greater length than Cable’s.
Usually, however, papers refrained from
detailed description of the entertainment.
One particularly effective piece which was
summarized a few times was “The Awful
German Language,” in which Twain said
that he would rather decline two drinks than
one adjective, a fairly literary joke to cite.
“The Golden Arm” was described in several
papers, showing how Twain could methodi¬
cally lead his listeners to the sensational con¬
clusion of the story when everyone jumped
at the ghostly accusation, “You’ve got it!”
On the whole, papers quote sparingly; in
fact, the LaCrosse Chronicle reporter
observes that the local audience was familiar
with these two popular writers. Reviews
usually describe manner of delivery and ap¬
pearance more than content. The emphasis,
especially for Twain, is more on the literary
“character” of the author rather than any
particular work.

The Janesville Daily Recorder pronounced
the entertainment the “literary event of the
season”; Twain in particular was “en¬
thusiastically received.” According to the
Janesville Daily Gazette, “Mark Twain,
from his first bow to the close of the enter¬
tainment, kept the audience in continued
laughter, while Mr. Cable was listened to
with deep interest.” The Madison Daily
Democrat quoted a press review from St.
Paul: “The audience laughed only once dur¬
ing the evening, but that was from 8 o’clock
till 10.” The dry understatement of this

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

observation was typical in a way; general
pronouncements on the readings often came
in cliche-like superlative praise, but for
description reporters sometimes tried to im¬
itate Twain’s comic style.8 So it was that the
reporter for the LaCrosse Chronicle noted
the disparate appearances of the two authors
and said, “Such a pair — such a team, let us
say— in animal life, would make a horse
laugh. But they pull well together.”

Twain’s appearance and stage delivery
were suited for the image he wanted to pro¬
ject of a completely artless, unselfconscious
wit. The Milwaukee Evening Wisconsin said
he “carelessly and indifferently sauntered
upon the stage” and read “[without cere¬
mony.” The Wisconsin State Journal called
his stage style a dry recital” which nonethe¬
less “kept the audience in a constant roar of
laughter.” The LaCrosse Chronicle said,
“He comes upon the stage as though look¬
ing for a pin on a floor covered with eggs.”
Then, “Speech falls from his lips as though
against his will.” Finally, “He disappears
with a canter and if he had not said a word,
there would still be something to laugh at.”

In physical appearance, the LaCrosse pa¬
per said, he was “tall, stooping, shambling
of gait with tumbled hair and uncertain
moustache, the counterpart of nothing ex¬
cept his odd self.” Other papers reported the
same. The Janesville Daily Recorder noted
that he was “tall, awkward, with heavy
bushy hair . . . heavy moustache . . . and he
drawled his words out.” Reporters and au¬
diences came to these readings with an image
of Twain derived from his books, and Twain
was always in character for them. The
Winona Daily Republican even headlined its
story “Innocents Abroad” and noted
Twain’s movements as “side-long, awkward
stride, amusing in itself . . . [with] a natural
and easy force to his gestures.”

Everywhere Twain spoke in Wisconsin he
had a full house; often he sold out before the
night of the performance. The Wisconsin
State Journal , on his second stop in Madi¬

son, thus promised an entertaining night for
“people [who] were not able to secure seats”
at the first. “These two gentlemen are draw¬
ing marvellously wherever they appear,” it
said. And every audience called for encores;
Twain offered two encores in LaCrosse.
Cable too was usually recalled to the stage,
but he always allowed Twain to finish the
program if any encores were called for.
Twain never explicitly insisted upon this, but
he clearly wanted to remain the star attrac¬
tion of the tour.

The apparent success of the tour at all
stops in Wisconsin and Minnesota gave no
hint of troubles in the background. In fact,
Twain was not entirely pleased with receipts
and blamed his business agent, nor was he
pleased with Cable over the course of time.
Cable’s unwavering Sabbath piety irked
Twain. Cable had started out encouraging
Twain to accompany him to church services
and reading his Bible to him on the train,
both of which he diplomatically discon¬
tinued when Twain ignored him. Cable never
swore or smoked, although there is no
record that he ever upbraided Twain for
these favorite hobbies of his. Worse, per¬
haps, Cable would not play billiards with
Twain. Cable’s expense account was a bit
rich for Twain, and, worst of all, his time on
stage seemed too great. These are all com¬
plaints which Twain often wrote to his wife,
particularly often after the new year began
and the tour went into the mid-west. He
seems to have kept his complaints to himself
on the tour, however; at least Cable did not
record any awareness that Twain was grow¬
ing irritated with him. In fact, Twain did not
continue any criticism of his partner after
the trip ended — actually he called him a per¬
fect traveling companion— and it is reason¬
able to say he simply lost patience at times
for all the traveling and work, and for the
January weather in Wisconsin. From Madi¬
son, Twain wrote that he was cold in his
hotel. In LaCrosse, his business manager
noted that he was “a little sharp” with peo-

1985]

Pribek — Mark Twain in Wisconsin

121

pie at the train depot. In Milwaukee, Twain
tried a hot bath before going on stage in
order to refresh himself, but this apparently
only tired him more. Twain actually con¬
fided to Cable that he felt the second night in
Milwaukee was a disaster.9 Twain and Cable
generally suffered from nothing worse than
weariness, cold, and occasional impatience
with each other, but their manager suffered
a mild heart attack in Madison and had to be
left behind in Milwaukee to recuperate. The
Evening Wisconsin noted the agent’s illness
but not how heavily it actually weighed
down the spirits of the two performers.

From what one can know of the back¬
ground to this lecture tour, already almost
three months long, it is remarkable that
Twain always managed to stay “on stage,’’
so to speak, for local audiences and re¬
porters. For instance, a Milwaukee Sentinel
reporter sent to interview Cable went mis¬
takenly into Twain’s room and found him
“decidedly en dishabille.’’ His “afternoon
attire’’ was “a long white nightshirt . . . and
a cigar.” In effect, Twain was discovered
with his pants down, but he corrected the
reporter’s directions and played up to his
amazement with obvious pleasure. In Madi¬
son, “about twenty” people followed Twain
and Cable to their hotel. Cable came down
from his room and greeted each one indi¬
vidually and politely, even though “he ex¬
pected to meet but two or three,” according
to the Wisconsin State Journal. Twain only
sent his regrets by Cable, and the paper
granted him “a little needed slumber.” Ap¬
parently, no one felt slighted.

Twain did grant an interview to a reporter
from the Evening Wisconsin in Milwaukee,
who found him quite agreeable despite
showing obvious signs of the cold weather.
Twain had read his imaginary “Desperate
Encounter with an Interviewer” in Mil¬
waukee, and the Evening Wisconsin reporter
was perhaps a bit unprepared for the urbane
person he actually met. He described Twain
as “brusque but genial . . . the result of the

varied life he has led.” Twain told him that
he enjoyed the lecturing, was pleased by the
size and responsiveness of the crowds, and
was living a hermit-like existence in Hart¬
ford, Connecticut. The reporter described
Twain’s former wild occupations of steam¬
boat pilot, miner, and traveler. He had had
“a rough experience generally,” the writer
noted, but was only the more admirably
masculine for it — an “almost perfect speci¬
men of physical manhood,” American fron¬
tier character. Twain politely discussed the
need for international copyright, his sales of
books to date and hopes for Huck Finn, and
a rather embarrassing bit of publicity for the
new book which had leaked out. An en¬
graver had created an obscene illustration
out of one woodcut for the salesmen’s ad¬
vance copies of Huck Finn, which Twain
casually dismissed as “a slight gouge of a
graver ... an indelicate addition to . . . one
of my characters.” (It was an erect phallus
added to a sketch of Reverend Silas Phelps,
with Aunt Sally apparently staring at it
amusedly and asking, “Who do you reckon
it is ?”)10 Twain said that all adulterated
copies of the book had been suppressed, and
no one need fear finding any obscene il¬
lustrations.

In general, no news during Twain’s week
in Wisconsin showed any hint of the weari¬
ness and irritation Twain expressed privately
about the long tour and his traveling compa¬
nions, nor any of his anxiety about preserv¬
ing his reputation for humor and decency
while Huck Finn was going to press. The lec¬
ture tour was a success in the most important
way for Twain; Samuel Clemens was able to
remain Mark Twain without fail for over
four months. The newspapers usually call
him Twain, a tribute to the currency of the
literary character he made of himself. The
LaCrosse Chronicle writer could not even
spell Clemens correctly, and the Milwaukee
Sentinel reporter who was introduced to Mr.
Clemens immediately called him Twain.
Without exception, newspapers emphasized

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

the colorful, vivid, and entertaining man —
just the image Twain cultivated.

Notes

1 Fred W. Lorch, The Trouble Begins at Eight:
Mark Twain’s Lecture Tours (Ames: Iowa State Uni¬
versity, 1968) 164. Since constant footnoting or even
parenthetical references to dates of all newspapers
quoted here would simply be intrusive, I have foregone
this documentation. With the itinerary in the following
paragraph, anyone who wishes to find specific stories
can do so easily. All Wisconsin papers are available on
microfilm in the State Historical Society, Madison.

2 Lorch 165.

3 See Guy A. Cardwell, Twins of Genius (East Lan¬
sing: Michigan State University, 1953) 68-77. In addi¬
tion, see the brief summary of Twain’s letter to a dean
of the Yale law school in Time 25 March 1985: 69.

4 Cardwell 25.

5 Lorch 162; Paul Fatout, Mark Twain on the Lecture
Circuit (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University, 1960)
216; and Arlin Turner, George W. Cable: A Biography
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University, 1966) 177.

6 Cardwell 17; and Fatout 205-06, 216-17.

7 Fatout 222; and Turner 188.

8 Cardwell 29.

9 See Cardwell 49; Fatout 211-12; Lorch 174; and
Turner 180.

10 See Walter Blair, Mark Twain and Huck Finn
(Berkeley: University of California, 1960) 364-67.

SOME EFFECTS OF CLEARCUTTING ON SONGBIRD
POPULATIONS IN THE NORTHERN HARDWOOD FOREST

James F. Steffen
Manitowoc

Abstract

A study was conducted in Marinette Co., Wisconsin on the breeding bird diver¬
sity occuring in six northern hardwood forest stands; 3, 5, 11, 17, 35 and 45 years of
age. Breeding bird censuses were conducted along one to several transects in each of
the stands in 1976 and 1977. A trend was observed in which diversity was low in the 3
year old stand and increased to a high in the 1 1 year old stand followed by a decline
toward the 45 year old stand. The trend in bird species diversity was not correlated
with vegetation density, plant species composition, or plant species diversity in any
of the stands.

Introduction

Today, the term forest resource has taken
on a much broader meaning than just
timber. The current concept also includes,
water, wildlife, range, and recreational
resources of the forest. Forest managers as
well as the public are seeking more precise
information about the effects following dif¬
ferent uses in specific forest situations.

In terms of species composition and struc¬
ture of vegetation, windfalls and fires have
altered much of our forest habitat many
times in the past. However, the effects on
fauna of such management practices as
clearcutting may differ greatly from those
occurring after storm fellings and burns
(Ahle’n, 1975).

Clearcutting (removal of all standing
timber) has been carried out in one form or
another since settlement of this country.
Ward (1974) believes that virtually all hard¬
wood forests in the northeastern United
States have sustained two or more clearcuts.

Aspen regeneration requires some type of
disturbance so that clearcutting is the
silvicultural practice most often utilized for
the propagation of this forest type. Because
the aspen-birch forest type is the most im¬
portant source of pulpwood in Wisconsin
(and other Lake States) and represents near¬
ly 4 million acres (Spencer and Thorne,

1972, Giese, et al., 1976) there is no doubt
that clearcutting represents an important
perturbation in Wisconsin forests.

Some of the public resentment toward
clearcutting relates to physical impact such
as poor road placement and severe erosion.
However, it is evident that much of the re¬
cent public concern about timber cutting
practices can be traced to its visual impact
(Lang, 1975, Giese, et al., 1976). It is
because of this public reaction that more em¬
phasis is being placed on quantifying the ef¬
fects of clearcutting on flora, fauna, soils
and other environmental parameters. Forest
managers, whether public or private, also
need to know precisely what effects the size
of the area being clearcut has on various
wildlife species and their densities (Sever-
inghaus and Tombaugh, 1975).

A few studies concerning animal popula¬
tions, aesthetic impacts and other non-
silvicultural parameters, with respect to
clearcutting, were begun in the early 1960’s.
Federal hearings in 1972 on forest manage¬
ment practices resulted in increased research
efforts. The effects of clearcutting on wild¬
life are largely unmeasured and not easy to
quantify. As a result wildlife has not been
adequately included in multiple-use manage¬
ment plans for forestry practices (Webb,
1973).

123

124

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

Because of their conspicuousness, terri¬
torial behavior, and well known systematics,
birds have been commonly utilized in
measuring the effects of the alterations in
habitat resulting from logging operations
(Odum, 1950, Jarvinen and Sammalisto,
1973). Several recent reports studied changes
in bird species diversity following various
amounts of logging on differing forest types:
eg. Hagar, 1960; Conner and Adkisson,
1975; Adams and Barret, 1976; Webb, et al.,
1977; and Ahle’n, 1975 and Asbirk, 1975.

Bond (1957) investigated breeding bird
distribution in the upland forests of southern
Wisconsin. Some recent studies on bird
species diversity in Wisconsin have con¬

cerned campground bird communities
(Guth, 1978) and avian utilization of small
woodlots (Howe and Jones, 1977) but the ef¬
fect of clearcutting on bird diversity has been
little studied.

This investigation was initiated to examine
the changes which occurred in breeding bird
populations as a result of clearcutting in the
northern hardwood forest of Wisconsin.
Goals of this study were to (1) document the
change in breeding bird species composition
as a result of clearcutting, and (2) to describe
the relationship between bird species diver¬
sity and age of stand since cutting. The data
presented here were gathered between April,
1976 and October, 1978.

Study Area

The study was conducted in the townships
of Goodman and Silver Cliff in northern
Marinette County, Wisconsin (Fig. 1). The
vegetation of this region is composed of
Hill’s oak ( Quercus ellipsoidalis ), quaking
aspen (Populus tremuloides ), large-toothed
aspen ( P . grandidentata) with some white
oak ( Quercus alba). The importance of the
aspen in this area is demonstrated by the fact
that the aspen-paper birch (Betula papy-
rifera) type of commercial forest comprises
243.3 thousand acres (98,380 hectares) or
27.4% of Marinette County (Spencer and
Thorne, 1972). The prevalent ground cover
is Aster macrophyllus, Carex pennsylvanica ,
Maianthemum canadense , Oryzopsis asperi-
folia, Pteridium aquilinium , Vaccinium
angustifolium and Waldsteinia fragarioides.
Six aspen stands were selected for study;
they were 3, 5, 11, 17, 35 and 45 years old.
All six sites were within 6.5 kilometers of
Mirror Lake. The 3, 5, 17 and 45 year old
stands were in sections 30, 29, 31 and 31
respectively of R18E, T36N. The 11 year old
stand was located in section 13 of R17E,
T36N. The 35 year old stand was located in
section 24 of R17E, T35N.

The 3, 5, 11 and 45 year old stands were
the largest being approximately 90, 65, 50

1985]

Steffen — Songbird Populations

125

and 140+ hectares respectively. The 17 and
35 year old stands were smaller in area being
approximately 15 and 30 hectares respec¬
tively.

The topography is one of gently rolling
hills with a total relief of 10 meters, as deter¬
mined from USGS quadrangle maps.

The soils under the stands are mapped as
sandy loams, originating from glacial drift
and wind blown loess, with leached A hori¬
zons and tend to be acidic (Beatty, et al.,
1964).

All of the areas studied showed indica¬
tions of having been burned in the past, i.e.,
occasional charred stumps and burn
meadows were observed on the sites. The
method of cutting appeared to have been
similar on all the stands. All standing
timber, except for scattered live trees and
dead snags, was cut down and usable logs
removed. No scarification (scraping the soil
clean) of the substrate was apparent, nor had
logging residue been removed or burned.
Logging residues were less evident in the
older stands.

Methods

Vegetation Sampling

Density was sampled using 100 randomly
located quadrats each lm2 for herbaceous
species and 40 randomly located 16m2 quad¬
rats for shrub and sapling species. The point
quarter method (Cottam and Curtis, 1959)
was utilized for sampling trees greater than 4
inches DBH at 40 points in each stand.

Vegetation Analysis

Total basal area, relative frequency, rela¬
tive density, relative dominance and im¬
portance value were calculated for all tree
species on the 11, 17, 35 and 45 year old
stands. A diversity index was computed for
trees and shrubs as in Shannon- Weaver
(1964). The formula is - E.-P,- loge P, where
Pt equals the proportion of all plants which
belong to the ith species.

A shrub density index was computed for
each stand by summing the individual den¬
sities for all the species in a given stand.

Avian Sampling

The strip census or transect method
similar to Conner and Adkisson (1975),
Gavereski (1976) and Milewski and Camp¬
bell (1976) was used to sample the bird
species present. Randomly located transects
200 meters long were established in each of
the 6 stands: 4 transects were established in
the 3 year old stand, 3 in in the 5 and 45 year
old stands and 1 each in the 11, 17 and 35
year old stands. Only one transect was estab¬
lished in 3 of the stands because of size
limitations. Each transect was run 3 times,
suggested by Emlen (1971) to be the mini¬
mum number necessary to derive valid popu¬
lation estimates on a transect.

Those birds heard singing or observed
within 50 meters on either side of the
transect were recorded. Censusing was con¬
ducted only on calm mornings to avoid bias
due to wind interference in detecting singing
birds. Several flags were tied at a distance of
50 meters from each transect to aid in identi¬
fying the boundaries of the sampling area.
All transects were placed at least 50 meters
from the edge of any given habitat type. All
birds, breeders and nonbreeders, observed
on the study areas were recorded. A factor
of (2.0) was applied to the number of singing
males in each census to estimate the total
population including females. Counts were
begun at 0600 and were concluded by 0900.
Counts were not conducted on mornings
that were heavily overcast or during periods
of precipitation.

Avian Analysis

In the formula for species diversity (Shan¬
non and Weaver, 1964), H is the bird species
diversity index, P, is the proportion of all in¬
dividuals which belong to the ith species.
This statistic includes both richness (number
of species) and evenness (number of individ-

DIVERSITY

126

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

uals of each species) factors and better ex¬
presses diversity than would a simple count
of species number.

Richness values were also computed for
S-l

each stand, utilizing D = j— ^ (Margalef,

1958), where D is the richness value, S is the
total number of species and N is the total
number of individuals.

In addition, evenness values were com-
H '

puted, utilizing e = j g (Pielou, 1966),

where e is the evenness value, S is the total
number of species and H ' is the bird species
diversity index.

Results

Vegetation Analysis

Species Composition — Observations in¬
dicated that the herbaceous vegetation was
relatively uniform in all the stands, and thus
herbaceous vegetation was sampled only on
the 3 and 45 year old stands. Sorenson’s
similarity index (1948) of 82 for the 3 and 45
year old stands supports the observed
uniformity of the herbaceous growth in the

3.0

2.0

1.0

A

' \ Shrubs

3 5 11 17 35 4-5

AGE OF STAND (yrs.)

Fig. 2. Shrub diversity and bird species diversity
plotted against age of stand.

stands. These data, along with observations
made on the remaining 4 stands, suggest that
wood aster ( Aster sp.) and bracken fern
( Pteridium aquilinium) had higher cover and
frequency than any of the other constituents
in the herbaceous layer. The species con¬
tributing most to the shrub layer in terms of
density was hazel (Corylus americana) (Fig.
3). Tree importance values (Curtis, 1959) are
presented for the 11, 17, 35 and 45 year old
stands (Table 1).

Quaking and large-toothed aspen were
found to have the highest importance values
(Table 1) of all the species present on any of

KiS hazel
U\T1 aspen

H^~^| VIBURNUM

WITCH HAZEL

LU LL] oak

pm JUNEBERRY
MM MAPLE

| 1 ~~~| ALL OTHER SHRUBS

3 5 11 17 35 4-5

AGE OF STAND (yrs.)

Fig. 3 . Shrub layer species with densities greater than 5
stems per 16 sq. meter quadrat for the six study areas.

1985]

Steffen — Songbird Populations

127

Table 1. Importance values for trees
on the four older stands.

Species

11 yr.

17 yr

35 yr.

45 yr.

Aspen

290.0

208.8

261 A

187.2

Hill’s oak

—

49.9

8.4

42.9

Red maple

—

2.8

9.9

33.1

Paper birch

—

20.2

—

37.0

White pine

—

9.8

—

—

Jack pine

—

7.6

—

—

Red pine

—

—

14.9

—

Black cherry

7.4

—

—

—

Total

297.4

299.1

300.6

300.0

the stands. In the 3 and 5 year old stands
these species were represented by saplings.
Hill’s oak and paper birch also had relatively
high importance values for the 45 and 17
year old stands. The 11 year old stand had
fewer tree species than any of the other three
stands.

Foliage Structure — Although species com¬
position differences were noted, the princi-

'/77777777777777777a

3 year stand

5 year stand

\\\\\\\\\\\\\\^

XWWWWWWWW^

W&BBBI fUgg j

V/777Z^Z7Z^7/7a

11 year stand

17 year stand

x\\\\\\\^ fXWWW'

V////////////////A

35 year stand

-Herbs Canopy

[HT] -Shrubs

■■ -Mid Canopy

=

5 year stand

- Well Developed

} ( - Poorly Developed

Fig. 4. Observed vegetational layering in the six study
areas.

pie vegetational difference between stands
was a structural one. While no foliage height
diversity measurements were made on any of
the stands, it became apparent from obser¬
vations that foliage structure was different in
each of the stands. These structural dif¬
ferences were in terms of fairly well defined
layers of foliage as to height in the forest
(Fig. 4).

The 3 year old stand had only herbaceous
and shrub layers. The shrub layer in this case
was composed mostly of aspen saplings. The
height of the canopy in this stand was
measured at 2.0-2. 5 meters.

In the 5 year old stand the sapling canopy
was attaining sufficient height to begin
establishing a third vegetational layer, a tree
layer. The height of the canopy in this stand
was measured at between 4. 0-5.0 meters.

The 1 1 year old stand had the most com¬
plete layers of all 6 stands, as determined by
visual observation, including herbaceous,
shrub, mid- canopy and canopy layers. The
mid-canopy layer was formed from pole¬
sized trees of aspen and black cherry ( Prunus
serotina) and tall shrubs such as Juneberry.
This mid-canopy layer was located above the
shrub layer and below the forest canopy.
The height of the canopy in this stand was
estimated to be 9.0-10.0 meters.

The 17 year old stand appeared less
layered than the 1 1 year old stand in that the
mid-canopy layer was less evident. The
shrub layer in this stand was found to be
relatively sparse. Because of this reduced
shrub density the stand presented a much
more open understory than the 1 1 year old
stand. The height of the canopy in this stand
was estimated at 10.0-15.0 meters.

Layering in the 35 year old stand was
similar to the 17 year old stand with a more
open understory. The canopy of the 35 year
old stand was approximately 15.0 meters.

The 45 year old stand differed from the 35
year old stand in having a more developed
shrub layer and a more closed canopy. The
height of the canopy was approximately 15.0
meters.

128

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

Avian Analysis

Bird Species Diversity and Abundance —
Bird species diversity (BSD) indices were
computed. Figure 5 is a plot of the regression
equation for these indices against age of
stand. A highly significant fit of the data to
this curve was obtained (P <.01). The
regression analysis and plot of the regression
equation clearly show a projected rise in
BSD in the early stages after cutting from an
estimated value of 2.02 at year 0 to a peak of
2.90 at about year 23 after which it declines.

The 1 1 year old stand was found to have
the highest BSD, 2.87 with 20 species. A
relative abundance statistic (Conner and
Adkisson, 1975) computed for each stand
(Table 2) shows the most abundant species in
the stand to be the chestnut-sided warbler
( Dendroica pennsylvanica ), rose-breasted
grosbeak ( Pheucticus ludovicianus) and
veery ( Catharus fuscescens).

The 17 year old stand had the second
highest BSD, 2.76 with 16 species. The most
abundant species in this stand were the oven-
bird ( Seiurus aurocapillus ), veery and least
flycatcher ( Empidonax minimus).

The 35 year old stand had the third highest
BSD, 2.59 with 16 species. The most abun¬
dant species in this stand were the least

Fig. 5. Plot of regression equations and data for bird
species diversity (X) and richness (□).

flycatcher, red-eyed vireo ( Vireo olivaceus ),
ovenbird and veery. The least flycatcher had
the highest abundance in this stand.

The 5 year old stand had the fourth
highest BSD, 2.32 with 17 species. The most
abundant species in this stand were the
chestnut-sided warbler, ovenbird, Nashville
warbler ( Vermivora ruficapilla) and rufous¬
sided towhee ( Pipilo erythrophthalmus).

The 3 year old stand had the fifth highest
BSD 2.20 with 16 species. The most abun¬
dant species in the stand were the chestnut¬
sided warbler, mourning warbler ( Oporornis
Philadelphia) and rufous-sided towhee.

The 45 year old stand had the lowest BSD,
2.16 with 13 species. The red-eyed vireo had
the highest abundance in this stand.

Bird Species Richness — The richness com¬
ponent (number of species) of bird species
diversity was computed for each of the
stands. Figure 5 is a plot of the regression
equation of species richness against age of
stand. A significant fit of the data to this
curve was obtained (P<.02). The regression
analysis and the plot of the regression curve
clearly show a projected increase in species
richness in the early stages after cutting from
a value estimated at 2.15 at year 0 to a peak
value of 4.61 at year 24 after which it de¬
clines.

Bird Species Evenness — The evenness
component (number of individuals of each
species) of bird species diversity was com¬
puted for each stand. A regression analysis
of species evenness values showed no signifi¬
cant difference with age of stand (P <0.3).

Discussion

Trends in BSD With Age of Stand — This
study demonstrates an almost complete
change in the avian fauna over a 45 year
period following clearcutting. These results
agree with the findings of Conner and
Adkisson (1975). A trend in BSD was ob¬
served in which diversity was low in the 3
year old stand, high in the 1 1 year old stand
and low in the 45 year old stand. Data col¬
lected in 1976 suggests that the BSD in the 3

1985]

Steffen — Songbird Populations

129

year old stand was initially lower and BSD in
the 45 year old stand was nearly the same as
in 1977. There was no difference in the even¬
ness component of BSD with respect to age
of stand. Tramer’s (1969) work on the com¬
ponents of Shannon’s Formula of diversity
lends support to this observation in that he

found breeding bird communities to be rela¬
tively constant with respect to the evenness
component of species diversity. Alternative¬
ly, Adams, et al., (1976) and Webb, et al.,
(1977) found evenness to be greatest in the
early stages after clearcutting.

The richness component of the BSD index

Table 2. Relative abundance of bird species in the six study areas.

3

5

11

17

35

45

Species

yr.

yr.

yr.

yr.

yr.

yr.

Tree swallow

.033

House wren

.067

Gray catbird

.067

Brown thrasher

.033

.088

Mourning warbler

.100

.064

Indigo bunting

.067

.029

.032

American goldfinch

.033

Rufous-sided towhee

.100

.088

.064

.073

Field sparrow

.033

Chestnut-sided warbler

.200

.147

.096

.037

.035

Golden-winged warbler

.100

.058

.032

Northern flicker

.033

Eastern kingbird

.033

Eastern phoebe

.033

Brown-headed cowbird

.033

.029

.032

.037

.035

.038

Song sparrow

.033

R.-t. hummingbird

.029

Blue jay

.058

.032

.037

.035

.038

Veery

.058

.096

.111

.107

.153

Red-eyed vireo

.058

.032

.111

.107

.192

Ovenbird

.088

.064

.074

.107

.115

Rose-breasted grosbeak

.029

.096

.074

.071

.076

Nashville warbler

.088

.032

Black and white warbler

.029

.032

Canada warbler

.029

American woodcock

.058

Yellow-bellied sapsucker

.029

.035

Downy woodpecker

.064

.038

Great crested flycatcher

.032

.037

.038

Least flycatcher

.064

.111

.178

.115

Eastern wood pewee

.032

.074

.071

.076

Black-capped chickadee

.032

.037

American redstart

.032

Scarlet tanager

.032

.037

.035

.038

American robin

.037

.035

Wood thrush

.037

.038

Cedar waxwing

.074

.035

Hairy woodpecker

.035

Ruffed grouse

.035

Black-throated green warbler

.038

TOTAL individuals

60

68

62

54

56

52

TOTAL species

16

17

20

17

16

13

130

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

in the present study increased to a maximum
in the 1 1 year old stand and then decreased
with continued age of stand. This trend is
similar to that found for oak-hickory clear-
cuts by Ambrose (1975) and Conner and
Adkisson (1975), although this trend was not
observed by Conner, et al. (1979) for pine-
oak clearcuts. This evidence suggests that the
kind of trend which might be expected for
the various components of the breeding bird
species diversity index for any given region
might be dependent on stand type.

BSD In Relation To Vegetation Struc¬
ture— The trend in BSD starting at a low
diversity, increasing in the early stages after
cutting and then decreasing again is not sup¬
ported by a corresponding trend, either posi¬
tive or negative, in tree or shrub species
diversity (Fig. 2). Several researchers have
suggested a close correlation between breed¬
ing bird diversity and foliage structural
diversity. Although no measurement of foli¬
age height diversity was made in this study, it
was observed during vegetation sampling
that the 11 year old stand appeared to be
more complex, in the development of vegeta¬
tion layers, than any of the other stands (Fig.
4). Tramer (1969) suggested that it is possible
that the foliage height diversity determines
the number of niches (at least in the physical
sense) and thus the number of species which
can coexist within a given community. BSD
appeared to be associated with vegetation
structural diversity in the present study.

Milewski and Campbell (1976) suggest a
correlation between floristic diversity and
bird species diversity. However, Bond (1957)
and MacArthur, et al., (1962) suggest that
there is little or no dependence of bird
species diversity on floristic diversity. The
results of the present study tend to support
the latter idea.

Clumping of vegetation or patchiness has
been found to relate to faunal diversity
(Wiens, 1974, Hooper, et al., 1975) and in
some cases has been shown to be more
important than foliage height diversity
(MacArthur, et al., 1962). Horizontal heter¬
ogeneity (patchiness) of vegetation was not

measured in the present study. However,
patchiness was observed in the 3 year old
stand. This patchiness was in the form of
clumps of stems occurring at the site of old
stumps of maple and oak where sprouting
took place. In some cases these clumps con¬
sisted of around 25 to 75 stems. Patchiness
of slash caused breaks in the vegetation, but
did not seem to greatly affect the BSD of the
3 year old stand as indicated by its relatively
low BSD index. It is possible that some of
the other stands may have had greater, but
less visible, patchiness in their vegetation
which may have affected the BSD found on
those stands.

In the 5 year old stand the aspen saplings
began to separate from the shrub layer to
form the beginnings of a distinct tree canopy
(Fig. 4). Wilson (1974) suggests that in a
series of increasing complexity of vegeta-
tional structure, the addition of trees in the
series has a major impact on the addition of
avian species. Karr and Roth (1971) express
a similar concept when they state that the
maximum rate of increase in avifauna diver¬
sity occurs between 100 and 150% cover
when both shrub and tree layers are being
added. It can be seen in Table 3 that the
number of species (across the cline in age
since clearcutting) begins to increase in the 5
year old stand. It should also be noted that
in the 5 year old stand and moving towards
the older stands the number of forest bird
species increases rapidly, replacing species of
open field and shrub habitats.

Conclusions and Summary

The data presented here clearly
demonstrate a nearly complete change in the

Table 3. Bird species number in relation to stand size.

Age of Stand
(years)

Size of

Stand (ha.)

Number of
Species

17

15

17

35

30

16

11

50

20

5

65

17

3

90

16

45

140

13

1985]

Steffen — Songbird Populations

131

species composition of the breeding bird
population in a northern hardwood forest
following clearcutting. Predicted bird
species diversity is initially reduced by clear-
cutting and then begins to increase until the
stand reaches 22 years of age after which it
declines. While the plot of the data suggests
that the numbers of species decreases rapidly
after the high value is passed at the stand age
of 22 years, the actual situation would prob¬
ably be close to that shown by Conner and
Adkisson (1975) where the number of species
levels off or increases as a climax condition
is approached. Structural changes in the
vegetation brought about by clearcutting
and the subsequent successional stages are
most important. The data also indicate that
the shift back toward the original species
composition occurs rather rapidly in the first
10-11 years following cutting after which the
change is much slower.

It is clear from the present study that
clearcutting increases bird species diversity
and increases density of individuals. An im¬
portant loss due to clearcutting is the almost
complete displacement of the original species
population; however, this displacement is
not a long time effect, since 85% of the
species found in the control stand were re¬
established in the 1 1 year old stand.

It appears that clearcutting in relatively
young aspen-birch stands is not deleterious
to avian diversity over the long term. In
terms of management, cutting should be
done to preserve sections of the original
habitat in order to assure the maximum
diversity of bird life in the area. Although
forest fragmentation may not be a serious
problem in northern Wisconsin because of
the extensive forest canopy present, it may
be a consideration in individual cases of
clearcutting.

