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Visionary Science Of The “Harvard Barbarians”, Catherine Schmitt

Catherine Schmitt

For over two months during the summer of 1880, eight young members of the Champlain Society made daily excursions, on foot and by boat, around Mount Desert Island. They collected plants and birds, and dredged small animals from the mud of Somes Sound. They stared at the rocks along shore and took photographs. Under the leadership of “Captain” Charles Eliot, son of Harvard President Charles William Eliot, the students were on the Island for the summer to “do some work in some branch of natural history or science.”