- Date
- 1900
- Eras
- Modern era
- Concepts
- biologywildlifeanimalsenvironmentwetlandshistoriography
- Within
- Beaver Island
Summary
This 1900 Michigan Agricultural College bulletin preserves a small, dated natural-history record for Beaver Island. Entomologist R. H. Pettit reports a visit with botanist Charles F. Wheeler and says that the report’s mollusc and spider lists include the island. The project index identifies 36 explicit Beaver Island records: 27 molluscs, 8 arachnids, and 1 insect.
What it establishes
The bulletin is contemporaneous evidence that specimens were collected on Beaver Island in early September 1900 and later determined by named specialists. Bryant Walker determined the molluscs and Nathan Banks determined the arachnids. The arachnid entries are dated September 6 or 8, the single explicit Beaver Island insect record is a Neuroptera entry dated September 5, and the mollusc list repeatedly names Beaver Island without specimen dates or precise island localities.
Indexed Beaver Island records
| Category | Records | Report pages | What the source preserves |
|---|---|---|---|
| Molluscs | 27 | 38–39 | Historical shell names and authorities, including freshwater and land-mollusc entries; Bryant Walker is named as determiner |
| Arachnids | 8 | 39 | Historical names, Nathan Banks’s determinations, and September 6/8 collection dates |
| Insects | 1 | 40 | Chrysopa rufilabris under Neuroptera, dated September 5 |
The index preserves the report’s spelling “Pryamidula alternata” and its uncertain “Limnea lancelata” entry rather than silently correcting either one. It also keeps Epeira, Phalangium, and the other historical arachnid names as reported. A future taxonomic bridge should cite current authoritative checklists and retain the 1900 determination as the historical source string.
Evidence and limits
The report is a selective collecting record made for economic-natural-history work. Historical names and determinations are retained as the report records them; they are not silently converted into current taxonomy, present-day occurrence, abundance, habitat, conservation status, or a complete island fauna. The report also does not identify each collecting locality on the island. The absence of a taxon from this list is not evidence that it was absent in 1900.
Ecological graph position
This record supplies a dated invertebrate baseline that complements, but does not merge with, the later MNFI natural-community and aquatic-fauna layers. The mollusc entries may include freshwater and land forms, while the bulletin does not preserve a complete habitat or site locator for each specimen. The spider and insect entries are likewise collection records rather than evidence of population size or habitat occupancy. Their value is temporal and taxonomic: they show that named specialists examined Beaver Island material in September 1900, and they preserve the historical names needed before any modern- taxonomy reconciliation is attempted.
See also
Read the document
89 pages, rendered from the held scan.
Sources
- Michigan Agricultural College Experiment Station, *First Report of the Upper Peninsula Experiment Station*, Bulletin No. 186 (Agricultural College, Michigan, 1900), “Insect and Animal Life on the Upper Peninsula Experiment Station,” R. H. Pettit.The held public-domain bulletin reports R. H. Pettit’s and Charles F. Wheeler’s Beaver Island visit after work at Chatham. It says its mollusc and spider lists include Beaver Island records and supplies several dated September arachnid records. It is a selective collecting report, not a complete survey or current species inventory. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.local_documents · 1900_msac-bulletin-186-upper-peninsula-experiment-station
- Searchable text extraction of the held 1900 bulletin.Created with pdftotext -layout. The Beaver Island lists are searchable at the extraction lines corresponding to printed pp. 38–40; the PDF remains authoritative for layout and page verification. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.local_documents · 1900_msac-bulletin-186-upper-peninsula-experiment-station
- Project-generated index of explicit Beaver Island natural-history records in the 1900 bulletin.Preserves 27 molluscs, 8 arachnids, and 1 insect record with historical names, authorities, recorded localities, dates where given, printed pages, and source-text line references. Modern taxonomy is deliberately unresolved. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.integrated · 1900_beaver_island_natural_history_index
- Provenance for the project-generated 1900 Beaver Island natural-history index.Records the input PDF/text checksums, parser, and 36-record count. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.integrated · 1900_beaver_island_natural_history_index.provenance
- Project provenance sidecar for the held 1900 bulletin.Identifies the item as the 1900 experiment-station bulletin and records the project’s narrow relevance assessment: a dated natural-history baseline, not a geological survey despite the inherited file label. No public copy of this file is known; the archive holds one and can provide it on request.local_documents · 1900_msac-bulletin-186-upper-peninsula-experiment-station.provenance
Added 2 August 2026 · revised 3 August 2026. Recent changes
Cite this article
Beaver Island Archive, “First report of the Upper Peninsula Experiment Station, 1900”, https://beaverislandarchive.org/documents/upper-peninsula-experiment-station-report-1900/, accessed [date], citing Michigan Agricultural College Experiment Station, *First Report of the Upper Peninsula Experiment Station*, Bulletin No. 186 (Agricultural College, Michigan, 1900), “Insect and Animal Life on the Upper Peninsula Experiment Station,” R. H. Pettit. (and 4 further sources listed on the page).
Last revised 2026-08-03. Fill in [date] with the date you read it — this page is static and cannot know that.
BibTeX for “First report of the Upper Peninsula Experiment Station, 1900”RIS for “First report of the Upper Peninsula Experiment Station, 1900”