The size of the area being clearcut is a fac¬
tor which must be a part of a management
plan. The stands examined in the present
study ranged in size from 15 to 140+ hec¬
tares. Conner, et al. (1979) has suggested a
size limit of approximately 12-16 hectares
which should be large enough to include

most species of birds with the exception of
those having large home range requirements.
Data from the present study do not support
a correlation between number of bird species
and size of clearcut (Table 3). However, it
should be remembered that these stands are
not of equal age. Although these data do not
suggest a size limit for clearcuts, it would
seem apparent that a limit could be at some
size equal to or less than the smallest stand in
this study (15 ha.).

Acknowledgements

This study was supported in part by the
Steenbock Fund of the Wisconsin Society
for Ornithology and the University of Wis¬
consin-Green Bay Graduate School. I would
like to thank Robert S. Cook, Keith L.
White and D. M. Girard for reviewing
earlier drafts of the manuscript. Also I
would like to acknowledge D. Jowett and
Christa Schwintzer for advice and technical
assistance. The staff of the Wausaukee
ranger station provided weather information
and helped in locating clearcut stands. Amy
Steffen and John Baum assisted with field
work and manuscript formulation.

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fects on bird species diversity within mature
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Ahle’n, I. 1975. Forestry and the bird fauna in
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Ambrose, R. E. 1975. The effects of small-tract
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Asbirk, S. 1975. Effect of tree-cutting on the bird
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Beatty, M. T., I. Hembre, F. D. Hole, L. R.
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_ , and C. S. Adkisson. 1975. Effect of

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staffpaper series #5.

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communities of Peninsula State Park, Wiscon¬
sin. Passenger Pigeon 40(4):489-493.

Hagar, D. C. 1960. The interrelationships of log¬
ging, birds, and timber regeneration in the
Douglas-fir region of northwestern California.
Ecology 41(1): 1 16-125.

Hooper, R. G., E. F. Smith, H. S. Crawford,
B. S. McGinnes and V. J. Walker. 1975.
Nesting bird populations in a new town. Wildl.
Society Bull., 3(3): 111-117.

Howe, R. W., and G. Jones. 1977. Avian utiliza¬
tion of small woodlots in Dane Co., Wiscon¬
sin. Passenger Pigeon 39(4):3 13-3 19.

Jarvinen, O., and L. Sammalisto. 1973. Indices
of community structure in incomplete bird cen¬
suses when all species are equally detectable.
Ornis Scandinavica 4: 127-143.

Karr, J. R., and R. R. Roth. 1971. Diversity in
several New World areas. Am. Naturalist
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Lang, L. 1975. Aesthetics. Pages 1-8. In Clear-
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MacArthur, R. H., J. W. MacArthur, and J.
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Spencer, J. S., Jr., and H. W. Thorne. 1972.
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Tramer, E. J. 1969. Bird species diversity: Com¬
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Webb, W. L. 1973. Timber and wildlife. Pages
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_ , D. F. Behrend, and B. Saisorn. 1977. Ef¬
fects of logging on song bird populations in a
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55. 35 pp.

Wiens, J. S. 1974. Habitat heterogeneity and
avian community structure in North American
grasslands. Amer. Midi. Nat. 91(1): 195-213.

Wilson, M. F. 1974. Avian community organiza¬
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1017-1029.

RELATIVE NESTING SUCCESS OF YELLOW-HEADED
AND RED-WINGED BLACKBIRDS

Michael E. Minock
U. W. Center-Fox Valley , Menas ha

Abstract

At Collins Marsh, Manitowoc Co., WI, Red-winged Blackbirds fledge signif¬
icantly fewer young per nest and have a significantly higher rate of nest failure
than Yellow-headed Blackbirds. As a result of interspecific territoriality Red¬
wings are prevented from breeding in areas they would otherwise use. Thus,
competition for nesting habitat results in lowered reproductive rates among Red¬
wings. A major factor causing the lower reproductive rates is increased egg
predation.

Previously Minock and Watson (1983)
reported that Yellow-headed Blackbirds
( Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus) and Red¬
winged Blackbirds ( Agelauis phoeniceus) are
interspecifically territorial at Collins Marsh,
Manitowoc County, Wisconsin. This has
also been found in western parts of North
America (e.g., Orians and Willson 1964,
Miller 1968), and in both regions it results in
Yellow-heads using emergent vegetation
over deeper, more open, water for nesting
and Red-wings being forced to the periphery
of the marsh. We found mean water depth
of 37 cm beneath 25 Yellow-head nests and
all nests were in cattails ( Typha sp.), while 18
Redwing nests were over water of mean
depth of 21cm and 12 were on land. Red¬
wing nests were placed in vegetation of at
least 7 different species.

As pointed out by others, this means that
Yellow-heads exclude Red-wings from their
“optimal niche space” (Robertson, 1972). I
was interested in whether specific detrimen¬
tal effects of this displacement of Red-wings
at Collins Marsh could be quantified in
terms of influence of the Yellow-head
presence on Red-wing nesting success. One
way to do this would be to remove Yellow-
heads from the marsh and then compare
nesting success between Red-wings on the
periphery and those in what was Yellow-
head habitat. This was not feasible. A sec¬

ond approach would be to compare nesting
success between Red-wings at Collins with
those at another similar nearby marsh
without Yellow-heads. I did not attempt this
and do not know if an appropriate situation
exists. A third approach is to compare
nesting success between Yellow-heads and
Red-wings at Collins. I did this in 1980. A
problem with this procedure is that there is
no guarantee Red-wings would fare the same
as Yellow-heads if the former had access to
the area used by the latter. Such results,
however, may be suggestive.

Nest searches were conducted in the south¬
west corner of the marsh. The nesting data
reported here were gathered on 12 visits to
the marsh from 16 May to 25 June and 1 visit
on 3 July. Return visits to nests reported on
in this paper, with one exception as follows,
were made until young fledged or failure oc¬
curred. One way to estimate nesting success
is to determine the number of young fledged
per active nest (at least one egg laid). Nestl¬
ings were considered to have fledged if they
were alive the next to last time I checked the
nest and were gone and would have been old
enough to fledge by my last visit. In addi¬
tion, three 8 day old nestlings in a Red-wing
nest on my last visit to the marsh were con¬
sidered to have fledged, but three later active
Red-wing nests were not included in the
data. The results (Table 1) show a fledging

133

134

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

Table 1. Fledging success per active nest of Red-
Winged and Yellow-headed Blackbirds at Collins
Marsh.

No.

of nests

Young

fledged

Young fledged
per nest

Yellow-heads

19

36

1.9

Red-wings

23

24

1.04

*P

<.032

*Mann- Whitney U Test, one-tailed.

rate in Yellow-heads nearly twice that found
among Red-wings. In addition to the differ¬
ence in number of young fledged per nest, 14
of 23 Red-wing nests fledged no young
whereas only 5 of 19 Yellow-head nests were
total failures. This difference is significant
(P < .05, Chi-square).

The two species are capable of producing
similar numbers of eggs per clutch (e.g.,
Orians 1980). Red-wings are generally
thought to have greater nesting success
within marshes than in upland situations
(e.g., Case and Hewitt 1963, Robertson
1972) (However, see Dolbeer, 1976). Young
(1963), in a study mainly concerned with
age-specific egg and nestling mortality, also
found lower nesting success among Red¬
wings than Yellow-heads at a marsh near
Stoddard, WI. These facts, together with my
data, strongly suggest that competition with
Yellow-heads for breeding territories is
reducing reproductive success of Red-wings
at Collins Marsh.

Of the 14 failed Red-wing nests, 12 were
cases where eggs disappeared. This occurred
in 3 of the 5 failed Yellow-head nests. It is
likely that parts of the marsh preferred by
both species but obtained only by Yellow-
heads are less susceptible to predation than
areas used by Red-wings. In his study Young
(1963) suggested one reason for lower egg
and nestling mortality among Yellow-heads
might be reduced predation because of “the
generally deeper water at the nest site.”
Robertson (1972) found that predation was
the most common cause of mortality to Red¬
wing eggs (and nestlings) in both marsh and

upland habitat but that it was greater in
uplands. The other 2 cases of nest failure
among Red-wings at Collins were from
drowning due to nest submersion from rising
water on a flood plain, and failure of eggs to
hatch in a deserted wind-tilted nest. The re¬
maining two nest failures among Yellow-
heads were due to desertion and/or starva¬
tion since dead young were found in the
nests. I have not attempted to analyze causes
of egg or nestling mortality in nests that were
partially successful. The role of differences
in food availability to each species was not
studied.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Ronald Barrett for reviewing
the manuscript, to Daniel Olson of the Wis¬
consin Dept, of Natural Resources for ap¬
proval of use of the marsh and to John R.
Watson for telling me about Collins Marsh
in the first place.

Literature Cited

Case, N. A., and O. H. Hewitt. 1963. Nesting
and productivity of the Red-winged Blackbird
in relation to habitat. Living Bird 2:7-20.
Dolbeer, R. A. 1976. Reproductive rate and tem¬
poral spacing of nesting of Red-winged Black¬
birds in upland habitat. Auk 93:343-355.

Miller, R. S. 1968. Conditions of competition
between Red-wings and Yellow-headed Black¬
birds. J. Anim. Ecol. 37:43-62.

Minock, M. E., and J. R. Watson. 1983. Red¬
winged and Yellow-headed Blackbird nesting
habitat in a Wisconsin marsh. J. Field Ornith.
54:324-326.

Orians, G. H. 1980. Some adaptations of marsh
nesting blackbirds. Princeton Univ. Press,
Princeton, N.J.

Orians, G. H., and M. F. Willson. 1964. Inter¬
specific territories of birds. Ecology 45:736-
745.

Robertson, R. J. 1972. Optimal niche space of
the Red-winged Blackbird (Agelauis phoeni-
ceus). I. Nesting success in marsh and upland
habitat. Canad. J. Zool. 50:247-263.

Young, H. 1963. Age-specific mortality in the
eggs and nestlings of blackbirds. Auk 80:145-
155.

BIRD BEHAVIOR IN RESPONSE
TO THE WARMTH OF BLACKTOP ROADS

Philip Clason Whitford
Biological Sciences
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Abstract

In summer small birds are commonly seen on the surface of blacktop roads,
particularly when the air is cool (< about 25° C, 77° F). In this study I recorded
the species and numbers of birds on the road as observed from a car on a
specific 20.6 km route daily and at different times of day; I related these observa¬
tions to concurrent temperatures of air, road surface, and surface temperatures
of adjacent open and shaded habitats.

The mean road temperature in full sunlight was 6.7° C higher than air
temperature in shade. The highest numbers of birds (75.6% of total) on the road
occurred when road temperatures were 7-10° C above air temperature (road
26-34° and air 19-26° C). Since the lower critical temperatures (LCT) of thermo¬
neutrality for many passerine birds is 22-23° C, the birds can conserve metabolic
energy by utilizing the solar heat stored in the road surface during the several
hours each day when the road is at or above LCT and the air is colder. Addi¬
tional stationary observations of birds and the length of time each stayed on the
road at different road temperatures showed a similar pattern. Responses to other
factors including wetness (after rain), clouds and wind were also considered.

The wide availability of the warmer microenvironment of blacktop roads,
and the behavioral adaptation of the birds using it, may conserve enough energy
in the critical breeding season for species at the northern margin of their range to
reproduce more successfully or even to extend their breeding range.

Roads represent one of man’s commonest
and most extensive intrusions into natural
areas. Road beds surfaced with asphalt have
the capacity to absorb and retain large quan¬
tities of solar heat. The stored heat is re¬
leased during the late afternoon and evening
hours. As sunset approaches, the angle of in¬
cidence of sunlight decreases; therefore the
sun’s effectiveness as a radiant energy source
for avian behavioral thermoregulation also
decreases. Due to its heat storage and release
characteristics, the road surface continues to
offer a thermal environment often well
above known lower critical temperatures
(LCT) of thermoneutrality for many passer¬
ine species until well past sunset. Thus, when
air temperature is cool and direct solar
energy is least available, birds may still con¬

serve metabolic energy by using the ther¬
mally favorable environment provided by
lightly- traveled asphalt-surfaced roads. To
do so the birds must modify daily behavior
patterns so that they are present on the road
during periods when the road surface is
above, and ambient temperatures below, the
species’ LCT.

The purpose of this study was two-fold:
first, to determine the magnitude and extent
of difference in temperature regimes of the
blacktop road and that of several adjacent
natural micro-environments, and secondly,
to determine whether daily road-visiting pat¬
terns of a wild passerine population in¬
dicated a relationship to road surface
temperatures which could be construed as a
form of behavioral thermoregulation. In ad-

135

136

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

dition data were collected to determine the
extent of influence of rain, wind, and other
weather phenomena on road-visiting be¬
havior of birds.

Methods

Description of Study Area

Marquette County, in central Wisconsin,
is an area of sandy moraine, outwash and
wetlands. Agricultural land use has declined,
many of the original farms reverting to
natural vegetation, thus creating succes-
sional stages which offer ideal habitat for
many bird species. The study area included
parts of Shields, Crystal Lake, Newton and
Harris townships. Aerial photographs in¬
dicate the area is approximately !4 cropland
and abandoned fields, !4 remnants of oak
savanna (chiefly Quercus ellipsoidalis and Q.
alba , Whitford and Whitford, 1971) or plan¬
tations of red and white pine (Pinus resinosa
and P. strobus) and Vi open marshes and
swamps of tamarack (Larix larcina).

Data Collection

Observations of birds on the road surface
were recorded at least once daily from 30
May through 30 August, 1974 and 1975,
from an auto traveling a standard 20.6 km
route over local roads of typical asphalt-
gravel composition at a steady speed of 56
km/hr (35 mph). Traffic on these roads
ranged from 0 to 10 vehicles per hour,
averaging approximately 5 per hour. Data
records included the times of meeting on¬
coming vehicles and the times during which I
knew vehicles ahead had disturbed the birds.
Analysis was based only on those samples
without known disturbance. In addition,
seven hours of stationary observations re¬
corded the lengths of time birds remained on
the road at various road and air tempera¬
tures.

Bird observations were recorded as the
number of birds, by species and in total,
which were seen upon the road surface dur¬
ing each 10 minute sample period. Birds
observed on the road were grouped into

three classes: those with ruffled feathers,
demonstrating Class I sunbathing (radiant
energy absorbing) posture (Hauser 1957);
those with feathers smoothed, erect posture
and no visible activity; and those involved in
visible searching activity which would indi¬
cate anting or feeding behavior. The latter
group was omitted from data analysis to
eliminate potential confusion between feed¬
ing behavior patterns and thermoregulatory
behavior patterns. The first two groups were
analyzed independently to separate birds ac¬
tively absorbing radiant energy from those
which appeared to be in a thermoneutral
state where they had no need to actively ab¬
sorb energy to augment metabolic heat pro¬
duction.

Temperatures were measured with labora¬
tory-quality mercury bulb thermometers and
a three-probe remote-sensing thermistor
recording unit. Probe placement was as
follows: a) on the ground in a medium-dense
stand of herbaceous plants dominated by
grasses; b) on the litter surface under 20 year
old pines; and c) at a height of 1.2m in shade
to measure ambient air temperature. Two
thermometers, bulbs shaded, were placed on
the road surface until the readings stabilized
to measure surface temperature in shade and
in sun. Temperatures of all sites were re¬
corded immediately before and after each
bird counting period. The wide temperature
range which was sampled allowed the road
to serve as its own control for the study by
comparing bird observations during both
optimal, i.e. above LCT, and sub-optimal
road temperatures.

The road surface was classified as wet, dry
or damp (having puddles of standing water
on an otherwise dry surface). Weather con¬
ditions such as rain, percent cloud cover and
wind speed were recorded to determine their
possible influence on bird presence on the
road.

Data Analysis

Significant differences in microenviron¬
ment temperatures were determined using a

1985]

Whitford — Bird Behavior

137

calculator programmed for the mean and
standard deviation of hourly groups.
09:00-21:00, on a monthly basis for June,
July and August, 1974 and 1975. Analysis of
variance was calculated for all hourly
groups.

Influence of various weather factors and
temperatures on bird use of the road was
determined by comparing the mean number
of individuals observed during all 10-minute
periods for each weather condition or
temperature range. The average number of
minutes birds remained on the road at vari¬
ous road surface temperatures was analyzed
in a similar manner for stationary observa¬
tions.

An a priori Chi-square test, using tem¬
peratures arbitrarily grouped by 5° C units,
was used to establish whether distribution of
individuals was influenced by road surface
temperature.

Finally, it was necessary to separate the ef¬
fects of time and temperature, two strongly
interrelated factors, to determine which had
the greater influence on bird presence on the
road. This was done by deriving coefficients
of determination for each factor.

The specific formula used to separate the
influence of time and temperature was
designed by Dr. Eugene Lange, then a bio¬
statistician with the University of Wisconsin-
Milwaukee, and is as follows (Lange, 1978,
pers. communication):

Y0k = ft, + + &H.2 + /33H,3

®

+ /^Ty + j35T;2 + <36T,3

©

+ + g..,H,T,2 + /32>4H,2T, +

©

where Y0k = k'* observation of ],h temperature and ith
time period

H, = i,h time period of the day

T, = ),h temperature

ft = constant

,4),(/3i ,s),(/52 ,4) = partial correla¬
tion coefficients

and where

1 produces the effect of time independent of temper¬
ature

2 produces the effect of temperature independent of
time

3 produces the combined effect of time interacting
with temperature.

The equation made it possible to use a regression anal¬
ysis where hitherto this had not been possible due to the
curvilinear relationships of temperature and activity.
Regression analysis followed the form:

I

Y =

ft =

©

II

Y =

ft =

©

III

Y =

ft =

©

IV

Y =

ft =

©

+

©

V

Y =

ft =

©

+

©

VI

Y =

ft =

©

+

©

VII

Y =

ft =

©

+

©

Results and Discussion

The most commonly observed species
were the Vesper Sparrow (Pooecetes gramin-
eus), American Robin (Turdus migratorius).
House Sparrow (Passer domesticus), and the
Mourning Dove (Zenaidura macroura). In
all, 2102 birds of 36 species were observed on
the road surface.

Laboratory studies indicate that House
Sparrow daily activity is energetically most
efficient at an ambient temperature of 22° C
(Kontogiannis 1968, Kendeigh 1969). Vesper
Sparrows were found to have a LCT of 22.5°
C, White-crowned Sparrows (Zonotrichia
leucophrays) 23° C (Yarbrough 1971, King
1964). The metabolic rate of Red-winged
Blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus) increases
significantly at ambient temperatures below
25.6° C (Lewis and Dyer 1969); they con¬
cluded that this increased energy output was
necessary to maintain proper body tempera¬
ture, indicating that this is their LCT of
thermoneutrality.

The road in full sunlight had a mean tem¬
perature for all observation periods 6.7° C
higher than ambient air, 6.3° C higher than
the ground layer in grassy cover, and 7.4° C
higher than the litter surface under the pines.
Analysis of variance for the various micro-

138

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

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e .8 I

<o H 2

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1985]

Whitford—Bird Behavior

139

environments sampled indicated that a sig¬
nificant difference of temperature existed
between the road surface and all other areas
sampled for all hourly sample sizes larger
than seven (p<0.01, Table 1). Temperature
differences between the naturally occurring
areas studied were not found to be signifi¬
cant; however a larger data base would per¬
mit statistical differentiation of these areas
(Johnson and Davies 1927).

Temperature records, grouped into hourly
averages for each month, June-August, in¬
dicate that the road surface offered favor¬
able temperatures for several hours after air
and other microenvironmental temperatures
had fallen below 22° C, the LCT of most of
the species observed (King and Farner 1961).
June records indicate that environs other
than the road had mean temperatures above
22° C from 11:00-16:00 hours, while the
road surface was 22° C or above from
07:00-20:00 hours daily (see Fig. 1). Road
surface temperatures above 22° C were
typical from 06:00-23:00 in July and from
08:00-21:00 in August, while tempera¬
tures of other environs sampled exceeded
this level only from 11:00-20:00 and
10:00-17:00 respectively. Therefore, during
these months, the road surface temperature
was within or above the birds’ thermoneutral
range an average of seven hours more per
day than were temperatures of ambient air
or of other local habitats.

Of all non-sunbathing birds observed on
the road, 75.5 percent were seen when the
road temperatures were between 22 and 33°
C; 12 percent were at temperatures above
33° and 12.5 percent at temperatures below
22° C. These temperature ranges represent
46, 30 and 24 percent of data collection
periods respectively. Birds were observed in
sun-bathing posture only occasionally at
road surface temperatures of 20-26° C, but
rapidly increased in number when road sur¬
face temperatures dropped below 20° C. In¬
deed, all non-feeding birds observed in the
range of 10-16° C road temperature were ex¬
hibiting sunbathing behavior.

Stationary observations (Table 2) indi¬
cated that the greatest numbers of birds per
hour (18) were observed at road surface tem¬
peratures of 30° C. This decreased to 1/hr at
19° C and 4/hr at 40° C. The mean length of
time birds remained on the road per visit
followed the same pattern as number of
visits per hour, namely 5.4, 1.0 and 1.7
minutes per visit respectively.

In observations from the moving car,

Fig. 1. Temperature curves of the five microenviron¬
ments for June 21, 1974, and total number of birds
observed relative to time and temperature factors. Air

Road in the sun — Road in the shade - ,

Tall grass- . , Pine litter layer - A- A, Birds observed

- solid line.

Table 2. Time birds were present on road at various
road surface temperatures. One hour of observation
was conducted at each temperature level.

Temperature

°c

Birds

Observed

Length of Time (minutes)*
Standard
Range Mean Deviation

40.0

4

1-3

1.75

0.96

35.0

7

1-4

2.14

1.21

32.5

13

2-9

4.69

2.39

30.0

18

1-11

5.39

2.57

26.5

9

1-7

4.44

2.23

23.0

2

1-2

1.50

0.71

19.5

1

NA

1.00

NA

♦Times were recorded by 1 -minute units with lengths of
time over a minute recorded to the nearest minute.

140

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

mean numbers of birds per ten-minute
period varied from 0.00-7.11 (range 0-26)
when compared to specific road surface
temperatures. Bird numbers were greatest
when air temperature was 7-10° C below
road surface temperature. Correspondingly,
the mean number of birds observed on the
road per ten-minute period was greatest
within road surface and air temperature
ranges of 26-34° and 19-26° C respectively.

The a priori Chi-square test of distribution
of birds on the road surface relative to
temperature indicated that distribution was
not rectangular (99 % confidence level, 6
d.f., 85.12). A similar test of bird distribu¬
tion relative to time failed to show the rela¬
tionship significantly non-rectangular. Rec¬
tangular distribution of an a priori Chi-
square is a form of null hypothesis which
assumes that one factor has no influence on
another (Games and Klare 1967). Therefore,
rectangular distribution, relative to temper¬
ature, would be expected if foraging or other
behavior patterns were the primary reasons
for birds being present on the road. Non-
rectangular distribution relative to tempera¬
ture indicates that the presence of birds was
strongly related to temperature. Coefficients
of determination were used to further isolate
the effects of time of day from those of
temperature via the formula given earlier.
These indicated that temperature had nearly
four times as great an influence on bird
presence as did time of day, once the effects
of the interaction of time and temperature
were removed. The coefficient of determina¬
tion derived for temperature was .1014 as
opposed to .0270 for time of day. These
figures represent only relative influence of
the two factors and are not to be interpreted
as correlation coefficients. However, they do
support the hypothesis that bird presence
was related to the temperature of the road-
surface and not to temporal behavioral pat¬
terns.

General trends of influence for various
weather factors and road surface conditions,
based on the mean number of birds observed

in each category, were as follows: 1) more
birds were present when vegetation was
damp from dew or rain than during dry con¬
ditions (14.7 vs 4.0 birds per 10 minute
period, respectively); 2) scattered or broken
cloud cover resulted in greater bird numbers
observed than in clear or overcast condi¬
tions; 3) bird numbers steadily decreased
(5.9 vs 2.6 birds per 10 minutes) as wind
velocity increased from 0-19 km/hr; 4) bird
numbers were greatest (10 per 10 minutes)
when the road surface was wet and were
lowest (4.4 per 10 minutes) when the road
was dry.

As indicated above, damp vegetation re¬
sulted in nearly a four-fold increase in bird
numbers observed, whereas numbers stead¬
ily decreased as wind strength increased. Ex¬
planation of these differences is relatively
easy, i.e. wet feathers conduct heat more
rapidly than dry and thus increase energy
loss to the environment while the warmer,
drier air at the road surface both reduces this
heat loss and increases the rate of drying. In¬
creasing wind speed also increases the rate of
conducted heat loss from the birds which
may partially or wholly negate the benefit of
the warmer microenvironment. Both heat
conductance and radiant energy flow are im¬
portant to animals in terms of behavioral
thermoregulatory processes and reduction of
metabolic energy demands (Rosenberg 1974,
Porter and Gates 1969).

Avian thermoregulatory behavior is highly
flexible, e.g. feather ruffling permits change
of insulation properties while sun-bathing
behavior uses incident light orientation to
control the rate of heat absorption (Lustick
1969). Great mobility allows birds to move
to sheltered areas to reduce radiant and/or
conductant heat loss or to select warm
microenvironments which serve the same
purpose. While many methods of behavioral
thermoregulation exist, the ultimate goal of
all the methods is the same, to achieve ther¬
moneutrality with the environment. By
definition, thermoneutrality is obtained
when the minimum activity period metabolic

1985]

Whitford — Bird Behavior

141

rate of a resting animal is sufficient to offset
heat loss to the environment and maintain
proper body temperature. In other words,
this is the temperature range in which the
animal is energetically most efficient. Once
thermoneutrality is obtained, radiant or
conductant energy input cannot further
reduce the metabolic rate of the organism;
such inputs are of energetic importance only
when the organism has an elevated metabolic
rate in response to temperatures below the
LCT of the species (Morton 1967). Thus ra¬
diant energy absorbing behavior would have
significance primarily when road surface
temperatures were below the species’ LCT or
when other weather factors increased energy
loss rates.

Sunbathing birds were observed when
road surface temperatures were near, or
more commonly, well below the LCT of the
species. Under these conditions, birds ap¬
parently utilized radiant energy absorption
in combination with the favorable thermal
environment of the road surface in the effort
to attain thermoneutrality with the macro¬
environment.

Birds observed at road temperatures
above 26° C, and most birds at 20-26° C,
were not sunbathing, they were simply rest¬
ing on the road with no particular orienta¬
tion to incident light. This would seem to
indicate that these birds were in thermo¬
equilibrium with the thermoneutral zone
they were in. Bird numbers on the road were
greatest when the road surface temperature
was within, and air temperature below, the
LCT of the species observed (Fig. 2). The
presence of the birds on the road seems,
therefore, to indicate not an energy-absorb¬
ing response but a behavioral pattern of
perhaps equal importance, the selective use
of thermally favorable microenvironments
when ambient temperatures are suboptimal.
Such behavior reduces heat loss to the en¬
vironment and therefore aids the bird in
achieving thermoneutrality and thus reduc¬
ing energy demands. The potential energy
saving to the individuals adopting this

TEMPERATURE ( °C )

Fig. 2. Total number of birds observed on the road
surface relative to both road surface and air temper¬
atures. Air Road surface — + .

(Note that the greatest number of individuals were
observed when the road surface temperature was within
the birds’ optimum temperature range and the air
temperature was not.)

behavior pattern is a function of the amount
of additional metabolic energy which would
be required to maintain themselves at the
lower ambient temperature for an equal
length of time. Therefore, to determine the
bioenergetic importance of this road usage,
it would be necessary to know the extent to
which individuals utilize this resource on a
daily and seasonal basis. No such data exist
at the present time.

On a theoretical level, widespread avail¬
ability of lightly-traveled asphalt roads with
their favorable thermal microenvironment
offers a very real potential for northward
range extension by avian species. The road
surface in summer is above LCT of common
passerine species an average of seven hours
per day longer than ambient temperature.
Sunbathing on the road when it is slightly
below LCT (and air temperature well

142

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

below), further extends the potential energy-
conserving period. Obviously, feeding and
other activities prevent full use of this poten¬
tial resource. However, it has been shown
that in cool climates avian species with
altricial young often live near their limits of
adult energy reserves during the breeding
season (Yarbough 1970, Morton et al. 1973,
Holmes 1976). Under these circumstances
even moderate use of the roads’ warm
microclimate might reduce metabolic energy
demands enough to improve breeding suc¬
cess and/or permit northward extension of
breeding range by species displaying this
behavior. The road surface average of 5-8°
C above the ambient (climatic) temperatures
is roughly equivalent to a 5-7° southward
shift in latitude (480-800 km) (Goode 1975).
Considering the magnitude of this micro¬
climatic diurnal temperature difference, it
would be surprising if bird species failed to
respond by extending their ranges north¬
ward, especially since availability of suitable
microclimates has been shown to be a major
determinant of plant and animal distribution
at the extremes of species ranges (Grimm
1937, Geiger 1965, Rosenburg 1974).

Summary

This study demonstrated that significant
temperature differences existed between the
natural habitats studied and the micro¬
environment of asphalt road surfaces. Road
surface temperatures remained above 22° C,
the LCT of many bird species, an average of
seven hours per day longer than in the other
adjacent microclimates.

Observations of 2102 birds of 36 species
on the road surface were compared with
time, temperature, and weather data to
determine whether a pattern of usage ex¬
isted. Analysis of these relationships in¬
dicated that road surface temperature was
the major determinant of bird presence on
the road.

Bird numbers were greatest when ambient
air temperatures were below species’ LCT
and the road surface was above this tempera¬

ture. All evidence indicates that these birds
have modified normal diurnal behavior pat¬
terns to utilize selectively the thermoneutral
temperature zone of the road surface. This
occurred primarily during periods when
birds would have had to elevate their metab¬
olism to compensate for the decreasing envi¬
ronmental temperatures. Therefore, birds
evidencing this behavior were able to reduce
daily metabolic energy expenditures in pro¬
portion to the length of time they spent on
the road each day.

Further studies are needed to determine
quantative daily and seasonal energy savings
derived by individuals using this behavior.
Data derived from such studies would make
it possible to assess more accurately the ex¬
tent to which this altered behavior pattern
may influence and alter breeding distribu¬
tion of the species involved.

Literature Cited

Games, P. A., and G. R. Klare. 1967. Elementary
statistics — data analysis for the behavioral
sciences. McGraw-Hill Inc. New York, N.Y.
Geiger, R. 1965. The climate near the ground.
Harvard Univ. Press. Cambridge, Mass.

611 pp.

Goode, J. P. 1975. World Atlas. Rand McNally.
New York. 372 pp.

Grimm, H. 1937. Kleinteirwelt, kleinklima und
microklima. Zeitschrift furangewandte
meteorologie. 54:25-31.

Hauser, D. C. 1957. Some observations on sun¬
bathing in birds. Wilson Bull. 69:78-90.
Holmes, R. T. 1976. Body composition, lipid
reserves and caloric densities of summer birds
in a northern deciduous forest Amer. Midi.
Natur. 96: 281-290.

Johnson, N. K., and E. L. Davies. 1927. Some
measurements of temperature near the surface
in various kinds of soils. Quarterly J. of the
Royal Meteorological Society. 53:45-59.
Kendeigh, S. C. 1969. Energy reponses of birds to
their thermal environments. Wilson Bull.
8 1(4) :441-449.

King, J. R. and D. S. Farner. 1961. Energy
metabolism, thermoregulation and body tem¬
perature: In Biology and Comparative Physiol-

1985]

Whitford — Bird Behavior

143

ogy of Birds. A. J. Marshall ed. Vol. 2. pp.
215-288. Academic Press. New York, N.Y.

King, J. R. 1964. Oxygen and body temperature
in relation to ambient air temperature in the
white-crowned sparrow. Comp. Biochem. Phy¬
siol. 12:13-24.

Kontogiannis, J. E. 1968. Effect of temperature
and exercise on energy intake and body weight
in the white-throated sparrow. Zonotrichia
albicollis. Physiol. Zool. 41: 54-64.

Lange, E .1978. Personal Communication.

Lewis, R. W., and M. I. Dyer. 1969. Respiration,
metabolism and the red-winged blackbird in
relation to ambient temperature. Condor. 71:
291-298.

Lustick, S. 1969. Bird energetics: effects of arti¬
ficial radiation. Science. 1963: 387-390.

Morton, M. L. 1967. The effects of insolation on
the diurnal feeding pattern of white-crowned
sparrows ( Zonotrichia leucophys gamellii).
Ecology. 48: 690-694.

_ , J. Horstmann and C. Carey. 1973. Body

weights and lipids of summering Mountain
White Crowned Sparrows in California. Auk.
90:83-93.

Porter, W. P. and D. M. Gates. 1969. Thermo¬
dynamic equilibria of animals with environ¬
ment. Ecol. Monogr. 39:227-244.

Rosenburg, N. J. 1974. Microclimate: the bio¬
logical environment. Wiley and Son. New
York. 315 pp.

Whitford, P. B. and K. D. Whitford. 1971.
Savanna in central Wisconsin, U.S.A. Vege-
tatio. 23:77-87.

