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University Daily Kansan Tuesday, April 16, 1963
Edward Harrison Taylor:
Adventure Is His Calling Card
By Blaine King
Edward Harrison Taylor has never found adventure.
He has lived with headhunters in the Philippines and roomed with a boa constrictor. He has dined with the son of Leo Tolstoy and breakfasted with Theodore Roosevelt. He has survived a typhus epidemic in Western Siberia and four attacks of Dengue fever in the tropics.
But he still says he has never found adventure.
MOST OF THE things that have happened to him happened in strange places, he said.
"That's what makes them sound more remarkable than they really are."
But to Taylor, one of the world's leading herpetologists, extraordinary would be common place.
(A herpetologist is a zoologist specializing in the study of reptiles and amphibians.)
"I wouldn't even want to guess," he said.
HE HAS, by his own estimate,
collected more herpetological spec-
imens than any other man in the
world. How many?
HE IS ALSO, he said, the only man listed as a herpetologist in Who's Who.
AND HE WILL BE 74 this month.
"But I didn't pay my dues this year," he said. The most recent Who's Who contains only listing referring the reader to a previous issue.
Last year, Taylor visited every country in South America except Chile and Paraguay. In 1960 and 1961 he traipsed through Java, Sumatra, Borneo, Laos, Cambodia, India and the Philippines.
AND HE WILL BE 74 this month.
Asked if 70-plus wasn't a little old for a man to be wandering through Southeast Asia, Taylor grinned.
"I'm tough," he said.
Taylor's search for adventure be gan in 1912 when he received hi B.A. from KU.
HIS FIRST JOB: supervise a school at Bunawan in the Philippines for the sons of the chiefs of headhunting tribes.
"I was sort of a one-man Peace Corps," Taylor recalls. "I taught the boys to play baseball and hoc corn."
The governor was pleased with Taylor's work, but the secretary of the interior of the Philippines. Dean
Worcester, fired Taylor for inefficiency.
TRADITION DICTATED that the natives build an arch of bamboo and ferns to welcome the representative of the government, Taylor said. But when Worcester arrived at Bunawan, the boys were out hoeing corn. No arch had been built.
"I still think that's why Worcester fired me." Taylor said.
Shortly after Worcester fired Taylor, however, President Wilson fired Worcester, and the government in Manila rehired Taylor — at an increase in salary.
BUT IN THE WINTER of 1918-19, word came of a typhus epidemic in Siberia. Help was needed.
So Taylor, still looking for adventure, went to Omsk, Siberia. There he had dinner with Tolstoy's son, but remembers little of the meeting.
TAYLOR MET Theodore Roosevelt about 1909, after Roosevelt had returned from Africa.
Taylor, still an undergraduate, was living with the Stubbs family when Mr. Stubbs was governor of Kansas.
(The Stubbs mansion is now the Sigma Nu house.)
Roosevelt visited the Stubbs home, Taylor recalls, and during breakfast Roosevelt described the snakes he had seen in Africa.
MRS. STUBES mentioned the snakes Taylor kept in the conservatory of the Stubbs home, and the former president and the undergraduate went to look at snakes.
"A day's work," he calls many of the things that have happened.
But the housemother did not enjoy the snake as much as the boys did, Taylor recalls, and she called Taylor to ask if he would take.
Some fraternity men stole the baby snake from a carnival and took it home to scare their cook.
He did, and for five years the snake shared Taylor's rooms on the top floor of the Museum of Natural History. Taylor was curator of herpetology and ichthyology at the museum then.
THE BOA CONSTRUCTOR Taylor found amusing.
"THAT SNAKE had a college education," Taylor said.
But the snake finally got about five feet long, and Taylor gave it to the son of the museum director in Philadelphia.
The first attack of Dengue fever he had was when he was at Bunawan. Taylor recalls. The fever attacks every joint in the body, he said, and completely destroys a man's appetite.
WORSE. THE natives will have nothing to do with a sick man, because of their memories of smallpox. He was left completely alone for almost a week.
When the fever breaks, Taylor said, recalling his second attack, the victim is ravenous. But at Negroes Occidental, the province in which he suffered his second attack of the fever, his cook ran off as soon as Taylor became ill.
"So my first meal consisted of raw Bermuda onion."
"WHEN THE FEVER broke. I wanted something to eat. I crawled to the kitchen, but all there was to eat were some large Bermuda onions just shipped in from Manila.
Taylor retired from the faculty at KU in 1959, but still has an office in the basement of Snow Hall. He has been working under a grant from the National Science Foundation the last two years, and has held two Fulbright grants in the last four years.
Program Outlined For Students' Visit
Thirteen student leaders from the University of El Salvador will visit the KU campus from April 20 to 27. The stay will be part of the group's 30-day tour of the U.S. designed to equip Latin American student leaders with a broader knowledge of U.S. universities and students.
The visit is being sponsored by the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs of the U.S. Department of State as part of an experimental program.
While at KU, the student leaders will have an opportunity to become acquainted with the schools and departments of their major field of interest, with the KU Latin America Area Studies Program, and with other general academic activities.
"THIS WILL BE the group's first week in the U.S. and it will be up to us to present them with some sort of orientation program of the American scene." Professor John P. Augelli, chairman of the KU Latin America Area Program, said.
The Salvadorians will also have an opportunity to meet KU student leaders, live in KU dormitories, and observe a typical cross section of the KU community.
Prof. Augelli said there is a great lack of understanding between the two groups of the other's ideas and views. The discussion will offer an opportunity for the exchange and possible debate on certain issues held in high regard by the respective student groups.
"WE ARE ARRANGING a series of informal sessions in which the group will meet and discuss with KU student leaders," Prof. Augelli said. "These sessions are intended to facilitate more effective communication between Latin American and North American students."
THE LATIN American student leaders will also participate in four seminar sessions while on campus "U.S. Government and Political Institutions" directed by Clifford Ketzel, associate professor of political science; "Economic Development of the U.S." directed by Charles E. Staley, associate professor of economics; "U.S. Policy in Relation to Latin America" directed by Robert D. Tomasek, assistant professor of political science; and "Structure of U.S. Society with Particular Emphasis on Race and Class Factors" directed by Charles Warriner, associate professor of sociology and anthropology.
KU RELAYS DANCE with RODNEY AND THE BLAZERS
UNION BALLROOM
SATURDAY, APRIL 20, 9:00 PM - 12:30 AM
TICKETS ON SALE NOW
AND THROUGHOUT THIS WEEK AT THE INFORMATION BOOTH, THE KANSAS UNION, OR AT THE DOOR
CASUAL ATTIRE
$1.00 per COUPLE
Prof. Augelli said interesting differences of opinion and points of controversy may arise during these seminars. They will be held at 9:30 a.m. April 23, 24, 25, and 26 in the Pan American Room of the Kansas Union.
After leaving Kansas, the group will visit Indiana, New York, Washington, D.C., and Miami. Florida.
The two girls in the group will stay at Lewis Hall, and the men will stay in Templin and Joseph R. Pearson Halls.
STUDENTS
Grease Jobs . . $1.00
Brake Adj. . . . 98c
Automotive Service
Motor Tune-Ups, Wheel
Balancing
7 a.m.-11 p.m.
PAGE CREIGHTON
FINA SERVICE
1819 W. 23rd
SALE
WED. & THURS.
—Spring merchandise that you can wear now.
REDUCED
40%
- TAPER PANTS
- DRESSES
- SUITS
- BLOUSES
SPECIAL
Poor Boys Hot Dogs
Short Dogs
EXCLUSIVELY
EXCLUSIVELY
Sale to be continued at the downtown store after Thurs.