Henry Webster Parker is credited with discovering and describing the Poweshiek skipper, Oarisma poweshiek (as Hesperia powesheik). I have come to the conclusion that Henry’s wife Helen probably discovered the butterfly, and that she may have written the description as well.
With this post I introduced Helen Parker and a number of the books she wrote: https://therousedbear.wordpress.com/2010/10/19
Helen wrote the book Rambles after Land Shells. This was a Sunday-School book, with religious instruction about terrestrial snails. What does the Bible have to say about land snails? Nothing, to my knowledge: https://therousedbear.wordpress.com/2010/10/20
Rambles after Land Shells has some pretty good detailed instruction about snails: https://therousedbear.wordpress.com/2010/10/21. The book is also interesting because of the time frame in which it was published—the middle of the Civil War.https://therousedbear.wordpress.com/2010/10/22
Helen wrote two other books about natural history, and they are discussed here: https://therousedbear.wordpress.com/2010/10/24
Henry Parker published a list of Iowa’s butterflies, which can be found at this post: https://therousedbear.wordpress.com/2010/10/29 and the description of the Poweshiek skipper, which is analyzed here: https://therousedbear.wordpress.com/2010/10/30. He may have had collaboration from Helen with both of those. In addition, he published one other article about insects, which can be found here: https://therousedbear.wordpress.com/2010/10/26
Helen’s health problems and a discussion about her after her death can be found here: https://therousedbear.wordpress.com/2010/10/31
I speculated that Helen may have discovered an undescribed land snail species, and got her future Brother-in-Law Samuel J. Parker to present a paper with the description of the snail in these two posts: https://therousedbear.wordpress.com/2010/11/08 and https://therousedbear.wordpress.com/2010/11/09 . I incorrectly identified Samuel J. Parker as Helen’s Father in Law (Who was named Samuel Parker) as the person who presented the paper, but noted the mistake in a later post.
Photos of Helen can be found at this post: https://therousedbear.wordpress.com/2010/11/18 and a recap of previous posts can be found here: https://therousedbear.wordpress.com/2010/11/24
What do you think?
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