The Prairies

1911 TREATISE ON THE PRAIRIES OF THE MIDWEST, INSCRIBED BY BOTANIST AND ECOLOGIST, PRESENTED TO NOTED PALEONTOLOGIST. 9 1/2 inches tall printed paper covered boards, offprint from The Bulletin from the Laboratories of Natural History of the State Univesity of Iowa, textured paper tape to spine, Author's inscription to Professor S. W. Willioston top of cover, with handstamp of S.W. Williston/ University of Chicago. Text is folowed by bibliography spanning 1818 to 1910, 11 plates of photographs of the prairies, graphs, folding map, and errata. BOHUMIL SHIMEK (1861 1937) was an American naturalist, conservationist, and a professor at the University of Iowa. The Shimek State Forest in Iowa is named after him. Bohumil Shimek first attended college in 1878 at the University of Iowa as a student of engineering. He graduated from the university in 1883 with a degree in civil engineering, and subsequently worked as a railroad and county surveyor. He later taught of Zoology at the University of Nebraska from 1888 to 1890, and later returned to the University of Iowa as an instructor in botany. In 1895, he became Assistant Professor in botany and curator of the herbarium, and he continued in the latter position until his death. In 1902 he was awarded a Master's degree in science. He served as head of the botany department at University of Iowa from 1914 to 1919. Shimek traveled extensively in North America studying nature, and also spent time traveling in Czechoslovakia, and Nicaragua. He especially traveled extensively throughout the American midwest and throughout every region of Iowa. Records show that between 1925 and 1928 Shimek had collected more than 10,000 specimens in Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wisconsin and Illinois. It has been estimated that, over his lifetime, Shimek contributed 200,000 specimens of vascular plants and 5,000 specimens of bryophytes to the collection. SAMUEL WENDELL WILLISTON (1851-1918) was an American educator and paleontologist who was the first to propose that birds developed flight cursorially (by running), rather than arboreally (by leaping from tree to tree). Williston was born in Boston, Massachusetts to Samuel Williston and Jane A. Williston ne Turner. As a young child, Williston's family travelled to Kansas Territory in 1857 under the auspices of the New England Emigrant Aid Company to help fight the extension of slavery. Williston returned to Kansas in 1890, to take a position on the faculty at the University of Kansas as a professor of geology and anatomy. In 1899, he was named the first Dean of the new School of Medicine there. He was also a member of the state boards of health and medical examiners. In 1902, Williston left Kansas again, and took the chair of paleontology at the University of Chicago.

Product Info

Year: 1911

Type: Used

Binding: Softcover

First Edition

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Country: United States