Yarbrough, C. G. 1970. Summer lipid levels of
some subarctic birds. Auk. 87:100-1 10.

_ . 1971. The influence of distribution and

ecology on the thermoregulation of small
birds. Comp. Biochem. Physiol. 39(2a):235-
266.

THE BIOLOGY OF CLASTOPTERA ARBORINA BALL
(HOMOPTERA: CERCOPIDAE) IN WISCONSIN

F. M. Kuenzi and H. C. Coppel
Department of Entomology
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Abstract

Clastoptera arborina Ball is a spittlebug (Homoptera: Cercopidae) that feeds
on Juniperus and has been recorded recently in Wisconsin. It is univoltine, with
the eggs hatching early in June, and the nymphs developing through five instars
until early to mid July. Adults appear in early July and persist through early
October. Nymphs spend most of their time feeding, primarily on the sap of the
green succulent tissue. The fluid waste is formed into a frothy mass (spittle) in
which the nymph lives. They usually stay within a few centimeters of their first
feeding site while immature. The imaginal molt occurs outside the spittle. The
adults are relatively freely living, capable of jumping and flying several meters or
more. Adults also spend much time feeding. Mating is done in an end to end
configuration and can last up to five hours. Eggs are deposited singly or in pairs
under thin flaps of juniper bark. No parasitoids were collected, but the adults
may fall prey to a variety of arthropod and vertebrate predators. No physical
damage to the host was observed; however, large numbers of nymphs producing
the spittle-like froth may be unsightly on ornamental plantings.

Introduction

Ornamental conifers, including the many
varieties of juniper (Juniperus spp.) and
white cedar (Thuja) are widely used in land¬
scape plantings. Their range of color and
shape, tolerance of dry conditions, and
longevity make them ideal low maintenance
plants for beautifying the many harsh en¬
vironments created by human habitation and
business. Insects that damage the aesthetic
value of these plants therefore, can become
as economically important as those that
cause physical and physiological damage.
Some species of spittlebugs (Homoptera:
Cercopidae) are known to directly damage
the host by causing yellowing and browning
of the leaf tips, and by vectoring a wide
variety of pathogenic organisms (Hamilton,
1983; Wilson and Dorsey, 1957). The spittle
bug, Clastoptera arborina Ball utilizes
Juniperus and perhaps Thuja as a host. The

nymphal excreta of C. arborina is a white,
frothy fluid deposited around the insect’s
body in the form of a spittle-like globule,
and many such globules can be unattractive
when viewed against the dark green foliage
of most varieties. It also feeds on native J.
virginiana L., which is an important part of
the dry, rocky bluff and glade habitats com¬
mon in Wisconsin. Therefore, both because
of its possible economic significance, and
because little is known about the general
biology of the genus Clastoptera, we shall
present our observations on the develop¬
ment, behavior, and ecology of C. arborina.

Systematic Position,
Distribution, and Hosts

Clastoptera arborina (Homoptera: Cer¬
copidae) was described by Ball (1927) as C.
obtusa var. arborina, a color variety of what
he considered to be a species based on struc-

144

1985]

Kuenzi and Coppel — Biology of Clastoptera arborina

145

tural information. The following year Doer¬
ing (1928), realizing that an even more de¬
tailed structural examination was necessary
to classify within the genus, published a revi¬
sion in which the arborina variety was given
species status. This scheme was maintained
in her later keys of the Cercopidae (Doering,
1930, 1941). Hamilton (1978) found that she
had misidentified her specimens of C. ar¬
borina in 1928 as C. newporta Doering, a
new species, and had described a truly new
species as “C. arborina .” Therefore, he
synonymized C. newporta with C. arborina ,
and renamed the new species. This revision is
maintained in his later key (Hamilton, 1983).

Ball (1927) originally recorded C. arborina
from Muscatine, Iowa. Doering (1928) re¬
corded collections (as C. newporta) from
Connecticut, Lakehurst, NJ; Lake George,
NY; and Newport, RI. Hamilton (1983) de¬
scribed its distribution from southern On¬
tario, south to N. Carolina and west to
Iowa.

The type specimens were collected from
“white cedar,” presumably Thuja occiden¬
tal is L., by Ball (1927). However, Hamilton
(1978) was unable to confirm this, but col¬
lected many specimens from eastern red
cedar, Juniperus virginiana L.

Investigational Studies

Ten specimens of the insect collected in
1981 by H.C.C. were identified as Clastop¬
tera arborina by J. P. Kramer of the Belts-
ville Agricultural Research Center, USDA,
Beltsville, MD. This series and additional
collections from 1983 and 1984 are kept in
the research collection of the University of
Wisconsin-Madison, Department of Ento¬
mology. C arborina was first recorded in
Wisconsin from a J. virginiana planting in
the southwest section of Madison, WI,
where this study was subsequently under¬
taken on populations of C. arborina in: a
residential area, the Odana Hills Golf
Course, and two areas in the University of
Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum: the Longe-

necker Horticultural Gardens, and the
Juniper Knolls.

Materials and Methods
Number of Instars:

Dyar’s law, that a dimension of a
sclerotized structure should increase by a
constant ratio between instars, was used to
determine the number of instars of C. ar¬
borina. Every two days at least 10 spittle
masses were collected from the field and
taken to the laboratory. The nymphs were
removed from the spittle singly and partially
dried on ground glass using cross pins for
manipulation. The greatest width of the
head was measured under a stereo micro¬
scope at approximately 54X with a cali¬
brated ocular micrometer. The daily sample
size was not constant because some spittle
masses contained more than one nymph, and
all available nymphs were measured to en¬
sure an adequate number of each instar for
further study.

To determine the size of each instar, the
measurements were grouped according to in¬
star and numbered consecutively within the
group. A random sample of 30 was obtained
by using the total data, or a random sample
chosen with the aid of a random number
table (Snedecor and Cochran, 1980). The
data are primarily from 1983, except for the
measurements of the first instar, and addi¬
tions to the second and third instars to com¬
plete the sample.

Seasonal History:

Random samples of 20 spittle masses were
obtained approximately every other day,
beginning with the first sighting of spittle on
May 6, 1984. Randomization was done by
constructing a grid over the surface of a
juniper bush. At every sampling, 20 coor¬
dinates were drawn from a random number
table (Snedecor and Cochran, 1980), and the
spittle mass nearest each coordinate was
removed from the bush. From head capsule
size or general morphology, all nymphs were

146

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

classified according to instar, and the fre¬
quency distribution (°7o of each instar) was
recorded for each sampling day. When
adults were found, the procedure was modi¬
fied by counting either the fifth instar
exuvia, patches of meconia, or both, if pres¬
ent, as an adult. Actual adult insects were
not counted. This interpretation proved
unambiguous, as the exuvia and meconia
persisted in place for several days.

Hosts:

The plantings of Juniperus spp. and Thuja
occidentalis in the University of Wisconsin-
Madison Arboretum provided a unique op¬
portunity for the investigation of hosts of C.
arborina. Within the Longenecker Horticul¬
tural Garden, the “Pinetum” collection con¬
tained 32 cultivars of J. chinensis, 9 cultivars
and varieties of J. communis , 1 J. rigida, 3
cultivars of J. sabina, 1 cultivar of J.
scopulorum , 1 cultivar of J. squamata , and
18 cultivars and varieties of J. virginiana. All
of these were in a 5600 m2 area on a south
facing hillside. A neighboring area contained
more cultivars of Juniperus spp. and a hedge
of T. occidentalis in juxtaposition. The other
area of importance was the Juniper Knolls,
which included a large area of juniper
canopy and its fringe of isolated and semi-
isolated Juniperus virginiana trees. A stand
of T. occidentalis was located 50 m to the
east, and the two areas were separated by an
extension of the prairie habitat.

When the C. arborina nymphs were begin¬
ning the fifth instar, all plantings in the
above areas were searched extensively for
spittle masses. Approximately one month
after the appearance of adults, a second
survey was conducted including these same
areas and the plantings around the adminis¬
tration building. In this study, adults were
collected by sweeping the foliage with an in¬
sect net.

To determine the part of the plant utilized,
the spittle masses observed in the seasonal
history survey were scored according to the
part of the branch they occupied. The cate-

Table 1. Head capsule measurements for nymphal
and adult stages, n, sample size; x ± SD, mean ± stan¬
dard deviation; Ratio, nymphal instar/previous instar.

Instar

n

x ± SD

Range

Ratio

I

30

0.333

±

0.011

0.32-

-0.36

II

28

0.485

±

0.021

0.45-

-0.52

1.45

III

30

0.695

±

0.037

0.60-

-0.76

1.43

IV

30

1.038

±

0.047

0.90-

- 1.13

1.49

V

30

1.552

±

0.080

1.35-

- 1.70

1.50

Adult

30

1.841

±

0.080

1.66 -

■ 1.96

male

15

1.809

±

0.080

1.66-

■ 1.94

female

15

1.872

±

0.068

1.72-

- 1.96

gories were: a) “Core,” including the trunk,
major branches, and minor branches cov¬
ered with true, cambium-derived bark; b)
“Dry Twig,” or the smaller branches
covered with dried scales; c) “Green Twig,”
or the photosynthetic twig composed of long
scales, concressent proximally with only the
tip free; and d) “Foliage,” which in most
varieties takes the form of branchlets bear¬
ing small, closely appressed scales.

Results and Discussion
Number of Instars:

Head capsule measurements clearly dif¬
ferentiate five nymphal instars (Table 1).
The growth ratios are reasonably constant,
and generally agree with the 1.4 expected
from Dyar’s law. The ranges of the 5th in¬
star and the adult measurements overlap,
but the head capsule width is otherwise
diagnostic for each instar. The adult and
nymph are easily distinguished morpholog¬
ically. There is a significant difference (P <
0.05) between the adult male and female
measurements, and the increasing standard
deviation with each instar (Table I), par¬
ticularly in the case of the 5th instar, may be
partially due to this sexual dimorphism. Un¬
fortunately, a lack of preserved specimens
prevented statistical testing of the im-
matures.

Descriptions of Stages and Instars:

Egg (fig. 1): The egg is elongate, oval, and
0.835 ± 0.057 mm (n= 16) long. In the fall it

1985]

Kuenzi and Coppel — Biology of Clastoptera arborina

147

Fig. 1 . Clastoptera arborina eggs in situ: A) during the
fall (3 eggs, side view), and B) in the spring before
hatching (1 egg, face view). Note the shiny black “egg
burster” in B. Bar equals 0.5 mm.

is laterally flattened, with the broad side
0.362 ± 0.061 mm (n= 15) wide, and the
narrow side 0.197 ± 0.037 mm (n= 12). It is
deposited under a flap of the plant tissue
with one end and most of a side ( lA to Vi of
the circumference) remaining exposed. The
exposed end is more pointed and narrower
than the blunt inner end. A white patch of
thickened chorion covers the central portion
of the exposed area, but the peripheral
chorion, like that covered by the bark or
epidermis, is membranous and translucent to
the yellow yolk. The white patch has a dark
sagittal streak under the chorion. In the
spring the egg swells, becoming round and
splitting the chorion over the streak to ex¬
pose a shiny black, oval “egg burster” (fig.
IB).

First Instar (fig. 2A,B): The head is

yellow, round, and the width at the eyes is
little more than the clypeus. The labium is
surprisingly long compared to the total body
length, and in dorsal view protrudes beyond
the tip of the abdomen. Each eye consists of
ten pigmented ommatidia. The antennae are
short and two-segmented.

The thorax is yellow, cylindrical, narrower
than the head, and dominated by the pro-
notum. The mesonotum has lateral tri¬
angular sclerotizations, and the metanotum
is entirely membranous. The legs are trans¬
lucent, long, and spider-like. The tarsi are
two segmented.

The abdomen is initially yellow, con¬
tracted, only slightly wider than the thorax,
and carried with the tip directed dorsally.
After feeding it becomes distended (fig. 2B).
There is a shallow groove parasagittally
which marks the attachment of the dorso-
ventral muscles, and there are irregular
transparencies in the integument permitting
partial observation of the digestive and cir¬
culatory organs. Paired, brush-like struc¬
tures of transparent filaments occur ven-
trally on segments 5 and 6 (fig. 3). These are
shed with the exoskeleton at each molt.
Similar structures are on segments 7 and 8 of
L. quadrangularis and Aphorophora paral¬
lel Say (Guilbeau, 1914). Unlike the condi¬
tion in Tomaspis saccharina Dist. (Kershaw,
1914), Lepyronia quadrangularis (Say)
(Doering, 1922), and Philaenus lineatus
(Sulc, 1910), the terga actually fuse in the
ventral midline rather than merely touch or
overlap (fig. 2G). The last tergum (9) is
sclerotized, and its lateral edges curve ven-
trally and touch without fusing. Thus, the
air canal enclosed by the sterna is a complete
tube, closed anteriorly by a posteriorly
directed triangular ridge of sternum 3, and
open posteriorly at the margins of tergum 9.
The remainder of the abdominal cuticle is
unsclerotized.

Second Instar (fig. 2C): The second instar
resembles the first, although it is larger. The
eyes consist of 12-15 ommatidia on a widen¬
ing of the head, and the antennae are short

148

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

Fig. 2. Nymphal instars of C. arborina. A) newly
emerged nymph; B) late first instar; C) second instar; D)
third instar; E) fourth instar; F) fifth instar, dorsal
view; G) fifth instar ventral view. Note the different
scale for F and G.

Fig. 3. Development of the genitalia. Ventral views of
abdominal segments 5-9. Segment 6 is concealed by the
enlarged fifth tergum and the curvature of the ab¬
domen. The filaments mentioned in the text are shown
as one clump. A) third instar; B) fourth instar; C) fifth
instar.

and two-segmented. The thorax is more
dorsoventrally flattened, and dominated by
the prothorax. There is some sclerotization
of the lateral meso- and metanota. The head,
thorax and last abdominal tergum are usual¬
ly olive green, and the remainder of the
abdomen is yellow.

Third Instar (fig. 2D; 3A): The head is
olive green and broad. The eyes are hemi-
conical and multifaceted, with the distal om-
matidia darkly pigmented. Each antenna has
two basal and one flagellar segment, and the
ocelli first appear.

The thorax is dorsoventrally flattened,
with the pro- and mesonota prominent. The

legs and dorsal thorax are olive green. Wing
pads become evident in this instar.

The abdomen is light yellow, although
some internal organs may impart a greenish
tinge. The ventrolateral areas of segments 4
and 5 may appear bright orange, due to a
number of large pigmented cells in the body
cavity of this region. Similar tissue was
reported by Garman (1923) as the “spittle
gland” of C. obtusa Say, and is also found in
L. quadrangularis (Doering, 1922). The de¬
veloping male and female genitalia become
evident in the ninth sternal region (fig. 3A).

Fourth Instar (fig. 2E;3B): The fourth in¬
star is generally similar in form and color to

1985]

Kuenzi and Coppel — Biology of Clastoptera arborina

149

the third instar. The antennae have two basal
segments, but flagella have a number of ir¬
regular, colored bands suggestive of seg¬
ments. The sclerotized structures are olive
green, although the shade is highly variable,
and the head and thorax have dark patches.
Anterior wing pads are prominent, and
trachea can be seen entering them. Posterior
wing pads are slightly developed. Each leg
bears a fringe of apical tibial spurs.

Fifth Instar (fig. 2F,G;3C): Dorsally the
head is crescent-shaped due to further
broadening and shielding posteriorly by the
pronotum. The color is olive green. Anten¬
nae are long and filamentous.

The thorax varies from dark green to grey
or brown, and the darkening of the midline
and wing areas makes it appear three-
striped. The anterior wing pads are well
developed, and exhibit some of the features
of the adult tegmina. The posterior wing
pads are less well developed and appear as
lateral triangular thickenings. The meso- and
metathoracic legs each bear a comb of apical
spines, and all tarsi are three-segmented.
Late in the stadium, black-tipped adult tibial
spurs are visible under the nymphal cuticle.

The first abdominal segment is sclerotized
and colored like the thorax. The second seg¬
ment has a triangular, darkly pigmented
patch, anteriorly as wide as the margin in
dorsal view and narrowing to a point half¬
way along the midline. The remainder of the
abdomen, except for the last tergum can be
yellow or white depending on the individual.
The genitalia are plainly visible on the last
sternum; the valves of the ovipositor are jet
black, and the claspers of the male are dark
and sclerotized (fig. 3C).

Adult: Doering (1928) illustrated and
described the adult in detail as C. newporta.
We have found that the ovipositor’s third
valvulae are fused dorsally for one third
their length and bear 68 ±5.57 (n = 25) teeth
along the dorsal margin between the fusion
and the apex. Doering (1928) reported
“about 82 teeth’’ for C. arborina while C.
doeringae Hamilton has “81 to 90” and C.

media Doering has “about 78.” The struc¬
ture of these valvulae is supposed to be of
great comparative value for these closely
related species. The red abdominal tissue is
well developed, but not visible due to the
pigmentation of the integument.

Seasonal History:

Clastoptera arborina is univoltine in Wis¬
consin, and overwinters in the egg stage.
This is consistent with most other Clastop¬
tera at this latitude on the continent, e.g. C.
hyperici Gib. in Michigan (Hanna, 1969),
but differs from the bivoltine C. obtusa of
Connecticut (Garman, 1923).

The seasonal distribution of the different
instars from the 1984 data (fig. 4) generally
corresponds to the 1983 observations. Eggs
with the “egg burster” were found in the
third week of April, 1984. First instar
nymphs were found on June 6, 1984, and an
egg was observed hatching June 7, 1984. In
both 1983 and 1984, adults began to appear
in early July. Mating was first observed in
mid July, and observations of mating con¬
tinued into early October, when the last
adults were collected (both years). Eggs were
found in twigs caged with adults from July
27 to September 26, 1984. The seasonality of
C. hyperici is similar to this, although Han¬
na (1969) does not give specific dates, and
Carman’s (1923) records for the species

■Ills . -

2 --1 1 | » * ~

3' - 1 ! ! 1 - -

4 - - 1 1 1 B

7 9 II 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21

Jun« July

Fig. 4. Seasonal history of C. arborina. Vertical length
of bars indicates percentage of day’s sample represented
by each instar. Eggs were not sampled.

150

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

mentioned above show a slightly contracted
seasonality, with the first generation being
advanced about 3 weeks.

Hosts:

Nymphs and/or adults of C. arborina
were found on the following cultivars or
varieties of Juniperus spp: Juniperus
chinensis cultivars Ames, Blaauw, Colum-
naris Glauca, Fairview, Iowa, Keteleeri,
Mission Spire, Mountbatten, Obelisk, Pfit-
zerana Aurea, Pfitzerana Glauca, Robusta
Green, and Story; Juniperus communis
cultivar Laxa; Juniperus sabina cultivars
Fastigata and Von Ehren; and Juniperus
virginiana from Juniper Knolls and cultivars
Burkii, Canaertii, Globosa, Hillii, Hillspire,
Pyramidalis, Skyrocket and variety glauca.
A large collection of J. horizontal is was not
examined for spittle masses, and no adults
were collected; however, the low creeping
growth of this species made the sweeping
technique ineffective. J. rigida , J. squama ta,
and J. scopulorum supported neither
nymphs nor adults, but together they made a
small contribution to the total planted col¬
lection. Otherwise C. arborina is able to
complete development on several species and
varieties of Juniperus. Doering (1942) listed
three other Clastoptera spp. collected from
Juniperus , including C. elongata Doer., C.
juniperina Ball, and C. doeringae.

Both the nymphs and adults of C. ar¬
borina prefer to feed on the green twigs of
Juniperus. A Chi square (x2) test against the
null hypothesis of equal utilization of the
four areas was highly significant (Table II, P
< 0.05). The green twig was the preferred

Table 2: Parts of the juniper plant utilized for feeding
by Clastoptera arborina.

Stage

Core

Dry

twig

Green

twig

Foliage

Total

x2*

Nymph

0

7

124

40

171

227.24

Adult

0

19

44

16

79

50.27

* 3 degrees of freedom.

feeding site, as this category made the great¬
est contribution to x2- Also only 5th instar
nymphs and adults were found in the dry
twig area, which can be attributed to the
relocation of spittle masses toward the trunk
as described below, and the free movement
of the adults respectively.

Habits of the Nymphs:

Eclosion: The “egg burster” acts as a trap
door at hatching, as its seam breaks cleanly
through most of its circumference. The
nymph is positioned in the egg with its head
in the outer tip and its venter against the
“egg burster.” As it wriggles out of the
chorion, its legs are worked free, and ex¬
tended and flexed repeatedly until one
catches an object such as a scale or twig.
This action enables the nymph to pull itself
into a standing position. The time from
chorion rupture to complete eclosion is ap¬
proximately 5-10 min. The nymph remains
nearly motionless for about 20 min, after
which it begins crawling about the foliage
and twigs until it establishes the first feeding
site.

Spittle Production: Doering (1922) briefly
reviewed earlier accounts of bubble forming
movements and related morphology in cer-
copid nymphs. In general, her description
and conclusions accurately apply to the
observations of C. arborina nymphs. As
noted previously, four clusters of filaments
are present near the opening of the air canal.
Guilbeau (1914) reported that they are a
secretion of the dermal glands of Batelli. His
experimental and histological studies in¬
dicated that the secretion is necessary for the
retention of bubbles in the excrement. We
observed that the filaments usually come in
contact with the newly formed bubbles as
they are expressed from the air canal, so they
may indeed contribute to this phenomenon.

Spittle production and maintenance was
virtually continuous; however, the rhythmic
movements of bubble making were frequent¬
ly interrupted by short, ca 30 sec periods of
breathing, where only a small “Y”-shaped

1985]

Kuenzi and Coppel— Biology of Clastoptera arborina

151

vent (the space on either side of the anus and
the adjoining median cleft between the tergal
plates) was open for the passage of air into
the air canal.

Activity: Nymphs are generally sedentary,
although they are capable of rapid move¬
ment while immersed in the spittle. The prin¬
cipal activity is feeding, with the stylets in¬
serted in the plant tissue. This necessarily
renders the insect immobile, except for the
abdomen, which is almost continually
pumping back and forth. When the spittle is
disturbed however, the nymph will withdraw
its abdomen from the surface and its mouth-
parts from the plant, move to the opposite
side of the twig, and take shelter in the axil
of a scale if available. Usually the mass of
froth is sufficient to obscure the presence
and movements of a completely submerged
nymph. The insect may remain submerged
for at least a minute, although, unless dis¬
turbed again, it will protrude its abdomen

Fig. 5. Aggregation of eight fifth instar nymphs.

and begin bubble making within a few
seconds. Molting from one nymphal instar
to another takes place inside the spittle mass,
and one to several exuvia can be found float¬
ing in the fluid after the first instar.

A nymph may abandon its original spittle
mass and move to a new feeding site, usually
on the same branch. Most abandoned spittle
masses are a result of this relocation rather
than nymphal death. This is based on obser¬
vations of the number and location of spittle
masses on marked twigs. The new masses
were usually closer to the center of the plant.
The number of exuvia in fifth instar spittle
also suggests that this movement occurs dur¬
ing the third or fourth stadium. Wandering
nymphs carry a film of spittle over their
backs, and a cache of bubbles and fluid
around their coxae. They crawl randomly,
and intermittently probe the twig surface
with their labellum until a new feeding site is
found. If they contact another spittle mass
however, they stop and enter it. This some¬
times leads to aggregations of up to 8
nymphs in one continuous spittle mass (fig.
5). This is no doubt a common feature of the
immature Cercopidae (Hamilton, 1983).

Natural Enemies: Nymphs may fall prey
to a variety of arthropod predators, primar¬
ily of the order Hemiptera (Insecta) (Hamil¬
ton, 1983). Although we found no direct
evidence of this, members of the family
Reduviidae, Nabidae, Pentatomidae, and
Miridae were found on juniper in association
with C. arborina. One case of an ecto-
parasitic larva was observed, but it died soon
after discovery, and no identification was
made. It did bear resemblance to the illustra¬
tions of the drosophilid found on temperate
C. obtusa (Baerg, 1920; Garman, 1923).

Impact: In spite of sometimes heavy
feeding, we observed neither yellowing nor
browning of the branchlet tips nor signifi¬
cant necrosis of the tissue around feeding
sites. Thus, the physical or physiological
damage caused by C. arborina is likely to be
minimal for plants in unstressed environ¬
ments.

152

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

Habits of Adults:

Imaginal Molt: The final molt occurs out¬
side and usually towards the tip of the
branch from the last spittle mass. Newly
emerged adults are pale yellow without def¬
inite markings. As the thorax is freed from
the nymphal skin, the wings are expanded,
while being held in a vertical position. The
legs and abdomen are then pulled free, and
the genitalia are expanded to full size, and
spread. After complete expansion, the wings
are first lowered till horizontal and longi¬
tudinal to the body axis, and then slowly, ca
2 min, laid flat on the back. Emergence takes
approximately 20 min. Failure to molt prop¬
erly is a frequently observed mortality fac¬
tor.

After molting, the adult may crawl a short
distance before pausing for cuticular tan¬
ning. Development of the mottled white,
tan, and black markings usually requries two
or more hours, during which time the
meconium is cast. The meconium is splat¬
tered on the foliage, and dries as a white
plaster-like substance, resistant to rain, and
persisting through the fall. After feeding,
adult excreta is also splattered on the foliage
as droplets of transparent fluid.

Locomotion: The adult C. arborina is
essentially sedentary, spending much time
feeding and mating, and it will usually
tolerate the manipulation of foliage neces¬
sary for close observation. Short distance
movement is by crawling, with the anterior
four legs used in the typical insect gait, and
the metathoracic (jumping) legs either held
next to the abdomen in a “cocked” position,
or used in an anterior-posterior pushing mo¬
tion. Jumping is accomplished by an explo¬
sive extension of the hind legs, accompanied
by a slightly audible popping noise. About
15 sec is required for cocking the legs after
landing. Jumping is a frequent means of
escape, but has also been observed in the
froghopper’s unmolested activity. In addi¬
tion, after jumping, C. arborina may use its
wings to alter its course, or extend its range
several meters. Specimens of Clastoptera

spp. were captured in the 20 m tower at Belle
Plain, NJ (New Jersey Dept. Agr., 1927),
which indicates a potential for long range
dispersal of these insects, probably mediated
by active flying.

Mating: During courtship the male rides
on the back of the female, with the couple
facing forward. The male and female
genitalia are then coupled and mating
begins. The pair may continue in this con¬
figuration, but usually the male lets loose
and turns to face in the opposite direction.
While joined, they do not feed, but can
crawl in a push-pull fashion, and jump ap¬
proximately 30 cm vertically. Copulation
lasts from two to five hours.

Oviposition: Eggs are laid singly or in
rows of 2 or 3 under a flap of either bark
(most common, fig. 1), or the green twig or
foliage epidermis. When in the latter suc¬
culent tissue, a brown necrotic area forms
around the egg. The long axis is usually at a
20° to 50° angle with the long axis of the
twig, or when laid in the axis of a branch and
twig, its direction is nearly perpendicular to
the plane of the branch and twig. The egg
penetrates the bark and parenchyma, and
often the phloem and outer xylem as well. In
nature a twig rarely contains more than two
oviposition sites.

Fecundity: Ten females dissected between
July 25 and August 20, 1984 contained from
6 to 11 ovarioles in each ovary (median = 8).
Mature oocytes (length = 0.773 ± 0.053
mm, n = 28 from 4 females) were present in
the ovarioles and lateral oviducts beginning
July 25, but some specimens contained only
developing oocytes. From late July to early
October all specimens contained one or more
mature oocytes, and mating was observed
throughout the interval. Unfortunately,
adults did not survive more than a week
when caged on juniper, so no estimate of
total fecundity was possible.

Predation: Adults are probably more
susceptible to predation than nymphs,
although the small size and cryptic colora¬
tion of the former when viewed against the

1985]

Kuenzi and Coppel— Biology of Clastoptera arborina

153

dry twig may provide some protection. In
the laboratory they have been preyed upon
by a toad, and a variety of arthropod
predators including Zelus socius Uhler
(Hemiptera: Reduviidae), Phymata Pennsyl¬
vania Handlirsch (Hemiptera: Phymatidae)
and Misumenops asperatus (Hentz) (Arach-
nida: Araneae: Thomisidae), all collected
from juniper. The froghoppers were cap¬
tured by the predators only while moving
about between feeding periods, presumably
because their motion increased their visibil¬
ity. Also they could frequently escape even
after capture by using their explosive jump.

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Col¬
lege of Agricultural and Life Sciences,
University of Wisconsin-Madison, and by
research funds from The Wisconsin Depart¬
ment of Natural Resources through the
School of Natural Resources, University of
Wisconsin-Madison. We wish to express our
sincere gratitude to John Haanstad for the
photographic assistance, to Steven Krauth
for the taxonomic assistance, to Dr. E.
Hasselkus for maps and planting records of
the Arboretum collection, and to the staff at
the Arboretum for their cooperation.

Literature Cited

Baerg, W. J. 1920. An unusual case of parasitism
on Clastoptera obtusa Say (Hemip., Cercop-
idae; Dip., Drosophilidae). Entomol. News.
31:20-21.

Ball, E. D. 1927. The genus Clastoptera (Cer-
copidae). Can. Entomol. 59:103-112.

Doering, K. C. 1922. Biology and morphology of
Lepyronia quadrangular is (Say) — Homoptera,
Cercopidae. Univ. Kans. Sci. Bull. 14:515-587.

Doering, K. C. 1928. The genus Clastoptera.

Univ. Kans. Sci. Bull. 18:5-153.

Doering, K. C. 1930. Synopsis of the family Cer¬
copidae (Homoptera) in North America. J.
Kans. Entomol. Soc. 3:53-59, 62-65, 80-87.
Doering, K. C. 1941. A revision of two genera of
North American Cercopidae (Homoptera). J.
Kans. Entomol. Soc. 14:102-134.

Doering, K. C. 1942. Host plant records of Cer¬
copidae in North America. J. Kans. Entomol.
Soc. 15:65-92.

Garman, P. 1923. Notes on the life history of
Clastoptera obtusa and Lepyronia quadran-
gularis (Order Hemiptera, Family Cercopidae).
Ann. Entomol. Soc. Amer. 16:153-163.
Guilbeau, B. H. 1914. The origin and formation
of the froth in spittle-insects. Amer. Nat.
42:783-789.

Hamilton, K. G. A. 1978. On the identity of
Clastoptera arborina and a new related species
(Rhynchota: Homoptera: Cercopidae). Can.
Entomol. 110:335-336.

Hamilton, K. G. A. 1983. The insects and
arachnids of Canada. Part 10. The spittlebugs
of Canada (Homoptera: Cercopidae). Agr.
Can. Publ. 1740. 102 pp.

Hanna, M. 1969. The life history of Clastoptera
hyperici McAtee in Michigan (Homoptera:
Cercopidae). Mich. Acad. (Pap. Mich. Acad.
Sci., Arts, Letters) 1:141-147.

Kershaw, J. C. 1914. The alimentary canal of a
cercopid. Psyche 21 :65-72.

New Jersey Department of Agriculture. 1927. In¬
sects captured in the lookout stations of New
Jersey. New Jersey Dept, of Agr. Circular 106.
Snedecor, G. W., and W. G. Cochran. 1980.
Statistical Methods. Iowa State University
Press, Ames, Iowa. 507 pp.

Sulc, K. 1910. Uber Respiration Tracheensystem
und Schaumproduktion der Schaumcikaden-
larven (Aphrophorinae: Homoptera). Zeit.
Wiss.Zool. 99:147-188.

Wilson, H. A., and C. K. Dorsey. 1957. Studies
on the composition and microbiology of insect
spittle. Ann. Entomol. Soc. Amer. 50:399-406.

FEEDING SITE AND SPITTLE OF CLASTOPTERA ARBORINA BALL

(HOMOPTERA: CERCOPIDAE)

F. M. Kuenzi and H. C. Coppel
Department of Entomology
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Abstract

Feeding punctures of Clastoptera arborina Ball stained bright red with safranin
0 dye in cross sections of juniper twigs. The punctures were primarily intracellular,
passed through all tissue layers, and ended in the outer layers of xylem tracheids.
Xylem feeding is consistent with this and other aspects of C. arborina' s biology, and
with the habits of other cercopids. Most feeding sites were established midway be¬
tween the resin canal and the scale edge, and a disproportionate number entered
through the stomata. The stylet sheath bore diameter increased with age, and
matched the maxillary stylet diameter. The mandibular stylets do not penetrate
beyond the outer mesenchyme and/or epidermis.

In the field, spittle is a white frothy mass, but this becomes more fluid in later
instars. Many kinds of insects are found in spittle masses, but these are probably
accidental entrapments, and not indicative of natural enemies. Under 100% humid¬
ity, the spittle production rate of a fifth instar nymph is 109.6 mg/day.

Introduction

Juniperus virginiana L., the host plant of
Clastoptera arborina Ball, usually grows in
the well drained soil of limestone outcrop¬
pings, bluffs, and glades. These more arid
environments present special problems of
water retention for developing insects, espe¬
cially during the cuticle tanning period im¬
mediately following ecdysis. Spittle insects
are well adapted for coping with these prob¬
lems, as they are able to utilize the plant’s
own sap to create a virtually aquatic micro¬
habitat in a semiarid environment. The
following study establishes the source and
acquisition of nutrients and water for C. ar¬
borina , and describes the spittle and its rate
of production.

