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1869 
THE LIBRARY 


THE 
AMERICAN MUSEUM 
JOURNAL 


VOEUME “xXTTT,, 1913 


NEW YORK 


PUBLISHED“ BY THE 
AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY 


1913 


American Museum of Natural History 
Seventy-seventh Street and Central Park West, New York City 


BOARD OF TRUSTEES 


President 
Henry FAIRFIELD OsBORN 
First Vice-President Second Vice-President 
CLEVELAND H. DopGsE J. P. Morcan 
Treasurer Secretary 
CHARLES LANIER ADRIAN ISELIN, JR. 


Tue Mayor or tae City or New Yor«k 
THE COMPTROLLER OF THE CiTy or NEw YorK 
THE PRESIDENT OF THE DEPARTMENT OF PARKS 


ALBERT S. BICKMORE MapiIson GRANT O«gpEN MILLus 

GrorGcE S. BowpboINn Anson W. Harp Percy R. Pyne 
FREDERICK F. BREWSTER ARTHUR CURTISS JAMES WILLIAM ROCKEFELLER 
JoserpH H. CHOATE WALTER B. JAMES JoHn B. TREVOR 
Tuomas DeWitt Curter A. D. Jum“uiarp Fetrx M. WarsBura 
JAMES DovuGLAs Seta Low GrorGE W. WICKERSHAM 


EXECUTIVE OFFICERS 
Director Assistant Secretary 
Freperic A. Lucas GrorGcE H. SHERWOOD 
Assistant Treasurer 
Tue UNITED States Trust Company or New Yor«K 


The Museum is open free to the public on every day in the year. 


The American Museum of Natural History was established in 1869 to promote the 
Natural Sciences and to diffuse a general knowledge of them among the people, and it is in 
cordial coéperation with all similar institutions throughout the world. The Museum 
authorities are dependent upon private subscriptions and the dues from members for pro- 
curing needed additions to the collections and for carrying on explorations in America and 
other parts of the world. The membership fees are, 


‘Anntial Members. = <.cictoe atelormiern oes $ 10 MC On Sania Ss ec eete. ae,o ee $ 500 
Sustaining Members (Annual)..... 25 120 v0) 0s he eRe & ere cc 1000 
hiftewMemberss scatter ees tercie os 100 Associate Benefactors.......... 10,000 


Benefactors (gift or bequest) $50,000 


The Museum Library contains more than 60,000 volumes with a good working 
collection of publications issued by scientific institutions and societies in this country and 
abroad. The library is open to the public for reference daily — Sundays and holidays 
excepted — from 9 a. M. to 5 P. M. 

The Museum Publications are issued in six series: Memoirs, Bulletin, Anthropologt- 
cal Papers, American Museum Journal, Guide Leaflets and Annual Report. Information 
concerning their sale may be obtained at the Museum library. 

Guides for Study of Exhibits are provided on request by the department of public 
education. Teachers wishing to bring classes should write or telephone the department 
for an appointment, specifying the collection to be studied. Lectures to classes may also 
be arranged for. In all cases the best results are obtained with small groups of children. 

Workrooms and Storage Collections may be visited by persons presenting member- 
ship tickets. The storage collections are open to all persons desiring to examine specimens 
for special study. Applications should be made at the information desk. 

The Mitla Restaurant in the east basement is reached by the elevator and is open 
from 12 to 5 on all days except Sundays. Afternoon Tea is served from 2to5. The Mitla 
room is of unusual interest as an exhibition hall being an exact reproduction of temple 
ruins at Mitla, Mexico. 


ILLUSTRATIONS 


African expedition, 304, 306 

Akin, Louis, 112 

Akin paintings, 98, 114, 115, 116 

Albatross, Black, 191, 192; Dance of, 188, 
189; Laysan, 185, 186, 188, 189, 190; 
Spectacled, 259 

Allen, Jerome Lee, 262 

Amethyst crystals, 164 

Ankylosaurus, Quarry where found, 144 

Apache foot race, 130, 131; Indian girl, 
cover (March) 

Archibuteo lagopus sancti-johannis, 21 

Arctic expedition, 4, 9, 12, 16, 17; regions, 
Map of, 52, 54, 57 

Arenaria interpres morinella, 21 

Arikara Indian, 100; medicine fraternity, 
111 

Ascidian, 89 

Asphalt group, 294 

Atures, 354, 355; Rapids of, 353 


Bacteria and disease [Chart], 319 
Banos de Ciego Montero, 227 
Barrens, On the w llow-grown, 4 
Bauria cynops, 346 

Bear skins drying in sun, 18 
Bears, Polar, 19 

Bickmore, Albert S., 202 

Bin for foodstuffs, 68 
Bird-banding, 146, 147 
Blackfish, 248 

Broom, Robert, 334 

Buffalo head, 307 


Camp in Alaska, 17 

Caribou drive, Inuktjuit, 8 
Caribou, Skins of Peary, 237 
Casa de Minoz, 226 

Casa de Suarez, 226 

Caspian terns, 210 

Cavern of Placard, 26 
Centrifugal pump, 228 
Chalcedony-agate bowl, 171 
Chandlar River, Branch of, 17 
Chapman, Frank M., 183 
Cheringani Dorobo, 300, 303 
Chichen Itza, Temple of, 269 
Chita cubs, 305 

Ciona tenella, 89 

Coppermine River, Expedition on the, 12 
Cormorant, Brandt’s, 211 
Cormorant rocks, 210 

Crocker Land expedition, 262 
Crow Indian camp, 129; dance house, 136 
Crystal sphere, 22 

Curtis photographs, 100, 110, 111 


Dance house, Crow Indian, 136 

Dease River, Near mouth of, 10 

Deer Dance, Rio Grande Cafion, 132 

Deming paintings, 102, 104, 106, 107, 108, 
109 


iii 


Dicynodon whaitsi, 343 

Diictodon galeops, 343 

Dimetrodon incisivus, 337 
Disease, How prevented, 320 
Donkeys (African expedition), 301 
Duida, Mount, 350, 359 


Eider, Pacific, Nest of, 21 

Ekblaw, W. Elmer, 180, 262 

Elephant models, 172, 174-177 

Elephant trap, 172 

Emydops minor, 342 

Endothiodon uniseries, 340, 341; whaitsi, 342 
Erosion in Fossil Forest, 313 

Eskimo mountain-sheep hunters, 13 


Fish, One day’s catch of, 9 

Fishing in deep water off New York, 43, 44 

Fly, Biting stable, 230 

Fly, House, 319; Model of, 194, 233; Wing 
of, 232 

Fossil beds, Rancho-la-Brea, 292 

Fossil Forest, 310, 312, 313, 315, 316 

Franklin Bay, On ice of, 16 

Galepus jouberti, 338 ° 

Garnet cameo, 161 ‘4 

Gavia stellata, 20 ~ 

Gaynor, William J., 260 

Giraffe, Herd of, 302 

Grand Cajion, 98 

Green, Fitzhugh, 181, 262 

Guajibo, Rapids of, 357 

Gulls, Black-backed, 
young glaucous, 21 

Gun-bearers of expedition, 298 


146; skua, 252; 


Hake, Large, 44 

Hawks, Young rough-legged, 21 
“‘Hopi Buckskin Man,”’’ 114 
Horticultural exhibit, 372, 375 
Hovey, Edmund O., 262 
‘*How-how,”’ 367 

Hula-hula River, Head of, 13 
Hunt, Harrison J., 262 
‘‘Hunters,’’ The, 106 
Hunting-trip, Return from, 4 


Impalla herd, Tana River, cover (Nov.) 
Inostrancevia alexandri, 344 


Jade bowl, Carved, 162, 163 
Jaguars, Frieze of, 280; Temple of, 268, 271, 
272, 273, 282 
Jatibonico, Entrance to cave, 222; Fissure of, 
223 
Jesup, Morris Ketchum, 2 


Kachina ceremonies, 119, 120, 121 

Kitksan totem poles, 362, 364, 365, 366, 
368, 369 

Kittigaryuit, 7 


lv ILLUSTRATIONS 


Kiva, Pueblo San Cristébal, 69, 71 


Lalakonti ceremony, 133 
Lampreys, Sea, 324, 325 

Larus hyperboreus, 21 

Laysan albatross rookery, 186 
Leopard, African, 301 

Lions, 302, 305 

Loligo pealii, 88 

Loon, Nest of red-throated, 20 


Mackenzie Delta, Eastern branch, 7 

MacMillan, Donald B., 262 

Maipures, 355, 357 

Manabozho, 107 

Maps: 
Aleutian Islands Reservation, 207 
Arctic regions, 52, 54, 57 
Archeological sites, New Mex., 65 
Hawaiian Islands Reservation, 206 
National Bird Reservations, 204 
Stefansson expedition, Proposed route 

of, 54 

Madquiritare Indians, 360; plantations, 360 

Maquiritares, Land of the, 350 

Marine group, 50, 86 

Matausch, Ignaz, 234 

Mexican picture-writing, 32, 33, 35, 36 

Mold-maker, Expert, 266 

Molgula, 89 

Monkey, Colobus, cover (Nov.) 

Morgan, J. Pierpont, 154, 156 

Morgan Collection, Specimens from, 161, 
162, 163, 164, 165, 167, 171, 216, 218, 
219, 220 

Mosquitoes in Colville River Delta, 15 


Natural Bridge, Fossil Forest, 315 
Nautilus shell, 220 

Navajo group, 82, 83, 84, 85 

New York Entomological Society, 46 
Nissequague River, 323, 325 
Nythosaurus larvatus, 346 


Osborn, Henry Fairfield, 262 


Paget, Mount, 247 

Pareiasaurus serridens, 336 

Pearls, Fresh-water, 165 

Pelican Island, Fla., 212-213, cover (May) 

Pelicans, White, 208 

Penguin, King, 254, cover (Oct.); Johnny, 
254 

Petrel, 253 

Petroglyphs, 62, 63, 72 

Piegan sun dance, Willow-bearers for, 110 

Pig, Silver-haired African, 309 

Plains Indian hall, Studies for, 102 

Plovers, Piping, 147 

Poison-hunter, 308 

Potrero Viejo, 76, 77 

Pottery vessels, Pueblo San Cristobal, 69 

‘Procession of the Chiefs,’ 126 

Ptarmigan, Willow, 16 

Public health, Model in dept, of, 196 


Pueblo Colorado, 66, 67; Kotyiti, 75, 78, 81; 
Largo, 79, 80; San Crist6bal, 64, 68, 71, 
Te Thay etl 


Rancho-la-Brea, 290, 292, 293 
Raudal de Sina, 358 

Red Deer River, 138, 139 
Rhinoceros head, 308 
Rock-shelters, 29, 75 

Royal palms near Aguacate, 225 
Rubber camp, Interior of, 358 
Rubellite in quartz crystal, 167 


Sabre-tooth tiger, Restoration of, 296 
‘*Salmon-fishers,’’ The, 134 

Sapphire, Star, 161 

Saurolophus, 140, 141, 142, 143 
Scymnognathus angusticeps, 345 

Sea elephant, 242, 255, 256, 257, 258 
Sea-squirt, 89 

Serpent head, Carved, 271 

Serpent columns, 275, 277; Mold of, 277, 278 
Sesamodon browni, Skull of, 346 

Shag, Blue-eyed, 253 

Shell cameos, 216, 218, 219 

Skeleton, Prehistoric human, 71, 78 
Skua gulls foraging, 252 

Snake dance, 122, 123, 124, 125, 133 
Somateria v-nigra, 21 

‘Song of Victory,’’ 108 

South America, Explorations in, 284 
South Georgia, 243 

Southwest, Country of, 118 

Spanish mission church ruins, 73 
Squid, 88 

Storage cases, 236 

Sunfish, 370 


Tanquary, Maurice.C., 180, 262 

Taylor mural canvas, 134 

Temple of the Jaguars, 268, 271, 272, 282; 
Restoration of, 273 

Temple of Chichen Itza, 269 

Tolman, Fossil camp near, 139 

Totem poles, 362, 364, 365, 366, 368, 369 

Trinidad and Lookout Hill, 226 

Turnstone, Ruddy, 21 


Vagre, Port of Atures, 354 
‘*Vision,’’ The, 109 
Viverrine cat, 309 


Wallace, Alfred Russel, 330, cover (Dec.) 

Walrus, 41, 42; herd, 38, 40 

Wanamaker photographs, 126, 129 

Whale, Cutting in a bowhead, 9 

Whale skeletons, Shores of Cumberland 
Bay, 244 

Whale-slip, Grytviken, 247 

Whaling brig ‘‘Daisy,’’ 248, 250; steamer, 
246 

Whales, Humpback, 246 

Wharf-pile group, 50, 86 

Williams, Point, 7 

Wolf, Restoration of, 297 


INDEX 


Capitals indicate the Name of a Contributor 


Accessions: 
Anthropology, 47, 151, 198, 199, 376 
Ichthyology and Herpetology, 47, 152, 200 
Invertebrate Zodlogy, 48 
Mammalogy and Ornithology, 95, 96 
Mineralogy, 374 
Vertebrate Paleontology, 48, 139, 287 
Akeley, C. E., Work of, 173-178, 326 
Akin, Louis, 48, 95, 113-117 
Albatrosses of Laysan, 185-192 
ALLEN, J. A. Shall the Walrus become 
Extinct? 39—42 
Allen, J. A., 151, 239, 327 
American Anthropological Association, 47, 
152, 374 
American Folk-Lore Society, 374 
American Ornithologists’ Union, 145, 327, 
374 
American Scenic and Historic Preservation 
Society, 326 
Amundsen, Roald, 45, 47 
AnpeErRsON,R.M. Arctic Game Notes, 5—21 
Anderson, R. M., 96, 238 
AnprEws, R. C. Storage of Mammal 
Skins, 235-237 
Andrews, R. C., 96, 198, 199 
Antarctic, Desolate Island of the, 243-259 
Appointments, 48, 96, 150, 151, 199 
Arctic Exploration and the New Stefansson 
Expedition, 51-52; Game Notes, 5—21; 
Ocean, Undiscovered Land in, 57-61 
Artin a Natural History Museum, 99-101 
Asphalt Group of Fossil Skeletons, 291—297; 
pools, 200 
Aztecs, Picture Writing of, 31-37 


Barnes, James, 150 

Bell, J. M., 199 

Bickmore, A. S., 94; Bust of, 238 

Bird-banding in America, 145-147 

Bird Reservations, Our National, 203-214; 
Studies in the Andes, 183-184 

Birds, Collection of local, 199 

Blind, Lectures to the, 374 

Bordon, John, 198 

Brewster, F. F., 94, 285 

Broom, Rosert, South African Fossil 
Reptiles, 335-346 

Broom, Robert, 287 

Brown, Barnum, New Crested Dinosaur, 
139-144; Some Cuban Fossils, 221—228 

Brown Barnum, 152, 286 


Canadian Arctic Expedition, 51—53, 55-56, 
95, 96, 238, 240 

Cave paintings, 151, 199, 376 

CuHapMan, F. M. Bird Studies in the 
Andes, 183-184; Roosevelt Expedition 
to South America, 283-285 

Chapman, F. M., 47, 48, 239, 327 


Cuasz, J. E. Comment on 
relief, 3 

Cuoatsz, J. H. J. Pierpont Morgan, 155 

Cunaves, H. H. Bird-banding in America, 
145-147 

Coles, R. J., 152 

Contents, Table of, 1, 49, 97, 153, 201, 241, 
289, 329 

Crampton, H. E., 287 

Crocker Land Expedition, 148, 238, 263-265, 
348, 349; Personnel of, 179-182 

Crystal Sphere, Mystic, 23-25 

Cuban fossils, 221-228 

Cuyler, T. deW., 94 


Jesup Bas- 


Davis, L. M., 198 

Dean, Basurorp, A Record Sunfish, 370- 
371 

Deming, E. W., The Indian — a Subject for 
Art, 103-111 

Dickerson, M. C., 199, 374 

Ditt, H. R. The Albatrosses of Laysan, 
185-192 

Dinosaur beds, 200 

Dinosaur, A New Crested, 139-144 

Dinosaurs, Preparation of, 149 

Dodge, C. H., 94 


Elephant Group, 173-178 

Elliot, D. G., 238 

Emmons, A. B., 239 

Emmons, G. T., Some Kitksan Totem Poles, 
362-369 

Exhibitions, 83-85, 95, 149, 198, 328, 376 

Expeditions: Africa, 95, 199, 299-309; 
Alberta, 139-144, 152, 286; Arctic, 5— 
21, 51-56, 95, 96, 238, 240; California 
asphalt pools, 96, 200, 291-297; Co- 
lombia, 47, 183-184, 239; Crocker Land, 
148, 179-182, 238, 263-265, 348, 349; 
Cuba, 287, Ecuador, 95, 285; Manitoba, 
288; Nebraska, 152, 287; New Mexico, 
63-81, 152, 239, 286; Orinoco, 351-— 
361; Panama, 149; Passamaquoddy 
Bay, 288; Peru, 285, South Georgia, 47, 
243-259; Southwest, 83, 239; Wyo- 
ming, 152, 286 


Fish exhibition groups, 150 

Fish from Deep Water off New York, 43—44 

Fisher, G. C., 96 

Fisk, D. M., 151 

Fossil Forest of Arizona, 311-316 

Fossil Reptiles, South Afri an, 335-346 

Fossil Vertebrat2s, Museum Expeditions for, 
286-287 

Fraser, James E., 3 


Gaynor, William J., 261 
Gems, Treasure House of, 169-171 
Gifts to the Museum, 152, 199, 288 


vl INDEX. 


Ginglostoma cirratum, 376 

Goddard, P. E., 47, 152, 239 

Granger, Walter, 48, 150, 152, 286, 288 

Gratacap, L. P. The Mystic Crystal 
Sphere, 23-25; Shell Cameos, 215-220; 
A Treasure House of Gems, 169-171 

GREELY, A. W. Stefansson Expedition and 

Other Arctic Explorations, 347-349 

Gregory, W. K., 48, 288 

GRINNELL, G. B. Shall Indian Lore be 
Saved? 135-137 

Groups, 83-85, 91-92, 150, 173-178 


Hard collection of Mexican serapes, 83 

Harris, R. A. Undiscovered Land in the 
Arctic Ocean, 57-61 

Hartman, C. V., 376 

Hetch-Hetchy Valley, 327 

Hopi village group, Model of, 150 

Horticultural Society exhibition, 328 

Hovey, E. O. Personnel of the Crocker 
Land Expedition, 179-182 

Hovey, E. O., 149 

Huntington, A. M., 83, 94 

Huntington, Ellsworth, 327 

Hussaxor, L. Sea Lampreys and their 
Nests, 323-325 


Indian, The — a Subject for Art, 103-111 

Indian delegation, 151 

Indian Lore, Preservation of, 135-137 

Indians: Mandan and Hidatsa, 149; 
mac, 376; Malecite, 150 

Indians of the Southwest, 83-85, 95, 113-128 

Infant Paralysis, 229-235 

Iselin, Adrian, Jr., 94 


Mic- 


James, A. C., 47 

James, W. B., 193, 376 

Jesup Bas-relief, Comment on, 3 
Jesup lectures, 94 

Jesup, Morris K., Portrait of, 3 


Karroo formation, 335-346 

Kearton, Cherry, 150 

Kitksan Totem Poles, 362-369 

Kligler, Israel, 150 

Kunz, G. F. Morgan Collection of Precious 
Stones, 159-168 


La Flesche, Francis, 149 
Lanier, Charles, 94 
Lectures, 94, 95, 328, 376 
Leighton, R. F., 150 
Lighting of Museum, 373 
Linnean Society, 48 
Loeb, Morris, 199 

Lowie, R. H., 47, 48, 152 
Lucas F. A., 48, 1938, 327 
Lutz, F. E., 287 


McCormicx, Howarp, The Artist’s South- 
west, 119-125 

McCormick, Howard, 150 

MacCurpy, G.G. Cultural Proof of Man’s 
Antiquity, 27-30 


. MacMiuian, 


MacCurdy, G. G., 149 
D. B. Report of Crocker 
Land Expedition, 263-265 
Mammal collections, Cataloging, 

Storage of, 235-237 
Man’s Antiquity, Cultural Proof of, 27-30 
Maquiritares’ Land, To the, 351-361 
Martuew, W. D. American Museum Ex- 
peditions for Fossil Vertebrates, 286— 
287; Asphalt Group of Fossil Skeletons, 
291-297 
Matthew, W. D., 48, 96, 200, 288, 374 
287, 


240; 


Members, 45, 93, 94, 148, 198, 238, 326, 
373 

Merritt, G. P. Fossil Forest of Arizona, 
311-316 

Micier, L. E. To the Maquiritares’ Land, 
351-361 


Miller, L. E., 283 

Mills, Ogden, 94 

Miner, R. W. Animals of the Wharf Piles, 
87-90 

Miner, R. W., 193 

Monaco, Prince of, 326 

Morgan, J. Pierpont, 94, 155, 288 

Morgan Collection of Precious Stones, 159- 
168, 169-171, 200, 220; Gifts to the 
American Museum, 157-158; Navajo 
textile collection, 83 

Morgan, T. H., 94 

Moropus, 287 

Mueller, H., 288 

Muourpuy, R. C. A Desolate Island of the 
Antarctic, 243-259 

Murphy, R. C., 47 

Museum Codéperation in the Teaching of 
School Hygiene and Sanitation, 317- 
322 

Museum History, A Page of, 127-128 

Museum notes, 45-48, 93-96, 148-152, 198— 
200, 238-240, 287-288, 326-328, 373- 
376 

Mutchler, A. J., 199 

Mystic Crystal Sphere, 23-25 


National Association of Audubon Societies, 
327 

Netson, N.C. Ruins of Prehistoric New 
Mexico, 63-81 

Nelson, N. C., 47, 150, 152, 328 

New York Aquarium Society Exhibition, 328 

Nicuouts, J. T. Fish from Deep Water off 
New York, 43-44 

Notharctus, 150 


Oetteking, Bruno, 326 

O’Neill, J. O., 96 

Ossorn, H. F. Gifts of Mr. Morgan to the 
American Museum, 157-158; A Great 
Naturalist — Alfred Russel Wallace, 
331-333 

Osborn, H. F., 48, 94, 193, 195, 374 


Palzontological Society, 48 
Patmer, T.S. Our National Bird Reserva- 
tions, 203-214 


INDEX. vil 


Paul, G. A., 150, 376 

Prary, R. E. Arctic Exploration, 51-53 

Peary, R. E., 45, 374 

Pension plan, 94 

Picture Writing of the Aztecs, 31-37 

Primates, Review of the, 238 

Public health, Opening of hall of, 152, 193— 
197 

Publications, Museum 96, 238 

Pueblos of the Southwest, 63-81 


Rainsrorp, W.S. Trackers of the Cherin- 
gani Hills, 299-309 

Rainsford, W.S., 95, 199 

Rhachianectes glaucus, 199 

Rhinoceros, Distribution of, 374 

Richardson, W. B., 95, 285 

Rock-shelter collections, 199 

Roosevelt Expedition to South America, 
283-285 

Ruins of Prehistoric New Mexico, 63-81 

Russ, Edward, 199 


Saurolophus, 139-144 

Scott, G. G., 152 

Schrabisch, Max, 199 

Scientific staff appointments, 48, 96, 150, 
151, 199 

Sea Lampreys and their Nests, 323-325 

Senckenburg Museum, 149 

Shell Cameos, 215-220 

Shufeldt, R. W., 96 

Silliman Lectures, 374 

Skinner, Alanson, 152, 240, 288 

South African Fossil Reptiles, 335-346 

South America, Roosevelt Expedition to, 
283-285 

South Georgia, Expedition to, 243-259 

Southwest, The Artist’s, 119-125; Indians 
of the, 83-85, 95; Pueblos of the, 63-81 

SpinpEn, H. J. Picture Writing of the Az- 
tecs, 31-37 


Spinden, H. J., 47, 152, 239 

Stefansson Expedition, 95, 96, 238, 240: 
and Other Arctic Explorations, 347-349; 
Arctic Exploration and the, 51-63; 
Plans of the, 55-56 

Stefansson, V., 47, 51, 55, 95, 96, 240 

Sunfish, A Record, 370-371 


Teachers’ day, 327; reception, 96 

Temple of the Jaguars, 267-282 

Thomson, Albert, 152, 287 

Tompson, E. H. The Temple of the Jagu- 
ars, 267—282 

Torre, C. de la, 287, 374 

Totem Poles, Kitksan, 362-369 

Trackers of the Cheringani Hills, 299-309 

Trustees annual meeting, 93-94 


Wagner, Rudolf, 327 

Wallace, Alfred Russel, 331-333 

Walrus, Extinction of, 39-42 

Warburg, F. M., 94, 193 

Warner, R. L. Louis Akin, 
Artist, 113-117 

Waterman, T. T., 199 

Whales, 198, 199 

Wharf-pile Group, 87—90, 91-92 

Wharf Piles, Animals of the, 87-90 

Wilson, G. L., 149, 288 

Winstow, C-E. A. An Insect-borne Dis- 
ease — Infant Paralysis, 229-235; Mu- 
seum Codperation in the Teaching of 
Public School Hygiene and Sanitation, 
317-322 

Winslow, C-E. A., 96, 152, 195, 340, 376 

Wissuter, CuarKk. Plans of the Stefansson 
Expedition, 55-56; Page of Museum 
History, 127-128 

Wissler, Clark, 47, 152 


American 


Young, E. F., 47 


Scientific Staff 


DIRECTOR 
Frepreric A. Lucas, Se.D. 


GEOLOGY AND INVERTEBRATE PALHONTOLOGY 


Epmunp Otis Hovey, Ph.D., Curator 
Cuester A. REEps, Ph.D., Assistant Curator 


MINERALOGY 


L. P. Gratacap, A.M., Curator 
GeorGcE F. Kunz, Ph.D., Honorary Curator of Gems 


INVERTEBRATE ZOOLOGY 

Henry E. Crampton, Ph.D., Curator 

Roy W. Miner, A.B., Assistant Curator 

FraNK EH. Lutz, Ph.D., Assistant Curator 

L. P. Gratacap, A.M., Curator of Mollusca 

Joun A. GrossBEcK, Assistant 

A. J. Mutcuusrr, Assistant 
Wr.ram Morton WHEELER, Ph.D., Honorary Curator of Social Insects 
Aaron L. TREADWELL, Ph.D., Honorary Curator of Annulata 
CuarRLES W. Lena, B.S., Honorary Curator of Coleoptera 


ICHTHYOLOGY AND HERPETOLOGY 


BasHrorp Dean, Ph.D., Curator Emeritus 
Louis Hussaxor, Ph.D., Associate Curator of Fishes 
Joun T. Nicuous, A.B., Assistant Curator of Recent Fishes 


Mary Cyntuia Dickerson, B.S., Associate Curator of Herpetology 


MAMMALOGY AND ORNITHOLOGY 


J. A. Auten, Ph.D., Curator 

Frank M. Cuapman, Sce.D., Curator of Ornithology 

Roy C. Anprews, A.M., Assistant Curator of Mammalogy 
W. DeW. Mitter, Assistant Curator of Ornithology 


VERTEBRATE PALHONTOLOGY 


Henry FAIRFIELD Ossorn, Sc.D., LL.D., D.Sc., Curator Emeritus 
W. D. Martrsew, Ph.D., Curator 

Water GRANGER, Associate Curator of Fossil Mammals 

Barnum Brown, A.B., Associate Curator of Fossil Reptiles 
Wituram K. Grecory, Ph.D., Assistant Curator 


ANTHROPOLOGY 


CuarK WIssLEeR, Ph.D., Curator 

Purny E. Gopparp, Ph.D., Associate Curator 
Rosert H. Lowis, Ph.D., Associate Curator 
HERBERT J. SPINDEN, Ph.D., Assistant Curator 
Nets C. Netson, M.L., Assistant Curator 
Cuarutes W. Mean, Assistant Curator 
ALANSON SKINNER, Assistant Curator 


Harwan I. Smita, Honorary Curator of Archeology 


ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY 
Ratpo W. Tower, Ph.D., Curator 


PUBLIC HEALTH 


CHARLES-EpwarpD Amory WINsLow, M.S., Curator 
IsRAEL J. Kuicuer, B.S., Assistant 


WOODS AND FORESTRY 
Mary Cyntaia Dickerson, B.S., Curator 


BOOKS AND PUBLICATIONS 


RautpH W. Tower, Ph.D., Curator 
Ips Ricuarpson Hoop, A.B., Assistant Librarian 


PUBLIC EDUCATION 


AuBert S. Bickmore, Ph.D., LL.D., Curator Emeritus 
Grorce H. SHerwoop, A.M., Curator 

G. Ciypr Fisaer, Ph.D., Assistant Curator 

Aq@nes LAIDLAW VAUGHAN, Assistant 


The American Museum Journal 


Votume XIII JANUARY, 1913 NuMBER 1 


CONTENTS 


Cover, Return from a Hunting Trip, Photograph by Rudolph M. 
Anderson 


Taken on the “ Barrens’ 


’ 


near Langton Bay, Arctic America 


Frontispiece, Memorial Portrait of Morris Ketchum Jesup 


Bronze bas-relief by the sculptor James E. Fraser 
Comment by J. Eastman Chase on the Jesup Bas-relief.............. 3 


Wirchiice a aINeOINOLES «1 osc alate, ee RupouteH M. ANDERSON 5 


Illustrations from photographs by the Author 
A story of the distribution and probable future history of caribou and moose, 
mountain sheep, polar bear and grizzly 


MhesVivstc Cryshal SPMEres ,. Ge). oct. fade Shah L. P. GratacaP 23 


Cultural Proof of Man’s Antiquity........ GEORGE GRANT MacCurpy 27 


With photographs by the Author 
Paleolithic evidence in examples of primitive man’s handiwork in Europe 


Pieture Writing ot the Aztecs: .. 20 .2..%. 2...) 2. HERBERT J. SPINDEN 351 
Shall the Walrus Become Extinct?............. JoEL ASAPH ALLEN 39 
Fish from Deep Water off New York............ JoHN T. NicHots 43 
IY GT SoU Ina Pos 011 Se Oe it Or on eed ey: PRED OP Artes sire onit .. 45 


Mary Oynrtara Dickerson, Editor 


Published monthly from October to May by the American Museum of Natural History. 
Terms: one dollar per year, fifteen cents percopy. Entered as second-class matter January 
12, 1907, at the Post-Office at Boston, Mass., Act of Congress, July 16, 1894. 


Subscriptions should be addressed to the AMERICAN MuseuM JOURNAL, 77th St 
and Central Park West, New York City. 
The Journal is sent free to all members of the Museum, 


The American Museum Journal 


FOR 1913 
FREE TO MEMBERS OF THE MUSEUM 


AN ILLUSTRATED MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO A POPULARIZATION 
OF SCIENCE WITH STRONG EMPHASIS 
ON ITS HUMAN INTEREST 


HE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL takes the reader out into every part 
of the world with great explorers,— with Stefansson who discovered the Es- 
kimo of Coronation Gulf, with Akeley who hunted elephants on the slopes of Mount 
Kenia, with Andrews who pursued whales in the Japan Sea. During 1913 it will 
follow Stefansson again who is going back to the Arctic ice fields; Macmillan who 
leads a party in search of the dimly seen Crocker Land; Lang and Chapin who have 
not yet returned from the Congo expedition in the heart of Africa; Chapman who is 
now on his way to South America for tropical birds; an expedition which leaves soon 
for Alaska to hunt the bowhead whale; another which is already in the South Georgia 
Islands for sea leopards and king penguins; and still others not yet organized. 

The American Museum JOURNAL contains articles by the men who are doing this 
work, who above all others can speak of it authoritatively, as well as by writers such as 
Robert E. Peary, Henry Fairfield Osborn, Theodore Roosevelt, George B. Sudworth 
and others as distinguished, scheduled to appear in the list of contributors for 1913. 

It presents articles of current interest on subjects such as comparison of Arctic 
and Antarctic exploration, Chinese culture in the light of recent history, cultures and 
psychology of the negro races of Africa, conditions at the Pribilof fur-seal rookeries, 
reproduction of the bigtrees of California, the conservation of our forests and of 
the world’s animal life, the problem of polluted river and harbor waters. 

At home in the American Museum, it takes the reader behind the scenes so that 
he may see sculptors and preparators modeling some jungle beast, creating a pano- 
rama of wilderness life or mounting the fossil bones of a prehistoric animal. Most 
important of all it tells of the educational campaign in progress at the Museum and 
the codperation which exists between its work and that of the public schools of New 
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...191 
Secretary, American Museum of Natural History, 
77th Street and Central Park West, New York City 
Ds desire: to: DECamie 2.2 i a Es member of the American Museum of Natural 


History and enclose check for $2.....sceeeeseeeeeeee 


DS res COMERS at RE NT lee CRB ARE ORDA Td, (Ma SRE Oe Ve 


Pally Aidcimesas Syeda ee Seto aia ksi Pode 2 OO cab ke De eee 


[Please write name as you wish it to appear in the Museum's printed lst of members.] 


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sone ‘aig eh 
FREE: Te Re Wes ERA a THE MUSEUM 


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The American Museum Journal 


Vou. XIII JANUARY, 1913 No. 1 


PORTRAIT OF MORRIS KETCHUM JESUP 


COMMENT BY THE’ART CRITIC, MR. J. EASTMAN CHASE, ON A 
BRONZE BAS-RELIEF EXECUTED BY MR. JAMES E. FRASER 


North American woods to the Museum whose interest he did so much 

to promote, the sculptor’s idea was first that it should be in harmony 
with its surroundings and secondly that it should fittingly express Mr. 
Jesup’s interest in what was the object of an absorbing and lifelong devotion. 
All the details of the composition have been carefully considered in whatever 
way they might contribute to unity of thought and action and we can say 
that the result is entirely in keeping with this double conception. 

Mr. Jesup is represented as walking in the woods, clothed as a man would 
be on such an occasion and accompanied by his dog as a silent but sympa- 
thetic companion. The mood is one of pleasurable contemplation. The 
large and easy movement of the figure and the fine intelligence of the face 
convey a vivid and agreeable impression of the character of the man. In 
no more appropriate manner could Morris Ketchum Jesup be represented 


|" making this memorial portrait of the donor of the great collection of 


in an enduring form than walking among the trees which so deeply interested 


him all his life. 
“Loving them all 
Among them he walked as a scholar who reads a book.” 


BY THOSE WHO LOVE THE TREES OF NORTH AMERICA, MORRIS 
KETCHUM JESUP WILL ALWAYS BE GRATEFULLY REMEMBERED! 


Almost the first step taken by Mr. Jesup upon his accession to the 
presidency [of the Museum] was the creation at his own expense of a depart- 
ment having in view a collection of all the woods in the United States... . 

“The formation of the Jesup Collection of North American Woods,” 
writes Mr. Sargent, “was a matter of national importance. ‘The prepara- 
tion of this collection enabled us to study the distribution of the economic 
value of many trees which, before Mr. Jesup’s undertaking, were largely 
unknown. I think it can be said that this collection is the finest representa- 
tion of forest wealth that exists in any country.” 

Through his interest in this collection Mr. Jesup was led to study the 
larger questions connected with forestry, and his energetic advocacy of the 
work of forest preservation was the direct outcome of this interest. “Mr. 
Jesup,” continues Mr. Sargent, “certainly played an important part in the 
early movement for the better care of the North American forests, and by 
those who love trees he will always be gratefully remembered.” 


1Quotations from Morris Ketchum Jesup: A Character Sketch. By William Adams 
Brown. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1910. 
3 


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ARCTIC GAME NOTES! 


DISTRIBUTION OF LARGE GAME ANIMALS IN THE FAR NORTH — 
EXTINCTION OF THE MUSK OX — THE CHANCES FOR SURVI- 
VAL OF MOOSE AND CARIBOU, MOUNTAIN SHEEP, 
POLAR BEAR AND GRIZZLY 


By Rudolph M. Anderson 


Illustrations from photographs by the Author 


HE hunting done by Arctic expeditions, as pointed out by Admiral 
Peary, is almost entirely utilitarian, supplementing the food supply. 
The plan of exploration of the Stefaénsson-Anderson expedition 
entailed living upon the country, and too often the immediate needs of the 
party impelled the use of the rifle where stalking with field glasses and cam- 
era would have been more desirable scientifically. The faunal naturalist 
properly considers it a crime to kill an animal while there remains something 
to be learned of its habits. Deprecating the necessity, we could justify 
such deeds only by the reasoning that justifies acts of necessity in war. 
Wringing sustenance from the Arctic wilderness is war: arms and the man 
continually pitted against the strength, speed or cunning of the wild beast 
backed by the rigors of his chosen habitat, a conflict without truce or 
parley and with no quarter to the vanquished. 

There were compensations however. Living to a large extent upon the 
country made the economic side of the fauna an object of daily research, by 
the natives of our parties as well as by ourselves. As with all nomad hunt- 
ers the one absorbing topic of general interest and discussion was the game of 
the country, its condition and pelage, its abundance, distribution, migra- 
tions and habits — and to people living the carnivorous primitive life the 
game forms a faunal list nearly all-inclusive. It may be remarked in passing 
that a much greater part than is generally supposed of the savage’s lore of 
the animal world, rehearsed around the campfire and to a large extent prac- 
ticed in the field, is founded upon old legends and superstitions accepted 
unquestioningly from former generations, rather than upon personal obser- 
vation. 

The moose is a game animal that is increasing in numbers all through 
the Mackenzie country, according to the opinion of the old residents and 
to data collected by the expedition, and has in recent years noticeably 
extended its range in the Mackenzie delta and to the north and east of Great 
Bear Lake to the very edge of the timber line and beyond. The moose owing 
to its habits cannot be slaughtered wholesale as can the caribou and musk ox, 
and the northern Indians have decreased in numbers at a much more rapid 
rate than their power to kill has improved with modern weapons. 

For the barren ground caribou the story is one of decrease, the same 
everywhere. In nearly every region where a few are now found, thousands 
roamed only a few years ago, and many a former feeding-ground now 


1 Article and photographs copyrighted by Rudolph M. Anderson, 1913. 


a | 


6 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


sees the animals no more. Not many years ago, the coastal plain of Arctic 
Alaska from Point Barrow to the Mackenzie was the pasture of vast herds 
of caribou. Only an occasional scattered band is now seen. As a conse- 
quence many families of Eskimo have been compelled by starvation to move 
out, notably from the Colville River region. The caribou are practically 
extinct around Point Barrow and our party in summer found only a few 
between Cape Halkett and the Colville, a herd of perhaps four hundred in 
the Kuparuk River delta (the only large band seen by anybody in northern 
Alaska that season) and other small bands as far east as Demarcation Point. 
Around the mouth of the Mackenzie the caribou have practically dis- 
appeared although stragglers are occasionally seen on Richard Island and 
in the Eskimo Lakes region. Few are now found on the Cape Bathurst 
peninsula and only small numbers around Langton Bay and Darnley Bay. 
This great diminution of caribou all along the Arctic coast from Cape 
Parry west has mostly occurred within the past twenty years, since the 
advent of whaling ships to the western Arctic. There are places in the 
interior of Alaska which are more favored. On one of the northern 
tributaries of the Yukon in December, I saw as many as one thousand 
in a single herd. 

Farther east also the caribou are more plentiful. Victoria Island pas- 
tures great numbers in summer. ‘These herds cross to the mainland south of 
Victoria Island as soon as Dolphin and Union Strait and Coronation Gulf 
are frozen over in the fall, returning over the ice in April and May. Some 
caribou are also found all summer around Great Bear Lake and the Copper- 
mine River. Large numbers winter on Caribou Point, the large peninsula 
between Dease Bay and McTavish Bay at the eastern end of Great Bear 
Lake. Here on the cold, calm days of midwinter the steam from the massed 
herds often rises like a cloud over the tops of scattering spruce forests. 

The Eskimo of this region have no firearms and kill caribou by driving 
a herd between long rows of rock monuments into an ambush of concealed 
bowmen, or by driving the deer into lakes and spearing them from kayaks. 
On the Barren Grounds around Coronation Gulf these inuktjuit [inuk (man)- 
like] caribou drives are found everywhere. But even here the older people 
say that in their youth caribou were much more abundant. 

These natives live almost entirely upon seal in winter and hunt caribou 
very little at that season. Consequently they do not travel much by sled 
and keep few dogs. With the advent of rifles in the near future, the natives 
who elect to follow the caribou in winter will be obliged to keep two or three 
times as many dogs as at present, feeding them on caribou meat as did the 
Alaskans, with the certainty of a speedy diminution of caribou in this 
region as in northern Alaska. 

The caribou is without question the most important animal of the Arctic. 
Its extinction would be a calamity to the natives. Its skin is an article of 
clothing hardly to be dispensed with, while as a source of food supply we can 


Point Williams, southwest coast of Victoria Island on Dolphin and Union Strait. The sea 
cliffs are about 125 feet high here, and hundreds of short-billed gulls (Larus brachyrhynchus) with a 
few glaucous gulls (Larus hyperboreus) were nesting among little niches and ledges in the face of the 
rocks 


Whaleboat sailing up the eastern branch of the Mackenzie delta. The delta is more than a 
hundred miles wide and has thousands of islands with a labyrinth of intersecting channels. One 


of our whaleboats navigated three times through parts of the delta and along much of the north 
coast of Alaska 


Kittigaryuit, on the eastern side of the Mackenzie delta, opposite the southeastern side of Richard 
Island. This was formerly the largest settlement of the Mackenzie Eskimo, and the surrounding 
hills are covered with house ruins and burial heaps. The spring of 1910 was spent in this locality 7 


Inuktjuit caribou drive on north side of Dismal Lake near the Narrows. Little 
monuments of rock, or blocks of turf, are set up in series, often extending for miles and con- 
verging at some natural ambush. On the Barren Grounds in late spring, the Eskimo some- 
times carry blocks of snow to make white monuments for the same purpose 


truthfully say that there are many vast sections of the Canadian northland 
which could with difficulty even be explored without relying upon the herds 
of barren ground caribou. 

The hunting of the barren ground caribou as it is practiced by white men 
and Eskimo who use firearms is in theory a very simple matter. The prime 
requisites are unlimited patience and much hard work. The field glass or 
telescope is almost as necessary as the rifle, since the caribou should be dis- 
covered at a distance. The band is spied out from the highest knolls or 
elevations and if the country is rough enough to afford even a little cover, 
the approach is comparatively easy by hunting up the wind, as the caribou 
do not see very far. On a broad, flat tundra plain where there is no cover, 
obviously the proper thing to do is to wait for the caribou to browse slowly 
along and move on to more favorable ground for stalking. During the short 
days of winter this is often impossible and under any circumstances is trying 
to the patience. The reputed superiority of the Eskimo hunter over his 
white confrére seems to be only in the former’s willingness to spend unlimited 
time in approaching his quarry. 

Our collection embraces caribou from the Chandlar River and various 
points on the north coast of Alaska, Franklin Bay, Horton River, Great 
Bear Lake, Coppermine River, Coronation Gulf and Victoria Island. 

As to musk oxen, the last around Franklin Bay were killed by Eskimo 
hunting for the whaling ships about fourteen years ago, and some ten years 
ago an Eskimo sled party got twenty-four musk oxen many days’ journey 
8 


One day’s catch of fish (mostly salmon trout), near the foothills of Endicott Mountains, Hula-hula 
River, Alaska. Dr. Anderson with three Eskimo and seventeen dogs was frozen in with two boats, 
near Barter Island early in September, 1908, and had to make an overland hunt to a series of fishing 
pools which remain open most of the winter 


“Cutting-in’’ a bowhead whale. The dead animal is lying alongside the ship and rolls in the 
water as the -tlubber strips are torn away. This species of whale has exceedingly thick blubber to 
protect it from the intense cold of the Arctic waters 9 


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ARCTIC GAME NOTES 11 


southeast of Darnley Bay. The Indians have within the past four or five 
years practically exterminated the species around the east end of Great Bear 
Lake, and from all the information we could get from the Coronation Gulf 
Eskimo, musk oxen are seldom if ever seen near the mainland coast less than 
seventy-five miles east of the mouth of the Coppermine River. The musk 
oxen are so readily killed, often to the last animal in a herd, that the species 
cannot hold its-own against even the most primitive weapons, and the 
advent of modern rifles means speedy extermination. 

In Arctic Alaska, the white mountain sheep (Ovis dalli) is undoubtedly 
fast diminishing in numbers. ‘The sheep probably never ranged east of the 
Mackenzie although they are said to be fairly common in the mountains on 
the west side of the river from Fort Norman to the west side of the delta. 
The Endicott Mountains or that branch of the northern Rockies which runs 
no1thwest from the western edge of the Mackenzie delta, form a divide ten 
or fifteen miles from the coast west of Herschel Island and seventy-five or 
one hundred miles from the coast at the Colville, the largest river flowing 
into the Arctic in northern Alaska. Sheep were formerly quite numerous 
at the heads of nearly all the rivers on the Arctic side of the divide, at least 
as far west as the Colville. It is probable that until comparatively recent 
times, before whaling ships began to winter at Herschel Island in 1889, the 
sheep were not much hunted in this region. The caribou were larger, more 
abundant and more easily taken. The gradual extermination of the cari- 
bou in northwestern Alaska, combined with other causes, has for many 
years sent family after family of Eskimo from the rivers in the Kotzebue 
Sound region across to the Colville River, at the same time that many 
Colville Eskimo have gradually moved eastward, occupying one mountain 
river valley after another until the sheep became too scarce to support 
them. Many of these Eskimo then gave up sheep-hunting and moved 
into the Mackenzie delta or to Point Barrow. 

In my sheep-hunting expedition of October, 1908, along the Hula-hula 
River, which has a course of about forty-five miles in the mountains, I met 
two Eskimo families of five each and hunted with them until December. 
We crossed the divide over a pass not known to have been crossed by a white 
man before and spent the midwinter season hunting caribou on the south 
side of the mountains along a branch of the Chandlar River, a tributary of 
the Yukon. Returning in February we spent several weeks more with the 
sheep-hunters on the north slope. Sheep seemed to be much more common 
on the north side of the divide than on the south side, although the south side 
is an uninhabited wilderness. 

One of the Hula-hula sheep-hunters, Kunagnanna, had in this small 
river valley killed thirty or thirty-five sheep from June to August, 1908, 
and thirty-seven from September, 1908 to May, 1909, subsisting with his 
whole family on sheep. He had come originally from'the head of Kotzebue 


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14 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


Sound and after helping to thin out the sheep in three of the valleys east 
of the Colville, had made his last stand on the Hula-hula. 

Although the numbers of sheep have been greatly reduced, I believe that 
a few are still found near the head of every river from the Colville to the 
Mackenzie. The natives hunt strictly for meat and skins, and the habitat 
of the sheep prevents the hunters from picking up this animal as a side line 
to other game hunting or trapping. When a local influx of hunters cuts 
down the number of sheep beyond a certain limit in some mountain valley, 
pressure of hunger soon causes the people to move out. Word is passed 
along that a certain river is starvation country and an automatic close season 
affords the sheep a chance to recuperate. 

The barren ground bear or grizzly is of interest as a rare species in collec- 
tions. This bear, known to the Eskimo as aklak from Bering Sea to Corona- 
tion Gulf, is perhaps referable to several races. In northern Alaska it does 
not appear to be very common in the mountains and seldom if ever comes out 
on the coastal plains. The inland Eskimo occasionally kill specimens and 
often use the skin for a tent door. In the Mackenzie delta, tracks are often 
seen, but the bears are seldom killed owing to the impracticability of hunting 
them through the dense underbrush on the islands insummer. The Eskimo, 
who are usually undaunted under any circumstances by nannuk, the polar 
bear, speak with much greater respect of the pugnacity of aklak and are 
much more cautious about attacking him. Many a time I have been 
warned against shooting at a barren ground bear unless from above — asa 
wounded bear has greater difficulty in charging uphill. So far as our ex- 
perience goes however, the barren ground bear is an inoffensive and wary 
brute preferring to put as much ground as possible between himself and 
human society. I saw but one unwounded grizzly come toward men, but 
as he did not have their scent his advance was perhaps out of mere curiosity. 
As he was on the uninhabited coast between Cape Lyon and Dolphin and 
Union Strait and he had probably never seen human beings before, this 
inference seems plausible. 

We found the center of greatest abundance of the barren ground bears 
in the country around Langton Bay and on Horton River not more than 
twenty or thirty miles south from Langton Bay. In this region our party 
killed about twenty specimens, most of which were obtained on our dog- 
packing expeditions in early fall. The barren ground bears go into hiberna- 
tion about the first week of October and come out again early in April while 
the weather is still very cold. They seem to be nearly as fat on their first 
emergence from their long sleep as in the fall but speedily lose weight and 
early summer specimens are invariably poor. This is natural from the 
nature of their food which is to a large extent vegetable. Although the bear 
country is conspicuously furrowed in many places by the unearthed burrows 
of Arctic spermophiles, I believe the bear’s search is more for the little mam- 


ARCTIC GAME NOTES 15 


mal’s stores of roots than for the animal itself. The bear’s stomach is 
much more apt to contain masu roots (Polygonum Bistorta) than flesh. 
A bear must needs be very active to catch enough spermophiles above ground 
in spring and early 
summer, and if car- 
casses are not to be 
found the bears evi- 
dently suffer from 
hunger at this season 
when they can neither 
dig roots for them- 
selves in the frozen 
ground nor dig out 
the spermophiles and 
their stores. 

One specimen was 
killed by an Eskimo 
of our party on Dease 
River east of Great 
Bear Lake, after the 
bear had gorged him- 
self on a cache of 
caribou meat. A few 
were met with in the 
Coppermine country, 
but through the Cor- 
onation Gulf region 
they are apparently 
rare. The Eskimo 
say that the species 
is not found on Vic- 
toria Island. Fortu- 
nately for the brown 
bear’s longevity, there 
is little market for 
his skin and neither 
Eskimo nor Indians 
make a special effort 
to hunt him, the speci- 
mens obtained in gen- 


eral being picked up Mosquitos in the Colville River delta, Arctic Alaska, 

: about 71° N. Lat., July 5, 1909. The Eskimo, Natkusiak, 
on summer caribou had stood still for a minute or two and refrained from 
hunts. brushing them off while loading our umiak 


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18 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


The polar bear is of less interest — a circumpolar cosmopolitan, although 
seldom found far from the sea ice. In winter these bears are apt to appear 
anywhere along the coast, but in summer their occurrence depends largely 
upon the proximity of pack ice. Around Cape Parry in August we saw 
within two days fourteen bears roaming about the small rocky islands, evi- 
dently marooned when the ice left the beach. 

The polar bears seem to be most abundant around Cape Parry and the 
southern end of Banks Island, very rarely passing through Dolphin and 
Union Strait into Coronation Gulf. They are often seen swimming far out 
at sea. While whaling about twenty miles off Cape Bathurst (the nearest 
land) and about five miles from the nearest large ice mass, we saw a polar 
bear which paddled along quite unconcernedly until he winded the ship, 
then veered away, heading out toward the ice pack. 

As a field for short trips of investigation, the region east of Point Barrow 
can hardly be recommended, as after four years in the country, the only 
available means of exit last summer was a fortunate chance to ship for a 
three months’ cruise on a whaling ship. And certainly we should not fail 
to mention the bowhead whale as the greatest game animal of the Arctic. 
The whaling industry which a few years ago kept a fleet employed in the 
western Arctic, once wintering fifteen ships at Herschel Island, and which 
directly or indirectly was responsible for the advent of civilization along 
these shores, with its concomitant effects upon population and fauna, has 
now declined to casual vessels which combine whaling with trading. The 
bowheads are far from being extinct however, and the single ship and 
schooner which whaled east of Point Barrow during the past summer 


Bear skins drying in the sun at Baillie Island for the Museum collection 


Polar bears swimming, near Cape Parry 


captured twelve whales apiece, but the claims of some whalers that the 
numbers of whales have not been greatly reduced by the last quarter cen- 
tury of chase, seems extravagant. 

The limits of this paper prevent extended discussion of the haunts and 
habits of the smaller Arctic birds. From September to May practically the 
only game bird is the ptarmigan. From northwestern Alaska to Franklin 
Bay, I found both the willow and rock ptarmigan present in almost every 
locality, while in the Coronation Gulf region only the rock ptarmigan was 
found. Immense numbers appear on the coast in early spring although 
some are found the year round. As these birds are spread so universally 
over a vast territory and people are so few, a comparatively small number 
are killed. A few are snared and netted but unless other food fails, ptarmigan 
are usually considered too small to waste ammunition on. The trapping 
of mammals by the natives is beneficial to the birds, destroying a large num- 
ber of predatory foxes and the like, which in summer feed extensively on 
birds, their nests and eggs. 

In the region around Kittigaryuit near Sir J. Richardson’s Point En- 
counter on the eastern side of the Mackenzie delta, there is more bird shoot- 
ing than among any other Eskimo I met. In 1910 the whole population for 
about a month depended almost entirely on the white-fronted, Hutchins’s, 
black brant and snow geese, as well as on numbers of whistling swans. 
Ducks were considered too small and were not often molested. An inter- 
esting experience here one June was a long sled trip over the ice of the 
Mackenzie estuary to a locally famous brant rookery. Only a few miles 
south of this typically Arctic zone, up inside the tree line south of Richard 
Island, the birds are of the Canadian zone — robins, yellow warblers and 


thrushes being common. 
19 


20 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


The black brant commonly nests around fresh water lakes and tundra 
marshes from western Alaska as far east as the Duke of York Archipelago 
in Coronation Gulf. Rookeries of the king and Pacific eider are found 
locally at various points along the Arctic coast of Alaska, near Cape Brown, 
at the mouth of the Horton River in Franklin Bay, Langton Bay and Cape 
Parry, and a few were found on the coast of southwestern Victoria Island. 
At Cape Bathurst thousands of male eiders passed westward nearly every 
day in July, first the king eiders and then the Pacific eiders. The females 
and young follow west later in the summer. These immense numbers of 
eiders must breed on Banks Island, Victoria Island or the northern 
islands, as the rookeries on the mainland west of Coronation Gulf do not 
seem sufficient to account for the tremendous numbers flying west after the 
breeding season. 

One spring season was spent around the Colville delta in Alaska. There 
was here perhaps a greater variety of species than at most Arctic points 
visited but no great numbers of individuals. Mosquitos were as abundant 
here as usval in the north, perhaps not more so than in the Mackenzie delta, 
but as we passed the 
summer without mos- 
quito netting my recol- 
) | ; ay, lection is more vivid. 
se I shall never forget the 
clouds of ravenous mos- 
quitos which hovered 
over me as I tried to 
photograph the nest of 
a ruddy turnstone on a 
flat delta island. Still 
another spring was oc- 
cupied on the south 
side of Coronation Gulf 
where however an un- 
usually small number of 
species tarried. Most 
of the birds which 
reached this section of 
the Arctic coast kept 
on going to Victoria 
Island or the numerous 
archipelagoes north of 


us. The last spring 


Nest of red-throated loon (Gavia stellata), at edge of a found me on the Cape 


little tundra lake near Coronation Gulf, Northwest 
hWesiitees, (ome Bathurst peninsula on 


the western shores of Franklin 
Bay. The lowlands extending 
from the Smoking Mountains 
west to Liverpool Bay are a 
favorite resort for snow geese, 
black brant, golden plover and 
the three species of jaegers, 
with ptarmigan and smaller 
birds. 

While of course in many 
districts the aboriginal popula- 
tion has been much reduced, 
I think it is true that the 
people who remain do not 
hunt birds so much as before 
the days of modern weapons. 
The native of the present day 
must make long summer jour- 
neys to trading posts or ships, 
and many famous rookeries 
which were annually resorted 
to in the egg season, and other 
places where the people gath- 
ered later in the season to club 
or spear the flightless molting 
waterfowl, are nowadays sel- 
dom visited. The natives of 
the north taking them all 
together can hardly be held 
responsible for any notable 
diminution of bird life in the 
country, as they may for the 
mammal life. The mammals 
are only to a slight degree 
migratory, while most of the 
bird species are but short 
summer transients in the north 
and must run the gauntlet of 
countless fusillades in more 
southern latitudes from Sep- 
tember to May and in some 
instances through an extent of 
the Western Hemisphere from 
Canada to Patagonia. 


Young glaucous 
gull (Larus hyper- 
borews) hiding 
among rocks. Is- 
land in Simpson 
Bay, Victoria 
Island 


Ruddy turn- 
stone (Arenaria 


inter pres mori-= 
nella) and nest. 
Colville River 


delta, northern 
Alaska 


Nest of Pacific 
eider (Somateria 
v-nigra). Simpson 
Bay, Victoria Is- 
land 


Young rough- 
legged hawks (Ar- 
chibuteo lagopus 
sancti-johannss). 
Herschel Island, 
Yukon Territory. 
Canada 


A SPHERE OF FLAWLESS QUARTZ 


A silver-mounted sphere of quartz, water pure, of beautiful symmetry and more than 
four inches in diameter, recently presented to the Museum by Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan. 

The largest known crystal sphere measures seven inches in diameter. It is in the Green 
Vault at Dresden 


THE MYSTIC CRYSTAL SPHERE 
By L. P. Gratacap 


MOST refined perception, developed perhaps often along narrow 
and technical lines distinguishes the connoisseur who is besides pre- 
éminently a collector. The recognition of the bold or delicate 
treatment of intaglio or relievo in onyx cutting, whether of antique or of 
the equally prized modern workmanship (Pistrucci, Girometti, Natter, 
Pichler) is acquired only by long observation and comparison, unless 
indeed the enviable power of discernment is bestowed by nature. Among 
gem stones, quality, color, limpidity, are probably sooner learned in their 
best development, though here again it is surprising how almost intuitional 
seems the skill of the gem expert in separating cut stones according to their 
species and their values in a miscellaneous group. The guiding features 
of natural form and association are absent, nevertheless the acute judge 
separates the different minerals, deceptively enhanced in their beauty by 
their cut, with amazing certainty. Very serious blunders occur, but they 
are really infrequent with those accustomed through a long experience to 
handle gems, and to detect the contrasted phases in the same mineral. 

Quartz is a protean mineral assuming in nature a remarkable number of 
aspects but never attaining except in its hydrated and softer condition as 
opal, significant gem value, unless indeed the more beautiful amethysts 
are given this coveted rank. And yet quartz of the purest quality attains 
a very unusual value, when it justifies the ancient identification of its quali- 
ties with ice and when this perfection of texture and stainless purity are 
brought by the cutter to their highest development to the eye, as in the 
“crystal sphere.” 

Of course the cameo contrived from the hard and many colored onyx 
possesses little commercial value apart from the talent or genius of the 
artist who shapes his exquisite images. But the quartz that meets the 
exacting requirements of the connoisseur in the formation of the crystal 
sphere which he so jealously prizes, must be flawless, and this immaculate 
state in masses large enough to yield the larger quartz balls is not so com- 
monly encountered. In 1886 Tiffany and Company received a mass of rock 
crystal weighing fifty-one pounds, part of an original crystal which Dr. G. F. 
Kunz estimated might have weighed three hundred pounds, from which an 
almost perfect ball four and one-half to five inches in diameter could have 
been cut. This extraordinary fragment came from Ash County, North 
Carolina, and in its vicinity occurred two crystals, one of which weighed 
two hundred and eighty-five pounds. The island of Madagascar furnishes 
quartz in rolled masses, sometimes weighing a hundred or more pounds, and 
these reappear in China or Japan in those wonderful spheres which fascinate 
not only the oriental collector but also his western competitor, and which 
by a crude perversion of their beauty, assist the impostor to read fortunes 


and predict the future. 
23 


24 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


One of these beautiful objects has recently been added to the gem col- 
lection through the munificence of Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan. It is water pure, 
414 inches in diameter, and of almost ideal symmetry. The “crystal ball” 
has been regarded for centuries with a singular veneration reflected to-day 
in those curious hallucinations which serve the cupidity of wizard and seer. 
But amongst the Orientals its peculiar fascination has exercised a predomi- 
nant sway. Crystal balls are prized among the precious objects of the col- 
lector’s cabinet, and it is with the most exacting and fastidious care that the 
buyer examines his prospective purchase as he turns it round and round 
in his microscopic search for some flaw, feather, cloud, stain, inclusion, 
irregularity, which would diminish its incomparable purity. When his 
patient and minute examination has convinced him of its freedom from de- 
fects he is willing to pay generously for its possession. 

