64 TEQUESTA


 the time of their lives; our whole environment could not have
 been improved upon. For many years I had dreamed of Florida,
 hoped for it, almost prayed for it, and now my dream had come
 true and all was far more strange and wonderful than I had sup-
 posed it could be."

 In the early 1880s, Simpson lived for four years in Bradenton,
supporting himself as a carpenter-contractor while he explored Florida's
lower wilds. During that period, he made a significant plant and shell
collecting trip to Honduras, returning with a variety of the first tropi-
cal plants introduced from that area, some of which found wide
distribution in South Florida.14
 In 1889, when Simpson was forty-three, his reputation as a
conchologist was sufficient for him to be hired by the U.S. National
(Smithsonian) Museum in Washington, D.C. In October of that year,
he received a letter from William H. Dall, Curator of the Department
of Mollusks, offering him a position as an assistant, with a starting
salary of $75.00 a month this for someone who barely had a high
school education!'5 Nevertheless, as Nixon Smiley, Miami Herald
 columnist and fellow natural-
 ist, noted, Simpson was said
 S to le, to be able to identify some
 S. -a ten thousand shells by sight
 and give their Latin names.16
 Simpson spent thirteen years
 at the Smithsonian, traveling
 often to the West Indies and
 the Bahamas, classifying two
 thousand species of freshwa-
 ter snails and mussels."7
 S Degreeless but an undeniable
 S authority in his field, he oc-
 casionally lectured at
 S  Georgetown University. One
 ..- tribute came in a letter from
 Henry A. Pilsbry, Curator of
 Simpson, to left, and George Clapp, the Department of Mollusks
 aluminum manufacturer and amateur of the Academy of Natural
 conchologist, together on one of their ece of ad a
 many trips. (HASFx-763-49) Sciences of Philadelphia: "I
 can congratulate you upon