My association with William Steel Creighton

The recent (1986) publication of “My Association with William Morton Wheeler” evidently stirred my latent autobiographical urge. It is quite reasonable that I should next apply it to William Steel Creighton, for he certainly ranks next to W. M. Wheeler among American myrmecologists. It will be quite different, however, because my actual association with Creighton was very brief twice a dinner guest in New York City and two visits in La Feria, Texas. Correspondence, however, is quite different. I received 45 letters from W. M. Wheeler between 1919 and 1936; the last was dated four months before his death. They dealt chiefly with our proposed treatise on ant larvae; only two ran over to the second page. From Creighton I received 81 letters between 1929 (while he was still a graduate student at Harvard) and 1973 (dated 12 days before his death). His early letters filled one page; the length increased gradually to three pages. The subject matter was chiefly practical taxonomy, but the wide variety of topics treated makes them just as interesting as when they were written