The preparation of these spheres with the Japanese or Chinese formerly 
consumed much time and as Dr. Kunz has said, “skill, patience and heredi- 
tary pride made up for any lack of labor-saving tools.”” The masses, at 
first rudely rounded into globular forms by chipping with small steel ham- 
mers, were subsequently ground down to an even surface with powdered 
garnet or emery, in cylindrical short troughs of iron, like “graters.” The 
last transforming polish which transfigures the dull surface into a lustrous 
mirror is imparted by rubbing with bamboo and with the hand dipped in 
rouge. When finished the resplendent object is ready for its mounting, 
usually upon bronze waves where it is borne like a congealed drop of the 
water’s spray. 

Modern economy of labor and mechanical device have shortened the 
laborious process of the eastern workman and the pieces of quartz are placed 
in semicircular grooves in huge grindstones where they are held until the 
contour coincides with the rounded sides of the revolving mold. Water is 
liberally used as the friction heats the crystal, the sudden application of 
moisture almost invariably developing cracks however. 

Polishing is effected on a wooden wheel with tripoli or on a leather buff 
with tripoli or hematite. This_mechanical operation eliminates the indi- 
vidual skill of the workman and while it would seem to diminish the esthetic 
interest of the product, it immensely accelerates the work and obviously 
insures its geometrical perfection. 

The crystal ball has become an enviable feature in all collections of 
beautiful mineral artifacts, and the Oriental finds his market extended over 
the whole world of dilettants and experts. In the Green Vault at Dresden 
there is the largest and most perfect crystal sphere known, weighing some 
fifteen pounds and measuring nearly or quite seven inches indiameter. The 
great value of the larger sphere arises from the rarity of the quartz masses 
of desirable quality for their creation. In Japan the islands of Niphon and 
Fujiyama yield superior material and fragments have beer uncovered in 
the great gravel beds —in ancient stream beds. Frequently serviceable 


MYSTIC CRYSTAL SPHERE 25 


masses have been impaired by the jolts or blows accompanying their trans- 
portation, which produce funnel-shaped flaws that may extend further and 
hopelessly ruin the integrity of the mineral’s texture. 

In the ancient river channels of California, dislodged crystals in confused 
association have been found as at Mokelumne Hill, Calaveras County; some 
of sufficient size to yield crystal spheres of respectable dimensions and mixed 
with river drift, sand, clay and with scattered smaller crystals, but whose 
origin is unknown. Fabulous stories come down to us of the size of quartz 
(Crystallus) masses, as that of Mohammed Ben Mansur who alludes to a 
merchant of Mauritania, having a basin “made of two pieces of crystal so 
large that four men could sit in it at once.” (King.) 

Looking at this attractive invention of Art, the story of Vidius Pollio 
comes to one’s mind, how he ordered a boy who had broken a crystal to be 
thrown into his lamprey pond, and how Augustus punished him by com- 
manding all vases of the kind to be destroyed in his presence, an arbitrary 
act that must have sent the coldest kinds of shivers up the backs of self- 
indulgent connoisseurs. In the days of the Former Empire the wealthy 
wore rings of quartz and ladies carried balls of crystal in their hands as a 
solace and a protection during summer heats. King quotes from the Greek: 

Now courts the breeze with peacock feathers fanned, 
And now with ball of crystal cools her hand. 

But the crystal ball has engendered the strange delusions of prophecy 
and clairvoyance, a strange tale of credulity and superstition, not always 
even by scientific writers regarded too scornfully. Crystal vision has a 
very ancient history. It was wide-spread in the Orient, and the Assyrians, 
Hebrews, Greeks and Romans practiced it. The topic is a strange and 
stimulating one taken in its connection with existence among savage or 
aboriginal cultures, and studied also on the side of its psychological signifi- 
eance. Who has not heard of the famous and erudite Doctor Dee? 

Dr. Daniel G. Brinton in a paper on the folklore of Yucatan quoting a 
Spanish observer Garcia, writes that the wise men among the natives prac- 
ticed a sort of divination through the use of a rock crystal and that it had an 
influence on the crops. Such crystals have been found buried in the ancient 
mounds of Arkansas, North Carolina and elsewhere, and it has been sug- 
gested that they appealed in some way to the Indians and may have pos- 
sessed a talismanic virtue in their eyes. 

So prolific of suggestion and so knit in with civilized and historic associa- 
tions is the simple text of this, our “ Mystic Crystal Sphere,” that its treat- 
ment could be indefinitely expanded. And when we think of the far more 
beautiful things which this same quartz, this “congealed breath of the 
White Dragon”’ has yielded under the sculpturing hands of artists, and still 
further recall its numerous other phases as onyx, amethyst and opal, this 
universal mineral becomes one of the most interesting of inorganic products. 


CAVERN OF PLACARD (CHARENTE) 


Especially rich in Solutréan industry, yielding the finest paleeolithic examples of the art 
of chipping flint. These are lance points shaped like a laurel leaf, also willow-leaf points 
with a single lateral notch at the base 


26 


CULTURAL PROOF OF MAN’S ANTIQUITY 


THE STORY AS TOLD BY PALAZOLITHIC EVIDENCE IN EUROPE 


By George Grant MacCurdy 
P \HE antiquity of man is based on two general classes of evidence — 


human skeletal remains and examples of man’s handiwork. Either 

class alone if properly dated is sufficient to prove man’s antiquity. 
When both kinds of evidence are present and agree, as they do in Europe, 
man’s antiquity is firmly established. 

The record shows that man’s cultural development has, like his physical 
evolution, been a slow process. Pre-history is not measured by dynasties, 
but rather by synchronizing industrial epochs and fauna with geologic 
periods and with glacial and interglacial epochs. The stone age is com- 
monly divided into three great periods: eolithic, paleolithic and neolithic, 
each of these being subdivided into various epochs. 

The range of the eolithic in the chronological scale is still a debatable 
question, and will probably continue so to be for an indefinite time owing 
to the difficulties in the way of drawing a hard and fast line between that 
which is natural and that which is intentional. No matter from what 
geological horizon they come, eoliths are alike in that they represent a com- 
mon culture level. They are natural flakes, chips or nodules of flint that 
bear traces of utilization and of having been fitted to the hand; they are 
often retouched also in order to increase utility or lengthen its period. The 
artifact nature of the eoliths from the Upper Miocene (or Lower Pliocene) 
of Cantal, France, is still an open question. 

The lower horizons of the palzeolithic are characterized by the gradual 
evolution of the amygdaloid or almond-shaped type of stone implement. 
There are four of these horizons based on stratigraphy as well as on the 
evolution of the river-drift type of implement. With the Strépyan at the 
base of the Middle Quaternary appear the rudimentary coup de poing and 
the poniard. In the Chellean epoch the classical almond-shaped implement 
becomes well defined, although the sears left by chipping the two faces are 
still large and somewhat irregular with a portion of the nodular crust gen- 
erally visible at the base. That which distinguishes the Acheulian from the 
Chellean is the regularity and fineness of the chipping, which is so skillfully 
done as practically to eliminate the zigzag nature of the edge formed by the 
meeting of the two chipped faces. 

At the close of the Acheulian epoch there is evidence that man began to 
occupy caverns and rock-shelters, so that industrial remains are no longer 
confined to valley deposits. Each class of finds confirms and supplements 
the other although there is no direct stratigraphic relation between the 
superimposed floor deposits of the caves and those of the river valleys. The 
upper palolithic series embraces four epochs: Mousterian, Aurignacian, 
Solutréan, and Magdalenian, to which may be added the Azilian or epoch 

27 


28 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


of transition. In respect to the stone art, flint flakes that are chipped only 
on one side dominate throughout. The typical Mousterian implements 
are the broad flake, one lateral margin of which is employed as a scraper, 
and the pointed flake. The first traces of a bone industry also make their 
appearance in the Mousterian. The ushering in of the Aurignacian epoch 
is marked by important changes. The dominant flint implements include 
bladelike flakes with one end chipped obliquely and the back worked down 
for its entire length, also flakes chipped along both margins, producing in 
some instances hourglass forms. Bone scrapers terminating in an oblique 
edge and bone points with cleft base occur. By far the most important 
contribution of the Aurignacians was in the line of sculpture, engraving 
and painting. 

The finest paleolithic examples of the art of chipping flint are the Solu- 
tréan lance points in the shape of a laurel leaf, and the willow-leaf points 
with a single lateral notch at the base. Bone, ivory and reindeer horn were 
largely employed by the Magdalenian races, who invented the barbed 
harpoon and the spearthrower. The first harpoons had only a single row 
of lateral barbs, short at first. These gradually lengthened producing a 
new type. In the upper Magdalenian deposits, appear the harpoons with 
two rows of barbs and an enlargement near the base to make secure the 
attachment of the cord. 

The arts of engraving and fresco reached their culmination in the Magda- 
lenian. On the other hand the flint industry of this epoch is largely confined 
to slender bladelike flakes, some retouched at one end to form a duck-bill 
scraper, others beveled at the end and destined for graving tools. Evidence 
that the races of the upper palolithic buried their dead continues to accu- 
mulate. During the month of August, 1912, I took part in the disinterment 
of two Mousterian skeletons (children), at La Ferrassie (Dordogne). The 
bodies were placed in pits that had been sunk into Acheulian deposits. 

The art of the caverns and rock-shelters consists of sculpture (in the 
round, and high and low relief), engraving and painting. These all had 
their beginnings in the Aurignacian epoch. The first discoveries were made 
in the floor deposits: statuettes carved in ivory and stone; engravings on 
stone, bone and reindeer horn; spear throwers of ivory and reindeer horn 
artistically decorated with figures of game animals, incised as well as in the 
round; and engraved batons of reindeer or stag horn. 

Cave art during the closing epochs of the paleolithic is seen at its best 
in mural engraving and fresco, so many examples of which have come to light 
in Spain and southern France. These escaped the notice of archeologists. 
for many years after the art products of the floor deposits had become well 
known. The first discovery was made at Altamira, in the province of 
Santander, Spain. One day in 1879, Marcellino de Sautuola was digging 
for relics in the floor of this cavern. His daughter who had accompanied 


CULTURAL PROOF OF MAN’S ANTIQUITY 29 


him, chanced to look up at the low ceiling and there beheld polychrome 
figures of strange animals. Her cry of excitement brought the father, 
who seemed to divine from the beginning the true meaning of these 
remarkable figures. The next year Sautuola published a paper on the 
subject. The paleontologist, Harlé of Bordeaux, came to see but went 
away unconvinced. Sautuola’s paper, received with skepticism by the 
scientific world, was forthwith forgotten. In 1895 Riviére found engraved 
figures on the cavern walls of La Mouthe (Dordogne). The next year 
Daleau found similar figures at Pair-non-Pair (Gironde), which was fol- 
lowed in turn by still more important discoveries at Les Combarelles and 
Font-de-Gaume (Dordogne), the latter containing polychrome figures 


Rock shelter of La Ferrassie (Dordogne), extending from the roadway to a point corre- 
sponding to the extreme right in the picture. Only a small portion has been excavated 


exactly like those at Altamira. Sautuola died without knowing that the 
authenticity of the Altamira frescoes had been confirmed by similar ones in 
France. There is a street named in his honor at Santander but his most 
enduring monument will be Altamira. 

The cumulative evidence in favor of the authenticity of these palzeolithic 
wall engravings and frescoes is now overwhelming. Briefly it is this: The 
animals represented belong to species either extinct or no longer to be found 
in those regions. The floor deposits are of palzeolithic age and these contain 
figures in the round, in relief or engraved, representing the same fauna and 
in the same style of art. Some of the mural decorations were covered by 
accumulated floor deposits of palolithic age (Pair-non-Pair, La Gréze, 


30 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


Teyjat, Laussel). Caverns that were accidentally sealed at the close of the 
Quaternary or Pleistocene by falls of earth and rock, when opened, are 
found to contain these parietal works of art (Altamira, La Mouthe, Bernifal, 
Gargas, Niaux). In caverns that have been open continuously from the 
paleolithic to the present time, if there are any parietal figures, there are 
always vestiges of palolithic culture in the floor deposits (Font-de-Gaume, 
Venta de la Perra, Covalanas, La Haza, Salitré, Castillo, Santian, La Pasiega 
Hornos de la Pena, etc.). On the other hand when vestiges of neolithic 
culture only are present, there is never any parietal art. 

The list of caverns and rock-shelters with paleolithic mural decorations 
increases from year to year. One of the most notable additions to the list 
during 1912 is the cavern of Tuc d’Audoubert, near St. Girons (Ariége), 
discovered on July 20th by Count Begouen and his three sons. The present 
entrance is by a subterranean stream bed, that of the Volp. By means of 
an improvised canoe Count Begouen and his sons ascended the stream bed 
for a hundred meters; by walking and bridging they continued for a like 
distance, when they found a small opening which they entered by means of a 
short ladder and which led into a great gallery hung with myriads of cream 
white stalactites and stalagmites. Traversing this they entered other 
corridors leading to other galleries equally beautiful. In a corridor they 
found engraved figures of various animals. One gallery was reached only 
after the breaking away of large pillars of stalagmite. In it they found 
skeletal remains of the cave bear, from the jaws of which all the canine teeth 
had been extracted to serve as ornaments or otherwise. A few flints and 
a perforated tooth (Bovide) were picked up from the cavern floor. Im- 
prints of human feet (bare) were seen in some places superimposed on foot- 
prints and claw marks of the cave bear. At the very end of this gallery and 
nearly a kilometer from the entrance to the series of galleries traversed, 
Count Begouen found two figures of the bison modeled in clay — a female 
followed by a male, sixty-one and sixty-three centimeters in length respec- 
tively. They seemed to rise from the sloping earth out of which they were 
fashioned. Near were human heel prints suggestive of a ceremonial dance. 

This was evidently a paleolithic shrine and symbolizes, as does the whole 
remarkable manifestation of cave art, the passing of a culture whose food 
supply was based on hunting and fishing. This art was called forth in 
response to an economic need and incidentally to satisfy an vsthetic sense. 
As the population increased — and no one who has visited the Vézére valley 
for example can fail to be impressed by the evidence pointing to a relatively 
dense population — the game decreased in ratio. In order to readjust the 
supply to the demand recourse was had to magic. The animal figures are 
votive offerings for success in the chase and for the multiplication of game. 
In the end magic was bound to fail. It was superseded by the domestica- 
tion of animals and plants which appeared with a new culture, the neolithic. 


THE PICTURE WRITING OF THE AZTECS 


WORDS ARE REBUSES MADE UP OF CONVENTIONALIZED 
PICTURES AS SYLLABLES 


By Herbert J. Spinden 


HE Aztecs of Mexico City wrote books upon durable paper made 

from the matted fiber of the maguey afterwards covered with a 

coating of fine lime. These books, commonly called codices, con- 

sist of long strips folded screen-wise and usually have writing on both sides. 

Among the Maya of Yucatan, book-making probably reached a higher 

plane than among the Aztecs but the interpretation of symbols is much 

more difficult. In both regions, the Spanish priests were instrumental in 

destroying large quantities of the native documents in their attempts to 
stamp out pagan beliefs. 

In the valley of Mexico however, the art of writing was able to maintain 
itself for some time after the conquest. There are a number of Aztec books 
or codices which contain European writing in explanation of the Mexican 
figures and these have been of great value in the study of other documents. 
The list of pre-Cortesian manuscripts is small, but there are many which 
date from soon after the coming of the Spaniards and these preserve in 
greater or lesser purity the original style of writing. 

As regards the subject matter, codices contain historical and religious 
information of several sorts, which is imparted in a system fundamentally 
different from ours. The Mexicans did not have an alphabet or even a 
formal syllabary. Their method of writing is in part pictographic and in 
part hieroglyphic. 

Aztec writing can best be compared to the so-called “rebus puzzles” 
which consist largely of pictured puns upon whole or partial words. The 
hieroglyphs are practically limited to place names, personal names, month 
and day names, numbers and principal objects of commerce. There are no 
word pictures for adverbs, adjectives or conjunctions, and no representa- 
tions of abstract ideas. Such hieroglyphs for example as the Chinese 
symbol for “ danger,’’ which represents a child standing on the edge of a cliff, 
are unknown. Some of the signs are in no degree realistic and have a 
definite meaning by common consent alone, while others are abbreviated 
and conventionalized pictures of objects. Thus the head of a god or of an 
animal frequently appears as the sign of the whole. But the most important 
and interesting word signs are, as before remarked, rebuses in which separate 
syllables or groups of syllables are represented by more or less conventiona- 
lized pictures. The whole word picture is then made up of syllable pictures 
which indicate phonetically the word as a whole but which may have no 


definite relationship to the meaning of the word. 
31 


Lob RETNA EN NETS INR EVERETTE IR HI wr a tener 
SoUIYU popsOd0d OU OALY UAAPTIYO Wuosesdor AUT YOIYA seanSy owWOg ‘sayeyd oy} 01 azo peoy oy} 07 poyoRe 


dAjZor0ry AQ poyeorpul Ay[ensn ore s[TeNprlArpur oy} Jo someu oy, “punods ay} UO Ja2sUH JO S[OO}S UO AIS SIOYIO “SUIQIVUT YIIM patoAod 
seuoiy} JO sareyo uo JIS SuOSded Sul~na 10 [edtoutd oyy, “juejd AonSseu oy} wo epeut Joded oATVU UO SUIMVIpP B WOT poydeisojoyd 


SNVOIXASW LNSZIONV SHL 40 35Y1 ATIWNVA 


Mice i 


a from atl, water te from tetl, stone cal from calli, house tepe from tepetl, mountain 


“IP v @ 


tlach from _ tlachtli, 
court pan from pantli, banner itz from itzili, obsidian _—_ tlan from tlantli, teeth 


quiauh from quiauh- 


miz from miztli, cloud apan from apantli, canal uitl, rain quauh from quauitl, tree 


tenan from tenamitl, wall tla from {lalli, ground or mi from petla from petlail, matting 
milli, cultivated ground 


ae Te 
Ee ro: & 


The figures on this page give certain elements that enter into many 
words. The phonetic value is in the root of the name and this root is usually 
obtained by cutting off the endings tl, li, tli or in. In each case the phonetic 
symbol is a conventionalized picture of the original word. 

Examples are also figured of compounds of two or more of these pictures 
with a greater or less degree of running together of details. One hieroglyph 
translated Atepec, is composed of a (water) and tepe (mountain). The 
ending c or co which means in, on or by, is unrepresented by a phonetic 
element in this and most other words where it occurs. Similarly Caltepec 
is composed of the two pictures, cal (house) and tepe (mountain). Itztepec 
and Pantepee are made in the same manner with substitution for the first 
syllable of itz (obsidian) and pan (flag). Actually the last example means 
“on top of the mountain” rather than “flag mountain,” the pun for once 
playing a useful part. 

The next three place names show the constant element tlan. As a 
matter of fact this syllable is a postposition meaning near, under or between, 
but it is regularly pictured by two conventionalized teeth. Itztlan, Miatlan, 
and Pctlatlan present the simplest sort of combination picture elements. 


33 


34 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


In one hieroglyph we see the combination of a (water) and tenan (wall) to 
make Atenanco. ‘Two others have as the fundamental part a plan of the 
ball court in which the ancient Mexicans played a sort of basket ball. The 
object of the game was to throw the ball through a ring in the center of the 
wall on each side. Tlatlachco shows this ball court, tlach laid out in a field, 
tla, and Tlachquiauhco finds it covered with raindrops, quiauh. 

The combinations may be more puzzling through the running together 
of details. Tecalco is a house ornamented with the characteristic markings 
of conventionalized stones and thus has fe plus cal as the essential parts. 
To go a step farther in Tepetlacalco we see a house, cal, made of mats, 
petla, and with stones, te, beneath and on top. 

The hieroglyph of the ancient Aztec capital, translates Tenochtitlan. 
The essential parts are a stone, te, out of which grows a cactus, noch. The 
last two syllables are unrepresented. The ti is only a connecting syllable 
but the tlan might easily have been given by pictured teeth. This hieroglyph 
forms a part of the Mexican coat of arms. The eagle which is commonly 
perched above the cactus has a mythological rather than a phonetic import. 
Popocatepetl is represented by a smoking mountain. The ancient name of 
Orizaba was Ahuilizapan (by the joyful water). The hieroglyph represents 
a man disporting in a stream, apan. . 

Besides the signs that have been given there are many others representing 
animals, reptiles, birds, plants, etc. The serpent coatl appears in many place 
names such as Coatepec and Coacalco, with the definite phonetic value coa. 

There are other hieroglyphs that contain a greater element of imagina- 
tion and belong to the type known as ideagraphs. The word-ending 
nahuac really signifies “near”? but it resembles the word Nahua which 
means “clear sounding”’ and was taken by the Aztecs and related tribes as a 
general name for themselves. Now in the word Cuauhnahuac (the modern 
Cuernavaca) the first half of the word is represented by a tree, quauh. In 
the trunk of this tree is a mouth and out of the mouth issues a blue word in 
the shape of a scroll. Thus we have “clear speech” figured. In Acolna- 
huac it is an amputated arm that has the mouth and utters the clear sound. 
The same idea is amplified in the place name Cuicatlan, “the place of sing- 
ing.’ A human face is shown with open mouth and in front of this is a 
decorated scroll that represents song. 

Color and position may play a part in the hieroglyph. In Acocozpan 
the first and last syllable are represented phonetically by the stream apan. 
The cocoz which means very yellow is represented by the color of the water 
in this pictured stream. Itzmiquilpan has its first syllable represented by 
an obsidian knife seen at the top of the hieroglyph. The second syllable mz 
comes from the strip of cultivated ground at the bottom; growing out of this 
ground is a green curved plant which represents the syllable quil, the name 
quilitl being given to one of the herbs eaten by the Aztecs. Finally the 


5 oA 


Atepec Caltepec Itztepec Pantepec 


MEXICAN PLACE NAMES SHOWING SIMPLEST COMBINATION OF DISTINCT 
PHONETIC ELEMENTS. THE ENDING C (OR CO) WHICH SIGNIFIES IN, 
ON OR BY IS USUALLY UNREPRESENTED IN HIEROGLYPHS 


Gf =~ 


Miztlan Itztlan Petlatlan 


THREE NAMES OF MEXICAN LOCALITIES. SIMPLE COMBINATIONS OF 
PICTURE ELEMENTS 


Tlatlacheo Tlachquiauhco Tecalco Tepetlacaleo 
A ball court laid outin A ball court covered with A house of stones A house made of 


a field . rain mats and stones 


PLACE NAMES SHOWING A CLOSE ASSOCIATION OF PHONETIC ELEMENTS 


Wy 
aay 
Tenochtitlan Popocatepetl Ahuilizapan 
Te (stone) out of which grows “A smoking mountain” “By the joyful water.” 
noch (cactus). Last two syllables The snowy summit is indicated Ancient name for Orizaba 


not represented 
HIEROGLYPHS OF WELL-KNOWN PLACES IN MEXICO 


35 


Quauhnahuac Acolnahuae Cuicatlan 
Nahua or “clear speech” repre- “Clear speech” again, coming from “The place of singing.” Song 
sented by a simple scroll coming the upper arm, acol represente by a decorated scroll 


from a tree, quauh 


MEXICAN IDEAGRAPHS SHOWING REPRESENTATIONS OF SPEECH AND SONG 
d 


G | 
ae leeee 


Acocozpan Itzmiquilpan 
First and last syllable apan (stream). Cocoz On top, itz (obsidian); at bottom, mi (cultivated 
means very yellow, shown by color of water ground); quil (plant); pan (over), represented by 
in the stream position of obsidian over plant 


HIEROGLYPHS IN WHICH ELEMENTS OF COLOR AND POSITION ARE BROUGHT 
IN WITH PHONETIC VALUE 


NY, 7 = 
KG 
Huitzilihuitl Chimalpopoca Axayacatl 
Huitzil (humming bird), Chimal (shield), popoca (smoking) A (water) zayacatl (face) 


ihuitl (feather) 


b 


[From left to right] 1. 20 cocoa beans; 2. 400 bowls of corn mush; 3. A sack of gold; 4. A roll of paper; 


5. Chalchihuitl or sacred green stone 
NUMBERS AND ARTICLES OF COMMERCE 


HIEROGLYPHS OF MEXICAN RULERS 


WSS 


36 


AZTEC PICTURE WRITING 37 


ending pan which means over, is expressed by the superposition of the 
obsidian knife over the plant. 

The hieroglyphs representing personal names are not especially different 
from those representing places. It might be interesting to examine the 
names of two or three of the Aztec kings. The second, third and sixth 
kings of Tenochtitlan of Mexico City were Huitzilihuitl (1396-1417), 
Chimalpopoca (1417-1427), and Axayacatl (1469-1482). The hieroglyph 
of the first is the head of a humming bird, huitzilin, with a feather, ihuitl, 
in its mouth. That of the next ruler is a picture of a smoking shield as the 
name signifies. The last name is that of a fly that lives on the lake. The 
translation of the name is “the face of the water.” The hieroglyph rep- 
resents a human face with a stream of water running down over it. 

The day and month signs of the Aztec calendar are well known. For the 
most part they are heads of animals and birds. The signs that signify 
numbers are not very numerous. The common articles of commerce are 
represented by symbols sometimes realistic, sometimes not. The sign for 
gold occurs in many documents as does that which means chalchihuitl, the 
sacred green stone. 

Several of the Aztec documents dealing with migrations and conquests 
of the Aztecs resemble old-fashioned maps, the sequence of events being 
indicated by a line of footprints leading from one place or scene of action to 
another. ‘The places or towns in these documents are represented by hiero- 
glyphs and often the character of the country is indicated by pictures of 
typical vegetation such as maguey plants for the highlands and palms for 
the lowlands. The symbol of the beginning day of the year in which took 
place the foundation of the town — or whatever event is intended to be 
recorded — is usually placed beside the hieroglyph or picture of the place 
orevent. A hieroglyph with a spear thrust into it signifies conquest. 

Genealogical records resembling our family trees were also in use, as may 
be seen from an example in the American Museum. In nearly all cases 
a hieroglyph that represents the name of the individual is placed above 
him. Other common records had to do with the tribute paid in by vari- 
ous towns and districts to Mexico City. The so-called “Tribute Roll” 
of Montezuma is a record of the cities and towns that were under the sway of 
the Aztecs when the Spaniards arrived on the scene. In this book are shown 
not only the place name hieroglyphs of the conquered peoples but also the 
sorts of tributes and the amounts collected. 

The codices dealing with religious matters are more largely pictographic 
than are the historical records. Ceremonies such as sacrifices are repre- 
sented by realistic pictures. The so-called “Tonalamatl” is one of the most 
important things represented in the religious codices. This is a sacred 
period of 260 days, the various subdivisions of which are under the rule of 
particular gods. 


A walrus herd on a floating ice cake. Eskimo hunters on a neighboring ice cake 
shoot the walruses one by one as the heads are lifted. The report of the rifle causes no 
alarm among the herd perhaps because walruses are accustomed to similar sounds made 
continually by the ice 


Great herds of females with their young drift northward in the ice fields. It is at 
this time that hunters, both Eskimo and white men, carry on the wholesale slaughter. The 
laws of Siberia and the United States prohibit the killing of the walrus within three miles 
of land — where the walrus is seldom if ever found. Because of this inadequacy of the 
law, the species is certain to be exterminated within a very few years 


38 


SHALL THE WALRUS BECOME EXTINCT? 
By Joel Asaph Allen 


HE walruses are doomed to early extinction like many other large 
mammals, hunted as game or for their commercial products. This 
will be true unless provision for their protection be soon made by 

international agreement, prohibiting their slaughter for commercial purposes 
or for trophies, and making the sale of such products illegal. As the accom- 
plishment of such an agreement and provision for its strict enforcement will 
naturally require a considerable period even in this age of conservation 
sentiment, the matter cannot be taken up too soon nor too earnestly to 
secure the preservation of the remnants of the former vast herds of one of 
the most specialized and interesting types of mammal life. 

The following practical facts supplied by Mr. Beverly B. Dobbs of 
Nome, Alaska, eye witness for many years of the slaughter of the walrus, 
are of peculiar value as an incentive to action. 


Walruses are greatly prized for their heavy pelts and ivory by the Eskimo of 
northwestern Alaska and northeastern Siberia. As the time approaches for the 
giving birth to the young, the females withdraw from the general herd and drift along 
toward the Arctic Ocean with the great ice fields, which each year begin movement 
toward the Pole about May 15. Until the middle of September great herds of these 
females with their young are found in these waters. I have often seen as many as 
ten thousand within three miles of our boat and it is during this time that the hunters, 
both Eskimo and white men, conduct a wholesale slaughter of the animals. During 
the hunting season the Eskimo keep their large skin boats or umiaks on stanchions 
out near the edge of the shore ice. Watchers are stationed at advantageous points 
where they may quickly detect a herd on a passing ice cake and give the signal to the 
village. Immediately upon receipt of the good news all available men rush to the 
boats, mount them on runners made of inflated sealskin pokes and push out over the 
rough ice into the open water. 

Keeping the walrus to the windward the Eskimo in the boat stealthily approach 
to within a few hundred feet of the herd, which may contain five or six hundred 
animals. Then climbing on a neighboring ice floe, they lie low and patiently wait 
until some walrus raises its head above the others. When this occurs a shot rings 
out, the head drops and the Eskimo settle down to await the appearance of another 
unprotected head. In this way an entire herd may be annihilated without one 
animal leaving the ice floe. Strange though it may seem, the loud report of the rifle 
causes no alarm among the herd. Thisis possibly due to the fact that fissures forming 
in the ice often produce sounds similar to the report of a gun and the walrus being 
accustomed to these sounds pays no heed to them. Should the animals get a scent 
of the hunters, they would plunge headlong into the open sea and in the scramble 
only a few would be captured. A bullet lodged in the body of the walrus instead of 
the head will not prevent escape into the water. 

Another method of hunting, which is employed mainly by the American native, 
is conducted along more hazardous lines: Fifteen or twenty natives armed with 


39 


40) THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


repeating rifles creep up to a herd, then make a rush, firing right and left. This 
method is considered unsatisfactory, as many of the animals get away even if they 
are shot or plunge off into the open water where they sink. Should they be harpooned 
before sinking, they must be hauled back on the ice field again before they can be 
skinned, and considering the fact that one walrus weighs from fifteen hundred to six 
thousand pounds, getting it on the ice again is no small undertaking. 

After as many of a herd as possible have been killed, the walruses are placed in a 
row ready for skinning. The ivory tusks are removed and saved, also the tail and 
flippers, the latter when cooked being considered a delicacy by the natives. The 
hide is used for making boats, towlines, lashing for sleds and soles for boots. In 
Siberia it is used also for the roof and sides of the summer igloo. Both the hide and 


’ 
: 
E 


Hey 


On receipt of the good news of a passing walrus herd on an ice floe, the men mount the 
boats on runners made of inflated sealskin pokes and push out over the ice into the water 


ivory are often exchanged to white traders for tobacco, coffee, tea, sugar, ammunition 
and guns, which the natives have learned to use and appreciate. 

Trading companies employ the natives to hunt for them, paying them with the 
tails, flippers and half of the ivory. Raw walrus hide brings ten cents per pound in 
the Pacific coast markets and is used in the manufacture of trunks, purses, suitcases 
and also in the making of buffing wheels used in the rough finish of cutlery. The 
ivory is worth from sixty-five cents to one dollar per pound. 

Both Siberia and the United States have laws which are supposed to protect the 
walrus, but these laws are of little value. They prohibit the killing of walrus within 
three miles of land while as a matter of fact, the animals are rarely or never found that 
close to land. Owing to the inadequacy of these laws and the almost universal use 
of modern firearms among both Eskimo and white hunters, extermination of the 
walrus will be accomplished in a few years unless steps are immediately taken for 
effective protection. 


The walruses constitute 
one of the three families of 
aquatic carnivorous mam- 
mals, the pinnipeds or fin- 
footed animals, the other 
two families being the 
common seals and_ the 
eared seals. The wal- 
ruses are similar in limb 
structure to the eared 
seals, that is the fur seals 


and sea lions, but have From the middle of the sixteenth century until the 


middle of the nineteenth, the walrus has figured in 
2 5 many fantastic ways of which this armor-wrapped 
are very different in the creature with swinish head is a typical example 


form of the skull modi- 
fied to afford support for the upper canine teeth, which as enormously 
developed tusks, form the most striking feature of these ponderous beasts. 

Unlike fur seals, sea lions and the true seals, the walruses are at present 
restricted to coasts and islands situated north of the Arctic circle; in fact 
they never ranged very far southward. About the middle of the six- 
teenth century the Atlantic walrus was found as far south as Nova Scotia, 
but during the last half of the eighteenth century they were practically 
exterminated from the various islands to which they resorted in great 
numbers in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and from Sable Island off the southern 
coast of Nova Scotia where thousands were killed annually for their oil, 
hides and tusks. For the last hundred years only stragglers have been 
seen as far south as the Labrador coast. 

On the other side of the Atlantic the walrus in early times ranged south 
as far as the coast of Scotland and the Hebrides, but apparently not in 
large numbers, their main resort being the islands north of Norway especially 
Bear Island, Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla, where the same war of extermi- 
nation has been carried on for more than three centuries till now only a 
few are left of the former great herds. 

Fossil remains of the 
Atlantic walrus have been 
found on the coasts of 
New Jersey, Virginia and 
South Carolina, showing 
that in glacial times it 
must have ranged much 
farther south than the 
points where it was 


found by the early ex- The first truthful figure of walrus, by Gerard, 1613, 

lorers of North America. and the only one for the next 250 years, untilin 1853 a 
BP i living walrus was brought to London and the truth of 
Remains of walruses, or the Gerard picture was proved 


much thicker bodies and 


41 


42 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


their immediate ancestors, have been found also in England and Belgium. 

The Pacific walrus is restricted to a comparatively small extent of the 
northern coasts of Asia and North America and the islands of the Bering 
Sea, its northern limit being the unbroken polar ice. This species formerly 
resorted to the Pribilof, St. Matthew and St. Lawrence islands, and to 
portions of the coast of Alaska, but their numbers have been greatly re- 
duced during the last half century. It is stated on the highest authority 
that for several years preceding 1870 about one hundred thousand pounds 
of walrus ivory was taken annually, involving a destruction of not less than 
six thousand walruses. Later statistics show that for many years following 
this date the catch of walrus in Bering Sea was not far from ten to twelve 
thousand annually. The wholesale slaughter continued until the herds 
became so reduced in numbers that their pursuit was commercially un- 
profitable. This destruction was additional to the number usually killed 
by the natives to supply their domestic needs and for barter. 

The walruses hold a picturesque place in the annals of natural history, 
being in early days the subject of many marvelous tales and fantastic 
pictorial representations. Even the tusks, which were always described 
as a prominent feature, were in some instances placed in the lower jaw and 
directed upward, and the hind feet were turned backward as in the common 
seal instead of forward. The early systematists assigned them to the class 
of fishes, with the whales and manatees, in accordance with their aquatic 
mode of life. Although left in the class of fishes by Linné as late as 1758, 
they were recog- 
nized by various 
writers as true 
mammals long be- 
fore the whales and 
manatees were dis- 
sociated from fish- 
es; but they were 
still assigned to 
most unnatural re- 
lationships. -Vari- 
ous writers as late 
as the close of the 
eighteenth century 
were unaware that 
the walrus had hind 
feet; and close re- 
lationship to the 
Carnivora was not 
fully recognized till toward the middle of the nineteenth century. 


From the Museum's walrus group 


FISH FROM DEEP WATER OFF NEW YORK 


By John T. Nichols 


HE “steam trawl” introduces a method of capture for salt water 
fishes which, though much in vogue in Europe, is only just gaining 
a foothold on our Atlantic coast. By the new method, small 
powertul steamers drag huge nets over the bottom in deep water, sometimes 
catching several thousand pounds of fish in one net. Six of these trawlers 
are now operating out of Boston but none came regularly to the New York 
market previous to November of the past year. Fortunately the Museum’s 
department of fishes was at that time invited by the Heroine Company to 
send a representative on the first New York trip of such a trawler. 

The primary object was to locate near the New York City market good 
fishing grounds for cod, haddock or other valuable bottom fishes. Although 
in this, the initial experiment was a failure, the exceptional opportunity to 
investigate deep waters brought to light interesting forms — and especially 
was material of value secured for the Museum. For example many smooth 
scallops (Pecten magellanicus) were brought to the surface fifty miles south- 
east of New York in 
twenty to thirty fath- 
oms of water, and be- 
tween the valves of 
some of them a single 
small hake was found, 
as has sometimes been 
previously reported by 
naturalists. It would 
be interesting to know 
if this fish customarily 
takes refuge within the 
shell of the mollusk. 

Further ‘southward 
and eastward in sixty to 
eighty-five fathoms on 
the edge of the conti- 
nental shelf, many deep 
water fish were taken. 
The tile-fish was there in 
small numbers; bright 
red, deep-water gur- 


2 After the net has been dragging over the sea bottom, the 
nards (Peristedion) were ends, equipped with heavy wood and iron ‘‘doors,”’ are 


common. One of the drawn up by machinery, one to either end of the boat, and 
the laborious task commences of getting the center of the 

latter mounted and net containing the fish aboard the steamer 
43 


placed in the systematic 
fish collection is a very 
showy specimen, but it 
should be remembered 
that in its natural en- 
vironment there are so 
few red rays left in the 
sunlight which pene- 
trates the mass of blue- 
green water, that the 
red color of the fish 
‘annot show. 

In latitude 39° 39’ 
north and longitude 72° 
07’ west, Zenopsis, a lit- 
tle-known deep-water 
relative of the European 
“John Dory,” was 
found. When a cast 
of Zenopsis is placed on 
exhibition, a direct com- 


parison with the Eu- 


A large hake from the catch. The fish from the net are 


all dumped in a pile on the steamer’s deck, to be dexter- ropean fish can be made. 
ously sorted with pitch forks, cleaned and tossed below, In the same locality 
where they are immediately buried in ground ice so that : 

they will reach the market in good condition was taken a single spec- 


imen of the small rare 
shark Catulus retifer, so-named from the delicate netlike color pattern on its 
back and sides. Two flounders, Paralichthys oblongus and Limanda ferru- 
ginea, previously not contained in our collection, also proved to be common 
in deep water within fifty miles of New York. 

Observations of no less interest were made on other commoner fish also. 
The Carolina sea robin and the fluke which abound in our bays in summer 
were found scattered in the, deep water off shore, indicating that with 
colder weather they migrate into the depths. We caught a single alewife 
along the Long Island shore. This species of herring with other similar 
fishes formerly ascended our fresh water streams to spawn in incredible 
numbers, which have gradually decreased on account of the damming 
and pollution of coastwise streams. A number of years ago Professor 
Baird attributed the decrease of cod which has gone on off the New 
dngland coast, not to over-fishing but to decrease in these smaller fishes 
which used to fill the waters adjacent to the streams where they spawned 
throughout a great part of the year and which formed an important 
factor in the cod’s food supply. 

The facts gleaned on this short trip with the steam trawl point out the 
importance of a thorough study of our local fishes, which it is hoped there 


will soon be opportunity to undertake. 
44 


MUSEUM NOTES 


Since the last issue of the JourRNAL the following persons have been elected to 
membership in the Museum: 

Patron, Mr. CuarkK LomBarp RING; 

Fellow, Miss Carouine L. MorGan; 

Life Members: Mrs. Wr1LL1AM ARMSTRONG, Mrs. GrEorcE B. Case, Mrs. Her- 
BERT Parsons, Mrs. Wi~iiAM Doueias SLOANE, Mrs. CorNELIUS ZABRISKIE, 
Dr. WiuuiAM T. Hornapay and Messrs. VINcENT Astor, JULES 8S. BAacHE, EpGAR 
Dea, Cuares L. FREER, and B. F. PanKey; 

Sustaining Members: Mrs. J. Henry Dick, Mrs. James Doucuas, Mrs. FRANK 
M. Lupron, Mrs. Beuutan S. OppenHEIM, Mrs. CorRNELIUS VANDERBILT and 
Messrs. Henry BENDHEIM, ConraD Husert, Jutrus Kayser, and Orro Maron; 

Annual Members: Countess De LaucreR-VILLARS, Mrs. Emma B. ANDREWS, 
Mrs. S. Resp AntHony, Mrs. J. Hutt Brownine, Mrs. Leorpotp CanHn, Mrs. 
Jost E. Cuaves, Mrs. A. W. Coueate, Mrs. J. DANNENBERG, Mrs. Matruew B. 
Du Bors, Mrs. W. N. Frew, Mrs. ALBERT GALLATIN, Mrs. M. Gouprrank, Mrs. 
Watter S. Gurnee, Mrs. Leigh Hunt, Mrs. BrapisH Jonnson, Mrs. Epwarp 
Kinc, Mrs. Paut LicuTeNsTEIN, Mrs. Francis Newton, Mrs. C. H. NicuHo.s, 
Mrs. M. Taytor Pyne, Mrs. Z. VAN RAatte, Mrs. T. Doucuas Rosinson, Mrs. 
Sotomon Stern, Mrs. WiLuiAM Strauss, Mrs. CHARLES APPLETON TERRY, MRs. 
J. Metcatre Tuomas, Miss 8. Gracr Fraser, Miss Ciara C. FuLier, Miss 
IsaABELLA C. Kinc, Miss ExvizaApetH McLaneg, Miss C. E. Mason, Miss Juuia 
Rytz, Miss Fanny A. Smiru, Miss Exiza A. THorRNE, Miss JOSEPHINE WISNER, 
Gen. Tasker H. Buss, Hon. Irving Lenman, Rev. WitiiamM M. Fincxe, Dr. 
Epwin Berr, Dr. Wituiam A. Downss, Dr. J. G. Futon, Dr. W. Travis Grp, 
Dr. AuFrED F. Hess, Dr. F. K. Houuister, Dr. E. L. Keyes, Dr. Hiram N. 
VINEBERG, Dr. Isaac Wert and Messrs. Bensamin ADAMS, ABRAHAM W. Ast, A. 
Vicror Barnes, Witu1amM M. Barnum, LLEWLLYN Barry, JEREMIAH BEALL, 
Martin Beck, Hamizvron Bextit, ABRAHAM Bisur, Hrram C. BLOOMINGDALE, 
Howarp S. Borpren, DanreL RicHarps Brapiey, A. BRESLAUER, RupoupH E. 
Briinnow, M. N. Buckner, JONATHAN BULKLEY, WILLIAM BurNuHAM, ERNEST T, 
Carter, Casar Cone, Witiuiam Coverty, Paut Dana, Grorce 8. Davis, E. 
Mora Davison, FREDERICK P. DELAFIELD, LymMAN DevaNno, HENRY R. DIEDEL, 
Joun A. Drx, Gustav Fatx, Witiiam C. Frercuson, Gustav J. FLEISCHMANN, 
Macomps G. Foster, Haroutp Fow er, JosepH 8. Frank, D. J. FRANKEL, ARTHUR 
G. FREELAND, VicToR FRIEDLANDER, LEON GoTTHEIL, ALBERT Z. GRAY, FREDERIC 
D. Grimxt, THomas C. Hatt, Epowarp HamMMERSLOUGH, SAMUEL HAMMERSLOUGH, 
Seymour E. Heymann, Lyman N. Hine, Frep HirscuHorn, F. H. HirscHuanp, 
Josepy Honic, Lewis Isetin, Doucuas Witson JoHNSoN, DeLancy Kane, HENRY 
M. Keiru, Roxtanp S. KursHeept, Emit Loms, Max Meyer, Morris MILER, 
Wiuuiam Monur, Rosert E. Noutker, Davin B. OapEn, HENRY OLLESHEIMER, 
Junius Parker, Cuartes A. Puatrr, Datuas B. Pratt, D. H. McAuprin PYLE, 
Grorce W. Rossins, BEVERLEY R. Roprnson, Francis Rocers, M. Roos, ALDEN 
Sampson, Evanper B. Scuitry, R. E. Smwon, THomas SNELL, ABRAHAM STEIN, 
Leonarp Stern, J. Ernest STerRN, ALBERT StTIEGLITz, HERBERT N. STRAUS, 
SaMvUEL Strauss, JULES TuRcAS, StiamunD ULiMaN, J. MANSON VALENTINE, EpwIN 
J. Water, R. L. Warner, Cuartes WeINBeRG, Max WELINSKY, MAURICE 
WertHerm, CHARLES A. WIMPFHEIMER, and Epmonp E. WISsE. 


Ar a recent meeting of the executive committee, Captain Roald Amundsen and 
Admiral Robert E. Peary were elected honorary fellows of the American Museum 
of Natural History in recognition of their great contributions to the science of 


geography. 
45 


AIOIST]T [RANIVNT JO WiNESsNA[ UVOWOUTY oY} Ul SJOesUT [BIO] JO UOTJIaT[OH 94} WO AUP xIO AA 
ALJIOOS IVOIDOIONOLNA MYOA MAN SHL AO SHAEWAWN 


MUSEUM NOTES 47 


Dr. CLark WIssLeR and Dr. Ropert H. Lowie of the department of anthro- 
pology attended the meetings of the American Anthropological Association at Cleve- 
land, December 30 to January 3. President J. Walter Fewkes of the affiliated 
Anthropological Association being absent, Dr. Wissler presided at the meetings. 
Dr. Lowie read a paper on the “‘Ceremonies of the Eastern Sioux.’’ Of the Museum 
staff, Dr. Herbert J. Spinden and Mr. Nels C. Nelson were elected to the council of 
the American Anthropological Association, and Dr. Lowie was made associate 
editor of the American Anthropologist and editor-in-chief of Current Anthropological 
Literature. Dr. P. E. Goddard was elected a member of the committee on a uniform 
alphabet for recording Indian language. 


Mr. FRANK M. CuaApmMaN sailed January 8, on the steamship ‘‘Zacapa”’ of the 
United Fruit Company, in charge of an expedition to Colombia. He was accom- 
panied by Mr. Louis Agassiz Fuertes as artist, and by Messrs. George K. Cherrie, 
formerly of the Brooklyn Museum, Paul G. Howes of New Haven, Connecticut, 
Thomas Ring of Saginaw, Michigan, and Geoffrey O’Connell of Ithaca, New York 
as general assistants. Mr. Chapman returns to South America to continue his 
studies of the Colombian fauna with the special object of ascertaining the limits 
of the various life zones, and also to secure material for a new habitat group of 
birds for the American Museum. It is designed that this group shall portray the 
Magdalena Valley with the snow peaks of the Central Cordillera as seen about 
Honda. 


Mrs. Evua Fiace Youna, superintendent of schools of Chicago, with a committee 
from the Chicago Board of Education recently visited the American Museum to 
study the institution’s methods of coéperative work with the New York public 
schools, with a view to introducing a similar coéperation between the public schools 
of Chicago and the Field Museum. 


Captain Roatp AMUNDSEN presents to the American Museum one of the 
sledges which made the trip with him to and from the South Pole. He gives it as 
an acknowledgement to the American people and especially to American scientific 
associations for the encouragement and assistance shown to him. This sledge 
makes a fitting companion to the sledge already in the Museum’s possession, the 
“Morris K. Jesup,” which accompanied Admiral Peary to the North Pole. 


A report comes that the South Georgia Islands expedition under Mr. Robert C. 
Murphy reached the Bay of Islands, November 27 and was waiting for the sea ele- 
phant season to open in order to obtain the desired specimens for a Museum group 
of this Antarctic species. Mr. Murphy’s statement that there were already on the 
ground twenty-one steamers representing seven commercial companies, mainly 
Norwegian, is discouraging for the future of the southern sea elephant race even with 
the close season set upon the species by the English. The South Georgia Islands 
expedition, made possible through the liberality of Mr. Arthur Curtiss James, hopes 
to obtain young penguins needed for completion of a penguin group under construc- 
tion at the American Museum, in addition to sea elephants and a general collection of 


birds. 


TurovucH Mr. Vilhjdlmur Stefdnsson the department of fishes has obtained 
specimens of capelin (Mallotus villosus), a delicious Arctic food fish allied to our 
smelt, from Point Barrow, Alaska, where they appeared in immense numbers in 
early August, spawning at the very edge of the sand. Mr. Stefansson gathered from 
the residents at Point Barrow that the abundance and season of appearance of these 


48 THE AMERICAN -MUSEUM JOURNAL 


capelin were uncertain, that in fact the species was often absent during a consider- 
able period of years. Although these are the first capelin of recent time which have 
come to the Museum, its collections for several years have contained fossil specimens 
of the same species from the Pleistocene of Canada. 


Dr. Rosert H. Lowis of the department of anthropology has been given the 
rank of associate curator, the promotion dating from January 1, 1913. 


THE LINN@AN Society or New York held its first annual banquet at the Hotel 
Endicott on December 17. Mr. Frank M. Chapman in recognition of his unequaled 
services in popularizing ornithology, was the guest of honor and was presented 
with amedal. About sixty members and guests were present, Dr. Jonathan Dwight, 
Jr., president of the Linnzan Society, presiding. At the speakers’ table in addition 
to Dr. Dwight and Mr. Chapman were Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn, Dr. Fred- 
eric A. Lucas, Mr. John Burroughs, Dr. A. K. Fisher, Mr. John H. Sage, Mr. Ernest 


Thompson Seton, Mr. T. Gilbert Pearson, Dr. George Bird Grinnell and Dr. Spencer 
Trotter. 


Dr. W. D. Marrunw, Mr. WALTER GRANGER and Dr. Witiiam K. GREGORY: 
represented the American Museum at the New Haven meeting of the Paleontological 
Society, December 28-31, and contributed a number of papers to the proceedings. 


By the death of the artist, Louis Akin, at Flagstaff, Arizona, on January 2, the 
Museum’s plans for mural decorations for the Southwest Indian hall have received 
a check. Mr. Akin had been commissioned to prepare tentative sketches for 
sixteen panels and had made a number of preliminary figure studies with that end in 
view. He expected to have finished the sketches during the present year. It is 
hoped that it may be possible to exhibit Mr. Akin’s studies during the spring months 
when there is proposed a special exhibit of material and paintings illustrating the 
life of the Indians of the Pueblo region. Mr. Akin is best known to the world by 
his paintings of Hopi Indians. His work is a faithful portrayal of the tribe, with 
which he lived during the years of his study and of which he was made a member. 


Last summer Mr. Walter Granger, associate curator of fossil mammals, sent in 
to the Museum a tiny fossil skull which he had found in a Basal Eocene formation 
in New Mexico. The specimen is of the greatest scientific interest as it belongs to 
an excessively rare and primitive group of Insectivora and carries back their record 
to the beginning of the Age of Mammals. But it was partly buried in a hard flinty 
nodule, the rock being harder than the delicate substance of the teeth and bone and 
not nearly as brittle. The whole skull is less than an inch in length, and to extricate 
it completely from its matrix without damage to the minute sharp-pointed teeth or 
the delicate structures of the skull is a remarkable accomplishment. It was not safe 
to employ acid or other chemicals to soften the rock; all had to be chiseled away, 
grain by grain, under the microscope with special tools devised for the work by Mr. 
Anderson. Enlarged photographs of the specimen were then secured and it was 
sealed up inside a small plate glass box and placed among the fossil Insectivores 
in the small mammal case in the Tertiary mammal hall. 


Tue department of invertebrate zodlogy has just acquired two notable additions 
to its collections. One contains representatives of one hundred and forty-two species 
of Neuropteroids, practically all of them being species not hitherto possessed by 
the Museum. It was obtained from Mr. Nathan Banks, a recognized authority on 
these insects. The other is a collection of thrips (Thysanoptera) obtained from J. 
Douglass Hood. Previously the Museum did not have a single well-determined 
example of this whole order; now it has a valuable and complete collection. 


The American Museum Journal 


VoLtuME XIII FEBRUARY, 1913 NUMBER 2 


CONTENTS 


Cover, Ancient Stairway at Pueblo Shipaulovi, photographed by 
Herbert J. Spinden. 


Frontispiece, Photograph of the New Wharf-Pile Group in the 
American Museum 


Polar Exploration and the New Stefansson Expedition 
Rosert E. PEary 51 


Plans of the Stefansson Expedition. .............CLARK WISSLER 55 
Liberal support by the Canadian Government — Work geographical and 
anthropological 


Map of proposed route of the expedition; unknown area awaiting exploration. 
Map prepared under Vilhjalmur Stefansson 


Undiscovered Land in the Arctic Ocean..........R. A. Harris a, 


Proof from the behavior of tides of the existence of an uncharted Arctic conti- 
nent of perhaps 500,000 square miles, or of an archipelago of large islands 
Map_.of polar regions indicating theoretical position, size and shape of undis- 
covered land; also ranges and directions of tides constituting proof. Map 
prepared under R. A. Harris 


Ruins of Prehistoric New Mexico................N.C. NELSON 63 


Extensive excavations of pueblos in the Rio Grande Valley for data to explain 
the origin and present day distribution and cultures of the people of the South- 
west. Map of Rio Grande drainage to show archeological sites located by 
the Nelson expedition. Map prepared under N. C. Nelson 


Prats aCe ey SOU ROeSInce ete ora ob he hae Ok RA te ome toe Sa ee 83 


Announcement of special display of collections opened at the Museum I*ebruary 
27 and of an exhibition of paintings including canvases by the late Louis Akin 
Announcement illustrated with photographs from the new Navajo group 


Animals of the Wharf Piles... =) +... ..0.....2 .. Roy W. Miner 87 


Description of a new group from the standpoint of animal specialization to 
inactive life 


STERN VATE Ves Groin, ca ou, Makes oe oe ee Cada ee we oe ae pee 91 
Editorial comment and notes on the construction of the group 
RUMI SCM IN OLES Ar Ns are 2 et 3. deunrganat fe cease eration eters tek 93 


Mary OCyntsia Dickerson, Editor 


Published monthly from October to May by the American Museum of Natural History. 
Terms: one dollar per year, fifteen cents percopy. Entered as second-class matter January 
12, 1907, at the Post-Office at Boston, Mass., Act of Congress, July 16, 1894. 


Subscriptions should be addressed to the AMERICAN Museum JOURNAL, 77th St. 
and Central Park West, New York City. 


The Journal is sent free to all members of the Museum. 


Za 


SS 


A NEW MARINE GROUP SHOWING THE ANIMAL LIFE OF WHARF FILES 


The old abandoned wharf, part of which is represented by a photographic transparency forming 
the background, is located at Vineyard Haven, Massachusetts, the cottages of which may be seen 
between the piles in the distance. In the foreground, the sea is represented as if in section to 
disclose the numerous sponges, hydroids, sea anemones, shellfish, ascidians and other sedentary 
animals with which the piles are crowded below the low water mark 

—* Animals of the Wharf Piles,’’ page 87 


The American Museum Journal 


Vou. XIIT FEBRUARY, 1913 No. 2 


ARCTIC EXPLORATION AND THE NEW 
STEFANSSON EXPEDITION 


By Robert E. Peary 


private, institutional and national wealth into channels for great re- 
sults, and I am glad because of my keen interest in polar exploration, that 
some of the great things to be done are still to be found in the fastnesses of 
the Far North notwithstanding four centuries of interest and pioneer work. 
Exploration has shifted decade by decade from one continent to another 
and from the Arctic to the Antarctic. The search for the North Pole was 
carried on many years before that for the South Pole began. Now both 
Poles have been attained, together with a large body of scientific fact, 
geographical and otherwise, brought back by the various exploring parties. 
The globe about the two Poles has held its mystery guarded most sternly 
of all the regions of the earth, especially about the North Pole where there 
is no land and the explorer can proceed in winter and earliest spring only, 
making hazardous journeys on shifting ice over unfathomed ocean depths. 
With all that has been accomplished, many hundred thousands of square 
miles still remain of the three million square miles of uncharted territory 
that existed prior to the expedition that resulted in the discovery of the Pole. 
To complete this exploration, to replace with knowledge the tradition and. 
51 


| becomes more and more an age of doing great things, of directing 


52 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


theory accrued during past years is the step immediately before us and 
cannot fail to be of great value to science. 

Of unexplored regions in the North, there are remaining but two of first 
importance: the inland ice cap of Greenland and the area represented by the 
large blank space on the map bounded by Bering Strait and the Pole, the 
western border of the Arctic Archipelago and the known open sea north of 
Siberia. The theories of cotidal experts have it that within this region lies 
an undiscovered Arctic continent, or a series of large islands separated by 
narrow channels, the whole not greatly distant from Banks Island, Prince 
Patrick Island and Grant Land (the western limit of the Arctic Archipelago), 
while tradition among the Eskimo and _ indefinite reports of whalers 


jaar “ten og PA 


ee 


Been HUDSON BAY 


Restored corn May Tae 1912 
The north polar regions have sternly guarded their unknown areas with shifting ice 
over deep sea. Cotidal experts now maintain the existence of a land mass, possibly of 500,000 
square miles, in what is represented as open polar basin immediately north of British America 
and west of the Arctic Archipelago 


strengthen the theories in fixing the southern edge of the unknown land not 
far north of Point Barrow and the northern shores of America. I must 
believe in the existence of such land, one corner of which I saw from Cape 
Thomas Hubbard in July, 1906, in the mountain peaks of Crocker Land. 
If land of large extent be located west of Banks Island and Grant Land, 
the discovery from the standpoint of future exploration will be of unusual 
importance, since the new land will be a base for penetration of the remainder 
of the unknown area to the west. In fact, since the theory of the existence 
of extensive land, one corner of which is Crocker Land and another not far 


ARCTIC EXPLORATION 53 


from Banks Island, seems so likely to me and is so well accepted by many 
expert geographers and mathematicians, I would divide the remaining great- 
est problem in the North into two separate problems — namely, the explora- 
tion of this land area and the exploration of the adjoining area beyond, 
between the Pole and Bering Strait. 

The eyes of the scientific world are on the projected expeditions which 
have for the geographical part of their work a search for this uncharted land. 
The Crocker Land expedition,! under the auspices of the American Geo- 
graphical Society and the American Museum of Natural History, has been 
announced for more than a year, having had its activity deferred by the 
deplored death of George Borup, its prospective leader. An announcement 
is now definitely made that the Stefansson expedition reported some months 
ago as likely to proceed on polar investigations under the auspices of the 
National Geographic Society and the American Museum of Natural 
History is to proceed with most liberal support as an expedition of the 
Canadian Government. 

The Scott tragedy, which has made men’s names imperishable and 
brought the heroic in human nature strongly to all people, has set an empha- 
sis upon expeditions about to enter polar work. Mr. Stefansson will carry 
not only a well-equipped expedition into the vastness and bleakness of the 
North, but also with it the thought and warm heart of the world left in the 
comforts and comradeship of civilization. 