Materials and Methods

/. Feeding Site Description

Twigs with spittle masses were removed
from the plant and trimmed as close as possi¬
ble to the feeding nymph. The nymph was

usually removed from the twig before the
twig sample was fixed in formalin, acetic
acid, and 50% ethanol (18:1:1) for one or
more days. The specimens were dehydrated
in an ethanol series with 2 changes of 100%
ethanol, cleared in xylene, and infiltrated
and embedded in Paraplast.

Young juniper twigs consist of a fibrous
xylem core surrounded by phloem and
mesenchyme. The difference in hardness be¬
tween the former and the latter two often
resulted in the fracture of the vascular cam¬
bium during sectioning. This artifact was
eliminated in later work by trimming one
end of the Paraplast block down to the
specimen and soaking the block in water for
one or more weeks. The embedded speci¬
mens were then mounted on wood blocks
and sectioned at lO/im. The resulting ribbon
of serial sections was mounted on glass
slides, stained with safranin 0 and fast green
according to Johansan (1940), and covered
with a cover slip. Measurements were made
with a calibrated ocular micrometer.

154

1985]

Kuenzi and Coppel — Feeding Site and Spittle

155

2. Rate of Spittle Production

A humidity chamber was constructed of a
25 x 25 cm square polyethylene sheet. A hole
approximating the mouth aperture of a poly¬
ethylene funnel (about 5.5 cm in diameter)
was cut in the center, and the funnel taped in
place, being fastened around its entire cir¬
cumference. Two opposing edges were taped
together to form a cylinder, with the funnel
nozzle directed outward.

The host plant was a small, potted J.
virginiana kept in an incubator under a
photoperiod of 18 hours light and 6 hours
dark. A trial began by placing a fifth instar
nymph on an appropriate section of twig in
the humidity chamber with the funnel
directly below the nymph. The chamber was
closed tightly around the twig proximal to
the trunk with a twist tie, and similarly with
the distal end, except that a moistened dental
wick was included in the closure so that one
end projected to the outside. The wick was
kept moist throughout the trial. A pre¬
weighed vial was then fastened with tape or
clay to the funnel nozzle. Similar units not
containing nymphs served as zero controls.
After three days the twig and apparatus were
removed from the plant and examined. Only
those setups with healthy nymphs remaining
at the end were used for spittle production
data. The vials and collected spittle were
weighed on an analytical balance, and the
volume estimated by drawing the contents
into a 1 ml pipet graduated in 0.01 ml divi¬
sions.

Results and Discussion

1. Feeding Site Description

The histological study showed the feeding
punctures of C. arborina in the tissues of its
host, Juniperus spp., as indicated by the
following evidence. Generally one feeding
puncture was located in each twig specimen.
Because C. arborina remains in the same
spittle mass through several stadia however,
two feeding punctures were occasionally
found in the same specimen. Also, as

Fig. 1. Cross section of Juniper stem showing feeding
sheath of fifth instar Clastoptera arborina Ball. Abbr. f
- fiber cell band, h - hypodermis, p - phloem, r - resin
canal, s - feeding sheath, x - xylem. Bar equals 0.25 mm.

nymphs sometimes withdraw their mouth-
parts and move when disturbed, they may
move far enough away from the feeding site
such that the sheath is excised during trim¬
ming. Thus, some samples inevitably con¬
tained no feeding sheaths, but in general the
number found was as expected. When two
nymphs were fixed with the twig specimens,
their mouthparts were observed inserted in
the feeding punctures after sectioning. Final¬
ly, no other type of damage was found con¬
sistently that would befit the mouthpart
morphology and feeding behavior of C. ar¬
borina . The feeding punctures are very
distinctive (Fig. 1).

As is the case with most Cicadoidea, the
feeding puncture is primarily intracellular,
and is lined with a sheath staining bright red
with safranin 0 dye (Wiegert, 1964; Pollard,
1967; Cheung and Marshall, 1973). This is
thought to be a salivary secretion, although
some basophilic staining may be due to
autolysis of the ruptured cells (Pollard,
1967). From observations on a cicadellid
feeding through an artificial membrane,
Bennett (1934) reported the secretion of a
colorless fluid from the mouthparts that
quicky coagulated to form a hyaline sheath
around the stylets. This corresponds with the
nature of the sheath reported here. Aphids
produce a similar structure, but the feeding
track is primarily intercellular (Balch, 1952).

156

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

The bore of the sheath is smooth, with the
diameter increasing with the insect’s age (see
below), and the outer surface is irregular, be¬
ing constricted by the plant cell walls, and
expanding slightly into the cytoplasm,
although not replacing it. The sheath con¬
tinues through the air spaces between meso-
phyll cells, where its surface exhibits helical
ridges, like twisted wrought iron.

The feeding tracks passed through many
tissue types before ending in the xylem. A
fibrous hypodermis was present near most
feeding sites (Fig. 1), although it was absent
directly below the stomata and other areas
where punctures were predominantly lo¬
cated. Other tissues always encountered were
the mesophyll, phloem sieve cells, ray paren¬
chyma, and concentric bands of thick walled
fiber cells. The stylets were usually worked
between the latter. Except for the cells
broken by the stylets, there was no other sign
of damage to the tissues. Seventy-seven per¬
cent of all sheaths terminated in the xylem
tracheids. These were generally in the outer
layer of vessels, and usually only one cell
showed signs of damage. The deepest tracks
ended in the seventh layer of xylem from the
outside. Sixteen percent ended in the xylem
ray parenchyma, and here there was no evi¬
dence of xylem feeding. Pollard (1967) noted
however, that in the mesophyll feeding cica-
dellid, Eupteryx melissae Curtis, maxillary
extrusion was commonly far beyond the end
of the sheath, in which instance, xylem ac¬
tually may have been contacted. The thick¬
ness of our sections however, made this dif¬
ficult to establish. In contrast to that of the
phloem, xylem sap is a very dilute solution
of inorganic ions, amino acids, and sugars.
Thus xylem feeding is in keepng with the
large amounts of fluid excreta produced by
C. arborina nymphs and other spittlebugs,
as large volumes of sap must be processed to
extract the necessary nutrients.

The angle of stylet penetration was usually
radial, although in 37% of the cases it was
skewed from 20° to 45° from the radial.

Also, the course of the stylets was generally
straight, but in some specimens it curved
slightly in either the transverse or longi¬
tudinal plane (29% of the cases), showed a
slight elbow (14%), or curved in an “S”
shape (2%). Branching was very infrequent,
and often occurred at the level of the fiber
cell bands. Usually only one branch was
patent.

Clastoptera arborina nymphs and adults
prefer the outer twigs and foliage branchlets
of Juniperus , with the younger individuals
predominantly on the more succulent tissue
(Kuenzi and Coppel, 1985). Histological loca¬
tion of the actual punctures provides more
specific circumstantial evidence characteriz¬
ing feeding site choice and establishment.
Examination of 42 sites revealed penetra¬
tions at virtually any point around the twig’s
circumference, including: between the resin
canal and the scale edge (fig. 1) (88.0%), be¬
tween scales (2.4%), at the edge of a scale
(4.8%), into the resin canal (2.4%), and
through the periderm (2.4%). Usually the
point midway between the resin canal and
the edge of the scale coincided with the
lateral edge of an overlying scale (47.6% of
the total), which is in keeping with the
nymph’s preference for sheltered locations.
Where a first instar attempted penetration
directly into a resin canal, sheath material
was deposited a few microns inside the canal
lumen, but there was no sign of continuation
through to the other side. Interestingly, 54%
of all penetrations were directly between
guard cells of the stomata, and in two addi¬
tional cases they were within one cell of a
stoma. Brandes (1923) also noted that the
stylets of Aphis maidis Fitch frequently
entered the thin cuticle of the guard cells in
corn, and Putman (1941) found over 10% of
the stylets either entering the stomata, or
passing between a guard cell and an adjacent
epidermal cell in the mesophyll feeding cica-
dellid, Typhlocyba pomaria McAtee. As the
stomata rarely occupy a large fraction of epi¬
dermal surface (7.8% of 218 mm2 in

1985]

Kuenzi and Coppel — Feeding Site and Spittle

157

Juniperus ), these observations may reflect a
tendency of the spittlebugs either to use the
vapor leaking through open stomata as a cue
to initiate a feeding puncture, or simply to
use the stoma as a path of low mechanical
resistance.

The bore diameter, measured midway be¬
tween the epidermis and xylem ranged from
4.2 to 25.2 ^tm (Table 1). A one way analysis
of variance showed a highly significant in¬
star effect (P < 0.005), but a least signifi¬
cant difference test failed to detect differ¬
ences between successive instars at the 90%
confidence level. A regression of the bore
diameter against instar (the adult considered
as the sixth instar) gave a linear trend with a
slope of 2.7 fix n (P < 0.001) and R2 of
69.8%. It should be noted however, that the
ranges and 95% confidence intervals of the
first and second instar measurements
overlapped completely (Table I). Excluding
size, the stylet sheaths of the nymphs were all
similar in morphology. The thickness of the
sheath was from 2.9 to 1 1 .6 pi n in the second
instar, and those of the other immature in¬
stars fell within this range. The sheaths of
the adults and some fifth instar nymphs
however, were very thin or not visible, and
did not appear to traverse the air spaces as
did those of the younger nymphs. The older
individuals also damaged the xylem
tracheids more, with several vessels being
ruptured.

Pollard (1967) suggested that the man¬
dibular stylets penetrated very shallowly,
with the maxillae being extruded much far¬
ther. Thus the presence of such long sheaths
in C. arboriha feeding punctures may in¬
dicate extensive mandibular penetration into
the plant tissue. As C. arborina feeds with its
body aligned with the long axis of the stem,
and the mandibular stylets are positioned
lateral to the maxillae, the sheath bore
diameter should correspond to either the
maxillary or the combined stylet width.
Transverse sections of second and fifth in¬
star nymphs allowed direct measurement of
the stylets. Allowing for some shrinkage of
the plant tissue, the combined mouthparts
were clearly too large to account for the bore
diameter, but the maxillae were only slightly
larger than the bore (Table I). Thus the man¬
dibles of C. arborina are apparently inserted
only a short distance, and in contrast to the
mesophyll feeding E. melissae, sheath mate¬
rial is deposited along the entire length of the
maxillary track.

Pollard (1967) also found that the depth
of penetration increased with each instar in
E. melissae , but this would not be expected
in C. arborina due to the uniform thickness
of mesophyll in the photosynthetic twigs. In¬
deed, a one way analysis of variance showed
no difference in average penetration (all
measurements were trigonometrically cor¬
rected for nonparallel sectioning) with an

Table 1 . Measurements in micrometers of the sheath and mouthparts of Clastoptera arborina Ball.
Numbers in parenthesis indicate sample size; x ± SD, mean ± standard deviation; Rep., represen¬
tative value.

Instar

Sheath

Bore Diameter
(x ± SD)

Thickness

(range)

Length
(x ± SD)

Mouthparts

Maxillae

(Rep.)

Max. and Mand.
(Rep.)

I

6.13 ± 1.69(6)

519 ± 64(5)

II

6.18 ± 1.18(8)

2.9 - 11.6

489 ± 118(8)

8.7

17.4

III

10.09 ± 3.65 (8)

482 ± 90(8)

IV

12.78 ± 5.16(6)

533 ± 97 (6)

V

15.75 ± 3.48(5)

4.4 - 8.7

507 ± 99 (5)

29.5

49.2

Adult

19.43 ± 4.66(4)

551 ± 61(4)

29.5

49.2

158

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

overall mean of 513 /im and pooled standard
deviation of 94.7 (30 degrees of freedom; P
> 0.25). This is demonstrated by the values
in Table I.

2. Description of Native Spittle

Early in the season the spittle produced by
a first instar nymph is a small, white mass of
tiny bubbles deposited in the fork of foliage
branchlets or outer twigs. The size of this
mass and of the bubbles increases with the
growth of the insect, and the whitish ap¬
pearance persists. Even in the first instar, the
spittle often includes silken strands of un¬
known origin, plant hairs and other detritus,
and the bodies of dead insects. All these
components, with the addition of crystalline
material, are found on the twig surface in
abandoned spittle masses. In later instars,
especially the fifth, the spittle becomes less
frothy, and large globules of clear to yellow¬
ish, gelatinous spittle are found, sometimes
with correspondingly colored patches of
crust on the surface. Other than this, there is
no change in the spittle of the pharate adult,
as opposed to the condition of Philaenus
spumarius (L.) and Lepyronia quadrangu-
laris (Say), where, at this stage, the spittle is
allowed to dry, and a cavity formed inside to
accommodate the ecdysing insect (Doering,
1922; Weaver and King, 1954).

The following insects were found in
various spittle masses in the summer of 1983:
in the order Hemiptera: Plagiognathus ilicis
Knight, P. annulatus v. cuneatus Knight
(Miridae); in the Hymenoptera: Euderom-
phale, and Omphale (Eulophidae), Aphan-
ogmus (Ceraphoronidae), Copidosoma (En-
cyrtidae), Laelius pedatus (Say) (Bethy-
lidae), Chelonus (Braconidae), Polynema
(Mymaridae), Metaclisis, Platygaster (Platy-
gasteridae); in the Psocoptera: Psocus
(Psocidae), and Lachesilla pedicularis (L.)
(Pseudocaeciliidae); and a moribund uniden¬
tified dipterous larva. None of these have
been reported as predators or parasitoids of
cercopids, and we believe that their occur¬
rence is either entirely accidental, or that

they became trapped while utilizing the spit¬
tle as a water source.

3. Rate of Spittle Production

The spittle collected under near 100%
humid conditions in the laboratory was
slightly different from the spittle in the field.
There were almost no bubbles in the mass
around the insect, and usually none in the
spittle collected in the vial. The spittle was
very fluid and colorless, and never mucoid
or of yellow tint. Most of it flowed from the
insect into the vial, leaving only a film and a
few bubbles covering the nymph and sur¬
rounding twig.

The liquid volume of spittle collected in
the field was impossible to determine due to
the difficulty in disassociating the entrapped
bubbles (these bubbles were very persistent,
even in alcohol-preserved spittle masses).
Thus, without invoking more elaborate in¬
strumentation, the density of native spittle
could not be determined.

The density of spittle collected in the
humidity chamber was 1.04 ± 0.02. The
daily spittle production was 194.6 ± 73.7 mg
(n = 9, range 101.6 - 291.3) for the three
days. For comparison, Horsfield (1978)
found that the fifth instar of P. spumarius
produced 1310 ± 80 mg/day under similar
conditions, or 6.7 times that of C. arborina.
P. spumarius is a larger animal feeding on
herbaceous plants, and this may account for
some of the discrepancy. Upon desiccation,
a thin residue consisting of a mat of very fine
interconnected fibers and small white
crystals was deposited on the vial walls.
None of the silken strands or detritus asso¬
ciated with the field spittle was observed.
The residue thus probably corresponds to
the filmy varnish seen coating the crystals
and foreign inclusions in abandoned spittle
masses in the field, and this soluble compo¬
nent, being concentrated by evaporation
from the surface, could act as a thickening
agent to increase the viscosity and structural
integrity of the spittle mass. No further tests
were performed, but studies have demon-

1985]

Kuenzi and Coppel — Feeding Site and Spittle

159

strated the presence of amino acids (Wiegert,
1964; Hagley, 1969), sugars, and microorga¬
nisms (Wilson and Dorsey, 1957) in spittle of
other cercopids.

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Col¬
lege of Agricultural and Life Sciences,
University of Wisconsin-Madison, and by
research funds from the Wisconsin Depart¬
ment of Natural Resources through the
School of Natural Resources, University of
Wisconsin-Madison. We express our sincere
gratitude to John Haanstad for providing
Figure 1, and to Steven Krauth for his tax¬
onomic assistance.

Literature Cited

Balch, R. E. 1952. Studies of the balsam woolly
aphid, Adelges piceae (Ratz.) and its effects on
balsam fir, Abies balsamea (L.) Mill. Depart¬
ment of Agriculture, Ottawa, Canada, Publi¬
cation 867. 76 pp.

Bennett, C. W. 1934. Plant-tissue relations of the
sugar-beet curly-top virus. J. Agric. Res. 48:
665-701.

Brandes, E. W. 1923. Mechanics of inoculation
with sugar-cane mosaic by insect vectors. J.
Agric. Res. 23:279-283.

Cheung, W. W. K. and A. T. Marshall. 1973.
Water and ion regulation in cicadas in relation

to xylem feeding. J. Insect Physiol. 19:1801-
1816.

Doering, K. C. 1922. Biology and morphology of
Lepyronia quadrangularis (Say) — Homoptera,
Cercopidae. Univ. Kans. Sci. Bull. 14:515-587.

Hagley, E. A. C. 1969. Free amino acids and
sugars of the adult sugar cane froghopper
( Aeneolumia varia saccharina ) (Homoptera:
Cercopidae) in relation to those of its host. En-
tomol. Expt. et Appl. 12:235-239.

Horsfield, D. 1978. Evidence for xylem feeding
by Philaenus spumarius (L.) (Homoptera: Cer¬
copidae). Entomol. Exp. et Appl. 24:95-99.

Johansan, D. A. 1940. Plant Microtechnique.
New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co. 523 pp.

Kuenzi, F. M. and H. C. Coppel. 1985. The
biology of Clastoptera arborina Ball (Homop¬
tera: Cercopidae) in Wisconsin. Trans. Wis.
Acad. Sci., Arts and Lett. 73 (this issue).

Pollard, D. G. 1967. Stylet penetration and
feeding damage of Eupteryx melissae Curtis
(Hemiptera: Cicadellidae) on sage. Bull. En¬
tomol. Res. 58:55-71.

Putman, W. L. 1941. The feeding habits of cer¬
tain leafhoppers. Can. Entomol. 73:39-53.

Weaver, C. R. and D. R. King. 1954. Meadow
spittlebug. Ohio Agric. Exp. Stn. Res. Bull.,
Wooster, 741 pp.

Wiegert, R. G. 1964. The ingestion of xylem sap
by meadow spittlebugs, Philaenus spumarius
(L.). Amer. Midi. Nat. 71: 422-428.

Wilson, H. A and C. K. Dorsey. 1957. Studies on
the composition and microbiology of insect
spittle. Ann. Entomol. Soc. Amer. 50:399-406.

EFFECTS OF RECENT ECOSYSTEM CHANGES
ON LAKE WINGRA BLUEGILLS

James Jaeger
Department of Zoology
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Abstract

Since the International Biological Program funded studies in the late 1960’s
and early 1970’s, Lake Wingra has undergone major floral and faunal changes.
Among the most dramatic alterations are the disappearance of once-abundant
yellow bass, the decline of European water milfoil beds, and the stocking of
muskellunge on an almost yearly basis. This paper documents the timing of these
changes and their impact on Lake Wingra bluegills. A winter 1984 sample shows
a bluegill population with more rapid growth than at the last recorded sampling.
The mean lengths for one, two, three, four, and five year old bluegills were 70,
102, 134, 154 and 165 mm respectively.

Introduction

The term “invisible present” was coined
by Magnuson, et al., (1983) to describe the
sum of “. . . . the events, processes, and
changes occurring over decades ... in the
scientific study of lake ecology.” Un¬
fortunately, status quo surveys recording a
lake’s current conditions have traditionally
been viewed as less exciting or intellectually
challenging than other types of ecological
research, and thus vital historical documen¬
tation remains sadly incomplete. Thus the
recent concern over acid rain produced
renewed interest in past environmental con¬
ditions, but records of lake chemistry, flora
and faunal populations ranged from poor or
spotty to nonexistent.

Ecological studies usually last one or two
years and are generally not repeated, making
long term changes difficult to assess. One ex¬
ception is Lake Wingra’s fish population,
for it has been the subject of several studies
during the past forty years. Serving as
another link in the documentation of Lake
Wingra’s “invisible present,” this paper
describes recent changes in the lake’s aquatic
environment and especially its bluegill popu¬
lation.

Lake Wingra, a 140 hectare lake with a
mean depth of three meters, is bordered on
one side by the City of Madison and on the
other by the University of Wisconsin Arbo¬
retum. Due to its proximity to the university,
Lake Wingra has been regularly studied, and
fifteen years ago its ecology and fish popla-
tions were intensely researched in Interna¬
tional Biological Program studies (Adams et
al., 1972). Major work on Lake Wingra’s
fishes includes that by Pearse and Achten-
berg (1918), Helm (1958), Baumann (1972),
El Shamy (1976), and Churchill (1976). All
these workers concentrated their studies on
the abundant panfish: bluegills, yellow bass,
perch, black crappies and white crappies.
Baumann, et al., (1974) described the history
of Lake Wingra’s fish community up to
1973.

Bluegills, Lepomis macrochirus , numeri¬
cally dominate the Lake Wingra fish com¬
munity and they are also the most common
fish in the angling catch. The average size is
small (140-160 mm), and many fishermen
consider them too small to bother catching
or cleaning. However, a substantial size in¬
crease in bluegills taken through the ice has
occurred in recent years. This increase oc-

160

1985]

Jaeger — Lake Wingra Bluegills

161

curred shortly after several dramatic changes
in the Lake Wingra ecosystem, most notably
the disappearance of the yellow bass, Mo-
rone mississippiensis, from the fish commu¬
nity, the decline of the aquatic macrophyte
beds which formerly ringed the shoreline,
and the stocking of muskellunge by the Wis¬
consin Department of Natural Resources.

Materials and Methods

In February and March of 1984 forty-
eight bluegills were collected from the south
end of Lake Wingra near the Aboretum’s big
spring. The fish were taken by angling from
water less than one meter deep, using
mousies (syrphid fly larvae), a small ice
fishing jig, and two pound test line.

The bluegills were measured in total length
to the nearest mm, and they were weighed to
the nearest 0.01 gram. Scales were taken
from below the lateral line in the area
beneath the end of the pectoral fin.

Three scales from each fish were mounted
between two glass slides, and the anterior
scale radius and annular distances were
measured to the nearest mm with a KEN-A-
VISON model TECH- A scale projector
which projected an image of the scales
enlarged by 47 times. Average values from
the three scales were used to back calculate
lengths at each annulus. The best fit equa¬
tion was L = 51.53 + 0.78 S (r = 0.957)
where L = total body length (mm) and S =
anterior scale radius ( x47). Calculations
used the Lee method as described by Car-
lander (1981).

Information on yellow bass disappearance
came from my fishing records of Lake
Wingra catches for the past fifteen years.
This diary also provided information on the
relative abundance of fish species in the
winter catch from Lake Wingra.

Results

The high catches of yellow bass in 1969-72
(Figure 1) are misleading because I later
learned to partially avoid them by fishing
closer to shore. In spite of this, I believe that

WINTER SEASON (yr)

Fig. 1 . The author’s winter angling catch of yellow bass
from Lake Wingra, 1969-1984, shown as a percentage
of the total catch. The total number of fish caught is
given above each column.

the trend shown in Figure 1 is real and that
the yellow bass population had declined
greatly before their ultimate disappearance.
Yellow bass averaged 6.7% in Churchill’s
extensive sampling from 1972-74 (Churchill,
1976), and I caught a very similar percentage
of yellow bass from 1972-75 (Figure 1). I
caught my last yellow bass from Lake
Wingra on January 10, 1977. I caught only
two yellow bass that entire winter, indicating
an extremely low population. I have not
caught a yellow bass since then nor have I
seen anyone catch a yellow bass; I therefore
believe they are completely extirpated from
Lake Wingra.

Prior to 1977, yellow bass made up 30%
of my catch, bluegills 60%, perch 7%, and
crappies (black and white combined) 2%.
After 1977, no yellow bass were caught,
bluegills made up 66% of the catch, perch
17%, and crappies 15%. Table 1 lists the ac¬
tual catch data and taxonomic names for the
various species.

The length-weight relationship for Lake
Wingra bluegills in my 1984 sample was log
W = -5.23 + 3.24 log L (r = 0.994) where

162

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

Table 1. The number of fish of different
species caught from Lake Wingra 1969-1984.

Pre

1977

Post

1977

Yellow bass (Morone mississippiensis)

397

0

Bluegill (Lepomis macrochirus)

801

618

Pumpkinseed (Lepomis gibbosus)

10

7

Golden shiner ( Notemigonus crysoleucas)

2

7

Perch (Perea flavescens)

98

162

Black crappie (Pomoxis nigromaculatus)

30

80

White crappie (Pomoxis annularis)

2

64

Largemouth bass (Micropterus salmoides)

2

0

Northern pike (Esox lucius)

0

1

Green sunfish (Lepomis cyanellus)

0

1

Total

1342

940

Number of fisherman hours

126.75

112.25

Fish/fisherman hour

10.59

8.37

W = weight in grams, L = total length in
mm, and log = log to base 10.

Table 2 gives the back-calculated lengths
for bluegills of each age class as well as a
weighted average for the population. This
1984 sample shows that I, II, III, IV, and V
annulus fish average 70, 102, 134, 154, and
165 mm total length respectively.

Discussion

A major problem inherent in ecological
field research is that variables cannot be
carefully controlled nor accurately assessed.
At least three major changes have occurred
in Lake Wingra since the last published work
on the bluegill population. These changes
are a) the disappearance of yellow bass, b)

the decline of the European water milfoil
beds, and c) the stocking of muskellunge.
The following discussion summarizes the
history and possible causes of these changes,
and attempts to assess their importance in
sculpting the “invisible present” of Lake
Wingra today.

A. What Happened To The Yellow Bass?

Ironically, yellow bass are now absent
from both Lake Wingra, the site of the best
Wisconsin study on yellow bass (Helm,
1964), and Lake Monona, the capture site of
the world’s angling record yellow bass — 2
pounds, 2 ounces (Anonymous, 1976).

Figure 1 documents clearly the disap¬
pearance of yellow bass from Lake Wingra
in 1977. At this same time yellow bass disap¬
peared from nearby lakes Mendota and
Monona, and populations of the closely
related white bass dropped to very low
levels. White bass did not occur in Lake
Wingra in the 1970s; they had dropped to
very low levels in Lake Monona in 1966
(Wright, 1968); and were declining in Lake
Mendota in the early 1970s. Conjecture held
that the yellow bass were eliminating the
white bass by interbreeding with them. Sup¬
porting this idea, some Lake Mendota
catches circa 1970 contained a few white
bass, many yellow bass, and many fish
which appeared to be hybrids between white
bass and yellow bass. Therefore, the species
disappearance in the winter of 1976-77 was
primarily of yellow bass, since the white bass
had declined earlier.

Table 2. Calculated lengths at each annulus and lengths at capture of bluegills from Lake Wingra, 1984.

Age

Mean total
length at
capture (mm)

Number

of

fish

Estimated total length (mm) at time of annulus formation

I II III IV V

I

117

14

70

II

140

11

70

103

III

160

17

69

103

134

IV

168

3

70

93

129

153

V

180

3

72

107

136

154

165

Weighted Average

= 70

102

134

154

165

1985]

Jaeger — Lake Wingra Bluegills

163

Yellow bass, white bass, and crappies are
all known to exhibit extensive population
fluctuations, the causes of which are
unclear. While white bass have begun to
reappear in Lakes Monona and Mendota as
of 1984, yellow bass have not yet returned.
The total extinction of yellow bass from lake
Wingra was not sprayed. The simultaneous
population fluctuation. Natural population
control factors such as diseases and parasites
seldom exterminate their hosts.

Local fishermen blamed the final yellow
bass disappearance on spraying done to con¬
trol aquatic macrophytes; however, Lake
Lingra was not sprayed. The simultaneous
disappearance of yellow bass in all three
lakes implies a more widespread cause.

Baumann et al. (1983, p. 98) suggested
that a more likely cause was the severe winter
of 1976-77 when ice on area lakes froze to an
extraordinary three foot thickness. Madison,
Wisconsin, was at the northern edge of the
yellow bass range, and moreover the yellow
bass was likely a non-native species, in¬
troduced during the fish rescue operations in
the 1930s and early 1940s (Noland, 1951).
Baumann, et al., reasoned that this severe
winter may simply have been too extreme for
these more southern fish. Several facts argue
against this idea. First, yellow bass inhabited
Lake Wingra successfuly for approximately
forty years in spite of some very cold
winters. Second, Figure 1 shows a drop in
the yellow bass populations beginning circa
1972, almost five years before their ultimate
disapparance. This second fact especially
argues for a long term cause, not the single
event of one very cold winter.

Another more probable cause is the low
background levels of agricultural chemicals
which all our waters are currently receiving
in rainfall and runoff. Even within the city
of Madison one can go outside in the spring
and smell the volatile chemicals being cur¬
rently sprayed on the surrounding crop¬
lands. An atmosphere thick with herbicide
droplets will dump its toxic load in every
rainfall. The possible additive and synergis¬

tic effects of agricultural chemicals at low
levels is unknown and unstudied.

The catch data in Table 1 indicate that
yellow bass have been replaced in the fisher¬
man’s bag by perch and crappies. Catch per
unit effort data support my observation that
the perch and crappies do not currently ap¬
proach the abundance shown by yellow bass
in the early 1970s, and that bluegills are also
less abundant now than in the early 1970s.
Before 1977, my winter catch rate was 10.6
fish/fisherman-hour. After 1977, the catch
fell to 8.4 fish/fisherman-hour, and the last
three winters only 5.4 fish/fisherman-hour
were caught. Comparison of crappie catches
in the pre-1977 and post- 1977 years is done
with reservations. Use of more efficient
equipment after 1977 resulted in a reduced
crappie escape rate. Assuming this change in
technique effects black and white crappies
equally, the white crappie population ap¬
pears to have increased since 1977.

B. The Decline of Water Milfoil

The second major change in Lake Wingra
since the early 1970s is the dramatic decline
in European water milfoil, Myriophyllum
spicatum. After its introduction into the
eastern United States from Europe, milfoil
spread across the country, eventually dom¬
inating the aquatic macrophyte community
in many lakes, including Lake Wingra and
the other Madison lakes. According to
Carpenter (1980), the decline of European
water milfoil in Lake Wingra occurred dur¬
ing the summer of 1977. Many milfoil beds
disappeared entirely, and the milfoil biomass
in the remaining beds dropped to less than
half its previous levels. Such patterns of
changing abundance are typical for intro¬
duced species and are usually attributed to
diseases and parasites catching up with the
host plant. Carpenter was not able to at¬
tribute the decline of milfoil in Lake Wingra
to any single observed factor. In 1984 Lake
Wingra supported a more diverse aquatic
macrophyte community, containing Pota-
mogeton , Ceratophyllum, and Vallisneria in

164

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

Table 3. Muskie stocked in Lake Wingra 1972-84.

1984

700 Hybrid*

1983

No Stocking

1982

690 Hybrid

144 Muskellunge

1981

1000 Hybrid

15 Muskellunge

1980

1000 Hybrid

32 Muskellunge

1979

24 Muskellunge

1972-78

No Stocking

Hybrid = Northern Pike x Muskellunge.

* Anticipated stocking for 1984.

addition to Myriophyllum. Current macro¬
phyte beds, however, are much less extensive
than the water milfoil beds of the early 1970s
which ringed Lake Wingra in a solid un¬
broken mass extending approximately 100
feet from shore.

C. Here Come The Muskies

The third major change in the Lake
Wingra ecosystem is the stocking of predator

Fig. 2. The average calculated length at each annulus as
determined by three recent studies of Lake Wingra blue-
gills.

species in the years following 1979. The rates
of stocking are given in Table 3 (Klingbiel
and Brynildson, 1984). A few pure muskel¬
lunge ( Esox masquinongy ) were stocked, but
most fish were “tiger muskies/’ northern
pike (E. lucius ) X muskellunge hybrids. The
great majority of stocked fish were finger-
lings, juvenile fish about five inches long.
Besides being highly prized sport fish,
muskies are major predators on small pan¬
fish. However, muskies are stocked primar¬
ily to promote sport fishing and only secon¬
darily to control panfish populations. Fish¬
ery biologists currently feel that stocking
predatory fish at any reasonable level has a
negligible effect on panfish numbers (Kling¬
biel and Snow, 1962).

Have Lake Wingra’ s panfish populations
been measurably affected by the above
ecosystem changes? Figure 2 compares the
growth in length of Lake Wingra bluegills
found in three separate studies. Adult
bluegills in my 1984 sample grew at the same
rate as adults in El Shamy’s 1969-70 sample,
but the fish are now 10 to 20 mm longer at
each annulus. Churchill’s 1972-73 sample
calculated average lengths for bluegills
which were almost identical to El Shamy’s.
Notice that Helm in 1955-57 found the same
growth in the first year as El Shamy, but
afterwards Helm’s bluegills grew faster, and
his curve gradually separated from El
Shamy’s. My more recent data show a major
increase in the growth of young bluegills
during the first year of life. This first-year
increase in growth requires a cause which ef¬
fects young of the year bluegills more strong¬
ly than adults.

