At Interlochen Arts Camp, back when the Proctors were directing the Junior Theatre Department, the campers put on a play about a woman scientist — a British mycologist who created exquisite plant and animal illustrations and wrote academic papers about mushrooms and lichen.
She finally was able to offer a paper called “On the Germination of Spores” to the Linnean Society, though she could not attend the meeting.
Only fellows (and fellows were men) were allowed, so Beatrix Potter was not present when her paper was discussed.
She was told it needed more work.
In the stage play, Beatrix was heartbroken to have her research dismissed.
So she returned home where she wrote and illustrated some little stories about a rabbit in letters which she sent to a little boy name Noel.
Years later, those sketches became a self-published storybook called “The Adventures of Peter Rabbit.”
Potter finally found a publisher, and, to make a long, convoluted story as short as a cottontail, as soon as her illustrations of animals were published in color, her books became bestsellers throughout the world.
A little boy in Massachusetts loved the stories, so when his father, conservationist and radio personality Thornton W. Burgess started writing storybooks, the child insisted that the rabbit be named Peter, and thus, “The Adventures of Peter Cottontail” came into being.
It it evolved into a holiday classic sung by Gene Autry called “Here Comes Peter Cottontail.”
Recent research has revealed that the stage play was a little hard on the scientists — they actually tapped Potter as the first female fellow of the Linnean Society.
Her theories and paper really did need more work, but her sketches of mushroom fruiting bodies were groundbreaking.
In the scientific community, Beatrix Potter is revered, not as the creator of Flopsy, Mopsy and Mr. McGregor, but as a pioneer in the field of biological illustration.