In personality and from training and experience, he is especially fitted 
4or this work, his courage and control of untoward circumstances have been 
proved in the six years he has already put in on Arctic investigations, and 
he has shown executive ability and judgment in his plans for organization 
of the new expedition. I am glad that in addition he has some of the quali- 
ties of a dreamer. For the greater work of life requires the man to whom a 
vision can come with such allurement that he must follow its leading through 
all obstacles and many years, goaded always to express the irresistible 
power within him in the accomplishment of that vision. And when I 
recall that to these characteristics he adds the hardy qualities that come from 
his ancestry of the North and to these still again the authority of science 
from his training as an ethnologist, I can but congratulate the scientific 
world and the Canadian Government that Vilhjdélmur Stefansson has 
stepped forth to do a man’s work in Arctic exploration. 

As I said regarding the Crocker Land expedition, I would that my years 
were fewer that I also might penetrate again into the enchanted solitudes. 
I can hear the yelping of the dogs, the shouting of the drivers and forward 
rushing of the sledges, as after days of weary travel across the ragged sea 
ice, every man and dog spurts for the shore of that untrodden land lying a 
few yards ahead in the brilliant Arctic sunlight. 


1See Peary on Crocker Land Expedition in AmMericaN Museum Journat for May, 1912 
— EpirTor. 


54 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


wD. / 


CROCK! ; 
\ 


D \ 


\ 


SCALE OF MILES 
100 


100 


PROPOSED SHIPROUTE —_______ PROPOSED SLEDGE ROUTE 


PROPOSED ROUTE OF THE STEFANSSON EXPEDITION 
Map prepared under Vilhjdlmur Stefdnsson 


Proposed sledge and ship routes and bases of operation of the Stefainsson expedition 
originally planned under the auspices of the National Geographic Society and American 
Museum of Natural History and finally transferred to the support of the Canadian Govern- 
ment. The expedition will sail in May from the Canadian naval station at Esquimault, 
British Columbia, with the recently purchased ‘‘Karluk,’’ 247 tons, for exploration work 
covering a period of from three to four years 

““Your base is one of the nearest, and perhaps the most accessible point for an attack 
upon the largest remaining unexplored areas within the Arctic Circle.’-— Quoted from a tele- 
gram from Peary to Stefansson, November 16, 1912 


PLANS OF THE STEFANSSON EXPEDITION 


By Clark Wissler 


NEW expedition to carry on the work begun in part by the Stefansson- 
Anderson expedition was projected some months ago in the inter- 
ests of the Museum. Immediately on the return of Mr. Stefansson 

from his four and a half years in the Arctic, plans were set in preparation 
in the Museum for this second expedition. The National Geographic 
Society of Washington initiated the subscription with a large sum for the 
geographic part of the work. This organization also agreed to codperate 
with the Museum in whose behalf Mrs. Morris K. Jesup contributed half 
the funds required for the expedition. While arrangements were being made 
for the expedition to set out in May of this year the Canadian Government, 
which through its Geological Survey was a party to the original Stefansson- 
Anderson expedition, made a proposition to take over the entire expedition 
and to provide a large fund for its support as well as to make it a govern- 
mental matter. While this is a great loss to the Museum, it is but fitting 
that such an important expedition into Canadian territory should be con- 
trolled by Canada. 

I quote the following letters by the Prime Minister of Canada and the 
President of the American Museum: 


New Yor« Cry, February 12, 1913. 
Dear Mr. STEFANSSON: 

The offer of the Canadian Government, through the telegram of the Honorable William 
J. Roche, Minister of the Interior, on Monday, February 10, to cover the entire expenses 
of an expedition to the Arctic, places the plans you have made with us and with the National 
Geographic Society in a new light. 

It would appear that this offers an opportunity of conducting your explorations under 
the direction of a strong government which, through patriotic as well as scientific motives, 
will take every possible step to insure success. 

We feel bound, under these circumstances, to relinquish the claim which our prolonged 
preliminary negotiations and understanding may have given us upon your expedition. We 
desire you to conduct your negotiations, therefore, with the Canadian Government, with 
entire freedom. 

It is, however, with the greatest reluctance that, through our desire to do what seems 
best for the general interests of science, we sever a connection established in 1908 with your- 
self and Dr. Anderson, which has been animated throughout by warm personal regard and 
which has been attended by the achievement of such notable scientific results. We desire 
especially to make record of our appreciation of the heroic and self-sacrificing efforts which 
you and Dr. Anderson made in carrying out the project of the first Stefansson-Anderson 
expedition. 

In case you enter upon this proposed service of the Canadian Government, I am sure 
that the entire Scientific Staff of the American Museum will unite with me in the expression 
of our heartiest goodwill and of our desire that you may successfully accomplish all the ob- 
jects that you have in mind in the way of further exploration. 

In view of our past friendly coéperation with the Canadian Survey, we trust that con- 
tinued coéperation with this Museum. especially in certain lines of anthropology and zoology, 
may be arranged for in connection with your expedition. 

Believe me, with the highest regard, 

Faithfully yours, 
[Signed] Henry FAatrFieEtD OSBORN 
President of the American Museum of Natural History 


55 


36 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


Prime MINISTER'S OFFICE, CANADA 


Ortawa, Ontario, February 21, 1913 
DEaR Sir: 

Mr. Stefansson has shown me your letter of the 12th instant stating that you are willing 
to forego your claims to a share in his exploration of the northern waters of Canada, and to 
cancel the arrangements which you had so generously made to contribute towards the ex- 
penses of this undertaking, and I wish to thank you for your courtesy in withdrawing in favor 
of this Government. 

We are most appreciative of the valuable results obtained by Mr. Stef4nsson’s explora- 
tions in the northern part of the American continent, which have given valuable information 
as to this comparatively unknown portion of the Dominion of Canada, and have to thank you 
for the part you took in assisting Mr. Stefansson in that work. The Government of Canada 
feels however, with regard to the present exploration, that it would be more suitable if the 
expenses are borne by the Government more immediately interested, and if the expedition 
sails under the flag of the country which is to be explored. The Government is, however, 
desirous that the line of investigation begun by Mr. Stefansson and the members of your 
Association should be continued and would be glad of the scientific co6peration of your mem- 
bers so as to obtain the best results from this expedition. 

Yours very truly, 
{Signed] R. L. Borpen 


It is Mr. Stefansson’s present intention to carry out in detail the plan 
as formerly developed in the interests of this Museum and the National 
Geographic Society. Its chief aim will be geographical and anthropological 
exploration. As planned, the expedition will have two main bases, the 
northern one on Prince Patrick Island and the southern on the mainland 
of North America near Coronation Gulf. Mr. Stefansson will give personal 
attention to geographical exploration and the study of the Eskimo, Dr. 
Anderson will conduct the biological investigations. It is expected that a 
staff of at least six scientists will accompany Mr. Stefansson, Dr. Anderson 
being one of that number. 

In general, the plan is to spend three or four years in an intensive study 
of the archeology and ethnology of the Eskimo, together with the zoédlogy 
and geology of the whole region from Alaska to Coronation Gulf. Also, to 
map the unexplored coast of Victoria and Prince Patrick islands and by off- 
shore journeys to the north and east determine by means of soundings the 
extent of the continental shelf and discover new lands, if such there be. It 
is intended that the expedition shall be a scientific one and devote its energies 
to the investigation of this unknown region. 

The anthropological work is to be made a special feature, the main prob- 
lem here being to determine the present and former limits of human occupa- 
tion. During summer the surface will be searched for traces of former 
villages which when found will be carefully studied by excavation and 
otherwise to determine their relative ages and the cultural character of their 
occupants. Such archeological work is now needed to estimate the period 
of occupation and the direction of Eskimo migration. 

In the east, special attention will be given to the distribution of the 
peculiar hybrid Eskimo discovered on the last expedition. It is intended 
that a full census of the people be made, noting the somatic character of 
each to serve as a basis for the study of this peculiar biological problem. 


OB\KERSCHEL I~. ~ BOO Arey) Ge ax / FAROE 105.1 
Nia as SEA eae - < + ee 


RF BNC FAREWELL 


OUTLINE MAP OF ARCTIC REGIONS 
Prepared under direction of R. A. Harris, cotidal mathematician of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey 


The map indicates the theoretical position, size (500,000 square miles) and shape of an uncharted Arctic continent, or archipelago of large islands. It shows also the 
directions and hours of the tides and the rise in feet and tenths — which tidal facts constitute a proof of the existence of the unknown land 


UNDISCOVERED LAND IN THE ARCTIC 
OCEAN! 


By R. A. Harris 


Of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey 


ROM the behavior of the tides, it can be shown that a deep Arctic 
basin cannot extend without interruption from the region of deep 
waters traversed by the “Fram” and embracing the Pole itself, 

to the known waters lying along the Arctic coasts of British America, Alaska 
and eastern Siberia. Moreover, this interruption lying between the Arctic 
Archipelago and the New Siberian Islands must be tolerably complete so 
far as the greater depths are concerned. For were this not the case, the 
Arctic basin would be well suited to the production of diurnal or daily 
tides, which would be much in evidence along the coasts just mentioned. 
Wherever adequate observations have been made along these coasts, they 
show that the diurnal tides have less than one-half of the rise and fall which 
the diurnal tidal forces of the moon and sun acting over the uninterrupted 
Arctic basin would produce; and again, the diurnal tide actually occurs 
earlier at Point Barrow than at Flaxman Island while the tidal forces acting 
over the uninterrupted basin require that the reverse should be the case. 
The ratio of the amplitudes of the two principal constituents of the 
diurnal tide or wave does not have even approximately its theoretical value, 
a fact which implies for this tide a comparatively complicated origin.” 
It may be noted in passing that it is because the free period of a deep Arctic 
basin is but a fraction of twenty-four hours in duration that we are enabled 
to say that approximately equilibrium tides would be the result of the 
action of the diurnal forces. Moreover these same conditions would reduce 
the effect of the deflecting force of the eaith’s rotation to a quantity rather 
small in comparison with the direct effect of the tide-producing forces, not- 


1 The substance of this article is, in a large measure, included in previous articles by 
the Author upon the same subject, to which the following are references: 

National Geographic Magazine, Vol. 15 (1904), pp. 255-261; 

Coast and Geodetic Survey Report, 1904, pp. 381-389; 

Report of the Eighth International Geographic Congress, 1904, pp. 397-406; 

The North Pole by R. EK. Peary. New York: Stokes, 1910, pp. 337-346; 

Arctic Tides; a special publication by the U. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey, 1911, pp. 
103. Arctic Tides consists of a detailed study of the tides north of the 60th parallel; it 
includes a cotidal chart of the Arctic regions, upon which is a hypothetical outline of the 
obstructing mass of land. This is the outline or hypothetical boundary which appears upon 
the less detailed map accompanying the present article. In the light of more recent observa- 
tions and discoveries, some of the data used and conclusions reached in the three articles 
published in 1904 have turned out to be erroneous, as can be seen upon comparison with the 
later articles. No attempt is here made to go into the history of the question of undiscovered 
land in the Arctic. References to some of the writings of individuals who prior to 1904 had 
expressed their views upon this subject are given in the three articles just referred to. 

2 The intensities of the two constituent diurnal forces are, at the Pole, 0.00000004466 g 
and 0.00000003175 g, respectively, g being the intensity of the force of gravity. These 
numerical coefficients multiplied by the distance of a point from the center of gravity of the 
surface of a deep basin, give the respective amplitudes of the two constituents of the diurnal 
tide ‘57 


IU 


3 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


withstanding the fact that the effect in question becomes a maximum at the 
Pole. ; 

At Bennett Island and at Teplitz Bay, Franz Josef Land, the range of 
the diurnal wave has about one-half of the magnitude which the tidal 
forces acting over an uninterrupted Arctic basin would produce. 

The semidaily tides found in the Arctic Ocean are derived almost 
entirely from those of the North Atlantie, because the semidaily forces 
vanish at the Pole and are very small in the higher latitudes. These tides 
enter the Arctic Ocean proper by way of the strait lying between Spitzbergen 
and the eastern coast of northern Greenland. They are propagated through 
the Arctic to the New Siberian Islands, the average rise and fall at Bennett 
Island being 2.5 feet.'. Now upon the assumption of an uninterrupted Arctic 
basin, the tides at Point Barrow and at Flaxman Island could not differ 
greatly in size from the tides which would, upon the same assumption, be 
found at Bennett Island. But as a matter of fact the rise and fall of the 
semidaily tide is 0.4 foot at Point Barrow and 0.5 foot at Flaxman Island. 
The rise and fall of the semidaily tides at Pitlekaj, a short distance northwest 
of Bering Strait, is 0.2 foot. 

The time of the semidaily tide along the northern coast of Alaska does 
not agree with the time implied in the transmission of the tide wave from 
the Greenland Sea through an uninterrupted polar basin having such depths 
as those discovered by Nansen. 

It being thus established that an obstruction in the Arctic Ocean exists 
which seriously interferes with the production of the diurnal tides in its 
waters, and moreover causes wide discrepancies between the amount of rise 
and fall of the semidaily tide at Bennett Island and that found along the 
northern coast of Alaska, the next questions relate to its size and disposition. 

That one corner lies northerly from Bennett Island and is separated from 

1 SUGGESTION CONCERNING TIDAL OBSERVATIONS.— The reading of hourly or half-hourly 
heights upon a vertical fixed staff, even if for a period no longer than one, two or three 
days would, in many instances, be of great interest. To judge of the diurnal tide, the time 
selected should be at or near the time of the moon’s farthest north or south. It requires 
a series of fifteen or thirty days for bringing out the principal tidal constituents. If 
fluctuations in the daily level are to be ascertained, the longer the series the better. 

With the exception of Bennett Island and Pitlekaj, there is at present little or no tidal 
information available along the Arctic coast of Siberia, or upon the off-lying islands, from 
Taimir Peninsula to Bering Strait, although the Russian government has recently made tidal 
observations at Taimir Bay and on one of the New Siberian Islands. Aside from this ex- 
tended coast line and off-lying islands, where observations would of course be of great value, 
the localities where information is especially wanted in this connection are: the northwestern 
coast of Alaska about midway between Point Hope and Point Barrow, Mackenzie Delta 
(outer coast), Cape Bathurst, west coast of Banks Island, western end of McClure Strait, 
Prince Patrick Island, Cape Isaachsen, western coast of Axel Heiberg Island, Cape Thomas 
Hubbard, and northwestern coast of Grant Land. 

From Arctic Tides already referred to, it can be seen what localities are either wanting 
or are especially defective in reliable tidal data, and where, if data were secured, a service 
would be rendered in perfecting our knowledge of the tides. Such points and localities in 
the Arctic Archipelago are the following: Dolphin and Union Strait, Coronation Gulf, 


Prince of Wales Strait, Eureka Sound, Nansen Sound, Greely Fiord, McClintock Channel, 
northern side of Cumberland Peninsula, and the eastern shore of Fox Channel. 


UNDISCOVERED LAND IN THE ARCTIC OCEAN a9 


this island by a broad and presumably shallow strait can be inferred with 
considerable certainty from a comparison between the drifting of the 
“Jeannette,” especially the later portion, and that of the “Fram.” The 
“Jeannette”? was frozen in at a point lying northeasterly from Wrangel 
Island and her general subsequent course lay approximately toward Cape 
Chelyuskin; the “Fram” was frozen in at a point to the northwestward of 
the New Siberian Islands, and her general subsequent course lay toward 
the Greenland Sea. 

The change in the direction of the drifting ice seems to occur in about 
the longitude reached by the “Jeannette” when she sank. This indicates 
that one corner of the unknown land lies not very far to the northward of 
this point and so probably extends westward to about the meridian 150° E. 
With this strait and land mass assumed, it is easy to see that the semidaily 
tide transmitted through this strait will be greatly reduced in range upon 
entering the broad expanse of water to the eastward through a portion 
of which the “Jeannette” drifted. Hence the small range of the semidaily 
tides at Pitlekaj, Siberia, and at Point Barrow and other places along the 
northern and northwestern coast of Alaska. The strait and land mass can 
also account for the observed fact that the semidaily flood stream at Point 
Barrow comes from the west and not from the north as the absence of the 
land mass would imply, especially if the soundings or known depths around 
Point Barrow be taken into consideration. 

An obstruction of the kind already established, probably implies that 
the land mass extends nearly continuously from the Bennett Island corner 
to within a short distance of the Arctic Archipelago. 

The fact that the tide comes from the west at Point Barrow indicates 
the existence of a cape or corner of the unknown land lying to the northward 
of this point. But the fact that the tide is nearly simultaneous all along 
the northern coast of Alaska implies, not only that Beaufort Sea is a deep 
body of water, but also that this corner in question lies at a considerable 
distance from Point Barrow, say five or six degrees of latitude. Such a 
position of the cape or corner would permit the ice off the northern coast 
of Alaska to set west-northwest when driven by an easterly or east-north- 
easterly wind, as was noted on numerous occasions by Mikkelsen and 
Leffingwell in April and May, 1907, in longitudes varying from 148° to 
151° W. 

That there is a northern coast to Beaufort Sea in some such position as 
that shown in the diagram and extending from north of Point Barrow 
nearly to Banks Island, can be inferred from the following considerations: 

1. The ice in Beaufort Sea does not drift freely to the northward, and 
is remarkable for its thickness and age. Northeasterly winds drive the 
ice westward. West of Banks Island large and old ice floes probably 
always extend down to the 72d parallel. 

2. The observations just referred to indicate not only a considerable 


60 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


westerly drifting when the wind is from an easterly direction, but also little 
or no movement of the ice when the wind is westerly. These circumstances, 
as far as they go, tend to show that Beaufort Sea is nearly landlocked in 
all directions excepting toward the west. 

3. <A description of the tide in Elson’s Bay just east of Point Barrow, 
found upon p. 162, Vol. 42 (1854), of Accounts and Papers, Navy, reads 
as follows: 

“The tides have been registered hourly for nine months, and the result 
is that the flood makes from the west, and the mean rise and fall in Elson’s 
Bay is seven inches. The time of high water at full and change is 1 P. M., 
but great irregularities occur from the wind, the rise being scarcely percep- 
tible with fresh east and northeast breezes, when with southwest gales it 
amounts to 33 feet. Of the latter case, a remarkable instance occurred on 
the 18th of December, when the water rose from the usual depth of 143 feet 
to 17 feet 10 inches, with a gale at southwest (true), the force of which 
was registered for fourteen hours at 8 feet, 9 inches and 10 feet.” 

Observations made at Ooglaamie just west of Point Barrow from Feb- 
ruary 26 to June 17, 1883, show that a west-southwest wind may, in extreme 
cases, cause the daily sea level to stand nearly three feet higher than when 
the wind is from the east-northeast. Observations taken on the south side 
of Flaxman Island in 1906, show that during the period extending from 
October 21 to December 17 the fluctuation in the daily sea level amounted 
to two feet, the lowest stage occurring at the time of northeasterly winds 
and the highest stage on westerly or southwesterly winds. Messrs. Leffing- 
well and Stefansson have informed me that effects similar to these are 
common all along the northern coast of Alaska. 

The natural inference from this is that the unknown coast line in question 
is not very remote from the northern coast line of Alaska and that the un- 
known land approaches the known Arctic Archipelago in one or more points, 
thus making a fairly complete land boundary to the north of Beaufort Sea. 

4. There are large quantities of driftwood to the westward of the 
mouth of the Mackenzie River and a considerable amount for some dis- 
tance to the eastward, although very little as far east as Coronation Gulf. 
This indicates a general westward movement of the ice in Beaufort Sea with 
occasional eastward movements when sirong westerly winds prevail. Very 
little driftwood has been found on the islands to the northeastward of Banks 
Island or along the northern coasts of Grant Land and Greenland. This 
indicates that no drift ice of consequence goes from Beaufort Sea to the open 
ocean via the passage lying north of Prince Patrick Island, Axel Heiberg 
Island, Grant Land, and Greenland, and so the probability of a narrowing 
of the passage at one or more points. Were it not for prevailing easterly 
winds, the waters of the Mackenzie River should, because of the deflecting 
force of the earth’s rotation, bear off to the eastward, instead of taking"a 
more or less westerly direction. 


UNDISCOVERED LAND IN THE ARCTIC OCEAN 61 


5. It may be well here to call attention to the dividing line between 
the east-going and west-going drifts. Amongst the islands constituting the 
Arctic Archipelago, the general drift is easterly or southeasterly and here 
northwesterly winds prevail. Off the northern coast of Alaska the drift is 
westerly or somewhat to the north of west and the prevailing wind is from 
the east-northeast. It is probable, for reasons already given, that the pre- 
vailing drift on the Beaufort Sea proper is westerly. The eastern boundary 
of this sea appears to lie upon or near the dividing line between the east- 
going and west-going drifts. The proximity of one corner of the unknown 
land to either Banks Island or Prince Patrick Island would seem to harmo- 
nize with the approximate location of the divide. 

Some of the facts which indicate the existence of a corner of the unknown 
land to the northwest of Grant Land are the following: 

1. The sighting of Crocker Land by Peary, June 24, 1906, from an 
altitude of about two thousand feet. 

2. The eastward progression of the semidaily tide along the northern 
coast of Grant Land, indicating that the tide derived from Lancaster and 
Jones Sounds, which progresses northerly through the channels to the 
westward of Axel Heiberg Island does not become exceedingly small when 
the northern coast of Grant Land is reached, as would probably be the case 
did not the unknown land approach Grant Land and so form the northern 
boundary of a channel of moderate width. 

3. On his northward journey to the Pole, Peary found fox tracks a little 
below the 87th parallel and bear tracks just below latitude 863°. On his 
return march he found fox tracks somewhat north of the 87th parallel and 
bear tracks at latitude about 853°. 

4. On the northward march of the Peary expedition, Marvin obtained 
in latitude 85° 23’ a sounding of 310 fathoms — a depth much less than 
was found at the two preceding sounding stations. 

Assuming for reasons already given, the existence of a corner or cape 
lying northward from Bennett Island and similarly, of a corner lying north- 
westward from Grant Land, it is natural to suppose that a poleward, or 
European, side of this unknown land exists which connects in some fairly 
continuous manner the two corners just mentioned. The unexpectedly 
large range of tide at Bennett Island is a reason for drawing this boundary 
as near the Pole as known facts seem to permit; for in this way the tidal 
area between the unknown land and Europe is kept down as much as possible, 
thus helping to explain this unexpectedly large range of tide. It may be 
noted that the diurnal tidal forces acting upon the deep basin lying between 
this assumed boundary of the unknown land and Spitzbergen and Franz 
Josef Archipelago, give from theory a range and time of diurnal tide at 
Teplitz Bay very nearly equal to the range and time found from actual 
observation at that place. 


(a) 
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AMAoId Yoot Sty} JO YYSUST [RUISWO OL 


soluowe.ioo) Sutonpoid 
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LNadYH3aS GSNHOH V 4O HdA190¥LAd 


ay} JO eumos Aq paesod Ysty UL PP TMs ate soyeug 


Petroglyphs, or pictures chiseled on rock, representing mythical horned serpents, near 
Pueblo San Cristébal 


RUINS OF PREHISTORIC NEW MEXICO 


EXTENSIVE EXCAVATIONS OF PUEBLOS IN THE RIO 
GRANDE VALLEY 


By N. C. Nelson 


FTER the lapse of a decade the American Museum has once more 
begun archeological research in the Southwest. It is felt that 
many problems relating to the origin and distribution of peoples 

and to cultural traits now observable in the Southwest cannot be solved in 
their entirety by the examination of present-day conditions or even by con- 
sulting Spanish documentary history, which though it takes us back nearly 
four hundred years and is reasonably accurate, shows us little more than the 
last phase of development within this most interesting ethnographic divi- 
sion of the United States. By a tolerably exhaustive study of the thousands 
of ruins and other archeological features characteristic of the region, we may 
hope in time to gain not only an idea of prehistoric conditions but perhaps 
also an adequate explanation of the origin, the antiquity and the course 
of development leading up to a better understanding of the present status 

of aboriginal life in the region. 
The field is very large and the work to be done so well-nigh momentous 
that no one institution will presume to accomplish it, Up to thirty years 
63 


64 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


ago hardly anything was known about the archeological wealth of the region; 
and while since then many surveys and excavations have been made, there 
are still localities in which exist many ruins more or less well known, which 
have never been seen by any archeologist. One such locality is the Rio 
Grande drainage in the state of New Mexico or that part of the drainage 
ranging from the Jemez Mountains south to the Mexican boundary. It 
was to this area that the Museum’s Southwest expedition gave its attention 
for six months of 1912.1 

The field work began at Ysleta del Sur, a few miles below El Paso, Texas, 
and the advance was made up the valley chiefly by short railroad journeys. 
From most of the numerous stops, side trips east and west were taken on 
horseback or by wagon as conditions favored. Lack of time and the ex- 
tremely swollen condition of the river impeded the work. Nevertheless at 
the end of five weeks when the Cochiti Cafion in the latitude of Santa Fé 
was reached, the location of one hundred and fifteen archeological sites 
had been ascertained, these comprising caves, rock-shelters, camp sites, 
mescal pits, cemeteries and petroglyphs as well as extensive ruins. 

The region under consideration is eminently suited to have furthered the 
advance of a primitive culture in prehistoric times. The Rio Grande from 
the mouth of Santa Fé Creek where it emerges on its first considerable 
flood plain, takes a moderately sinuous course almost due south to El Paso. 
Throughout this three-hundied-mile stretch, the river receives numerous, 
mostly minor, tributaries, especially from the generally higher and more 
broken country which tends to crowd it along the west side. On the east 
there are only two or three affluents, all well to the north, the most impor- 
tant being Galisteo Creek. The dearth of tributary streams here is due to 
the fact that the mountain ranges paralleling the river are either very close 
to the stream as in the case of the Caballos and Sandia ranges, or are sepa- 


Beginning to clear the ruins of a two-story house of prehistoric date at Pueblo San 
Cristébal 


1 Previous to the work in the Rio Grande valley, the expedition made brief visits to the 
well-known Casa Grande ruins near Phoenix, Arizona, and to Bisbee close to the Mexican 
‘boundary, where through the kindness of Mr. Cleveland H. Dodge, one of the trustees of the 
American Museum, some interesting petroglyphs were examined 


RIO GRANDE DRAINAGE 
IN NEW MEXICO 
SHOWING 
ARCHEOLOGICAL SITES 
LOCATED BY 
NELSON EXPEDITION, 1912 


LEGEND 
O vittace Ruins 


4& CAVES AND ROCK SHELTERS 
O CAMP SITES 
++ PICTOGRAPHS 

SITES IN SOLID SYMBOLS EXCAVATED 


fo $$ ) 


107 W.of Greenwich 
DRAWN BY A BRIESEMEISTER 


99 
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oy} 09 eTMoed s1oMOYS-Jopunyy qguonboly oy} wou Ajddns sj7q poAteood UY, 
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SNINY OGVYHO100 O183Nd 


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68 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


rated from it by broad stretches of low semi-desert or barren plains, across 
which no living stream can reach. 

The river valley itself, or more properly its productive flood plain, varies 
in width from almost nothing up to four and five miles, according as the 
mountain ranges and occasional lava flows approach one another from oppo- 
site sides of the stream. This flood plain, subject in part to inundations, 
comprises close to 400,000 acres and is all of it suitable for irrigation. It 
was doubtless this fact which made the Rio Grande valley relatively popu- 
lous in prehistoric times. Our first definite knowledge of its inhabitants 
dates back to the year 
1540 when the Coronado 
expedition reported the 
existence of about sevy- 
enty pueblos or villages 
in the valley. At the 
present day only seven- 
teen villages of the old 
type remain in the entire 
Rio Grande drainage, 
and several of these such 
as Santo Domingo as well 
as additional scattered 
settlements near Las 
Cruces and at Ysleta del 
Sur, are of modern origin. 
From these facts it will 
readily be seen how rich 


Ceiling and roof construction at Pueblo San Cristébal. | : vay ee 
Over the timbers was placed a thicker layer of adobe the region mus e m 


sufficient to shed the rains archeological data. 
Most of the ruins lo- 
cated by the expedition 
however are not situated 
on the great river or the 
lands described as most 
suitable for cultivation 
but to the east and the 
west thirty or forty miles 
away. It is conceded 
that the Museum expe- 
dition did not examine 
all the ruins known to 
exist close to the Rio 


Small bin for foodstuffs, built of stone slabs in the 3 ap 
corner of a room, at Pueblo San Cristébal Grande; but if that had 


Pottery found at Pueblo San Cristébal. The ware is mostly of prehistoric make and includes 
bowls and small] jars, some having painted and some glazed decoration 


Circular kiva excavated at Pueblo San Cristébal. This ceremonial chamber, twenty feet in diameter, 
was built into one of the regular long houses. The stones in the fioor were possibly rests for ceiling props 


Pottery vessels found at Pueblo San Cristébal. The specimens are from a building inhabited dur- 


ing historic times and differ somewhat from the ancient ware in the nature of the glazed ornamentation 
69 


OL 


qJo] ouIa1}xe oY} UO MINI YoOINYO ‘WOl}BAvdXe JO Ssed0.d 
4 Woay A[WO OSTA UMA SI} UT SuTUTeUIed syVA oy Jo suoysod oN, 


U]  “JoAa] puNosZ [eAouds oy} 0} spuodsosI09 YOTYM UOHVPUNOF ATay} OAOG® Joo OA OF OA 
SWOOH OML-ALNZASS SO DNIGTING OIYOLSIHAYd JO NIN 


Men at work clearing, the rooms surrounding a kiva in a historie building at Pueblo 
San_Cristébal. 


been done, the number would still have fallen far short of seventy, the total 
given by Coronado as inhabited in 1540. Doubtless Coronado’s list 
included some of the villages located on the tributary streams such as 
Galisteo Creek, but there is still a margin to be accounted for and one is 
forced to believe that during the intervening centuries many village sites 
have been washed away or by some process obliterated. Such obliteration 
may explain also the apparent absence of village ruins at the southern end, 
that is, in the great Mesilla section of the valley, although we have here no 
less than 180,000 acres of bottom land suitable for cultivation. 

As for the presence of immense ruins distant from the rich bottom lands, 
the fact is not easily explained. It may be stated however that, contrary 
to the prevailing notion about the great heat and dryness of New Mexican 
climate, dry farming is possible in the region say from Gran Quivira north- 
ward. Besides it is conceivable that these distant villagers did cultivate 
lands on the river bottom. 


Human skeleton, apparently that of a woman who had been left lying in the corner of 
the room in the position in which she died 


z(il 


“J 
bo 


THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


Up to the present time very little excavation had been done in the mapped 
area although immediately to the north in the more rugged and picturesque 
Pajarito Park district, important work has been carried on for some years 
by the School of American Archeology located at Santa Fé. It was partly 
with a view to profit by the presence of comparative culture material from 
an adjacent locality that the Museum excavations were begun at the 
northern extremity of the region under consideration. Here the ruins 


Petroglyphs near Pueblo San Crist6bal. Deer, snakes and other animals are repre- 
sented 


are also more thickly scattered than farther to the south, and climatic as 
well as other material conditions made it altogether the most suitable region 
in which to make a beginning. 

The specific loeality chosen was a large barren depression about twenty- 
five miles south of‘Santa Fé and the gathering place for the several streams 
which make up Galisteo Creek, an affluent of the Rio Grande some thirty 


RUINS OF PREHISTORIC NEW MEXICO 73 


miles to the northwest. The excavated ruins, such as Tanos and San Cris- 
tébal, are situated on these tributary streams and are arranged in such a 
way as to enclose a roughly oval stretch of territory about eight or ten miles 
in diameter — the Galisteo Basin. The ruins normally do not lie in the 
open basin, but immediately beyond its borders, a short distance up the 
cafhons, penetrating the surrounding mesas and low-timbered hills. Vari- 
ous common sense reasons for the choice of site are usually apparent, such 
as shelter, the presence of building material, timber and water. Doubtless 
the element of defence against marauding enemies played a part although 
it is not clearly apparent in some cases.! 

The Galisteo pueblos resemble those observed elsewhere in the Rio 
Grande drainage. They represent villages of the well-known communistic 
type, consisting of a series of buildings arranged at right angles in such a way 
as to form one or more enclosed courts or plazas. Within these enclosures 
are usually found traces of a circular and semi-subterranean structure, 
known as a kiva or estufa, and in fact a sort of underground house used in 
part for ceremonial pur- 
poses to the present day 
by the remaining Pueblo 
Indians along the Rio 
Grande. The ruins are 
those of large towns cov- 
ering an area from three 
to ten acres in extent and 
appearing to-day in the 
form of — well-marked 
ridges representing col- 
lapsed two and_ three 
story houses, invariably 
covered with a heavy 
growth of cacti. Close 
to the ruins are usually 
found one or more refuse 
heaps made up of ashes, 
animal bones, lost and 
discarded as well as 
broken artifacts, and a 


large number of human 


Remains of Spanish mission church at Pueblo San }ypjals. The sites are 
Cristébal. Built probably during the first half of the a ee : 
seventeenth century and abandoned in 1680 characterized moreover 


1It should be stated also that four of the excavated pueblos are located on the large 
estate of Mr. B. F. Pankey of Santa Fé, to whose generous treatment the expedition owes 
much. 


74 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


by the presence of large artificial reservoirs sometimes at a considerable 
distance from the pueblo and sometimes, as is shown in one of the illustra- 
tions, directly within one of the courtyards of the village. 

Still another feature of interest connected with each one of the pueblos 
is the presence of numerous petroglyphs or pictures chiseled on the nearby 
rocks. Some of the figures are purely geometric, others are convention- 
alized representations having no doubt a symbolic meaning and still others 
are unusually excellent delineations of the plant and animal life of the region. 
In a few instances scenes from the life of the people such as hunting and 
other pursuits have been depicted. 

The excavation of the Galisteo pueblos occupied fully three months. 
Ten to fifteen laborers were constantly employed. No one of the ruined 
villages was completely bared, but enough excavation was done at each place 
to obtain a clear idea of the relative antiquity of the sites and their cultural 
relationships. Besides opening numerous scattered rooms, three entire 
buildings were cleared, the largest one, containing seventy-two rooms, 
being at San Crist6bal. Four of the seven ruins were found to be of pre- 
historic date, that is, they contained no evidence whatever of contact with 
European civilization. 

The buildings range from about fifty to seven hundred feet in length and 
from thirty to forty-five feet in width. The walls, built usually of sand- 
stone slabs and in a few instances of adobe blocks laid in mortar, still stand 
to a height of from two to nine feet, although as previously stated, they 
no doubt rese to a height of two and three stories, that is, about twenty feet. 
In some buildings the two or more stories 1ose on the terraced plan observ- 
able in several of the modern pueblos. The walls were plastered with mud 
and sometimes whitewashed. The floors were flagged with stone or were 
made of tamped clay, possibly mixed with blood, and showing often a very 
smooth and semi-polished surface. The ceiling, barely five and one-half 
feet above the floor level, was supported by heavy crossbeams overlaid 
by light timbers, brushwood and grass, on which was placed a layer of 
tamped clay to serve as floor for the story above. The rooms, usually 
rectangular or nearly so, averaged about seven by twelve feet in size, the 
larger dimension corresponding always to the long axis of the building, so 
that all the buildings of normal dimensions were from four to six rooms wide. 
From this fact it will readily be seen that whenever a building was of more 
than one story height, it contained a large number of interior and therefore 
dark rooms. These latter compartments were entered from the lighted 
exterior rooms by means of small rectangular doorways in the partition wall, 
usually a foot or two above the floor. The outer rooms themselves were 
presumably entered through an opening in the ceiling, as no doors were found 
in the walls leading directly to the courtyard. The arrangement of the 
different parts of the pueblo, as well as the regularity observed in the archi- 


Rock-shelter at Pueblo San Cristébal, formerly occupied by Indians (during a part of the 


field season by members of the expedition). The barren stretch between the cave and the timber 
line is a mass of ruins partly washed away and overgrown with grass 


Best preserved portion of Pueblo Kotyiti which has stood in ruins for 220 years. Note the 
plaster still adhering to the walls 


75 


9) 
Sspareraedg oy} ysurese 


spurs 4se] aor) JO ouo opeur pure oseyTIA soSnjod & }Ihq uoISea oY Jo SURIPUT OY] ‘YSIT 4905 OOS ands eset popis-doajs & ‘ssoazjaoJ yerngeu siqy Jo doy UO 


INOY4S JHL WOYS N3SS SV ‘OFSIA O8FAHLOd 


ad 


UII JO WONVAVOXO JoIJW  ‘SdojoMp wsout oy} aoy ATddns 109eM JO 9d1nOs ATWO oy} ‘TIVES FUSUVUTIEd T[VUIS B SMO YOIYM Jo TW0}}0G 949 9B UOURD TIYD0D 
doop oy) SUMBA SUTP[ING 94} JO JYSlI oY} 09 JooJ porpuNy 9UO0 yNOGY ‘EeGE9T UI Spavtuedg oy} Aq UMOP potInd svM T}IAJOM O[qong Jo SuIp[INq siqy, 


OfAlA OYSYLOd NO SONIGIING GANINY SHL 40 ANO 


Fireplace at Pueblo Kotyiti. 
on which the cooking was done 


Across the upright stones was placed a smooth stone slab 


tecture of individual buildings, suggests that the building plan was thought 
out before the construction work began. 

Within the rooms were found such stationary household effects built 
of stone slabs, as fireplaces and bins for food stuffs. Also cages containing the 


bony remains of turkeys and eagles were found. 


Human burial in refuse heap on which 
was later built a two or three story house. 
The body was tightly doubled up and laid 
face down 


78 


Scattered on the floor and 
throughout the débris from the col- 
lapsed upper stories were numerous 
implements and utensils of bone, 
stone and shell, as well as pottery. 
Most of the specimens were used in 
the preparation of food and clothing, 
but things were present also sugges- 
tive of the less material side of life 
as for example, tobacco pipes, flutes, 
whistles, and ornamental objects of 
shell and turquoise. Smooth peb- 
bles, quartz crystals, oddly shaped 
and curious rock formations, and 
even fossils were commonly met with 
and serve as testimony of ancient 
animistic beliefs. In one room was 
uncovered a small altar in the shape 
of a low platform. On it stood 
a human-like image of stone and 


RUINS OF PREHISTORIC NEW MEXICO 79 


around this supposed god were laid numerous objects of the various types 

mentioned above. “a 
The inhabitants of these villages or large groups of apartment houses, 

as they might be called, were agriculturists rather than hunters. Bones of 


A shrine found in one of the rooms at Pueblo Largo. On a low earthen platform and 
leaning against the wall stands a stone image surrounded by various obiects of bone, stone, 
and pottery. Photographed very nearly as found 


the deer, the buffalo, and other animals were occasionally found in the pre- 
historic ruins; but it seems very clear that the meat diet was relatively 
light until the Spanish conquerors brought the domesticated animals of 
Europe. Remains of charred maize were found however, in every one of 


OS 

AVME POLIS J[VY ULY} I1OUL MOU SI YOTYM SUIPTING poutns ot} payoror dsvy av 

pue zued 877 InoJopUN OF UBsoq WROI]S 9} “Ysno1y} Woyord WOM OSLITLA OY} OAOG ooURISIP OlMOS A]T[NS oY} UT 19}zVA\ JO MOY oy} SUIUIeJOI SUIRP PoJE][50U 
oUF PUB poTOpULG’ SVAL OFIS OY} JOWJY “oseTTIA oY} Ysnoay) sutssed AT[NS 10 OLOIIe dovp oY} Wor BdURISTP OJvs vB 7R YING A|[VUTSIIO SUM OINQONAYS SIT, 


OSYV1 OT184aNd LV ASNOH DONO V 4O NINY 


RUINS OF PREHISTORIC NEW MEXICO 81 


the ruins, so that although the culti- 
vated fields can no longer be dis- 
cerned, we may be reasonably certain 
that the inhabitants subsisted main- 
ly by the cultivation of the soil. 
Incidental to the expedition’s 
main work in the Galisteo region, 
two weeks were given to the excava- 
tion of the historically famous ruin of 
Kotyiti on Potrero Viejo, a few miles 
west of the Rio Grande in the latitude 
of Santa Fé. Potrero Viejo is a high, 
steep-sided mesa spur, a strong nat- 
ural fortress. It shows signs of hav- 
ing been occupied once in very ancient 
times, but Kotyiti itself was a village 
or temporary refuge built shortly 
after the Indian rebellion of 1680 to 
be destroyed by the reconquering 
Spaniards in 1693. Its excavation 
was undertaken partly to verify 
Spanish documentary history and 
partly also because it was possible to 
get here a glimpse of the conditions 
of pueblo life at a given 
and known instant of 
time. The entire ruin 
was cleared. It con- 
tained one hundred and 
thirty-six rather large 
living rooms and two 
estufas. The chief thing 
of interest learned from 
the excavation here was 
the fact that the Indians 
in the absence of the 
Spaniards made a fair 
success of smelting cop- 
perore. This art was of 
coursenot of native origin 


Doorway connecting interior rooms at 
Pueblo San Cristébal. This is the form of 
door in general use in all the pueblos of the 
region 


but had been acquired in Illustration of the masonry at Pueblo Kotyiti. The 
larger blocks of stone were roughly dressed with stone 


connection with Spanish tools and laid in mortar, after which the wall was chinked 
mining operations. with small angular fragments, plastered and often white- 


washed 


FIGURE FROM THE NEW NAVAJO GROUP 


Engaged in smoking a cigarette while he watches the women work. [The pipes of the 
Navajo tribe are used in ceremonies only.] This figure illustrates the manner of wearing the 
blankets made by the Navajo and shows the fringed buckskin leggings Common until fifty 
years ago 
82 


INDIANS OF THE SOUTHWEST 


SPECIAL EXHIBITION OPENED FEBRUARY 27 AT THE MUSEUM 
NAVAJO BLANKETS, PUEBLO POTTERY, PAINTINGS BY DIS-— 
TINGUISHED ARTISTS, TO ILLUSTRATE THE LIFE OF 
INDIANS IN NEW MEXICO AND ARIZONA 


OR several years the Museum has been engaged in the study of the 
Indians of the Southwest in the course of which larger collections 
were made than can be exhibited at one time. The field work was 

provided for by Mr. Archer M. Huntington. In addition to the col- 
lections made under this grant, are 
shown the J. Pierpont Morgan Navajo 
textile collection and the Anson W. 
Hard collection of Mexican serapes. 
The permanent exhibit of material 
from the former Hyde expeditions is 
also on view. This exhibition will 
make it possible for those interested 
in the anthropology of the Southwest 
to study intensively the many char- 
acteristic phases of cultwie peculiar 
thereto. 


Pounding one of the Mexican silver dollars from which Navajo jewelry is made. The 
silver-beater has on a velvet blouse and white cotton trousers, a costume much worn by 
Navajo men. The silver is shaped by pounding, then ornamented by stamping with steel 
dies. Finger rings, bracelets, necklaces and large oval disks for belts are the objects more 
commonly made for Navajo use 

The Navajo girl is carrying in her shawl the baby brother too large for the cradle-board 


83 


84 INDIANS OF THE SOUTHWEST 


There will also be on view a number of paintings by distinguished artists 
including some work by the late Louis Akin. This with photographs, 
sketches and maps will give one the feeling of the Southwest. 

One of the special ethnic groups is here shown in the illustrations. 
Supplementary to this is a full-sized hogan or Navajo house, shipped to the 
Museum from the Navajo reservation. This is one of the older types of 
ceremonial hogan, built upon a foundation of four forked logs, the arrange- 
ment of which suggests the tipi pole structure among the Crow and some 
other tribes of Northern Plains Indians. In the near future it is proposed 
that the interior of this hogan be fitted out with the furnishings of a Navajo 
home and life-sized figures of the occupants. 

A handbook on the Southwest has just been written by Dr. P. E. 
Goddard in which are discussed phases of Indian life peculiar to that part 
of our country. For a long time the Navajo and Pueblo Indians have 
excelled in decorated pottery and textiles. These arts are rather old 
because in many ancient ruins are fragments of very fine pottery. Also 
the early Spanish explorers found the people spinning and weaving cotton. 


, 


Navajo man making turquoise beads (drilling a piece of turquoise matrix with a bow 
drill) 


G8 


_ SUTJS¥d IOJ JOATIS SuIy;ouN 
SMOTIOG ITM OSI0F OY} 4¥ SI AOG & PU OSIONHANY pUv JOATIS JO S}USUTeUIO SULTVUL Ul poseZue ust oie dnois oy} JO Jo] 04} UO “WOOT o[duIs & uO JoHULIq B 


SUIAvOM SI pity) & pues ‘Wes oY} SuTUUIAS ST Joq}OUR ‘s][OI 07UT TOO oY} SUIpPavd ST URMIOM OUD ‘“dnoiZ OfeAeN WHosnyL oY} JO OpIs 4ST eq) UO poyeaysnq{t 
ole SUL{eUI-JoyuUL[q JO ssoooid oy} Jo syred sei, “SJeHUL[ OJUT 9peUI ST IO Japvay oY} YSNOIT} POS JOyYAIS SI [OOM OUT, 
-InJ SYOOY oY} JO osvoioUl ot, “Usip[iyo pue usui0M oy} Aq popuey desys Jo yoo ve sey Ajrurey AoAO ATIVAN 
suljyuny oIpemou e atoM AOU, 


YOo[g 01490 AQ poeTquiesse dnois pue opeul solosssddy [019 ° 


‘uo dumnsu0d etm0Y JOF YeeM SoysTu 
‘ajdood ye1ojsed e stuvoeq Aoy ‘oTdood 


‘OFST Ul ATQUNOD 4VY} OFUT OTD SpreTUedg 9} BOUIS SOATOSMISY) OpeMaI BAL JSOMYINOG oy) JO suvIpuy ofear N SOUL 
H 3oMepery Aq pasojod ‘ueyoH wssoN esi, Aq poyepouw seams 
SSIYLSNGNI GNV 3417 SAIWOH OFVAVN SNIMOHS dNOHS V 


A DETAIL OF THE WHARF-PILE GROUP 


The broken pile at the right is crowded with edible mussels, upon which are growing the feathery 
colonies of a beautiful pink-centered tubularian hydroid. The irregular Jobed mass of the rose-colored 
ascidian (‘‘sea pork’’) is seen on the upper part of the pile. On the pile at the left are shown sea 
anemones and various ascidians as well as colonies of the red-beard sponge 
86 


ANIMALS OF THE WHARF PILES 


THE NEW VINEYARD HAVEN GROUP! AS AN ILLUSTRATION OF 
5 CERTAIN PHASES OF EVOLUTION 


By Roy W. Miner 


HE animal life which grows on the wharf piles furnishes a striking 
illustration of one of the important adaptive phases of the process 
of evolution — namely, specialization to an inactive life. In the 

new Vineyard Haven wharf-pile group, recently completed for one of the 
windows of the Darwin hall, an attempt has been made to emphasize this 
principle, as well as to depict the abundance and beauty of the animals 
themselves in their natural environment. The group illustrates a balanced 
association in which the struggle for existence between animals is not 
apparent, the majority of the species being plantlike and either incapable 
of locomotion in the adult stage, or in possession of it to a very limited degree. 

On the broken pile in the center of the foreground, for example, growing 
over the mussels which have completely covered its stump are hundreds of 
delicate pink hydroids (Tubularia crocea) clustered in feathery colonies. 
Here and there among them peep forth the transparent solitary polyps of 
the white-armed sea anemone (Sagartia leucolena), while the larger brown 
sea-anemone (Metridium marginatum) expands its fringe-crowned disks on 
this and the neighboring piles, interspersed with coral red masses of the 
red-beard sponge (Microciona prolifera). Although these flower-like forms 
are relatively stationary and inactive, underneath their apparent peaceful- 
ness and beauty the struggle for existence goes on as relentlessly as among 
fierce free-swimming species, but with this difference, that their prey is 
invisible to our eyes. The waters in which they are immersed are swarming 
with myriads of microscopic creatures, while every polyp, with open rapa- 
cious mouth and extended stinging tentacles is but a trap to entangle and 
engulf them, and every sponge-colony with its million pores sucks in the 
nutritious draft of organisms which are the ultimate basis of food for all 
sea-life. In a word, sponges and polyps in spite of their size and wide 
diversity of form are but little above the simplest of all animals, the one- 
celled protozoa, and have developed as typically digestive organisms. 
Since their food is everywhere present, organs of locomotion are not needed 
to obtain it. Special senses and directive intelligence or instincts have not 
been definitely evolved, since the evolution of these powers always goes 
hand in hand with that of locomotor organs. It is true that certain polyps 
possess somewhat aimless and imperfect methods of locomotion such as the 


1 The field work, composition and effects for this group are the work of the author. The 
modeling and preparation was done by Mr. I. Matausch assisted by Mr. E. Miiller, the glass- 
work by Mr. H. Miiller, and the coloring by Messrs. S. Shimotori and I. Matausch, under 
the supervision of the author. Through the courtesy of the United States Fish Commis- 
sion the laboratories and equipment of its Woods Hole station were put at the disposal of 


the Museum for the field work of this group 
87 


88 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


slow creeping movement of the sea anemones and the umbrella mode of 
propulsion peculiar to hydromeduse and the true jellyfishes— a beautiful 
example of which (Dactylometra quinquecirra) is shown lazily swimming 
near the broken pile in the group. But the polyps as a whole may be 
considered as mere saclike stomachs, this specialization in digestion being 
their most striking advance, aside from their multicellular structure, over 
their protozoan progenitors. Yet there is good reason to believe that a 
polyp-like condition such as this is ancestral to the structure of all the 
higher and more complex groups of the Animal Kingdom. 

Associated with the sponges and polyps upon the wharf piles are many 
other sedentary animals which like them feed upon the microédrganisms of 
the sea. At first glance these seem to be of hardly higher organization 
than the polyps, but an examination of their structure at once shows them 
to be members of 
much higher groups 
in the scale of life. 
Examples of these 
are the edible bi- 
valve mussels (Mytt- 
lus edulis) clustered 
thickly upon the 
piles. These  ani- 
mals are so closely 
adapted to an at- 
tached mode of life 
and a diet of micro- 
Organisms that the 
average observer, 


The squid (Loligo pealii), a carnivorous free swimming mol- unacquainted with 
lusk, propels itself by ejecting a stream of water. It has highly : “1° 
specialized eyes and a beak-like mouth surrounded by sucker- their affinities, would 
bearing tentacles fail to recognize 


them as being in- 
cluded in the same great phylum (Mollusca) as the active and highly 
specialized squid, an example of which (Loligo pealii) is shown in the group 
swimming near the same pile. Again, closely encrusting the pile to the left 
are masses of coiled calcareous tubes, the homes of the tube-building worm 
(Hydroides dianthus) whose multicolored gill circlets are everywhere peep- 
ing forth from the tube-openings, giving their owners, to the superficial 
glance, a much closer resemblance to hydroids and small sea anemones 
than to highly specialized members of the annulate worm group to which 
they really belong. 
Finally, everywhere on the piles are various species of sea squirts or 
ascidians, singly and in colonies. These small saclike creatures each with 


ANIMALS OF THE WHARF PILES 89 


a projecting pair of tubes or 


‘ 


“siphons,” though apparently insignificant, 


are in reality highly interesting from an evolutionary standpoint. One 


species (Molgula manhatten- 
sis) is represented as grow- 
ing in large yellow masses 
on the upper part of one of 
the piles. Some of the in- 
dividuals of this species are 
marked with dark starlike 
colonies of another ascidian 
(Botryllus gouldit), which 
grow upon their surfaces. 
Here and there stand out 
the conspicuous masses of 
the pink “sea-pork”’ (Ama- 
roucitum pellucidum) a colo- 
nial ascidian whose minute 
individuals are perceptible 
as white dots forming irreg- 
ular ringlike patterns on the 
colonial mass. On one pile 
a spreading white patch 
marks the position of a col- 
ony of the species Leptocli- 
num albidum, and here and 
there bits of delicate web- 
like net-work dotted with 
tiny green globules grow 
over mussels and sea-weed 
indicating the presence of 
the green ascidian (Pero- 
phora viridis). Some of the 
ascidians are more or less 
solitary like the brownish 
Cynthia partita, and _ still 
others (Ciona tenella) grow 
in clumps of several individ- 
uals, comparatively large in 
size. These have trans- 
lucent yellowish bodies 
through which may be seen 


A typical ascidian, or sea-squirt (Ciona tenella). A 
food-bearing stream of sea-water enters and leaves the 
creature’s sac-like translucent body by means of the two 
tubes or siphons 


Large yellow masses of the sea-squirt Molgula, are 
often found on the submerged piles not far below the 
water surface 


glimpses of the internal organs. The ascidians as a group possess a pecu- 
liar interest for biologists, since in spite of their humble appearance and 


90 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


structure somewhat lower than that of a mollusk so far as complexity of 
organization is concerned, they are actually primitive members of the 
chordate group which includes the vertebrates and culminates in man. 
Their true relationship is shown by their life history according to the 
principle that an animal in its development tends to summarize certain 
of the changes that its ancestors have undergone in evolution: their young 
when first hatched are free-swimming, with tadpole-like tail, well-developed 
median eye, “brain’’ and central nervous system of the primitive chordate 
type, and the most striking indication of their affinity the larval notochord, 
or cartilaginous prototype of a backbone. As the animal approaches 
maturity however, it attaches itself to some stationary object, by means 
of sucking disks upon its head. It then undergoes a metamorphosis which 
involves the breaking up and degeneration of “brain,”’ special sense organs 
and notochord while the nervous system is reduced to little more than a 
single ganglion. On the other hand the digestive system is rotated upon 
itself and together with the circulatory system and other organs, becomes 
adapted to the future sedentary life of the animal. 

As in the case of the hydroid, the organization of the adult ascidian is 
chiefly that of a digestive and reproductive machine, but that it is of a 
much higher type than the polyp is evident from the relatively high speciali- 
zation of its digestive apparatus. 

Thus in an association of animals like that of the wharf piles, in which 
the various species are adapted to a sedentary existence and a diet of 
microorganisms, there may be three principal categories of forms,— first, 
those like the polyps which have reached the adaptation as the result of an 
evolution from still lower types; secondly, those like the tube-building 
serpulid worms and the bivalve mollusks, which have become greatly 
specialized to that mode of existence without much loss of complexity; and 
thirdly, those like the ascidians, which have undergone a considerable 
degeneration from a former more complex and highly organized type of 
structure. 

Such an association also emphasizes the general tendency throughout 
the great groups of animals to take advantage of all the available sources 
of food supply in their environment. The microérganisms of the sea seem 
especially suitable as prey for the smaller and more primitive members of 
the animal kingdom like the sponges and polyps. Yet among the echino- 
derms, worms, crustaceans, mollusks, ascidians, chordates and even fishes 
(such as menhaden), there are certain forms in each group which haye found 
it of advantage to share this great abundance of food. Thousands of 
microscopic creatures may swarm in a single drop of sea water; and in the 
course of time the species that feed upon them have become more and 
more perfectly adapted to this diet, often to the extent of undergoing pro- 
found modifications of structure and habits of life. 


THE NEW WHARF-PILE GROUP 


[Editorial comment and notes on the construction of the group] 


ROM the standpoint of faithful reproduction of nature, there is no 
group in the American Museum of Natural History that surpasses 
the new marine group constructed under the supervision of Mr. 

Roy W. Miner. From the standpoint of general artistic effect, there is no 
very large number perhaps that compare with it. It is without doubt one 
of the most beautiful groups thus far constructed in this Museum, although 
differing so greatly in character from the three or four masterpiece mammal 
groups, the habitat bird groups and the frog group that comparison is 
difficult. 

Its chief claim artistically, outside of what is inherent in the subject 
itself, lies in its handling of color and illumination. These have been so 
controlled as to produce distance in the scene above water and a depth and 
gradation of depth that give very unusual illusion under water. The 
splendid success of the group results in large part of course from the clever 
management of mechanical details of construction, and it may be said that 
there are few blemishes to be discovered by even the most critical eye. 
What this implies in an intelligent control of technical work can scarcely 
be appreciated except by the trained museum man, although a compara- 
tive study of groups in many museums will enforce the fact of the excep- 
tional excellence to the most casual observer. 

The following notes given by Mr. Miner concerning the mechanical 
work on the group will be enjoyed both by those who are directly interested 
in Museum constructive work and by the visitor who is merely curious as 
to how realistic effects have been produced: 


The group is based on actual observations in the Woods Hole region, the life 
depicted being a faithful copy of that actually seen on the piles of wharves, especially 
on abandoned wharves whose piles have not been scraped. The abundance and 
beauty of this life are in no way exaggerated in the group and the life associations 
shown are possible anywhere in the Woods Hole region, although most of the direct 
studies were made at Vineyard Haven, six miles from Woods Hole village. In the 
field a miniature sketch model showing the composition of the future group was 
constructed. Then living specimens of the animals were removed from the piles 
and brought into the laboratory where they were kept alive in sea-water aquaria. 
Studies were made of them with and without the microscope, and they were sketched 
in color and photographed. The Museum photographer in New York was sent for 
to make the photographs for the transparency backgrounds, while dissections and 
enlarged drawings were prepared for use in constructing enlarged models for the 
accompanying synoptic series in the Darwin hall. 

At the close of the summer season in the field, work on the group was continued 
in the Museum. First a wooden framework for the full-sized group was made by the 


91 


92 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


Museum carpenter, on which enlarged photographic prints were stretched as pre- 
liminary backgrounds to enable harmonizing the foreground construction with the 
natural perspective. The animal life in the group is represented by an assemblage of 
models except in the case of hard structures such as shells. The mussels on the piles 
are the actual specimens which were preserved in alcohol and afterward taken apart, 
the soft portions cleaned out and the shells reassembled with wax and cotton. The 
worm tubes are the natural dried specimens recolored. The starfish was also dried 
and prepared with a wax foundation, the tube feet being modeled in glass and in- 
serted. The tubularian hydroids were all separately blown in glass and welded 
together in colonies, the sketches made in the field and the original alcoholic speci- 
mens being used as patterns. The color was sprayed on with the air brush, the 
finishing touches being made by hand in the usual manner. Some of the ascidians 
(for example, Ciona tenella) were blown in glass and their internal organs were 
modeled in the same material and inserted separately. Hundreds of tentacles for 
the sea anemones, cirri for the serpulid Hydroides dianthus; and even some of the 
seaweed are also the work of the glass-blower, but perhaps the best work in this line 
is the modeling of the jellyfish and the squid. The former is entirely of glass and is a 
masterpiece of the giass-blower’s art, while the peculiar translucency of the squid’s 
body could be attained by no other medium. The coloring of these two models by 
the Japanese artist is also a triumph of skill. 

Much of the animal life however was modeled in such materials as wax and 
celluloid. The ascidian, Molgula, the colonies of the red beard sponge and the 
greater part of the sea anemones are of wax, while the delicate hydroid, Bougainvillia, 
and the green network colonies of Perophora are made of a combination of wax and 
German silver wire handled in most delicate fashion. One of the most creditable 
pieces of work, the accurate modeling and coloring of the wharf piles themselves, is 
the work of Mr. I. Matausch, who is also responsible for the technical skill in as- 
sembling and anchoring the hundreds of separate models and specimens in their 
final positions. 