My length-weight relationship (log W =
-5.23 + 3.24 log L) supports the conten¬
tion that bluegills are growing better now. El
Shamy (1976) reported a length-weight rela¬
tionship of log W = -3.788 + 2.57 log L
for Lake Wingra bluegills. Churchill (1976)
reports a length-weight relationship of log W
= -4.8904 +3.062 log L for bluegills

caught in 1972-73. Churchill’s results in¬
dicate that only three years after El Shamy’s

1985]

Jaeger — Lake Wingra Bluegills

165

1969-70 sampling, the bluegill length-weight
relationship was already changing toward
that which we see now. In fact, my length-
weight relationship for Lake Wingra blue-
gills today is much closer to that of El
Shamy’s for Lake Mendota (log W = - 4.99
+ 3.21 log L), where bluegills consistently
have grown much larger than in Lake
Wingra. Simply stated, Lake Wingra blue¬
gills of a given length are now considerably
heavier than they were in 1969-70. This in¬
crease, effecting fish in all age classes, is the
expected result in a population released from
a major food competitor.

Thus we may now speculate with some
confidence on how the three ecosystem
changes discussed, acting alone or in com¬
bination, could produce the observed in¬
creases in bluegill growth. The disap¬
pearance of yellow bass, eliminating a poten¬
tial food competitor, probably had the
greatest impact on bluegill growth. The
decline of the macrophyte beds may have
allowed greater predation through a decrease
in protective cover, again leaving the sur¬
vivors with more food per fish. Or, the more
open weed beds may simply make feeding
easier for bluegills. Artificially elevating the
predator population through muskie stock¬
ing would lower bluegill populations slight¬
ly, perhaps easing intraspecific competition.
However, since relatively few muskies were
introduced, predator stocking probably had
the smallest effect on panfish populations.

It appears that competition between the
remaining panfish species may be reduced by
habitat selection and food preferences.
While examination of stomach contents of
perch and bluegills taken through the ice
shows that both feed primarily on chiron-
omids (lake fly larvae), interspecific com¬
petition is limited because perch are more
pelagic and bluegills more littoral. Winter
crappies eat small copepods not taken by
bluegills or perch, and therefore appear not
to compete with perch or bluegills for winter
food. At the height of their abundance,
yellow bass overlapped the habitats of all

these species, especially the open water perch
and crappies.

Summary

This study documented recent major
species changes in the Lake Wingra eco¬
system. Yellow bass, previously codominant
with bluegills, vanished in 1977. The Euro¬
pean water milfoil that once dominated the
littoral zone has greatly declined. Muskel-
lunge and northern pike-muskie hybrids
were introduced. In response, the Lake
Wingra bluegill population currently shows
a greatly increased growth in the first year,
and adult bluegills are longer at a given age
and heavier at a given length than they were
previously. Continuing documentation of
the various aspects of Lake Wingra’ s chang¬
ing “invisible present” are necessary to ac¬
curately assess and predict future ecosystem
and fish population changes.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the Zoology Depart¬
ment for providing space and the scale pro¬
jector, C. Hughes for illustrations, and D.
Chandler for photography.

References

Adams, M. S., O. L. Loucks, J. F. Koonce, J. F.
Kitchell, D. D. Huff, E. H. Dettmann, and R.
J. Luxmoore. 1972. Overview and summary of
Lake Wingra research, 1971-1972. Eastern
Deciduous Forest Biome. Memo Rep. No.
72-94. 77 pp.

Anonymous. 1976. Freshwater angling records;
World’s record and Wisconsin’s record fish.
Department of Natural Resources, Madison,
WI. 3 pp.

Baumann, P. C. 1972. Distribution, movement,
and feeding interactions among bluegill and
three other panfish in Lake Wingra. M.S.
Thesis, Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison. 48 pp.
Baumann, P. C., J. F. Kitchell, J. J. Magnuson,
and T. B. Kayes. 1974. Lake Wingra, 1837-
1973: A case history of human impact. Trans.
Wis. Acad. Sci., Arts, Lett. 62:57-94.

Baumann, P. C., J. Jaeger, and K. Elliot. 1983.
Freshwater Fisherman’s Companion. Van
Nostrand Reinhold Co. New York. 215 pp.

166

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

Carlander, K. D. 1981. Caution on the use of the
regression method of back-calculating lengths
from scale measurements. Fisheries 6(l):2-4.

Carpenter, S. R. 1980. The decline of Myrio-
phyllum spicatum in a eutrophic Wisconsin
lake. Can. J. Bot. 58:527-535.

Churchill, W. S. 1976. Population and biomass
estimates of fishes in Lake Wingra. Technical
Bulletin No. 93, Wis Dept, of Natural
Resources, Madison. 9 pp.

El-Shamy, Farouk. 1976. A comparison of the
growth rates of bluegill Lepomis macrochirus
in Lake Wingra and Lake Mendota, Wiscon¬
sin. Trans. Wis. Acad. Sci., Arts, Lett.
64:144-153.

Helm, W. T. 1958. Some notes on the ecology of
panfish in Lake Wingra with special reference
to the yellow bass. Ph.D. Thesis, Univ. of
Wisconsin, Madison. 88 pp.

Helm, W. T. 1964. Yellow bass in Wisconsin.
Trans. Wis. Acad. Sci., Arts, Lett. 53:109-125.

Klingbiel, J. and C. Brynildson. 1984. Personal
communication of Wisconsin Department of
Natural Resources stocking data. July 1984.

Klingbiel, J. and H. Snow. 1962. Population ex¬
plosions: old stuff. Wis. Cons. Bull. 27(2):
8-10.

Magnuson, J. J., C. J. Bowser, and A. L. Beckel.
1983. The invisible present. Long term eco¬
logical research on lakes. L and S Magazine.
Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison. 1:3-6.

Noland, W. E. 1951. The hydrography, fish, and
turtle populations of Lake Wingra. Trans.
Wis. Acad. Sci., Arts, Lett. 40(2): 5-5 8.

Pearse, A. S. and H. Achtenberg. 1918. Habits of
yellow perch in Wisconsin lakes. Bull. U.S.
Bur. Fisher. 36:295-366. (Document 885,
Aug., 1920).

Wright, T. D. 1968. Changes in abundance of
yellow bass ( Morone mississippiensis) and
white bass (M. chrysops ) in Madison, Wiscon¬
sin, lakes. Copeia 1968( 1): 1 83-1 85 .

ZOOPLANKTON DYNAMICS IN LAKE MENDOTA:
ABUNDANCE AND BIOMASS OF THE
METAZOOPLANKTON FROM 1976 TO 1980

Carlos Pedr6s-Ali6*

Department of Bacteriology

E. Woolsey
Department of Zoology

T. D. Brock

Department of Bacteriology
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Abstract

Metazooplankton species composition, abundance, and biomass were followed
from 1976 to 1980. Fairly similar annual cycles were found for the years studied.
However, three types of differences were found: substitution of one species for
another of the same genus, differences in the number of peaks and their time of
appearance for certain species, and the maximum population abundances of most
organisms. Results give insight into year-to-year variations and provide a data base
to be compared with a similar study done almost one hundred years ago by E. A.
Birge.

Introduction

The success of some long-term ecological
studies (Bormann and Likens, 1979; Erlich,
1979) has recently focused attention on the
need to have continuous records of data
spanning as many years as possible. Studies
of this sort address questions on a broader
time scale than is possible with sporadic or
seasonal studies. Thus, they allow distinc¬
tions to be made between seasonal changes
and long-term trends, as well as to ascertain
long term effects of human action or slowly
changing environmental parameters upon
ecosystems. Recognizing the importance of
such studies, the National Science Foun¬
dation has established a new funding pro¬
gram termed Long Term Ecological Re¬
search (Callahan, 1984). The northern lakes
of Wisconsin have been included as one of

* Present address: Department of Microbiology,
Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Autonoma de
Barcelona, Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain.

the eleven study sites funded by this pro¬
gram.

Lake Mendota, having been studied for
almost a hundred years, offered a unique
system for comparison of long and short
term changes in its characteristics. By com¬
paring data from modern studies with those
from the existing literature, conclusions
might be drawn about long-term changes in
the lake. Stewart (1976) has made similar
comparisons of data for oxygen concentra¬
tions and Secchi disk readings. The extensive
studies carried out on the zooplankton
of Lake Mendota by Birge (1897) offered a
unique opportunity to contrast results
gathered eighty years apart. Other studies on
the zooplankton of the lake (see Frey, 1963,
for a review) concentrated on particular as¬
pects, such as vertical migration (Juday
1904), total biomass (Birge, 1923), sampling
problems (Neess, 1949), patchiness and its
causes (Ragotzkie and Bryson, 1953), feed¬
ing by fish (McNaught and Hasler (1961), or

167

168

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

were concerned with taxonomy of different
groups such as rotifers (Harring and Myers,
1921), cladocera and copepoda (Birge, 1918;
Birge and Juday, 1908). However, no exten¬
sive study of zooplankton species density
had been done since Birge’s landmark paper
(1897), and no quantitative studies on roti¬
fers had been ever done.

Therefore, we carried out a study of Lake
Mendota zooplankton, including species
composition, abundance and biomass, from
1976 to 1980. The impact of feeding by
zooplankton on the bacteria of the lake
(Pedros-Alio and Brock, 1983) and quan¬
titative comparisons with Birge’s data
(Pedros-Alio and Brock, 1985) have been
published already. Detailed data for every
species, sampling date, and depth can be
found in Pedros-Alio (1981). Here we
describe the annual cycle of the zooplankton
and discuss differences among the five years
of the present study, as well as relations with
their food sources, phytoplankton and
bacteria. It is hoped that the results will
become a useful data base from which to
draw conclusions about long-term changes
in a lake ecosystem.

Materials and Methods

Zooplankton sampling. Samples were
taken at the deepest part of the lake (24.2 m)
located towards the center of Lake Mendota.
Three different techniques were used to col¬
lect zooplankton. The first one, vertical tows
taken with a 20 cm diameter plankton net
(mesh size 156 /un), was used during all years
of the present study for two reasons: first, to
provide an integrated picture of the zoo¬
plankton throughout the lake, and second,
because this method is practically identical
to that used by Birge (1897), which consisted
of vertical tows taken with a 166 /un mesh
size zooplankton net. In our study, the net
was towed slowly from 23 m depth to the
surface, thus sampling a water column of
723 1 . Since not all the water in the column
could pass through the net, the volume ac¬
tually sampled would be somewhat smaller.

Replicate subsamples, of 1 or 2 ml depend¬
ing on the abundance of zooplankton in the
sample, were removed with a Hansen-Stem-
pel pipette and all the animals counted. The
whole zooplankton sample was also exam¬
ined to count all the individuals of Lepto-
dora kindtii, since its relative scarcity and
large size made counting of small volumes
unreliable.

In addition to the vertical tows, two dif¬
ferent techniques were used in 1979 and
1980, respectively, to provide information
on vertical distribution of the zooplankton.
During 1979, a fairly detailed discrete sam¬
pling technique was used. Samples were
taken at a number of depths with a 5 1 Van
Dorn bottle, and at least one liter from each
depth was filtered on a Whatman GF/C
glass fiber filter. The volume was reduced to
a few milliliters and the vacuum discon¬
nected. The filters were rinsed at least twice
with filtered lake water and the wash water
added to the concentrated sample. Examina¬
tion of the rinsed filters showed a substantial
amount of algae remaining on them, but no
animals were ever found. This concentrate
was then transferred into a gridded Petri
dish and counted, using a dissecting micro¬
scope. Samples were also preserved in 4°7o
formalin for later study. A simplified
method, based on that of Likens and Gilbert
(1970), was used during 1980. Discrete
duplicate samples were again taken with Van
Dorn bottles from several depths. Circular
pieces of Nitex 64 net (64 /un mesh size) were
fitted to a Sartorius filtering apparatus and
volumes of water proportional to the lake
volume at each depth interval were filtered
through the Nitex net. During the period
when the lake was totally mixed, two filtra-
tions, representing a volume proportional to
the whole lake were filtered. During the
stratified period, two filtrations from the
epilimnion and two from the hypolimnion
were carried out separately (the thermocline
was usually found between 10 and 12m).

Thus, we had total population data from
the vertical tows from 1976 to 1980, and ver-

1985]

Pedr6s-Ali6, Woolsey and Brock — Zooplankton in Lake Mendota

169

Table 1 . Lengths of the main zooplankton species in Lake Mendota for each sampling date during 1980.
Average length in mm and, between parenthesis, ±95% confidence limits.

Date

Daphnia

galeata

Diaphanosoma

leuchtenbergianum

Chydorus

sphaericus

Calanoids

Cyclopoids

Jan. 15

1.19 (.24)

— °

—

—

0.92 (.04)

Feb. 7

1.23*

—

—

—

—

Mar. 17

1.31 (.08)

—

—

1 .25*

0.97 (.04)

Apr. 1

1.296

—

—

—

—

Apr. 22

—

—

—

—

1.10 (.12)

May 12

—

—

0.346

—

0.79 (.09)

June 2

1.20 (.18)

—

—

—

0.61 (.07)

June 11

1.22 (.13)

—

—

1.12 (.07)

0.66 (.04)

June 24

0.97 (.10)

—

—

0.70 (.09)

0.59 (.04)

July 1

1.41 (.16)

1.02 (2.9)

—

0.86 (.09)

0.86 (.07)

July 8

1 .35*

0.74 (.37)

—

0.89 (.07)

0.88 (.07)

July 23

—

0.51 (.07)

0.18 (.01)

0.71 (.09)

0.54 (.08)

Aug. 12

—

0.73 (.13)

0.24 (.01)

0.96 (.06)

0.99 (.14)

Aug. 27

—

0.68 (.14)

0.24 (.01)

0.92 (.08)

0.73 (.09)

Sept. 8

0.91 (.36)

0.82 (.11)

0.24 (.02)

0.93 (.05)

0.67 (.09)

Sept. 22

1.63*

0.92 (.19)

0.26 (.01)

0.91 (.07)

0.69 (.08)

Sept. 29

1 .56*

1.06 (.15)

0.27 (.01)

1.01 (.07)

0.84 (.09)

Oct. 6

1.48 (1.8)

0.97 (.10)

0.27 (.01)

0.93 (.07)

0.76 (.06)

Oct. 20

0.80 (.22)

0.94 (.11)

0.27 (.02)

0.98 (.06)

0.79 (.06)

Nov. 20

0.91 (.16)

1.21 (.09)

0.32 (.01)

1.05 (.02)

0.82 (.01)

Dec. 18

—

—

0.31 (.02)

1.07 (.03)

0.91 (.04)

“Not present.

b Not enough individuals for reliable statistics.

deal distribudon data and rotifer data for
1979 and 1980 from the other techniques. By
statistical analysis, we found that total
numbers calculated from the techniques us¬
ing Van Dorn samples were not significantly
different from those of the vertical tows.

Zooplankton lengths. Except in 1979, at
least 30 individuals of each major species
were measured under a dissecting micro¬
scope, at each sampling date, to the nearest
30 fx m, and the average size for that date
calculated. In 1979 between 15 and 20 in¬
dividuals were measured. The species most
abundant and variable in size were divided
into size classes and individuals assigned to
them. For species that were too rare to per¬
mit counting of a significant number of in¬
dividuals at any given date, all the in¬
dividuals present were measured and the
average length from measurements through¬
out the year was assigned to them. Average
lengths for every sampling date of the last

year of the present study (1980) are shown in
Table 1.

Zooplankton weights. Except in 1979,
average dry weights were calculated with the
regression equations of dry weight vs. length
given by Dumont, Van de Velde and Du¬
mont (1975), and those for average values
are given in Table 2. In 1979, the most abun¬
dant species were divided into size classes

Table 2. Formulae for calculating zooplankton dry
weights from average lengths calculated during the pres¬
ent study.

Organism

Formula

Daphnia galeata and

D. retrocurva

W = 9.93 x 10"8

L256 + 2.97

Diaphanosoma

W= 1.88 x 10'6

L2 11 - 0.14

Cyclopoids

W = 2.00 x 10"8

L2 75 + 8.41

Calanoids

W = 8.40 x 10"7

L2 33 + 1.06

W: Average weight in /ng.
L: Average weight in /un.

170

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

and dry weights calculated for each size class
independently, with the same equations of
Dumont et al. (1975). These regressions were
not checked for Lake Mendota zooplankton,
but the same relationship was assumed for
the same species in both studies. A carbon to
dry weight ratio of 0.4 was used to convert to
carbon biomass.

Results and Discussion

Validity of the techniques used. According
to Ruttner-Kolisko (1977), statistically reli¬
able counts of rotifers can be obtained if
more than 100 individuals of each species are
counted. She compared three sampling
methods for rotifers (vertical tows, Ruttner
bottles and pump) and showed that the
results were not comparable among the dif¬
ferent techniques. Nevertheless, Ruttner-
Kolisko concluded that numbers of rotifers
could be used even if duplicates and/or
sampling methods gave results differing by
two fold, because the animals tend to change
their numbers by several orders of magni¬
tude throughout the year. In the present
study, differences between duplicates and
techniques were considerably smaller than
those found by Ruttner-Kolisko. Average
coefficients of variation (CV) for replicates
taken with Van Dorn bottles were 19% for
cyclopoids, 15% for calanoids, 31% for
Daphnia species, 17% for Daphnia galeata
mendotae, 20% for Chydorus sphaericus,
29% for other cladocerans, 26% for rotifers,
and 15% for the most abundant rotifer,
Keratella cochlearis.

When simultaneous samples taken with
Van Dorn bottles and vertical tows were
compared, average CV’s were 22% for
cyclopoids, 21% for calanoids, 47% for
Daphnia species, 26% for Chydorus, and
38% for other cladocerans. Rotifers could
not be counted in vertical tow samples
because they were not retained by the zoo¬
plankton net. Coefficients of variation from
vertical tow samples were only slightly
higher than those for replicates of Van Dorn
samples. Two way analyses of variance

(ANOVA) without replication (Sokal and
Rholf, 1969) were performed on abundances
from vertical tows and Van Dorn samples
for seven sampling dates to compare vari¬
ability due to different sampling techniques
with variability due to the different zoo¬
plankton species. As expected, the latter was
always highly significant, due to the dif¬
ferent population dynamics of different
species. On the other hand, variability due to
the different sampling techniques was never
significant (P>0.05), making possible com¬
parisons of numbers obtained with all of the
various techniques.

To check the variability due to horizontal
location in the lake, on July 20, 1979 vertical
tows and Van Dorn samples were taken at
three stations in the eastern, central, and
western parts of the lake. A three way
ANOVA without replication (Sokal and
Rohlf, 1969) was conducted, checking the
variability of counts due to horizontal loca¬
tion, species, and sampling technique.
Again, the latter was not significant
(P>0.05), while variability due to locations
and to different species were both significant
(P <0.05 and P <0.001 respectively). All this
indicates that counts from any of the sam¬
pling methods can be used together in calcu¬
lating zooplankton abundances, but that
results from the central station, the station
used for the present study, may not be easily
extended to the whole lake, due to patchiness
in the distribution of the organisms. There¬
fore, when values are given on an areal basis
they should be understood as representing
the central part of the lake.

Species composition. In the present study
fourteen main species were found: 3 cyclo-
poid copepods (Diacyclops bicuspidatus
thomasi (S. A. Forbes), Mesocyclops edax
(E. A. Forbes), and Acanthocy clops vernalis
(Fischer)), 3 calanoid copepods ( Leptodiap -
tomus sicilis (S. A. Forbes), L. siciloides
(Lilljeborg), and Aglaodiaptomus clavipes
Schacht), 4 species of the genus Daphnia ( D .
galeata mendotae Birge, D. pulex Leydig, D.
parvula Fordyce, and D. retrocurva Forbes),

1985]

Pedr6s-Ali6, Woolsey and Brock— Zooplankton in Lake Mendota

171

and 4 other cladocerans ( Chydorus sphaeri-
cus (O. F. Muller), Bosmina longirostris (O.
F. Muller), Diaphanosoma leuchtenbergi-
anum Fischer, and Leptodora kindtii
(Focke)). In addition, one cyclopoid cope-
pod {Tropocy clops prasinus (Fischer)), one
calanoid copepod ( Skistodiaptomus orego-
nensis (Lilljeborg)), Ceriodaphnia quad-
rangula G. O. Sars, and Ergasilus sp.
were observed occasionally in very small
amounts.

Rotifers were identified to genus, except in
the easily distinguished Keratella cochlearis
(Goss e) and K. quadra ta (Muller). The other
genera present were Poly art hra Ehrenberg,
Brachionus Pallas, Asplanchna Gosse, 777-
chocerca Lamarck, Filinia Bory de St. Vi-
cent, Conochilus Hlara, and Conochiloides
Hlara.

Annual cycle . The general pattern of
zooplankton abundance and species compo¬
sition was similar from year to year and to
that found by Birge (1897) eighty years ago.
We illustrate this general pattern with the
data from 1979. During this year, we sam¬
pled 28 times with both vertical tows and
Van Dorn bottles, and therefore, informa¬
tion was obtained on vertical distributions
and total abundances and species composi¬
tion of the zooplankton. Vertical distribu¬
tion and total abundance for each organism
or group of organisms are shown in Figures
1 to 13 for this year. However, since signifi¬
cant differences could be found from year to
year, we will present data from other years
when necessary. Each main group of orga¬
nisms will be analyzed separately. Year-to-
year variations are specifically treated in a
later section.

1 . Cyclopoid copepods. Birge (1897) men¬
tioned only three species of cyclopoid
copepods in Lake Mendota. Cyclops Leuck-
artii , corresponding to the currently recog¬
nized Mesocyclops edax , is the North Ameri¬
can counterpart of the European Mesocy¬
clops leuckartii (Cocker, 1943). The North
American species followed the same type of
annual cycle as the European species, being

Fig. 1. Abundance, in individuals nr2 (upper panel),
and vertical distribution in individuals l"1 (lower panel)
of cyclopoid copepods during 1979. Depth is in meters.
Adults and copepodites were pooled together. Drawings
of animals are: 1, Diacyclops bicuspidatus thomasi; 2
Mesocyclops edax; 3, Acanthocy clops vernalis. Tropo-
cyclops prasinus was rare most of the year.

Fig. 2. Abundance, in individuals m-2 (upper panel),
and vertical distribution in individuals 1_1 (lower panel)
of calanoid copepods during 1979. Depth is in meters.
Adults and copepodites were pooled together.

Fig. 3. Abundance, in individuals m"2 (upper panel),
and vertical distribution in individuals l-1 (lower panel)
of Daphnia galeata mendotae during 1979. Depth is in
meters. Adults and juveniles were pooled together.

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

Fig. 4. Abundance and vertical distribution of Daph-
nia parvula during 1979. Symbols and units as in Fig. 1 .

Fig. 7. Abundance and vertical distribution of Chy-
dorus sphaericus during 1979. Symbols and units as in
Fig. 1.

Fig. 5. Abundance and vertical distribution of Daph-
nia retrocurva during 1979. Symbols and units as in Fig.
1.

Fig. 8. Abundance and vertical distribution of Dia-
phanosoma leuchtenbergianum 1979. Symbols and
units as in Fig. 1.

Fig. 6. Abundance and vertical distribution of Bos-
mina longirostris during 1979. Symbols and units as in
Fig. 1.

Fig. 9. Abundance and vertical distribution of Kera-
tella cochlearis during 1979. Symbols and units as in
Fig. 1.

1985]

Pedrds-Alid t Woolsey and Brock — Zooplankton in Lake Mendota

173

Fig. 10. Abundance and vertical distribution of Kera-
tella quadrata during 1979. Symbols and units as in Fig.
1.

Fig. 13. Abundance and vertical distribution of
Asplanchna sp. during 1979. Symbols and units as in
Fig. 1.

Fig. 1 1 . Abundance and vertical distribution of Bra-
chionus sp. during 1979. Symbols and units as in Fig. 1 .

Fig. 12. Abundance and vertical distribution of Poly-
arthra sp. during 1979. Symbols and units as in Fig. 1 .

Individuals liter1 Temp.(°C)

Fig. 14. Vertical profiles of zooplankton abundance
(left hand panels) and physico-chemical parameters
(right hand panels) for: A, February 21, 1979, and B.
April 18, 1979. Symbols are: S, Secchi disk depth in
meters; T, temperature in °C; O, oxygen in mg 1_1. The
bar in panel B represents the bottom (a shallow station
was sampled on this day due to inaccessibility of the
central station because of ice). Organisms are: 1,
Copepod nauplii; 2, Cyclopoid copepods (including
copepodites and adults); 3, Keratella quadrata; 4,
Calanoid copepods (including copepodites and adults).

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Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

Fig. 15. Abundance in individuals nr2, of rotifers during 1979, and during 1980. Animals are: 1 , Keratella cochlearis;
2, Keratella quadrata; 3, Polyarthra sp.; 4, Brachionus sp.; 5, Asplanchna sp. ; 6, Conochilus sp. in A and
Conochiloides sp. in B. K. cochlearis is presented in a different scale.

Fig. 16. Total zooplankton biomass during 1979 and
1980. A and C, Carbon weights in g mf2. B and D, Per¬
cent biomass in different zooplankton groups. Rotifers
are in black. Numbers are: 1, Cyclopoid copepods; 2,
Cladocerans; and 3, Calanoid copepods.

Fig. 17. Phytoplankton biomass during 1979 and
1980. Numbers are: 1, Chlamydomonas sp.; 2,
Cosmarium sp.; 3, Stephanodiscus astraea; 4,
Aphanizomenon flos-aquae; 5, Lyngbya sp.; 6, Cera-
tium sp.; 7, Fragillaria sp.; 8, Cryptomonas sp.

1985]

Pedr6s-Ali6, Woolsey and Brock— Zooplankton in Lake Mendota

175

abundant and reproducing in the summer,
and rare in the winter. Cyclops pulchellus,
later reclassified as Cyclops bicuspidatus by
Birge and Juday (1908), corresponds in mod¬
ern taxonomy to Diacyclops bicuspidatus
thomasi. Better information about this
organism than in the 1897 paper can be
found in Birge and Juday (1908), where they
describe its summer diapause. Finally, Cy¬
clops brevispinosus was considered to be a
synonym for Cyclops viridis (Jurine) by
Marsh in his revision of the North American
Cyclops (Marsh, 1910). Cyclops viridis , in
turn, is considered by Yeatman (1959) to oc¬

Fig. 18. Abundance of cyclopoid copepods from 1976
to 1980. Values have to be multiplied times 103 to obtain
individuals per m2. In 1976 individual species are also
shown. Numbers are: 1, D. b. thomasi; 2, A. vernalis;
and 3, M. edax.

cur only in a few cases in North America,
but is referred in almost all cases to Cyclops
vernalis Fischer, which corresponds to
Acanthocy clops vernalis in modern tax¬
onomy. The fourth species found in our
study, Tropocyclops prasinus, does not ap¬
pear in Birge’s studies, but it had only very
low numbers year-round and it could have
been overlooked very easily by Birge, since
most of his copepod taxonomy was done by
Marsh using only a small part of his samples
(Birge and Juday 1908).

Diacyclops bicuspidatus thomasi was the
dominant organism during the late fall and

Fig. 19. Abundance of calanoid copepods from 1976 o
1980. Values have to be multiplied times 103 to obtain
individuals per m2. In 1976 individual species are also
shown. Numbers are: 1, L. siciloides; 2, L. sicilis; and 3,
A. clavipes.

176

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

winter, both in our study and in Dirge’s. Ver¬
tical distribution showed an accumulation of
D. b. thomasi towards the bottom of the
lake during this time of the year (see Fig. 1
and Fig. 14a). Temperature was one to two
degrees warmer than at the surface and
throughout most of the water column (Fig.
14a), and this might attract the organism.
From February to March, the animals slowly
rose from the bottom, establishing them¬
selves at four meters by the end of March
(Fig. 14b), and increasing from then on to

Fig. 20. Abundance of members of the genus Daphnia
from 1976 to 1980. Values have to be multiplied times
103 to obtain individuals per m2. Numbers are: 1, D.
pulex; 2, D. g. mendotae; 3, D. parvula; and 4, D.
retrocurva.

produce the annual maximum in May. This
peak of abundance represented the highest
biomass of the whole year, with concentra¬
tions of 1.8 x 106 ind. m-2 in 1896 and 1.48
x 107 ind. nr2 in 1980, which accounted for
90% of the total zooplankton biomass (Figs.
16 and 22). The May peak appeared every
single year in both Dirge’s and our studies,
and there was a sharp crash shortly after the
peak had appeared. According to Birge
(1897), this crash was due to a lack of food.
Fryer (1957) established the carnivorous
habits of most cyclopoids, but Hutchinson
(1967) pointed out that small cyclopoids,
such as D. b. thomasi, would feed mainly by

Month

Fig. 21. Abundance of cladocerans not belonging to
the genus Daphnia from 1976 to 1980. Values have to be
multiplied times 103 to obtain individuals per m2. The
scale on the right is for Chydorus only (number 2). The
scale on the left is for Bosmina (number 1) and
Diaphanosoma (number 3).

1985]

Pedr6s-Ali6, Woolsey and Brock — Zooplankton in Lake Mendota

177

grabbing algae. Our feeding experiments
showed that it could also eat bacteria,
although at very low rates, from 0.1 to 1.0
ml ind-1 day1 (Pedros-Alio and Brock,
1983). During 1979, the May peak started
when the alga Chlamydomonas was at its
maximum (Fig. 17a). The two organisms in¬
creased and disappeared following perfect
“predator-prey” curves (see Figs. 16a and
17a). In 1980, there was an early peak of the
diatom Stephanodiscus (Fig. 17b), and D. b.
thomasi followed it at the time that the
diatoms disappeared and the flagellate
Cryptomonas reached its maximum (Figs.
16b and 17b). In both cases, the algae almost

Fig. 22. Total zooplankton biomass. Dry weight in g
carbon per m2 for the five years of the present study.

completely disappeared from the lake in
mid-June, perhaps thus causing the crash of
D. b. thomasi.

Birge and Juday (1908) discovered this
peak of D. b. thomasi to be composed main¬
ly of immature individuals which gradually
descended towards the sediment and entered
diapause as the copepodite IV stage. Lack of
food and rising temperatures in the epilim-
nion, and anaerobiosis in the hypolimnion,
were the factors inducing D. b. thomasi to
enter diapause. The same summer resting
stage has been described in other lakes
(Moore 1939, Cole 1953) and at least one
case of winter encystment has also been
described in Marion Lake, British Columbia
(McQueen 1969). Sealed bottles with mud
samples showed a fine layer of live, slowly-
moving animals at the mud-water interface
after several months of being devoid of
oxygen, demonstrating the animal’s ability
to survive in the anaerobic hypolimnion
throughout the summer.

Towards the fall, more and more copepo-
dites left their cocoons and reached the
cooler and oxygenated waters after the lake
overturned, and this was reflected in the in¬
creasing abundance of the organism in the
plankton starting in late September and
reaching a plateau in late December, about
the time the lake froze. As shown by the
presence of egg-bearing females and nauplii,
winter populations reproduced at a slow
pace and thus were able to compensate losses
and maintain more or less constant numbers
under the ice until ice-out occurred, at which
time the population started to produce an¬
other spring peak.

D. b. thomasi was the most abundant
crustacean in Lake Mendota, a feature com¬
mon to many North American lakes (Wat¬
son, 1974; Hutchinson, 1967; McQueen,
1969). However, the annual cycle of this
organism in Lake Mendota, both in Birge’s
and in our study, was different from the cy¬
cle in other lakes such as L. Ontario
(Nauwerck et al., 1972), L. Erie (Watson et
al., 1973) or Marion Lake (McQueen, 1969).

There is a common alternation between

178

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

Diacyclops and Mesocyclops in many lakes
(Hutchinson, 1967). In these cases, Diacy¬
clops dominates during the winter while
Mesocyclops is more abundant during the
summer. In some cases, M. leuc/cartii, the
European counterpart of M. edax, has been
found to undergo winter diapause (Fryer and
Smyly, 1954), replacing Diacyclops in the
summer (Cole, 1955). Thus, M. edax in L.
Mendota followed the general pattern for
temperate lakes. According to Fryer (1957),
M. edax is carnivorous, preferentially eating
small cyclopoids, Diaphanosoma and roti¬
fers, and thus it would find abundant prey in
the summer fauna of the lake.

Acanthocy clops vernalis followed the
same pattern as M. edax , although generally
in lower numbers. Together, these species
accounted for all the summer cyclopoids in
the lake (Fig. 1). A. vernalis is also a large
aestival, carnivorous cyclopoid (Cocker,
1943; Fryer, 1957). The expected competi¬
tion for food between A. vernalis and M.
edax might not have occurred because of
their size differences. Tropocy clops pra-
sinus, found at all times during the year in
very low numbers, is a common constituent
of the plankton in the Great Lakes and in¬
land lakes of Wisconsin (Hutchinson, 1967).

2. Calanoid copepods. Birge reported
only one species of calanoid copepod: Diap-
tomus oregonensis Lillj. and described a life
cycle which consisted of a stable winter
population with no reproduction and no
change in numbers, a small peak in June, a
middle summer minimum, and a second
peak in September. Birge found reproduc¬
tion from May to September, as shown by
the presence of ovigerous females, but there
were also losses due to predation by
Leptodora, invertebrate larvae such as
Chaoborus , and planktivorous fish, espe¬
cially perch. After October, when lower
temperatures developed, the population
started to decrease. Some of the adults over¬
wintered, while some produced a few nauplii
which slowly developed under the ice. The
same type of cycle, with two summer genera¬

tions, was found by Langford (1938) for
Skistodiaptomus oregonensis in Lake Nipiss-
ing and by Davis (1961) in Lake Erie. This
suggests that S. oregonensis was, in effect,
the most abundant calanoid in the 1890s in
Lake Mendota, but that Birge did not recog¬
nize the possible presence of other species
due to the amount of work necessary to dif¬
ferentiate species (as he states, Birge, 1897,
p. 326). In our study, 5. oregonensis was the
least abundant calanoid species and this is
the main difference between the crustacean
plankton studied by Birge and that found by
us.

We found three species occurring together
in the plankton of Lake Mendota (Figs. 2
and 19). This is a common phenomenon, as
Davis (1961) found three of our species and
two more coexisting in Lake Erie. He found
that Leptodiaptomus siciloides and S.
oregonensis reproduced mostly in the sum¬
mer, while L. sicilis did so in the winter and
spring. Eddy (1930) described L. siciloides
and L. sicilis coexisting in Reelf oot Lake, the
first being abundant year-round and the se¬
cond appearing only in November. Wilson
(1955) found Aglaodiaptomus clavipes and
L. siciloides living together in Boulder Dam
(Nevada) and Cole (1961) found the same
two species in some of the Salt River im¬
poundments in Arizona, associated with the
cyclopoid Acanthocy clops vernalis . It seems
that different species of diaptomids can
coexist due to differences in size, food re¬
quirements, vertical distribution, reproduc¬
tive season, etc. In our study, L. siciloides
was the most abundant species year-round,
but L. sicilis and A. clavipes followed close¬
ly, the three species being present through¬
out the year. It seems reasonable that the
larger the lake, the more species of diap¬
tomids can coexist, since there are more
niches available (Hutchinson, 1967), and
Lake Mendota fits nicely between the small
ponds in Arizona with two species (Cole,
1961) and the large lakes such as Lake Erie
with five species (Davis, 1961). In summary,
although the main species was different in

1985]

Pedrds-Alid, Woolsey and Brock — Zooplankton in Lake Mendota

179

the 1970s than in the 1890s, the pattern of
abundance of calanoid copepods was very
similar to that found by Birge.

3. The genus Daphnia. The various spe¬
cies of the genus Daphnia were the most
abundant cladocerans in Lake Mendota.
Four species were found in the present study,
three of them the same species found by
Birge: D. galeata mendotae, D. retrocurva,
and D. pulex. A fourth species, D. parvula,
which was not mentioned by Birge, appeared
in the last two years of the present study.
The genus Daphnia constituted from 80 to
60% of the total zooplankton biomass dur¬
ing the month of June (Fig. 16).

D. galeata mendotae was referred to as D .
hyalina in Birge’s paper (Hutchinson 1967,
p. 611). Birge himself redescribed it later as
D. g. mendotae (Birge, 1918). It behaved in
1895 and 1896 as a perennial species with a
fairly variable cycle, always with a small
peak in May-June of about 300 ind. nr2, and
either no peak (1895) or a rather large
peak (1896) of 500 ind. nr2 in October. Dur¬
ing the two first years of the present study,
D. g. mendotae was found in very low
numbers, mostly during the summer (Fig.
20), but from 1978 on, it replaced D. pulex
and became the most abundant Daphnia
species in the lake. From 1978 to 1980, D. g.
mendotae showed a very consistent peak in
June, and low, oscillating numbers for the
rest of the year (see results for 1979 in Fig.
3). The June peak was much larger than any
peak reported by Birge for any Daphnia
species, reaching 1.02 x 106 ind. nr2 in 1979
(Fig. 3). While this maximum of abundance
lasted, Daphnia constituted between 50 and
60% of the total zooplankton biomass (Fig.
16). This type of behavior, with a single
sharp peak in the whole year, has been ob¬
served in D. galeata in a Swedish lake (Ax-
elson, 1961) where temperature was never
above 17°C, but in most American lakes D.
g. mendotae always exhibits two peaks, one
in late spring and one in the fall (Birge, 1897;
Borecky, 1956; Hall, 1962). The different cy¬
cle in Lake Mendota is probably due to the

recurrent cyanobacterial blooms during the
summer. Cyanobacteria can have negative
effects on zooplankton in several ways.
Members of the genus Daphnia cannot eat
the large flakes of filamentous Aphanizo-
menon (Holm et al., 1983) and, therefore,
are unable to reproduce during the summer,
thus giving rise to a second peak in the fall.
In addition, many Microcystis species are
toxic to zooplankton (DeBernardi et al.,

1981) . Moreover, daphnids are less efficient
than calanoids at avoiding filamentous and
other blue-green algae, and unlike calanoids,
daphnids are not able to feed selectively on
smaller edible algae (Richman and Dodson,
1983).

The collapse of the June daphnid peak
was probably due to a combination of lack
of food and predation by fishes. Fish ate
large quantities of Daphnia when the
cladoceran accumulated locally (McNaught
and Hasler, 1961). Leptodora, on the other
hand, did not play any major role in the
disappearance of Daphnia in Lake Mendota,
since it only appeared in July, when the
Daphnia population had already declined.
Leptodora, however, could help to maintain
low summer populations once the peak had
crashed, by eating the juveniles, as Hall
(1962) found in Base Line Lake. The most
obvious factor in the disappearance of the
D. g. mendotae peak was lack of food. Both
in 1979 and 1980 there was a dramatic reduc¬
tion in phytoplankton biomass coincidental
with the Daphnia peak (Figs. 16 and 17). At
its maximum, D. g. mendotae had a biomass
of 6.7 g C m'2, while there were only 0.057 g
C nr2 of phytoplankton and 0.203 g C m"2 of
bacteria in the lake (Pedros- Alio and Brock,

1982) . The Daphnia probably eliminated the
algal spring bloom formed by easily edible
algal species of the genera Cryptomonas and
Stephanodiscus, thus leaving the stage set
for the appearance of cyanobacteria and the
summer fauna in early July.

D. pulex is considered to be a cold water
species with a rather variable annual cycle. It
presented low oscillating peaks of popula-

180

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

tion during the summer of 1895 and a sharp
peak in May of 1896 (Birge, 1897). In our
study, D. pulex had a similar large peak in
early June and low numbers the rest of the
year during 1976 and 1977, but disappeared
almost completely afterwards (Fig. 20). The
substitution of D. g. mendotae for D. pulex
was rather dramatic and it probably re¬
flected the incidence of heavy fish predation
in 1978 and after. D. pulex was considerably
larger than D. g. mendotae , and this would
give the latter a competitive advantage when
planktivorous fishes were present (Brooks
and Dodson, 1965). As a matter of fact, we
observed cisco (Coregonus artedii) appear¬
ing in large numbers as a single size class in
1979-1980, while it had been absent from
1976 to 1977.

D. parvula appeared only in 1979 and
1980. Although in 1979 it was present at the
same time as D. g. mendotae , the two species
seemed to avoid each other both in depth
and slightly in time (Figs. 3 and 4), so that
direct competition did not occur. D. parvula
seems to replace D. retrocurva in the
Southern U.S. (Hutchinson, 1967, p. 818).
However, during the present study, D. retro¬
curva did not show any differences in life cy¬
cle when D. parvula was present from when
it was absent. Thus, these two species did not
seem to compete in Lake Mendota.

During the present study, D. retrocurva
behaved in almost the same way as in 1895,
being an aestival species with numbers
around 5 x 104 ind. nr2 from July to
December (Fig. 5). However, a peak such as
that found in 1896, with 3 x 105 ind. nr2,
did not occur in any of the years of the pres¬
ent study.

If the genus Daphnia is considered as a
whole, the annual cycle was almost identical
to that found by Birge (1897), with peaks in
spring and autumn, and variable numbers
during the summer. But when individual
species are taken into account, differences
within years can be found both in Birge’ s
study and in ours.

4. Other cladocerans . Cladocerans other

than Daphnia in Lake Mendota could be
divided into spring and summer species.
During the present study, Bosmina and
Ceriodaphnia appeared almost exclusively in
the spring, generally coincidentally with the
Daphnia peak and with the disappearance of
the easily edible phytoplankton. This be¬
haviour seems fairly typical for Bosmina
longirostris (Fig. 6; Wesenberg-Lund, 1904;
Patalas, 1956) and it was rather constant
from 1976 to 1980. The maximum reached 7
x 104 ind. nr2 except in 1978 when it was
less abundant (Fig. 21).

Ceriodaphnia , on the other hand, is con¬
sidered to be a pond species (Hutchinson,
1967, p. 619) and its appearance in the
plankton was, accordingly, erratic. It was
only recorded a few times, and always in
fairly low numbers, once in 1976, never from
1977 to 1978, once in 1980, with a small peak
being detected in June 1979 coinciding with
the peaks of Daphnia and Bosmina.

The summer species of cladocerans were
Diaphanosoma leuchtenbergianum, Chy-
dorus sphaericus and Leptodora kindtii. In
the summer, after the lake had become firm¬
ly stratified, the main phytoplankton species
were cyanobacteria (blue-green algae), main¬
ly Aphanizomenon and to a lesser degree
Microcystis and Lyngbya (Fig. 17). Daphnia
does not eat Aphanizomenon , and the same
seems true for smaller cladocerans and cala-
noid copepods. Thus, these summer zoo-
plankters graze primarily on the smaller siz¬
ed, less abundant, eukaryotic algae, which
form a small percentage of the phytoplank¬
ton biomass at the time (Fig. 17). The species
composition thus shifts from the relatively
large D. g. mendotae to the smaller Dia¬
phanosoma and Chydorus.

Chydorus sphaericus is a littoral species
which appears in the plankton mainly when
there are cyanobacterial blooms (Hutchin¬
son, 1967). It has been suggested that
Chydorus , being a littoral particle scraper,
would be able to handle the larger cyano¬
bacteria as if they were particles and
somehow eat them, for example by sucking

1985]

Pedrds-Alid, Woolsey and Brock — Zooplankton in Lake Mendota

181

Aphanizomenon filaments “spaghetti
style/’ Thus, this could explain the abun¬
dance of Chydorus in the summer plankton
(Fig. 7). Its oscillations were quite variable
from year to year, presenting two peaks in
1976, one peak from 1977 to 1979, and three
peaks in 1980 (Fig. 21). These peaks were
found from May to November in different
years. Birge found Chydorus in low numbers
with very small peaks (100 to 300 ind. m“2) in
July 1895 and September 1894, and three
peaks of 400 ind. nr2 in July, 750 ind. nr2 in
September, and 400 ind. m"2 in October of
1896, thus showing the same type of variabil¬
ity that we found. Chydorus seemed not to
avoid the lower depths as much as other
cladocerans (Fig. 7), not even during the
period when the hypolimnion was anaerobic.

From 1976 to 1980, Diaphanosoma

changed slowly from having a cycle with
only one wide peak in late August (1976, see
Fig. 21) to presenting two clearly distinct
peaks in late July and in September (1980,
see Fig. 21). Both types of behavior have
been observed in this organism (Marsh,
1893; Birge, 1897; Patalas, 1954; Wells,
1960). Birge found very low numbers in
September-October of 1894 and 1895, and a
sharp peak of 1.5 x 105 ind. nr2 in 1896.
The highest concentration found in the 1970s
varied in different years between 100 and 4
x 105 ind. m-2. It seems a widely extended
feature of cladocerans to be able to shift
back and forth between cycles with one and
two annual peaks. This has been observed in
Lake Mendota for Diaphanosoma , Chy¬
dorus and D. retrocurva (present study;
Birge, 1897). Changes in maximum abun-

Table 3. Comparison of two different techniques in the determination of the abundance of
Leptodora kindtii in Lake Mendota, 1980.

Date

Individuals
per m1

Total

individuals

counted

Percent of
sample
counted

Sampling

method

Jan. 14

0

0

100

Van Dorn

Feb. 7

0

0

100

Van Dorn

Mar. 17

0

0

100

Van Dorn

Apr. 1

0

0

100

V. tow“

Apr. 22

0

0

100

V. tow

Apr. 29

0

0

100

Van Dorn

May 12

0

0

100

Van Dorn

June 2

0

0

100

Van Dorn

June 11

0

0

100

Van Dorn

June 24

0

0

100

Van Dorn

July 1

0

0

100

Van Dorn

July 8

1600

2

100

Van Dorn

July 23

1300

1

100

Van Dorn

Aug. 12

2000

2

3

V. tow

Aug. 26

3000

9

10

V. tow

Sept. 8

500

15

100

V. tow

Sept. 22

2000

55

100

V. tow

Sept. 29

2000

1

2

V. tow

Oct. 6

1000

30

100

V. tow

Oct. 20

0

0

1

V. tow6

Nov. 20

1000

1

4

V. tow°

Dec. 18

0

0

4

V. tow

° Vertical tow from 23 m to the surface.

6 Vertical tow from 23.5 m to the surface.

182

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

dances of cladocerans are probably in accor¬
dance with changes in food availability,
competition, and predation.

Leptodora kindtii was always present in
very low numbers, appearing in the plankton
in July and disappearing towards October
(Table 3). The extreme rarity of this animal
makes numbers in Table 3 not completely re¬
liable, due to the few individuals counted.
Leptodora always appeared a few weeks
after the collapse of the June Daphnia peak,
so that, contrary to what happened in Base
Line Lake (Hall, 1962), Leptodora did not
play a significant role in the disappearance
of Daphnia in Lake Mendota. Birge also
found Leptodora present in very low num¬
bers during the summer, and this has been
observed by several authors (Wesenberg-
Lund, 1904; Findenegg, 1953; Nauwerck,
1963).

5. Rotifers. No comparisons are possible
for rotifers, since there are no previous
quantitative studies of the rotifers of Lake
Mendota. Only studies of Harring and
Myers (1921) considered the rotifers of
Wisconsin, but they were mostly concerned
with the taxonomy and distribution of the
different genera and not with quantitative,
ecological studies. All the genera we found
appeared in their 1921 list of species (Harr¬
ing and Myers, 1921). The organisms found
belong to all the common planktonic genera
and are widely distributed (Figs. 9 to 13, and
15). Numerically some of them were very
abundant, but in terms of biomass they
always constituted a very small portion of
the whole zooplankton biomass (Fig. 16).

All the rotifers were extremely rare ( Kera -
tel la spp.) or completely absent (the other
genera) from the winter plankton. Both
Keratella species, Polyarthra , and
Asplanchna had one or two peaks, usually
one in the spring and one in the fall, but were
absent from the lake during summer stratifi¬
cation. Brachionus and Conochilus, on the
other hand, were more abundant during lake
stratification. K. cochlearis was the most
abundant rotifer as well as the one with the

most constant annual cycle. It had a peak in
June, a small peak in early July, and its
largest peak in October or November (Figs. 9
and 15). The other genera tended to have
peaks which did not overlap (Fig. 15) and
which substituted for each other from spring
to fall.

Year-to-year variations: 1976-1980. Con¬
siderable year-to-year variation occurred in
the general annual cycle described in the
previous section. Most of the detailed
changes have already been discussed. Here,
we will only give a systematic summary of
the changes found. The main body of data
(with numbers and biomass for each species,
each depth, and each sampling date of the
five years of the present study) can be found
in Pedros-Alio (1981). For conciseness, the
organisms have been grouped and their
abundances represented in Figures 18 to 21
and total zooplankton biomass is presented
in Figure 22. Three types of changes among
years were found and will be discussed
separately below: 1) species composition, 2)
maximum abundances of certain species,
and 3) timing of the maxima.

1. Species composition. The most dra¬
matic change in species composition was the
substitution of D. g. mendotae in 1979 and
1980 for D. pulex, which had been the domi¬
nant cladoceran in the previous years (Fig.
20). This substitution was almost complete
and very few individuals of D. pulex could
be observed after 1978. The remaining
changes in species composition were due to
the presence of certain species (in substantial
numbers) during some years, but not others.
D. parvula appeared in 1979, presenting high
numbers in the metalimnion immediately be¬
fore and after the main D. g. mendotae peak
(Fig. 4). In 1980 there was again a small
peak, but no individuals of this species were
observed previous to 1979. Finally, Cerio-
daphnia quadrangula was observed in sig¬
nificant numbers only in February 1976 and
in June of 1979 and 1980.

2. Maximum abundances. It can be easily
seen in Figures 18 to 21 that maximum abun-

1985]

Pedr6s-Ali6, Woolsey and Brock — Zooplankton in LakeMendota

183

dances of many species were different from
year to year. For example, the peak of D. g.
mendotae in June was 230 ind. m*2 in 1978,
1000 ind. nr2 in 1979, and 470 ind. m“2 in
1980. The May peak of Diacy clops reached
150 ind. nr2 in 1976, 1200 ind. m"2 in 1978,
4000 ind. nr2 in 1979, and 14700 ind. nr2 in
1980. These are only the most spectacular
changes in abundance, but variations were
observed in most species.

3. Timing of species maxima . Some of the
species found were reasonably constant in
their annual cycles, such as Diacy clops and
D. g. mendotae. On the other hand, species
such as Diaphanosoma and Chydorus were
rather variable in the timing of their ap¬
pearance as well as in the number of peaks
per year (Fig. 21). In general, the species
present during the winter and spring had
very predictable peaks and cycles, while the
summer species were variable.

When a statistical test was run to test for
differences between our study and Birge’s
(Pedros-Alio and Brock, 1985), it was found
that differences among years within each
study were higher than differences between
the two studies. Thus, for example, 1895 was
very different from 1896 and close to 1978,
and 1976 differed more from 1979 and 1980
than from 1895 or 1896. Therefore, although
clear year-to-year variations were found, no
significant trend with respect to Birge’s
study could be detected, indicating that the
lake has had the same conditions for the past
eighty years.

Acknowledgments

Winter samples for 1978 were kindly pro¬
vided by R. Lathrop from the Wisconsin
Department of Natural Resources. Samples
from 1976 were gathered by Dr. V. Watson,
then at the Department of Botany of the
University of Wisconsin. Phytoplankton
biomass was measured by T. H. Gries and J.
Sesing, in the Department of Bacteriology.

This work was supported by NSF grant
DEB-8212459 to T. D. Brock and the North¬
ern Lakes component of the Long-Term

Ecological Research Program of the Na¬
tional Science Foundation (DEB-8012313).

Carlos Pedr6s-Alio was a recipient of a

Fulbright-Hays grant from the United

States-Spain Cultural Exchange Program.

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185

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A STABLE ARTIFICIAL SUBSTRATE DEVICE
(TRI-BASKET SAMPLER) FOR COLLECTING
MACROINVERTEBRATE SAMPLES FROM STREAMS AND RIVERS

Michael W. Mischuk and David L. Rades
The Institute of Paper Chemistry
Appleton , Wisconsin

The quantitative collection of aquatic
macroinvertebrates for the purpose of en¬
vironmental impact assessment has always
presented some sampling problems. Hella-
well (1968) provides a review of the major
benthos sampling devices and techniques, in¬
cluding artificial substrate samplers. Al¬
though the utilization of artificial substrates
is now widely accepted (Cairns, 1982), ad¬
vantages and disadvantages to these techni¬
ques exist. Rosenberg and Resh (1982) con¬
cluded that the habitat to be sampled will
usually dictate the sampling device used. The
remainder of this paper describes a sampler
we feel provides a durable, simple, and effi¬
cient device for collecting benthos under cer¬
tain habitat conditions,
system to be used in areas where the natural
habitat was composed largely of pebble and
cobble (50-250 mm in diameter). Addition¬
ally, we wanted the system to withstand fluc¬
tuations in river discharge, while providing
physical stability and positive direction-of-
current orientation. Unlike the standard
Surber sampler, the device had to be ver¬
satile enough to be used in shallow water
and, with the use of S.C.U.B.A., deeper
water. We also needed a sampler which
would generally minimize the effect of silta-
tion, allow for the collection of samples
without loss of fauna, be relatively incon¬
spicuous to minimize vandalism, and pro-

* Sources of Equipment: Bar-B-Q Tumble Basket,
Paramount Housewares, 4770 East 50th St., Los
Angeles, California 90058. Two-inch, unlapped
porcelain balls, Ferro Corporation, Porcelain Plant,
P.O. Box 858, East Liverpool, Ohio 43920.

vide some measure of within-sampler varia¬
tion.

The tri-basket sampler (Fig. 1) was devised
to satisfy the design criteria previously
stated. It is composed of three modified
barbeque baskets like those described by
Anderson and Mason (1968). Each basket is
18 cm (7 in.) in diameter by 13 cm (5 in.) in
length.

Attached to the base of each basket is a 6
mm-(0.25 in.) thick Masonite plate 18 cm (7
in.) in diameter to give stability to each
basket. Twelve, 5 cm (2 in.) in diameter
unlapped porcelain balls were used as
substrate material within the basket.*

The baskets are mounted on steel pipes 30
cm (12 in.) long by 3.2 cm (1.25 in.) in
diameter (outside diameter). These pipes are
attached to a triangular steel frame con¬
structed of three 76 cm (30 in.) pieces of 5 cm
(2 in.) angle iron welded together (60° inside
angle). The configuration of the steel frame
reduces standing wave effects from the lead
basket on those to its sides. Small steel pipes
to accept the ones supporting the baskets are
welded in the corners of the frame. These
pipes are 13 cm (5 in.) in length by 4.1 cm
(1.75 in.) in diameter (O.D.). These pipes
allow for adjustment in basket height above
the frame (achieved by placement of holes in
basket pipes).

The baskets can be removed from the
frame at the top or bottom by releasing
either one of the 6 mm (0.25 in.) clevis pins.
Although the sampling device maintains lo¬
cation on the natural substrate well by virtue
of its weight 17 kg (37 lb) and configuration,
additional security is provided by utilizing a

186

1985]

Mischuk and Rades— Artificial Substrate Device

187

Fig. 1. Tri-Basket Sampler.

Table 1. A comparison of major colonizing groups (average percent comparison) and numbers of species (average
number/sample) for tri-basket and natural substrate (Surber sample).

River

Substrate

Type

Number of
Samples

Trichoptera

(%)

Ephemerop-

tera

(%)

Diptera

(%)

Oligochaeta

(Vo)

Turbellaria

(Vo)

Number of
Species

Wisconsin River, WI

Tri-basket

18

47

4

30

9

8

31

Summer

Natural

18

49

3

22

3

16

26

Wisconsin River, WI

Tri-basket

18

45

5

18

31

1

28

Fall

Natural

18

69

2

17

3

5

23

Catawba River, SC

Tri-basket

21

67

16

10

3

2

27

Natural

5

44

13

15

8

18

16

9 kg (20 lb) navy anchor. The anchor is at¬
tached to the sampler with plastic coated
steel cable (0.5 cm) (0.38 in.) and several
cable clamps. Samples are collected without
loss of fauna by placing plastic or nylon
mesh bags over each basket before removal
from the frame.

A comparison of the faunal composition
on the tri-basket sampler and the natural
substrate was conducted to determine sam¬
pler biases for different groups (Table 1). In
general, those taxa that were dominant on
the natural substrate were also dominant on
the tri-basket sampler. Likewise, within-
sampler variation was looked at to determine
sampling efficiency (Table 2).

The tri-basket sampler was found to be a
stable sampling system to obtain benthic
macroinvertebrate specimens. The weight of
the sampler maintains the proper position
and orientation on the stream bottom, par-

Table 2. A comparison of within-sampler variation
(coefficient of variation) for density and number of
species from four different river systems.

River

Number of
Samples

Number of
Species

Density

Wisconsin, WI

18

13.2%

15.4%

Escanaba, MI

7

12.9

36.9

Catawba, SC

6

16.4

21.7

Paint Creek,
Scioto, OH

12

13.0

22.4

188

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

ticularly during high flow conditions. Since
the baskets sit just above the bottom, silta-
tion problems are minimal. Because of its
versatility it can be used in deeper water ( > 1
ft) which might preclude the use of a stan¬
dard Surber Sampler.

References

Anderson, J. B., and W. T. Mason, Jr. 1968. A
comparison of benthic macroinvertebrates col¬
lected by dredge and basket sampler. J. Water
Poll. Control Fed. 40:252-259.

Cairns, J., Jr., ed. 1982. Artificial substrates.
Ann Arbor Science Publ., Inc., Ann Arbor,
MI. 279 p.

Hellawell, I. M. 1978. Biological surveillance of
rivers. Dorset Press, Dorchester, Dorset,
England. 332 p.

Rosenberg, D. M., and V. H. Resh. 1982. The
use of artificial substrates in the study of
freshwater benthic macroinvertebrates. Pages
175-235. In Cairns, J., Jr. (ed.), Artificial
Substrates. Ann Arbor Science Publ., Inc.,
Ann Arbor, MI.

A HISTORY OF OLIVER LAKE #2,

CHIPPEWA COUNTY, WISCONSIN,

BASED ON DIATOM OCCURRENCE IN THE SEDIMENTS

Rodney Gont and Lloyd Ohl
University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire

Abstract

A general history of Oliver Lake #2, Chippewa County, Wisconsin, has been
constructed. Interpretations were based on a diatom analysis of a vertical profile
of bottom sediments taken from the deepest part of the lake using two types of
coring devices. Evidence indicates that a shallow, slightly alkaline lake, moder¬
ately high in nutrient content, evolved into a relatively deep, highly acidic lake,
low in available nutrients. Diatom communities of the most recent sediments
indicate these trends may now be reversed.

Introduction

Techniques of interpreting changes in
lakes by analyzing fossil diatom commu¬
nities of the sediments are well established.
Studies by Conger (1939), Andrews (1966),
Charlton (1969), Florin and Wright (1969),
Florin (1970), Andresen (1976) and Stoermer
(1977), in the Great Lakes region; and by
Patrick (1954), Round (1957 and 1961),
Stockner and Benson (1967), and del Prete
and Schofield (1981), elsewhere, are repre¬
sentative. There are many publications
available outlining diatom identification
which is based on the size, shape, and orna¬
mentation of easily-preserved, glass-like
walls. Many species have narrow habitat re¬
quirements, being greatly affected by tem¬
perature, available nutrients, and chemical
properties of the water (Patrick 1948). There
is also information available concerning
their pH preferences, and even though pH is
less indicative of water conditions than
factors such as mineral content (Patrick
1945), it is still useful.

This study was based on a single sediment
profile. Although relying on a single site in¬
creases the probability of taking a sample
that does not represent the lake as a whole,
there is precedence for doing so (Patrick
1954, Florin 1970, Stoermer 1977). Florin
(1970) briefly discusses the problem. By us¬

ing the deepest, most stable part of the lake,
it seems that unnecessary effort can be elim¬
inated while still collecting an adequately
representative sample.

Only the prevalent species (relative density
>3%) have been used in the majority of the
analyses and interpretations. Patrick (1948)
discusses the use of the largest populations
as the best interpretive indicators.

Certain problem taxa were encountered
but only restricted interpretive use was made
of them. In a few instances identification
was not possible and these were assigned
numbers and recorded as such. By taking a
conservative, selective approach, it is be¬
lieved that the taxonomic and ecological
problems have been minimized without ex¬
cessive loss of information.

Study Site

Oliver Lake #2, in sec 24, T31N, R8W,
Chippewa county, Wisconsin, lies on an ir¬
regular terrain deposited as stagnant, ice-
core moraine, just within the maximum ad¬
vance of the most recent continental glacia¬
tion (Cahow 1976). This dark water, bog-
rimmed, acidic (surface pH, 5.1) lake has
characteristics that reduce disturbance of the
bottom: 1) a small surface area of 1.6 hec¬
tares accompanied by a relatively great depth
of 21 meters, 2) a wind sheltered location

189

190

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

bordered by uplands some 6 to 12 meters
above the lake surface, and 3) a bottom oxy¬
gen deficit (instrumental determination) in
the winter which, as Simola (1977) points
out, would eliminate large, bottom crawling
animals. Lakes with these characteristics are
susceptible to chemical stratification. How¬
ever, with uniform conductivity throughout
the water profile, and a standard, winter in¬
verse temperature stratification, the lake was
apparently not meromictic at the time of
data collection.

Procedure

A vertical profile of the bottom sediments
at the deepest part of the regularly shaped,
slightly oblong, bowl-like basin was ob¬
tained using two different coring devices. A
195 cm long core of the uppermost sediments
was taken through the ice on 5 January 1983
using a freeze-core device (Swain 1973). The
upper end of the sample was marked by the
clearly visible, water-sediment interface, in¬
dicating disturbance of the sediments had
been minimal. This core was wrapped in
aluminum foil to reduce dessication and
transported on dry ice to the laboratory for
storage.

On 26 February 1983 a piston-core device
(Livingstone 1955) was used through the ice
at the same site to remove successively
deeper, 1 meter long segments, resulting in
an additional 268 cm long composite core.
Since 21 meters of water was above the
sediment-water interface, a rigid pipe casing,
slightly larger in diameter than the piston
corer, was used, not only to prevent bending
of the sampler thrust rod when pressure was
applied to take the sample, but also to ensure
that each time the sampler was lowered it
entered the same hole in the sediments.
Based on a subsequent comparison of
diatom communities from this core to the
previously-taken freeze-core sample as well
as on certain trends which were continuous
between the two cores— a declining number
of alkaliphilic species, a constant number of
acidophilic species, a rising number of

Eunotia individuals, and constant diversity
—the piston core portion began an estimated
250 cm below the water-sediment interface
and continued to 500 cm.

A small cork borer was used to take 7 mm
diameter by 20 mm long subsamples, spaced
50 cm apart, from the composite profile.
Several mm of each end of each plug were
discarded to reduce the chance of con¬
tamination from other levels. These sub¬
samples were oxidized (van der Werff 1953)
before preparing strewn-mounted micro¬
scope slides (Patrick and Reimer 1966) with
Hyrax (R.I., 1.65) as the mounting medium.
A slide from each subsample level was ex¬
amined at 1250 x with a Zeiss research
microscope. Randomly selected transects
were taken until a minimum of 400 diatom
valves were identified and tabulated from
each slide. Mclntire and Overton (1971) have
used information diversity measures for
various diatom counts in establishing sample
size adequacy for an ecological study of
diatoms of similar scope.

Numerous publications were used to iden¬
tify the diatoms, but those of Patrick and
Reimer (1966 and 1975) and of Hustedt
(1930 and 1930-66) were the primary
sources. Subsamples were labelled (as levels)
using their distance, in cm, below the
sediment-water interface.

Results

Based on a preliminary visual inspection,
only the deepest 30 cm (Level 470 to 500) of
the profile had noticeable amounts of in¬
organic material. Wet mount examinations
of this portion at a magnification of 500 x
before any treatments revealed: 1) both
Levels 496 and 490 had small amounts of
“sand” (particles > 7 /un diameter) mixed
with organic matter, 2) Level 496 had a
slightly lower proportion of “sand” than
Level 490, 3) Level 480 was “gravel” com¬
prised of sand and pebbles (up to 20 mm
diameter) with very little organic matter, and
4) Level 470 was almost entirely a reddish
clay ( < 7 /un diameter). The 1250 x study of

1985]

Gont and Ohl— Oliver Lake #2

191

subsamples prepared for diatom identifica¬
tion also showed: 1) Level 490 had a very
diverse diatom flora devoid of pelagic and
terrestrial species, 2) Level 480 had many
diatoms and a wide array of species (based
only on a cursory inspection), and 3) Level
470 had an insufficient number of diatoms
to even count. All other levels consisted
primarily of organic material interspersed
with diatom valves and fragments. Figure 1
summarizes these observations.

Twenty eight prevalent species were found
in one or more of the 1 1 sediment levels ex¬
amined. The relative densities and distribu¬
tion of these species are shown in figure 2.

Many techniques are available to group
data into more interpretable groups. Al¬
though the efforts to condense seemed to
fail, they were valuable in showing that each
sediment level was unique. The following ex¬
amples are representative.

The degree of association between species
was measured using Cole’s Index (Cole 1949)
with signficance tested by Chi square.
Among the 28 prevalent species there were
only three significant (P < .05) relation¬
ships: 1) Asterionella formosa Hass, and
Fragilaria pinnata Ehr. were negatively
associated, 2) Eunotia paludosa Grun. and
F. pinnata were negatively associated, and 3)
Eunotia flexuosa Breb. ex Kutz. and E. palu¬
dosa were positively associated. A subse¬
quent cluster analysis (Williams and Lam¬
bert 1959), which uses a Chi square distance
measure, resulted only in one significant (P
< .05) division — those levels with F. pinnata
present (the 7 deepest levels) and those with
it absent (the 4 shallowest levels).

Bray and Curtis (1957) used a l-2w/a + b
index to objectively measure the degree of
dissimilarity between samples. The indices
calculated for Oliver Lake #2 were high,
indicating high level to level dissimilarity.

Curtis (1959) proposed a ratio of prevalent
modal species to prevalent species for de¬
tecting hybrid communities. A comparable
ratio, disregarding prevalence, could also be
used to give more weight to the rare species.

