Mary Lua Adelia Davis Treat - Publications

Publications

Treat’s first scientific article was a note published in The American Entomologist when she was 39 years old. Over 28 years she wrote 76 scientific and popular articles as well as five books. Her book, Injurious Insects of the Farm and Field, originally published in 1882, was reprinted five times. She also collected plants and insects for other researchers, one of whom was the eminent Harvard botanist Asa Gray. It was through Gray that she was introduced to Charles Darwin. Treat wrote letters to engage in botanical and entomological discourse not only with Darwin and Gray, but Auguste Forel and Gustav Mayr too.

The first recorded correspondence between Treat and Darwin originates from 20 December 1871 in which Treat describes the fly-catching activities of Drosera. Treat and Darwin’s recorded correspondence extends over five years and revolves, unsurprisingly, around the period of time when Darwin was researching, and then publishing, on carnivorous plants. Investigations on these plants are the predominant theme in their correspondence (although not the only theme, they also discussed controlling sex in butterflies), and Treat does not withdraw from openly critiquing Darwin’s hypotheses. One notable exchange concerns the bladderwort plant, Utricularia clandestina.