The coloring of the transparencies proved a problem peculiar to itself, involving 
the application of transparent oil colors, selected for their permanency under strong 
sunlight, to the surface of glass covered with a delicate photographic film (in the 
case of the transparencies represented as above the water line), and to the smooth 
surface of plate glass for the submarine background. This latter background is 
made up of five successive sheets of glass, each colored in such a manner that the 
daylight passing through the entire series gives the effect seen when looking hori- 
zontally through the waters of the ocean. The color effect for this part of the group 
is based on actual observation in the sea itself made with the help of a water glass 
and submerged mirror. Fishes, squid and a distant pile were painted on the suc- 
cessive plates of glass, thus giving them the lifelike effect of appearing suddenly from 
the gloom of the green sea depths. Since the whole group was placed in front of a 
window, the illumination is entirely that of the natural daylight, as transmitted 
through the various backgrounds. The cloud and sunshine and various outdoor light 
conditions in general thus produce their natural effects as they filter through the 
translucent backgrounds of the group. 


MUSEUM NOTES 


SrncE the last issue of the Journat the following persons have been elected to 
membership in the Museum: 

Benefactor, Pror. HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN; 

Associate Benefactor, Mr. A. D. JUILLIARD; 

Fellow, Mr. FREDERIC C. WALCOTT; 

Honorary Fellows, Captain RoaALD AMUNDSEN, ADMIRAL RoBeEeRT E. PEARY; 

Life Members, Rev. ARTHUR HUNTINGTON ALLEN, Messrs. WILLIAM F’. BELLER, 
WARREN Deano, D. K. Este FisHer, Jr.. Francis P. Garvan, CHARLES E. 
HANAMAN, CHARLES B. IsHam, OGpEN L. Mitus, EpMuND PENFOLD, JOHN J. RIKER, 
ARCHIBALD D. RussEetL, HERBERT F. ScHwarz, ALBERT JAMES SHELDON, Howarp 
CASWELL SmitTH, WiLLIAM Boyce THOMPSON; ; 

Sustaining Members, Mrs. HELEN Haut Vatu and Mgssrs. JoHN F. Harris and 
FREDERICK STURGES; 

Annual Members, Mrs. J. Scortr ANDERSON, Mrs. Eimer EF. Buack, Mrs. H. L. 
Buum, Mrs. Jessiz B. Cameron, Mrs. Resecca McM. Conrext, Mrs. Wittiam D. 
GAILLARD, Mrs. W. Prerson Hamittron, Mrs. Joun Hays Hammonp, Mrs. ALFRED 
JARETZKI, Mrs. ADAM Leroy Jones, Mrs. AmManpa F. LauTerBAcH, Mrs. Casimir 
DER. Moors, Mrs. Braprorp NorMAN, Mrs, W. A. Paynse, Mrs. Cuartes G. 
StopparD, Mrs. GreorGE F. Vietor, Miss Autice M. Davison, Miss Carouine B. 
Dow, Miss FLorENcE Wier Gisson, Miss Sorpaize Horrman McLane, Miss 
Bertua V. Merrick, Miss Marsorie T. Sincuair, Miss ANNIE STONE, Dr. WIL- 
LIAM B. DunninG, Dr. Howarp LILIENTHAL, Dr. ARNOLD STURMDORF, and Messrs. 
J.S. AtexanpnEr, A. K. Atrorp, W. H. ANpREws, HueH Potrer Baker, HERBERT 
BarBER, THoMAS HENRY BavcuLeE, JR., ANDREW A. BENTON, H. HENRY,BERTRAM, 
ARTHUR C. BLAGDEN, HuGHES Bryant, Epwarp Burns, WILLIAM CARPENDER, 
Percy M. Cuannier, O. H. Coenry, GEorGE A. CRIDER, WILLIAM NELSON Davey, 
JOHNSTON DE Forest, Davin Dows, FREDERICK L. ELDRIDGE, BENJAMIN F. EuGcar, 
2d, R. K. Forsytu, Hueu F. Fox, Doucuas W. FrancHot, JosEPH FRANK, FRANK 
B. Ginpretu, W. 8. Gorpon, J. S. Haute, Coartes Hatuaway, SAMUEL B. Haw- 
LEY, W. DEF. Haynus, Epcar C. Hepparp, JoHN B. HENDERSON, JR., SIMON Hess, 
GRANGER A. Houuister, E. Coz Kerr, Lucian 8. Kirtuanp, Epwarp H. Kruse, 
FrepERIc S. Lez, Louis 8. Levy, FranK J. Lorscu, C. A. Luptum, Apam K. LuKE. 
C. N. Mason, Joun C. McCatu, Grtorcr R. McCienian, THomas P. McKenna, 
Francis W. McMitnan, Paut B. Morgan, H. D. Nessuter, GeorcE P. Putnam, 
JAMES Rascovar, J. D. RockwELL, Aucustus J. RouuE, WILLIAM P. Roomg, P. D. 
SAKLATVALA, ISADORE Saks, Louis J. SCHILLER, Epwarp M. ScuppErR, WILLIAM E.” 
Srymour, WILLIAM G. SHAILER, JOHN SINNOTT, JAMES A. Swan, Marcus Straus, 
Wituiam R. StrRoBet, FRANK Surron, AuGcustus Porter THOMPSON, CHARLES 
THoRLEY, ARTHUR TURNBULL, OWEN Warp, H. WALTER WEBB, ARTHUR WILLIAM 
Writ, JoHN C. WELwoop, E. G. WHITAKER, GEORGE F. WILLETT, ALEXANDER S. 
WILLIAMS and JosEPH WILLIAMS. 


Tue forty-fourth annual meeting of the trustees of the American Museum of 
Natural History was held on Monday, February 3, 1913, at the residence of Mr. 
Adrian Iselin, Jr. The following were elected officers for the coming year: president, 


93 


94 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


Henry Fairfield Osborn; first vice-president, Cleveland H. Dodge; second vice-presi- 
dent, J. Pierpont Morgan, Jr.; treasurer, Charles Lanier; secretary, Adrian Iselin, Jr. 
who succeeds Archer M. Huntington. 

Mr. Frederick F. Brewster was elected as a new member of the board of trustees 
and the following members of the board were reélected: Mr. Albert S. Bickmore, Mr. 
Adrian Iselin,’ Jr., Mr. Thomas deWitt Cuyler, Mr. Ogden Mills and Mr. Madison 
Grant. 

The executive staff of the Museum was reappointed as follows: director, Frederic 
A. Lucas; assistant secretary, George H. Sherwood; assistant treasurer, the United 
States Trust Company of New York. 


Tue American Museum has adopted a pension plan which will go into effect 
on March first. It is a departure in this country, the first instance recorded of a 
museum of sciences originating a pension system for the benefit of its employees. 
‘The idea was suggested to President Osborn by an investigation of the pension 
plans in operation in Europe. The committee which acted in the matter included 
the following trustees: Mr. Felix M. Warburg, Mr. Adrian Iselin, Jr., and Mr. 
Anson W. Hard. 

In brief the plan is a contributory system, three per cent of the annual salaries 
being paid to the fund by the employees and a like amount by the corporation. The 
plan provides: 

1. Pensions — Six classes of pensions according to length of service and age, 
the pensions varying from twenty-five to fifty per cent of the average salary 
of the last three years. 

2. Health Insurance — Gratuity to the employee in case he is totally disabled 
through illness, or his position is abolished. 

3. Life Insurance — Gratuity to a beneficiary, in the event of the death of 
the employee, and under certain conditions in the event of the death of a 
pensioner. 

4. For the return of the employee’s contribution with simple interest at three 
per cent in case the employee leaves the service of the Museum before he is 
eligible for a pension. 


At the annual meeting of the board of trustees, Mr. A. D. Juilliard was made 
associate benefactor of the American Museum in recognition of his generous contri- 
butions and continued activity in matters that tend toward the growth of the insti- 
tution. 


Tue Jesup lectures on “ Heredity and Sex” by Dr. Thomas H. Morgan, professor 
of experimental zodlogy in Columbia University, began in the auditorium of the 
American Museum, February 5 and will continue to be given on Wednesday evenings 
until March 26. The subjects of the series are as follows: 

February 5— “The Evolution of Sex” 


February 12 — “ The Mechanism of Sex Determination ” 
February 19 — ‘‘ The Mendelian Principles of Heredity and their Bearing on Sex” 
February 26 — ‘ Secondary Sexual Characters and their Relation to Darwin’s Theory 


of Sexual Selection ” 
March 5—“ The Effects of Castration and of Grafting on the Secondary Sexual 
Characters ”’ 
March 12 — “ Parthenogenesis and Sex” 
March 19 — “ Inbreeding and Fertility ”’ 
March 26 — “ Special Cases of Sex Inheritance ” 


MUSEUM NOTES 95 


Mr. VitHJsALMUR STEFANSSON will sail early in March for Europe where he will 
purchase a part of the scientific equipment for the new Arctic expedition. He will 
address the Royal Geographical Society while in London and later attend the Inter- 
national Geographical Congress at Rome as delegate of the National Geographic 
Society. 


A RECEPTION at the Museum on the evening of February 26 marked the opening 
of the exhibition of collections, paintings and photographs illustrating the daily life 
and ceremonies of the Indians of the Southwest. In this exhibition the following 
complete collections are placed on view for the first time: The Collis P. and Archer 
M. Huntington collections; the Anson W. Hard serape collection; the J. P. Morgan 
Navajo collection; the Mrs. Russell Sage blanket collection; the James Douglas 
basket collection; selected specimens from the Hyde archzological collections and 
the Lumholtz Mexican collections. 

Among the pictorial exhibits are a series from the Morgan collection of Curtis 
prints and one from the Museum collection of Karl Moon photographs. The late 
Louis Akin is represented by paintings loaned by Messrs. C. L. Le Fevre, G. H. 
Frommann, Goelet Gallatin and W. H. Simpson. The following artists have loaned 
examples of their work: Ernest L. Blumenschein, R. W. Chanler, Kate Cory, E. 
Irving Couse, E. W. Deming, Howard McCormick, Bert G. Phillips and Mahonri 
M. Young. The exhibition will remain open to the public until March 26. 


Tar Museum has announced to the principals and teachers of the New York 
City schools a series of lectures grouped in three courses in accordance with the new 
method adopted in the fall. The lectures will be given by the members of the Mu- 
seum staff and will specialize on the history and geography of the United States and 
New York City. They will be illustrated with lantern slides and moving pictures. 


Tue Instituts Solvay, Bruxelles, in its last Sociological Bulletin published extracts 
and translations in French of Dr. Wissler’s recent Museum publication on the ‘‘Cere- 
monial Bundles of the Blackfoot Indians.’’ Two full pages of illustrations and some 
text figures were also reproduced. The parts of the paper dealing with the social 
aspects of certain religious ceremonies were regarded as important sociological con- 
tributions. 


A series of natural history picture stories has been arranged for the children of 
members of the Museum. These are designed primarily for entertainment, yet 
through the pictures taken from life hope to teach something of the habits of wild 
creatures and the 1elationship and interdependence of all life. They will be given 
on Saturday mornings in the auditorium of the Museum and will be illustrated with 
moving pictures. The stories will be as follows: 

March 1-— “Jungle Scenes in Africa, India and Borneo,” by CHerry KEARTON 
March 8 — “Wild Animal Neighbors,” by Ernest Harotp BayNEs 

March 15 — “‘A Monkey on Safari,” by Cart EK. AKELEY 

March 22 — ‘‘Poonkong and his People,” by PLiny E. Gopparp 

March 29 — “Our Friends the Trees,” by Grorce H. SHERwoop 


A SHIPMENT of birds and mammals has been received from Mr. W. B. Richardson, 
who has been collecting for the Museum in Ecuador. 


Dr. W.S. Rarnsrorp, in charge of the Museum’s third African expedition, re- 
ports that he has been successful in securing a large series of specimens, including 
the black rhinoceros which was one of the special objects of the expedition. 


96 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


Dr. R. M. ANDERSON was appointed assistant in the department of mammalogy 
at the February meeting of the board of trustees. Dr. Anderson will accom- 
pany the Stefdnsson expedition to the Arctic as zodlogist and second in command. 


Mr. J. H. O’Nen, assistant in the department of public health, has resigned to 
accept an appointment as sanitary engineer of the State Board of Health of Louisi- 
ana. His place is taken by Mr. D. Greenberg, a graduate of the College of the City 
of New York. 


Dr. W. D. Marruew of the department of vertebrate paleontology left on Feb- 
ruary 3 for a month’s trip to Los Angeles, California, where he is to study the famous 
asphaltum pools of Rancho Ia Brea in connection with a group now under prepara-- 
tion in the department. He hopes also to effect exchanges with California institu- 
tions which have done excavating at La Brea ranch, whereby the Museum may ac- 
quire additional specimens of the wonderfully preserved Pleistocene fossils which 
these asphaltum pools contain. The Museum’s present collection from these de- 
posits, obtained through exchange, includes skeletons of the saber-toothed tiger 
and an extinct species of wolf and a skull of the ground sloth. Dr. Matthew is taking 
advantage of the opportunity to visit en route the museums of Pittsburgh, Chicago, 
Lincoln, Laramie and San Francisco. 


Dr. C-E. A. Wrnstow has recently been elected president of the Society of 
American Bacteriologists. 


Dr. R. W. Ssuretpt of Washington, who is well known as one of the few authori- 
ties upon fossil birds in this country, has completed a revision of the Pleistocene 
fossil birds in the American Museum collections and is now engaged upon a study 
of the Tertiary bird specimens. Fossil birds are extremely rare and Dr. Shufeldt’s 
contributions will add materially to one of the least known chapters of the history of 
life. Among the specimens in his hands for study are a few fragments of a gigantic 
bird from the Lower Eocene equalling in size the extinct moa of New Zealand. This 
specimen was found by the Museum expedition in Wyoming last summer, and some 
more or less imaginative notices of it have appeared in the daily papers. The full 
results of Dr. Shufeldt’s studies will appear in the American Museum Bulletin. 


Durina the past month there have been a number of additions to the collections 
of the department of mammalogy. Thirty-five of the great fruit bats from the 
Philippine Islands with complete accessory material for a group have been received. 
These bats are found in rookeries consisting at times of as many as fifteen or twenty 
thousand individuals. The collections made by Dr. Rudolph M. Anderson in the 
Arctic have arrived at the Museum. Among them is the magnificent series of barren 
ground bear which has already been noted in the Journau. Also the northern Korea 
collections of mammals made by Mr. Roy C. Andrews, have arrived in New York 
safely after what proved to be an adventurous voyage from the Orient. 


Mr. Crybe G. FisHer of Johns Hopkins University, has been appointed assistant 
curator in the department of public education, the appointment to take effect on 
May 1, 1913. 


On Saturday afternoon, March 8, the Museum will tender a reception to the 
public school teachers who give their services for the after-school athletics of the 
girls’ branches of the Public Schools Athletic League. 


The American Museum Journal 


VoLtuME XIII MARCH, 1913 NUMBER 3 


CONTENTS 


Cover, An Apache Indian Girl 
Copyright photograph by Edward S. Curtis 


Frontispiece, “The Grand Cajion,” by Louis Akin 


Phat Herta ENstorye MISSI. 6)... 6 ecb 250,05 Se pa Ne Gace oes 99 
With special reference to mural decorations in the Indian halls 

The Indian — A Subject for Art.................E. W. Demine = 103 
Illustrations from canvases by E. W. Deming and photographs by Edward S. 
Curtis 

Louis Akin, American Artist...............RoBERT L. WARNER 113 


Illustrations from canvases by Louis Akin 


The Artist’s Southwest. ...................-Howarp McCormick 119 
With the Author’s photographs of the snake dance and other ceremonies of the 
Hopi Indians 

A. Paee-of, Museum) History..../...:...:....:.:CLARK WiIsstEr.-. 127 


A review of the American Museum’s work on the Indians of the Southwest 
during the past three years 


Shall Indian Lore be Saved?............GEORGE Brrp GRINNELL = 135 
A New Crested Dinosaur.....................BARNUM Brown 139 
Batley ATER Gds 2G el G,d Gad betes sak 124d steele tian © TA 


From a report before the Ornithologists’ Union by Mr. Howard H. Cleaves 


LAPS aCTNS ICTS as Aas OA ne On ae ee Ee MI! (5 


Mary Cyntuia Dickerson, Editor 


Published monthly from October to May by the American Museum of Natural History. 
Terms: one dollar per year, fifteen cents percopy. Entered as second-class matter January 
12, 1907, at the Post-Office at Boston, Mass., Act of Congress, July 16, 1894. 


Subscriptions should be addressed to the AMERICAN MusEuM JouRNAL, 77th St. 
and Central Park West, New York City. 


The Journal is sent free to all members of the Museum. 


THE MUSEUM’S NEW HANDBOOK SERIES 


important or more interesting exhibits of the Museum, is a part 

of the educational work of the American Museum of Natural 
History. These publications supplement the labels by giving more detailed 
information than can be compressed into a few lines. The time of the 
visitor is often limited, he comes to the Museum first of all to see the objects; 
in a way these publications enable him to carry the exhibits home and study 
them at leisure. 

The guide book is a sort of illustrated chart, like the maps of old, com- 
bined with sailing directions, telling where certain things may be found, 
with a few lines in regard to them and pictures of some things of especial 
interest. The illustrated guide leaflet goes a step farther and describes at 
some length a definite group of exhibits illustrating some interesting topic, 
such as the evolution of the horse, the bird habitat groups or the meteorites. 

The recently issued Handbook of the North American Indians of the Plains, 
by Dr. Clark Wissler, is of a different character from the leaflets and marks 
a departure in the publications of this institution. 

Handbooks deal with subjects, or topics, that are illustrated by exhibits 
rather than with the exhibits themselves. Thus the present handbook is 
not merely a guide to the Southwest Indian hall, although it notices and 
figures many of the more important pieces shown there; it describes the life 
and customs of the Indians. It tells of their material culture, of their food 
and how it is or was obtained, by the chase or by cultivation; describes 
their lodges, modes of transportation, dress, weapons and games. Other 
chapters deal with social organization, religion and ceremonies, telling of 
marriage customs, mode of government, societies, mythology, war and 
scalp dances, most of these being topics that cannot be shown by collections 
alone. 

This Handbook of the North American Indians of the Plains, it is hoped, 
is but the first of a large number to be issued by the Museum. A second 
on the Indians of the Southwest written by Dr. Pliny E. Goddard came from 
the press at the time of the Museum’s Southwest exhibition. That on 
Mexican Antiquities is nearly ready, and the Evolution of the Horse now in 
press, although issued in leaflet size on account of the illustrations, is really 
a handbook. Such handbooks may well be used as text-books on the sub- 
jects of which they treat, the more, that being written by men thoroughly 
conversant with the subjects, they may be looked upon as authoritative. 

H.,” Acrale 


r | \HE issuing of publications of a popular nature describing the more 


The American Museum Journal 


Vou. XIII MARCH, 1913 No. 3 


ART IN A NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM 


WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO MURAL DECORATIONS 
IN THE INDIAN HALLS 


TRANGERS in the American Museum knowing only the old type of 
natural history museum might well ask how it comes about that 
an institution of science contains so much that is art. The ex- 

planation is not far to find. It lies in this particular museum’s conscious 
educational trend by which it attempts to make its exhibits attract the 
masses of people, who are without scientific training and probably have no 
especial scientific interests. If any non-compulsory educational institu- 
tion is to prove effective, it must give the knowledge it wishes to impart a 
guise of unusual fascination. 

This fact has been realized by the Museum, particularly during the past 
dozen years. In consequence, artists and sculptors have been brought in 
to codperate with the scientist, as for example in the panoramic bird 
groups, which have attracted world-wide attention. In fact the so-called 
“oroup’’ method of exhibition has produced what in some cases may well 
be termed works of art, a new type of story-telling “picture” consisting of 
real landscape —a site selected and reproduced for artistic as well as 
scientific reasons — blending with an artist’s canvas. 

Attractiveness however has not been the only motive underlying the 
evolution of the present American Museum. A display of specimens, in 
cases, unrelated, is not only uninviting, it is also uninstructive in that it 
tells only a small part of the truth. It can convey no idea of the life, in the 
instance either of animals or of primitive man. Thus the “group,” which 
shows animals in relation to each other and to their native haunt, stands 
for manifolded power to convey knowledge. 

But unfortunately the group idea when used to depict the life of primi- 
tive man, although it keeps its instructiveness as seen in the Eskimea groups 
in the North Pacific hall and the Indian groups in the Woodlands and 
Plains halls, tends to lose in artistic value. The Museum has not the space 
to isolate sufficiently groups of the size that these must be, the visitor 
must approach too near, and besides the difficulties inherent in the con- 
struction of the groups can scarcely be overcome. Human habitat groups 
call for the world’s first talent to handle composition, color and light and 
still more to model the human figures and represent them not for form 
alone as in a masterpiece of bronze or marble but with the confusion of 
the motley color of realism added. 99 


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Copyright, 1908, by Edward S 


AN ARIKARA INDIAN 


Curts 


ART IN A NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM 101 


The Museum recognized this situation with regard to its anthropological 
exhibits several years ago and decided that in large part the province of 
telling the cultures and lives of the people represented in any hall must be 
relegated to mural decorations on the large wall spaces. Such paintings 
have after all, the full value of a group. In a bird group it is desirable to 
have mounted specimens in the foreground because the structure of the bird 
is one of the essential points in the exhibit. In the case of the American 
Indian, on the other hand, the anatomical differences from the white man 
are so small and have so little cultural significance that they are quite 
secondary. What are essential and cannot be told except on canvas are the 
natural environment in which the Indian lives, his village spread over a wide 
area and his stately ceremonies and weird dances. It is only through the 
aid of the artist that the mythology of the Indian can be interpreted, and 
the artist’s success is directly dependent on his knowledge and the degree in 
which he enters into the spirit of Indian life. Decorations in the Indian 
halls must possess archeological and ethnological accuracy as the first 
consideration; after that the artist is free to give a poetical and more or 
less mystical interpretation. 

The plan of mural decorations in the Museum was first tried out in the 
Eskimo section with F. W. Stokes as artist and is now being extended to 
the Indians of Alaska and the North Pacific coast in a remarkable series 
under the brush of Will S. Taylor. At present plans are being prepared 
for a continuous series around two other Indian halls, the Plains and the 
Southwest. E. W. Deming has made studies for the Plains hall. Louis 
Akin for two years previous to his death had worked on studies for the 
Southwest hall and that these studies had not been transferred to the 
Museum’s walls is a fact greatly to be regretted. 

As a subject for American art there could be none greater than our 
American Indian of the past —if the artist but understand him. Few 
people perhaps do this. Here and there a man with the heart of a poet, 
musician or artist — one who himself feels what the Indian felt when, 
wrought upon to energy by midday heat, subdued to reverence by night 
mists and the light of stars, he named the sun his father and the earth his 
mother. Centuries have dulled for civilization the keenness of that un- 
conscious susceptibility to nature and instinct which combines religious 
and poetic feeling with all the practical affairs of life and gives a simple 
nobility, faith and faithfulness such as was possessed by this race rank- 
ing many thousands of years behind the white race in cultural development. 

The Indian has often been superficially and unfairly represented. The 
American Museum hopes to show in mural paintings the relationship of 
this primeval man to the vast isolation on the continent before the coming 
of the white man, and thus to provide a permanent historical record which 
shall be as truthful as science to-day can make it and as sympathetic as 
our American artists can reveal it. 


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THE INDIAN—A SUBJECT FOR ART 
By E. W. Deming 


Illustrations from canvases by E. W. Deming and photographs by Edward S. Curtis 


HE Indian of the old time has passed away, although a few old men 
eh of the race still live, and we have certainly very little to be proud 
of in the record of our dealings with him. He received us with 
generous hospitality and has rarely broken a treaty with us, while we have 
seldom kept one. Every Indian war has been the result of our avarice. 
We have brought him disease which has killed off whole tribes as the Man- 
dan were killed off in 1837. For civilization brought disastrous changes 
to this race too primitive to possess the necessary adaptability. The 
Indian was a meat-eater. Rapidly the supply dwindled under the encroach- 
ments of the white man and he was forced to depend on the “provisions” 
of civilization, seldom obtained first-class. He had lived in some rude 
habitation like the tipi which was a sanitary dwelling, never closed, with 
fresh air always coming in, and moreover continually moved from one place 
to another. The life that he now leads in houses which he keeps airtight 
has killed off a good part of every tribe. Many die of consumption. 

We have cheated the Indian out of his land and his furs — worse than 
cheated him — we have traded him liquor and by this means debauched 
him. He was a great orator and although he has never had a historian, 
we get a glimpse here and there of the power of his speeches. He was a 
great hunter. He was a mighty warrior—we have adopted his mode of 
fighting. His mythology and folklore rank with the mythology and folk- 
lore of the white race. 

It has been my good fortune since a time some fifty years ago to live 
with many tribes of this race, with Sioux, Crow, Blackfoot and Apache, 
most with the Indians of the Plains, with Pueblo and also with the Winne- 
bago. I have hunted and shot with the members of many tribes, but 
could never come up to any in tracking. They honored me by adopting 
me into their tribes and in that way I came into close touch with Crow, 
Blackfoot and Sioux. But this is what I wish to say that in all this inti- 
mate knowledge of them I have never had an oldtime Indian betray a 
confidence. My grandfather, who knew Indians well throughout his life, 
said that he had never refused to trust an Indian and that he had never 
had an Indian betray his trust. ; 

It is very difficult indeed for a white man to interpret the Indian’s point 
of view, wholly impossible perhaps unless he lives with the Indian for many 
years. The death of Dr. William Jones has been one of the hardest blows 
to our knowledge of Indian history and mythology. He was part Indian 
and had the Indian’s point of view together with the white man’s, which he 
had gained through a good education. He was scientific as an observer. 


103 


Copyright by E. W. Deming 


One of the decorations in Mr. Frederic C. Walcott’s summer home in the Berkshire 
Hills, Norfolk, Connecticut. In the murals of this country house Mr. Deming has used the 
landscape and mythology of the immediate locality — a bit of the old time looking back 
one hundred and fifty years 


In collecting Indian myths he knew the difference between the old and the 
transition myths. The Algonkin for instance have been under white influ- 
ence for a hundred and fifty years and their myths have been greatly 
changed. It is only a man who really understands the Indian that can 
translate Indian mythology to carry a true meaning in the languages of 
civilization. Working with this man for many years helped me to under- 
stand the religion and poetic spirit of the red man and to appreciate old 
Indian customs. 

But these old customs are practically gone. We cannot go out into the 
field to-day and study them. We find only transition customs. Neither 
are the oldtime customs obtained from books. All books on the Indian 
are narratives and histories written from the white man’s standpoint, pre- 
senting but superficial ideas of ceremonial life. 

The Indian was in perfect harmony with his environment. ‘The sun was 
his father, the earth his mother, the animal his brother. Over all, the 
Great Mystery ruled. The Indian’s every move was influenced by his 
religion. From the time a child was conceived, the mother’s only thought 
was of the coming warrior — living a pure and simple life, making her 
appeal often to the Great Mystery in his behalf. When in his cradle, she 
sang songs of his brothers, the birds and the animals, and by the time he 
was ten years old he was instilled with a reverence and belief in the all 
powerful Great Mystery. After this the boy never spoke of what was 
sacred to him, yet the Great Mystery was always with him. When the 
youth reached manhood after purifying himself in the sacred sweat lodge, 
he went away from all of his kind to some solitary place and fasted with the 
hope that the underground and underwater people would come to him, the 


104 


interpreters of the Great Mys- 
tery, to make him strong, brave 
and generous. In his emaciated 
condition and with his strong 
faith, the visions were real to him 
and influenced his whole life. 

The white man owes the red 
mana debt greater than he can 
ever repay and is in honor bound 
to record as true a history of the 
oldtime Indian as possible, that 
future generations may know and 
appreciate this stone age people 

2 surviving until to-day. 
COD ent ae Wis emery There has never been in 
literature or in art a more splen- 
did subject to treat. Here is a man different from any other, with deep 
poetic and religious tendencies but never a fanatic. It is this man and this 
race, as far as possible uninfluenced by civilization, that I wish to set forth 
in the decorations at the American Museum. With the Plains Indians I 
shall be able to eliminate everything of white influence. I have taken for the 
paintings that period after the horse was introduced. Horses were brought 
over in 1541. Afterwards they were stolen by Indiaas and began to drift 
north. The Indian at that time was in no way influenced by the white man. 

Each panel of the series in the Plains Indian hall is planned to tell the 
story of a certain stock of Indians, the way of living, customs, decoration 
of lodges, life in the tipi, transportation, everything that can be told; be- 
sides a hundred little things that there is no record of at all, children play- 
ing with make-believe travois, animals, tame crows, around the camp — 
matters that give color and reality to the life. The Indian boy of to-day 
does not even know of these things with the changed way of living and the 
lack of the oldtime way of telling stories. 

Other panels in the series will show the Sioux visiting the Blackfoot; 
a Pawnee hunting party coming in — the earth-lodge people; the return 
of a Comanche war party bringing in stolen horses; a sun dance, probably 
Cheyenne, typical of a religious ceremony; and a buffalo run with the 
Blackfoot and Sioux tribes. 

Studies for mural decorations in the Southwest Indian hall of the Ameri- 
can Museum have been made during the past two years by Louis Akin, 
and most unfortunate was his recent death. He was not only an interpreter 
of the Indian, but was also one of the few, almost the only artist, who realizes 
in his studies and pictures the romance and mystery of the wonderful 
country of the Pueblo Indian. As a co-worker in recording the Indian, I 
grieve for his loss, and for the delay that must follow in making that true 
pictorial record of the American Indian which both art and science demand, 
105 


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Manabozho (Longfellow’s Hiawatha) chasing the spirit of mischief which escapes transformed 
to a whirlwind. Mural at Arden House 


Copyright by E. W. Deming 


Manabozho fighting the West Wind. Mural at Arden House 107 


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LOUIS AKIN, ARTIST 


Born in Oregon in 1868; died at Flagstaff, Arizona, January 2, 1913 

Quoting E. W. Deming, ‘‘He was not only an interpreter of the Indian but was also one 
of the few, almost the only artist, who realizes in his studies and pictures the romance and 
mystery of the wonderful country of the Pueblo Indian ”’ 
112 


LOUIS AKIN, AMERICAN ARTIST 


WITH BRIEF QUOTATIONS FROM THE ARTIST’S LETTERS 
AMONG THE HOPI INDIANS 


By Robert L. Warner 


Illustrations from canvases by Louis Akin. [See frontispiece] 


Arizona, January 2, America lost one of the foremost of its young 

painters. He died at the summit of his powers, his work but half 
finished. And that work is splendid. His colors are always delicate and 
harmonious, his canvases full of the mystery of the desert. At the time of 
his death and for two years previous, he was engaged upon the work of 
preparation of sketches in oil for the mural decorations of the new South- 
west Indian wing of the American Museum of Natural History. 

He was one of my boyhood chums with whom friendship had endured 
up to the present, and I can perhaps appreciate the more his later triumphs 
in art from having observed the handicaps under which he struggled in 
early life. More than that of any other man I have known, his character 
typified passionate love of the great out of doors. 

Louis Akin did. not surrender to the conventions by which in general 
men are bound. His worldly affairs frequently became entangled in a 
skein of difficulties; his correspondence was often neglected, but when 
finally there came the answer to half a dozen letters long untouched, it was 
sure to be so many pages of delightful conversation, illustrated with comical 
marginal sketches, such a joy to read, that one was made ashamed of 
impatience and of his own feeble matter-of-fact communications. From 
one of his letters long ago I quote: 


OUIS AKIN was born in Oregon in 1868. By his death at Flagstaff, 


I have just found an old letter written by my mother to her sister, in the year 
1867 from near Corvallis, Oregon. That was then the frontier. Said she, ‘‘As I sit 
in our cabin door, looking out across the little river, I can hear the singing of the 
waterfall, the sweetest sound in all the world for me.” That was the year before 
I was born. Is there any wonder I have always loved the music of the streams, 
which was my earliest lullaby? 


He first went to Oraibi, Arizona, in the latter part of 1903. I quote the 
following from a letter received from him a few months later: 


.... You see how I’m still holding down my little old stone house — I’ve out- 
stayed my intentions long ago—but I’m good for say three months yet. It is 
simply too good to leave. I haven’t done very much work till in the past few weeks 
— just soaking it in — getting familiar with all I can and finding out what to do and 
what not to. Now I’m getting at it in earnest. If I can only do the “blooming 
stuff”? well enough! It’s the best stuff in America and has scarcely been touched. 
I’ve seen some great ceremonies and rites — been in the thick of them — for I’ve 


made good friends with everybody. 
113 


See 


.... These days we are 
having some wonderful 
sand storms, blowing up 
nearly every afternoon. 
Off here on the mesa we 
get little of them, but see 
the sand sweeping up the 
plains and piling drifts 
around the school and 
store buildings. 

....1 went to a Hopi 
wedding yesterday morn- 
ing — the first I’ve seen. 
It was held at the groom’s 
house, where, as is the 
custom, the girl had gone 
previously to grind corn 
for three days. I arrived 
in plenty of time, for only 
their mothers were up — 
though some other guests 
had already been wel- 
comed. In front of the 
fireplace in one corner 
the two women had two 
large bowls of warm water 
and busied themselves 
working up a lather from 
crushed soap-weed root, 
while the balance of the 
family woke up and 
dressed. The bride’s toilet 
consisted in rising in her 
blanket and putting on her 
belt —for they sleep in 
their one garment. About 
that time the man ap- 

“The Hopi Buckskin Man.’ Sketch in color by Louis peared from an adjoining 
Akin, presented in 1912 to the Camp-Fire Club of New York room, yawning (for, mind 
you, this was at “first 
cock-crow”’), clad in blue overalls, much worn, and an old shirt, for he is an educated 
chap and takes to the white man’s burden of clothes. Then they both knelt in 
front of the basins and his mother washed her hair and her mother washed his. 
Head washing is a feature of all their ceremonies and they all have wonderfully 
beautiful hair. When the hair had been partly dried, they bathed the bride’s arms, 
shoulders and feet, and all present threw water which they had brought for the pur- 
pose over the groom. After that the two stepped out on the terrace, joined hands, 
cast a pinch of sacred cornmeal toward the sunrise and they twain were one. Now 
she will live at his house for two months, during which time he and his male relatives 
will weave two white robes and an elaborate white sash foe her, which she will put 
on and wear to her own house — he following later, and they settling there. After 
the wedding I went home and still had an hour or two for sleep before’ sunrise. 

To-morrow we have another “kachina”’ dance — thirty Indians or so from a 
branch settlement at Moenkapi, forty-five miles away, visit us for that purpose. 
114 


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NIMV SINOT AG SVANVO 


Uuriyv)jyy 70700 “siz fq ‘eTeT ‘7ybruhdog 


Copyright, 1918, by W. J. Black 


THE TEMPLE — BY LOUIS AKIN 


They all run in from there to-day — dance all night in the kiva—all day to-morrow 
out of doors and probably most of the night and half the next day; then run home 
the following day. Oh, but they’re a husky lot! One of my best friends and neigh- 
bors, a snake priest, runs over there and back in a day easily. 


Since the time of writing this letter Akin had been away from the desert 
only for short intervals at New York and during one trip into the Fraser 
River country of British Columbia, which we took together in 1909, he to 
paint and I to hunt sheep. Always, however, he kept in frequent corre- 
spondence with many of his old friends, and during this early winter contrib- 
uted to the Buckskin Shirt dinner of the Camp-Fire Club at New York, 
a picture of a Hopi buckskin man which he described in a letter as follows: 


b) 


It is a sketch in color — really a very correct ‘‘study’”’ of the character. He is 
known as ‘“‘So-we-ing-wa Ka-chi-na”’ and is one of the many demigods of the Hopi 
Indians. ‘‘Soweingwa”’ means “‘deer’’ and is also the common term for ‘‘ buckskin.” 
He is the patron saint of the hunter and is a protector of game from natural enemies. 
With his rattle he warns of the approach of such as wolves and mountain lions, 
and with his trusty bow and arrow he slays the same when opportunity offers. With 
116 


LOUIS AKIN — AMERICAN ARTIST gig? 


his song he soothes the nerves of game animals with appeals to their vanity and com- 
forts them with the assurances of the very great good and happiness they will be 
conferring on the Hopi by their death. 

This kachina has not appeared in public for many years, and I had some difficulty 
in getting details. He finally consented to pose for me however, but without the 
headpiece, giving me permission to make drawings of that. It would be very sacrile- 
gious to wear any kachina mark outside the proper ceremonial occasions. 


Not long after this I received the following: 


ZuNt, New Mexico, December 11, 1912 
Dear WARNER: 

I have just settled on a fairly definite time for my return to New York — said 
time being almost the last of January. The Museum is to hold a special Southwest 
exhibition in February and they want to show my sketches then. I expect to stay 
about three months — want to get back here in May if possible. 

I came in here from Hopiland ten days ago and will leave in a few days — proba- 
bly to go to Phoenix and Grand Cajion for short stays, then eastward, stopping at 
two or three places for some photos on the way — places I haven’t time to work in 
now, but must have some knowledge and data of to finish up my sketches after I 
get to New York. Goodnight! 

Lou 


This was indeed his goodnight letter — the last letter received from him 
by any of his oldtime friends as far as I know; and for me the goodnight 
to a friendship which had endured almost from infancy. 

As to the important work upon which he had recently been engaged, 
it must be a cause of gratification to all to know that his oil studies for this 
work were nearly completed. A friend who lived with him in Arizona during 
the last year of his life, has written concerning these sketches as follows: 

“His work, all sketches in oil, is in my judgment complete. He brought 
with him on his return some twenty small paintings, the Indians in their 
dancing garb, Indian spinners and weavers, scenes in the pueblos, and one 
or two of the desert. These were intended for his larger work, and with a 
few exceptions are fully done, in colors.”’ 

Mr. Akin was one of the American pioneers in organizing mountain 
lovers for coéperative effort, and in fact gave to the greatest organization 
of this nature in the Northwest about 1886 its name, The Mazamas. He 
had, before the time of that organization, built for himself a small hut 
away back in the heart of the cascades not far from the sloping glaciers 
of Mount St. Helena, and had studied the last of the Rocky Mountain 
white goats there. Most of his time however was spent in the Southwest. 
After he had lived with the Hopi a year or so, he was initiated into one of 
the secret societies of the young Hopi men, danced with them in their 
underground lodge room, the kiva, and ran with them on their visits to 
their neighboring villages. “Mapli,” they called him. Finally received as 
a member into the Hopi tribe, it is appropriate that his ashes should now 
rest upon the brink of the Grand Cafion, the spirit home of the Hopi. 


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tAomnedryg Jo oyqand ayy YorpaM wodn esow oq, 


THE ARTIST’S SOUTHWEST 


By Howard McCormick 


Illustrations of kachina and snake dance ceremonies from the Author’s photographs 


UNDREDS of peaceful Indians in Hopiland trudge down the steep 
mesa sides to till their meager fields and carry their products to 
homes on the wind-swept tablelands, living a life of contentment 

and simplicity. Consider a civilization with no artificial social demands, no 
extended business contact such as fret and worry the white man; a place 
where no time is known except as marked by the daily position of the sun, 
where one day is like another in that each rising and setting of the sun is the 
occasion for a prayer asking for rain, good crops and happiness. 

The artist’s most adequate pen or capable brush becomes commonplace 
in registering impressions of Hopiland. The limitless sky with its gor- 
geous but subtle gradation of color is the one big impression of the mesa 
country. At the zenith a positive blue fuses into a cool blue green, then 
into yellow green, and finally into delicate lavendar as it nears the horizon, 
only to be violently arrested by a long strip of distant mesa of almost pure 
cobalt. The sun beats down and illuminates the grayish-yellow sand with 
a brilliancy seemingly beyond the power of paint to suggest. On the 
yellow sand lie bones whitening in the sun, startlingly brilliant. 


Paraders in the Anyah kachina ceremony, which is common to Zuni and Hopi 
pueblos. There are a great variety of kachina beings or gods believed in and represented 
by the Southwestern Pueblo peoples. New conceptions of such beings wholly different 
from the oldtime Indian ideas are constantly being introduced. Navajo Indians and white 
cowboys even are represented for the amusement of the spectators 119 


The kachinas are supernatural beings or gods, who live in the San Francisco Mountains and 
elsewhere, much as do mortals. From December until July they are represented by masked 
dancers in the Hopi villages in many ceremonies. The Niman kachina ceremony is the last of 
this series. The dancers wear masks and are decorated with evergreen boughs 


A... By 
og Se 


The dancers representing the Niman kachina gods are receiving a farewell message before 
they withdraw from the Hopi villages 
120 


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4 


During the kachina ceremonies divine honors are paid the dancers as if they were the supernatural 
beings. Sacred cornmeal is thrown on them and they are addressed in prayer 


ig eee 
CPt iat 3 


The departure of the gods. The dancers of the Niman kachina are shown leaving the Hopi 


villages from which they are believed to be absent until the winter solstice 
121 


Antelope priests leaving the kiva or underground room, in which a very important part of the 
snake dance is held. Kivas are used by the Hopi men as clubrooms and workshops and for im- 
portant ceremonies 


ee 


Peal 


The antelope priests are making the four fold circuit of the plaza during the ninth day 
of the snake dance. The chief priest who is leading the procession holds in his left hand the tiponi, 
a very sacred badge of his office and the ‘‘mother”’ of the priestly society 


122 


The snake dance of the Hopi is given by two orders of priests, the snake men and the antelope 
men. These two orders are shown drawn up ready for the singing which precedes the carrying of 
the snakes on the ninth day of the ceremony 


The most spectacular part of the snake ceremony is the carrying of the snakes in the mouths 
of the priests. A large rattlesnake is firmly held near the middle by the lips. The priest who 
follows closely carries a snake whip of feathers with which he distracts the attention of the snake 
when necessary 


123 


When the snakes have all been carried in the dance, a large circle is marked on the 
ground with the sacred cornmeal, six radii are drawn representing the sacred dimensions, 
north, west, south, east, up and down. The snakes are then thrown into the circle and 
sprinkled with cornmeal 


Sagebrush which may cover practically all the ground is a beautiful foil for 
the luminous sand and delicate sky. Mesas rise out of the plains like great 
eroded monuments, turrets and towers. Imagination is lame in picturing 
shapes as varied and weird as Nature puts into her rock formations. Pin- 
nacles rise before a flat smooth mass of rock streaked with delicate hori- 
zontal lines. Erosion turns a spur of rock into a beautiful spindle or leaves 
a tracery of lace across the hills. Jt etches, slashes and undermines, 
tumbling boulders down to lie exposed for centuries and finally to be 
swallowed up by the sand. 

The shadow of the first mesa glides across the plain changing the 
gray green sagebrush to olive and rests at the foot of the nearer purple mesa, 
orange-tipped by the setting sun. The day dies while yonder square- 
topped mesa glows like molten iron, deeper red and deeper until strain- 
ing eyes question whether its color is entirely gone. The stars come out 
brilliantly in a moonlit sky. The artist spreads his blanket on the ground 
and lies for hours enjoying an Arizona night as wonderful as an Arizona 
day. All is quiet except for the baying of a mongrel dog; or perhaps a 
belated worker in the fields sings a weird song off on the distant plain, 
draws nearer, passes, the voice stilled as he refreshes himself at the spring, 
then continues the song as he goes up the mesa to his home, a pueblo in 
the clouds. 

These people, adjusted so perfectly to their surroundings, furnish for the 
194 


At a signal the snake priests grab up the snakes and run with them down the trail 
leading from the mesa to the plains where the snakes are released. These snakes are supposed 
to carry a report of the ceremony and the honor bestowed upon them to the supernatural 
beings who control the rainfall 


artist the human interest for his pictures. In their daily life and many 
ceremonies they reflect the colors of skies, the shapes of the clouds and 
mesas and fill both with mnumerable supernatural beings. 

But the Hopi are profiting by the example of the Navajo in acquiring 
sheep and some cattle and although modern scientific farming is a failure in 
their reservation they succeed in raising corn, melons and peaches. Changes 
due to civilization have rapidly been taking place in the ceremonial life of 
the people. We can but wonder how this ceremonial life has held out so 
long considering the pressure of the Government and the constant flow of 
returning students from the schools. But the few old men of the tribe 
retain their confidence in the primitive traditions and are not in the least 
shaken by the young men’s statements of facts which run counter to their 
accepted beliefs. What answer is there to the fact that after three months 
of drought the participants in a dance for rain were drenched? That a 
repetition of the dance the following day brought more rain? And that 
in a circuit of the villages extending over more than one hundred miles, 
with one or two exceptions rain attended the visits of the dancers? 

The Hopi men have now adopted white man’s dress in their daily life. 
Automobiles carry the mails to within a few miles of the Hopi villages and 
soon the land will be overrun with tourists. From an artistic standpoint 
the Indian of the Southwest is surely disappearing and it will soon be 
necessary for the artist to reconstruct the customs and habits which may 
now be seen in their final stage of dissolution. We are grateful that yet a 
few in Hopiland retain their beliefs based upon centuries of close contact 
with nature and still live in a world of their gods. 


125 


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LIYDUDUY Af UDUpOY fq ‘eTE] Vy bishd 


A PAGE OF MUSEUM HISTORY 


DEVELOPMENT DURING THE PAST THREE YEARS OF THE 
AMERICAN MUSEUM’S WORK ON THE INDIANS OF 
THE SOUTHWEST 


By Clark Wissler 


Photographs by Pliny E. Goddard, Howard McCormick and Joseph K. Dixon 


west since 1909 when Mr. Archer M. Huntington provided funds for 
investigation and collecting among the Indians of New Mexico, 
Arizona and Northern Mexico. Up to that time the Museum had done 
nothing in the Southwest since the Hyde expedition (1895-1900). The work 
of that expedition resulted chiefly in the collections obtained by the exca- 
vation of the prehistoric ruins of Pueblo Bonito which were unique in many 
respects. Among them we may mention the unusual number of turquoise 
beads and mosaics and the white and black cylindrical pottery jars, all of 
which form a part of the present permanent exhibit in the Southwest hall. 
Aside from a few random groups of specimens this was all the Museum had 
from the Indians of that region. The modern Pueblo Indians were repre- 
sented by a small series of pottery, but little else, while from the Navajo 
and Apache there was scarcely a single piece except the Douglas collection 
of Apache baskets. 
When funds for taking up systematic work came to the Museum in 1909, 
a plan was worked out for a vigorous attack upon the problems, both of the 
prehistoric and the historic natives. Among: the historic peoples, very 
little had been done on the ethnology of the Rio Grande pueblos, though 
Hopi and Zuni, farther west had been vigorously exploited by several 
museums. Although a great deal of collecting had been done by others 
among the Navajo and Apache, no one had made a serious study of these 
tribes. Several investigators had worked over a few localities containing 
the ruins of prehistoric peoples, but notwithstanding some very competent 
men were thus engaged, the field is so extensive that only a beginning was the 
result. In formulating a plan for future work, the Museum desired first 
of all, to take up problems not as yet begun by other institutions in the region, 
and least of all to break into the field already occupied by others. It was 
felt by all that if the Museum selected new fields its work could be made to 
co6perate with that of other institutions and thus advance the work of 
science as a whole. No one was then working among the Apache, Navajo 
and Papago of the more nomadic tribes, so this culture was taken as one of 
the problems. Dr. P. E. Goddard was called to the Museum from the 
University of California to take up the Apache, he being the best qualified 
man in the country for that work. His former work had been among the 


3) nas been much progress in the Museum’s work in the South- 
HERE has | cl g the M Y 


127 


128 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


Athapascan-speaking peoples of California, Oregon and the Plains, all of 
whom speak a language similar to that of the Navajo and Apache. Miss 
Mary Lois Kissell, at that time special assistant in textiles but now of the 
University of California, was assigned to the textile problems of the Papago 
and Pima. 

Among the Pueblo peoples the numerous villages of the Rio Grande 
Valley offered an almost virgin, though a very difficult field. Dr. Herbert 
J. Spinden was engaged to work up the art and material culture of these 
villages, he having at that time just completed a very important investiga- 
tion of Maya art at Harvard University. 

In addition to the problem of the living Indians, and in fact the real 
problem of the area, is the origin and history of the previous or ancient 
population. For some time it has been clear that the surviving Pueblo 
Indians were the direct descendants of the people who built many of the 
ruined prehistoric villages. In view of this it was planned to make our work 
effective by a study of the living or surviving peoples, and correlate the 
results with studies of the ruins. Mr. Nels C. Nelson of the University of 
California was engaged to carry on the prehistoric part of the work. 

During the past three years the work has gone forward. The high 
development of art in pottery and weaving among all the tribes of the area 
and the abundance of pottery in the ruins, made it clear that in this phase 
of culture was to be found one of the most promising leads toward a correla- 
tion of the ancient and the modern Indians. Consequently a special effort 
has been made to collect specimens and information along these lines. 
The above-named members of the staff have brought together a representa- 
tive collection, the greater part of which was on view during the recent 
special exhibit for the Indians of the Southwest. 

What is of even more value, a considerable body of data has been 
brought together from the field and is now being worked over in the Museum 
laboratories. Dr. Goddard has issued a study of the Jicarilla Apache and 
a general handbook on the Southwestern Indians as a whole. Dr. Spinden 
has well under way a study of the industrial arts of the Rio Grande pueblo 
tribes, Miss Kissell is preparing a manuscript on the basketry of the Papago 
and Pima and Mr. Nelson is writing a report on the archeology of the Rio 
Grande Valley. These studies will eventually enable us to distinguish 
between the historic and the prehistoric elements of culture in the South- 
west and to offer the basis for the determination of the prehistoric culture 


areas therein. 


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oid sIy, “poyeqwy ore speumyue sures queqaodwy YOTYM Ul Soourp AURUT OAL] SOsRTTIA opuRty) OTA oy) Jo suvipuy ou. 


NOIDaY JGNVYD OIY SHL NI JONVO 430 


gouep Joap oy} sMoys ein} 


Se en a 
hana; 


The Lalakonti ceremony, which follows the snake and flute ceremonies of the Hopi, is given by 
a society of women priestesses. After important ceremonies held in secret during eight days, a 
public dance is given in the plaza. Basket trays are moved in time with the songs and are after- 
wards thrown as presents to the spectators 


The women who dance in front of the circle shoot with toy bows and arrows at netted hoops. 
This is supposed to cause the lightning to strike the fields and to result in abundant crops 


133 


Copyright, 1913, by Will S. Taylor 
THE SALMON-FISHERS 


Mural canvas by Will S. Taylor, from the North Pacific series in the American Museum. 
The subject is a reconstruction to show the old method of salmon fishing among the Kwakiutl 


Indians of the Alaskan coast. They built a dam of logs to form a pool in which the migrating 
salmon were entrapped and speared. 


134 


SHALL INDIAN LORE BE SAVED? 


AN IMPERATIVE CALL FOR FIELD WORK BEFORE THE LAST 
OF THE OLD BELIEFS AND OLD CUSTOMS ARE LOST 


By George Bird Grinnell 


cially for the United States —is fast disappearing. It must be 

gathered soon, or not at all. The longer its collection is postponed 
the more vague and uncertain will be the results. Our Indians are changing 
rapidly and to-day the vast majority of the individuals of each tribe have 
forgotten the old beliefs and the old ways. The pressure of new ideas has 
driven out the memory of the old things. 

It was never true that all the Indians of a tribe, or of a section of a tribe, 
were well informed on the tribal traditions, beliefs and customs. All the 
youth had the opportunity to learn, but some children and young people 
were attentive to what they heard, thoughtful and possessed of good 
memories; others were heedless, unthinking, forgetful. To-day among the 
younger Indians — those under forty years of age — there are few who can 
give any connected account of the old ceremonies, while the detail and ritual 
of those ceremonies is almost wholly lost. 

With the Plains tribes, it is only among the few remaining old men and 
old women, who reached adult life while the tribes were still wandering free 
and subsisting on the buffalo, that we find any real knowledge of the tribal 
history, and of these old people some never knew and others have forgotten. 
This is evident if one sits by when preparations are being made for some one 
of the oldtime elaborate ceremonies and listens to the discussions and argu- 
ments that take place about the forms to be gone through with. The men 
of fifty or sixty years of age appeal to those of seventy or eighty for informa- 
tion as to how certain things ought to be done according to the old customs, 
or ask for the words of certain songs, forgotten by all but afew. These old 
people, the only ones whose memory still carries so much of the mysterious 
information of ancient times as has been handed down and remembered, 
are dying very rapidly and are leaving few or none to take their place. The 
young men, born since the Indians were brought onto reservations, and 
obliged to attend schools, neither know nor care for the traditions of their 
forefathers. Sometimes may be found a middle-aged man who, by tem- 
perament or from some condition of his early life, is acquainted with old- 
time things, but such men are very unusual. Therefore the springs of our 
information are rapidly drying up. 

Besides that, two obstacles stand in the way of making valuable collec- 
tions to-day; these obstacles are lack of money and lack of men. Money 
may be supplied, of course. Men are much harder to find. The reason 
for this is obvious. 

Young men interested in Indians and their lore may conscientiously try 

135 


} THNOLOGICAL material for the North American continent — espe- 


156 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


to secure information from the best sources, but being usually unacquainted 
with Indians and ignorant of their ways of thought, they do not know how 
to sift the true from the false and often cannot comprehend without elabo- 
rate explanations much of what they are told. A wise old man may talk of 
things that to him were matters of everyday life, but are not in the least un- 
derstood by the collector. The informant takes for granted in the inquirer 
a knowledge equal to his own and slurs over, as too familiar to need explana- 
tion, a multitude of things about which the inquirer knows nothing. 

The present day inquirer is likely to choose as interpreter some edu- 
cated Indian boy, speaking good English. Such an interpreter is too young 
to comprehend a narrative dealing with matters that fifty years ago were 


Dance house of the Crow Indians at Lodge Grass, Montana, an old Pawnee type of 
structure used in the hot dance. It has been given a corrugated tin roof and a modern 
cupola-like superstructure and so illustrates well the passing away of the old things 


commonplace. He is also likely to be unacquainted with many of the words 
used by an old man, for often such old men employ the language of oratory, 
which to-day is almost obsolete. Yet even if he does not understand the 
old man’s meaning, the interpreter often will not confess this, but will give 
some interpretation which may be erroneous or obscure. The three 
persons engaged in the conversation, therefore, are almost certain to mis- 
understand one another, and the inquirer is likely to bring back material 
which may be wholly misleading. 

For the most part, the Indian young men of the present day do not 
understand why anyone should wish to set down, and as far as may be 
explain, all that can be learned about the old ways of their people. They 
regard the inquisitiveness about these things, which some white people 
show, as one of the eccentricities of that race, hardly susceptible of expla- 
nation, but from which if possible a profit should be derived. I have been 


SHALL INDIAN LORE BE SAVED 137 


told of cases, in two widely separated and unrelated tribes, where young 
men learning of the arrival of an inquirer, have come together and invented 
strange and mysterious stories which, for a price, they related as being of 
the tribal traditions. This is said to have happened only a few years ago, 
and the stories told were accepted in perfect good faith. 

Some years ago the American Museum of Natural History chose the 
best possible sort of an investigator when it selected David Duvall, a young 
Blackfoot Indian deeply interested in the history of his people, and engaged 
him to collect and sift material concerning them, which was later turned 
over to an ethnologist. Unfortunately Duvall died in the summer of ia 
but it is quite within the bounds of possibility that on other reservations 
other men of his type may be found and may be induced to do good and hon- 
est work such as he did. 

It is greatly to be wished that funds available to push this work be 
found without delay. So far as the Plains tribes go, I know of nothing more 
important. 

If the acquisition of real knowledge about our aboriginal population is 
necessary for the Plains — with which I have long been chiefly concerned — 
no less is it necessary for the whole of North America. That a vast deal of 
work remains to be done in the Southwest, and a vast deal in the North and 
Northwest. The remarkable discoveries reported by Stefansson are 
suggestive of what we may still hope to learn, provided the right persons 
take hold of the work in the right way. 

Long as I have been associated with certain tribes of Plains Indians I am 
continually discovering new facts of interest; facts that shed fresh light on 
the ways of thought and ancient habits of these people. 

Our knowledge of most tribes still remains only superficial. Almost 
every article that gets into print, about those Indians that I know best, 
shows that in many respects they are misunderstood and that statements 
are being made about them which the facts do not warrant. If this is true 
of the people that I know about, who can doubt that it is true also of other 
tribes about which I know nothing? The situation is one of great difficulty. 

One may be pardoned for not accepting with absolute confidence the 
material brought back by the average young collector of to-day, who how- 
ever hard he may work and however sincere his interest may be, cannot in 
the nature of things come — in the course of a few weeks or months or even 
years — to understand one so different from himself in viewpoint and ex- 
perience as is the stone-age man with whom he speaks. 

I sometimes wonder what the reader of a hundred years hence will 
believe about the North American Indians. It is quite certain that while 
in what has been written about them he will find much that is true, he will 
also find many false statements together with a vast number of theories 
and conclusions not justified by facts. —_ 


qe JOA] olted oY} WOT, JOATI oY} UMOP SUTYOO'T Sel 


snydojounngy oy JO WoOJoTays oy} PUNoJ seM YOIYM JvoU Aqio,q, WeUUaypo,L, 
GNNO4 SVM HNVSONIG G3LSSHO SHL JYSHM YSAIY YAdG Q3ayY S3HL NO JLIS 


A NEW CRESTED DINOSAUR 


By Barnum Brown 
With photographs by the Author 


HE most recent acquisition in the dinosaur hall is the skeleton of a 

new dinosaur found by the Museum expedition to Alberta in 1911. 

This specimen is exhibited as a vertical panel mount, the bones 

still partly buried in the original rock from which they have been chiseled 

in relief and for the most part in the position as found excepting that the 
skeleton was lying horizontal on its right side. 

When the dinosaur was found, ripple-marked sandstone surrounded the 
skull and a part of the skeleton. These ripples in which are seen worm 
tracks and impressions of horsetails or scouring rushes (Equisetum) have been 
continued above the skeleton as though the body had been washed in near 
shore making a dam in the shallow water, and the shoreward side of the 
beach had dried up forming mud cracks. 

The skeleton with pieces of skin clinging to it here and there was evi- 
dently buried on a sandy beach with comparatively little disturbance of 
the bones. Millions of years passed, the bones turned to stone and hun- 
dreds of feet of earth accumulated above them as the low-lying coastal 
marshes were filled in while the climate then subtropical changed to tem- 
perate cold. Finally the Red Deer River, a comparatively recent water- 
course, began to cut through these sediments, uncovering fossil treasures 


Professor Henry F. Osborn and party in canoe leaving the fossil camp near Tolman, 
Alberta, for a 150-mile trip down the river to the Belly River Cretaceous beds 
139 


140 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


of the Cretaceous age. Recently in the side of the cafion five hundred feet 
below the prairie surface, a few bones were discovered protruding from the 
rocks which proved to be the spines of vertebree and the skull of a nearly 
complete skeleton. ; 

This skeleton presents characters strikingly distinct from related forms 
and it has been made the type of a new genus Saurolophus (meaning “ crested 


The Saurolophus skeleton in the quarry, earth and surplus stone removed but not yet 
plastered. It lay on the right side with skull still surrounded by ripple-marked sandstone 
[near the observer]; the tail extending beyond the man’s hand; feet and hind limbs nearer 
the bank. The ribs on the upper side had been washed away during fossilization 


saurian’’) which is closely related to the well-known duck-bill T'rachodon. 
The new dinosaur is distinguished by a great bony crest on the back of the 
skull which in life evidently supported a leathery lobe of skin similar to the 
living lizard Basiliscus. Other distinctive characters are found in the hip 
bones, the ischium of which resembles in general structure that of the 


IFl AIOISTH TeANVVN JO UNesn urowowy ‘Te_ amesourq 
INNOW TANVd V SV G3LISIHXS NOLSTSNS YNVSONIG aaLsaHoO 


‘QTTTAOANIG Ivou PUNOJ SVM UWOJTSHS SIL SFI 


UOT}VOOT OY} 0} ON]O B OAVT YNO poJOyyVoOM Pet YOM T1eV7 oy} JO quiod of, “et Woqry 
NOLA1aNS YNVSONIG 4O NOILVAVOXS 


el 


Apoq 9} JO opis 4591 009 UO ULYs a1Ue 94} APUsIedde pue ‘padAsosald st stuteprde oy} Jo WOIssarduat 94} ‘Y}eomIepun pure peysnzo ato] o1e 
Souog 0} *[1e} ey} Jo yutod ay} yd9dxe a4o[durod st ‘WoTIQIyxXo JOJ poredoid 40h you pure ZI6T WI Speq JoATY ATlo_ OY} UL pajgeaAroxa ‘MOJO[OHS SIU, 


VLYAETV “ATIIASASZLS YVAN NOLATSMS YNVSONIG 


144 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


carnivorous dinosaurs and supported great caudo-abdominal muscles. In 
life this animal was about thirty-two feet in length and stood between fif- 
teen and seventeen feet in height when erect. These measurements refer 
to the skeleton only and do not include the erectal skin portion of the crest 
which probably added considerable to the height during excitement when 
the dinosaur must have been a most imposing creature. 

