Doctor William A. Murrill, Ph.D., left Cornell University in 1900, ready to sample the metropolis on its own turf. Perhaps wife, Edna, was with him, but Murrill wrote exclusively in the third person, singular, so only occasional circumstantial evidence testifies to his marital status. One way or another, it was not as though “Zeus threw a lightning bolt and the city appeared in the full glory of its existence.” Instead, its sociological and political status was complicated, and the situation for “naturalists” was not readymade. The total scene had developed over time, and Murrill was to be injected at a specific time and role. It was as though a field had been tilled before the seed could be sowed.