0

50

100

E 150
o

r 190
0

| 250

c 300
0

I 350
I 400
450
500

Levels examined above level 450 were
comprised primarily of organic matter.
Diatom valves and fragments were plentiful
in all of these upper levels

450-r^y,

Predominantly organic
matter, many diatoms

Fine red “clay”, few diatoms

“Gravel”, many diatoms

Organic matter and “sand”,
many diatoms

Fig. 1 . Characteristics of the bottom 50 cm of the sedi¬
ment profile taken from Oliver Lake #2. The proportion
of “sand” at Level 496 was slightly lower than at Level
490.

sediment level (cm) % r.d. species

(0 010 010 01(0 01001
ooooooooo oo

> f !— I ! 3

Achnanthes laterostrata
Amphora ovalis var. af finis

Asterionella formosa

Cymbella minuta % r.d.
Eunotia flexuosa n°0

Eunotia formica
Eunotia naegeiii
Eunotia paludosa
Eunotia tenella
Fragilaria crotonensis
Fragilaria brevistriata

Fragilaria pinnata

Fragilaria vaucheriae
Gomphonema gracile
Gomphonema parvulum

Melosira distans

Melosira distans var. lirata

Melosira islandica subsp. helvetica

Melosira italica subsp. subarctica
Navicula laevissima
Navicula radiosa var. tenella
Navicula subrotunda
Pinnularia biceps
Synedra minuscula

Synedra tenera

Synedra rumpens

Tabellaria fene strata
Tabellaria flocculosa

Fig. 2. Percent relative densities of the prevalent fossil
diatoms for each sediment level examined from Oliver
Lake #2. Relative densities less than 3 °7o are shown as 0.

192

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

Low ratios indicate a lack of uniqueness.
Figure 3 shows that these two indices are
simultaneously low only at Levels 50 and
350.

In effect, the species present at various
times in the history of Oliver Lake #2 have

varied greatly, with little continuity between
adjacent levels. This is not as unusual as it
first appears to be. Even in an unchanging
environment, the kinds of diatom species
can fluctuate greatly while the number of
species and the relative sizes of the popula-

% relative density

ooooooooo

Fig. 3. Modal and prevalent modal species ratios for
each sediment level examined from Oliver Lake #2. Low
values indicate that the diatom community at that level
has a hybrid composition. Only Level 50 and Level 350
have simultaneously low values.

Fig. 5. Distribution of individuals when classified by
their pH preferences for each sediment level examined
from Oliver Lake #2. Acidophilic: pH preference < 6.5.
Alkaliphilic: pH preference > 7.5. Circumneutral: pH
preference 6.5 to 7.5.

Shannon-Weiner
diversity index

O t- CM 00 ^

c

n

% relative
density

s o o o

3 i- CM CO

U

. V . .

50

\

\

100

\

150

\

190

! /

250

y

300

J Eunotia

\ spp.

350

400

7*

450

/

490

\

Fig. 4. Shannon-Weiner diversity index for each sedi¬
ment level examined from Oliver Lake #2. Level to level
variation is much greater in the older sediments.

Fig. 6. Percent relative density of the genus Eunotia
for each sediment level examined from Oliver Lake #2.
This genus is much more common in the younger sedi¬
ments.

1985]

Gont and Ohl — Oliver Lake #2

193

tions of the species remain quite constant
(Patrick 1962, 1963). There are so many
diatom species available that any one of a
number of these, in the right place and time,
can reproduce rapidly enough to fill niche
openings. The Shannon- Weiner diversity in¬
dex (Shannon and Weiner 1963) uses just
these two criteria (number of species and
sizes of populations). Remaining constant, it
would then indicate relatively stable eco¬
logical conditions. As shown in figure 4, the
index fluctuates erratically in the earliest
stages of lake development but dampens
considerably in more recent times.

Species can be grouped by their pH prefer¬
ences (Foged 1981). As shown in figure 5,
acidophilic species are absent from the
deepest sediments but become prominent in
the more recent sediments. A comparison
with fig. 6 shows that the genus Eunotia
roughly parallels this trend and in fact con¬
tributes to it. This would be expected since
Eunotia taxa are virtually all acidophilic.
Eunotia genera peak at Level 150. Figure 5
also shows that the combined alkaliphilic-
circumneutral pH species are at a minimum
at Level 150.

Discussion

Level to level diversity has fluctuated
more in the older fossil communities studied
than in the recent ones. Since Richardson
(1969) has correlated stratigraphic variability
to low water levels, this may well mean that
Oliver Lake #2 was shallower than at the
present. To account for the later stability, a
subsequent increase in depth is proposed
which provided extra volume to better ab¬
sorb the effect of factors that influence lake
ecosystems. The analyses at each individual
level support this contention as well as indi¬
cating that conditions became more acidic
and more dystrophic.

Level 490 (oldest sediments)

At this time, Oliver Lake #2 was apparent¬
ly mildly eutrophic. Of the prevalent dia¬
toms, F. pinnata, Gomphonema parvulum

Kutz and Fragilaria brevistriata Grun. are
usually found in such water, while only Pin-
nularia biceps Greg, prefers water of low
mineral content. The marked lack of
acidophilic species indicates somewhat
alkaline conditions.

Although shallow water species can exist
in deep water if the water is clear enough to
allow sufficient light penetration (Conger
1939), only an oligotrophic lake would likely
be clear enough. As discussed above, Oliver
Lake #2 was apparently mildly eutrophic at
this time, so that the abundance of shallow-
water species would indeed imply shallow
water. Since pelagic species normally
abound in deep, mildly eutrophic water, but
not in shallow water, their absence here fur¬
ther supports the shallow water proposal.

Diatom diversity is particularly high.
Water chemistry apparently had not greatly
changed for a long time and an abundance
of available niches due to an extended period
of favorable habitat development seems
probable. However, it is unlikely that the
situation was totally static. Maximum diver¬
sity may well occur when there is some inter¬
mediate disturbance (Huston 1979, van Dam
1982). Presence of some sand at this level
further substantiates a somewhat dynamic
situation.

It is speculated that the lake at this time
was located above a large block of buried
glacial ice. Florin and Wright (1969) have
proposed the melting of buried ice blocks to
be a common means of lake basin formation
in glaciated regions. Cahow (1976) felt that
most of the lake basins in the area resulted
from the melting of buried ice blocks. The
gradual deepening of the shallow lake, in¬
dicated by the fossil diatom community at
this level, to the present day depth of 21
meters, fits well into this buried ice block
concept.

Level 480 and 470

These levels were not a part of the diatom
analysis, but were included because of their
obviously different physical appearance

194

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

when the entire sediment core was visually
inspected. The “graver’ layer of Level 480
would have required a powerful earth-mov¬
ing force for its transportation to this loca¬
tion. It is conceivable that glacial events —
large volumes of swift-flowing water, rafting
via chunks of ice, or landslides — provided
the impetus. Diatoms in this “gravel” may
have been transported from reworked, up¬
stream sites.

On the other hand, subsequent deposition
of the easily suspendible clay particles of
Level 470 would have required greatly re¬
duced flows. Glacially fed runoff may have
been depleted due to recession of the glacier.
The insufficient number of diatoms present
at this level to even count is consistent with
Round’s proposal that deposition of clay
dramatically reduces diatom populations
(Round 1956).

Level 450

Apparently, organic deposition in a
shallow lake was renewed. Extensive
amounts of the benthic F. pinnata and a lack
of pelagic species once again indicate
shallowness. Sand and clay are no longer
present, so that material being transported
overland appears to be trapped by some sink
surrounding the lake. The establishment of
emergent and submergent vegetation at the
periphery of the lake may have been that
sink. Retarded water movement would cause
a dropping of sediment loads before the lake
was reached. The organic matter of the
sediments would then have come only from
production within the lake and from wind¬
blown sources (e.g. leaf litter).

With acidophilic species still rare, the
water was probably somewhat alkaline.
Diversity at this level is low and the widely
tolerant and benthic F. pinnata is very abun¬
dant, implying that conditions were harsh
for diatom growth. Warm water may have
been one of those conditions. Benthic species
would have been scarce in a cold, shallow
lake (Patrick 1948).

Level 400

An increase in the proportion of cir-
cumneutral species, a decrease in alkaliphilic
ones, and a concurrent slight rise in acidoph¬
ilic ones indicate a pH decline. The presence
of Fragilaria crotonensis Kitton, a pelagic
species, would have required some deeper,
open water — presumably provided by the
sagging of the lake bottom as the buried ice
block slowly melted. WithF. crotonensis , F.
brevistriata and G. parvulum present, the
lake was probably still mildly eutrophic.

Level 350

The lake apparently continued its pH
decline. Although alkaliphilic species (F.
pinnata in particular) still were abundant,
acidophilic species such as Melosira distans
var. lirata Ehr. had also become prevalent.
Water depth and nutrient content were ap¬
parently sufficient to support pelagic species
such as Melosira italica subsp. subarc tica O.
Mull, and A. formosa in small numbers. The
lower diversity might be attributed to acidic
conditions “weeding out” less tolerant
species. A small bog may have developed at
the perimeter — not only increasing acidity,
but also donating water-darkening humic
substances that would be resistant to break¬
down in the more acidic conditions.

Level 300

As indicated by the dissimilarity indices
and the proportion of modal species, this
was a hybrid level, showing some similarities
to both Level 350 and Level 250. Acidophilic
species peaked here due to the high propor¬
tion of M. distans var. lirata , but the
alkaliphilic F. pinnata was still present in
large numbers. Diversity was low indicating
a major transition, presumably from alka¬
line to acidic water, was taking place.

Level 250

The increase in individuals within the
genus Eunotia implies that pH had dropped

1985]

Gont and Ohl — Oliver Lake #2

195

and that dystrophic, bog-like conditions
were likely established. Most of the species
of Eunotia indicate soft, somewhat acid
water (Patrick 1977). This has been con¬
sistently confirmed, particularly in deep
lakes (e.g. Ford 1982). A floating bog that
covered shallow water and contributed
humic material which would prevent suffi¬
cient light for photosynthesis from reaching
the bottom, may have caused the decline of
benthic species. None of the prevalent
species were indicative of eutrophic condi¬
tions, implying that nutrient levels were low,
possibly due to unavailability in acidic con¬
ditions rather than to an absolute deficiency.

Level 190

The relative proportion of Eunotia in¬
dividuals was high and acidophilic species
were plentiful. A well developed bog is pro¬
posed and the lake was likely dystrophic.
High humic content and low available nutri¬
ent levels determined the biotic composition.
Increased diversity might have been caused
by a stable period of dependable resources.
A wider array of specialist species could then
have gained a competitive advantage, reduc¬
ing the numbers of the more extensive gener¬
alist species (Smith 1980).

Level 150

The high proportion of Eunotia in¬
dividuals and low proportion of alkaliphilic
species indicate that by this time Oliver Lake
#2 was a prime example of a dystrophic acid-
bog lake. Although pH and calcium content
of the water may be the most important fac¬
tors in diatom distribution, proper substrate
may have been the primary reason certain
attached species were present (Bruno and
Lowe 1980). The bog would have provided
such a specialized habitat. This could also
explain the rarity of benthic species as well as
the commonness of littoral ones such as
Synedra rumpens Kutz. Although A. for-
mosa was present, it and other planktonic
species were scarce. This could still have

been due to a nutrient tie-up under the acidic
conditions.

Level 100

The proportion of Eunotia individuals
declined, but the density of acidophilic indi¬
viduals had remained constant. Alkaliphilic
species were still rare. Although still a
dystrophic, acid-bog lake, it appears that
bog expansion had stagnated. With the rela¬
tively high diversity, water conditions were
apparently in a stable phase with only slight
disturbance.

Level 50

The proportion of modal species and a
low dissimilarity index indicate that this was
a hybrid level which resembled Level 100. A
surrounding bog continued to provide living
space for littoral species such as Synedra
tenera W. Sm. Hints of new, rather surpris¬
ing, changes were also found here. The pro¬
portion of alkaliphils increased while that of
Eunotia individuals decreased.

Level 0

The increasing alkaliphil and decreasing
Eunotia trends became more marked. It
becomes tempting to propose that lake acid¬
ity was decreasing and the dystrophic, bog¬
like conditions were being altered. Recent
personal observation and instrumental mea¬
surements do not support such an interpreta¬
tion. Oliver Lake #2 is still a highly acidic,
dark water, dystrophic lake with low con¬
ductivity and depleted winter oxygen supply.

However, the great abundance of A. for-
mosa (36.9% r.d.) cannot be totally ignored.
There are some variations in the literature
concerning its ecological preferences but it is
usually considered an alkaliphilic species
that is normally best developed in somewhat
nutrient-rich water. If these qualities are
truly not artifacts, the diatom analysis has
been able to detect trends — decreasing acid¬
ity and increasing nutrient availability — that
were not apparent in the restricted instru-

196

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

mental analyses. These same trends have
been found in certain Swedish lakes and
have been related to agriculural development
of the drainage basin (Renberg 1976).

Summary

Immediately following the most recent
glaciation, Oliver Lake #2 was apparently a
shallow, slightly alkaline, mildly eutrophic
lake. As uplands weathered and became
vegetated, nutrient inputs were altered. A
huge ice block buried beneath the lake slowly
melted and a bog developed at the periphery.
Several trends became apparent: 1) increas¬
ing depth, 2) increasing acidity, 3) increasing
dystrophy, and 4) reduced availability of
nutrients — so that the lake has become deep,
acidic, and dystrophic, with very dark water.
However, there are now indications that
acidity may be decreasing and nutrient
availability rising, possibly as a result of
cultural modification of the drainage basin.

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Andrews, G. W. 1966. Late pleistocene diatoms
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Bray, J. R. and J. T. Curtis. 1957. An ordination
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Bruno, M. G. and K. L. Lowe. 1980. Differences
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Conger, P. 1939. The contribution of diatoms to

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Curtis, J. T. 1959. The Vegetation of Wisconsin.
University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wis¬
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del Prete, A. and C. Schofield. 1981. The utility
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Florin, M.-B. 1970. Late glacial diatoms of
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Florin, M.-B. and H. E. Wright, Jr. 1969.
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Foged, N. 1981. Diatoms in Alaska. Bibliotheca
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83-101.

THE AQUATIC MACROPHYTE COMMUNITIES
OF TWO STREAMS IN WISCONSIN

John D. Madsen and M. S. Adams
Department of Botany
University of Wisconsin-Madison

Abstract

The aquatic macrophyte communities of two streams, Black Earth and
Lawrence Creeks, were examined using the line intercept method from May through
August, 1981. The data were analyzed using multivariate statistics. The seasonal
succession of species was significant in both streams. Differences within and be¬
tween their plant communities were also examined, as well as the distribution of the
plant species in relation to environmental factors.

Introduction

Aquatic macrophytes are an important,
but neglected, component of stream commu¬
nities. Macrophytes contribute a large por¬
tion of the energy budget in some streams
(Minshall 1978). In addition, they stabilize
the stream bed and provide food and shelter
for macroinvertebrates and small fish (Daw¬
son 1978; Haslam 1978). In some instances,
eutrophication has caused large growths of
macrophytes that are deleterious to fish
habitat and undesirable for human recrea¬
tion. For these reasons, a greater under¬
standing of stream macrophytes is necessary
to an understanding of stream ecosystems as
a whole.

Plants living within the stream ecosystem
have to contend with an environment that is
entirely different from that of lentic eco¬
systems. The stream environment is complex
and heterogeneous, having many habitat
patterns superimposed on each other at vary¬
ing scales. There is a gradual change in
character from the headwaters to the mouth
(Vannote et at. 1980) with local variation in
habitats primarily due to geology, geomor¬
phology and a patchy distribution of micro¬
habitats (Hynes 1975; Dawson, Castellano
and Ladle 1978). All of these factors create
environmental differences that affect the

distribution and abundance of aquatic mac¬
rophyte species.

The macrophyte communities of temper¬
ate streams respond to a complex array of
environmental factors in a definite seasonal
pattern as well. During the year, various en¬
vironmental events in the watershed affect
the stream, giving one species a competitive
advantage over another. Along with sea¬
sonal changes of temperature and photo¬
period, seasonal rainfall and intermittent
flooding cause dramatic changes in micro¬
habitats, sediment contours, and current
regimes. One intense flood may scour a
stream so intensely as to effectively remove a
large proportion of plant biomass and
change the contours of the stream bottom
(Bilby 1977; Westlake 1975; Wetzel 1975).
Flooding at one stage may remove more pro-
pagules of one species than another, or may
occur at a time when one species is more
susceptible to disturbance than another.
Therefore, different species may dominate
from one period or year to another (Daw¬
son, Castellano and Ladle 1978; Kimmerer
and Allen 1982).

Terrestrial plant ecology has used quan¬
titative methods for many years. These
methods have been applied only recently to
aquatic systems. Swindale and Curtis (1957)

198

1985]

Madsen and Adams— Macrophyte Communities

199

used the quadrat method in developing their
index of aquatic plant associations in Wis¬
consin. Lind and Cottam (1969) used the line
intercept method of McGinnies (1952) to
quantify the changes in macrophyte com¬
position which resulted from the eutrophica¬
tion of Lake Mendota, Wisconsin. Lind and
Cottam found this method preferable to the
quadrat method in measuring aquatic plant
cover.

In stream environments, quantitative
methods are even less commonly used.
Haslam (1978) used presence/ absence data
in her study of the stream vegetation in
England. Other studies which used this
method were those of Holmes and Whit-
ton (1977) and Smith (1978). The pres¬
ence/absence method is adequate for
large-scale investigation across many sites,
such as in the case of whole riverine
systems or provinces, but is not intensive
enough for the study of one or two
streams. A method for study on a smaller
scale has been to measure biomass (Kull-
berg 1974; Hannan and Dorris 1970), but
this method requires much time and a
large number of samples due to variabil¬
ity.

We have chosen to measure cover using
the line intercept method, for several
reasons. First, no problem arises with quad¬
rat size affecting the measure of cover. Sec¬
ond, line intercept is a rapid method that
does not require cover estimation (McGin¬
nies 1952). Third, reliance on cover alone
avoids the difficulty of counting or estimat¬
ing the number of individuals. Fourth, with
the cross-channel transect we were able to
measure vegetation along the entire cross-
section of the stream, not just a small seg¬
ment, as with the quadrat method (Grieg-
Smith 1957).

We studied the macrophyte communities
of Black Earth and Lawrence Creeks to ex¬
amine the successional trends within the
streams as well as quantitative differences
within and between the streams. By measur¬

ing environmental data, we correlated these
trends to measureable environmental fac¬
tors.

Materials and Methods
sites

Black Earth Creek

Black Earth Creek is a class-one trout
stream in Dane County (Figure 1). The study
area was near the Village of Cross Plains.
The average stream gradient is 1.96 m/km,
and the stream drains 116.78 km2 (Dane
County Regional Planning Commission
DCRPC 1979). The area surrounding Black
Earth Creek has a variety of land uses. Most
of the land directly along the banks is in a
public fishing easement, fenced off to main¬
tain the streambank. In many places, arbo¬
real vegetation has returned. The drainage
basin as a whole is mostly agricultural, with
38% in pasture and 15% cultivated. The re¬
mainder is largely composed of wetlands
(DCRPC 1979).

The average yearly water flow for Black
Earth Creek is 0.879 mVs; however, this is
not evenly distributed over the year (USGS

Fig. 1 . Location of Black Earth and Lawrence Creeks
within the State of Wisconsin.

200

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

Fig. 2. Water flow for Black Earth and Lawrence
Creeks (data from USGS). Bars indicate ± standard
deviation; standard deviation smaller than square for
Lawrence Creek data.

1973b; Figure 2). Flow is low in early winter
when precipitation is low and in a solid form
(snow or frozen rain). Black Earth Creek has
a tendency to flood in late winter or early
spring (DCRPC 1979). The average flow is
also highest during this period. Flow gen¬
erally decreases over the summer, probably
due to increased transpiration and flow
resistance caused by plants. However, in
August of the sampling year, heavy rains
caused a spate with a maximum flow of
3.059 mVs on 27 August 1981 and 4.816
mVs on 1 September 1981 (U.S. Geological
Survey (USGS), personal communication,
1981). Although Black Earth Creek receives
a base flow of artesian spring water and
ground water, high flows commonly occur
from heavy surface runoff of adjacent
agricultural land.

Black Earth Creek is a “rich” limestone
stream. High concentrations of nutrients
support high productivity of plants and
other aquatic organisms (Brynildson and
Mason 1975). This is largely due to the
parent limestone material surrounding the
stream, which provides a needed high in¬
organic carbon source for high primary pro¬
ductivity. A moderately high amount of
suspended solids is present. The major pollu¬
tion problems are coliform bacteria and
phosphorus, due to both surrounding agri¬

Fig. 3. Map of study sections on Black Earth Creek.
Roman numerals indicate section numbers.

culture and the sewerage plant (DCRPC
1980).

The stream flows through a variety of land
use categories in the four study sections
(Figure 3). Above County Highway (CTH)
P, Section I, it flows through a wetland area.
Section II, below CTH P, flows through a
city park area behind the Village of Cross
Plains. It then passes a light industrial area
and the Cross Plains sewerage treatment
plant. Section III, the “horseshoe,” flows
through a residential area in the lower half.
Section IV flows through agricultural fields
and pastures. Along most of its length in II
through IV, the Wisconsin Department of
Natural Resources (WDNR) has a stream-
bank easement where trees, mostly cotton¬
wood and willow, have grown back, along
with some planted red cedar.

Lawrence Creek

Lawrence Creek is a class-one trout stream
located in western Marquette and eastern
Adams counties near Westfield (Figure 1).
Most of the 6.5 km stream and a significant
portion of its 16.4 km2 drainage basin lie
within the 338 ha Lawrence Creek Public
Hunting and Fishing Area (Hunt 1966). The
basin is predominantly wooded with red oak
forests and several pine plantations. Cattail
and sedge marshes lie along the stream

1985]

Madsen and Adams— Macrophyte Communities

201

Fig. 4. Map of study sections on Lawrence Creek. Let¬
ters indicate sections.

course. This gives the basin the character¬
istics of a forested watershed. The runoff
and groundwater lack significant anthro¬
pogenic inputs.

The yearly water flow for Lawrence Creek
is regular, varying slightly throughout the
year (Figure 2). Largely due to its forested
watershed and the high percentage of
groundwater and springs that constitute its
flow, it is not subject to flooding (USGS
1973a). The annual average flow is 0.473
m3/s. The elevation drop is about 8.8 m for
an average slope of 1 .62 m/km.

Lawrence Creek is also divided into four
sections (Figure 4). The upper section, A, is
characteristic of headwater streams with
shallow depths, a few riffles and a predomi¬
nantly gravel substrate. It is largely sur¬
rounded by forested land. Section B is much
slower and deeper, but also has a significant
amount of gravel. It flows through a marsh.
Section C and D also flow through marshes,
but differ in having an almost total absence
of gravel. The predominantly sand substrate
greatly influences the character of the lower
portion of the stream.

Field Methods

Each of the streams was divided into four
arbitrarily determined study sections ap¬
proximately 1 km in length (as discussed

above). Once per month (May through Au¬
gust 1981) we sampled 20 transects in each
section. The transect site was selected using a
stratified-random system. At each site we
measured the following environmental data:
width, water temperature, light extinction,
canopy and substrate. The transect was con¬
structed with a plastic-coated wire clothes¬
line (Lind and Cottam 1969) with 1 dm and 1
m graduations indicated. Width was deter¬
mined using the transect. In the middle of
each 1 m interval, depth and current were
measured. Depth was measured with a meter
stick. Current was measured using an orange
as a float for a distance of one meter follow¬
ing the method of Hynes (1970). Water tem¬
perature was recorded with a Yellow Springs
Instruments thermistor-thermometer #44.
Light (photosynthetically active radiation,
or PAR) was measured with a Lambda quan¬
tum sensor 3LI-17Q and submersible probe;
and light extinction was calculated using an
equation from Nichols (1971; Hutchinson
1957). Canopy, although part of the ter¬
restrial biotic community, is most conve¬
niently considered with the physical environ¬
ment. Canopy was estimated as the total
percentage of overhead tree or shrub cover
to the nearest 10%. The substrate type for
the site was classified as either gravel, sand
or silt.

The transect was also used to measure
the cover of plant species as points of line
interception. Each species that was present
under a 1 dm segment was considered to
“cover” that 1 dm segment. In addition to
percent cover, relative cover was calculated
to assess plant species composition.
Relative cover is calculated by dividing the
percent cover of a species by the sum of
cover for all species, or

X

relative cover = - 1 — x 100

n

i=Ei x-

where X, is the cover for species i and n the
total number of species. Relative cover in-

202

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

dicates the percentage of the plant com¬
munity represented by an individual species,
and so the sum of relative cover for all
species is 100. Relative cover is a measure of
dominance in the plant community.

Species identification was based initially
on Fassett (1957), although taxonomic
names were used after Gleason and Cron-
quist (1963). Voss (1972) was especially help¬
ful in identifying species of Potamogeton.

The U. S. Geological Survey (USGS) pro¬
vided water flow data for Lawrence and
Black Earth Creeks from October, 1967 to
September, 1973 (1973a, b). Water flow data
for this six year period was averaged for each
stream to indicate mean base flow, as shown
in Figure 2.

Water chemistry data for Black Earth
Creek came from two reports by the Dane
County Regional Planning commission
(DCRPC 1979; 1980). Water quality data
from Hunt (1966) and Mason (unpublished)
were used for Lawrence Creek.

SEDIMENT SAMPLES

In July, five sediment samples were taken
from each section of both streams. Sample
sites were determined using a stratified-
random sampling procedure. The sample

was obtained from the thalweg of the stream
course using an Eckman dredge. The sedi¬
ment samples were transported in poly¬
ethylene bags to the laboratory where they
were refrigerated in polyethylene containers
with sealing tops. Particle Size Analysis was
performed using the Bouyoukos Hydrom¬
eter method (Foth 1978; Love, Corey and
Gilmour 1977). The U. S. Department of
Agriculture (USDA) system of particle
classes was used (Foth 1978).

Crucibles for analysis of organic and
CaC03 content were first heated to 950 C for
24 hours and then cooled under dessication
for taring. Dry weight, organic matter, and
CaC03 were determined using the Ther-
molyne muffle furnace F-A1740 after Wetzel
(1970) and Adams, Guilizzoni and Adams
(1978b) on wet samples from 50 to 100
grams. Organic matter composition was
determined by combustion at 550 C, as com¬
pared to oven dry weight (105 C). Percent
CaC03 was measured by conversion of C02
lost at 950 C to % CaC03 present in the sam¬
ple (Adams, Guillizzoni and Adams 1978b).

STATISTICAL ANALYSES

Average cover values were entered along
with environmental data for 600 transects in

• Black Earth Creek, including flood values
o Black Earth Creek, excluding flood values

Fig. 5. Total percent cover of macrophytes for Black
Earth and Lawrence Creeks over the growing season
(M, May; J, June; J, July; A, August).

Lm

No

Pa Pp

10% Relative Cover

Fig. 6. Seasonal succession as indicated by relative
cover for Black Earth Creek (Lm, Lenina minor; No,
Nasturtium officinale; Pa, Phalaris arundinacea; Pc,
Potamogeton crispus; Pp, Potamogeton pectinatus; Rl,
Ranunculus longirostris; M, May; J, June; J, July; A,
August).

1985]

Madsen and Adams — Macrophyte Communities

203

order to perform statistical analyses on a
Sperry-Univac 1 100 at the University of Wis-
consin-Madison Academic Computing Cen¬
ter (MACC). Descriptive statistics were com¬
puted for each section and sampling period.
Descriptive statistics, one-way analysis of
variance (ANOVA) and Discriminant Analy¬
sis were performed using the Statistical
Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS; Nie
et al. 1975). Discriminant Analysis was also
performed using the BMDP Statistical Pack¬
age (BMDP; Dixon et al. 1981).

Analyses for seasonal succession were per¬
formed by grouping the data from all sec¬
tions for each month. Differences between
sections were examined by grouping data for
all months for each section. Therefore, each
month or each section has data for eighty
transects, which is an adequate sample size
for these analyses. Examination of the dif¬
ferences between the two streams used all
data for each stream, or the data for 320
transects.

Results and Discussion
succession
Black Earth Creek

The total cover of Black Earth Creek in¬
creases rapidly from May to June (Figure 5).

o

Pc R I

10% COVER

Fig. 7. Seasonal succession as indicated by percent
cover for Black Earth Creek (Lm, Lemna minor; No,
Nasturtium officinale; Pa, Phalaris arundinacea; Pc,
Potamogeton crispus; Pp, Potamogeton pectinatus, Rl,
Ranunculus longirostris; M, May; J, June; J, July; A,
August).

By June, total cover peaks and senescence of
Potamogeton crispus begins (Figure 6). Due
to a large amount of rain over a two week
period, a large flood occurred on Black
Earth Creek in August after sampling sec¬
tions I and II, but before sampling sections
III and IV. This flood greatly reduced total
cover, leaving vegetation only along the
banks and a few protected sites. The data for
Black Earth Creek are presented both in¬
cluding and excluding values affected by the
flood.

Potamogeton crispus has its highest rela¬
tive cover in May when it is nearly full grown
due to overwinter growth (Figure 6; Haslam
1978). Dominance continues through June,
when P. crispus literally fills many stretches
of the stream from bank to bank. In June P.
crispus senesces, with large mats of it
floating downstream and lodging around ob¬
structions. Although cover is still fairly high,
biomass was observed to be down signifi¬
cantly by July. A sparse, though continuous,
cover of P. crispus is then maintained
through the rest of the summer. However,
the flood removed most of the stems remain¬
ing, explaining the sudden decrease in cover
in the lower two sections.

Nasturtium officinale increases steadily in
cover throughout the summer. Its high rela¬
tive cover for August is due to the absence of
other vegetation after the flood (Figure 7).
The flood apparently did not affect N. of¬
ficinale due to its protected streambank
habitat.

Phalaris arundinacea is fairly constant in
relative cover throughout the summer, start¬
ing growth early from rhizomes. The flood
did not affect it due to its stable gravel and
stream bank habitats.

Potamogeton pectinatus increases in
dominance after the senescence of P.
crispus , apparently replacing it. However,
the flood in August removed this species also
from the lower stretches of the stream.

Ranunculus longirostris steadily increases
in cover throughout the summer. Being tol¬
erant of spates, it is second in importance to

204

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

TV. officinale for August. Its dominance in
May is due to overwintering evergreen stems.

Lemna minor appears later in the summer,
probably due to its need for warm waters to
initiate vegetative reproduction.

For most temperate stream communities,
several species share dominance over the
season as environmental conditions change
in the stream. In this respect, the phenology
of P. crispus shows an interesting ecological
adaptation. Turions germinate in late au¬
tumn, with growth occuring all winter. Max¬
imum development is achieved in late spring,
with flowering and fruit formation in late
May or in June. Turions then develop on the
stems or rhizome during this period and are
dormant until autumn, and the majority of
the above-ground biomass senesces. Dor¬
mancy is broken by cold temperatures (Sas-
troutomo 1981). Potamogeton crispus is
adapted to grow rapidly in early spring to
compete with other species in a eutrophic en¬
vironment. It then dies off in midsummer,
allowing other species to grow, especially TV.
officinale and P. pectinatus. However, the
flood in August removed most of the plants
in the mid-stream area, especially the re¬
maining P. crispus and P. pectinatus. This
left the streambank macrophytes (Nastur¬

tium and Phalaris) and the more spate-
tolerant vegetation, such as Ranunculus , to
dominate. Such floods are fairly common on
Black Earth Creek, and are an important
factor in plant distribution. The seasonal
succession of species in Black Earth Creek
was highly significant (at the p = 0.01 level)
as determined by Discriminant Analysis,
with significant changes occuring in Lemna,
Nasturtium, P. crispus, and P. pectinatus.

Lawrence Creek

The total cover for Lawrence Creek in¬
creases regularly throughout the summer, as
expected in a situation without disturbance
(Figure 5). However, the underlying change
in species is more complex. Elodea canaden¬
sis and Nasturtium officinale have over¬
wintering stems that allow rapid growth in
the spring. Elodea is the dominant species
for all but the month of May, when P. pec¬
tinatus is more common due to its early
phenology. Elodea canadensis grows rapidly
from overwintering stems (Figure 8). Cover
values increase throughout the summer, but
relative cover decreases due to increased
emergence of other species (Figure 9).

High overwintering cover of Nasturtium
officinale allows it to have high relative

Pp Rl Vc

10% Relative Cover

Fig. 8. Seasonal succession as indicated by percent
cover for Lawrence Creek (Be, Berula erecta; Ec,
Elodea canadensis; Lm, Lemna minor; No. Nastur¬
tium officinale; Pa, Phalaris arundinacea; Pp,
Potamogeton pectinatus; Rl, Ranunculus longirostris;
Vc, Veronica catenata; M, May; J, June; J, July; A,
August).

Fig. 9. Seasonal succession as indicated by relative
cover for Lawrence Creek (Be, Berula erecta; Ec,
Elodea canadensis; Lm, Lemna minor; No, Nasturtium
officinale; Pa, Phalaris arundinacea; Pp, Potamogeton
pectinatus; Rl, Ranunculus longirostris; Vc, Veronica
catenata; M, May; J, June; J, July; A, August).