Like Trachodon it was an herb-eater and without means of defense from 
the contemporary flesh-eating Albertosaurus except in its power of swimming 
away from danger. Great numbers of these creatures lived in the pre- 
historic coastal marshes. In a single quarry — and there are many such 
quarries on the Red Deer River — bones of several hundred individuals 
mostly of this kind have been washed out of the bank. 

The expedition to Alberta last summer secured a carload of fossils 
several of which are new to science. One of the prize specimens is an un- 
usually complete skeleton of another new dinosaur coming from an older 
formation and probably ancestral to Saurolophus. In this new skeleton 
the skin impression is preserved more or less completely on one side. When 
prepared it will be exhibited as a double-faced panel, one side showing the 
skin, the opposite side showing the bones and their muscle attachments. 


Quarry below Tolman where in 1912 a complete pelvis of Ankylosaurus was found. 
Lowering a 700-pound box with block and fall to the valley one hundred feet below 


BIRD-BANDING IN AMERICA 


[“Return records” quoted from a report by Mr. Howard H. Cleaves, of the Ameri- 
can Bird-Banding Association,' before the American Ornithologists’ Union] 


T WAS on June 7, 1911, that an adult chimney swift fluttered down a 
chimney into the study of Mr. Ernest Harold Baynes in Meriden, 
New Hampshire, and was promptly banded and released. The band 

bore the number 6326. At eight o’clock p. M. on June 15, 1912, two chim- 
ney swifts flew from the chimney into the same room where the bird had 
been caught a year and eight days before. When these birds were taken 
in hand and examined one of them proved to be 6326. Remarkable as it 
may seem this diminutive creature less than six inches in length, had 
traveled hundreds of miles to Central America or elsewhere in the tropics 
where he spent the winter and then had made the long return journey at the 
approach of summer and found again the chimney of his choice in a village 
of far-off New Hampshire. And throughout his journeyings the little 
aluminum ring had traveled with him. 

Two French Canadians were gunning along a small river near the hamlet 
of Whitebread in southwestern Ontario, Canada, on August 5, 1912. Black- 
birds, their intended booty, were not numerous and the men were about to 
return to camp when one suddenly touched the other on the arm and said 
pointing to a flying tern, “You cannot hit him!” In answer to this chal- 
lenge the second gunner wheeled quickly about and took a difficult chance 


1The American Bird-Banding Association, but recently organized, is planned on the 
lines of the many European bird-banding associations of long standing and large results. 
It has its headquarters at the American Museum and is thoroughly in sympathy with the 
conservative work of the bird lovers of the country, its membership including not only the 
foremost members of the American Ornithologists’ Union but also leaders of the great Audu- 
bon movement. 

The aim of the work is purely scientific, the extension of knowledge of bird habits by 
means of records made by men who are enthusiastic bird students and accurate observers. 
Each wild bird banded wears an aluminum ring that slips loosely up and down the tarsus so 
as to be of no injury or inconvenience to the bird. The ring bears the words, ‘‘ Notify Ameri- 
can Museum, New York,’’ and corresponds to a card in the filed records of the Museum 
giving the species of the bird, and also the date, place and circumstances of banding. The 
following questions quoted from the association’s pamphlet of directions suggest some of the 
results hoped for: 

1. To what extent do birds return year after year to their previous nesting place? 

2. How far from their birthplace will birds be found nesting? 

3. In cases where an identical nest is occupied in successive seasons, how is the tenancy 
determined? 

4. Do birds reared in distinctive nesting sites themselves favor a similar site? 

5. In migration, how far and in what direction do individual birds travel? 

6. Do migrants travel by definite routes, and if so, what is the nature of these routes? 

7. Do birds have definite winter quarters which they seek each year? 

8. To what extent are males and females, young and old, separated while migrating 
and in winter quarters? 

9. What relation do the winter quarters of the northerly-breeding members of a species 
bear to those of the southerly-breeding members? 

10. To what age do wild birds live? 

145 


Banding black-backed gulls at Lake George, Yarmouth 


County, Nova Scotia 


question had been marked 
when about two weeks old 
at Saint Clair Flats Canal, 
Michigan on August 13, 
1909, by Mr. S. A. Courtis. 
By correspondence with Mr. 
Salois it was learned that 
the terns were apparently 
not nesting at Whitebread, 
Ontario, and it is not un- 
likely that the birds seen 
there had bred at Saint 
Clair Flats and were indulg- 
ing in a little roving after 
the nesting season. How- 
ever this may be, the facts 
remain that the dead tern 
had worn the aluminum 
anklet for three years minus 
eight days; had likely made 
three round trips to the 
Gulf of Mexico or some 


other place in the tropics to 
146 


shot at the fast 
disappearing _ bird. 
There were many 
terns flying up and 
down the stream, 
hovering in the air 
and plunging for 
minnows, and it 
seems strange that 
the one shot should 
have born a band 
on its leg with the 
number 4590. The 
finding of that band 
resulted in a letter 
to New York from 
the gunner, Mr. Leo 
Salois. On referring 
to 4590 among the 
original banding rec- 
ords it was found 
that the bird in 


Young black-backed gull wearing aluminum ring 
which bears the inscription, ‘‘ Notify American 
Museum, New York" 


BIRD-BANDING IN AMERICA 147 


spend the winter each year since 1909; and when shot was within about 
thirty-five miles of the spot where it was hatched. 

A farmer by the name of August Schilling of Evansville, Illinois, was 
walking across his fields on April 1, 1912, when he frightened a butcher bird 
from a fencepost where it had been feeding on what proved to be a bluebird. 
On picking up the victim and scrutinizing it, Mr. Schilling was astonished 
to discover that the bird wore a ring on its right leg, and that the ring bore 
an inscription. He wrote a letter giving the number of the band and asked 
for information saying, “Please let me know when the band was put on. 
There are lots of people who would like to know.” 

This particular bluebird was one of a brood banded by Dr. R. M. Strong 
of the University of Chicago at West Allis, Wisconsin on July 5, 1909. The 
band had been carried for two years and nine months and had apparently 
caused no inconvenience. It is probable that this bluebird had made two 
complete migrations to the south and was about to complete the last lap of 
a third when he was so unfortunate as to cross the path of Lanius borealis. 

Beyond a doubt the year just past [1912] has seen the greatest progress 
in the work of banding birds in America. All told during the twelve 
months, eight hundred bands have been placed on birds and some of them 
have already yielded return records possessing a high degree of interest. 
The total number of species banded during the past summer is seventy- 
three, a few of the more unusual being black guillemot, great black-backed 
gull, least tern, glossy ibis, American egret, barn owl, short-eared owl, 
chestnut-collared longspur and dickcissel. It is only by extensive banding 
through a long period of time that results of value will be obtained. It 
cannot be wise to spring at conclusions with regard to the significance of 
return records. The fact that Mr. Baynes’s chimney swift returned to its 
old stand after an absence of nearly a year in the tropics is insignificant as 
proof in itself. Before stating that chimney swifts invariably return year 
after year to the same chimney, it would be advisable, not to say necessary, 
to obtain many similar records as corroborative evidence. 


Young piping plovers three days old banded on Martha's Vineyard, July 3,1912. One 
was shot August 2 not far from the home site. As Massachusetts laws protect piping 
plovers at all seasons, this return record started an investigation of value 


MUSEUM NOTES 


Srnce the last issue of the JourNaAt the following persons have been elected to 
membership in the Museum: 

Life Members, Mrs. RicHarp Marcu Hor, Miss ELEANOR DEGRAFF CUYLER 
and Dr. ALLEN M. THoMAs; 

Sustaining Members, Mrs. Atrrep M. Coats, Miss Marie L. Russet, and 
Messrs. Bensamin A. HeGEMAN, Jr., ARTHUR NoTMAN and OGDEN M. Reip; 

Annual Members, Mrs. M. J. Buuren, Mrs. Irvine Brokaw, Mrs. STARLING W. 
Cuttps, Mrs. JEFFERSON CoppineTon, Mrs. A. B. Frank, Mrs. WILLIAM SAMUEL 
Hawk, Mrs. Apour 8S. LapenBuRG, Mrs. Henry J. LAmMarcue, Mrs. R. A. DELIMA 
Mayer, Mrs. Tirus B. Meics, Mrs. U. H. Patntrr, Mrs. L. A. PFLETSCHINGER, 
Mrs. W.S. Rarnsrorp, Mrs. JoHn Sincuair, Mrs. Francis H. Suave, Mrs. H. B. 
Wiaut, Miss Louisa Low, Miss ExizApeTH M.SHArRpE, Miss GEORGINA SCHUYLER, 
Hon. Epaar J. Lauer, Dr. Amos CANFIELD, Dr. JoHN E. WeEKs and MeEssrs. 
Percy H. AsHmeap, T. ArTHUR Bau, ALVIN V. Batrp, CHARLES Batrp, Max 8. 
BorHMm, THEODORE BorTTGER, RIcHARD C. Bonpy, WiLLt1AM Bonpy, CHARLES P. 
Bonnett, Enos S. Bootu, J. W. C. CAMPBELL, Josh E. CHAvES, GEORGE U. Ciav- 
SEN, JOHN Ciericr, Winiiam H. Crocker, DeWitt A. Davinson, LEonarp M. 
Davis, ArTHUR R. Denman, WiLirIAM A. Doppyn, Francis P. DopGEe, WALTER 
Dovucuas, Henry E. Dunn, EpmunpD Eckart, RicHarp Epi£, Jr., BENNO ELKAN, 
WILLIAM ERDMANN, JAMES C. FENHAGEN, LocKWwoop DEFoREST, JULIUS FRANKE, 
WIuuiAM S. FRIEDLANDER, WiLuIAM K. Gitutett, HENry GLEASON, JAMES A. GOLD- 
sMITH, WitLiAM GoTTGETREU, AusTIN M. GreEeR, ANTHONY GREF, ALFRED C. 
GREENING, C. W. Hamnitu, Greorce B. Herzic, Henry R. Hrwiarp, W. J. Hoaeson, 
B. H. Homan, Leo M. Kern, Joun G. Luxe, Lea SHIPPEN LUQUER, SAMUEL 
McRoserrts, MELVILLE D. Martin, T. ANSon Matruews, Morton H. MErnnarp, 
S. Sramwoop MENKEN, Barrincton Moore, JoHN Nico~son, RuTLEDGE IRVING 
OvELL, A. G. Parnes, Jr., Mitton C. Patmer, G. Exton Parks, L. O. Peck, GEORGE 
H. Perkins, CHARLES W. Puace, Otro EuGENE REIMER, CHARLES W. RENDIGS, 
Grorce C. Riacas, WALTER CLARK Runyon, ACKLEY C. ScHUYLER, CHARLES O. 
Scuutu, FRANK SEAMEN, My es STANDISH Stocum, F. L. Stattman, J. CRAWFORD 
Stevens, Percy 8S. Straus, Moses TANENBAUM, RicHArD E. Tuipavut, JosepH B. 
Tuomas, Karu H. Vesper, H. D. WALBRIDGE, ALLEN WARDWELL, ARTHUR L. 
WESSELL, WALTER K. WILpES and FrANcis A. WILSON. 


Preparations for the Crocker Land expedition are progressing satisfactorily. 
The University of Illinois has made an appropriation which provides for the addition 
of a trained zodlogist to the expedition party, and Dr. M. C. Tanquary, a graduate 
of the University, has been appointed to the post. The General Electric Company 
has offered to contribute a thoroughly up-to-date outfit for power for wireless teleg- 
raphy and electric lighting, heating and cooking; the American Geographical Society 
has added three thousand dollars to its previous subscription of six thousand; Mr. 
Zenas Crane has increased his subscription by an additional twenty-five hundred 
dollars; Mr. George B. French has added one thousand to the fund and Colonel D. L. 
Brainard has contributed one hundred dollars. The United States Navy Department 
has added the detail of a skilled electrician and wireless operator to its previous 
detail of Ensign Fitzhugh Green to the cartographic and magnetic work of the 
expedition; the United States Hydrographic Office and Naval Observatory are 


148 


MUSEUM NOTES 149 


lending a number of surveying and other instruments; and the Department of 
Agriculture through the Weather Bureau is providing a full equipment for the estab- 
lishment of a meteorological station at the permanent headquarters on Bache Penin- 
sula. The Bureau of Terrestrial Magnetism of the Carnegie Institution is to supply 
the instruments required for making and recording the magnetic observations. The 
Georgetown University, Washington, D. C., is loaning the party a Wiechert seismo- 
graph for the establishment of a station at the home headquarters on Flagler Bay, 
which is to be under the care of Mr. Green. Other assistance in the way of money 
and equipment is promised. 


Dr. E. O. Hovey, curator of geology and invertebrate paleontology has devoted 
about six weeks to a trip to Panama and Costa Rica in the interests of the Museum. 
Specimens giving a fairly complete section from the Atlantic to the Pacific across the 
Isthmus and illustrative series from the volcano of Poas and the gold district of Agua- 
cate, Costa Rica, were secured together with many photographs. The Isthmian 
Canal Commission has presented to the Museum a selected series of most excellent 
photographs of the Panama Canal and the Zone. 


Tue friendly coéperation between this Museum and the great natural history 
museum at Frankfurt (Senckenberg Museum) has been shown in the past by ex- 
changes from one to the other institution of fine exhibition specimens of fossils. 
The latest are the skeletons of Phenacodus and Sinopa, duplicates of those in our 
Tertiary mammal hall, purchased by the Frankfurt museum and restored after 
the more perfect originals in our collection by members of our preparation staff. 
These are important types of the early Tertiary faune, representing the primitive 
hoofed and clawed animals respectively. The Phenacodus has already been hand- 
somely installed in a prominent position in the galleries of the Senckenberg Museum. 


PROFESSOR GEORGE GRANT MacCurpy of Yale University spent a few days at 
the Museum recently cataloguing the collection of palzeolithic implements he secured 
for the Museum on his last trip to Europe. 


Mr. FRANCIS LA FLESCHE, an educated Omaha Indian from Washington, D. C., 
visited the Museum in March. He is now occupied with an anthropological 
investigation of the Osage Indians of Oklahoma under the direction of the United 
States National Museum. These Indians speak a Siouan language and are noted 
for the great number of medicine bundles to be found among them. 


Rev. Ginpert L. Witson of Minneapolis has just filed the report of his investi- 
gation of the agricultural customs of the Mandan and Hidatsa Indians. This prom- 
ises to be one of the most complete and suggestive studies of this particular phase of 
American Indian culture. It brings out among other things the aboriginal origin of 
methods of fertilization and propagation. Certain fields were not only the habitual 
planting places of particular families, but the right to them was hereditary. This 
is important because it approaches the modern conception of individual ownership 
of land, a rarity among the communal Indian tribes. A series of primitive agricul- 
tural implements from this tribe is on exhibition in the Plains Indian hall. 


THE great collection of dinosaurs secured in western Canada last year keeps busy 
most of the staff of preparators of the department of vertebrate paleontology. 
Several fine specimens are well-nigh completely cleaned up and can be placed on 


150 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


exhibition this summer; others will take a year before they are ready for exhibi- 
tion. Although related to the dinosaurs of Montana and Wyoming, most of these 
are new kinds or have been known hitherto by very fragmentary specimens. 


Two skeletons of the little Eocene lemuroid Notharctus are being restored for a 
group mount. They are related to the living lemurs of Madagascar and were very 
like them in size and appearance. But living near the beginning in the Age of Mam- 
mals they are regarded as collateral ancestors of the higher Primates (monkeys, apes 
and man) which first appeared much later in time. These skeletons were found in 
Wyoming where they were contemporary with the four-toed horses. 


TuHE collections of rare Eocene mammals made by Mr. Walter Granger last sum- 
mer are being catalogued and prepared. They include numerous new species and 
a number of new genera of scientific interest besides additional or better specimens 
of those hitherto known. The collection is of great value for scientific research and a 
preliminary account of the new material will shortly be published in the Museum 
Bulletin. 


Mr. JAmes Barnes of New York and Mr. Cherry Kearton of London are plan- 
ning to cross Central Africa for the purpose of making photographs of the animal life. 
This expedition has the indorsement of the American Museum. 


A LARGE collection from the Malecite Indians has just been placed on view in the 
Eastern Woodlands hall under the section devoted to the Eastern Algonkin tribes 
of New England and Eastern Canada. The collection was made during the winter 
by G. A. Paul, the hereditary chief of the Penobscot Indians. 


Mr. N. C. Netson, assistant curator in anthropology, will soon go to Europe to 
study the results and methods of archeologists. He will visit the principal caverns 
and other sites where the remains of palzolithic cultures have been found and gather 
material and data for a type model of such deposits. 


Mr. Roy F. LercuTon, a student of anatomy in the University of Vermont, is 
making a special study of the Museum’s large collection of trephined skulls from South 
America. 


In one of the side alcoves of the Southwest hall is a small model of the proposed 
Hopi village group prepared by Mr. Howard McCormick and Mr. Mahonri M. 
Young. The group as designed will show by panoramic background, a view of 
the Pueblo of Walpi and its surroundings, while in the foreground will be a life-size 
family group as seen upon the terrace of a house in another village. The plan is to 
make this as accurate and artistic as the bird habitat groups. When one recalls 
that everywhere Indian life is fast passing away, the need of a few such groups is 
clear. With the extinction of the last elements of Indian culture will go out from our 
midst one of the most original of the world’s artistic elements. 


Mr. IsraeL Kiicuer has been made assistant in the department of public health, 
the appointment to date from April 1. 


TurREE fish exhibition groups which have been in preparation for some time, are 
now completed. They represent three of the ganoid fishes peculiar to North America. 
One group shows the nesting habits of the bowfin (Amia calva), a fish widely distri- 


MUSEUM NOTES 151 


buted in the Mississippi Valley and the Eastern States, and interesting as the only 
survivor of a very ancient family of fishes once widely distributed in the northern 
hemisphere. The second group represents the shovel-nose sturgeon (Scaphirhynchus 
platorhynchus), a fish of considerable commercial value both for its flesh, which is 
“sturgeon,” and the roe, which is made into caviar. A school of these fish is repre- 
sented in the group, swimming, as is their wont, near the sandy bottom in search of 
food. The third group represents spawning fish, nest and eggs of the long-nosed 
gar pike (Lepidosteus osseus). These groups were planned by Professor Bashford 
Dean. The studies for them, made possible through the Cleveland H. Dodge fund, 
were carried out by Mr. Dwight Franklin in the spring of 1912 in Wisconsin. 


Tue collections in the hall of North American archeology have been readjusted 
to occupy the new wall cases and to make room for the expansion of the European 
exhibit. The mural series of paleolithic cavern paintings has been completed and 
will soon be open to the public. 


Mr. Daniet Moore Fisk has recently been appointed assistant in the depart- 
ment of invertebrate zodlogy. Mr. Fisk is a graduate of Columbia University. 


A buffalo-hide shield and a war shirt have been added to the historical exhibit 
in the Plains Indian hall. These were taken from the body of an Indian by Alfred 
Rochefort Calhoun after an engagement in 1868. The tribe cannot be certainly 
determined but judging from the shield, the owner was a Cheyenne. This historical 
section now contains two scalps, objects owned by the famous Sitting-bull, and also 
a personal medicine bag from the equally distinguished Red-cloud. Among the 
older pieces are a war shirt and two feather headdresses collected by Colonel Sword 
in 1838. 


A delegation of Indians mostly from the Plains area, who had attended the break- 
ing of the ground for the new monument to the American Indian at Fort Wadsworth, 
came to the Museum recently and were received by members of the department of 
anthropology. The most distinguished members of the Crow delegation among the 
visitors were Plenty-coups and .Medicine-crow. Both rank as chiefs by the old 
Indian way of reckoning according to martial deeds, and Plenty-coups has the addi- 
tional prestige of being recognized as tribal chief by the United States government. 
Medicine-crow not only enjoys an unusual record for warlike achievement but is 
also famous for his ceremonial activity. He is the owner of a medicine-pipe bundle 
and has founded a new branch of the Tobacco order, the greatest of Crow ceremonial 
organizations. Another of the visitors, White-man-runs-him, has the distinction 
of being one of the surviving Custer scouts. 


Dr. J. A. ALLEN represented the American Museum at the meeting of the Inter- 
national Zodlogical Congress at Monaco. Some of the important work of the 
Congress was done by the International Commission on Nomenclature. Meetings 
were held for ten days both morning and afternoon, for five days by the Commission 
and later by a section of the Congress, during which an attempt to break down the 
law of priority was met and handled in such a way that in the end the authority 
of the International Commission was strengthened and the outlook for harmony 
on questions of nomenclature improved. From Monaco Dr. Allen goes to London 
for comparative work at the British Museum on mammals from South America and 
Africa. 


152 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


Tue Council of the American Anthropological Association under the chairman- 
ship of Professor Alexander F. Chamberlain of Clark University, met recently at the 
American Museum of Natural History. In an informal discussion Professor R. S. 
Woodworth of Columbia University gave a report on the psychological investigation 
of primitive races, which was followed by remarks on methods of research in physical 
anthropology, archeology, art, linguistics, and technology. Among those who took 
part in the discussion were Professor Chamberlain, Mr. Frederick W. Hodge, 
the ethnologist-in-charge of the Bureau of American Ethnology, Professor Franz 
Boas of Columbia, Professor Alfred M. Tozzer of Harvard, Drs. Clark Wissler, 
Pliny E. Goddard, and Robert H. Lowie. In honor of the non-resident anthropolo- 
gists attending the council session, the American Ethnological Society gave an in- 
formal dinner at the Hotel Endicott, after which all returned to the Museum for the 
regular monthly meeting of the local society. At the evening session Mr. N. C. 
Nelson spoke on the Galisteo Pueblos, while Dr. Herbert J. Spinden and Mr. Alanson 
Skinner discussed the folklore of the Tewa and Menomini Indians respectively. 


Ar the March meeting of the Section of Biology, New York Academy of Sciences, 
Mr. George G. Scott of the College of the City of New York, summarized his own and 
other investigations on osmotic pressure of the tissues in aquatic animals. In marine 
invertebrates the internal osmotic pressure varies with that of the external medium; 
in the higher fishes it is more stable, responses to changes in the medium being limited 
in range; in the lower fishes (sharks) intermediate conditions are observed. Dis- 
cussion of Mr. Scott’s communication brought out the principle that osmotic phe- 
nomena had played an important réle in evolution, especially of the respiratory organs, 
circulatory system ard skin of vertebrates. 


Tue hall of public health in the American Museum will be opened April! 16, the 
event marked by a public meeting in the interest of the campaign for civic cleanliness 
instituted by the New York City department of health. Addresses illustrated with 
moving pictures, will be given by Dr. Ernest J. Lederle, Mrs. Edward R. Hewitt 
and Prof. C-E. A. Winslow. At a reception following, there will be exhibited an 
enlarged model of the house fly prepared at the Museum during the past year and 
models of other specimens dealing with the relation of insects to the dissemination 
of disease. 


Tur Museum will this summer have three field parties in search of fossil verte- 
brates, continuing the systematic exploration of regions which last summer and in 
previous years have yielded very important additions to our collections. Mr. Bar- 
num Brown will continue work on the Cretaceous of Alberta, Mr. Walter Granger 
in the Eocene of New Mexico and Wyoming, Mr. Albert Thomson in the Miocene 
of Nebraska. While it is not expected that the unusual success of last summer will be 
duplicated, we look forward to securing valuable specimens of Cretaceous dinosaurs 
and Eocene and Miocene mammals. 


Mr. Russe. J. Cotes of Danville, Virginia, has presented to the Museum many 
interesting specimens of fishes from the coast of North Carolina, notably sharks and 
rays. His intimate acquaintance with the Cape Lookout region enables him to 
navigate its treacherous waters in a small sailboat and thus gain first-hand knowledge 
of little-known species. During the coming season Mr. Coles will continue to collect 
for the Museum and among other specimens hopes to capture a porpoise of doubtful 
identity previously observed in the region. 


The American Museum Journal 


VotumeE XIII APRIL, 1913 NUMBER 4 


CONTENTS 


Cover, Design from Objects in the Morgan Gem Collection 
[See note page 200] Drawn by Mr. 8S. Shimotori 


Frontispiece, J. Pierpont Morgan, Recent Photograph 


J. Pierpont Morgan — A Founder and Benefactor of the Museum 
JosepH H. Cuoate 155 


The Gifts of Mr. Morgan to the American Museum 
Henry FaAtrRFIELD OsBorN 157 
With an expression of gratitude and indebtedness by the Board of Trustees 
The Morgan Collection of Precious Stones 


GEORGE FREDERICK Kunz 159 
History of the assembling of the Morgan gem coliection and some description of its 


contents 

An Lreasure: bouse of (Gems... cs. a see has ee L. P. GratacaPp 169 
An appreciation of the beauty of the Morgan collection 

PERE AVOT RGR UTL dtr) AIOE Wh eg on 3 SAMA does etre tate ce Srey See: Ath ae seer 173 


Illustrations from models of elephant groups and single figures to be cast in bronze 
Brief suggestions as to the plans for the new African hall 


Personnel of the Crocker Land Expedition..... Epmunp Oris Hovey 179 
Mr. Donald B. MacMillan, leader; Mr. W. Elmer Ekblaw in charge of geological 
and botanical work; Ensign Fitzhugh Green, U. S. N., meteorology, map-making, 
earthquake records, wireless telegraphy. Mr. Maurice C. Tanquary, zo6logist 


Bird Stidues iitthevAmdes.. savin, oa) va. athens soe RE ee 183 
With portrait of Mr. Frank M. Chapman and quotations from his letters 

athe -Alibatragssest*Ol~ ay SAM oy rans, onan eo es hee Homer R. Dru 185 
Illustrations from photographs by the Author 

Onemne of the tall of Public Health. oF sk o sie ware seeeahys cnodec nee 193 


Report by the department with descriptions of the enlarged model of the house 
fly constructed during the past year by Mr. Ignaz Matausch 

Quotations from addresses by Prof. Henry Fairfield Osborn and Dr. C—E. A. 
Winslow, given on the evening of the opening at a public meeting in the interest 
of the campaign for civic cleanliness instituted by the New York City Department 
of Health 


Miser oN OES s.7 ne ts eee AR en) cee ea Le ee el 198 


Mary Cyntuia Dickerson, Editor 


Published monthly from October to May by the American Museum of Natural History. 
Terms: one dollar per year, fifteen cents percopy. Entered as second-class matter January 
12, 1907, at the Post-Office at Boston, Mass., Act of Congress, July 16, 1894. 


Subscriptions should be addressed to the AMERICAN Museum JourNAL, 77th St. 
and Central Park West, New York City. 


The Journal is sent free to all members of the Museum. 


J. PIERPONT MORGAN 
1837-1913 


One of the founders of the American Museum of Natural History. 
finance committee of the Board of Trustees, 1873-1910. Treasurer, 18 
president, 1903-1910. Mr. Morgan was also one of the institution 
benefactors 


Member of the 
890. First vice- 
S most generous 


The American Museum Journal 


Vou. XIII APRIL, 1913 No. 4 


J. PIERPONT MORGAN 


A FOUNDER AND BENEFACTOR OF THE MUSEUM 
By Joseph H. Choate 


HE death of J. Pierpont Morgan is a very severe loss to the American 

aR Museum of Natural History. As one of the charter founders of 

the Museum, as a trustee from the beginning, and for a long period 

a vice-president and a member of the Executive Committee, he exercised 

always a commanding influence ia its councils, and as one of its most 

generous benefactors, he contributed largely to the enrichment of its 
collections. 

To the long continued efforts of Morris K. Jesup and of Henry Fairfield 
Osborn to maintain the Museum in a leading place among the museums of 
natural history in the world, and at the same time to make it a powerful 
educational influence in the City of New York, he gave continual support. 
The very rich and almost unique collection of gems and minerals which he 
presented to the Museum is in itself an object of vast interest and admiration 
in the scientific world, as well as in the popular mind, and is a delightful 
monument to his memory. And then, besides the material wealth which 
he has donated so freely to the Museum, the mere fact of his having been a 
member of its Board of Trustees and an active worker in its affairs for more 
than forty years, is an invaluable possession. 

As Mr. Morgan himself said in his examination at Washington, “char- 
acter is the secret of ll success in life,” and this applies as well to corporate 
as to individual success, and especially to corporations organized not for 
money-making or business purposes, but for the promotion, in any form, of 
the public welfare; and when an institution like the American Museum of 
Natural History aspires, as it did from the beginning, to take a great place 
not only in the public eye but also in the scientific and educational world, the 
presence of such an individual in its government invites and holds for it 
at all times universal approval. It was sufficient to say that Mr. Morgan 
was one of its active officers and workers to answer all queries about it. 

To his associates in the Board, and to the scieatific staff and large 
company of employees, who regarded a visit of his to the Museum as an 
important event, he had long since become a figure of great personal interest 
which commanded their general respect and affection. His influence was 
always for good, and for conduct and measures oa the part of the Museum, 
of an elevated and inspiring character. The same qualities that gave him 
his supreme place among his fellow citizens in the United States and at- 
tracted the admiration of all the people in the world who knew him, if even 
only by name, made him always an invaluable element in the cause of 


education and science represented by the American Museum. 
155 


By courtesy of the 
Century Club 


J. PIERPONT MORGAN 


Photograph taken at about the time of the founding of the American Museum 


THE GIFTS OF MR. MORGAN TO THE 
AMERICAN MUSEUM 


WITH AN EXPRESSION OF GRATITUDE AND INDEBTEDNESS BY 
THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES 


By Henry Fairfield Osborn 
A T the age of thirty-one J. Pierpont Morgan had won such a position 


in New York that as one of the leading citizens of the city 
he was included among the founders of the American Museum. 
From the first he took an active part, joining Joseph H. Choate and 
Andrew H. Green in preparing the laws of the institution and William 
T. Blodgett and Theodore Roosevelt in securing legislation to provide for 
the erection of a building. After rendering these initial services, as early 
as 1871 he united with Morris K. Jesup and others to mature plans 
to increase the funds of the Museum; he served as a member of the 
finance committee from 1873 to 1910, as treasurer from 1875 to 1890, and 
as first vice-president from 1903 until 1910. He was the chief supporter 
of Mr. Jesup’s great administration, and was second only to Mr. Jesup as 
the most generous benefactor of the Museum. His interest was not 
centered in any one department, but extended to the Museum as a whole, 
as manifested by his munificent contributions of $25,000 to the endowment 
in 1890 and of $300,000 in 1904. 
The trustees of the Museum desiring to express the gratitude of the 
institution for this noble life work, adopted the following resolution at a 
special meeting of the board on April 4: 


The people of New York and of this country are forever 
indebted to 


John Pierpont Morgan 


for his large share in the foundation and the upbuilding of 
The American Museum of Natural History 


as a national institution of education and of public welfare. 

From December 30, 1868, when the first steps were taken 
to found the Museum, until 1912, when he last visited his col- 
lections of minerals and gems in the Museum, he gave mu- 
nificently of his time, his judgment, his affection, his means. 
In this, as in so many other public causes, he will be remem- 
bered as a true patriot and loyal citizen of the republic. 

He served as charter member of the museum corporation, 
as treasurer, as chairman of the Finance Committee, as 
first vice-president. His gifts to the exhibition halls and 
to the endowment have enriched every branch of the Mu- 
seum, and are of such a rare and beautiful character as to 
give an inspiration and love of nature for all time. 


157 


158 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


His love of the beautiful led Mr. Morgan to take special interest in the 
collections of minerals and gems. It is probable that he himself kept no 
record of the whole number of his gifts, for he gave out of love for the institu- 
tion and the pleasure of giving. It is interesting therefore, to enumerate for 
the first time some of his chief donations which have been brought together 
in the long record of forty-four years since the Museum was founded: 


Collection of gems and precious stones 

Bement collection of minerals 

Bement collection of meteorites 

The John Collins Warren collection, including the Warren 
Mastodon 

Charles R. Knight’s restorations of fossil vertebrates 

Lenders collection of Indian costumes 

Contribution to the third African expedition 

Garces archeological collection from Lake Titicaca 

Contributions to the endowment 

Contributions to the capital and maintenance fund 

Mummy of the Chilean miner 

Great boulder of jade from New Zealand 


It was through Mr. Morgan that the Museum came into possession 
of the unique series of restorations of extinct animals executed by Charles 
R. Knight, reproductions of which have found their way into most of the 
natural history museums of the Old World. 

The Garces collection received from him comes from prehistoric sites on the 
islands of Lake Titicaca, Peru, and Copacabana, Bolivia, numbering about 
five hundred objects in gold, silver, copper and bronze, of beautiful design. 

The Lenders Plains Indian collection numbers more than twelve hundred 
pieces and contains many old and rare examples of Indian costumes, beads 
and quill work, shields, ornamented pipes and weapons. 

One of his most unique gifts is that of the ancient pre-Columbian miner, 
known as the Chilean mummy, wonderfully preserved through the tissues 
being impregnated with copper salts. 

On the occasion of his last visit to the Museum Mr. Morgan was delighted 
with the rearrangement of the mineral collection in the great south hall, 
and his very last gift to the Museum, a few months before his death, was an 
especially exquisite collection of precious and semiprecious stones. 

It seems appropriate to the committee of the trustees appointed to 
memorialize the great services of Mr. Morgan to the Museum to place an 
artistic memorial of the donor in the halls which will always be especially 
associated with his name, and to perpetuate his memory still further by 
naming these halls “the Morgan Halls.” 


THE MORGAN COLLECTION OF PRECIOUS 
STONES 


By George Frederick Kunz 


F all themany and munificent gifts with which our great and lamented 

fellow citizen, John Pierpont Morgan, enriched the collections of 

“our museums, none has afforded more instruction to a large 

number of visitors or is more highly appreciated and better known than 
the wonderful Morgan gem collection exhibited on the upper floor of the 
southern wing of the American Museum of Natural History, on the 
Seventy-seventh Street side. 

We can truly say also that none of Mr. Morgan’s gifts gave him more 
pleasure, and his interest in the collection was as keen the last time I spoke 
to him as it had been at the outset. That one so familiar with the best in 
all branches of art should be a lover of beauty of form and color goes without 
saying, and we may add that his thorough appreciation and understanding 
of the finest examples made him a severe critic in such matters, rendering 
him intolerant of everything mediocre, commonplace or uninteresting. 
And he possessed withal a wonderfully retentive memory of what he knew 
was in the collection or of what he had seen, which only enhanced his admira- 
tion of what was exceptionally fine. 

Until 1882 scarcely any attention was paid to precious stones in the 
United States. A few years before that date I had seriously taken up the 
subject of studying and collecting gems, and had prevailed upon Messrs. 
Tiffany and Company to preserve the best examples that presented them- 
selves to form the collection which was exhibited in a circular pavilion at 
the Paris Exposition of 1889, in the center of the American section. 

At the solicitation of the late Morris K. Jesup, president of the American 
Museum of Natural History, Mr. Morgan presented this entire collection to 
the Museum. The specimens were displayed in two long cases on the upper 
floor, and some five years later the fact that the tile pavement on both sides 
had been worn to a considerable depth along the line where the cases stood, 
gave testimony to the interest excited in the general public. 

The success of the first collection led me to believe that a collection of 
precious stones of other than American origin would be worthy of a greater 
national exhibition, and a consultation was held with Mr. Morgan. As a 
result a new collection was made and proved to be larger than had origi- 
nally been anticipated. It was purchased on condition that it should be 
shown at the Paris Exposition of 1900 where it received a Grand Prize and 
occupied a most important position in the Department of Mines. 

This latter collection was the result of a trip throughout Europe, Asiatic 
Russia, the United States and Mexico. The finest examples were obtained 
by purchase frequently, sometimes however only through exchange with 


159 


160 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


collectors or museums. This collection is now installed in the American 
Museum of Natural History, a crowning glory to the many magnificent 
assemblages of other things in the Museum. 

The collection is especially remarkable for the many unique things it 
contains, among which are the most perfect large sapphire known, a Baby- 
lonian ax-head of banded agate, four thousand years old, and a wonderful 
series of sapphires, blue, pink, salmon and brown. There is also a magni- 
ficent series of beryls; a large series of tourmalines; an immense section of 
jade — an entire boulder but so thin that it measures not more than one 
eighth of an inch through. The great hyacinth with the portrait of Christ 
engraved on it, the gift of a Vatican cardinal to a friend, is in this 
collection. 

The two collections as eventually completed consist of 2176 specimens 
of gem-stones, objects of precious-stone, and 2442 pearls. Taken in its 
entirety the present collection is the most extensive and carefully selected 
display of rough and cut stones in existence. The specimens of ancient 
Babylonian minerals represented by engraved cylinders constitute in them- 
selves a quite unique possession, and the same may be said of the collection 
of opals and of the collection of kunzite specimens. Magnificent cut speci- 
mens of morganite must also be noted, as well as a mass of quite transparent 
aquamarine, the heart of the great crystal found at Marambaya, Brazil, a 
piece weighing fourteen pounds. This mass of aquamarine is the largest 
piece of gem beryl known. There are also magnificent crystals of rubellite 
found during the past year at Pala, San Diego County, California. 


A gigantic geode thirty-five feet in height and twelve feet in width, lined 
with magnificent amethyst, was discovered in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, in 1899. 
‘This was carefully broken apart and the five largest masses measuring several feet 
and covered with the finest crystals, of one to two and one half inches across, many 
of them perfect gems, are in this collection. 

The diamond crystals of American origin are quite unique, notably, a diamond 
crystal weighing 1542 carats, found in gravel and clay of the Kettle Moraine, near 
Eagle, Waukesha Co., Wisconsin; another of 314 carats, a perfect octahedron, from 
Kettle Moraine, two and one half miles southwest of Oregon, Dane Co., Wisconsin; 
two diamonds, one of 43 carats from Lee Co., Alabama, and the other of 4ti, from 
Shelby Co., Alabama; diamonds found in a rock from Kimberley, South Africa and 
from the Vaal River, South Africa, as well as a number of pink, brownish, yellow and 
white diamonds, and some of the interesting round sort of the greatest hardness and 
density. The diamond collection comprises eight cut stones, ten ring-gems and six 
in the rock. 

The sapphire collection numbers 166 specimens, many of them magnificent 
examples, such as a great blue gem from Ceylon of 15823 carats; a violet stone of 
33 carats from Siam; a superb yellow sapphire of 100 carats from Ceylon; one of 
a golden yellow weighing 733 carats, and a yellow and blue one of 154 carats, also 
from Ceylon. There is also an engraved Indian sapphire of 1455 carats. In addi- 
tion to these we have an endless collection of purple, greenish yellow, pink and salmon- 
colored sapphires. 


MORGAN COLLECTION OF PRECIOUS STONES 161 


Among the rubies must be noted one from Burma, weighing 47 carats. Six 
rubies from Cowel Valley, Macon Co., North Carolina, weigh together 623 carats. 
A Burmese ruby carved as a head weighs 8+? carats. In addition there is an inter- 
esting collection of gem-corundums, green, yellow, pink and other colors, from near 
Coral Creek, Montana, and a series of fine blue stones from Yogo Gulch, Fergus Co., 
Montana. 

The collection is also enriched with a number of interesting natural crystals of 


unusual beauty and a large sapphire of yellow and blue, as well as with the first sapphire 


The greatest and one of the most perfect star sapphires known. The star sapphire is 
one of the most admired of gems, the perfection of the six-rayed refraction which gives it 
its name varies greatly in different stones and is somewhat influenced by the color of the 
stone and the convexity of its polished surface 

A cut gem of morganite (571 carats) from Madagascar. Morganite is the pink beryl 


of Madagascar, which is identical with the pink gem of the same mineral found in southern 
California 


ever cut from material found in the United 
States. Besides these magnificent crystals there 
are a number of dark blues, pale blues, purples, 
greens and whites, as well as some of grayish 
black and brownish color from Franklin, Macon 
Co., North Carolina. 

The beryl group comprises 57 beryls, 30 
aquamarines and 13 emeralds and_ includes 
golden beryl and morganite. It is notable for 
the splendid cut morganite of 57} carats from 
Madagascar. There are aquamarines of 2143, 
271% and 159,% carats respectively, from Adun- 
Tschilon, Siberia; another of 156%’; carats and a 
great bluish-green gem of 355 carats from Cey- 
lon. There is a beautifully cut emerald of 324 
carats from the Muso Mines, United States of 
Colombia; a cut gem of 4 carats from Earles 
Station, Blacksburg, South Carolina; an en- 
graved emerald of Indian workmanship, exe- 
cuted in the seventeenth century and weighing 
6721; carats. To these must be added a series of 


A garnet cameo said to be from 
the Vatican collection, engraved 
aquamarines from Mount Antero, Colorado, with a bust of Christ in profile 


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A superb group of amethyst crystals [height 53 inches] 
from Upper Providence, Delaware Co., Pennsylvania. In 
these gem crystals the purple coloring is unevenly distri- 
buted, as in the Siberian amethysts making a rich royal 
purple tint in the cut stone equal to that of any known 
gem 


found at an altitude of 14,000 feet, in the zone of almost perpetual snow. Addi- 
tional specimens to be noted are some wonderful yellow beryls from Ceylon, one of 
573°; carats; a beryl of 12} carats from Mt. Mica, Paris, Maine; twelve stones, one 
of 1423 carats from Litchfield, Connecticut, and a deep brown specimen from the 
Ray Mine, Mitchell Co., North Carolina. 

The collection of tourmalines numbers 79 cut and 13 uncut specimens. Here we 
have examples as varied as the sapphires in their coloring. There are magnificent 
red and pink stones from Pala Chief, California; one from Madagascar weighing 
402 carats; another from Sarapulka, Russia, as well as specimens from the state 
of Minas Geraes, Brazil. A large irregular mass is said to be from the eye of an idol 
in India and to have been secured during the Sikh war. A series of the wonderful 
bicolored stones, part yellow and green, the balance of the stone being red, are from 
Mesa Grande, California; there is also a red and “blue bicolored stone from the same 
locality. Noteworthy and interesting are some tourmalines from Brazil in which 
there is a red center bordered by white, with an outer line of green. A series of more 
than a dozen blue, dark green and green tourmalines come from the famous locality 
at Mt. Mica, Paris, Maine. 


The topaz series numbers 55 cut and 15 uncut stones. It is one of the most 
164 


Portion of fresh-water clam shell holding a cluster of pearls. Pearls of the greatest 
value are satiny in surface, pearly white in color, and almost ideally perfect in symmetry. 
Such pearls command the highest value. The pearls in the Morgan collection number 2442. 
The series includes a large number collected in different parts of the United States to illustrate 
varying forms and colors 


important, embracing magnificent blue gems, one weighing 308+ carats from Ceylon; 
another of 9835 carats from Alabaschka; around blue stone of 120 carats from Ceylon; 
another great topaz of 600 carats, faultlessly cut, comes also from Ceylon. It is 
the masterpiece of cutting of one of the greatest lapidaries who has ever lived in 
India, as is also the blue Ceylon stone of 3081 carats. The yellow and pink topazes 
from Minas Geraes are superb; one of a deep yellow weighing 61 carats, and a 
darker one, more brownish yellow, 463 carats. Then there is a splendid triangular, 
sherry-colored stone, weighing 16%? carats from Ceylon; a beautiful pink specimen 
of 19;%s carats and another of 49;°; carats from Ouro Preto, Minas Geraes, Brazil. 
A great pale amber-colored stone of 193? carats is from Cheyenne Mountain, 
E] Paso, Colorado; there are also specimens from Australia and other localities. 

In the quartz series among the rock crystals, Spanish topaz, and rose quartz, 
there are many fine specimens — notably the two crystal balls from Mokelumne Hill, 
Calaveras Co., California. The one of 5} inches diameter weighing 6.3 pounds is 
flawless; the other of 74 inches diameter with a weight of 8.17 pounds, is a large 
piece of crystal containing numerous natural markings. There are wonderful ex- 
amples of seals and other ornaments cut by the famous lapidaries of the Ural Moun- 
tains and by Chinese lapidaries of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, as well 
as vases and snuffboxes by the expert lapidaries of the Nahe Valley in Germany. 

The amethyst series is fully as complete and contains many unique gems, such 
as a great group of crystals from Upper Providence, Pennsylvania, and a carved 
hand of Buddha from Japan. There may also be seen a large hexagonal gem, three 
sectors white and three sectors purple, and a magnificent royal purple gem of 1425°5 
carats from the Ural Mountains. Some large and superb gems come from North 
Carolina; Deerhill, Maine, and other localities. 

The garnets are represented in their full range of color — red, purple, honey-color, 
brown, green and black. A remarkable series of spessartite comes from Amelia 
Court House, Virginia, several dozen gems weighing from one carat to the great gem 
of 9677; carats. The two finest found in this locality weigh respectively 337°, and 36é4 
carats and are unique in size, perfection and color. 

We have already noted the hyacinth cameo, engraved with a bust of Christ in 
profile, said to have been in the Vatican collection. A garnet bowl engraved with 
Indian designs weighs several ounces, and a small dish, cut from garnet found at 

165 


166 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


Salida, Colorado, is nearly two inches across. Certain of the ruby-red garnets were 
found on the ant-hills of the Navajo Reservation, New Mexico, where they had been 
brought out by the ants. Rose-purple rhodolite garnets come from Franklin, Macon 
Co., North Carolina. 

Several dozen demantoid garnets, so often erroneously termed olivine, of a rich 
emerald green with a light tinge of gold and showing a play of color like the diamond 
were brought from Poldnewaja, Ural Mountains. A magnificent polished garnet 
crystal weighing over a pound comes from Salida, Colorado. 

One of the most brilliant cases of the collection is the opal case which contains 
many fine gems. In it may be viewed a wonderful series of two dozen rich golden 
and fire opals from Querétaro, Mexico, and a number of fine specimens from White 
Cliffs, New South Wales. A mass of precious opal weighing nine ounces originally 
formed the bone of a prehistoric animal and was naturally changed to precious opal. 

It was intended that the collection should not only represent the varieties of 
precious stones and the various forms of cutting and working these in ancient, medi- 
zeval and modern times in all nations, but should also include the stones in more 
especial use in different countries, manipulated, carved or cut by the artisan of the 
country in question. Groups of carved gem-stones may be seen in the form of 
fruits, and there is a series of carved vases made in Siberia, where the industry was 
introduced by Catherine the Great, who sent two Italian lapidaries to teach the 
natives, with the result that at the present time more than one thousand people are 
thus making a good living. 

Amber is a treasure that has been prized from the earliest times. To secure it 
the Pheenicians visited the Baltic; the Germans have traded it to China, Africa and 
to many distant lands; it has been found in French graves and it is worn in the form 
of beads by the natives of Africa. 

Here we have it represented in a variety of forms, such as Indian beads and snuff- 
bottles of Japanese manufacture; there are also some pieces containing insects which 
were imprisoned millenniums ago in the gum of the tree. For amber is not indeed the 
tears of the Heliades as the classic myth explains, but the tears oozing out of the bark 
of wounded trees, as was in fact believed by some of the more enlightened among the 
ancient writers. 

When the lilac and purple spodumene was found in 1903-4 and named kunzite, 
Mr. Morgan acquired a series of the finest stones, some of which had been figured as 
type specimens. This interesting series of crystals included some really wonderful 
gems. We may instance one of 224} carats, the largest type specimen. Another 
superb gem weighs 118 carats. 

The jade collection comprises only about two dozen examples. It was decided 
not to supplement the great Bishop Collection and other treasures of the Metropolitan 
Museum. But there are some important pieces of Chinese jade, such as a great bowl 
measuring twenty inches across; a white bowl of twelve inches diameter, with two 
swinging handles; a jade cup, with cover jeweled with diamonds and rubies, from 
India; a bowl of jadeite (melting snow) and an ellipse-shaped bowl of seven inches 
diameter, mounted on gold and enamel, originally belonging to Louis XVIII. A 
jadeite figure from the Valley of Mexico weighing four pounds is also here, and a 
snuff-bottle and a green vase seven inches in height. 

No single specimen is of greater importance from an archeological point of view 
than the ancient axhammer of banded agate. This was obtained by Cardinal 
Borgia while at the head of the Propaganda. It was offered by the Countess Ettore 
Borgia to the British Museum, but was eventually acquired by Count Michael 
Tyskiewiecz for 15,000 francs ($3000); soon after his death it was purchased by 
Messrs. Tiffany and Company and was presented by Mr. Morgan to the American 
Museum. 


The carmine tint of this rubellite [height 93 inches] in contrast with the almost colorless 
and glassy surface of the quartz crystal forms a mineral wonder. Rubellite is a lithia 
variety of the variable silicate known to mineralogy as tourmaline and the intergrowth of 
quartz and tourmaline is noticed at many localities. Invariably the quartz as a secondary 
crystallization has formed around its mineral companion, as a foil to the showier associate 


We have touched upon the historic value of the series of Babylonian cylinders, 
composed of various minerals such as serpentine, steatite, hematite, lapis-lazuli, 
jasper, agate, anhydrite, amazon stone, shell, aragonite, chalcedony, marble and 
quartz. These cylinders date from 4000 to 400 B. c., and are inscribed with figures 
and names. 

To illustrate the history of gem engraving there are fine examples of Persian en- 
graving offered by a series of fourteen Persian seals of various ages, bearing from a 
few to several hundred words of the beautiful tracery engraving that only the Oriental 
can accomplish with full success. 

Agatized wood from Chalcedony Park, Arizona, is well represented, some sections 
measuring two feet across, polished as smooth as the finest mirror, and showing parts 
of the prehistoric trees replaced by silica and oxide of iron, as if nature had painted 
them in orange, red or brown, in pinkish or bluish hues, and in other colors, fairly 

167 


168 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


rivaling the brush of any modern artist. The rock crystal is at times accompanied 
by crystals of rutile, hornblende and tourmaline. In these the hairs are frequently 
as fine as human hair and again they may be as thick as the lead of a pencil. In the 
white colorless quartz the crystals are nine inches long; in others the crystals are 
brilliant reddish brown, twisted and distorted. Fine delicate rutile “hairs” in quartz 
crystal come from Madagascar. There are some interesting quartz crystals in which 
the successive growths of the crystal have been registered by a deposition of some 
other substance as the quartz was growing, presenting a series of ‘phantom crystals.” 
These have been polished on the sides. 

The skill of the lapidary in cutting and polishing excessively thin sections of 
precious minerals is demonstrated in the case of a piece of jade thirty inches in length, 
twenty-four inches in width and one-fourth of an inch thick, polished on both sides, 
a triumph of lapidary work. Another example from the Onot River, from distant 
Siberia, is a section of a boulder skillfully mounted, only one-sixteenth of an inch 
thick, and yet measuring twenty inches in length and twelve inches in width. A see- 
tion of a meteorite from Kiowa Co., Kansas, is filled with golden yellow olivine 
(peridot). 

The turquoise exhibit is of unusual interest; very notable is the great Persian 
turquoise engraved with two thousand words, an entire chapter of the Koran; 
this laborious task must have required a year’s time for its accomplishment. Addi- 
tional examples here are a turquoise matrix from Persia; bone turquoise (odontolite) 
from France; a magnificent turquoise from Los Cerrillos, New Mexico, as well as 
beads and charms made, mounted or cut by the Navajo Indians. 

The pearl series numbers 2442. It contains a great variety of examples collected to 
illustrate the various forms and colors of freshwater pearls in the different parts of the 
United States. Some of them are large and important gems and are of great beauty and 
value. There is an extensive series of common clam, abalone and conch-shell pearls. 

The rare gems are well represented, such as the titanite from Tavetschtal, Switzer- 
land, which almost rivals the diamond in brilliancy. 

Of other gem-minerals we have brown and gold andalusite from Ceylon; euclase 
from Brazil; cut sphalerite from Santander, Spain; cyanite from Russia and 
Bakersville, North Carolina; apatite from Georgia and from Canada; rutile; sun- 
stone; chlorastrolite from the one locality in which it is found, Isle Royale, Lake 
Superior, Minnesota; prehnite from Paterson, New Jersey; oligoclase from New 
Bakersville, North Carolina; microcline from Norway; thomsonite; willemite; 
hyalite from Lake Co., California; and many others. Moonstone is well repre- 
sented by a number of large and beautiful gems. 

The agates and moss agates form a great series of large, important and beautiful 
specimens, notably the great bowl that measures thirteen inches across, cut out of 
natural agate and showing the wonderful mammillary structure. Some “mocha 
stones,’ as agates are termed in India, measure four inches across. Interesting in 
their way are a number of beautiful smaller pieces from Brazil and Wyoming. 

The Morgan collection at the 1900 Paris Exposition aroused such great and 
universal interest in gems and minerals, that when Mr. Morgan’s attention was 
drawn to the Bement collection of minerals he realized that the people as well as 
the Museum authorities would greatly appreciate it, and he generously presented to 
the Museum this greatest private collection of minerals, embracing also one of the 
greatest private collections of meteorites. 

To recapitulate, the catalogue of the collection numbers 2064 cards listing the 
following specimens: pearls 2442; diamonds — rings, 10, cut stones 8, in rock 6; 
sapphires 166; beryls 57; aquamarines 30; emeralds 13; topaz, cut 55, uncut 
15; tourmaline, cut 79, uncut 13; beads 500; cylinders (Babylonian) 32; shell 
cameos 3. 


A TREASURE HOUSE OF GEMS 


AN APPRECIATION OF THE BEAUTY OF THE MORGAN COLLEC- 
TION IN THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY 


By L. P. Gratacap 


decorations, gems gain in splendor, yet the claims of education 
in the halls of a museum of natural history demand that gems for 
specific study be individualized and separate. The only way to produce 
the impression of richness and brilliancy is to have them profusely shown, 
to be lavish and generous in examples, with a kind of luxurious extravagance 


lee with each other in clustering groups, as in jewelry and 


even that startles. 

In the Morgan gem collection something of this effect is indeed produced. 
As we pass in review the cases in the gem room, each with few exceptions 
devoted to a single gem, the aggregate effect is sensibly imposing — a feeling 
reflected in the average visitor by his bewildering estimates of its value. 
Admiration arises in part from the comprehensiveness of the collection, 
the wide embrace within it of the minerals that may serve the purposes of 
decoration, or enter, less conclusively as gems, into works of art, the rococo 
of the artificer in quartz, jade, jadeite, rhodonite, fluorite, gypsum, serpen- 
tine, agate and chalcedony. 

Herein has been displayed the exhaustiveness of Dr. Kunz’s inquiry, 
sympathy and learning, for the present Morgan collection of gems is practi- 
cally the consolidation of the two World’s Fair Exhibits of Tiffany and Com- 
pany at Paris in 1889 and 1900, and Dr. Kunz gathered for those occasions 
something suitable from every available source. 

The primacy of gems remains, to-day as always, with the diamond, the 
sapphire, ruby and emerald, curiously invaded by that frail product of the sea 
and the river, the pearl of which Julius Wodiska says, “In its purity, liquid 
beauty, and charm of romantic and poetical association the pearl — aristocrat 
of gems — leads even its peers of the highest rank, the diamond, emerald, 
ruby and sapphire.’’ Perhaps we might quarrel with this impersonation 
of the pearl, but there can be no hesitation in ascribing to it a wonderful 
charm as we see the varied and fascinating display in the Morgan collection. 

From this case of pearls the visitor may learn also the scheme devised 
by Dr. Kunz for the whole collection of gem-material, that it might sub- 
serve quite completely the purposes of scientific discrimination and compari- 
son. In this case of pearls are the calcareous secretions of the hard-shell 
clam (Mercenaria mercenaria), our edible quahog; the less attractive offer- 
ings from the pearl factory of the common oyster; the rosy rolls from the 
giant whelk of the south (Strombus gigas); the dissymetric nodules, with 
their vivid sheens, from the abalone (Haliotis splendens) of California, 
and the priceless dainty and delicate spheres, pale silvery and lilac-tinted, 
from the mantles of the freshwater clam (Unio). Here are perfect and 


baroque pearls, hinge pearls and pearlaceous masses, the exhibit unduly 
169 


170 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


limited for want of space to accommodate the abundant overflow now 
hidden in storage. 

The visitor leaning over that variegated garden of the sapphires learns 
with interest the remarkable range of colors in this gem: the vivid electric 
blues, paler cerulean hues, the deep pansy tones, the pinks, translucent 
and feeble, and the almost opaque turgid pigeon-blood stones, and green, 
golden yellow, salmon, gentian, to colorless water stones. The opposite 
case reveals the superb play of color in beryl from the peerless emerald, 
through haunting changes of blue and green in the aquamarines, to the 
saffron yellow of the golden beryl, while near it is the amazing show of 
tourmaline, surprising in its vagaries of sharply lined and interblended 
tints, with its contrasted triple points of emphasis in green, red and blue. 
The topaz, less arrestingly, exhibits its departures from convention in the 
burnt half-caramel tone of the Brazilian stone, to gentians (mostly artificially — 
produced), yellows, and the limpid masses. 

Case follows case, holding the precious and semiprecious stones, approxi- 
mately in the order of their commercial merit, an order not invariably sus- 
tained by taste, and yet practically valid. The chrysoberyls (alexandrite) 
with their tantalizing caprices of color, the rather insipid spinel; the rich 
moorish browns of the zircon, among which note the raspberry glints of the 
hyacinth, the effective bottle green of peridot, and the coarser — yet at 
times refined to the point of a deliberate superiority almost over ruby 


garnet with its audacious greens and honey-yellow spessartites. 

Here is a supremely showy case of the chameleon amongst gems, the 
tortuous and vagrant opal, and here a splendid group of amethysts — the 
bishop’s stone — with a regal group of crystals from Delaware County, 
Pennsylvania, in the center of it. A case of mingled degrees and orders, in 
the hierarchy of gems, adjoins it, where, with recognized families as the 
moonstone (adularia), are joined a host of lesser aspirants to fashionable 
attention, such as titanite and euclase, a motley throng not unlike the 
obsequious courtiers before the gates of Timon of Athens, seeking honors 


to which they have no claim. 

But to some eyes, more beautiful almost than anything else are these 
marvelous lilac, gentian, or pale carnation slabs of kunzite (spodumene), 
a mineral wonder, found buried far below all human contact in the moun- 
tains of southern California, and now fascinating the world of ostentation 
with its subtle radiance. 

