Education
His research included studies of the Okefenokee Swamp and fieldwork in the north eastern United States and in northern Canada, and he also studied the 18th-century American naturalists John and William Bartram. Harper received an Bachelor of Arts in 1914 and a Doctor of Philosophy in 1925 from Cornell University.
Career
Harper authored new combinations for two species originally described by William Bartram, Garberia heterophylla and Roystonea elata. He taught briefly at Swarthmore College, but beyond that he worked for museums, government agencies and research agencies. In 1914 Harper made his first trip to northern Canada on an expedition to Lake Athabasca working as a zoologist for the Geological Survey of Canada.
Between 1917 and 1919 Harper served as a rodent control officer in France with the United States Army"s 79th Division.
He returned to Athabasca in 1920, Nueltin Lake in southern Keewatin in 1947 and the Ungava Peninsula in 1953, his last trip north. Harper published notable works on the caribou of Keewatin, the birds of the Ungava Peninsula, and the Montagnais of the Ungava.
Harper traced the Bartrams" travels in the American South and helped revive both scientific and popular interest in the Bartrams" work. Harper"s research into the Bartrams was funded by grants from the John Bartram Association in Philadelphia, the American Philosophical Society, and the Guggenheim Foundation among others
Harper published extensively on both of the Bartrams including annotated editions of John Bartram"s "Diary of a Journey through the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida 1765-1766.
William Bartram"s "Report to Doctor John Fothergill 1773-1774" and an annotated naturalist"s edition of William Bartram Travels.. first published in Philadelphia in 1791. Harper published on the mammals and folklore of the Okefenokee Swamp, including recordings of the local music He also published on the "extinct and vanishing" mammals of the old world.
His papers are held in the Kenneth Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas.