Book Recommendation

[Diana Beatty]

I'm reading a fun book by a Colorado author right now that I thought I'd mention - 

Pioneer Naturalists - The Discovery and Naming of North American Plants and Animals by Howard Ensign Evans of CSU - Fort Collins.

Here's an excerpt from today's reading:

Thomas Mayo Brewer and the Sparrow War

The Sparrow War of 1874-1878 never made it into history books, but it engendered a good deal of passion in ornithological circles.  Elliott Coues was once again feuding, this time with Thomas Mayo Brewer (1814-1880), a Harvard-educated physician who preferred birds to doctoring.  The house sparrow had been introduced from Europe in 1852 by persons who liked to be reminded of the Old Country and who thought the sparrows would clean up the cankerworms in city trees.  But of course the sparrows are seed-eaters and scavengers and feed mainly on the ground.  In Coues's words, they had soon "overrun the whole country, and provide a nuisance without redeeming quality."  Brewer was a defender of the sparrow, and he had strong backing from the eloquent clergyman Henry Ward Beecher.  For several years newspapers and scientific journals were filled with blasts and counterblasts.  Brewer wrote in the Washington Gazette that Coues's statements regarding the sparrow were an example of " a lie well stuck to being as good as the truth."  After Brewer's death, Coues wrote of Brewer's accomplishments but said that he had "made a fool of himself about the sparrow for years."  The sparrow won the war; Coues's suggestions that the sparrows be controlled were never implemented to any degree....

https://smile.amazon.com/Pioneer-Naturalists-Discovery-American-Animals/dp/0805023399/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=howard+ensign+pioneer&qid=1600440601&sr=8-1

I first encountered Ensign's writing in another great book I highly recommend, although I think it is out of print and a little pricier now - The Natural History of the Long Expedition in the Rocky Mountains. 

 https://smile.amazon.com/Natural-History-Expedition-Mountains-1819-1820/dp/0195111850/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=howard+ensign+long&qid=1600440534&sr=8-1

He also has a book about the natural history of the Cache La Poudre and several others including some specializing in entomology.  Unfortunately, no more works are forthcoming as he passed away a little over a decade ago.

Diana Beatty

El Paso County

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All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost.

[DAVID A LEATHERMAN]

Diane's nice post requires a response. 

Howard Ensign Evans was a truly great entomologist, great naturalist, great man, period.  I came to know him late in his career and life when he left a prestigious position in the Entomology Department at Harvard (his office was down the hall from that of colleague E. O. Wilson) to take a post at Colorado State University.  He did so with great loss of prestige and income in order to more easily study his passion: wasps.  Dr. Evans knew the West had great diversity of Hymenoptera, especially the families of ground-nesting species he specialized in, and that virtually every field trip would yield new species, new life history information, etc.  He was a scholar of unrivaled technical skill, yet he wrote marvelous books for lay people about the natural world (including birds) and people who studied the natural world, such as the book Diane quotes.  Regarding naturalists, he was most interested in capturing the feats of less famous people he thought deserved celebrating for posterity.  Perhaps his most famous work is Life On A Little Known Planet (about the secret lives of insects) which has been reprinted many times and in over 25 languages. 

I always felt truly honored to be near this man, and count a couple field trips to southeastern CO with him as part of the group among my fondest entomological memories.  On one of those trips to Vogel Canyon south of LaJunta we were collecting along the side of the road that leads into the area off SR109.  The snow-on-the-mountain plants (Euphorbia marginata) lining the edge were in full flower and swarming with wasps.  It was very hot.  And there was Dr. Evans in his late 70s, big floppy hat, shorts, bony legs and net, truly reveling in the scene.  He swept thru the flowers, capturing dozens of individual wasps, most of which could sting.  Grasping the base of the net to prevent escape, he examined his catch thru the semi-transparent gauze, spied a tiny spider wasp (family Pompilidae) he wanted, reached bare-handed up into the chaos, no doubt got stung multiple times, and pulled out his prize.  He let the rest go.  As I recall, the little wasp was a 1st State Record or one only recorded a few times in CO.

Dr. Evans was a man of very few words, but when he mumbled a comment, or wrote a little note, his communications carried great weight with us all.  I recall turning in some web-spinning sawflies to the Gillette Museum collected from ponderosa pine near the former, now-razed, CSU football stadium west of town.  In my department mailbox a few days later was a little communique Dr. Evans scribbled in pencil that read something to the effect, "A few of those specimens you submitted were interesting.  You should write them up."  When the great Dr. Evans said specimens were "interesting", that was like somebody else shooting off fireworks and yelling thru a bullhorn at the major intersection downtown.  I still have the note and it means as much or more than any plaque or diploma gathering dust somewhere in my apartment.

I fully agree with Diane's favorable reviews of what she has read and recommend anything he has written.  I will always hold fond memories of Dr. Evans and his dear wife Mary Alice, also an entomologist who pulled together one of the first summaries of Colorado dragonflies and damselflies (since revised and improved by one of Colorado's best birders and perhaps foremost authority on the Odonata, Bill Prather).  Every time my entomologist friends Dr. Boris Kondratieff and Dr. Whitney Cranshaw and I look at a wasp we have collected for the Museum, and know nobody but Dr. Evans could/would probably key it out to species, we say the same thing: "I miss Howard".  Oh, yes.

         

Dr. Howard E. Evans during a 7/16/92 field trip to Picture Canyon (Baca County).

Dave Leatherman

Fort Collins

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From: cob...@googlegroups.com <cob...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Diana Beatty <otowi...@gmail.com>
Sent: Friday, September 18, 2020 8:52 AM
To: COBIRDS <cob...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [cobirds] Book Recommendation

 

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