Here too is amber and turquoise and gold, lovely in themselves but 
lovelier in combination, and then, with a fine challenge to the prerogatives 
of the sister museum, are carved, cut and polished vessels and designs in 
quartz, chalcedony, agate, jade and jadeite. 

It must always stand true that this treasure-house of beauty is in itself 
a wonderful monument to the man who thus generously enriched the Ameri- 
can Museum. 


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“THE LAST STAND”’ 
Model by Mr. Carl E. Akeley for elephant bronze. [Photo one-fourth size of model] 


' big 7 Y 


The elephant trap used by the Kara Moja consists of a “‘basket,’’ such as is here shown, 
and a slip-noose of rawhide cable placed over a hole dug in the trail. The cut shows the 
Kara Moja antelope trap which is similar to the elephant trap but of smaller size 


172 


THE WORK OF CARL E. AKELEY 


\ , J ORK on the elephant group planned by Mr. Carl E. Akeley for 
the American Museum is to begin in early summer. Many 
studies are already in progress both for the group and for 

supplementary miniature groups and single figures to be cast in bronze and 

used to supplement the life size group, thus illustrating in full the character 
and habits of the African elephant. 

Some of Mr. Akeley’s work is to be seen in the Chicago Field Museum — 
a series of groups of African mammals, a very beautiful seasonal series 
of the Virginia deer and as the central piece of the Museum a statuesque 
group of two elephants. At present Mr. Akeley has connection with the 
Field Museum in an extension of the African mammal series, working at 
the moment on an African buffalo group of large proportions. 

The elephant group planned for the American Museum, a family group 
of massed elephants, five in number, is destined for the center of the African 
hall in the proposed new wing. The group, statuesque in effect, without 
habitat, will tower eighteen feet from the floor, elevated four feet on a pedes- 
tal base in order to give an unobstructed view on first approach from the ends 
of the hall over two low groups of rhinos one at either end. These three 
groups in a space 44 by 136 feet will be mounted according to Mr. Akeley’s 
newly devised method for non-haired mammals which gives them the 
permanency of bronze and allows exhibition without cases, exposed to the 
varying heat and humidity conditions of the open hall. 

The elephant group will have in addition to the correlated bronze 
miniature groups and single figures already mentioned, bas-reliefs in bronze 
on the sides of the pedestal. These will show the massing of the animals 
in herds, and other features of the story of the African elephant and its 
relation to the country and to the natives. As planned, the great central 
space of the hall with its elephant and rhino groups will be encircled by a 
series of thirty-two panoramic groups with habitats and painted backgrounds, 
each composite in character, so that together they will show several hundred 
species. The corner groups for instance will represent the Congo forest 
(okapi the center of interest), African plains, African desert with typical 
water-hole (giraffe the center), and a river scene of Africa. Each of these 
will contain many species, the last for example, crocodiles, hippos and turtles 
in the water, and in the trees that border the river different species of 
monkeys and birds. These thirty-two groups will be in cases so constructed 
as to be under automatic control regarding light, temperature and humidity, 
entirely independent of the varying conditions in the main open part of the 
hall. 

Two requisites underlie successful work in taxidermy — as the mounting 
of animals for museum exhibition is known — in addition to accuracy of the 
scientific truth to be demonstrated. The first of these is technique of such 


173 


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178 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


character that not only is the mount flawless in workmanship but it is fitted 
also to endure unchanged for many years — fifty, one hundred, surely even 
longer. For in this age of advanced experiment and knowledge such a 
result alone justifies the money and effort. Still more important than money 
and effort however, is the fact that the animal life of the globe in its wild 
state, especially the large mammal life, is in very large part approaching 
extinction because of the encroachments of civilization. For this reason, 
museum records made to-day should be historical in that they embody 
accurate knowledge in permanent form for the future. Also it chances that 
the knowledge which can be put in the graphic form of groups is precisely 
that part of zodlogical science which it is most important to-day to preserve 
—namely, field knowledge or ecological records, the interrelationships of 
any given race of animals with other races and with environment, which if 
not gained in the near future will be lost forever. Collections are important 
(and they too must be put into shape for enduring) and they must be made 
in large series before too late. Work on them however, with the systematic, 
anatomical and comparative results which in combination are of such 
intrinsic value in the general body of science, will not be injured or lost by 
delay. 

The demands of the time in the matter of ecological record are strong 
upon museums and particularly upon the American Museum which aims in 
so large a degree to put its information in graphic form because of the 
enhanced educational value. Therefore that the opportunity seems at 
hand when Mr. Akeley will give his power as a taxidermist to express his 
large field knowledge of African mammals, is a triumph for science even in 
greater degree than for taxidermy or for the development of the American 
Museum. 

But there is a second requisite for the adequate mounting of animals. 
It lies in a combination of the life and of art, a choice of life facts, positions, 
relations such as can be set forth in accordance with what we recognize as 
artistic effect. The taxidermist who can produce flawless and relatively 
enduring technique is rare; the man who combines with these the second 
requirement is still more rare. Mr. Akeley stands pretty much alone, far 
and away the best taxidermist of the world. Quoting a critic of repute in 
museum matters: “Mr. Akeley to the men who often bear the title of 
taxidermist stands as Rodin and French to the cave artists.” 


THE PERSONNEL OF THE CROCKER LAND 
EXPEDITION 


By Edmund Otis Hovey 


themselves fortunate in the personnel of the staff and congratulate 

the scientific world at large upon the results that may reasonably 
be expected to flow from the energy that has been and is to be put into the 
enterprise. 

The leader of the party, Donald B. MacMillan, who was coleader with 
George Borup of the expedition as originally planned, won his spurs in 
Arctic work as one of Admiral Peary’s trusted lieutenants during the suc- 
cessful quest of the North Pole in 1908-1909, traveling more than two 
thousand miles with dog team along northern shores, even to the most 
northern point of land in the world, Cape Morris Jesup. It was from this 
point that MacMillan and Borup made their record march covering 336 
miles in eight days. Mr. MacMillan is a graduate, A. B. and Honorary 
A. M., of Bowdoin College. He has spent the three and one-half years since 
his return from the Arctic in studying, lecturing and traveling. The sum- 
mers of 1910 and 1912 were spent in exploratory, ornithological and archzeo- 
logical work in and along the coast of Labrador. The year 1910-1911 and 
the past autumn and winter have been spent at Harvard University working 
in anthropology and practical astronomy. Mr. MacMillan is of Scotch 
ancestry and was born in Massachusetts thirty-seven years ago. 

W. Elmer Ekblaw was born in Illinois and is thirty years old His 
portrait shows him as he is, strong, sturdy, self-reliant and reliable, as befits 
his Scandinavian ancestry. He took his degrees A. B. and A. M. in course 
at the University of Illinois, specializing in geology, botany and ornithology. 
He is a valued instructor in geology at his Alma Mater. He has done much 
field work in that science and will have charge of the geological and botanical 
work of the expedition. 

Ensign Fitzhugh Green, U.S. N., graduated at the Naval Academy, 
Annapolis, four years ago, when he was only twenty years of age. He was 
born in Missouri of old Colonial stock and received his appointment to the 
Academy from that State. Mr. Green’s experience has been largely at sea, 
where his duties concerned navigation and all the complicated machinery of 
a battleship. He was in command of a turret on the “Michigan” and has 
likewise done mapping of coast lines. He has been taking special studies 
during the past year in cartography, meteorology, seismology, terrestrial 
magnetism and wireless telegraphy in Washington, D. C. and will have 
charge of these branches of the expedition work. His experience in the 
navy has already taught him how to command as well as to obey. 

Maurice C. Tanquary is a Wisconsin boy, although his parents and his 
grandparents for several generations were born in New England. He was 

179 


, SHE organizing institutions of the Crocker Land expedition consider 


MR. MAURICE C.TANQUARY 
[ Upper photo} 

Mr. Tanquary is a grad- 
uate of the University of 
Illinois. He will act as zodlc- 
gist of the Crocker Land expe- 
dition 


MR. W. ELMER EKBLAW 
[Lower photo] 

Mr. Ekblaw, instructor at 
the University of Illinois, will 
have charge of the geological 
and botanical work 


180 


graduated from the Uni- 
versity of Illinois in the 
same class with Mr. 
Ekblaw, but he = con- 
tinued his college work 
at the same institution 
to include the degree of 
Ph. D. He specialized 
in zodlogy, more partic- 
ularly entomology, and 
he is well fitted to take 
charge of the zodélogical 
work of the party in- 
cluding that on fishes 
and mammals. He is 
thirty-one years old and 
is full of the life and 
vigor that will be inval- 
uable to the party dur- 
ing the long hours of 
darkness in the second 
winter. 


ENSIGN FITZHUGH GREEN, U. S. N. 


Ensign Green, who joins the Crocker Land expedition which is 
under the leadership of Donald B. MacMillan, is a graduate of the 
Naval Academy, Annapolis, and has had experience at sea, in part on 
the ‘‘Michigan.’’ He will have charge of the meteorology, the map- 
ping of coasts, records of earthquakes, wireless telegraphy and allied 
work 

181 


182 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


In addition to the strictly scientific staff of the expedition there will be a 
surgeon. The climate of the Arctic regions is so healthful for white men that 
there is not likely to be much for the doctor to do for the staff aside from 
the treatment of frost bite and the results of accidents, but the Eskimo 
furnish a fertile field for medical study and maintaining the health of the 
whole party through properly balancing the diet is of high importance. 
The surgeon has not yet been appointed although there have been many ap- 
plicants for the post. 

The party includes an expert electrician to have the direct care of the 
outfit of wireless and other electrical instruments at headquarters and his 
duties will include making the meteorological and seismological observations 
during the absence of Mr. Green. A good mechanic and boat-builder who 
combines also the qualifications of being a good camp cook has been engaged. 
The whole staff will seem nearly perfect, when a competent surgeon has 
been secured. 

No American expedition has ever gone to the Arctic regions better 
equipped as to men, supplies and instruments than this, which is to start 
for the north in July of this year under the auspices of the American Museum 
of Natural History and the American Geographical Society with the co- 
operation of the University of Illinois and the assistance of the United 
States Navy Department, the Department of the Interior (through the 
Geological Survey and the Bureau of Mines), the Department of Agricul- 
ture (through the Weather Bureau), the Department of Commerce and 
Labor (through the Coast and Geodetic Survey), the Carnegie Institution 
of Washington (through its Bureau of Terrestrial Magnetism), Yale Uni- 
versity, Colgate University, Bowdoin College, Worcester Academy and 
Groton School. 

Such an array of backers gives the enterprise a national character which 
is further emphasized by the large number of individuals, about one hun- 
dred thirty in all, who have contributed liberally of their means and the 
score or more of prominent publishing houses and other firms that have made 
either direct donations of their valued goods or concessions in prices that 
have given the expedition’s funds much greater purchasing power than other- 
wise they could have had. Wireless telegraphy is to be utilized for the first 
time to further the work of an Arctic expedition. This will be used in 
connection with the fully equipped weather bureau station to be established 
at the home base of the party on Flagler Bay (Kane Basin). The idea of 
being in direct frequent communication with an exploring party north of 
79° north latitude is one to stir the blood and fire the imagination, at the 
same time that it removes some of the terrors of the long Arctic night. 


BIRD STUDIES IN THE ANDES 


QUOTATIONS FROM THE LETTERS OF FRANK M. CHAPMAN, 
LEADER OF AN EXPEDITION TO SOUTH AMERICA 


R. Frank M. Cuapman is in Colombia for the purpose of making 

a study of the life zones of that part of South America. The con- 

ditions in the region are peculiar. In a short distance with 

increasing altitude occur tropical, temperate, sub-boreal and alpine zones, 
the bird life in each zone distinct from that of the others. 

Also studies are being made for a panoramic group to continue the series 
of bird habitat groups in the American Museum. The following quota- 
tions are from letters received from Mr. Chapman during March: 

Honpa, February 9 


....One month ago we left New York but in spite of the fact that the voyage 
from New York to Baranquilla consumed eleven days and that plowing up the water 


183 


184 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


— and mud — of the Magdalena twelve more, we already have over six hundred birds 
and the study for the great Magdalena group has been made. We let no opportunity 
to collect escape us while sailing up the Magdalena. Whenever the steamer stopped 
for cargo or firewood the six men of our party rushed ashore — somewhat to the 
astonishment of the inhabitants, who not infrequently asked if we were starting a 
revolution! The bird skins were prepared at once on the steamer, where we were 
given every facility for work by a sympathetic captain. 

The view for the group was made at a point above Honda, at an elevation of 
2700 feet, near the summit of the first ridge of the Eastern Andes. From this point 
one looks west across the Magdalena Valley to the Central Andes. The floor of the 
valley is broken by a series of low, strongly modeled ranges through which the 
Magdalena winds in graceful curves and the blue wall of the Central Cordillera is 
crowned by three snow masses, Tolima, Isabel and Ruiz, having an elevation of 
16,000 to 18,000 or more feet. In its impressive proportions, its variety of form and 
color, its singularly beautiful and pleasing composition, this view is by far the finest 
I have ever seen. 

All the men! are working with enthusiasm and this in the face of conditions try- 
ing even to those of us who have had experience in the tropics. Lying at the western 
base of the Eastern Andes, the Magdalena is not cooled by the easterly trades and 
the mercury hangs about 90°, while the air is charged with a high percentage of 
moisture. I am glad to say that to-morrow we begin our section from the Mag- 
dalena to the Meta at the eastern base of the Eastern Andes, thus completing the 
survey of the three Colombian Andes from the Pacific to the Orinoco drainage. . . | 


“HEART OF THE ANDES,” February 25 : 
....In order to avoid the expense of running a large pack-outfit for the two hun- 
dred miles through the Eastern Andes, I have divided the party into two or three 
each, and am relaying it along the trail with six mules, three for the saddle and three 
for “ cargo,” asitis here called.... Things move slowly here and a week was of neces- 
sity passed in Bogotaé while I purchased the mules and hired men for our journey. . . . 
The week was also used to establish relations with resident naturalists (few in num- 
ber and chiefly French priests), to pay the respects of the Museum to various officials 
including the President of the Republic, the American and British Ministers, and to 
ascertain the sources of the so-called “‘ Bogota ’’ birdskins which for the past seventy 
years have been reaching the museums of Europe and America, hitherto constituting 
practically the only specimens of birds from this region.... Investigation has 
yielded the most surprising and definite results. In brief, the area drawn on by the 
Bogota dealers is so large that these dataless specimens are not only scientifically 
valueless but also actually misleading, and the discovery of this fact alone is worth a 
journey to Colombia. 
Buena Vista, February 28 
We finally reached the summit of the last ridge of the Andes (altitude 4000 feet). 
At our feet the llanos stretched indefinitely eastward and for the first time since enter- 
ing the mountains we saw the horizon below us. Westward we look back up the valley 
of the Rio Negro. Justly is this place named Buena Vista:.... ....It is very rich 
in bird life. One collecting of sixty-six specimens brought a result of thirty-four 
species, and in a single morning’s work we have collected as many as thirty-eight 
genera.... 


1The assistants of the expedition are as follows: Mr. Louis Agassiz Fuertes, artist; 
Messrs. George K. Cherrie, formerly of the Brooklyn Museum, Paul G. Howes of New 
Haven, Connecticut, Thomas Ring of Saginaw, Michigan, and Geoffrey O’Connell of Ithaca, 
New York. 


With wings extended the albatross runs along the ground until it has headway enough 
to rise against the wind like an aéroplane 


THE ALBATROSSES OF LAYSAN'! 


By Homer R. Dill 


Of the University of the State of lowa 


UNDREDS of miles from the regular course of mail steamers, on a 
tiny sand-grit island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, millions 
of birds have made their homes; here for countless generations 

they have lived, finding abundant food and suitable places in which to rear 
their young. 

This primitive world, inhabited only by birds, is known as Laysan 
Island and is one of the Hawaiian group. The island has an area of two 
square miles, is low and flat, and although of voleanic origin has its upper 
surface to-day completely covered with coral sand and phosphate rock. 
The shores are of cream-white sand; the higher ground bordering the 
beach is covered with a rich growth of low bushes and sand grasses, among 
which are trailing vines. In the center lies a shallow lagoon unconnected 
with the sea and not far from the south end of the lagoon is a small fresh- 
water pond. From the central plane the sloping sides of the old coral 
atoll basin are plainly visible, rising gently to the higher ground that 
borders the beach. 

In the spring of 1911 I spent six weeks on this island with three assis- 
tants, to study local conditions. We found twenty-three species of birds 
living there, among them the Laysan albatross (Diomedea immutabilis) per- 
haps the most notable. 

The birds did not seem to mind the presence of man; as our party toiled 
up the beach through the loose coral sand these beautiful creatures were 


1 [llustrations from photographs by the Author 
185, 


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THE ALBATROSSES OF LAYSAN 187 


seen on the higher ground, assembled in groups of twenty or more; as we 
drew nearer they came up to greet us, some of them bowing profoundly. 
They gathered about as we stopped to rest, pulling at our clothing with 
their mandibles, and pecking at our luggage. If we offered to touch them 
they retreated somewhat, but soon returned, their curiosity getting the bet- 
ter of them. In flight the albatross, like an aéroplane, must rise against 
the wind; with its wings fully extended the bird runs swiftly along the 
ground until it has gained headway enough to rise. If thrown into the air 
it cannot fly as do most birds, but instead falls heavily to the ground. 

About two years previous to our visit a party of foreign plume-hunters ~ 
landed on Laysan and for several months made the slaughter of sea birds 
a business. Had they not been interrupted, they probably would have 
exterminated the entire colony. As it was, thousands of sea birds were 
destroyed, especially albatrosses. To-day there is about one-sixth of the 
original albatross colony left, numbering approximately 180,000 — and to 
one who has never beheld such masses of birds, this colony is a wonderful 
sight. The level ground that surrounds the lagoon is wholly occupied by 
them; also nearly every other part of the island, except the beaches, sup- 
ports small colonies. 

The amount of guano deposited by the albatrosses and other sea birds 
on this island has been estimated to be about one hundred tons daily. The 
guano deposits were leased for a number of years to a company in Honolulu 
but later the business was abandoned. A member of the company reports 
that although there is an abundant supply of guano it is of low grade, owing 
to the frequent rains that remove the ammonia. 

Much of the time of the Laysan albatross is spent in carrying out a 
very strange performance. This performance varies, but usually goes on 
in the following order: One bird approaches another with an indescribable 
squeaking sound, bowing all the time. If the other bird feels like perform- 
ing, which is usually the case, he bows in return. They cross bills rapidly 
several times. Then one bird turns his head and lifts one wing in such a 
manner that the primaries point directly out at the side. In the meantime 
the other bird keeps up a loud noise that sounds like the neighing of a 
horse. The bird taking the lead then walks around his partner, stepping 
high like a negro cake-walker. This part of the procedure is usually closed 
by one or both birds pointing their beaks straight up in the air while rising 
on their toes, puffing out their breasts and uttering a long-drawn groan. 
The same thing is repeated many times with slight variations. 

The albatrosses are said to begin nesting about the middle of November. 
The one egg is laid on the ground, and the parent bird draws the sand or 
earth about her, forming a platter-like nest, in which the young albatross, 
when hatched, spends the early part of its life; in fact it does not stray far 
away even after it is able to walk about. I carried one of the youngsters 


They cross bills rapidly several times. The first stage in the strange “‘dance”’ of the Laysan albatross 


Second stage in ‘‘dance’’ — One bird quickly turns its head while lifting one wing; the other 
bird in the meantime snaps its bill 


188 


Neighing like a horse. The albatross ‘‘dance’’ is repeated over and over again with slight 
variations 


The final stage in which each bird points its beak straight up in air while rising on its toes, 
puffing out its breast and uttering a long-drawn groan 


189 


Laysan albatrosses are not afraid of man. They approach a visitor on the island as if to greet 
him, bowing profoundly 


Young albatrosses totter along fanning their wings in a futile attempt to fly 


190 


- > 
¢ ” 

Taf, 

4 t 

ae ee 4 

he Ne! OL 
Stes ae aed «# es 

. < * a 4 

{ « ies , am. ded | 
Black albatross about to feed young. The food 


consists of squid partially digested by the parent 


to see the youngsters tottering 
along and fanning their wings in a 
futile attempt at flight. They 
play and quarrel with one another 
and amuse themselves by gather- 
ing together any loose material 
that may be near the nest. One 
young bird had surrounded itself 
with a pile of the bleached bones 
-of its dead ancestors. 

The  black-footed albatross 
(Diomedea nigripes) has taken al- 
‘most complete possession along 
the beaches on the north, east and 
south sides of the island. An oc- 
-casional pair may be found nesting 
with the white species, but as a 
rule they are found by themselves. 


The black-footed albatross is bee ~ 


-somewhat larger than the white 
-species, and when seen on the 


some distance from its nest 
to see if it would find its way 
back; after it had recovered 
from its fit of anger at being 
disturbed, it slowly waddled 
home. During the morning 
hours, the old birds feed the 
young, the food consisting 
entirely of squid that have 
been partly digested by the 
parent. 

The young albatross was 
wearing a coat of dark brown 
down when we landed on the 
island [about April 24] which 
gave way a few weeks later 
to the white feathers on the 
breast and abdomen and the 
dark feathers of the back and 
wings. When the down has 
nearly disappeared the young 
bird begins to try its stcength 
by spreading the wings and 
rising on its feet like the 
adult birds. It is laughable 


‘ a 
io sb iM 
ik: ot nes 
ee meee 


~ 


Black albatross singing 191 


The black albatrosses occupy the beaches of Laysan. This species also has a ‘‘dance,”’ 
more elaborate than that of the white albatross and at a slower pace. The notes are soft 
and the dance ends with a sound like the stroke of a bell under water 


wing is instantly recognized as being far superior as an aviator. Black 
albatrosses followed our ship all the way from the Hawaiian Islands to San 
Francisco. They nest like the white species and feed their young in the 
same manner. Also they have a performance similar to that of the white 
species, but much more elaborate and they go through the figures more 
slowly and gracefully. Instead of lifting one wing they raise both, while 
the notes uttered are much softer and the whole ends with a sound like 
the stroke of a bell under water or deep withia the bird’s body. Black 
albatrosses are very neighborly with the white species. We often saw them 
visiting a white colony and on a few occasions trying to perform with 
them, but the rapid pace set by the white bird was rather too much for his 
more deliberate cousin, and in each instance the affair eaded disastrously. 

During the latter part of August, young albatrosses are strong enough 
to fly and to feed themselves; all then leave the island and live on the sea 
until their return for the nesting season. It is a satisfaction in these days 
when all wild life is fast disappearing to know that there is in the middle of 
the Pacific this bird wilderness quite unmolested by man. 


192 


OPENING OF THE HALL OF PUBLIC 
HEALTH 


[Report by the department] 


The exhibits of the department of public health which were sent to the Inter- 
national Congress of Hygiene and Demography in Washington last fall, through the 
generosity of Mr. Felix M. Warburg, dealt with the problems of water supply and 
waste disposal and with the bacteria. After their return from the Congress, where 
they were awarded the highest honor in both sections of the exhibit in which they 
were included, these models were installed in permanent fashion in the west corridor 
on the third floor. During the past year the department has been at work on the 
preparation of material bearing on the problems of insect-borne disease; and the 
completion of half a dozen of these exhibits and in particular of the model described 
in the daily press as “the house fly! as big as a cat’ was selected as an auspicious 
occasion for the formal opening of the new hall of public health. In view- of the 
fact that the movement for cleaning the city inaugurated by Health Commissioner 
Lederle this spring is largely based upon the danger to health from insect-carriers 
of disease, it was felt that our exhibition might be made of assistance in this important 
public work. The friends of the Museum were therefore invited on the evening of 
Wednesday, April sixteenth, to take part in a public meeting in the interest of the 
campaign for civic cleanliness instituted by the New York City department of health 
as well as to assist at the opening of the hall of public health. 

The large lecture hall was well filled and on the platform besides Dr. Henry 
Fairfield Osborn, president of the Museum, and Dr. Frederic A. Lucas, director, 
the Museum was represented by Dr. Walter B. James and Mr. Felix M. Warburg 
of the board of trustees. With them sat Dr. Livingstone Farrand, secretary of the 
American Public Health Association, Mr. H. deB. Parsons of the Metropolitan 
Sewerage Commission, Dr. C. Ward Crampton, director of physical training of the 
department of education, Prof. Charles Baskerville of the College of the City of New 
York and Dr. N. E. Ditman of the American Museum of Safety. 


1 The first step in constructing the model was the study of the fly itself. It was found 
necessary to make the studies upon living flies stupefied with chloroform, or from freshly 
killed specimens since within half an hour after death much of the original color of the fly as 
well as the surface modeling changes. The chitinous armor is distorted either through the 
contraction of soft parts or the collapse of the air-tubes or trachez, while the limbs are drawn 
up into unnatural positions. Even the color of the eye changes a short time after death. 
Hence each specimen is useful only for a short time. About two hundred flies were used as 
models for the preliminary studies and as guides during the work of construction. Careful 
drawings enlarged to scale were made by Mr. Matausch of all anatomical details and these 
are on file in the Museum to vouch for the accuracy of the work. The head, mouth parts, 
body and legs were modeled separately in clay, cast in wax, smoothly finished and polished 
and accurately colored. The construction of the compound eyes was a problem in itself. 
Each one contains more than twelve hundred separate little eyes or ocelli. These are so 
arranged that they stand in perfect rows, when looked at from any one of three directions. 
In the model each eye is a separate glass bead, accurately placed in its proper position. 

The most difficult and trying process was the construction and insertion of the hairs with 
which the body is covered. Since there are several kinds of hair on the fly varying in size, 
shape, and direction of insertion, and since these bend in characteristic positions often of 
importance to the economy of the fly, it was a serious matter to portray them accurately. 

_This was finally accomplished by constructing each hair separately of german silver wire, 
filing it to its proper shape, bending it according to its peculiar character, and placing it 
carefully in its proper position. The wings were modeled in celluloid. The halteres (a 
rudimentary second pair of wings) the plumelike antenne, the club-shaped palps or tasting 
organs were all accurately modeled and articulated into position. The fly is mounted on 
a base representing a magnified rectangular crumb of bread. [Notes by Mr. R. W. Miner 
of the department of invertebrate zoélogy.| 

193 


A MODEL OF THE HOUSE FLY 


ngth and 64,000 times the size of the living fly, is the product of nearly 
It is doubtless the most accurate and adequate 


my of the common house fly (Musca domestica) in existence, for not 
been faithfully copied, but even the lesser details visible upon a 


magnification of forty diameters have been modeled with the utmost accuracy 
194 


This model, fifteen inches in le 
one year’s work by Mr. Ignaz Matausch, preparator. 
representation of the external anato 
only have the more striking features 


OPENING OF HALL OF PUBLIC HEALTH 195 


President Osborn presided and spoke as follows: 

“This evening we enter into the campaign to clean up the homes of six million 
people. Has it ever occurred to you that among other inventions, man is the in- 
ventor of dirt? In the whole of God’s universe, before man defiled it, there was not 
a speck of dirt; everything was spotlessly clean. Go into the wilds anywhere, into 
the great deserts or in the great swamps, it is always the same. In the economy of 
Nature wherever there is a temporary deposit of what might be classed as dirt, like 
a decaying carcass or a pile of excrement, there is an army of scavengers — either 
bacteria or beasts of prey — and a complete clean-up in an incredibly short space of 
time. 

In Nature, therefore, we find the prophets and harbingers of Commissioner 
Lederle, of Commissioner Edwards, of Mrs. Hewitt and others who are marshalling 
this great movement. 

The part the Museum can play is to furnish visual teaching, first, of the perfect 
way in which Nature does it, and second, of the clumsy way in which man does it. 
The contrast is really between the work of God and the work of man, and it is certain 
that in the advance of civilization the more close we get to Nature’s laws and example 
the more civilized we shall be. 

In the hall of public health which opens to the public for the first time this even- 
ing, you will find the first attempt made in a pure natural history museum to regard 
man as after all one of the most important animals, 

It is curious how long it takes man to treat his fellow-man as well as he treats 
his animals. It is true we have societies for the prevention of cruelty to children, 
child-beating, neglect, but there are more subtle forms of cruelty to children and to 
grown people as well, which we are Just beginning to understand and to guard against. 
It is cruel to bring a child into the world predestined to disease and suffering, hence 
eugenics. It is cruel to bring into our country the kind of people who will produce 
children like this, cruel, I mean, to those already here, hence the survey of immigra- 
tion. It is cruel to bring up children in an unclean environment, hence this great 
clean city campaign. 

As New York goes, so goes the nation in politics. It is also the case in civics. 
This great city, which is always decrying itself, and is too large to care for its outside 
critics, is also the center of the most intense local patriotism and public spirit; and 
to-night we are to see some of its best manifestations both among those who speak 
and those who support the movement by their presence here.” 

Dr. E. J. Lederle, health commissioner of the City of New York, then described 
the plans for the spring clean-up campaign and showed slides illustrating the bad 
conditions which exist and the forces of the city available for dealing with them. 
Mrs. E. R. Hewitt, president of the Woman’s Municipal League, in a witty speech, 
outlined the part which women should play in this and similar movements for civic 
cleanliness. Dr. C.-E. A. Winslow, curator of the Museum’s department of public 
health, then briefly outlined the viewpoint of the Museum toward this movement, 
which is in fact a natural history experiment in the adaptation of habitat to the 
human animal. The following is quoted from his address: 

“On this rocky island one of the crucial experiments of civilization is being made, 
an experiment requiring the unremitting effort and keenest intelligence for its suc- 
cessful conduct. Consider what would happen if the vigilance with which our com- 
fort and safety is here guarded were relaxed for only a few days, how the forces of 
primitive nature would rush in and take possession. The wolves and bears are gone 
from Manhattan, but if our water and light failed, if our forces of civic cleanliness 
and order were paralyzed for a week, destructive hosts of vermin and scourges of 
plague and pestilence would sweep in. Grass growing in the streets has long been a 


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OPENING OF HALL OF PUBLIC HEALTH 197 


symbol of the desolation of a city and the struggle that is going on in the wake of 
the western floods to prevent epidemics more fatal than the floods themselves is a 
fresh reminder that it is no easy task to hold what we have won. 

The movement for civic cleanliness in which we have the privilege of taking a 
small part to-night, is an attempt to make it more certain that the slice of the world’s 
surface that we call New York shall be a place fitted for the higher life of man and 
not for the lower life of vermin and microbe. Garbage and rubbish in cellars and 
streets and lots make the city a home for rats and flies. Undrained marshes and 
stagnant pools of water make it a home for mosquitoes and malarial germs. Im- 
proper care of human wastes and foul harbor waters make it a home for the typhoid 
bacillus. Clouds of irritant dust prepare congenial ground for the germs of tubercu- 
losis and pneumonia. The removal of these things makes the city a home for civilized 
man. 

We of the American Museum are proud that we can do our part in helping for- 
ward movements of this sort. The department of public health is one of the smallest 
departments of this Museum. It occupies about one per cent of the floor space 
allotted to exhibition halls. Yet in the mind of its curator this small beginning looms 
large with future possibilities. It is the thin point at which all the departments of 
the Museum touch the practical daily life of man. With the advice of the department 
of geology we have prepared maps and diagrams showing the relations of rainfall 
and rock formations to public water supply. A preparator skilled in the service of 
the department of mammalogy has made for us a group of rats which are important 
as the carriers of bubonic plague. Through generous expenditure of time and energy 
on the part of the department of invertebrate zodlogy we have been able to prepare 
models of the microdrganisms of lakes and reservoirs and of some of the insects which 
carry disease. 

It happens that the new exhibits for the first time formally displayed to-night 
deal with this last problem of insect-borne disease and are therefore particularly 
germane to the objects of Dr. Lederle’s city cleaning movement. The models of the 
mosquito in the Darwin hall have for many years testified to the interest of the 
Museum in these practical problems of human welfare. The new material deals 
particularly with two other insect-carriers, the flea and the fly, and marks the begin- 
ning of a somewhat extensive plan for a comprehensive exhibit of insects in relation 
to disease. We have now installed a striking model copied from an original in the 
possession of the U. 8. Public Health Service of a corner of a kitchen and cellar in 
California where rats, the hosts of the germ of plague, had taken almost complete 
possession of the premises; and as a companion we have a small model of a house 
and barn protected against vermin by approved rat-proof construction. We have 
small modeéls showing how an ill-kept farm threatens the health by polluted water 
and the breeding of flies and mosquitoes and how all these conditions are remedied 
on a well-kept farm. We have a model showing how much more fatal were typhoid 
germs than bullets in the Spanish war of 1898. Finally we have an enlarged model 
of the house fly itself, one foot long, upon which the patience and study and artistic 
skill of Mr. I. Matausch have been constantly employed for over nine months.”’ 

After the speaking a remarkable moving picture film was shown illustrating the 
life history and habits of the fly. This was kindly loaned for the occasion by Mr. 
Edward Hatch, Jr., chairman of the Fly-fighting Committee of the Merchant’s 
Association. 

The exhibits so far installed include only the beginning of the contemplated sec- 
tion dealing with the relation between insects and disease and the department of 
public health plans to continue during the coming summer the preparation of exhibits 
dealing in particular with the fly. 


MUSEUM NOTES 


Since the last issue of the JouRNAL the following persons have been elected to 
membership in the Museum: 

Patron, Hon. CHARLES SMETS; 

Sustaining Member, Mr. H. C. FAHNESTOCK; 

Life Members, Mrs. Wiuuram G. Nicuots, Mrs. M. Rosertson, Mrs. WILLIAM 
Stoane; His Excetiency, J. MAureyt, and Messrs. ALBERT H. Batpwin, ALFRED 
DersonceE, and GrEorGE EASTMAN; 

Annual Members, Mrs. A. J. BLoomprerc, Mrs. J. B. Epson, Mrs. Auaust 
Lewis, Mrs. Jutius LOEwWENTHAL, Mrs. EuGENE Meyer, Jr., Mrs. James E. Pops, 
Mrs. Oscar RosentHat, Mrs. Emity M. Scorr, Mrs. THEopore Tuomas, Miss 
Eva R. Incersott Brown, Dr. Harry R. Satomon, Pror. EpmMunp B. Winson 
and Messrs. Grorce B. BeRNHEIM, Henry S. Britt, WILLIAM W. CouEn, NICHOLAS 
EVERTSON Crossy, Henry DucHarpt, NATHAN FLEISCHER, HERBERT FRANKEL, 
Henry E. FRANKENBERG, CHARLES A. GouLp, JoHn M. W. Hicks, Jonas Lin, 
Hueco V. Loews, CHarues L. Loop, CHarteEs W. McCurcuen, Frep. A. Mack, 
Epwarp F. McManus, Frank H. Matin, JoHN Patmer, P. Stuyvesant PIutot, 
Frep. L. Rets, Myron W. Rosrnson, C. P. Scuiicke, WALTER ScotrtT, GERALD 
SHERMAN, EUGENE E. SPIEGELBERG, DUNCAN STERLING, JoSEPH TaTE and R. B. 
Van DYKE. 


Mr. JoHN BorpEN of Chicago, who is planning a hunting trip in the Arctic for 
big game and has built for the purpose an especially designed schooner yacht, will 
endeavor to secure for the Museum the skeleton of a bowhead whale. With this in 
view, he has invited Mr. Roy C. Andrews of the Museum to accompany him upon 
the cruise. The party will leave San Francisco about the first of July upon the yacht 
which is now on her way around the Horn. Besides making especial efforts to kill a 
bowhead whale, the members of the party will spend considerable time in hunting 
brown and polar bear, walrus and caribou. The whale if secured will be towed to 
the nearest harbor and Mr. Andrews will be landed to prepare the skeleton, which 
will be sent to Seattle by coasting schooner for shipment to New York. Mr. Borden’s: 
yacht carries a fully equipped New Bedford whaleboat, and is captained by Mr. 
Charles Sparks, an experienced whaleman from Provincetown. 

The Museum is especially to be congratulated upon the opportunity which Mr. 
Borden has presented to acquire the skeleton of this whale. Because of the great. 
expense attendant upon securing a specimen, since this species has a high commer- 
cial value, its acquisition had seemed impossible. This one species alone is needed 
to complete the Museum’s collection of large cetaceans. There are at present no 
bowhead skeletons in America and but little scientific data is known as to the external 
anatomy. Through Mr. Borden’s generosity moreover it may be possible to exhibit 
in the proposed new whale hall of the Museum not only the complete skeleton, but 
also a life-size model of this remarkable animal. 


Durinec the month of May there will be on exhibition in the west assembly hall 
and adjoining corridor a series of paintings of Alaskan scenes by Leonard M. Davis, 
some of the results of many years’ residence in Alaska. The series comprises more 
than a score of large canvases and about one hundred small studies — snow-clad 
mountains, gorgeous sunsets, brilliant auroras, flower-clad hillsides, displaying the 
wealth of color that makes the northland a continual surprise to those who think of 
it as always bleak. 


Tue State of Arkansas has long been noted for the unusually fine class of stone 
implements found in the mounds and ancient village sites occurring in that region. 


198 


MUSEUM NOTES 199 


The Museum has been fortunate enough to receive through Mr. Joseph M. Bell a 
fine example of the best class of stone work plowed out in a field one-half mile east of 
Bassett, Mississippi County, Arkansas. The implement is one of the so-called 
ceremonial celts and has received a very high polish. It is an unusual form, the use 
of which is problematic. 


TuHrouGH the bequest of the late Edward Russ, a life member, the Museum has 
received one thousand dollars. 


THE Museum is designated as one of ten residuary legatees under the will of 
the late Morris Loeb. According to the terms of the bequest it must be used for the 
illustration of the industrial use of natural products in ancient and modern times. 


Miss Mary Cyntuta Dickerson has been promoted from assistant curator to 
associate curator in the department of ichthyology and herpetology, this appoint- 
ment taking effect May 1, 1913. 


THE material collected by the third African expedition, under Dr. W. 8. Rains- 
ford, has been received at the Museum. It contains specimens of black rhinoceros, 
East African buffalo, eland, leopard, cheetah, antelope and monkey. 


Proressor T. T. WATERMAN, assistant professor of anthropology in the Univer- 
sity of California will spend the summer in New York, in part to study the collections 
in the American Museum. 


THE Museum series of cave paintings has been extended by a series from the 
caves of South Africa. On the end wall of the African hall are four panels presenting 
the best known examples of Bushmen art. These are not of great antiquity but 
seem to belong to a state of culture somewhat analogous to that of the cave men of 
Europe. The most interesting panel is that representing a running fight between a 
party of Bushmen cattle thieves and a pursuing posse of Kaffirs. 


Mr. Max Scurasiscu has brought his rock-shelter collections and reports to the 
Museum for the season of 1912-13. Seven sites were explored. The most important 
was one near Stony Point, New York. This proved to be a large granite boulder 
under the shelter of which the Indianscamped. The ancient fireplaces were uncovered 
and several refuse pits filled with bones of the animals used for food. 


Mr. A. J. Mutcuuer has been appointed assistant in the department of in- 
vertebrate zodlogy, this appointment taking effect May 1, 1913. 


THE collection of local birds is once more open to the public after having been 
retired for some months on account of its removal to new quarters and the installation 
of the exhibits of the department of public health on the third floor. The local birds 
may now be found in the west corridor, second floor. 


Tue California gray whale (Rhachianectes glaucus) which Mr. Roy C. Andrews 
secured on his last cruise was the subject of an interesting communication by him to 
the May meeting of the Section of Biology, New York Academy of Sciences. He 
showed that in many points of its skeleton Rhachianectes is the most primitive living 
whalebone whale and that it is probably the little-changed descendant of the early 


200 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


Tertiary ancestral stock which also gave rise both to the Balenopteride (fin whales) 
and to the Baleznide (right whales). 


THE department of ichthyology and herpetology has just received through 
exchange from the Queensland Museum, Brisbane, Australia, an interesting series 
of specimens of fishes and reptiles from the Australian region. 


At Rancho La Brea near Los Angeles, California, is a series of ancient asphalt 
pools covering many acres, which contain thousands of skeletons of a great variety 
of extinct animals of the Pleistocene epoch. Ground sloths, sabre-tooths, extinct 
species of wolves and many other animals are heaped together in amazing profusion. 
To the Section of Biology, New York Academy of Sciences, Dr. Matthew recently 
described his visit to Rancho La Brea, touching especially on its probable origin, 
and on the way in which the remains of the entrapped animals had been dissociated 
and intermingled. He also exhibited some of the fossils from this formation which 
had been secured in exchange from the University of California through the co6épera- 
tion of Professor J. C. Merriam. 


THE cover of this number of the JouRNAL is designed from objects of antiquity 
and historic value in the Morgan gem collection. Babylonian cylinders dating from 
4000 to 400 B. c. are combined in the border, an enlargement of a portion of a fifteenth 
century turquoise inscribed with two thousand words of the Koran forms the inner 
band, and an agate axhammer of ancient workmanship occupies the lower left-hand 
corner. The cylinders are engraved with figures and names on various minerals 
such as lapis-lazuli, jasper, chalcedony, steatite, hematite and agate. The ax- 
hammer of banded agate was in the possession of Cardinal Borgia while at the head 
of the Propoganda, was acquired from the Countess Ettore Borgia by Count Michael 
Tyskiewiez for 15,000 franes ($3000) and purchased by Tiffany and Company soon 
after his death. It found its way into the Museum’s gem collection through the 
generosity of Mr. Morgan. 


Tue Berlin Museum has for some years past conducted explorations in the 
dinosaur beds of German East Africa. These explorations, financed upon a far more 
liberal scale than those of American museums, have secured splendid collections 
of dinosaurs from that region. While the preparation and study of these collections 
will doubtless take some time to complete, the preliminary reports which have been 
published indicate that they will equal or surpass anything that has been found in 
this country. The largest of these East African dinosaurs, distinguished by an ex- 
traordinary length of neck and fore limb, is probably related to the imperfectly 
known Brachiosaurus of this country and much exceeds the Brontosaurus or 
Diplodocus in the size of these parts. With this were found partial or nearly com- 
plete skeletons of numerous smaller dinosaurs, and various other remains. Three 
successive faunzee have been distinguished by the German geologists, and it is hoped 
that much may be learned as to the evolution of these extraordinary reptiles. 

The total cost of the expedition is stated at 180,000 marks ($45,000) up to 1912, 
most of which was raised by private subscription. An additional sum of 50,000 marks 
has since been voted by the Prussian government. This liberal support attests the 
widespread interest in scientific progress displayed by the German people and in 
particular their interest in these records of the past history of the world. Yet as Dr. 
Edward Hennig, from whose description [Am Tendaguru, Schweizerbart’sche 
Verlagsbuchhandlung: Stuttgart, 1912] the above facts are mainly taken, remarks, 
the amount is small in comparison with the cost of say the German Antarctic expedi- 
tion for which 1,500,000 marks were subscribed. 


The American Museum Journal 


Vou. XIII MAY, 1913 No. 5 


CONTENTS 


Cover, Scene at Pelican Island Reservation, Florida 
Photograph by Frank M. Chapman 


Frontispiece, Portrait of Professor Albert S. Bickmore........... 202 


Bronze bust by William Couper 


Our- National: Bird Reservations. +) 2:0... eee T. S. Palmer 203 


With maps reproduced through the courtesy of the Biological Survey, United 
States Department of Agriculture, and photographs of habitat bird groups in 
the American Museum 


no) OC UBB) Cae yah eee | Men Maat) as ote, Rare tikas Sha cw L. P. Gratacap 215 


With illustrations from the Morgan gem collection 

SURMen Cava s MOssiss hae Vek od no Barnum Brown 221 
Animals that lived before the advent of man identified from bones discovered in 
a hot spring. Illustrations from photographs by the Author 


An Insect-borne Disease — Infant Paralysis. ... . C-E. A. Winslow 229 


Storage of Mammal Skins in the American Museum 
Roy C. Andrews 235 


INISCUTON OES: Uc eee cece fs cy LPee et Aah Bia en abe 238 


Mary OCyntruita Dickerson, Edutor 


Published monthly from October to May by the American Museum of Natural History. 
Terms: one dollar per year, fifteen cents percopy. Entered as second-class matter J anuary 
12, 1907, at the Post-Office at Boston, Mass., Act of Congress, July 16, 1894. 


Subscriptions should be addressed to the AMERICAN Museum JouRNAL, 77th St. 
and Central Park West, New York City. 


The Journal is sent free to all members of the Museum. 


PROFESSOR ALBERT S, BICKMORE 
CURATOR EMER! TUS OF THE DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC EDUCATION 


Bronze by William Couper made in 1909 from portrait studies of Professor Bickmore and 
recently moved from the members’ room to the east wall at the entrance to the auditorium 
{See page 238] 


The American Museum Journal 


VoLuME XIII MAY, 1913 NUMBER 5 


OUR NATIONAL BIRD RESERVATIONS 


PROTECTED NESTING PLACES, RESTING AND FEEDING GROUNDS 
FOR BIRDS ON LONG MIGRATIONS — FIELD LABORATORIES FOR 
EXPERIMENTAL WORK ON IMPORTANT ECONOMIC AND SCIEN- 
TIFIC PROBLEMS 


By T. S. Palmer 


Assistant Chief, United States Biological Survey 


HEN President Roosevelt signed the Executive Order setting 
aside Pelican Island in Florida as a reservation, he took a step 
which was destined to mark an important milestone in the 

progress of bird protection. The colony of brown pelicans nesting on this 
island had been known to ornithologists for more than a century, and ever 
since the visit of Dr. Henry Bryant in 1858 it had been visited from time 
to time by observers who had published notes on the condition of birds. 
The visits of Mr. Frank M. Chapman in 1898 and 1900 and the wonderful 
series of photographs which he obtained showed very clearly the urgent 
necessity for the protection of the birds. 

Late in April, 1901, at the request of Mr. William Dutcher, then chairman 
of the Committee on Protection of Birds of the American Ornithologists’ 
Union, I accompanied him to Tallahassee, Florida, in an effort to secure the 
enactment of a law for the protection of these and other non-game birds. 
The effort met with success and under the act approved May 29, 1901, 
protection was extended to practically all non-game birds in the state. In 
the following year a warden was appointed by the committee and placed 
in charge of Pelican Island. Later the island was surveyed and negotiations 
were begun for its purchase, when it was suggested by the Surveyor General 
of the United States that it might be made a national reservation. Acting 
on this suggestion an Executive Order was prepared in the General Land 
Office, approved by the Secretary of the Interior, and submitted to the 
President. This Executive Order, the first ever issued for the benefit of 
birds, read as follows: 

Waite Hovuss, March 14, 1903 


It is hereby ordered that Pelican Island in Indian River in section nine, township thirty- 
one south, range thirty-nine east, State of Florida, be, and it is hereby, reserved and set apart 
for the use of the Department of Agriculture as a preserve and breeding ground for native 
birds. 

[Signed] THEODORE ROOSEVELT 


203 


204 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


Such briefly was the history of the creation of the first national bird 
reservation in the United States. In the ten years which have since elapsed 
many other islands and pieces of public land have been dedicated to the 


a. 
LAKE DISTRICT. 


8 
].GULF DISTRICT. 6®®ss 
2 


Location of national bird reservations and administration districts. From Circular 87, 
Biological Survey, United States Department of Agriculture 


birds until the number of reservations has increased from one to sixty-one, 
but Pelican Island still remains the best known and one of the most 
accessible. 


LOCATION OF THE RESERVATIONS 


National bird reservations are widely scattered in nineteen states and 
territories, from Florida and Porto Rico in the south to Michigan, Montana, 
Washington and Alaska in the north and the Aleutian Islands and Hawai 
in the west. Between Chamisso Island in Alaska and Culebra Island, 
Porto Rico, is a distance of nearly 50 degrees of latitude, and between Attu, 
the most distant of the Aleutian Islands and Culebra is a distance of more 
than 120 degrees of longitude. In other words, the most remote reserva- 
tions are separated by a space equal to one-third the distance around the 
world from north to south and from west to east, and in visiting them a 
traveler must journey farther than in going from New York to Mombasa, 
British East Africa, or from London eastward to Manila. 

In the following lists the reservations are arranged both chronologically 
and alphabetically to facilitate reference: 


NATIONAL BIRD RESERVATIONS 205 


LIST OF NATIONAL BIRD RESERVATIONS MARCH 4, 1913, ARRANGED IN 
CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER 


{Areas unknown, except as follows: Pelican Island 5.50, Stump Lake 27.39, Passage Key 
36.37, and Indian Key 90 acres.] 


Execu- Execu- 
Date estab- : Date estab- : 
: m - tive or- ||No. Name : tive or- 
Hs a Heke der No. | lished | der No. 
7 — i] 
| | 
: {| Mar. 14, 1903 | 32 | Rio Grande, N. Mex .|..... (0 eater | 1032 
1 | Pelican Island, Fla..) | Jan. 26, 1909 } 1014 || 33 | Cold Springs, Oreg....|....- tee ere | 1032 
2 | Breton Island, La..... Otte As 1904" Wie nse | 34 | Belle Fourche, 8. Dak.|..... doxscaerse 1032 
3 | Stump Lake, N.Dak..| Mar. 9 1905 | ...... 35 | Strawberry Tey, 
4 | Huron Islands, Mich..| Oct. 10,1905 | ...... Utah.. Sei ro @lignsadeee 1032 
5 | Siskiwit Islands, | 36 Keechelus, “Wash. Sinister | caters (0 (aa tee | 1032 
IMTCHGEE sez ctoe oe ellos het doeaye eosleok Ss | 37 | Kachess, Washewe oto. Oak geroes 1032 
6 | Passage Key, Fla.....|....- (OE aR Ane) see ees 1-38) | Clealum: Wash’2.2- =. jvc -. dows ose 1032 
7 | Indian Key, Fla......| Feb. 10,1906 | ...... 39 | Bumping Lake, Wash .|..... (c eeaee ees Se 1032 
8 | Tern Islands, La...... i Arties, SSO Asc | 40 | Conconully, Wash....|..... bee meee 1032 
9 | Shell Keys, hae eee lAtap lie L907) nn ee [4ie Pathfinders, Wiy Ors. s\rse- dG4 sees 1032 
10 | Three Arch Rocks, | 42 | Shoshone, Wyo.......]....- au cna ne 
Ones eee ak | Oct. 14, 1907 699 - f Ose te BY 
If | Hiattery Rocka. Wach.| Oct, 2301907 | 703 |) > | Mimidoka, Idaho_---) | Feb. 20, 1912 | 1486 
12 | Quillayute Needles, | 44 | Bering Sea, Alaska... | Feb. 27, 1909 1037 
Wash... it ae On tracrere £ 705 45 | Tuxedni, Alaska......|..... Glistiaatoer 1039 
13 | Copalis Rock, Wash...|..... Oss eee 704 46 | St. Lazaria, Alaska....|..... ds: neeece 1040 
14 | East Timbalier, lever} eee 7, 1907 718 |) a ee eee Alaska . Leas de Sr ee He 
| . {| Feb. 24, 1908 763 4 ulebra Bee ors Oeati ee: 2 
15 | Mosquito Inlet, Fla. | apr. 2, 1909 | 1057 || 49 | Farallon, Cal......... io alameda: 1043 
16 | Tortugas Keys, Fla...) Apr. 6, 1908 779 || 50 | Pribilof, Alaskal...... lease doteteeiee | 1044 
17 | Key West, Fla........ Aug. 8, 1908 923 |. 51 | Bogoslof, Alaska...... Mar. 2, 1909 1049 
18 | Klamath Lake, Orepes|Paace dotiares 924 | Boul Clear Lake: Cal (| Apr. 11, 1911 1332 
19 | Lake Malheur, Oreg ..| Aug. 18, 1908 Aa A ae abi SP ca Jan. 13,1912 | 1464 
20 | Chase Lake, N. Dak.. .| Aug. 28, 1908 932 || 53 | Forrester Island, | 
21 | Pine Island, Fla... | Sept. 15,1908 | 939 || Alaska... | Jan. 11,1912 | 1458 
22 | Palma Sola, Fla...... | Sept. 26, 1908 942 54 | Hazy Islands, iNlaska olen: descr eer 1459 
23 | Matlacha Pass, Fla...)..... dow ey i... 943 55 | Niobrara, Nebr....... | Seuss. dose a45- 5 | 1461 
24 | Island Bay, Fla....... Oct. 23, 1908 958 56 | Green Bay, Wis...... Feb. 21,1912 | 1487 
25 | Loch-Katrine, Wyo... Oct. 26, 1908 961 | 57 | Chamisso Island, 
26 | Hawaiian Islands, | ANAS alr dtemacesies 5 Dec. 7,1912 | 1658 
EL iyvalieene sees eeetas Feb. 3, 1909 1019 | 58 | Pishkun, Mont.. Dec. 17,1912 | 1664 
27 | Salt River, Ariz.......| Feb. 25, 1909 1032 || 59 | Desecheo Island, P.R.| Dec. 19,1912 | 1669 
28 | East Park, Cal....... Feb. 25, 1909 1032 | 60 | Gravel Island, Wis....| Jan. 9, 1913 | 1678 
29) Deer lat. Idahossss-e|: Os, sarees 1032 || 61 | Aleutian Islands, | 
30 | Willow Creek, Mont..|..... dose 1032 || Mlaakaec as. see emeee Mar. 3, 1913 1733 
31 | Carlsbad, N. Mex.....|.....do........ 1032 | | 


LIST OF NATIONAL BIRD RESERVATIONS MARCH 4, 1913, ARRANGED ALPHABETICALLY 


Aleutian Islands Alaska........ 61 | Forrester Island, Alaska....... 53 | Pelican Island, Fla............ 1 
Belle Fourche, S. Dak......... 34 | Gravel Island, Wis............ 60 | Pine Island, Fla.............. 21 
Bering Sea; Alaska::......-.... 44 | Green Bay, Wis. ......:..0% 05. DO. | Pishkunes Montecnz.ccioc sacri 58 
Bogoslof, Alaska.............. 51 | Hawaiian Islands, Hawail...... 26 | Pribilof, Alaska. . A524 k OO 
Breton Island, La.... 2 | Hazy Islands, Alaska.......... 54 Quillayute Needles, ‘Wash. ..... 12 
Bumping Lake, Wash. 39 | Huron Islands, Mich. fan, 4 | RiovGrandesN. Mexs...0. 4... -< 32 
Carlsbad, N. Mex.. eat OL linia Weve Wile sete. eee tam coarse 7 | St. Lazaria, Alaska............ 46 
Chamisso Island, Alaska....... 57 | island’ Bay Blak snecasee ain 24a |USalbliRivertAniziee: oecieeseaa | 2% 
Chase Lake, N. Dale, we oot 20% | Kachesse Wash sacjac'r. svete crsteie 4 30) || Shell: Keys) bateadc. sees cece 128. 
Clealum, Wasliesi 0% .22.<... +s 38 | Keechelus, Wash.............. 36 | Shoshone, Wyo..........---++ 42 
ClearsHake, Cale t accina7 eek O21 Wey Westab laces. cheeceasccies 17 | Siskiwit, Mich.. Aes Bs 
Cold Springs, Oreg............ 33 | Klamath Lake, Oreg.......... 18 Strawberry Valley, Utah. eerste 35 
Conconully, Wash............ 40 | Loch-Katrine, Wyo........... 25 | Stump Lake, N. Dak.. Mate: 
Copalis Rock, Wash........... 13 | Malheur Lake, Oreg........... 19 | Tern Islands, La.. : 8 
GulebraePeRiat see aeen cele 48 | Matlacha Pass, Fla........... 23 | Three Arch Rocks, ‘Oreg.. 10 
Deer Flat, Idaho.. Ea 29 | Minidoka, Idaho.............. 43 | Tortugas Keys, Fla........... 16 
Desecheo ‘Island, Peo hs. 59 | Mosquito Inlet, Fla........... 15 | Tuxedni, Alaska..............- 45 
Mast bari Calter e Atenas 28 ) Niobrara, Nebr............... 55 | Willow Creek, Mont.......... 30 
East Timbalier, Tiatnceacaace: 140) (Palmarsolar Hig. stan eed 22 | Yukon Delta, Alaska.......... 47 
HarallonsGaliiescasoe eee eon 49 | Passage Key, Fla............. 6 

Flattery Rocks, Wash......... 11 | Pathfinder, Wyo.............. 41 


1 Transferred to Bureau of Fisheries by act of Apr. 21, 1910. 


206 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


Hawaiian Islands Reservation for the protection of the birds of the territory of Hawaii. 
{Reefs and islets embraced within the broken lines.] From Circular 87, Biological Survey, 
United States Department of Agriculture 


For purposes of administration these reservations are grouped in six 
districts, known as the (1) Gulf, (2) Lake, (3) Mountain, (4) Pacific, (5) 
Alaska and (6) Hawaiian districts. In time each district will be in charge 
of a supervisory officer or inspector and probably each of the more important 
reservations will have a warden to protect the birds, at least during the 
breeding season. 


TYPES OF RESERVATIONS 


Bird refuges are set aside because of their attractiveness to the birds 
either as nesting places or as resting and feeding grounds during migration 
or winter. They are usually small, sandy, marshy or rocky islands, unin- 
habited, of little or no agricultural value, and attractive to the birds largely 
on account of their isolation. These islands are located chiefly along the 
sea coast or on some of the interior lakes. 

The insular reservations are well represented in the bird groups in the 
American Museum. The brown pelican group is an exact reproduction of 
Pelican Island. The white pelican and western grebe groups illustrate 
the conditions on the Klamath Lake Reservation. The heron groups show 
the home life in some of the Florida reservations, and Bird Rock and Cobbs 
Island groups, while not national reservations, convey a very good idea 
of the life of some of the rocky islands on the west coast and the sand bars 
in the refuges in the Gulf district. In fact the expeditions of the Museum to 
collect material for these groups and the publications of Mr. Chapman on 
his trips and on the bird life here represented have done much to familiarize 
the public with the reservations and to popularize this method of wild life 
conservation. 


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WHITE PELICANS, KLAMATH LAKE 
The white pelican has a wing expanse of eight or nine feet and is most impressive in the air. 
Photograph of portion of group in the American Museum, representing white pelicans, Caspian 
terns and cormorants. Klamath Lake, which is on the boundary of California and Oregon, was made 
a national reservation on August 8, 1908 
208 


NATIONAL BIRD RESERVATIONS 209 


Another type of reservation is the refuge established on the reclamation 
projects in the west. It comprises merely a narrow strip of land bordering 
the reservoir and is set aside to afford the birds a resting place on their 
journeys north and south. Some of these reservations were created before 
construction work was completed and before there was any water to attract 
the birds, in order to afford protection as soon as the reservoirs were filled 
and the birds began to visit them. One-third of all the reservations belong 
in this class. 

While in most cases the refuges are isolated and some of them very 
difficult to visit, others, like Pelican Island and Mosquito Inlet, Florida, are 
readily accessible. The Deer Flat Reservation in Idaho seems destined to 
become something of a resort for the people of Boise and Nampa on account 
of the facilities for boating on the reservoir, and since the Niobrara Reserva- 
tion, three miles from Valentine, Nebraska, has been stocked with a herd 
of big game, it attracts many visitors. On Forrester Island, Alaska, during 
the summer, is a camp of more than two hundred fishermen of various 
nationalities, and on the recently established Aleutian Reservation are two 
important settlements, Dutch Harbor and Unalaska, and several small 
villages of natives. 


