| Chapter : | Introducing the Green Roosevelt |
contributed pieces in memoriam to a dedicated, January 1919 issue of the journal Natural History. Henry Fairfield Osborn, then director of the American Museum of Natural History, describes Roosevelt variously as “a naturalist, an observer, traveler, explorer, writer, and last but not least, a biological philosopher.”27 Osborn substantiates the honorific appellation with facts from Roosevelt's 1913–14 expedition through Brazil and Paraguay, an exploration that nearly cost the aging ex-President his life. More than 450 mammals and 1375 bird specimens, by Osborn's count, Roosevelt's expedition added to the American Museum's collections, as well as the “discovery” of the river known thereafter as the Rio Roosevelt. TR's preparation for the trip, Osborn hastens to add, was not that of the “amateur or the sportsman” but of the “trained naturalist.” Heller, concurs, writing, “The Colonel was a delightful companion…on our rides afield,” and, moreover, that “he had at his command the entire published literature concerning the game mammals and birds of the world, a feat of memory that few naturalists possess.”28 He concludes, “I felt constantly while with him that I was in the presence of the foremost field naturalist of our time, as indeed I was.” Founder and Director of the United States Biological Survey, Dr. C. Hart Merriam, reached for similar words to describe his indescribable, indefatigable friend and colleague, writing, “Theodore Roosevelt had the instincts, the powers of observation and the vision of a faunal naturalist.”29 In his 1932 reminiscence, Merriam continues, “The keenness of his [Roosevelt's] observation coupled with his intimate firsthand knowledge of nature enabled him to recognize the necessity for fieldwork and convinced him of the absolute need of the museum specimens for exact studies of animals and plants.”
Such antiquated monikers as faunal naturalist and biological philosopher hint at Roosevelt's broke-the-mold exceptionalism and partially explain why his contributions to natural science have been consistently overlooked. On this subject, Merriam notes that Roosevelt lived in a period of “ultra microscopic specialization…the sad period in which the good old term ‘natural history’ fell into disuse.” Indeed, the veneration of Roosevelt by the era's greatest naturalists existed in part because, by the early twentieth century, Roosevelt symbolized what some