Our Wild Animals by Edwin Lincoln Moseley

Edwin Lincoln Moseley, a former teacher at Sandusky High School, was a prolific scholar and writer on science and nature. One of his books, Our Wild Animals, was published in 1927. A copy of this title is in the Local Authors collection of the Sandusky Library Archives Research Center.

The text was aimed at upper elementary students, and was promoted by the Boys’ Life magazine. A theme of the book was that Professor Moseley felt that all people show an interest in animals simply because they too are living beings.  

Many other photographs and drawings were used to illustrate the book, which was over three hundred pages long. Professor Moseley pointed out in chapter two that squirrels were good at hiding, yet were strong enough to make long leaps. He wrote about the tail of a squirrel serving as parachute, to prevent a fall, but also as a rudder, to guide its course. 

Sandusky photographer Ernst Niebergall took the photograph of the squirrel found in the introduction. 

He detailed the anatomy, habitat, diet, and habits of many different wild animals common in the United States, including several types of rats and mice. He stated that “Wherever man has settled these animals have followed.”  Moseley wrote that house mice are less intelligent than rats, but that “they often match their wits successfully against the devices of the housewife who would get rid of them.”  

In chapter fourteen, he wrote about the rabbit, whose life depends on its coat blending in with its surroundings, and the ability to run fast when necessary.  He commented that rabbits were even seen on the courthouse lawn and high school grounds in Sandusky, Ohio. 

Professor Moseley’s book has a total of thirty chapters, each focusing on a different animal or group of animals that people were likely to run into on a walk through the woods. He relied on his own experiences as an observer of nature and his knowledge of books already written on animals and nature. In the chapter on skunks, Moseley told about an orphaned skunk found in a haymow near Toledo which was adopted and raised by a cat. 

A biographical sketch about Edwin Lincoln Moseley in, The Biographical Dictionary of American and Canadian Naturalists and Environmentalists, (Greenwood Press, 1997), read in part, “A truly devoted teacher who received overwhelming loyalty from his students, he pioneered in the teaching of natural science by the experimental method in the field.” Our Wild Animals is still found in libraries and colleges all across the United States. Visit the Sandusky Library Archives Research Center if you would like to view this classic text by a former Sandusky educator. You can see photographs of Professor Moseley and his museum at Sandusky High School at a previous blog post on this site.

Edwin Lincoln Moseley -- Teacher, Scientist, Scholar

One of the most interesting characters to contribute to Sandusky's history is Edwin Lincoln Moseley, a science teacher at Sandusky High School, and later one of the original professors on the science faculty at what is now Bowling Green State University.

Edwin Moseley was born in Michigan in 1865 and graduated from the University of Michigan in 1885, the youngest in his class. He joined the faculty of Sandusky High School in 1889, after he returned from participating in a scientific expedition that took him across the Pacific to Hawaii, the Philippines, China, and Japan. (Here is SHS class of 1912, with faculty. E.L. Moseley is in the back row.)
While at Sandusky High School, Moseley was perhaps most admired for inspiring his students to learn through direct observation and to develop independent thinking.
He used both the school laboratory (one of his SHS physics classes is shown here) and field trips to teach his students -- he frequently brought his students on scientific explorations of Sandusky Bay and the Lake Erie Islands, to study the geology and flora of the region. While a teacher at SHS, he operated a natural history museum in the school building, managing a collection of about 17,000 specimens (an exhibit area of the museum is pictured below).

While in Sandusky, his reputation as a scientist and a scholar became so great that, in 1914, he was invited to become the founding science faculty (yes, faculty -- he was the only science professor when he started there) at the new Bowling Green State Normal College (now Bowling Green State University). He continued his research and teaching in Bowling Green until his retirement in 1936. He died in 1948, leaving a legacy of strong scholarship and devoted students.

For more information about Professor Moseley: Relda E. Niederhofer and Ronald L. Stuckey have produced a book that may be the definitive biography of the professor, Edwin Lincoln Moseley: Naturalist, Scientist, Educator; the book is available in the Biography section of the Sandusky Library and as a reference book in the Genealogy department.
The Sandusky Library Archives Research Center has a small collection of papers and publications by and about Professor Moseley, including many of his scientific publications (such as: Sandusky Flora; Trees, Stars, and Birds; Lake Erie: Floods, Lake Levels, Northeast Storms; and others) and a small number of letters and documents he wrote. A finding aid to the collection is available; contact the library reference department (419-625-3834) or the Archives Librarian for more information. Additionally, The Center for Archival Collections at Bowling Green State University holds a collection of Edwin Lincoln Moseley papers, primarily covering his time in Bowling Green.