Kinps oF Birps PRoTECcTED 


The birds which have been provided with homesteads by the National 
Government are chiefly marsh birds or waterfowl which nest in colonies. 
On the refuges in the Gulf District they comprise laughing gulls, terns of 
several kinds, brown pelicans, Florida cormorants, and several species of 
herons. On the reservations on the Great Lakes the herring gull is the 
principal species. On the interior lakes of Oregon are numbers of Canada 
geese, Caspian terns, California gulls, white pelicans and western grebes. 
These lakes formerly furnished many grebe skins for the millinery trade 
before they were protected by Executive Order. On the islands off the 
coast of California, Oregon and Washington, are found such birds as the 
western gull, the ashy, forked-tailed, and Keeding’s petrels, the tufted 
puffin, Cassin’s auklet, the remarkable rhinoceros auklet, pigeon and Cali- 
fornia guillemots, Baird’s, Brandt’s and Farallon cormorants. On the 
Alaska islands are colonies of Arctic sea birds, such as auklets, petrels, 
puffins and northern gulls. The Yukon Delta Reservation is one of the 
greatest breeding grounds for ducks and geese, including that of the rare 
Emperor goose. On the Hawaiian Island Reservation ! in the Mid-Pacific 
is Laysan Island, one of the most famous bird colonies in the world where 


1 Many papers on the bird fauna of the reservations have been published and readers 
who may wish to consult them will find the titles and references in Circular 87 of the Biological 
Survey, entitled ‘‘ Reservations for the Protection of Wild Life’’ (pp. 22—29). 


whinm 
Ad 
wm Taiay || 


i} 


, 


Field study of Caspian terns at Klamath Lake. Photograph by Mr. Frank M. Chapman 


Cormorant -rocks off California coast near Monterey. Typical of bird life on various rocky 
islands along the Pacific coast such as Farallon Island which was made a national reservation in 
1909. Photograph by Mr. Frank M. Chapman 


210 


BRANDT’S CORMORANT, CALIFORNIA COAST 


Photograph of portion of habitat bird group in the American Museum, showing con- 
ditions such as are to be seen on Farallon Island. Other groups in the Museum giving 
studies of bird life such as may be seen on national reservations are as follows: brown 
pelican, white pelican, the western grebe, bird rock, Cobbs Island and the heron groups 


211 


Pelican Island, Florida. From the painting by Bruce Horsfal, background of the 
brown pelican group in the American Museum. Pelican Island, the first national bird reser- 
vation, was set aside in March, 1903, by order of President Roosevelt. It is guarded by a 
warden employed by the National Association of Audubon Societies. Only visitors who have 
secured a permit from this warden are allowed to land on the island 


albatrosses, shearwaters, frigate birds, noddy and sooty terns, and the 
beautiful snow-white Pacific tern resort to breed. Here are also found 
resident throughout the year the peculiar Laysan rail, the Laysan teal, the 
Laysan finch, and the Miller bird. 


How THE Brrps ARE PROTECTED 


In many cases the chief protection to the birds lies in the isolation of the 
reservation. The islands on the Washington coast and the Farallon 
Reservation are very difficult to land on even when the sea is smooth, and 
in rough weather are practically accessible. On the larger and more 
accessible reservations wardens are stationed throughout the year or at 
least during the season when the birds are breeding. In several cases, 
chiefly through the codperation of the National Association of Audubon 
Societies, motor boats are provided for the use of the wardens in patrolling 
the waters about the islands. To protect the birds on Bird Key in the Dry 
Tortugas, recourse is had to the Navy Department which several times 
each year sends a Naval tug from Key West to the reservation to transport 
the warden and his supplies. In the case of the Hawaiian Reservation a 
revenue cutter is now despatched from Honolulu at least once each year 
and sometimes oftener, to make the round of the islands and ascertain 
whether the birds have been disturbed. In 1909 a company of twenty-three 
Japanese plumage-hunters visited Laysan and Lysianski and destroyed 


212 


nearly 300,000 birds. They were arrested by the officers of the revenue 
cutter, brought back to Honolulu, tried and deported to Japan and the 
plumage was confiscated. Since this practical demonstration in bird 
protection the colony has not been disturbed. 


UTILIZATION OF THE RESERVATIONS 


National refuges are utilized for several purposes other than the 
protection of birds, notably the preservation of other forms of wild life, the 
study of certain problems connected with the migration and life history of 
species, and the development of public sentiment in favor of wild life con- 
servation. With the stopping of shooting on the Mosquito Inlet Reservation 
protection was afforded aquatic mammals, as well as birds, and since this 
order has been in effect manateés and porpoises have increased in the adja- 
cent waters. Incidentally, it is interesting to note that Daytona at the 
upper end of the Mosquito Inlet Reservation is the most northern point 
at which the manatee occurs on the coast of Florida. On several of the 
Pacific Coast reservations sea lions are afforded protection and on some of 
the islands in the Hawaiian Reservation a rare and peculiar tropical seal is 
one of the most interesting species. 

At the Deer Flat Reservation in Idaho experiments are being made to 
ascertain to what extent birds can be protected and encouraged to breed on 
a body of water which is used as a resort for visitors during summer. It is 
expected that with reasonable restrictions on the use of boats on the reser- 
voir the birds will become as tame as they are at some of the winter resorts 
in Florida. At the Niobrara Reservation in Nebraska, which includes some 
12,000 acres of land on the edge of the sand hills, within the former range of 


213 


214 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


the buffalo and the home of the prairie chicken and sharp-tailed grouse, 
an enclosure for big game has been constructed. Here has been established 
through the liberality of a publie-spirited citizen of Nebraska a nucleus of a 
herd of buffalo, elk and deer, which in time will doubtless increase and stock 
a large part of the reservation. 

At the Tortugas Reservation in extreme southern Florida some very 
interesting experiments are being conducted by Professor John B. Watson 
in codperation with the Carnegie Institution. Professor Watson, who has 
acted as warden for several seasons, has been experimenting with the two 
species of terns which nest on the island to determine, if possible, the manner 
in which birds find their way during migration. He has also been studying 
some of the problems connected with the nesting habits of the birds. Sev- 
eral terns which were nesting on the island were marked for identification 
and sent northward on a steamer from Key West to New York. When off 
Cape Hatteras they were liberated and within a few days found their way 
back to their nests on the reservation. In order to show that this so-called 
“homing sense” was not fortuitous and not affected by the presence of the 
Gulf Stream, experiments will be made this season in taking the birds west- 
ward towards Galveston and setting them free at different points in the 
Gulf of Mexico some distance from the island. Professor Watson has also 
shown that the sooty tern is unable to pass the night on the water, indicating 
that although a sea bird it cannot venture far from land when on migration, 
whereas its neighbor, the noddy tern, apparently suffers no inconvenience 
when forced to rest on the water. 

Many other questions in regard to food, time of nesting, period of incu- 
bation, methods of feeding, causes which check increase of the various 
species, and similar practical questions demand attention. These problems 
can best be solved where birds are nesting in large numbers and in working 
them out the reservations can be utilized as field laboratories for the increase 
of our knowledge as well as refuges for the birds. 


SHELL CAMEOS 
By L. P. Gratacap 


Illustrations from the Morgan gem collection 


the pictorial gravure of shells. The permanence of mineral 
matrices for their skill was readily apparent and the stimulation 
supplied by the difficulties of the work enhanced both the appreciation 
and the pleasure of cutter and engraver. Then too the variegated and 
“layered” agates, with their strong tones gave opportunities for effective 
contrast, while intaglios permitted keenness of outline and microscopic 


P | \HE ancients were not acquainted with the artistic possibilities in 


precision. 

But any implied censure must be qualified by recalling that the conches 
of the West Indies, which furnish the most adaptable material and the best 
color for the engraver, were unknown to the Greeks and Romans, and that 
the shores of the Mediterranean offered rather worthless material from which 
neither experiment nor accident could have evolved the priceless “brooch 
of our grandmothers.” 

Shell-cameo art apparently arose during the sixteenth century, expand- 
ing as demand increased. Ambitious subjects, drawn from the fables of 
mythology cr the biblical records, were attempted; portraiture and con- 
ventional scenes also employed the numerous artists who now welcomed this 
new resource which permitted beautiful adjustments of marble-white 
relievos over saffron, yellow, orange or faintly mahogany backgrounds. 
The shell structure with its superficial white layer cohereat with a delicate 
underlying colored film was a very convenient reproduction of the zoned 
onyxes. The material too was softer to work, although its fragility deterred 
hasty or careless sculptors. 

The helmet shells (Cassis cornuta, C. tuberosa, C. cameo |madagascarien- 
sis], C. rufa) furnished the most promising and the more generally employed 
material, but enthusiasm and curiosity brought into use other shells as 
Turbo, Strombus, Meleagrina, Cyprea and even the Nautilus. In none of 
these species however was there so useful or so permanent a disposition 
of the parts for artistic effects and the background was either quite absent . 
or less adaptable for desired effects, thus the process of elimination has 
reduced the first miscellaneous selections to the helmet shells alone and of 
these Cassis cameo claims preéminence because of the very favorable color 
development of the under conchiolin layer. The big stromb (Strombus 
gigas) by reason of its deeply-tinted, roseate mouth was quickly appropri- 
ated and its coloring produced vivacious effects, but the color faded and ex- 
posure soon robbed the design of its beauty. 

The tiger cowrie (Cyprea tigris) perhaps might be made to rival the black 
helmet, but its convexity and smallness deprives the artist of a broad field 

215 


SHELL CAMEO OF THE MORGAN GEM COLLECTION 


Carving of Guido Reni’s Aurora on a Madagascar helmet shell (Cassis cameo). Morgan 
gem collection 


216 


SHELL CAMEOS 217 


for enlarged composition. In the Seba collection a cameo representing the 
“Rape of Europa,” cut by C. Bellekin, was formed over the surface of the 
pearly nautilus whereon the broad band (keel of the shell) separating the 
side subjects “consisted of an arabesque of flowers and leaves, ending on the 
narrowing convex curve as it turns under into the cuplike lip of the shell, 
in a bold heraldic design, all of which was carved in relief.’””. An example 
of the cowrie cameo may be seen in the Medieval room of the British 
Museum showing a winged centaur galloping and armed with club and 
shield. 

The helmet shell practically monopolized attention in the shell cameo 
industry however; and selection played an important part in the first steps. 
But a small number in any lot of shells are fit to use. Dullness, weakness, 
turbidity, a speckled condition of the under layer, imperfect solidity of the 
upper layer which may be too porous or even worm-eaten, disqualify a shell 
for the artist’s acceptance. Sometimes the back-color layer is too thin and 
fragile to guarantee the integrity of the finished carving. In such cases, 
when the color is good, the artist cuts out his design on the shell intact, 
trusting to the arched rigidity of the shell to maintain its continuity. 

The rich coloring of the inner zone in the helmets naturally attains its 
depth and desirable tone near the mouth of the shell and from this portion 
selections are made for the plate. Undulating ridges (as in Cassis cameo) 
on the last whorl are thickened, and into this strengthened deposit deeper 
lines can be cut and a high relief obtained. Yellow or orange backgrounds 
are unusual, but present very inspiriting contrasts. 

ne shell selected, the formal stages of executing the work begin. If a 
design as a tour de force, or too large for ornamental personal use is proposed, 
the shell frequently is treated as a whole. For most purposes, at least those 
connected with commerce, the shell is cut into pieces, by means of a tin 
wheel, running water and emery powder, a selection of the better-colored 
and textually perfect pieces made, and the various sections assigned to the 
subjects, as these subjects are best suited in size or treatment for the size 
or boldness of the physical features in the parts of the shell at hand. 

In beginning his work, the artist prepares his surface much as the painter 
coats and smooths his canvas; discolorations, asperities of surface, minute 
imperfections are removed. The subject selected, the outline of the 
cameo — usually square, oval, or oblong with rounded angles — is shaped 
by means of a small grindstone turned over a trough of water, the process 
or action of grinding being safer than sawing, as the shell, freed from the 
reinforcement of its original position, may now easily split or scale. Next, 
the design itself is roughly outlined. Then a handle is attached to the shell 
by means of a cement made of tar, resin and brickdust, the precaution being 
observed that the back of the shell-pattern is covered by a piece of paper 
of its exact size, soaked in water, and the cement pressed around the edges 


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SHELL CAMEOS 219 
of the shell. This is a necessary precaution as it prevents the cracking of 
the shell, and the cement is supposed to adhere only to the under layer. 

The cement cold, and the handle fixed in the wooden chancery of a 
notched board, cleaning the shell surface with pumice follows, and a more 
careful drawing on the white expanse in pencil. Ten implements may 
figure in the steps toward the finished product. These are steel gravers 
with sharpened, variously inclined and shaped ends of differing thickness 
and width, not remotely resembling the burin of the wood-engraver, and 
intended to be used as gauges, planes, scrapers and line points. These 
tools are sharpened on Turkey stone, moistened with olive oil. The cameo 
completed, the background is developed by rubbing it gently with the end 
of a square-sided stick of boxwood cut to a flat point and dipped first in 
crushed pumice stone and oil, then into a mixture of rotten stone and a few 
drops of sulphuric acid. This rubbing polishes and brightens the surface, 
evokes the deeper shades of color, and conveys to the cameo the contrast 


As contrasted with the treatment of the Diana motive this carving of Phoebus in his 


chariot shows extreme{elaboration of detail, a finely burnished surface and the last refinement 
of evenness in the relief 


220 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


sought between the relief and its background. This final consummation 
must be closely watched and each burnished area immediately upon its 
completion wiped with a moist cotton spug to remove all trace of acid, which 
of course would corrode and dissolve the shell substance. 

The three examples of this interesting meticr in the Morgan gem collec- 
tion show contrasted treatment. They are in the north end of the gem room, 
placed in an excellent light for their inspection. The subjects unfolded on 
them are the “Metamorphosis of Actzeon” into a stag by the resentful 
Diana, whose swiftly directed arrow has already touched the unfortunate 
victim with its transforming charm, a copy of “ Phoebus,” the sun god, in 
his chariot and Guido Reni’s “ Aurora.” 


The pearly nautilus shell has been employed frequently as a surface for engravings and 
inscription of legends, prayers and emblems. 


The most casual glance reveals two schools or methods of treatment, the 
bold, free romantic touch with its vivacity and acceleration of action in the 
first, and the classic calm and fastidious finish in the latter two. The col- 
lector and student of shell cameos is afforded here a very profitable material 
for study. 

To-day shell cameos are perhaps lightly valued. They must have been 
wrought in great numbers for almost three centuries however, and in English, 
German and Scotch families domestic affection cherishes still the old 
brooches which a former day applauded as personal ornaments. 


‘¢ 


ay hy: 
AE Sieh : 


SOME CUBAN FOSSILS 


A HOT SPRING YIELDS UP THE BONES OF ANIMALS THAT LIVED 
BEFORE THE ADVENT OF MAN 


By Barnum Brown 
With photographs by the Author 


HE former connection of Cuba with the mainland of North, Central 
or South America has long been a subject of speculation, a one-time 
connection of the whole chain of West Indian islands with the con- 

tinent being at once suggested by their position. But deep-sea soundings 
show that water ranging from one hundred to five hundred fathoms in depth 
separates Cuba from Florida while depths of more than one thousand 
fathoms separate it from Yucatan. 

Cuba is at present rich in some phases of small life such as land shells, of 
which more than six hundred species have been described while less than half 
that number is known from the entire United States and comparatively few 


are common to the two countries. Of mammals however only three kinds 
221 


222 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


are represented, bats, rodents and insectivores, the latter two by a single 
species each. Covered as this island is with a luxuriant growth of subtropi- 
cal vegetation, there are comparatively few exposures of the underlying 
rocks and_ those 
showing are of igne- 
ous or oceanic origin, 
in which land animal 
remains are not 
found. 

A comprehensive 
series of fossil ani- 
mals, those forms 
that had lived there 
prior to the advent 
of man, would serve 
to determine the 
early history of this 
island. It was there- 
fore of great interest 
when the discovery 
of a fossil sloth jaw 
was announced in 
1860. In 1868 Dr. 
Joseph Leidy named 
this creature Mega- 
locnus rodens and 


Entrance to the cave of Jatibonico. The black line above 
the entrance is not a crack but the covered passage of termites, 
a species of white ant which cannot stand strong light related to the South 

Throughout Cuba, caves and fissures are of frequent occur- 
rence, leached out of the limestone rocks by the chemical action 


of water cene animal Mega- 
therium. The au- 


determined it to be 


American  Pleisto- 


thenticity of its origin in Cuba has been questioned however by some 
geologists until lately. Additional light was thrown on the former animal 
life of this island when that enthusiastic Cuban naturalist, Dr. Carlos de la 
Torre, presented a paper before the International Geological Congress in 
Stockholm in 1910 and exhibited many fossils collected by him in northern 
Cuba. 

In response to a request from Dr. La Torre I went to Cuba in 1911 to aid 
him in further search for fossil remains. In company with Dr. La Torre 
and his assistant, Mr. Victor Rodriguez, I left Havana one morning in June 
destined for the little town of Caibarien on the north shore, to reach which 
we traveled a day through sugar plantations, groves of royal palms and rural 
scenes so interesting one is loath to dismiss them with the term picturesque. 


Irom Caibarien to 
Yaguajay it was a 
short sail by motor 
boat along the 
coast in shoal water 
where one could 
wade most of the 
way and where the 
only navigable 
course is marked 
out by tree branch- 
es. Seaward were 
long lines of low- 
lying sandy keys, 
the feeding-ground 
of countless bril- 
liant flamingos 
magnified by the 
mirage into regi- 
ments of giant 
British — soldiery. 
Another short jour- 
ney by narrow 
gauge road, more 
sugar plantations 
and palms and we 
had reached the 
high land border- 
ing the Sierra de 
Jatibonico. 

It was in these 
mountain fastness- 


‘ : : EAL a te Rae 
es that many : Fissure of Jatibonico during the work of excav ation. ee to 

J 4 F right, Dr. La Torre, Mr. Brown and the discoverer Senor 
Cuban patriots se- Ramén Gonzalez 


creted their fami- 

lies, where they lived in limestone caves and fissures during the period 
of Weyler’s concentration movement. One of these refugees, Ramon 
Gonzalez, while dipping water from a fissure one day discovered a jawbone 
that he recognized was different from that of any creature now living in Cuba. 
It is of interest to recall here that besides the bats which are more or less 
migratory, but two other mammals are at present peculiar to the island — 
namely, the rare insectivore Solenodon, and the more abundant ratlike 
tree rodent Capromys. The latter is protected by common consent and 
now almost venerated by the country people because during the war these 
creatures stood between the refugees and starvation. 


223 


We went to the cave-fissure discov- 
ered by Gonzalez and worked there, 
aided by many of the mountain peo- 
ple, who were greatly interested in 
the search and who gave us the 
hospitality of their homes — in return 
for national lottery tickets which they 
valued more highly than money. 
This fissure, evidently leached out of 
the limestone by the action of water, 
was about fifteen feet deep by three 
hundred feet in length and opened 
into ashort cave. After cutting away 
the brush and orchids that partly 
filled the opening, we were soon at 
work turning over the mud. Bones 
showed here and there but were not 
plentiful. In a week we had com- 
pleted this work and secured much 
material but nothing new to Dr. La 
Torre’s collection. 

I doubt not that this fissure was 
long ago, as it is to-day, a cistern to 
which the animals whose bones are 
preserved there came to drink. Dur- 
ing the dry season one may go a long 
distance in parts of Cuba without find- 
ing water. [A fact that was taken 
advantage of by the Spanish soldiers, 
who poisoned the wells and water 
holes. Nature had provided for the 
patriots however, for all through the 


islands there is a vine in the forests 


A drink on the trail. The bejuco de 


parra, resembling a grape vine, grows in that resembles the grape and 1s called 
forested regions. <A section two inches bejuco de parra from which a section 
in diameter and three feet long will fur- : ; é 

nish a drink of pure cool water three feet long will yield a drink of 


pure cool water. | 

After other localities nearby had been examined for fossils without not- 
able results, we determined to visit Ciego Montero on the south coast whence 
came the type specimen of Megalocnus. The Banos de Ciego Montero, 
meaning the “bath of the blind field man,” is about thirty miles northwest 
of Cienfuegos near a small river, the Analla. Here are three thermal springs. 
close together having temperatures respectively of 93, 96 and 98 degrees 
fahrenheit. Around the one of 96 degrees, the best known thermal spring 
on the island, a hotel with swimming pools has been built. The spring of 98 


224 


SOME CUBAN FOSSILS 225 
degrees is known as the ““ Chapapote ” and in this one the jawbone of Mega- 
locnus was said to have been discovered. This pool was surrounded by rushes 
and tall grass with an old dilapidated bathhouse on one side, as we found 
if,, and’ <drom’) it 
flowed a rivulet in 
which there were 
many small fish. 
In subsequent work 
I collected here six 
species of fish that 
had become accli- 
mated to the hot 
water, one individ- 
ual having a length 
of six inches. 

As the center of 
this pool was seven 
feet deep, we en- 
gaged a field hand 
to dive to the bot- 
tom. Tense and 
expectant were we 
three as Avalino 
dived time and 
again bringing up 
handfuls of black 
mud, finally a croc- 
odile vertebra and 
after a few more 
efforts a mammal 
rib and some turtle 
fragments. These 
pieces showed that 
bones were numer- 
ous, so a large hand 
pump was secured 
from a nearby plan- 
tation. By pump- 
ing in relays we 
could in four hours 
exhaust the pool 


k A Royal palms near Aguacate. These are symbolic of Cuba; 
and eep the water like regiments of grenadiers they outline the plantations in long 


down. Bones stuck __ lines that fade away in perspective 


me 
eee 


Casa de Suarez, the home of our mountain host. Country homes are made entirely from 
the royal palm; the trunk makes the walls of the house, the leaves make the thatched roof and the 
bracts cover the ridge pole. Stoves are uncommon, food is cooked over an open fire or on an earth- 
covered table 


226 


SOME CUBAN FOSSILS 220 


up all through the black mud in great profusion, jaws and bones of sloths, 
skulls of crocodiles and alligators, and parts of turtle shells. There were also 
numerous pine cones although at present pine trees are not found in the 
province of Santa Clara. In three days we had secured several boxes of 
bones but in so doing freed the partly choked opening until the water could 
no longer be kept out so that we could work, even with relays pumping 
night and day. A small hand fire-pump was then secured but the combined 


Banos de Ciego Montero and railroad bridge crossing Analla River 


pumps did not suffice. Finally a three-inch centrifugal gasolene pump 
solved the problem although it required constant pumping to keep the water 
out. 

In three weeks’ time we had taken out all material immediately sur- 
rounding the vent where the water boiled up out of a crack in the basaltic 
bed rock. Many bones were broken and showed the tooth marks of alli- 


Banos de Ciego Montero, hotel in background and Chapapote spring in foreground. 
This spring of 98° fahrenheit was filled with living fishes and insects. In the muddy bot- 
tom there were hundreds of prehistoric fossil bones 


Sanchez and Avalino at the pump. A stream of water six inches wide and an inch 
through flows from this spring constantly 
gators, and few bones of any single individual were associated. One night a 
heavy rainstorm caused the Analla to overflow a part of the stream crossing 
the spring. Next morning there were shells and river turtles in the spring, 
an example of the way bones probably accumulated in prehistoric times. 

The bones represent at least two genera and five species of sloth, the 
largest about the size of a black bear, a rodent, a peccary, birds, an alliga- 
tor, a crocodile and three species of turtle. The fossils are of Pleistocene 
age and none are turned to stone. Some recent bones are mixed with them. 
The collection has not yet been prepared and studied, so that at present it 
would be premature to say what may be the final deductions. The sloths 
particularly are creatures of South American origin, but whether they 
reached the island by way of a land bridge or in some other way has not 
yet been determined. 


The centrifugal pump in action. The canvas covers the center of the spring. It was 
impossible to work in the combined heat of the midday sun and hot water without shelter 
228 


AN INSECT-BORNE DISEASE — INFANT 
PARALYSIS 


By C-E. A. Winslow 


progressive conquest of the insect-borne diseases. Up to 1898 

malaria was a “bad air” disease, a mysterious miasm that crept 
out at night from the swamps to seize on its helpless victims. Then the 
Englishman, Ross, and the Italian observers, Grassi and Bignami, solved 
the problem and the mystery resolved itself into a question of controlling 
mosquito-breeding pools. When the American army of occupation went 
into Cuba in 1898 yellow fever was raging. It had killed on the average 
seven hundred and fifty men and women in the city of Havana every year. 
Our administrators were at first helpless. The ordinary methods of sani- 
tation served to control typhoid fever and smallpox and other diseases 
whose causes were known. Yellow fever decreased from the high figures 
of 1898 when the Havana hospitals were filled with soldier victims, but in 
1900 it began to rise again. Then in March 1901, the American Army 
surgeons, Reed, Carroll and Agramonte, heroes and martyrs of the war 
against disease (for two of the three gave their lives to the cause) announced 
the discovery that yellow fever too was carried by a mosquito of the genus 
Stegomyia. With this basis for action the conquest of the disease was al- 
most immediate. For 1901 there were eighteen deaths from yellow fever 
in Havana and for 1902 and succeeding years, none. A few cases later 
occurred in a little epidemic around the wharves in which the infection was 
introduced from outside but the endemic scourge of the city for centuries 
had been stamped out in a single year. So the discovery of each new dis- 
ease germ and each new insect host has substituted effective measures of 
control for helplessness and fear. 

The latest of the insect-borne diseases to yield up its secret is infant 
paralysis or poliomyelitis. This infection, mild and obscure in its onset, 
but not infrequently fatal and usually leaving its victims more or less per- 
manently crippled, was entirely a mystery until four years ago. It is not 
a new disease. In the light of modern knowledge it is clear that various 
historical personages have suffered from it. In 1905 however, it assumed 
a violent epidemic form in Sweden and quickly spread to this country, 
appearing first in 1907 in the eastern coast cities and in 1908 in the Scan- 
dinavian states of the Northwest. In connection with this disease I re- 
ceived a vivid lesson in the helplessness that characterizes the prescientific 
period of disease. It was in a little summer colony on the Massachusetts 
coast, a colony of about twenty houses stretched out along a road through 
the salt marshes. First a mild case occurred, not recognized at the time 
but since thought to be infant paralysis. Then in rapid succession two 


N O branch of public health science has been more dramatic than the 


229 


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-SNVYL LVHL LOASNI AHL 


AN INSECT-BORNE DISEASE 231 


children in one family were taken with it and died. There were children in 
almost every house and the parents felt the gravest alarm. Many were 
physicians accustomed to control disease and not to fear it. Here was an 
unknown force however which no one could control. Was this disease 
carried by people or air or domestic animals or insects or food supplies? 
No one knew. Finally a fourth case occurred, further along the road; and 
the next morning every family in the little colony had gone. There was no 
rational mode of fighting this “pestilence that walketh in darkness,’ no 
recourse but flight before it. This was the attitude of mankind toward | 
every epidemic disease before Jenner and Pasteur. 

The first steps were taken in clearing up the mystery of infant paralysis 
when in 1908 Landsteiner and Popper in Vienna succeeded in transmitting 
the disease to monkeys. Flexner and Lewis at the Rockefeller Institute in 
the next year extended this work and proved by successive inoculation ex- 
periments that there was a living germ present in the body and in the nose 
and throat of affected persons although this germ belongs to the class of 
the “‘filterable viruses,”’ organisms so minute that they will pass through 
the pores of a Berkefeld filter and cannot usually be distinguished under the 
most powerful microscopes. Very recently during the past winter, Flexner 
and Noguchi have added new laurels to the Rockefeller Institute and to New 
York by cultivating this almost invisible germ outside the body. Animal 
experimentation however, which has been the chief agent in bringing com- 
municable disease under control, made it possible much earlier to detect 
the presence of the germ by its effects. Flexner and Clark at the Rocke- 
feller Institute, Kling, Wernstedt and Peterrsen at Stockholm, Osgood in 
Boston, and others showed that the germ may persist in the nose and throat 
after recovery and that it may be found in the nose and throat of healthy 
persons who are therefore liable to act as carriers of infection, although 
themselves not sick. It seemed probable that at least one method of 
spread of infant paralysis was by more or less direct contact between sus- 
ceptible persons (particularly children) and either previous cases or healthy 
carriers. 

There were two things however which seemed puzzling and which could 
not easily be harmonized with this theory of spread by human contact. In 
the first place infant paralysis is preéminently a summer disease. Cases 
do occur at all seasons but the great majority develop during the warm 
weather. Now this is a characteristic of insect-borne diseases like malaria 
and yellow fever since the breeding of the insect hosts is directly dependent 
upon temperature. On the other hand, diseases which spread by contact 
usually reach their maximum in winter when people are crowded together 
and there is most opportunity for the interchange of germs. There are 
exceptions to this rule, like typhoid fever, which is normally a summer 
disease though in the northern United States it is not generally carried by 


232 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


insects; so the seasonal prevalence -proves nothing by itself. Another 
curious fact brought out in the Massachusetts studies by Richardson how- 
ever was the greater proportionate incidence of infant paralysis in rural 
than in urban districts. Again the rule is not a universal one, but the fact 
that even in one state a distinctly higher percentage of cases occurred in the 
country than in the city was a striking one. Diseases that spread directly 
from person to person are almost always most prevalent where persons 


cn hin hil te shai lsh GS: 
eet ete 


erecta tated tte ctacloe ent et 
ncaa, OY 
va 


oe le Le eee eG tlh, 
eee 


Wing of the house fly (Musca domestica) above and of the stable fly (Stomozys ealci- 
trans) below. Note the sharp elbow in the third long wing vein of Musca and the less bent 
vein of Stomozxys. Drawing by Ignaz Matausch 


congregate so that the opportunities for contagion are most frequent; while 
insect-borne diseases are often most serious in the country where insect 
breeding places are more frequent. 

These facts led the Massachusetts investigators to search with special 
care for a connection between some insect host and the prevalence of infant 
paralysis, and in 1910 Dr. P. A. E. Sheppard, working for the state health 
department, noted the large number of cases in which fly bites were reported 


“shih ttt: 

I Sgn OAL e- 
¢ oe tn = 
io ILL EA 
4 eZ ; 


Side view of house fly from enlarged model made by Mr. Ignaz Matausch. The house 
fly has not the long biting proboscis characteristic of the stable fly which transmits infantile 
paralysis. Compare with figure on page 230 


by the victims of the disease. In the next year Mr. C. T. Brues, an en- 
tomologist, was assigned to work with Dr. Sheppard and suspicion began to 
point strongly toward a particular insect, the biting stable fly. Finally in the 
summer of 1912 Prof. M. J. Rosenau of the Harvard Medical School com- 
pleted the chain of proof. No one who was present at the joint session of 
Sections I and V of the Fifteenth International Congress of Hygiene and 
Demography on September 26th last will forget that most striking event 
of the whole Congress, the presentation of these results. Eminent investi- 
gators from Norway, Sweden and Austria, as well as some of the leading 
workers in this country, had presented the formal papers of the morning. 
Much that was important was added but the weight of evidence still seemed 
to point, though somewhat doubtfully, toward human contact as the chief 
agent in the transmission of the disease. In the discussion that followed, Dr. 
Rosenau made a preliminary report of his experiments and announced that 
he had succeeded in producing poliomyelitis in six out of twelve monkeys 
bitten by stable flies (Stomozys calcitrans) which had been allowed to feed 
on other monkeys suffering from the disease. As a result of his discovery 
the entire outlook for the control of infant paralysis has been changed. 
Prof. Rosenau’s work has since been confirmed by Drs. Anderson 
and Frost of the United States Public Health Service. There is of course 
no certainty that the disease is always transmitted by Stomoxrys. The 
work of Dr. Flexner and of the Swedish observers and the occurrence of a 


certain proportion of cases in cold weather strongly suggest that sometimes 
233 


234 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


infant paralysis may spread by direct contact between human beings or 
in other ways than by fly bites. On the other hand it seems certain that 
the biting stable fly is one means by which this disease is conveyed; and the 
seasonal and geographical prevalence of the epidemics makes it seem prob- 
able that this is the usual and most important means. 

The Stomozys calcitrans like the house fly or filth fly (Musca domestica) 
is a two-winged fly 
of the family Musci- 
de. It closely re- 
sembles the house 
fly in general form 
and size and may 
easily be mistaken 
for it by the casual 
observer. It differs 
from the house fly 
in one very impor- 
tant respect how- 
ever, in the posses- 
sion of a sharp biting 
proboscis instead of 
the soft tongue-like 
mouth parts with 
which the house fly 
absorbs its food. 
This proboscis of 
the Stomoxys may be 
seen projecting for- 
ward as a fine black 
beak when the insect 
is at rest. Anoiher 


important difference 


lies in the venation 
of the wings, the Mr. Ignaz Matausch, preparator, who has recently completed 
: a marvelous piece of technical work in the shape of an enlarged 
third of the long model of the common house fly. It represents a magnification of 
veins being bent at 64,000 diameters, required one year for its construction and is the 
‘ most accurate representation of this insect in existence 
a less sharp angle in 


the Stomoxys than in the house fly. Two additional points of difference 
between the house fly and the stable fly are brought out in Mr. Matausch’s 
original drawing reproduced herewith: that the posterior edge of the 
compound eye as seen in side view is concave in Stomozys calcitrans and 
practically straight in Musca domestica; and the antennz of Stomoxys 
calcitrans are clothed with hairs on the upper side only while those of Musca 
domestica have hairs both above and below. 


STORAGE OF MAMMAL SKINS 230 


The habits of Stomoxys differ widely from those of Musca domestica. 
The Stomoxys is a biting fly, feeding on the blood of the higher vertebrates. 
It is found in the vicinity of dwellings, particularly where horses and cattle 
are kept, but it is apt to remain out doors in warm sunny places and does 
not come into the house much except at night and before rain. According to 
Brues it breeds in “‘fermenting heaps of grass, straw and similar substances, 
horse manure, cow dung and even garbage” and its preference is probably 
in “about the order named.”” Many devices used for trapping the house 
fly and depending on its liking for sweets will of course prove of no avail 
with the stable fly. For the control of this insect, dependence must prob- 
ably be placed chiefly upon elimination of its breeding places. There can 
be no doubt that the recognition of the importance of this insect in the trans- 
mission of infant paralysis, which we owe to such a striking codperation 
between epidemiologists, entomologists and experimental physiologists, 
opens a new chapter in our campaign against this disease; and the summer 
of 1913 should throw a flood of light upon the subject. 


STORAGE OF MAMMAL SKINS 


By Roy C. Andrews 


museum has to meet. The two things most to be desired are 

- safety and accessibility and in order to secure either it is sometimes 

difficult not to sacrifice the other. The skins when they have been received 

from the field are first tanned after which they can be easily folded, but even 
then are of great bulk and in some cases of considerable weight. 

The problem of their storage has been met by different institutions in 
various ways. One museum stores the skins in large cans eight or ten feet 
long by four or five feet in height and as much in depth, where the specimens 
can be spread out almost at their full length. This method has its advantage 
but the very serious difficulty of requiring an almost unlimited amount of 
space. The cans are however movable which is a point in its favor. 

Another American institution is contemplating the installation of a cold 
storage room in which the skins will be hung from racks which can easily be 
pulled out and examined and where the temperature is sufficiently low to 
prevent the breeding of Dermestes, the pest of all natural history collections. 

The American Museum of Natural History has met the problem in a still 
different way. In two large rooms storage cases have been built solidly 
into the wall. The backs and sides are of cement, the doors of iron and the 
trays of woven iron wire. The cabinets are about six feet high, above them 
a latticed iron floor has been built and a duplicate row of cases installed 
thus giving a second-floor room and double space, all of which is readily 


P \HE care of large mammal skins is one of the problems which every 


236 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


accessible. Nothing has been used in the preparation of the rooms other 
than iron and cement so that in case of fire if the doors were closed the cases 
would be practically safe. The trays on which the skins are placed slide 
easily upon angle-iron ratchets and a whole tray or a single skin can be re- 


Fireproof storage cases built solidly into the wall. Backs and sides are of cement, doors 
of iron, trays of woven iron wire. An open can of carbon disulphide protects from insects 


moved without the slightest difficulty. An open can of carbon disulphide 
placed on one of the shelves at the top of the case will allow the gas to 
penetrate into all skins and is a sufficient protection from insects. 


Skins of the beautiful Peary caribou, showing every variation of age, sex and pelage. 
The storage cases of the American Museum preserve such material while making it always 
accessible for study 


Each cabinet bears a label on the door outside giving the species and the 
number of each skin contained in the compartment. Thus it is possible 
to tell not only the storage case but the actual tray on which the specimen 
desired has been placed. A long iron table in the center of the room is 
convenient for the examination of skins and for study of such specimens as 
it is not desirable to remove from the storage rooms. 

Of some species of large mammals the Museum contains an extensive 
and important series. For instance the beautiful Peary caribou are repre- 
sented in the collection by about one hundred and twenty-five specimens 
showing every variation of age, sex and pelage. These are the only skins 
of this species in any museum of the world and in themselves present an 
extremely interesting and valuable collection. The musk oxen also, are 
represented by an almost equal number of specimens. 

While many of these skins will be exchanged in the future for other 
museum material, nevertheless in the meantime they must be carefully 
preserved and be accessible for study; to this end the storage cases are 
proving eminently successful. 237 


MUSEUM NOTES 


Since the last issue of the JourNAL the following persons have been elected to 
membership in the Museum: 

Life Members, Mrs. Mary A. Tutrue, Miss Grace Scovitte and Mr. ARNOLD 
SCHLAET; 

Annual Members, Mrs. Wiutu1aAmM G. RocKEFELLER, Mrs. STANFORD WHITE and 
Messrs. S1IEGMUND ADLER, T. Broom BELFIELD, FREDERICK BLASCHKE, HowarpD 
CHANDLER CHRISTY, JoSEPH C. Hann, Aucustus F. Kine, ALEXANDER KontTa, 
Henry S. Lake, H. G. RAMSPERGER and Liuoyp/W. SEAMAN. 


Tue Couper bust of Professor Albert 8S. Bickmore [See frontispiece] has recently 
been placed at the entrance to the Museum auditorium, an especially appropriate 
location since Professor Bickmore was so intimately associated with the organization 
and development of the lecture system at the Museum. From 1886 to 1903 at a 
time when he was a leader in the work of the Museum, he was also identified with 
the State Department of Public Instruction. He was one of the pioneers in lantern- 
slide work, being probably the first’educator to exhibit slides of such accuracy and 
beauty. He kept photographers traveling in different parts of the world collecting 
photographs and he bought the best negatives that were brought back by Museum 
and other explorers. From such negatives he made up a series of lectures for the 
teachers in the public schools. When the contract between the Museum and the 
State terminated, all of the slides and of the original negatives from which the slides 
had been made went to Albany, Professor Bickmore’s personal set of slides alone 
remaining at the Museum. The great value attaching to this latter set, recently 
presented to the Museum by Professor and Mrs. Bickmore, was realized when the 
Albany fire destroyed the original negatives and slides. It is this set of 12,000 beauti- 
fully colored slides that has made it possible for the Museum to carry on its effective 
lecture work for school children. During the spring more than twenty lectures were 
given in the regular course and these were attended by nearly 19,000 pupils. In 
addition the slides have been in great demand by teachers for special lectures given 
at the Museum by members of the Museum staff or by the teachers themselves. 


Tur Crocker LAND EXPEDITION is to be congratulated on the appointment as 
surgeon of Dr. Harrison J. Hunt of Bangor, Maine, Bowdoin College, A. B., 1902 and 


M. D. 1905. 


A Review of the Primates by Daniel Giraud Elliot has recently been published 
by the Museum. This is a monographic treatise in three quarto volumes containing 
1360 pages, 28 colored plates and 512 half-tone figures. Although the apes, monkeys 
and lemurs surpass all other mammals in scientific interest, it is a striking fact that 
no satisfactory review of all the known living species has hitherto been published. 
Dr. Elliot’s work treats not only of the generic and specific characters, synonymy, 
literature and other technical matters, but also very fully of habits. The living 
animals are shown in twenty-five plates and twenty-eight colored plates, the latter 
mostly reproductions in four colors from the original lithographic figures published 
in the Proceedings of the Zoélogical Society of London; and photographs of the skulls 
of more than one hundred species are reproduced with a clearness to allow technical 
comparisons. A Review of the Primates is interesting also as an example of beautiful 
book-making. The edition is limited to 850 copies, 500 being offered for sale. 


By arrangement with the Ottawa Museum, Dr. Rudolph M. Anderson of the 
Canadian Arctic Expedition will bring back a set of duplicate specimens to fill the 
gaps still existing in the mammal and bird collections of the American Museum. 


238 


MUSEUM NOTES 239 


Dr. J. A. ALLEN has been working at the British Museum during the past six 
weeks on the mammals of Korea and South America. His work is particularly 
complete on South American squirrels, the material which Mr. Chapman’s expedition 
secured in Colombia and the large unidentified collections of the British Museum 
providing for an entire revision of the group. The work on the Korean mammals 
collected by Mr. Andrews in northern Korea had the benefit of comparison with 
British Museum specimens secured by the Duke of Bedford’s earlier expedition to 
Korea, the British Museum being practically the only institution in the world which 
contains any series of mammals from the region. 


Dr. ArtHUR B. Emmons of Harvard University, has published an article in 
Biometrika on “‘The Variations in the Female Pelvis, based on observations made on 
217 specimens of the American Indian Squaw.” This study is founded largely 
upon skeleton material in the American Museum. The results were so important 
that the author was awarded the Boylston Medical Prize for 1912. 


THE Museum’s zodlogical expedition to Colombia returned early in May, after 
an absence of four months. The objects of the expedition were first, to collect 
material for a habitat group illustrating the bird life of the Magdalena Valley; second, 
to complete the ornithological survey of the Colombian Andes, begun in 1910; . third, 
to ascertain definitely the limits of the so-called Bogoté region whence, for the past 
seventy odd years specimens collected by natives, but unaccompanied by data of 
any kind have been received; fourth, to collect a series of topotypical specimens from 
the Bogoté region. The expedition included Mr. Frank M. Chapman, and Messrs. 
George K. Cherrie, first assistant, Louis Agassiz Fuertes, artist, Thomas Ring, Paul 
G. Howes, and Geoffrey O’Connell, volunteer assistants. This party left Barran- 
quilla on January 19, and during the voyage of twelve days up the Magdalena River 
to Honda, by taking advantage of every opportunity when the boat stopped for cargo 
or fuel, collected three hundred birds. Studies for the habitat group were made at 
El Consuelo, on the western slope of the Eastern Andes, 2700 feet above Honda; 
from this point a superb view is had of the Magdalena Valley, through which the 
river winds picturesquely, while in the background the Central Cordillera rises 
crowned by the three great snow peaks, Tolima, Isabel, and Ruiz, each of which has 
an approximate altitude of 18,000 feet. 

Having completed its work in this region, the expedition journeyed by mule to 
Bogotdé, making this city its headquarters during the remainder of its stay in Colom- 
bia. From Bogota it passed first to the eastward to Villivicencio, at the eastern base 
of the Andes, stopping en route at all favorable localities. On reaching Villivicencio, 
the section through the Andes from the Pacific coast to the upper drainage of the 
Orinoco, was completed, and data are now in hand for the determination of the 
altitudinal life zones of the Colombian Andes. A month later the expedition re- 
turned to Bogoté and passed southward to Fusugasuga, encountering there entirely 
different species from those which it had met with in its journey to the eastward. 
In all, some 2300 birds and about 100 mammals were secured, and the diversity and 
richness of the avifauna is illustrated by the fact that no less than 505 species of 
birds were secured during the comparatively brief period when the expedition was 
actually in the field. 


Dr. P. E. Gopparp is preparing for a trip to the upper Peace River country of 
northwestern Canada to make a study of the Beaver Indians, a little known tribe 
of the Northwest; and Dr. Herbert J. Spinden will spend the summer in New Mexico 
on ethnological work among the Pueblo Indians of the Rio Grande Valley. 


240 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


Tue department of mammalogy has begun the revision of its osteological col- 
lections with reidentification and card-indexing, and also the work of restorage of 
these collections in the new storage room where they will be for the first time in wholly 
accessible shape for study. 


Mr. ViLHJALMUR STEFANSSON returned to the Museum about the first of May 
after two months in Europe chiefly in Rome where he delivered a paper at the 
International Geographic Congress, and in London where he assembled oceano- 
graphic and other scientific apparatus. The Stefansson Expedition, as now planned, 
will consist of a scientific staff of fourteen men divided into two parties: one sailing 
north from Herschel Island in the ‘‘ Karluk,”’ a 247-ton whaling vessel, and the second 
east In a twenty-ton vessel fitted for cruising in small rocky waters. 


The northern party under Mr. Stefansson’s leadership, with a captain and crew of fifteen 
men, will be made up of six scientists, among whom will be Mr. W. T. McKinlay of the Uni- 
versity of Glasgow, in charge of terrestrial magnetism; Mr. George Malloch, member of the 
Canadian Geological Survey, geologist and specialist in strateography; and Mr. James 
Murray of Glasgow, oceanographer for many years and co-worker of Sir John Murray, 
member of the Sir Ernest Shackleton Antarctic Expedition, and recently of the Colombian 
boundary survey of South America. 

The southern party under Dr. Rudolph M. Anderson, zoélogist and second in command, 
will have a personnel of eight men among whom the following are of note: Fritz Johansen, 
biologist in the Department of Agriculture, Washington, with a record as member of the 
Mylius-Erichsen East Greenland Expedition; Henri Beuchat, French anthropologist and 
author; Dr. D. Jennes of Oxford, ethnologist with field experience in the South Sea Islands; 
Dr. A. Forbes Mackay of the University of Edinburgh, experienced as a British naval surgeon 
and as surgeon of the Shackleton Antarctic Expedition; and Mr. J. J. O’ Neil of the Canadian 
Geological Survey, mining geologist and specialist in copper deposits. 

The plan of the northern party includes three or four years’ investigation of the 
unexplored area north of western Canada and Alaska, to the end of securing com- 
prehensive scientific data covering the region. It will use new land discovered, as a 
base of supplies or will push east and establish a base on Prince Patrick Island. 
From such base, exploration will move northward, in summer by boat and in winter 
by sledge. The southern party with secondary base on Victoria Island will give 
special study to those Eskimo tribes showing an admixture of European blood, 
discovered by Mr. Stefdnsson on his previous expedition under the auspices of the 
American Museum; as well as to the copper deposits also discovered and other 
matters of scientific and economic interest. Because of the very liberal support of 
the Canadian Government the expedition has been able to broaden both its geo- 
graphic aims and the scope of its scientific research from the original plans. Mr. 
Stefansson will remain at the Museum until the last of May and the expedition will 
sail from Victoria sometime in June. 


Dr. C-E. A. Winstow has been appointed chairman of a commission which is 
to spend $50,000 in the experimental study of ventilation problems during the next 
four years. The other members of the commission are: Prof. F.S. Lee of the College 
of Physicians and Surgeons, Prof. E. L. Thorndike of Columbia University, Prof. 
EK. B. Phelps of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dr. James Alexander 
Miller and Mr. D. D. Kimball. The fund is part of the gift made by Mrs. Elizabeth 
Milbank Anderson to the Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor. 


Mr. ALANSON SKINNER, assistant curator in the department of anthropology, 
is making collections for the Museum among the Western Ojibway Indians of Long 
Plains, Manitoba. 


The American Museum Journal 


VotumeE XIII OCTOBER, 1913 NuMBER 6 


CONTENTS 


Cover, King Penguins, South Georgia Island 
Photograph by Mr. R. C. Murphy 


Hroutispiece;-- Dhe:Beach) Master’ \ 4200.0 heen deel See ace 
Photograph of Sea Elephants on South Georgia Island by Mr. J. I. Wilson 


A Desolate Island of the Antarctic..... RosBeERT CuSHMAN MurRpPHY 


Expedition to South Georgia conducted jointly by the American Museum of 
Natural History and the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences 


William J. Gaynor, Mayor of New York City, 1909-1913........... 


Crocker lLand/-Pixpeditidtin 2% 24 ste he es Skee oa eee Pe 
Report by Mr. Donald B. MacMillan, Leader 


The Temple: of the Jaguars............. Epwarp H. THompson 


A study of the ruins of the Temple of the Jaguars preliminary to the reproduc- 
tion of the front facade as an architectural feature of the Columbus Avenue 
entrance of the American Museum, when that new extension shall be erected 


Roosevelt Expedition to South America....FRANK M. CHapMan 


With news of other South American expeditions of the American Museum which 
are already in the field 


American Museum Expeditions for Fossil Vertebrates 
W. D. MatrHew 


INE WSetTNeIN GheS ee tate too ate het lend Makes, fol Ee ER Ee 


267 


Mary Crntuia Dickerson, Editor 


Published monthly from October to May by the American Museum of Natural History. 
Terms: one dollar per year, fifteen cents per copy. Entered as second-class matter January 


12, 1907, at the Post-Office at Boston, Mass., Act of Congress, July 16, 1894. 


Subscriptions should be addressed to the AMERICAN MusEuUM JOURNAL, 77th St. 


and Central Park West, New York City. 


The Journal is sent free to all members of the Museum. 


a 26 
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The American Museum Journal 


VoLuME XIII OCTOBER, 1913 NUMBER 6 


A DESOLATE ISLAND OF THE ANTARCTIC! 


SOUTH GEORGIA, IN THE LATITUDE OF CAPE HORN, THE 
GREATEST WHALING GROUNDS OF THE WORLD 


By Robert Cushman Murphy 


Curator, Division of Mammals and Birds, Brooklyn Museum 


HE cold white hills of South Georgia were a most welcome sight after 

| five months of sea life. That desolate isle, which for more than a 
hundred years has been the scene of ruthless sporadic destruction 

of fur seals and sea elephants, has of late become the base of the greatest 
whaling grounds in the world. The modern industry was instituted by 
a Norwegian of both north and south polar fame, Captain C. A. Larsen, 
who in 1893 touched at South Georgia with the “Jason” while on his ex- 
pedition which led him into the Antarctic Sea east of Graham Land. Eight 
years later Larsen commanded Nordenskjéld’s vessel, the “ Antarctic,’ 
which likewise visited South Georgia, and upon returning thence he de- 
termined to establish a whaling station of the modern Norwegian type. 
Thus the Compania Argentina de Pesca was incorporated in Buenos Aires, 
and the right of locating in Cumberland Bay, South Georgia, was secured. 
Larsen’s success led to the establishment of other plants, so that now in 
addition to the Argentine station there are five Norwegian and two English 


1 Copyright, 1913, by Robert Cushman Murphy. All rights reserved. 243 


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EXPEDITION TO SOUTH GEORGIA 245 


companies operating in various harbors along the northeastern seaboard of 
the island, and more than two thousand men are at work manufacturing oil 
and fertilizer and other products of the whale’s carcass. 

Phenomenal success has attended the whole industry; more than five 
thousand whales have been towed into the ports of the island in one year; 
twenty carcasses are sometimes received at a single station during twelve 
hours; and two and a half million gallons of oil have been tried out at one 
station during a season, to say nothing of whalebone and guano. Several 
of the companies have yielded a profit of more than one hundred per cent to 
the stockholders. And still the whales show slight signs of diminished 
numbers, although they are said to have become more difficult to capture 
than they formerly were. At present transportation is maintained between 
South Georgia and Buenos Aires; a British magistrate resides at Cumber- 
land Bay, which has been declared a port of entry; and legislation designed 
to control the destruction of wild life has finally been enacted. 

The whale taken in greatest numbers at South Georgia is the southern 
humpback or knéll, which is the mainstay of the industry. The slenderer 
and less profitable finback is also abundant, and is shot whenever the former 
species is scarce or shy. The giant blue whale or sulphur-bottom is third 
in importance, while sperm and right whales are taken more rarely, perhaps 
only once or twice a year. The height of the whaling comes during Christ- 
mas season, that is about midsummer. 

The expedition to South Georgia Island, conducted jointly by the Ameri- 
can Museum of Natural History and the Museum of the Brooklyn Institute 
of Arts and Sciences, returned last May after an absence from the United 
States of exactly one year. The itinerary of the New Bedford whaling 
brig “Daisy,” which carried the museums’ representative, was pleasantly 
roundabout, including in its course several West India islands, the Cape 
Verdes, the Brazilian island of Fernando de Noronha, and the uninhabited 
South Atlantic islet Trinidad, and affording opportunity for field work at 
each of these interesting tropical localities. The objective point of the 
voyage, South Georgia, lying in the latitude of Cape Horn, was not reached 
until November 23, 1912. 

Although the long cruises in the tropical Atlantic, where not infrequently 
many days passed without sight of a bird, fish or other living creature more 
conspicuous than a Portuguese man-o’-war, were sometimes monotonous, 
such periods were well balanced by the occasional excitement of sperm- 
whaling or blackfish-hunting. The latter cetaceans were frequently en- 
countered, and a good series of skulls of the tropical species was secured for 
the museums, the animals being captured with hand harpoons according to 
the venerable methods of the sperm-whale chase. Blackfish travel in large 
shoals, often in company with porpoises. I have seen both species, mixed 
more or less indiscriminatively, swimming along peaceably together in groups 
of three or four, the individuals of each group almost touching sides. When 


A Norwegian whaling steamer of South Georgia just after the shot. A humpback whale is fast, 
and the harpoon line (on the port bow) is being drawn in by a steam winch located behind the mast. 
The chopped-off flukes of a dead whale show amidships. Note in the foreground a Wilson’s petrel 
(Oceanites oceanicus) which migrates northward to our coast every year, and farther back a Cape 
pigeon (Daption capense) one of the commonest petrels of the southern seas 


Three humpback whales (Megaptera sp.), two spouting. Photographed from a Norwegian 
whaling steamer, South Georgia 
246 


Snow-covered ‘Mount Paget towering seven thousand feet above King Edward Cove, where 
is situated the meteorological station of the Argentine Government 247 


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EXPEDITION TO SOUTH GEORGIA 249 


blackfish are moving leisurely at the surface the back fin is exposed most of 
the time, but occasionally they lie idly, with the head, fin and flukes all 
under water and only the rounded angle of the high caudal ridge projecting 
above. When they rise to breathe the great square “junk” or snout, which 
yields the most valuable of all lubricating oils, is commonly thrust out of 
water as far as the eyes and the angle of the mouth. They are rather wary 
cetaceans, often avoiding the whaleboats with tantalizing skill, leading on 
the oarsmen only to render the pursuit hopeless in the end. Lying quietly 
at the surface they wait until the boat draws almost within striking distance 
and then “let go,” as whale-men say, that is they sink straight down with- 
out appreciably altering the inclination of the body. From the masthead 
I have watched them thus lowering far down into the clear water until they 
became indistinct shadows. Within a few moments they reappear a short 
distance away, and sometimes, as if in mockery, raise their hinder ends out of 
water and beat the surface ten or a dozen times with the flat of the flukes, 
making a loud tattoo — a trait which recalls the “lob-tailing”’ of the right 
whale. If however the blackfish harpooner be so fortunate as to make a 
successful dart, the members of the herd gather about their wounded com- 
rade and it then becomes comparatively easy for the other boats to select 
and strike their victims. Once fast, the struggle is but begun, for blackfish 
are strong fighters, sometimes tearing out even deeply buried irons. Usually 
they pull straight away for a short distance, and then resort to dodging 
tactics, jerking the boat violently from side to side or spinning it end after 
end. As the prize becomes exhausted and the boat is drawn close, there is a 
final flurry in which the captive lashes itself back and forth under the bow 
with terrific jerks, so that quick and skillful work is required in lancing. 

In the South Atlantic, visible animal life was far more abundant than we 
had found it within the Tropics. Vast flocks of petrels of many species 
were our constant companions, and during rough weather numbers were 
caught on fishlines from the stern of the vessel, an exciting form of angling, 
especially if the game chanced to be an albatross or giant petrel with the 
baited bent nail at the end of a slender hand-line jammed in the hook of its 
bill, the bird being held only by its own resistance. The smaller petrels 
such as Cape pigeons, were caught on fishhooks and were hauled from the 
air as animated kites after they had pounced upon the trailing baits and 
had started to fly off with them. 

The day after we had “made the land” at South Georgia the “ Daisy”’ 
was towed by one of the whaling steamers into King Edward Cove, Cumber- 
land Bay. This cove is the old “ Pot Harbor” of American sealers, a term 
which has been preserved in a translated form as the name of Captain 
Larsen’s whaling station — Grytviken. The tiny, land-locked haven nowa- 
days greets the visitor through his sense of smell long before he rounds the 
point which shuts its entrance from view. The “whaly”’’ odor increases 


250 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


amain as one enters the cove, which might be likened to a great caldron so 
filled with the macerated bones of whales that they not only bestrew its 
bottom, but also thickly incrust its rim to the farthest highwater mark. 
During the next few days I discovered that not King Edward Cove alone, 
but indeed the whole beach of the south fjord of Cumberland Bay, a shore 
line of more than twenty-five miles, is lined with an almost inconceivable 
number of bones, mostly of the humpback whale. Spinal columns, loose 
vertebre, flipper bones, ribs and jaws are piled in heaps and bulwarks, and 
I could count seventy-five or one hundred huge skulls without moving from 
one spot. The region is one enormous sepulcher, yet no one can guess how 
many hundreds or thousands of flensed carcasses have been carried out to 
sea by the tide, and so have sunk their skeletons in the deep. Such reckless 


The whaling brig ‘‘ Daisy’’ at anchor in the Bay of Isles 


waste of a material which when manufactured into fertilizer is worth several 
pounds sterling a ton, was due to the exceeding abundance of whales in 
South Georgia waters and consequent neglect of all products of secondary 
importance to the blubber oil. But now the companies are required by law 
to utilize the entire carcass of the whale, and they have either installed bone- 
boiling and guano plants at their stations, or have sub-let this branch of the 
industries to “floating factories,” that is vessels especially fitted for the 
purpose. One of this type, a 2000-ton full-rigged ship, was so occupied at 
the time of our visit. 

During our sojourn in Cumberland Bay the time was occupied with trips 
into the surrounding mountainous country, particularly about the magnifi- 
cent west fjord of the bay, a section reached overland from Grytviken 
through a high, extinct glacier bed, parts of which are smoothly paved with 
small fragments of shale packed edgewise by. the ice in the manner of a 


EXPEDITION TO SOUTH GEORGIA 201 


mosaic. This pass is, curiously enough, the route taken by sea birds, 
particularly terns and skuas, in flying from King Edward Cove to the west 
fjord lakes. It seemed odd to meet flocks of terns 1700 feet up in the 
mountains. The summit of the pass is marked by a stone cairn from 
which the way descends abruptly on the west fjord side to the lake basins in 
the ancient moraine. There are five transparent lakes, no two on precisely 
the same level, and the largest nearly half a mile long. Intermingled with 
them are low, irregular hillocks covered with tussock grass, and at the sea- 
shore the land rises again, ending in bold cliffs. 