1985]

Madden and Adams — Macrophyte Communities

205

cover due to the relative scarcity of other
species. Percent cover increases throughout
the summer, with an increase in dominance.
Potamogeton pectinatus has high relative
cover compared to percent cover due to wide
distribution and occurrence where other spe¬
cies are lacking. The cover values of Pha laris
arundinacea are slightly affected by man.
One section was mowed in July, removing
some of the cover. However, flowering and
seed set also occur at this time, with ensuing
senescence reducing cover (Sculthorpe 1967).

Berula erecta grows from underground
rhizomes during late May and early June.
Veronica catenata and Ranunculus longi-
rostris also have an early period of out¬
growth. Lemna minor is late in appearing,
and at low levels due to the fast current of
this stream. Few refugia exist for the growth
of Lemna minor in Lawrence Creek, such as
backwaters and slow-moving pools.

For Lawrence Creek, relative cover is high
in early spring for those plants with high
overwintering cover and rapid growth from
dormant perennial parts. This is especially
true of Elodea canadensis , Nasturtium of¬
ficinale, and Potamogeton pectinatus. These
three plants are dominant throughout the
year. Discriminant Analysis found seasonal
differences, to be highly significant, with B.
erecta , E. canadensis , L. minor , and P. pec¬
tinatus to be significant elements in this
seasonal change (at the p = 0.01 level). Late
in summer or early autumn, most of the
plant biomass senesces, returning to low
overwintering levels. Limited water flow
records for Lawrence Creek seem to indicate
that spates are extremely infrequent and are
therefore less important in plant community
regulation than observed in Black Earth
Creek.

Temperate stream communities tend to ex¬
hibit a cyclic relationship between cold and
warm temperature plants. Several species
dominate during the winter and early spring
due to a tolerance of colder water and/or
lower light regimes (e.g., TV. officinale and
E. candensis). As spring and summer prog¬

ress, total cover and diversity of macro¬
phytes increase. After this period of growth,
plants begin to senesce. Potamogeton cris-
pus senesces early in the summer, allowing
other species to replace it. As winter ap¬
proaches, there is rapid senescence of the re¬
maining species. Although a few plants re¬
main intact throughout the winter, most are
protected in dormant vegetative propagules.
Some propagules, such as tubers, roots, and
rhizomes, may be under the sediment; others
are above the sediment, as in the case of
turions and hibernaculae. Such structures
adow rapid germination for the next growing
season. The actual pattern found in the plant
community depends on environmental fac¬
tors affecting the watershed. Some factors,
such as flooding, may be randomly occuring
historical events. In some streams, such as
Lawrence Creek, the watershed has few
floods so that this factor is of little impor¬
tance to the plant community. In others,
such as Black Earth Creek, occasional floods
alter species pattern and result in different
dominant species than in non-flood years.

INTRASTREAM DIFFERENCES

Physical Environment
Black Earth Creek

The sediment of Black Earth Creek is
largely gravel mixed with silty alluvium. The
highest proportions of gravel and sand occur
in II and III (Table 1), the areas with higher
current velocity. The largest silt deposits oc¬
cur in I and IV, the areas of lower current
velocity. All sections are high in organic
matter and CaC03. The CaC03 may be from
three causes: silt material, marl (CaC03) for¬
mation on plants in the stream, or gravel ma¬
terial of limestone origin. The latter appears
to be the major cause, as the highest percen¬
tages of CaC03 appear in samples with a
high percentage of gravel. In general, the ap¬
pearance of these substrates in I and IV are a
covering of silt over a gravel or sand sub¬
strate. Riffles are commonly free of silt.

The water temperature of the headwaters

206

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

Table 1. Sediment composition of each section and stream averages for Black Earth and Lawrence Creeks.

Stream

Section

%

Gravel

%

Sand

%

Silt

%

Clay

%

O.M.

%

CaC03

Black Earth Creek

Ave.

17.9

66.0

24.8

9.2

9.2

21.0

I

12.0

52.7

30.9

12.1

12.3

12.4

II

30.3

74.5

16.6

8.9

2.7

24.0

III

29.2

73.2

20.4

6.4

7.0

31.4

IV

0.0

59.1

31.3

9.6

14.8

15.8

Lawrence Creek

Ave.

0.8

97.5

1.4

1.4

0.5

0.6

A

0.7

97.3

1.2

1.5

0.5

0.6

B

0.0

97.7

0.9

1.4

0.4

0.6

C

0.0

97.7

1.1

1.2

0.4

0.7

D

0.0

97.2

1.3

1.5

0.6

0.6

Table 2. Environmental data for stream sections and averages for each stream,

for Black Earth and Lawrence Creeks.

including standard error (S.E.),

Section

Water Temp
(C)

Canopy

%

Light

Extinc

Depth

(m)

Current

(m/s)

BLA CK EARTH CREEK

I

12.2

15.5

1.4

0.52

0.12

(S.E.)

0.53

4.0

0.24

0.02

0.01

II

12.1

18.9

1.34

0.32

0.23

(S.E.)

0.38

4.2

0.11

0.01

0.01

Ill

13.5

59.2

1.81

0.40

0.25

(S.E.)

0.54

4.6

—

0.01

0.01

IV

16.2

20.5

2.56

0.45

0.20

(S.E.)

0.45

3.8

0.29

0.02

0.01

AVERAGE

13.5

28.7

1.88

0.42

0.20

(S.E.)

0.29

2.3

—

0.01

0.01

LA WRENCE CREEK

A

12.8

10.1

1.15

0.45

0.25

(S.E.)

0.34

3.0

0.19

0.02

0.01

B

12.8

4.74

1.95

0.51

0.22

(S.E.)

0.31

2.2

0.18

0.02

0.01

C

15.8

3.6

1.24

0.35

0.26

(S.E.)

0.39

1.4

0.21

0.01

0.01

D

13.0

9.6

1.29

0.39

0.26

(S.E.)

0.40

2.9

0.33

0.01

0.01

AVERAGE

13.5

7.0

1.37

0.43

0.25

(S.E.)

0.22

1.2

0.12

0.01

0.01

1985]

Madsen and Adams — Macrophyte Communities

207

region is low and fairly constant, with pro¬
gressive warming below the sewerage plant
in III and IV. Water temperature in IV is
statistically different from that of sections I
and II (Table 2,DCRPC 1979).

Section III has a significantly higher
overhead canopy of trees than the other sec¬
tions, according to a one-way ANOVA
(Table 2).

The current velocity in I and IV is less than
in II and III. No significant difference exists
between II and III at the p = 0.05 level (Table
2).

Lawrence Creek

The sediment of Lawrence Creek is com¬
posed largely of sand (Table 1), due to its
parent material, Potsdam sandstone. The
sediment is low in both organic matter and
CaC03. The lower sections of Lawrence
Creek, C and D, lack any gravel beds and are
mostly sandy and sinuous in character. The
upper two sections, A and B, have large
areas of gravel (Hunt 1977; Table 1; Figure
4).

In a section-by-section comparison, C, be¬
ing more shallow, had a much higher aver¬
age water temperature. Continuous influx of
ground water and increased water depth led
to a temperature decrease farther down¬
stream. (Table 2).

Since most of the stream is bordered by
marshy vegetation, the canopy over Law¬
rence Creek is quite sparse (Table 2). This
allows a great deal of light to reach the
stream.

The current velocity in B is significantly
lower than in C and D. The average depth of
B may explain this difference (Table 2).

VEGETATION

Black Earth Creek

The graph of total cover for each section
shows that macrophyte cover is much higher
in I and IV than in II and III (Figure 10). The
major environmental difference between
these sections are the siltier substrates in I

and IV (Table 1). Both Kullberg (1974) and
Hannan and Dorris (1970) report that
macrophyte production is much higher on
silty substrates than gravel or sand, within a
given stream system. Silty sediments absorb
more nutrients, especially phosphorus, that
are then available for plants. Higher levels of
available nutrients may therefore encourage
macrophyte growth in these types of sedi¬
ments (Barko and Smart 1980; 1981).

Potamogeton crispus is the dominant spe¬
cies in all but the upper section. The relative

• Black Earth Creek, including flood values
O Black Earth Creek, excluding flood values

Fig. 10. Total cover of sections of Black Earth and
Lawrence Creeks.

o Ec Lm No Pa Pp

o

0)

Pc Rl

10% Relative Cover

Fig. 1 1 . Relative cover of species for sections in Black
Earth Creek (Ec, Elodea canadensis; Lm, Lemna
minor; No, Nasturtium officinale; Pa, Phalaris arun-
dinacea; Pc, Potamogeton crispus; Pp, Potamogeton
pectinatus; Rl, Ranunculus longirostris ).

208

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

cover of P. crispus decreased in II and III,
due to higher current and increased gravel.
The increase in relative cover for IV cor¬
responds to the increased silt (Figure 11).
The environment of Black Earth Creek is
ideally suited to P. crispus: a small layer of
silt over a layer of gravel or hardened lime¬
stone (Haslam 1978), with areas of overhead
shade and moderate turbidity.

The relative cover of Nasturtium offici¬
nale in each section corresponds inversely to
the width of the stream. This downstream
decrease in the dominance of N. officinale
may also be related to shade, increased
pollution, and increased water temperature
(Figure 11, Table 2).

The relative cover of Potamogeton pec-
tinatus is directly related to the amount of
sand in the substrate (Figure 11, Table 1).
Sand is a difficult medium in which to root
and remain, and P. pectinatus is better
adapted to this substrate than the other
macrophytes.

Ranunculus longirostris is common in the
upper two sections, being found in the gravel
areas. The relative cover decreases in the
lower sections, possibly from pollution
(Figure 11). The increase in dominance in IV
is due to its survival of the August spate.

AXIS I

Fig. 12. Discriminant Analysis plot for sections of
Black Earth and Lawrence Creeks as based on vegeta¬
tion composition (numbers-sections of Black Earth
Creek; letters-sections of Lawrence Creek).

Phalaris arundinacea is fairly common in
the upper three sections, growing out into
shallow gravel runs (Figure 11). This habitat
disappears almost entirely in IV, explaining
the absence of P. arundinacea .

Lemna minor is found in sheltered areas
throughout the stream but is most common
in the upper two sections (Figure 11). In I,
many water areas occur in which L. minor
can reproduce. This upstream sanctuary pro¬
vides a continuous supply of L. minor to the
lower sections, explaining the relatively high
concentration in II.

Elodea canadensis was found exclusively
in II, probably due to the silt substrate
without the pollution of the lower sections.
This section is mesotrophic, with an environ¬
ment most similar to that of Lawrence
Creek. This similarity may explain why both
Elodea and V. catenata were found in only
this section of Black Earth Creek.

In summary, the dominant cover of P.
crispus is directly related to a silty substrate
and increased width. Nasturtium officinale
decreases in cover as the width of the stream
increases. Discriminant Analysis shows this
sectional difference to be significant at the
p = 0.05 level, with Lemna , Nasturtium ,
Phalaris , Potamogeton crispus , P. pectina-

Fig. 13. Relative cover of species for sections of
Lawrence Creek (Be, Berula erecta; Ec, Elodea
canadensis; Lm, Lemna minor; No, Nasturtium of¬
ficinale; Pa, Phalaris arundinacea; Pp, Potamogeton
pectinatus; Rl, Ranunculus longirostris; Vc, Veronica
catenata ).

1985]

Madsen and Adams — Macrophyte Communities

209

tus and Ranunculus being a significant part
of this difference (Figure 12).

Lawrence Creek

When inspecting Lawrence Creek, it is im¬
mediately obvious that the lower sections (C
and D) are quite different from the upper
ones (A and B). A graph of total macrophyte
cover shows that the lower sections have
significantly less cover than the upper sec¬
tions (Figure 10). This is due to a combina¬
tion of less stable sandy substrate, shallower
depths (which bring vegetation in contact
with faster current, as the area of highest
current velocity is near the surface), and un¬
supported banks (Haslam 1978; Kullberg
1974). These factors allow the channel to
wander, providing poor conditions from
macrophyte establishment and growth.
Many species cannot root in this unstable en¬
vironment.

In relative cover for each section (Figure
13), N. officinale , P. arundinacea, and E.
canadensis are the three most important
species for A and B (N. officinale dominant
in A, E. canadensis in B); whereas B. erect a,
E. canadensis, and P. pectinatus are the
three most important species in C and D ( E .
canadensis dominant in C, P. pectinatus in
D).

The dominance of N. officinale in section
A is due to cold water from many springs
and proportionately more bank habitat re¬
quired for growth (Figure 13). This area is
narrow, with bank-type vegetation predomi¬
nating (e.g., N. officinale, B. erecta, and P.
arundinacea). Nasturtium officinale is
unable to root adequately in the unstable
substrate of the lower sections.

The importance of Phalaris is inversely
related to the width of the stream (Figure
13, Table 2). As it only invades the stream
by vegetative growth from the banks, it
should decrease in importance with in¬
creased stream width. It is also unable to
root in the sand of the lower sections and is
relinquished to the more stable banks.

Elodea is common in the quiet, deep pools

of A and B (Figure 13, Table 2). As this
habitat is more common in B, it is dominant
here. Its cover is sharply reduced in section
C. However, Elodea is still a dominant in C
due to the low total cover of all species.

Berula erecta decreases in importance
from A to B, presumably for the same rea¬
son as N. officinale. However, it increases
again in the lower sections due to the open
habitat with a sandy substrate (Figure 13;
Haslam 1978).

Ranunculus longirostris and Veronica
catenata do best in A, where the highest cur¬
rent and proportion of gravel occur (Figure
13, Table 1). Personal observations of these
species indicate that they tend to occur
together in this type of habitat and thrive
best under these conditions. However, they
are represented in the other sections in
isolated areas of higher current velocities
and stable substrates, such as submerged
logs or large rocks.

Potamogeton pectinatus is infrequent in
the upper stretches but is a dominant species
in the lower sections (Figure 13). It is the on¬
ly plant that is able to grow in the middle of
the shallow sandy channels in these lower
sections, where growth is extremely sparse.
This macrophyte is probably a case of being
the only species “available” to fill this
habitat, as is often the case with macro¬
phytes: their distribution may be limited
(Haslam 1978).

Several less important species occur in
Lawrence Creek, and two deserve special
comment. Lemna minor was found along
the whole stream, but in small quantities. It
requires still waters. However, a continuous
source of L. minor comes from the marshes
surrounding the stream. A Potamogeton
richardsonii colony existed in one 100 m area
of section D, which could represent either a
new introduction or a remnant of a large
population. Haslam (1978) indicates that
this species grows in silty areas of rocky
streams. This colony was attached to several
contiguous submerged logs and silt beds ad¬
jacent to the bank.

210

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

In summary, the most remarkable aspect
of the vegetation of the stream is a pro¬
nounced shift from N. officinale as a domi¬
nant in the upper sections (A and B) to P.
pectinatus in the lower two sections. The
shift in dominance is due to the unstable
nature of the sediment in the lower sections
where N officinale cannot root. Pota-
mogeton pectinatus, however, cannot coex¬
ist in the upper sections with those plants
which have lower nutrient requirements.
Elodea canadensis is common throughout
the stream and is predominant in the slower,
deeper section B. A Discriminant Analysis
between sections A through D showed a
highly significant difference between the sec¬
tions based upon all of the major species,
with the exception of Lemna minor. In this
analysis, A and B were similar and grouped
as significantly different from sections C and
D (Figure 12).

The community compositions of contigu¬

ous sections within the two streams were
significantly different in most cases. These
differences correlated well with changes in
environmental factors, such as sediment
type, depth and current. In Lawrence Creek
a shift from a dominance of Nasturtium,
Phalaris, and Elodea in the upper two sec¬
tions to Elodea and P. pectinatus in the
lower sections correlated with a shift to
shallow, sandy and sinuous conditions in the
lower sections. For Black Earth Creek, Na¬
sturtium decreased with an increase in water
temperature and width. Habitat types for
each species derived from this study com¬
pared favorably with those observed by
other authors.

Environmental Amplitude of
Macrophyte Species

As a result of the extensive amount of data
collected in this study, it is possible to obtain
a quantitative evaluation of the optimal en-

Table 3. Relationship of species with environment. 0: no observed relationship - : negative relationship,
+ : positive relationship, numbers indicate optimal value or limits.

Species

Width

(m)

Water

Temp

(C)

Canopy

%

SubStr.

Light

Extinc.

Depth

(m)

Current

(m/s)

Berula

-

0

0

gravel

0

0

+

erecta

.25

Elodea

0

0

—

sand,

turbid

+

-

canadensis

silt

1.40

.50

<.20

Lemna

0

+

-

0

0

+

minor

>15.00

0.0

>.40

<.10

Nasturtium

-

0

0

-

0

-

officinale

<4.5

1.25

<.20

Phalaris

0

0

-

gravel

-

-

0

arundinacea

<30.0

1.25

<.30

Potamogeton

0

0

0

silt on

+

+

-

crispus

gravel

1.80

.50

<.30

Potamogeton

0

0

0

silt,

+

+

-

pectinatus

sand

1.80

.50

<.30

Ranunculus

-

0

0

gravel

0

-

+

longirostris

<4.0

<.30

>.30

Veronica

-

0

gravel

0

-

+

catenata

<4.0

<30

<.30

>.40

1985]

Madsen and Adams — Macrophyte Communities

211

vironment for each of the species (Table 3).
Ideally, these optima should be constant
wherever the species is found. However, the
plant responds to such a large range of vari¬
ables that it is difficult to be entirely sure
which factor is limiting or encouraging suc¬
cess. For each species we will compare op¬
tima from the literature (Table 4) with those
derived from our data (Table 3). References
used were Fassett (1957), Gleason and Cron-
quist (1963), Haslam (1978), and Sculthorpe
(1967). A full list of macrophyte species
found in the two streams is given in appen¬
dices I and II. A complete discussion of these
species can be found in Madsen (1982).

Bern la erecta was not found in the sandy
substrates discussed in the literature due to
the extreme instability of this substrate in
Lawrence Creek. Other discrepancies occur
with turbidity and depth.

Elodea candensis is found in sandier
substrates than that mentioned in the

literature, due to the sandy nature of
Lawrence Creek. Elodea was also found
under a broader range of turbidity in
Lawrence Creek because it was found in
marshy areas of the stream that produce
high amounts of organic matter.

The distribution of Lemna minor was con¬
sistent with the literature, considering that
increased depth is usually associated with
slower currents. Nasturtium officinale is also
consistent in distribution with literature
reports. Nasturtium officinale is most com¬
monly associated with cold spring waters;
therefore, it is associated with smaller
tributaries.

Pha laris arundinacea was only found in
the stream in fast, shallow areas with gravel
substrates or along the banks. This differs
from literature reports.

Potamogeton crispus is shade and turbid¬
ity tolerant. The optimal substrate is silt over
a gravel or hard substrate. Potamogeton

Table 4. Relationship of species with environment, as determined from literature review.
0 = no observed relationship; - negative relationship; + positive relationship.

Species

Width

(m)

Water

Temp

IQ

Canopy

%

Suhstr.

Turbidity

Depth

Current

Berula

erecta

-

-

0

gravel

-

-

+

Elodea

canadensis

0

0

-

silt

-

+

-

Lemna

minor

0

+

0

0

0

0

-

Nasturtium

officinale

-

0

0

-

—

-

Phalaris

arundinacea

0

0

0

0

0

-

0

Potamogeton

crispus

0

0

+

silt

+

+

-

Potamogeton

pectinatus

0

0

+

silt

+

+

—

Ranunculus

longirostris

0

0

-

gravel

-

-

+

Veronica

catenata

0

0

—

0

—

0

0

212

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

pectinatus is found in similar environments,
except for preferences for sandy or silty en¬
vironments.

Ranunculus longirostris was consistent
with literature values. However, the distribu¬
tion of Veronica catenata does vary signifi¬
cantly from literature reports. This discrep¬
ancy is due to the association of Veronica
with Ranunculus. Veronica is often associ¬
ated with clumps of other plants. This ten¬
dency has altered its usual distribution pat¬
tern (Haslam 1978).

Interstream Differences

Physical Environment

The light extinction of Black Earth Creek
is significantly higher than that of Lawrence
Creek (Table 2). This is due to higher tur¬
bidity from erosion, siltation and sewage ef¬
fluent. Black Earth Creek also has greater
canopy cover. These factors reduce potential
macrophyte productivity (Krause 1977;
Dawson and Kern-Hansen 1978; Dawson
1978, 1981). Whereas nutrients or substrate
may limit growth in Lawrence Creek, light

Table 5. Summary of water chemistry data from
Black Earth and Lawrence Creek with p-value
from a Mann-Whitney two sample nonparametric
test used to compare the two streams.

Test

Black

Earth

Creek

Lawrence

Creek

Mann-
Whitney
P- Valuea

pH

7.95

8.04

0.122

Ammonia (ppm)

0.29

0.03

0.013*

Nitrate (ppm)

1.56

1.85

0.225

Organic N (ppm)

0.33

0.57

0.153

Total N (ppm)

2.76

2.45

0.762

Reactive P (ppm)

0.26

0.07

0.100*

Total P (ppm)

0.31

0.08

0.110

Conductivity

(mhos/cm)

465.5

304.7

0.011*

Alkalinity

(mg CaC03/l)

281.6

158.9

0.006*

Turbidity (JTU)

4.60

1.57

—

“ an asterisk (*)

indicates

significance at the

p = 0.10 level.

must be the limiting factor for growth in
some stretches of Black Earth Creek.

SEDIMENT

The sediments of the two streams differ
significantly (Table 1). In the predominantly
sandy sediment of Lawrence Creek, little or¬
ganic matter and CaC03 are present. Black
Earth Creek sediment has significantly high¬
er percentages of gravel, silt, clay and or¬
ganic matter. It is highly calcareous as well.
These factors make the sediment of Black
Earth Creek a better medium for rooting and
for retaining nutrients.

WATER CHEMISTRY

Differences in geology, soil, and land use
patterns result in important differences in
water chemistry (Table 5). Significantly
higher levels of ammonia and reactive phos¬
phate occur in Black Earth Creek, probably
from the application of fertilizers on adja¬
cent agricultural fields and output from the
sewage treatment plant. This is a recognized
pollution problem (DCRPC 1980) and may
account for the higher productivity of trout

Fig. 14. Average percent cover of species and total
macrophyte cover for Black Earth and Lawrence Creeks
(Be, Berula erecta ; Ec, Elodea canadensis; Lm, Lemna
minor; No, Nasturtium officinale; Pa, Phalaris arun-
dinacea; Pc, Potamogeton crispus; Pp, Potamogeton
pectinatus; Rl, Ranunculus longirostris; Vc, Veronica
catenata; T, total cover).

1985]

Madsen and Adams — Macrophyte Communities

213

and aquatic macrophytes (Brynildson and
Mason 1975). Higher alkalinity and conduc¬
tivity in Black Earth Creek results from
watershed soils and bedrock. Greater
amounts of total dissolved inorganic carbon
are available for photosynthesis, resulting in
higher productivity in Black Earth Creek
compared to Lawrence Creek (Adams et al.
1978a).

VEGETATION

One aim of this study is to compare quan¬
titatively the differences in the vegetation of
the two streams. This was achieved using
Discriminant Analysis. The separation of the
two streams by BMDP Discriminant Analy¬
sis was highly significant (p < 0.001) with a
correct classification of 92.5% (86.9% for
Black Earth Creek and 98.5% for Lawrence
Creek; Figure 12). This analysis selected P.
crispus and R. longirostris as representative
of Black Earth Creek, with the higher cover
values of N. officinale as somewhat repre¬
sentative of Black Earth Creek. Berula
erecta , E. canadensis and V. catenata were
chosen to represent Lawrence Creek, with P.
pectinatus somewhat less important in dis¬
criminating the two streams on the basis of
cover values. We then performed a BMDP
Discriminant Analysis on the sections of
each stream. This was also highly significant
(p < 0.001), with a correct separation to
each section of 93.0%. Potamogeton crispus
and R . longirostris were selected again as
representative of Black Earth Creek; Berula
erecta , E. canadensis and V. catenata repre¬
sented Lawrence Creek. Nasturtium offici¬
nale represented the upper sections of both
streams, and P. pectinatus was indicative of
the lower two sections of Lawrence Creek.

In general, growth is more luxuriant in
Black Earth Creek. Total cover of macro¬
phytes in Black Earth Creek averaged
75.2%, whereas in Lawrence Creek it was
49.5% (Figure 14). Ecological differences
may also be seen from the species composi¬
tion in each stream (Figure 14). The presence
and success of Potamogeton crispus in Black

Earth Creek indicates that the stream is
mesotrophic or eutrophic, polluted and
silted. The dominant species in Lawrence
Creek is Elodea canadensis , which prefers
quiet, clear waters and silt banks. This
species is rare in Black Earth Creek, prob¬
ably due to its intolerance of turbidity. The
second most common plant in both streams
is Nasturtium officinale. However, it covers
twice the percentage of area in Black Earth
Creek that it does in Lawrence Creek (Figure
14). This macrophyte is most common in the
upper portions of both streams, due to
cooler water temperatures. The third most
common macrophyte in both streams is Po¬
tamogeton pectinatus. In each, it appears to
fill a gap in stream habitat. In Lawrence
Creek this is a spatial habitat of shifting sand
in which other macrophytes cannot become
established. In Black Earth Creek P. pec¬
tinatus occupies a temporal microhabitat left
open after the mid-summer senescence of P.
crispus. Other macrophytes are not as suc¬
cessful in the combination of pollution, tur¬
bidity and silt.

Ranunculus longirostris is also found in
both streams, but achieves cover in Black
Earth Creek five times that in Lawrence
Creek (Figure 14). The limiting factor for R.
longirostris in Lawrence Creek seems to be
gravel substrate; it cannot root well in sand
or silt. More than five times as many sites
with appropriate gravel substrates occur in
Black Earth Creek (Madsen 1982).

Both Berula erecta and Veronica catenata
were found commonly only in Lawrence
Creek; in the case of B. erecta , its absence in
Black Earth Creek is due to its intolerance of
siltation, pollution, and spates. Berula also
prefers either fine sand or silt substrates.
Less is known about Veronica catenata.

There is no significant difference in the oc¬
currence of Phalaris arundinacea in the two
streams. As it is generally a streambank spe¬
cies, this is an expected result.

Lemna minor is much more common in
Black Earth Creek than Lawrence Creek,
possibly due to a headwaters refuge and

214

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

reproductive area, as well as many areas of
slack water for habitation.

SYNTHESIS

In comparing the differences in vegetation
between stream sections or two entire stream
communities, confusion may occur. In
studying sections or “reaches” of a given
stream, slight differences in the environment
or other factors may result in a slight dif¬
ference in the community composition of
those two sites. However, these differences
are small when compared to the differences
between the two streams, as in the case of
Black Earth and Lawrence Creeks. Using
Discriminant Analysis, this relationship can
be seen (Figure 12). The differences between
all sections except C and D are significant at
the p = 0.05 level. The separation between
the streams is significant at the p = 0.01 level.
These relationships may be thought of in a
hierarchical fashion, with the differences
between sections or reaches being local and
variable, and the differences between
streams being of a larger scale and due to en¬
vironmental differences characteristic of the
streams.

Acknowledgments

We thank Carolyn Madsen for her assis¬
tance in preparing and reviewing this
manuscript, and the Davis Fund Committee
(Department of Botany, University of
Wisconsin-Madison) for providing travel
funds for this project. An anonymous
reviewer provided constructive comments.

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216

Wisconsin Academy of Sciences , Arts and Letters

[Vol. 73

Appendix 1

Species observed in Black Earth Creek.

1. Batrachospermum sp. (Rhodophyco-
phyta)

2. Callitriche verna (Callitrichaceae)

3. Cladophora glomerata (Chlorophyco-
phyta)

4. Draparnaldia sp. (Chlorophycophyta)

5. Elodea canadensis (Hydrocharitaceae)

6. Fissidens fontanus (Muscopsida)

7. Lemna minor (Lemnaceae)

8. Nasturtium officinale (Brassicaceae)

9. Phalaris arundinacea (Poaceae)

10. Polygonum sp. (Polygonaceae)

11. Potamogeton crispus (Najadaceae)

12. P. foliosus (Najadaceae)

13. P. pectinatus (Najadaceae)

14. Ranunculus longirostris (Ranuncu-
laceae)

15. Sagittaria brevirostra (Alismaceae)

16. Solanum dulcamara (Solanaceae)

17. Typha angustifolia var. elongata
(glauca?) (Typhaceae)

18. Veronica catenata (Scrophulariaceae)

Appendix 2

Species observed in Lawrence Creek.

1. Alnus rugosa (Betulaceae)

2. Amblystegium riparium (Muscopsida)

3. Berula erecta (Apiaceae)

4. Caltha palustris (Ranunculaceae)

5. Cladophora glomerata (Chlorophyco¬
phyta)

6. Drepanocladus sp. (Muscopsida)

7. Elodea canadensis (Hydrocharitaceae)

8. Lemna minor (Lemnaceae)

9. Machantia sp. (Hepaticopsida)

10. Mentha arvensis (Labiaceae)

1 1 . Nasturtium officinale (Brassicaceae)

12. Phalaris arundinacea (Poaceae)

13. Polygonum sp. (Polygonaceae)

14. Potamogeton pectinatus (Najadaceae)

15. P. richardsonii (Najadaceae)

16. Ranunculus longirostris (Ranuncu
laceae)

17. Solanum dulcamara (Solanaceae)

18. Symplocarpus foetidus (Araceae)

19. Veronica catenata (Scrophulariaceae)

ADDRESSES OF AUTHORS: Transactions Wisconsin Academy, 1985

Adams, Michael S.
Department of Botany
University of Wis. -Madison
Madison, WI 53706

Ahmed, Saad N.

Apt. 106, 200 Elm St.

West Haven, CT 06516

A wen, Thomas J.

230 Washburn Avenue
Oconto, WI 54153

Ayer, Peter F.

University of Wisconsin
Center-Washington County
400 University Drive
West Bend, WI 53095

Brinkman, Waltraud A. R.
Department of Geography
Science Hall

University of Wis. -Madison
Madison, WI 53706

Brock, Thomas D.
Department of Bacteriology
University of Wis. -Madison
Madison, WI 53706

Coppel, Harry C.
Department of Entomology
University of Wis. -Madison
Madison, WI 53706

Drennan, William R.

Route 3, Box 349
Reedsburg, WI 53959

Fleming, Charles M.

7312 Edgemont Avenue
Greendale, WI 53129

Foust, J. B.

Department of Geography
University of Wis.-Eau Claire
Eau Claire, WI 54701

Gont, Rodney
Route 1, Box 170
Jim Falls, WI 54748

Jackson, Marion L.
Department of Soil Science
University of Wis. -Madison
Madison, WI 53706

Jaeger, James
Department of Zoology
University of Wis. -Madison
Madison, WI 53706

Kuenzi, F. M.

Department of Entomology
University of Wis. -Madison
Madison, WI 53706

Li, Chang S.

Director, Institute of
Environmental Chemistry
Academia Sinica
P.O. Box 934
Bejing, People’s Republic
of China

Lindborg, Henry J.
Department of English
Marian College
of Fond du Lac
Fond du Lac, WI 54935

Luckhardt, Virginia
4122 Council Crest
Madison, WI 53705

Madsen, John
Department of Botany
University of Wis. -Madison
Madison, WI 53706

Minock, Michael E.
Department of Biology
University of Wis. -Fox Valley
Midway Road
Menasha, WI 54952

Mischuk, Michael W.
Aquatic Biol./Chem. Sci. Div.
The Institute of
Paper Chemistry
P.O. Box 1039
Appleton, WI 54912

Ohl, Lloyd
Department of Biology
University of Wis.-Eau Claire
Eau Claire, WI 54701

Pedr6s-Ali<5, Carlos
Department of Microbiology
Facultad de Ciencias
Universidad Autonoma
de Barcelona

Bellaterra (Barcelona), Spain

Piehl, Charles K.

Campus Box 110
Mankato State University
Mankato, MN 56001

Pribeck, Thomas
English Department
University of Wis. -La Crosse
La Crosse, WI 54601

Putman, Daniel A.
Department of Philosophy
University of Wis. -Fox Valley
Midway Road
Menasha, WI 54952

Rades, David L.

Aquatic Biol./Chem. Sci. Div.
The Institute of
Paper Chemistry
P.O. Box 1039
Appleton, WI 54912

Steffen, James F.

920A North 16th Street
Manitowoc, WI 54220

Tishler, William H.
Department of Landscape
Architecture

University of Wis. -Madison
Madison, WI 53706

Tomlinson, Thomas
Medical Humanities Program
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824

Walasek, Richard A.
Department of Geography
University of Wis.-Parkside
Box No. 2000
Kenosha, WI 53141

Whitford, Philip C.

2625 North 62nd Street
Wauwatosa, WI 53213

Wilson, Raymond
Department of English
Loras College
Dubuque, IA 52001

Woolsey, E.

Department of Zoology
University of Wis. -Madison
Madison, WI 53706

Zhang, Ji Z.

Soil Scientist

Anhui Agricultural College
Hefei, People’s Republic
of China

WISCONSIN ACADEMY OF SCIENCES, ARTS & LETTERS

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%

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Telephone 608 263-1692

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