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Chapter II, Natural History, pp. 340–344 of the 1880 county history — this section's dated spine
Lead: Every later article in this section is measured against one dated text: Chapter II, “Natural History — Quadrupeds — Birds — Reptiles — Fishes — Plants,” in Chas. C. Chapman & Co.'s History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (Chicago, 1880), pp. 340–344. Read whole for this section, it is not a nostalgic species list. It is a loss ledger written fifty years after settlement. Its opening sentence for quadrupeds is the baseline in one line: “Of the species of native quadrupeds that once roamed the flowery prairies and wild forests of this county, but few of the smaller remain, and none of the larger. Of the latter we cannot even find a specimen preserved in taxidermy.”
The quadruped passage names the already-gone first: “The buffalo which grazed upon the verdant prairies has been driven westward. With or before it went the beaver, elk, badger, panther, black wolf and black bear.” It then names the become-rare: gray fox, catamount, otter, lynx, “the beautiful Virginia deer,” opossum, raccoon, mink, muskrat, common weasel, small brown weasel, skunk, woodchuck, prairie mole, common shrew mole, meadow and deer mouse, and gray rabbit — with squirrels (gray timber, fox, chipmunk, large gray prairie, striped and spotted prairie, flying) and the dark-brown and reddish bats still common. That two-tier structure — gone versus rare — is the 1880 baseline every return arc in this section must answer.
The bird chapter is organized by the period orders — Perchers, Birds of Prey, Climbers, Scratchers, Swimmers, Waders — and carries the same pattern. Among perchers it lists the ruby-throated hummingbird, chimney swift, whippoorwill and nighthawk, belted kingfisher, thrushes, warblers, swallows, finches and sparrows, blackbirds, blue jay and crow. Among birds of prey: the golden eagle “always rare but now no longer seen here,” the bald eagle “once quite common, now scarce,” eight or nine hawks, a turkey-buzzard that “has almost, if not quite, disappeared,” and barn, screech, long- and short-eared, barred and snowy owls. Among climbers, seven woodpeckers including pileated and red-headed. Among scratchers and their kin, the warnings this section follows up: the wild turkey “has almost entirely disappeared,” the prairie chicken which “if not carefully protected, must ere long follow the wild turkey, never to return,” a quail whose fate “is only a question of a short time,” and wild pigeons still visiting but “not in such vast numbers as years ago,” with Audubon's 1813 Ohio flight quoted at length. Swimmers “have almost disappeared” as a class, though the duck family still furnished “most game for sportsmen,” and waders are already explained by drainage: they “frequented the marshes, but cultivation has drained their favorite haunts” — whooping crane “now never seen,” sandhill cranes still stopping, herons, bitterns, plovers, snipe and rails named.
Reptiles and fish close the chapter. Rattlesnakes (banded and prairie) were “numerous in the early settlement,” the prairie kind “still occasionally found,” copperhead “always rare,” with harmless snakes, map, snapping and soft-shelled turtles, and frogs including a bullfrog “often as large as a man's head.” The fish list — black bass, goggle-eye, crappie and sunfish; pickerel and gar pike; buffalo, red-horse, white and black suckers and mullet; channel and mud catfish — is printed in full in the river-fish article below, where its omissions matter as much as its entries. Method note: the text used here is the published 1880 volume as reproduced from the Internet Archive copy (986 pp.); the natural-history chapter was opened and read directly for this section, pp. 335–345 in the reproduction, including the topography passage that places Terre Coupee, “the largest in the county, and which was at one time covered by water, lying in Olive township,” first among the county's prairies. No passage class of the chapter — quadrupeds, birds, reptiles, fish — failed to open; the botany that follows (p. 345 onward) is outside this section.
Sources:
- Chapman, Chas. C. & Co., History of St. Joseph County, Indiana (Chicago, 1880), Contents (Ch. II, Natural History, p. 340) and pp. 335–345 — topography and prairies (p. 337), quadrupeds (p. 340), birds (pp. 340–343), reptiles and fishes (pp. 343–344); text via Internet Archive copy reproduced at ldsgenealogy.com, Parts 29–30.