University of Arizona

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Homer Leroy Shantz Papers

Homer Leroy Shantz (1876-1958) was a plant physiologist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, botany professor at several universities, and Chief of Wildlife Management Division for the U.S. Forest Service. He also served as President of the University of Arizona from 1928 to 1936.

This collection contains field notebooks, reprint articles, speeches, survey abstracts, photographs, diaries, and correspondence pertaining to Shantz's interests in worldwide agriculture and botany. Shantz's various trips to Africa resulted in extensive field notes, including those for the Smithsonian African Expedition (1919-1920), and the African Education Commission (1923-1924). Background material he collected about Africa encompasses maps, postcards, dictionaries and primers on languages, including Swahili. He also collected articles on the people; the areas they inhabited; and specific problems, such as the tsetse fly, sleeping sickness, forced labor, and race relations. Photographs of his travels from the Cape to Cairo depict the Nile, Egyptian ruins, wild and domestic animals, vegetation and the landscape, villages and cities, and people in tribal dress. Documentation of communal activities include cultivation, thatching roofs, building a road, and weaving a large bamboo mat to cover a bridge walkway.

United States material primarily concerns the West, with a focus on Colorado. A study of its vegetation changes includes over 200 photographs.  Items from other countries are South American survey abstracts by various authors, Shantz's diary and notes from the International Phytogeographic Expedition to Switzerland (1923), his field notes and diaries from Ontario (1916), the former U.S.S.R. (1930), and Germany (1934). Correspondence concerns his various projects. The bound reprints of his writings have some material concerning wildlife, as it relates to larger ecological schemes.