In this attractive area it is but natural that the majority of the twenty- 
three species of birds which breed on South Georgia can be found. The 
native gulls, terns, titlarks, ducks and the larger Tubinares nest upon the 
ground, trusting the safety of their eggs to protective coloration, conceal- 
ment or constant guard, but the lesser petrels nest in deep burrows in order 
_to escape the predatory skua gull, the universal enemy of every living 
creature it can master. Extraordinarily populous among the many in- 
habitants of the tussock hillocks I found the petrel Procellaria equinoctialis, 
‘the “black night hawk” of our sailors and “shoemaker” of the Norwegians. 
At sea I had often caught these birds, which exceed our herring gull in size, 
on pork-baited fishhooks. In the west fjord section they were nesting in 
burrows which they had dug through the frozen ground to a depth of a yard 
or more, using both feet and bill in the process, and the chatter or “singing” 
of the subterranean tenants, a pleasant and rather musical sound, usually 
revealed their presence before the nest entrances under the spreading 
hummocks were noticed. Early in December nearly all nests contained the 
single white egg which was often soaking in a pool of muddy water thawed 
out by the sitting bird. When drawn out of their holes the shoemakers 
screamed in an ear-splitting key and bit and scratched savagely, but if set 
free they squatted on the ground stupidly for awhile before taking flight. 
During the day many flew in from sea with a shrill whistling of their stiff 
wing quills, and I often surprised others apparently sunning themselves in 
front of their burrows. 

The greater part of our stay at South Georgia was spent at the lonesome 
Bay of Isles, and at Possession Bay where in 1775 Captain James Cook set 
up his colors and claimed the dreary land for his king. At the latter place 
our anchorage was all but inclosed by a curving wall of valley glaciers the 
grandeur and proportions of which made them quite outclass the moribund 
glaciers of the Alps. The difficulty of working at these harbors was very 
great indeed because an ordinary camp outfit proved inadequate for the 
‘conditions encountered. South Georgia is a region of almost continuous 
violent gales, and my light tent was worthless. It was impossible to keep 
an oil stove burning within it, so that I suffered considerably from the cold 
while preparing bird specimens, and moreover the tent blew down frequently 


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A blue-eyed shag (Phalacrocoraz atriceps georgianus) brooding her young. In this beautiful species 
the ring of bare skin about the eye is cyanine blue. The feathers of the crest, back and wings are 
richly iridescent. The birds are of more gentle disposition than our northern cormorants and will 
allow themselves to be stroked while on the nest. Bay of Isles 


The petrel called ‘‘black night hawk’’ by sailors and ‘‘shoemaker’’ by Norwegians at entrance 
of nest burrow. The burrows are dug through frozen ground to the depth of three feet or more. 
‘The chatter or singing of these subterranean tenants is a pleasing sound 253 


King penguin (A ptenodytes patachonica) incubating its single egg. Bay of Isles. A king 
penguin carries its egg on the instep covered by a fold of the skin on the belly. The sexes relieve 
each other in the duties of incubation 


A Johnny penguin (Pygoscelis papua) walking up to be chummy. ‘The ‘‘Johnnies’’ are the 
commonest penguins at South Georgia; their eggs make an important food supply for the Norwegian 
whale-men. Temperamentally they are inquisitive, social with their kind, and quick to start a fight 
with one another 
254 


EXPEDITION TO SOUTH GEORGIA 259 


exposing everything to the snow and sleet. Eventually it blew to shreds. 
Very often blizzards made it impossible for a boat to leave the ship; and 
sometimes we were stormbound for three successive days. 

Since the long-gone days of the fur seal harvest at South Georgia, when 
a hundred thousand “golden fleeces” a season were sometimes taken by 
“Argonauts” chiefly from Long Island and New England ports, the isle 
has been best known as a home of the sea elephant. The Antarctic species 
of this largest of seals differs markedly from the Californian race, and for- 
merly had a circumpolar distribution. The great brutes being abundant as 
well as comparatively inoffensive and easily killed, a relentless pursuit of 
them was conducted wherever they could be taken on shore, or from Juan 
Fernandez southward and eastward to the Falklands, and throughout the 
isles of the South Atlantic and Indian oceans to the outliers of New Zealand. 
In many of its ancestral haunts the sea elephant has long since been wiped 
out of existence, but on South Georgia it had until recently a stronghold 
second only to Kerguelen 
Land. Itis true that the 
heavy toll of “elephant 
oil” exacted of South 
Georgia in the nine- 
teenth century brought 
the animals at several 
periods near the verge of 
extinction; there is a rec- 
ord that in 1885 the crew 
of a Connecticut schoon- 
er, which made a voyage 
thither in search of both 
oil and furs, were able to 
find only two sea ele- 
phants during a stay of 
ten weeks. But this ex- 
ample is perhaps without 
a parallel, and in any case 
sea elephants had been 
fairly abundant of late 
years in all suitable har- 
bors and fjords of the 
island until three or four 
seasons ago. Since then 


the existence of the much 


persecuted animals has Sea elephant rearing. In attacking, the bull sea elephants 
raise themselves until the fore flippers are clear of the 
been threatened probably ground and then hurl themselves forward 


Sea elephant (Macrorhinus leoninus) worried by the ship’s fox terrier. The great brutes when 
fighting can swing about very quickly by flinging their hinder ends into the air 


A Parthian glance as he retreats. A sea elephant can progress for a short distance at the 
speed of a brisk walk. Note that the inflatable sac on the snout of this bull is collapsed because the 
nostrils are open 
256 


EXPEDITION TO SOUTH GEORGIA 257 


more seriously than ever before by the business-like and thorough ravages 
of one of the whaling companies which takes seal oil as a side line of whaling. 

Soon after our arrival at South Georgia we began to fall in with sea 
elephants. As nearly as I can determine from my subsequent observations, 
filled out from the accounts of experienced sealers, the life history of these 
animals is very briefly as follows: The single “pups” are born on shore in 
early spring (September, October), and the old ones pair immediately 
afterwards while the young are nursing. For a period the adults then lie 
ashore, moving little and of course feeding not at all, while they grow gradu- 


Sea elephant swimming at the surface. Bay of Isles. Usually sea elephants swim be- 
neath the surface, gliding through the seaweed with great ease 


ally thinner, supporting life upon their own plenteous blubber. The pups 
are more active, frequently entering the water and playing with one another 
in schools. They seem to be weaned at an early age, probably during 
November. After six or eight weeks the mature animals go into the sea 
where they feed, and may journey hundreds of miles, but on this part of 
their lives there is a gap in our information. <A few slothful individuals 
continue ashore, and I have seen bulls of this sort in a state of pitiful emacia- 
tion, lying in wallows either alone or with four or five cows, as late as March 
first. Early in January well nourished adult sea elephants begin to “haul 


A bull sea elephant. Bay of Isles 


up” from the sea again, and as the month advances considerable herds of 
exceedingly fat females gather on the upper beaches. The males come later, 
during February and March, and are then of enormous bulk and very 
lethargic. These are the “March bulls” which sealers prize, for one such 
may yield five or six barrels of oil. They locate wherever they can find 
company, and if undisturbed remain in sleepy ease throughout the remainder 
of the Antarctic summer and the autumn. During the winter they divide 
their time between the land and the adjacent waters, and are in prime 
condition when they come ashore to stay during the breeding season of the 
following spring. 

The attribute par excellence on which the sea elephant’s reputation rests 
is large size. For a number of weeks after arriving at the Bay of Isles I saw 
no animal more than thirteen feet in length, except the dismal remains of 
bulls slain in former years. But during February, seventeen and eighteen- 
foot bulls, just out of the sea, were taken a dozen times, and on the last day 
of the month the record seal, twenty feet six inches long, was killed in Pos- 
session Bay. I did not see this huge brute until after it had been stripped 
of blubber, but as it measured twenty-one feet four inches (651 centimeters) 
while lying on its back in its flensed condition, the mate’s flesh measurement 
is certainly not exaggerated. Our second largest bull was shorter than this 
by two feet. When the animals are in best condition (from a sealer’s point 
of view at any rate) a large sea elephant’s girth may very nearly equal its 


258 


EXPEDITION TO SOUTH GEORGIA 259 


extreme length. The fattest I saw was a bull eighteen feet four inches long, 
and so round and distended that it had the appearance of being pneumatic, 
and inflated under high pressure. Seven men could barely turn its body 
over with the aid of ropes and hand holes in its skin, even after half the 
blubber had been removed and a trench had been scooped under one side 
of the carcass. The blubber was a trifle less than eight inches thick in the 
center of the breast, and the brute yielded almost as much oil as a young 
sperm whale. I gained a good idea of the weight of a sea elephant by clean- 
ing up the skulls, for there was no man among the crew of the “Daisy” who 
could pick up and carry the head of a large bull until the hide and fat had 
been cut away from it. 

The question as to whether the greatest of the seal kind is to be preserved 
at South Georgia depends largely upon the results of an investigation of the 
status of whales, seals and penguins, now being conducted for the British 
Colonial Office. The difficulties and expenses of the fishery make it almost 
impossible for any species of whale to become completely extirpated, how- 
ever persistently it may be chased, but the unfortunate sea elephants have 
no such hope of preservation. Slow, unsuspicious, gregarious, they can be 
hunted profitably until the last one has gone to his ancestors and the calamity 
of the Antarctic fur seal is repeated. 


A’ spectacled albatross (Diomedea melanophrys) or ‘‘mollymoke.’’ South Atlantic. 
These birds are less numerous at South Georgia than the great wandering albatross 


THE LATE WILLIAM J. GAYNOR 


William J. Gaynor, Mayor of the City of New York since 1909 and as such a 
member of the Board of Trustees of the American Museum of Natural History in 
its capacity as an educational institution of the city. Mayor Gaynor died sud- 
denly on the ‘‘Baltic’’ on his way to England, September 10, 1913 

“‘And I have got to that point where nothing said about me affects me much. 
Nothing that could happen to me would affect me much. I think I would be satis- 
fied under most any circumstances. I think we all ought to feel that way — espe- 
cially if you are going into political life, young men. Whatever God’s will may be of 
me, I amcontent.’’ From address to Politics Club of Columbia University. 

‘*Consider that the great universe of which thou art only a trivial speck, is goy- 
erned by fixed laws, and be therefore content in all things, and especially to die at 
any time, and abide God’s will of thee, whether of individual future life, or dissolu- 
tion into universal mind and matter.’’ From letter to Dr. Finley after reading Marcus 
Aurelius. 

260 


WILLIAM J. GAYNOR 


MAYOR OF NEW YORK CITY, 1rgo09—1913 


S is known not only to his own city but also to all great cities of 
the civilized world, William J. Gaynor, Mayor of New York, died 
suddenly at sea September 10. This man who because of his work 

as supreme judge and as mayor of New York City, will stand in the future his- 
tory of the politics of America as one of its most forceful figures, honored the 
American Museum as a member of its Board of Trustees for the three and 
a half years of his mayoralty. To be sure Mayor Gaynor’s engrossing 
political work through his interest in both city and national problems 
allowed him little time for consideration of educational questions — which 
is unfortunate, for it is certain that he would have brought to them the same 
quick grasp that he had for the core of a problem in law or politics, the same 
clear vision of means to end, and strong terse words and abundant courage 
for expression. 

Mayor Gaynor however did not need to take active part in education to 
have influence there. He had a large influence because of his personal 
example. He was always a student. He continued reading the old and 
the new in law, history, philosophy — and his farm is practical proof of his 
interest in agriculture. This influence moreover will continue through his 
speeches and letters, a small number of which have just come in book 
form from the press of the Greaves Publishing Company.! What he has 
said in these letters will be remembered when what another man may have 
said is forgotten, for he did not choose words to please but to express 
fearlessly and effectively what he thought. It is a pleasure to quote the 
following from an address to the Politics Club of Columbia University, 
March 13, 1913: 


Sone ake See whether you are going into politics really from high motives or not. Are you 
going into politics to help the community or to help yourself? It is very easy to deceive 
ourselves. But my advice to you is to go into politics only after a firm resolve that your 
whole and only motive is to help the community in which your lot is cast... ..Do not give up 
your studies. Keep reading when you gooutofhere. If you arestudying mathematics, con- 
tinue the study of it. It is one of the greatest drills for the mind. I don’t mind saying that I 
like now to take a problem of Euclid and pore over it and do it again, and think I am as smart 
at it as I was when I was your age, which of courseI[amnot. And the same with your reading. 
Pick up especially works of the philosophy of history. There was once a great professor here 
in New York who wrote ‘‘The Intellectual Development of Europe,’’. .. .But read books like 
that. Read Lecky. Read Hallam. Read the book of Emil Reich, ‘‘Success among Na- 
tions.’’ Read Green's ‘‘ History of the English People.’’. ...And then, of course, other books, 
like the Bible and Shakespeare, and works of autobiography, like Franklin and Benvenuto Cel- 
lini... .. You are not doing much more here than learning how to learn. Unless you acquire 
the studious habit here you might as well go home to-morrow. And do not be under the de- 
lusion that you can get to anything great in this world without preparation.....Do not rely 
upon your genius. I know you are all geniuses. But nevertheless do not rely onit. It has 
been said by a man who has sense that genius is two per cent inspiration and 98 per cent per- 
spiration.....Getready and you are agenius. Butif you think you can doit without getting 
ready you are more fool than genius, I can tell you that. And you cannot do that without 
keeping up your thoughtfulness and your study.....The saying is that no lawyer ever came to 
fame with a straight back or without a pale face. That tells the wholestory. To be great in 
anything, you have to toil terribly, in the language of Sydney Smith. There is no other way 
to doit. You have got to pay the price; and if you are not willing to pay the price you can-~ 
not do it. 


1 Mayor Gaynor’s LETTERS AND SprEcHES. New York: Greaves Publishing Com=- 
pany, 1913. 


261 


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CROCKER LAND EXPEDITION 


REPORT BY DONALD B. MACMILLAN, LEADER 


HE sealer “Diana,” carrying the Crocker Land expedition with 

aR Donald B. MacMillan, leader, sailed from New York July 2. The 

first port of call was Boston, where she took on additional supplies, 

among which were seven tons of pemmican. The second port of call was 

Sidney, Nova Scotia, where the supplies were increased by twenty tons of 
dog biscuit and several hundred tons of coal. 

When the “Diana” sailed out into the Strait of Belle Isle July 12, she 
encountered much ice and finally dense fog. The difficulties of navigation 
became very great and on the morning of July 17 the ship was wrecked on 
the rocks off Barge Point, Labrador. This did not prove a great disaster 
for the expedition however. The whole party and all the supplies were 
transferred to the steam sealer “ Erik” of St. John’s and on July 31 the start 
was again made for the north with only a brief stop at Battle Harbor, 
necessary to take on board the thirty-foot power boat, the “George Borup,” 
before the ship cruised direct for Cape York. 

On August 5 many icebergs of great size came in view and at night all 
was obscured by fog. The days passed with slow progress between giant 
icebergs and through impenetrable fog until August 14 when the fog lifted 
and to starboard lay the coast of Greenland, and the expedition had its first 
view of the midnight sun. On the next morning the “ Erik”’ touched shore 
at the southernmost village of the Innuits, then steered on along the 
coast past North Star Bay where the Danes have established a mission 
and erected a shelter for meteorological instruments, past the village of 
Oomenooe where three Eskimo were engaged, on past Inglefield Gulf and 
Igludahoming. This village where three more dog-drivers were engaged, is 
made up of but six tupiks on a meadow sheltered by storm cliffs and covered 
with the golden poppies and dandelions of the Arctic. The following which 
carries the story to August 30 is quoted from the report cabled to New 
York by Mr. MacMillan: 

“We left Igludahoming August 18, for Nerky. Everywhere we found 
the Eskimo thriving, prosperous and healthy. They had already laid in 
ample supplies for winter, despite the fact that most game is scarce this year, 
particularly the walrus and eiderduck. Narwhal and seal are relatively 
abundant. 

“From Nerky the ‘Erik’ steamed on to Etah, our last stopping place 
before crossing to Ellesmere Land. Here we stayed until Thursday after- 
noon, detained by great fields of ice in Smith Sound. Etah is a place 
famous in Arctic explorations, and in its sheltered harbor many ships have 


found safe anchorage. We took on more Eskimo here. We have now on 
263 


264 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


board eight good dog-drivers, with their wives and families, a total of 
twenty-six Eskimo and eighty dogs and twenty-five pups. These dog- 
drivers are among the best in the tribe. They improvised little igloos on 
deck for their families from our boxes of supplies in the main hold. They 
must have inherited some of the skill of our prehistoric cave-dwelling ances- 
tors. They put their kayaks up on the stays, from which they could easily 
put them overboard when they wished to go after a narwhal or a walrus. 

“With Etah as our base, we bucked the ice in Smith Sound for over a week, 
embracing every opportunity that promised a way across to Cape Sabine 
and retreating to the harbor whenever the closing ice threatened to crush 
our ship, there to stay until our watch on the mountain back of Etah should 
report a favorable lead widening toward Ellesmere Land. Every lead that 
promised ingress to Flagler Fjord, where we had planned to establish our 
headquarters, was eagerly followed through our glasses. 

‘From the barrel at the masthead the members of our party took turns at 
the watch, but in vain. We were even unable to approach within fifteen 
miles of Cape Sabine or of Payer Harbor on Pim Island, where we might 
have established a base from which it would have been relatively easy to 
prosecute our explorations and scientific research, though with less dispatch 
and certainty of accomplishing all we hoped to do. On our latest attempt 
we encountered a massive pack that extended without break from Lyttleton 
Island to Cape Sabine, studded with colossal floes and massive bergs. This 
impenetrable barrier extended as far back into Kane Basin as the vision 
could attain with the most powerful glasses. An unfavorable wind was 
packing all the drift ice against the barrier. The most optimistic among us 
could not detect a ray of hope that a passage would open this year, and we 
reluctantly abandoned our attempt to cross to Ellesmere Land and turned 
the ship back to Etah. 

“Thus Etah becomes the headquarters for the Crocker Land expedition. 
On the site of Peary’s old base we have unloaded our supplies and equipment 
and begun the foundation of the house which is to be our home for the next 
two or three years. The ‘ Erik’ was laid up along the rocks, and everything 
except our lumber unloaded directly, without the aid of boats, about a 
quarter of a mile from the site of our house. 

“The site we have chosen offers the maximum comfort and convenience 
attainable in the North. Its only drawbacks are a restricted view of the sea, 
a rocky shore to land our boats and a doubtful position for our wireless 
aérials. Its advantages are a sheltering protection from the cold winds of 
the north and east, accessibility to water hunting-grounds and the sea, prox- 
imity of Eskimo to assist us in our work, full exposure to the sun whenever 
it shines, favorable conditions for valuable scientific work and an accessible 
gateway to the Greenland ice cap, which we hope to explore before next 
summer. Altogether Etah is perhaps the best possible site on the Green- 


CROCKER LAND EXPEDITION 265 


land coast for our purposes, though not at all comparable with Koldewy 
Point, on the Bache Peninsula of Ellesmere Land where we had hoped to be. 

‘Reluctant as we are to give up our plans to winter on Ellesmere Land, 
the near approach of winter and the long night, the vast amount of work 
before us, the uncertainty that Smith Sound will be open this year and the 
dread that the ‘Erik’ should be frozen in, with the consequent necessity 
of feeding the entire ship’s crew for ten months from the provisions intended 
only for our party, all forced us to the decision to go into winter quarters 
on the Greenland coast without further delay. 

“Our entire party is in good health, optimistic and determined to make the 
most of our bad fortune in not attaining Ellesmere Land this year. All are 
eagerly at work building our house, storing our supplies and arranging for 
the winter’s work. Every one realizes that there is much to do and a lim- 
ited time in which to do it. 

“Snow has already fallen twice since we came to Etah and ice freezes on 
the harbor nearly every night. The birds are migrating southward and the 
Eskimo making their final preparations for relinquishing their life in the 
tupiks for the warmer interior of the igloos. The chill and sternness of the 
great North have already settled down upon the plateaus, for upon them the 
streams are even now frozen dry with the temperature falling to 22 degrees 
Fahrenheit. There can be little doubt that the Greenland autumn is far 
advanced and that winter is not far distant. 

“The ‘ Erik’ will leave us as soon as she has taken on ballast and water 
and been made ready for the voyage south. With her will go Judge Carroll 
Sprigg and Fredrick B. Patterson, of Dayton, Ohio, who accompanied us as 
tourists and who we wish might stay with us. They have endured the 
misfortunes, inconveniences and unpleasantnesses of the voyage as good 
sportsmen and we are loath to lose them. After we bid them goodby, 
and they and the ‘Erik’ are gone, we shall again turn our faces to the 
work and problems before us, alone except for the gentle, patient, little 
brown people, the Innuits who will help us. We greet you all who have 
helped us, all who are interested in our welfare and think of us, and then 
the North claims us.” 


Judge Sprigg and Mr. Patterson returned to civilization giving an 
enthusiastic report of their trip to Etah with the expedition. They re- 
peat the story cabled by Mr. MacMillan, that the fight against the ice 
was hopeless and return to Etah necessary. This practically reverses the 
plan for the three years’ work, putting the exploration of the Greenland ice 
cap for next summer instead of the summer of 1915 as scheduled, and 
deferring the search for Crocker Land until this later time. 


9926 


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YSAVW-GIOW LYadx43 ‘ILNVSIYD OYL3!d 


THE TEMPLE OF THE JAGUARS 


REPORT OF WORK PRELIMINARY TO THE REPRODUCTION OF 
THE FRONT FACADE! 


By Edward H. Thompson 


NE of the most important archeological problems of the day is that 
of the ruined cities, vestiges of an ancient American civilization, 
that lie strewn over the surface of the Yucatan peninsula. Who 

were their builders and where did these builders come from are among the 
queries of to-day as they were in the days of Stephens, Von Humboldt and 
Brasseur de Bourbourg. 

Whether the ancestors of these ancient builders with their undecipherable 
glyphs, their ornaments and tools of jade, came from Asia by the way 
of Behring Strait, were broken branches of a lost Atlantic stem, or grew 
up by gradual evolution from purely indigenous roots we may not yet 
know, but we do know that in times ancient even as science now interprets 
the word, civilized races were born in the Americas, that these races lived 
out their days and then sank back into the dust from whence they came, 
leaving faint traces of their having been, to mock our ignorance. No one 
wise in the knowledge of these things even thinks to name, much less to fix 
by time, the origin of these most ancient, long-forgotten and temple-build- 
ing races of America. 

The last of these earlier races was the one from whose fast-dying fires the 
Aztecs and allied people kindled the fierce flames of their civilization. This 
earlier race, call it Toltec if you will, was probably the one that built the 
now ruined cities of Yucatan of which Chichen Itz4 was the great mother 
city. 

Chichen Itza was the largest and most important ancient city on the 
peninsula of Yucatan, if not indeed over the whole area, influenced by that 
distinctively American civilization that students now call the Maya. Its 
great pyramid temple with its four broad stairways and nine parallel ter- 
races rises from the midst of a man-made plain and looms against the sky 
in massive grandeur. Seven other structures still rear their sculptured walls, 
defying time, and hundreds more lie prostrate, their carved stone walls and 
what were once their chambers now but shapeless heaps of stone, lime and 
fallen columns. 


1Mr. Thompson was engaged by the Museum to make molds for a full-sized model of 
the ruined Temple of the Jaguars in Yucatan to be erected as an architectural feature of the 
‘Columbus Avenue entrance to the Museum when that extension of the building is erected. 
‘He owns the site upon which the temple stands and has long been a student of the ancient 
architecture of the Maya race. In addition to the molds Mr. Thompson has prepared 
drawings and selected photographs all of which will make it easy to reproduce this aboriginal 
amasterpiece. 
267 


TEMPLE OF THE JAGUARS 

This temple is some five hundred feet to the west of the pyramid temple. The entire 
front has fallen outward over the twin serpent columns [See cut page 266] which acted as 
levers, to be hurled over the edge of the temple platform into the Ceremonial Court thirty 
feet below. It is this fallen facade — a huge mass of masonry, broken stone and lime com- 
pacted to a cement-like hardness by years of exposure and covered with centuries’ growth 
of trees — that the American Museum hopes to reproduce in its original beauty. All ac- 
cumulated débris was cleared from the temple platform and surfaces unfamiliar to modern 
students were laid bare. Thesteps of the wide stairway have the narrow treads (8 in.) and 
high risers (12 in.) characteristic of sandal-wearing people. A large stone plate with paneled 
carving rests at each side of the stairway directly below the point formerly occupied by a 
carved stone serpent head. ‘These heads were found during the excavation [See page 271} 
268 


PYRAMID TEMPLE OF CHICHEN ITZA 
Pyramid temple with four broad stair- 


Ways and nine terraces. Chichen Itza was the 
mother city in that prehistoric civilization that 
students for convenience sake now agree to 
call “‘Maya.’’ No one tries to name or set 
the time exactly of these building races of 
Yucatan. Of this city seven other structures, 
among them the Temple of the Jaguars, still 
rear their walls while hundreds lie as shapeless 
heaps of masonry 


Five hundred feet to the west 
of this pyramid-temple but on the 
same great terrace, rest two huge 
moles of masonry, stone-faced, 
each 274 feet long by 30 feet high 
and 30 feet thick. No lines of 
cornice or bands of ornamentation 
interrupt the sheer vertical walls, 
but high up the inner wall sur- 
face, two large stone rings once 
projected, one on each side and 
each opposite the other. One of 
these has been broken from its 
place and lies on the ground be- 
neath, but the other still remains 
firm and projects boldly from the 
sheer surface. Between these two 
moles is a level space 121 feet 
wide, called the Ceremonial Court. 
These stone rings and the Cere- 
monial Court were probably used 
in the performance of sacred rites 
and in games of a religious char- 
acter. 

Upon the southern end of the 
eastern mole rests an edifice that 
is In many respects the most in- 
teresting of all the structures still 
standing. It is called the Temple 
of the Jaguars, from the remark- 
able frieze or band of well-carved 
jaguars 
shields, 


that alternating with 
once extended 
the temple walls. 

Below the proper 
which is two-chambered, the re- 
mains of what was once a third 
chamber is still visible, facing the 
east and resting directly upon the 
level surface of the great ground 
terrace. A large portion of its 
walls has fallen but upon the 
portions of wall surface still 
standing can be seen carvings in 
low relief of intense interest. 


The inner chamber of the 
269 


around 


temple 


270 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


structure above, that of the temple proper, has its walls as yet almost in- 
tact and they were once completely covered with mural paintings depicting 
domestic scenes, early migrations and war forays. Nature however has 
passed her erasing hands over large portions of the smooth wall surfaces 
and vandal man has proved more pitiless than Nature in defacing the 
works of the ancient artists, yet even so, enough remains to make this 
chamber the repository of what is probably the finest examples of this class 
of mural paintings yet left to us for study and comparison. The walls of 
the outer chamber were once covered’ with paintings but of these not a 
single legible outline remains. The great twin columns fashioned into the 
conventionalized forms of serpents still hold in the deeper carvings and 
cavities, like those of the mouth and the bulbous teeth, traces of the pig- 
ments that once covered the surfaces of columns and chamber walls. 

The entire front of this beautiful structure, as chaste and artistic in its 
own way as the temples of Greece and Rome, has fallen. Fractured and 
wrenched apart by the growing tree roots at the apex of the roof, the weakest 
point in all the structure, the overweight of the heavily ornamented facade 
caused the whole mass to fall outward, and turning upon the two serpent 
columns as upon gigantic pivots, to be tossed nearly clear of the temple 
platform, crashing down to the hard and level space of the Ceremonial 
Court full thirty feet beneath. 

This fagade with its beautiful frieze of carved stone figures, graceful 
meanders and noble proportions, it is hoped to reproduce in as nearly as 
possible its pristine state. It is an undertaking much in line with the de- 
sires of the late John La Farge, who with me had long felt the wisdom and 
necessity of incorporating in some definite way the ideals and fruits of these 
ancient distinctively American architects into what is fast becoming our 
own modern distinctively American architecture. 

For these reasons I not only felt greatly honored by the action of the 
high authorities of the Museum in confiding to me this important under- 
taking, but I also felt that I had a double charge and a double incentive, 
inasmuch as in so doing I was aiding in the fulfillment of the dead artist’s 
dream and in my own hopes as well. Such measure of success as I may have 
attained must be attributed more to these incentives than to my own merely 
personal abilities. 

Proceeding to Yucatan I attacked the task with enthusiasm. My 
previous experience in reproducing the “Labna Facade” and in the still 
more important undertaking at the World’s Fair in Chicago aided me greatly 
in working out the problems and overcoming the obstacles in this task." 
Then too the efficient aid of my oldtime companion in the field, Pietro 
Grisante, the expert plaster-mold maker, was to be at my service and I 
knew how much I could rely upon him. 


1 Official Report Mass. Board of Managers, World’s Fair, page 161. 


Five hundred feet west of the pyramid temple are two moles of masonry, 274 feet long, 30 feet 
high, 30 feet thick. The space between (121 feet wide) was probably a ceremonial court used for 
celebration of sacred rites and games. Upon the southern end of the eastern mole rests an edifice 
called the ‘‘Temple of the Jaguars”’ 


Facade portions uncovered. Every cubic foot in the fallen mass was gone over and not a frag- 
ment however small was thrown aside without careful examination 271 


The paper molds of the carvings still in place had to be made from a scaffolding of large 
and small poles bound together with ropes, native fashion. Some danger attended the work 
because of the disintegrating condition of the walls and the continual movement and shaking 
of the scaffolding which swung fully fifty feet above the temple terrace. Once we had the 
work done and the paper molds ready to be dried by the hot sun when a storm arose and the 
wind whipped our tarpaulins aloft like so many handkerchiefs and scattered the molds in bits 
far and wide 


The greater portion of this once beautiful fagade lay in a huge mass of 
masonry, broken stone and lime, over thirty feet below the front platform 
of the temple. The commingled mass had become compacted by rain 
percolation and time pressure into a cement-like hardness. Over this 
had accumulated a thick blanket of vegetable mold and trees had grown as 
huge as those of a forest primeval. Their rotting trunks were still visible 
and their myriad roots yet bound the stone masses as if with bands of iron. 

The work commenced by the clearing off of all the superficial accumula- 
tion and débris upon the front chamber floor and the platform of the temple. 
In so doing we came upon mementoes of earlier workers in the field. A long 


272 


ELE 


UNOSN IAL UBOMOUTY OY} JO SOUBIJUS ONUSAW snqunjory oy} Jo oanjzeoy yemyzooyore we se sienSsee oy} Jo o[dmoy, oy) Jo worv10}s01 & Asn OF pouULTd st 4T 


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Aco ; : = 2 sig 


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Senora acted he 


274 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


narrow break in the floor evidenced the trench that the tireless student Dr. 
August Le Plongeon dug when he interred the fourteen Atlantean figures to 
keep them safe from vandal hands. An empty marmalade can was the 
souvenir left by Mr. A. P. Maudslay, now president of the Royal Anthro- 
pological Institute of Great Britain, and I was almost ready to affirm that 
it was the same can that I helped him to empty nearly a quarter of a 
century before. A daintily marked crystal flask that once held citrate of 
iron, could only have been the property of Miss Adéle Breton, the gifted 
artist-student whose copy of the mural paintings within the inner chamber 
of this temple are as beautiful as they are exact. Other finds were of other 
later visitors but more prosaic and so less interesting. 

With the cleaning off of all this modern and near modern accumulation, 
the steel probe, the whisk broom and the trowel laid bare surfaces and 
outlines untouched by modern students. These were followed up until the 
full original outlines of the entire front platform were clearly defined and 
worked out. 

Carefully disposing of the accumulation removed, that it might not fall 
upon and so disturb the true sequence of the material below in which exca- 
vation was to be made later, the carved stone work to the right and left 
of the wide front stairway and the entirely new carvings brought to light 
by this clearing were all carefully cleaned, photographed and measured 
as preliminary processes to that of making the molds of plaster or of paper. 
It was found that the wide stairway in front of the temple platform consists 
of four steps (excluding the base and platform planes) each twenty-seven 
feet long with an eight inch tread and a twelve inch riser. These narrow 
treads and high risers are characteristic of a sandal-wearing people. 

To the right and left of this stairway and binding it in place are large 
stone plates, one on each side, and each plate has upon its face a paneled 
carving. Beyond each of these stone plates which are inclined at the same 
angle as the stairway, are recessed walls slightly inclining from the vertical 
inward toward the temple. The wall on the left looking from the temple 
entrance is still in place although portions of the handsome stone slabs are 
missing but of those on the right, only the terminal post is visible and that 
is lying mutilated and prostrate. Probably the fall of the facade mass 
pushed the stones from their places and broke them into unrecognizable 
fragments on the hard surface far beneath. 

It was during the excavations of this mass of accumulations upon the 
front platform of the temple that we came upon evidence of the fact that the 
two beautifully carved stone serpent heads found later in the fallen masses 
below, when in their places rested one on each side of the stairway and 
directly over the paneled and carved stone plates. 

The symbol of the feathered serpent seems to have been to the New 
World races what the cross was to the Old World. The origin of both as 
religious symbols is buried in mists of antiquity so dense that modern man 


THE TEMPLE OF THE JAGUARS 275 


may not hope to penetrate it. Both the Maya and the Aztec had their 
culture heroes, Kukulcan ot Quetzalcoatl, whom they first deified, then 
surrounded with the aura of still more ancient sun myths, and endowed 
with attributes common to the beliefs of an agricultural people in regions 
where the beneficent rains are eventualities. 

That the religious ideals evidenced by these symbols permeated the very 
lives and influenced every action of these ancient builders is clearly revealed 
by the symbolism of this feathered serpent that in its varied and conven- 
tionalized forms is ever present on structural base, carved approach and wall 


The largest and most typical of all the serpent columns discovered in these ancient 
cities of Yucatan. This is one of the twin columns which formed the central supports of 
the fallen facade. Color in the crevices proves that they were painted. The feathered 
serpent as a religious symbol seems to have been to the New World what the cross was to 


the Old. It is found everywhere in architectural ornamentation from structural base to 
carved approach and facade 


276 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


facade. The motive of the feathered serpent becomes therefore a highly 
important factor in the analysis of their work and the development of their 
ideas. 

The twin columns that formed the central supports of this facade to be 
reproduced are the largest and most typical of all the serpent columns yet 
found among the ancient structures on the peninsula. The serpents’ heads 
are over three feet six inches measured between the crotalid plates, four 
feet three inches high from base of lower jaw to crown of crotalid plate, and 
seven feet long from front of jaw to outer angle of the neck. The column 
proper from base plane to capital is eight feet two inches, the thickness of 
the capital is two feet, two inches, while the upper flare of the tail is fully 
four feet. The whole column is well carved, artistically covered in front 
with the flowing plumes of the quetzal bird. The crotalid head with its 
pronounced crotalid plates above the eyes, has all the distinctive marks of 
the crotalus or rattlesnake, but conventionalized through centuries of reli- 
gious idealism.- The inner back of the column corresponding to the belly 
of the serpent is marked with segments, like the serpent scales, but even 
these are sparingly overlaid with the smoothly flowing plumes of the sacred 
bird. The tail conventionalized into the capital has its front thickly coy- 
ered with the plumes of the bird, while the surface underneath is carved 
into the conventionalized segments of the rattlesnake. Fragments of both 
tails lie scattered among the débris at the foot of the mole, beneath the 
temple for a distance of thirty feet or more. Portions of the rattles were 
found over three feet long, but large parts of both tails are so crushed and 
broken as to be unrecognizable. Enough has been secured however to 
make restoration possible. 

The huge beams of Zapote wood that passed from end walls to the 
serpent columns and so helped to sustain the front fagade, have entirely 
disappeared, and any hopes that I may have had of finding them among the 
fallen material were doomed to disappointment. It may be that they too 
were carried off to fill another purpose, either by Valladolid esthetics or 
by even earlier vandals, for their dimensions would not have escaped notice. 

The work of making the paper molds of the carved stone sections still in 
place on the temple platform and those still in place on the north fagade was 
attended with some danger and much difficulty but great interest. The 
highest line of carved stones still in position was fully fifty sheer feet above 
the level of the general terrace. From the temple base on the level of the 
mole platform, large and heavy poles were bound together, as the natives 
well know how to do, while strong ropes held them upright and fast, and so 
permitted the framework of the scaffolding made of smaller poles to be 
erected. On this moving, shaking, yet perfectly safe scaffolding of poles, 
with not a nail or spike in the whole structure, we worked and made the 
molds. 


THE TEMPLE OF THE JAGUARS 217 


The element of real danger was furnished by the disintegrating wall 
material and the loose stones of the grouting. These stone fragments were 
some of them quite large and had been placed by the ancient builders in the 
plastic mass of grouting much like the nodules in the pudding stone. The 


Making the molds in a temperature of 130° F. was no 


easy task. 
completed. 
tons 


The photograph shows the mold of the head 
{The serpent tail capital weighs nearly three 


softer mortar wearing 
away with the erosion 
of the centuries has left 
the stones outcropping, 
at times falling of their 
own weight and always 
aconstant factor of dan- 
ger to those working be- 
neath them. Then too 
the high winds and rain 
storms that prevailed 
at this season, while 
they aided the growing 
crops and made the lux- 
uriant vegetation, also 
increased the difficul- 
ties of the undertaking 
in hand. Once we had 
the work on the north- 
ern fagade all done, and 
well done it was too. 
The long sections were 
duly marked and noted, 
nothing remained but 
the hot sun to do its 
part in drying and 
hardening the plastic 
paper surface. Even 
while we were looking 
at it with tired backs 
but satisfied _ hearts, 
black cloud heads ap- 
peared in the east, they 
rose rapidly and hid the 
sun. We at once put 
the heavy tarpaulins 
over the molded sur- 
faces fixing them in 
place by the iron force- 


278 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


hooks, spreading clips, and screws especially made for the purpose. No 
use! for when the strong wind came it whipped the tarpaulins aloft, torn 
and split like so many handkerchiefs, while the drying paper molds once 
lying so smoothly and trim on the carved stone surfaces, were scattered far 
and wide as bits of paper over the tree tops. 

The work was once more completed and this time Nature was in a more 
lenient mood. The sun did its work even as we did ours, and in the proper 
time, the molds duly prepared and rendered impermeable to moisture by 


*. a y 


“ gs 
nt 
oe alla 


a! a 
ay 
ae 


os 
. 


The completed sectional mold of the serpent column. Note the many pieces tied 
and wedged to await the drying and trimming process. Each separate piece weighs sev- 
eral hundred pounds. For shipping to New York the molds were packed with dry 
xkusac grass in cases of zpasac wood which had been cut in the forest and dried in the hot. 
sun for months 


THE TEMPLE OF THE JAGUARS 279 


varnishings, were packed and so made safe against all ordinary dangers and 
mishaps. 

The description, delineation, measurements and molding of the facade 
portion still in place, and so capable of serving as guide in the restoration 
of the fallen facade, having been completed, the rest of the réport deals with 
the accumulated material on the floor of the Ceremonial Court. Every 
cubic foot of this immense mass of fallen material must be carefully gone 
over, not a stone fragment however small is to be thrown aside without 
having been carefully examined. 

The dimensions of the fallen facade having been determined, the zones 
of varied designs on the northern fagade portion still in place, were measured, 
numbered and given names. For example: the “Frieze of the Jaguars and 
the Shields” was analyzed and its intent studied. By computation it 
was found that the frieze, if of unbroken continuity in front, should hold 
three shields and eight jaguars. In time the three shields were found, no 
more and no less; and enough jaguars or fragments of jaguars to complete 
the required number, thus the continuity of design on that line of frieze was 
logically established, and so on with the other bands. This was the task in 
the round. The problems involved were many and varied, the mere mold- 
ing of the carved stones found being among the least of them. 

Not only were the factors of displacement, fracture, and actual demoli- 
tion to be considered, but others not subject to the natural laws of falling 
bodies. For instance, some time between 1721 and 1840, corrals were 
built and drinking troughs made on the plantation of the Chichen from 
stones some of which certainly were and others may have been taken from 
the falling facade. Again, during the middle of the last century, a 
strange microbe seems to have invaded the brain of a Jefe Politico of the 
City of Valladolid, some thirty miles distant, and under its influence he 
sent carts and men to Chichen Itzé and took therefrom carved stones and 
serpents’ heads, to adorn the plaza of Valladolid, and some of these at least 
came from the level space of the Ceremonial Court. As the carts went on 
through the forest road toward Valladolid some broke down under their 
heavy burdens and their contents still lay in the forest where they were 
dumped. Later, half a century later, some of these carved stones that did 
reach Valladolid were once more removed, taken to the Museo Yucateco at 
Merida, where they now are. All these incidents and many others not 
necessary to mention, made the task by no means an easy one, but for that 
reason the more fascinating. 

The methods by which the undertaking has been accomplished, the 
details by which the final result has been obtained, are so varied that much 
of the original monotony of such hard labor was missing, and the interest 
of even the slowest-witted native on the work so awakened that they often 
of their own volition continued lugging and hauling, digging around some 


An assembled carving made up of eight fragments which had been thrown apart at the time of 
the great crash centuries ago 


The temple gains its name from a remarkable frieze of well-carved jaguars alternating with 
shields. This cut shows one shield and a portion of a second, and three jaguars [Compare with cuts 
pages 266 and 272]. Study of this facade still in place and computation of the dimensions of the 
fallen facade gave the conclusion that the frieze of the latter must have held three shields and eight 


jaguars. Exactly this number was found during the excavation 
280 


THE TEMPLE OF THE JAGUARS 281 


especially interesting carving, long after the hours when they would usually 


be swinging in their hammocks, in the cool shade of their palm-thatched 
homes. 


Some particularly interesting carving would be unearthed —a little turning over in the 
hand, the fragment would fit into its place with other fragments and the workmen would go 
on with the digging 


The tree trunks, matted roots and all the surface accumulation of cen- 
turies were carefully removed so as not to disturb the sequence, nor yet 


The natives proved faithful workmen and became so interested that they often remained 
many hours overtime at the digging 


282 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


to dislodge the delicate portions of carvings that the long, slender yet tena- 
ciously strong rootlets might have grown into and wedged apart metres 
deep in the mingled mass of disintegrated mortar and worked stone sections. 

Long years of experience with my work, have made good practical 
archeologists of some of the workmen, not a fragment of carved stone, 
however small, within reason of course, escapes their keen eyes — a prelimi- 
nary fumbling, a little turning over in the hand, a speculative eyeing of a 
nearby fractured carving, and then the 
fragment fits into its place while the 
workman with a grunt of satisfaction 
goes on with his digging. 

The making of the molds with the 
temperature at 130 in the sun and no 
shade available, is not precisely a recrea- 
tion but all things that have a begin- 
ning have an end as well, and in time in 
spite of the obstacles seen and unfore- 
seen, the undertaking was completed and 
the final processes of trimming, binding 
and waterproofing the paper molds com- 
menced. Then the trunks of apasac 
wood, that had been cut in the forest 
and drying for months, were sawn into 
inch boards and made up into strong 
wooden cases according to the measure 
of the various mold sections. Large 
quantities of wkusac grass, a very fine 
packing grass, had been cut, cured and 
stored, and with this the heavy plaster 
molds were packed so carefully and so 
securely that it seemed as if they could 
defy the efforts of the most reckless bag- 
gage-smasher and freight-wrecker. 

Careful cartage over the rough frontier 
roads and careful handling under personal 
supervision at the port of Progreso, made 
more than probable the safe arrival of the 
twenty-seven large cases containing all 
the molds, both paper and plaster, to the 
store-rooms of the Museum, where they 
now lie @ la disposicién de Ud. 


THE ROOSEVELT EXPEDITION TO SOUTH 
AMERICA 


NEWS OF THE MUSEUM’S OTHER SOUTH AMERICAN WORK 


By Frank M. Chapman 


HE Museum’s zoological explorations in South America, which 

eh during the past two years have produced such interesting results 

in the northern parts of that continent, now promise to be even 

more effectively prosecuted in southern South America, under the leadership 
of Colonel Theodore Roosevelt. 

Colonel Roosevelt will sail for South America on October 4, and after 
delivering lectures in Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires and Santiago de Chile, 
will penetrate the interior of southern Brazil to study the country, its 
mammals and birds. There is no big-game hunting in the region which 
Colonel Roosevelt proposes to visit, and his expedition serves to emphasize 
his keen interest in natural history even more strongly than did his recent 
trip to Africa. Mr. George K. Cherrie and Mr. Leo E. Miller, both tried 
members of American Museum expeditions, will accompany Colonel 
Roosevelt as field assistants. 


cally, one of the least known areas in South America. Various 
attempts have been made to penetrate it but the obstacles presented 
by climate and transportation have not been wholly overcome. 

Mr. L. E. Miller, who recently headed an American Museum expedition 
to this terra incognita, has more nearly achieved success than any of his 
predecessors, but through no fault of his, he was obliged to retreat just as 
he was about to reap the reward of two months’ constant exertion and ex- 
posure to the dangers incident to travel on the Orinoco. 

Mr. Miller, accompanied by Mr. F. X. Iglseder, as assistant and carto- 
grapher, left Ciudad Bolivar on December 17, 1912, in a small sloop bound 
for San Fernando de Atabapo. After a number of narrow escapes and the 
loss of one man, this remote settlement was reached January 28. On Febru- 
ary 3, he reémbarked with a mandioca-hunter, whom he was fortunate 
enough to encounter, for his destination, Mt. Duida, farther up the Orinoco. 
This mountain being unscalable from the Orinoco side (site of the now 
abandoned village of Esmeraldas), it was proposed to attack it from the 
west by ascending the Cunucunuma, a small river which flows into the Ori- 
noco about twenty miles west of the junction of the Orinoco and Cassiquiare, 
and on March 4, camp was established at Boca Sina, some eight miles from 
the mouth of the Cunucunuma, and but two miles from the base of Duida. 

Work was now begun on a trail through the forest to the mountain, but 
before it was completed Mr. Iglseder fell desperately ill with a complication 
of beriberi and malaria, and in order to save his life Mr. Miller was com- 
pelled to return with him to San Fernando and eventually to Cristébal- 
Colén. 


lg \HE mountainous region at the headwaters of the Orinoco is, zoblogi- 


283 


JOIN “A “VT “AI JO UOKTpedx@ ‘oooulO oy} Ur sT[ey punore uoeJI10dsuLa} JoJ yUSTIdMba Surprojun 
VOIYANWY HLNOS NI NOILVYO1dxa 


SOUTH AMERICAN EXPEDITION 285 


Some four hundred birds were collected on the upper Orinoco, but none 
were taken above an altitude of seven hundred feet at the base of Duida 
and the fauna of the mountain still remains unknown. Mr. Miller will 
probably renew his attempt to conquer it and the receipt of further collec- 
tions will be awaited before attempting to report on the specimens already 
obtained. Six hundred specimens were secured at Crist6bal-Col6n includ- 
ing a surprising number of species not found in Trinidad. 

From Crist6bal-Col6n on the Paria Peninsula (which was attacked by 
revolutionists shortly after Mr. Miller left it), Mr. Miller proceeded to Port 
of Spain, Trinidad, whence his collections were shipped to New York, and 
proceeded thence to Georgetown, British Guiana. Here he was greatly 
assisted by government officials in procuring the necessary permit to collect 
specimens and was soon established at Tumatumari near the junction of the 
Essequibo and Potaro Rivers. Under date of August 1, Mr. Miller reports 
that the surrounding primeval forests were proving most productive collect- 
ing ground and that in spite of a daily rainfall of between two and three 
inches, his collections were growing at the rate of about two hundred 
birds and mammals per week. October first, Mr. Miller is to sail from 
Georgetown for Barbados to join the Roosevelt expedition. 


during the past season and a shipment of 1400 birds and mammals 
has just been received from him. These specimens were collected 
in part on the coast from the northern extension of the arid coastal zone of 
Peru and give us definite information of where this arid strip merges into 
the humid coastal region of northeastern Ecuador and western Colombia. 
Mr. Richardson also collected in the luxuriant forests of the subtropical 
zone at an altitude of 6000 feet, in the temperate zone about Quito and the 
base of Pinchincha, and in the paramo or alpine zone of Pinchincha and 
Chimborazo, working on the latter mountain up to an altitude of 16,000 feet. 
Here Mr. Richardson secured specimens and accessories for a habitat 
group to represent the bird life of the upper life-zone of this famous 
volcano. 


| rae work in Ecuador, under Mr. Richardson has proved successful 


exceptionally important addition in the collections made by Mr. 

R. H. Beck for Mr. F. F. Brewster and Dr. L. C. Sanford. A large 
shipment lately received from Mr. Beck is particularly rich in little-known 
marine forms collected well off the coast of Peru, and in a beautifully 
prepared series of water-fowl from Lake Junin, situated at an altitude of 
13,000 feet in the Peruvian Andes, which includes the Andean flamingo and 
many other species not heretofore represented in the Museum. 


| an Peru, the Museum’s available study material has received an 


AMERICAN MUSEUM EXPEDITIONS FOR 
FOSSIL VERTEBRATES 


By W. D. Matthew 


Brown in search of Cretaceous dinosaurs, reports a very successful 

season. Nine dinosaur skulls and a correspondingly large series 
of skeletons or parts of skeletons have been secured. These all come from 
an older formation than those in which most of our Cretaceous dinosaurs 
have been obtained. Many, perhaps most of them, will be new to science, 
and we hope to recognize among them the ancestors of the horned dinosaur 
Triceratops, the armored Ankylosaurus, the duck-billed Trachodon and the 
carnivorous Tyrannosaurus which lived during the latest Cretaceous. 
Doubtless also we shall find among them others which left no descendants in 
the later fauna. The collection of over seventy boxes will soon be shipped 
to the Museum, and its preparation and study will be taken up during the 
winter. Mr. Brown regards this as the most successful season’s work yet 
in his dinosaur campaign, bettering even last year’s results. 

Mr. Walter Granger, in charge of the American Museum expedition to 
the Eocene of New Mexico, has secured a fine collection of the very rare 
fossils from the Puerco formation of that region. 

One of the most valuable portions of the Cope collection of fossil mam- 
mals purchased for the Museum by a number of the Trustees in 1894, was 
the collection from the Puerco formation. These were, and are, the most 
ancient mammals that we know much about; for the few remains of mam- 
mals that have been found in older formations are very fragmentary and 
exceedingly rare. With the Puerco fauna at the very beginning of the Age 
of Mammals commence the consecutive documentary records of the history 
of the evolution of the various kinds of higher quadrupeds. It is to paleeon- 
tology what the Chaldzan records are to archeology. 

Additions to the Cope collection of Puerco fossils were secured by the 
Museum expeditions of 1892 and 1896. Mr. Granger has now secured from 
the Lower or True Puerco horizon a collection equaling or exceeding in 
value all that the Museum possessed hitherto, and in addition a large series 
of specimens from the Torrejon or Upper Puerco horizon. Among the new 
specimens are a number of skulls and two or more skeletons. One specimen 
of Ectoconus, a primitive hoofed animal about as large as a bull terrier, from 
the Lower Puerco is fairly complete and is the most ancient mammal skele- 
ton ever found. Other skulls and partial skeletons of primitive hoofed and 
clawed mammals are of scarcely less interest, and a number of specimens 
appear to belong to new genera and species. Altogether the collection is of 
remarkable scientific interest, and will provide material for a careful restudy 


of the Basal Eocene faune. 
286 


e SHE American Museum expedition to Alberta in charge of Mr. Barnum 


MUSEUM NOTES 287 


Among the most valuable prizes secured by last year’s successful fossil 
expeditions were three skeletons of the gigantic and extraordinary “clawed 
ungulate” MWoropus, a huge animal combining the proportions of a horse 
and a rhinoceros and with large curved claws on fore and hind feet. These 
skeletons were found by Mr. Albert Thomson in the great fossil quarry at 
Agate, Nebraska. This year Mr. Thomson continued work in the quarry 
hoping to find certain missing parts of the skeletons. Judging from his 
reports he has not only succeeded in finding most of the missing parts, but 
has discovered two or more additional skeletons equal to the best of those 
we had before. The Museum is now assured of the materials for a group of 
complete and finely preserved skeletons of this remarkable extinct animal. 


MUSEUM NOTES 


Srvce the last issue of the JouRNAL the following persons have been elected to 
membership in the Museum: 

Fellow, Mr. Paut GriswoLp HowsEs; 

Honorary Fellow, Dr. LEONARD C. SANFORD; 

Sustaining Member, Mrs. Emiry N. Huycx; 

Annual Members, Mrs. JosepH J. Corn, Mrs. Wiuiiam C. DickERMAN, Mrs. 
J. R. Smmon, Miss Auice A, Detamar, Rev. CuHarues L. Goopruu, Dr. Louis C. 
LeRoy, Dr. JAmMes FRANKLIN NAGLE AND Messrs. Paut ARMSTRONG, Epwarp D. 
Bettens, V. Forspin, FERDINAND HANnsEN, M. LEDERMAN, Oscar LOWENSTEIN, 
B. Frank MEBANE, WILLIAM STUBNER, FRANCIS J. SWAYZE, CHARLES WILSON 
TaIntor and A. WILLSTATTER. 


Dr. Rosert Brooms, the chief authority upon South African paleontology, is 
visiting America for a year of scientific research especially upon the ancient verte- 
brates of the Permian period. He has honored the American Museum by accepting 
a temporary appointment upon its staff for this purpose, and has brought with him 
his splendid private collection of South African Permian reptiles, one of the best yet 
brought together. While slightly surpassed in size by that of the British Museum it 
rivals that famous collection from a morphological and exhibition point of view. The 
comparative study of this collection and of the large collections in this Museum from 
the Permian of Texas and elsewhere, will yield results of great scientific value. 


Pror. H. E. Crampton devoted the summer to the completion of the first volume 
of reports on the ‘‘ Evolution and Natural History of the Partule of Polynesia.” 
This volume deals with about 24,000 adult snails, representing the fauna of Tahiti 
and it presents the evidence which demonstrates recent evolutionary changes in the 
species and varieties of the island. 


Dr. Frank E. Lutz, accompanied by Mr. Charles W. Leng, is in Cuba on an 
entomological collecting trip. After a period of study in Havana where unusual 
facilities for work were accorded by Prof. Carlos de la Torre, the expedition estab- 
lished field headquarters in Pinar del Rio. Dr. Lutz reports results which are 
valuable not only in extending knowledge of the fauna of Cuba itself, but also in 
establishing an evolutionary connection of the insects of eastern Cuba with those of 
southern Florida. Field work will be continued into October. 


288 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


Dr. W. K. Grecory, assistant curator in the department of vertebrate palzon- 
tology, attended the Birmingham meeting of the British Association for the Advance- 
ment of Science, having been invited to take part in the discussion on convergence in 
evolution. He also exhibited to the meeting some of the valuable specimens of early 
Tertiary lemuroids secured by our recent expeditions in the Eocene of Wyoming, 
with a discussion of their relationships to the various groups of Primates, living and 
extinct, and presented a paper by Dr. W. D. Matthew summarizing the important 
scientific results attained by the American Museum’s expeditions in the Eocene forma- 
tions during the last ten years, as conducted by Mr. Walter Granger. 


Rey. Gitpert L. Wrison of Minneapolis, a volunteer field-worker in anthropol- 
ogy, has just completed two months’ study of the ‘“‘zodculture”’ of the Hidatsa-Man- 
dan Indians in North Dakota. The term ‘‘zoéculture”’ is often used to designate 
all the relations between man and animals, especially such as are to any degree 
domesticated. Mr. Wilson reports the work unusually successful. His notes show 
that these people had worked out a detailed and definite body of knowledge for the 
breeding, training and use of dogs as traction animals. Later when horses were 
introduced among them, they worked out another system for that animal. The 
results of this study will be published by the American Museum. 


Mr. ALANSON SKINNER returned from a four months’ collecting trip among the 
Indians of Manitoba and Wisconsin. While in Manitoba he made a detailed study 
of the so-called Plains-Ojibway, a group regarding themselves as independent of the 
Ojibway proper, and designating themselves as ‘ Bungi,’’ a name not heretofore appear- 
ing in ethnographical literature. Part of the Bungi reside on Turtle Mountain Re- 
serve in North Dakota. The chief point of interest resulting from Mr. Skinner’s. 
observations is that these Ojibway present very clearly traits of culture pertaining 
both to the Central Algonkin tribes of the Eastern Woodlands and to the Plains 
Indians of the buffalo country to the west. The study of these transitional or mixed 
cultures is of great importance just now, because of the discussions between geog- 
raphers and anthropologists as to the relation between geographical environment and 
culture. Also, such studies bear directly upon the theoretical problem as to whether 
a people gets its culture chiefly by borrowing it from others or by inventing it inde- 
pendently under the stimulus of similar conditions of life. 


Messrs. Roy W. Miner and H. MuEtuer have recently returned from a collect- 
ing trip to Passamaquoddy Bay on the boundary line between Maine and New Bruns- 
wick. While in this region they obtained an extensive series of invertebrates for 
purposes of comparison with similar forms collected in recent years from more south- 
ern localities. Passamaquoddy Bay is an arm of the Bay of Fundy and is at the 
threshold of that region of great tides which at this point reach a height of twenty- 
eight feet above low water. Interesting observations were made in connection with 
the distinctness with which the faunal zones of life separate from each other in the 
“‘bhetween-tides”’ area, as compared with the more condensed and overlapping condi- 
tion of these zones in more southern waters, such as Casco Bay and the Woods Hole 
region where the rise of the tides is not more than ten and five feet respectively. 


Tue Charles 8. Mason archeological collection from the vicinity of Jonesboro, 
Tennessee, has been presented to the American Museum by Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan. 
It contains several remarkable engraved shell gorgets and a number of unusual stone 
implements among which are two large exceptional celts. The entire collection came 
from one locality and thus constitutes an important addition to the Museum’s series 
for the Eastern States. 


The American Museum Journal 


VotumeE XIII NOVEMBER, 1913 NuMBER 7 


CONTENTS 


Cover, “On the Tana River” 


Copyrighted photograph of a herd of impalla, Africa, by Carl E. Akeley 


The Asphalt Group of Fossil Skeletons. .......... W. D. MatrHew 291 


The asphalt pools of Rancho-la-Brea, yielding fifty species of birds and at least 
as Many mammals, form doubtless the richest repository of fossils ever dis- 
covered. ‘The new group in the American Museum serves to convey a picture 
of the operation of these asphalt pools in past ages as death traps 


Trackers of the Cheringani Hills.............. W. S. Rarnsrorp 299 


The story of the help given to the Museum expedition for black rhinoceroses 
by the warriors of a poison-hunting tribe, the Cheringani Dorobo of British 
East Africa 


The “Fossil Forest” of Arizona............. GEORGE P. Merritt 311 


Museum Coéperation in the Teaching of School Hygiene and Sanita- 


PIGIIN ERT OLE A Are od en C.-E. A. WINSLow 317 
Sea (lamipreys cand, them (Nests. Sen ks 25 03 Louts Hussakor | 323 
INITSEIRIIN UN GHOSE of fie etc 4 oir tar eae. we SUNN tS, Raum a ok 326 


Mary Cyrntuia Dickerson, Editor 


Published monthly from October to May by the American Museum of Natural History. 
Terms: one dollar per year, fifteen cents per copy. Entered as second-class matter January 
12, 1907, at the Post-Office at Boston, Mass., Act of Congress, July 16, 1894. 


Subscriptions should be addressed to the AMERICAN MuseuM JOURNAL, 77th St. 
and Central Park West, New York City. 


The Journal is sent free to all members of the Museum. 


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The American Museum Journal 


VotumE XIII NOVEMBER, 1913 NUMBER 7 


THE ASPHALT GROUP OF FOSSIL 
SKELETONS 


THE TAR-PITS OF RANCHO-LA-BREA, CALIFORNIA 


By W. D. Matthew 


illustrate one of the most marvelous fossil deposits of the world. 

This is the famous asphalt formation of Rancho-la-Brea near Los 
Angeles, California. 

The petroleum of southern California, as in most of the West, has an 


r ‘HE Museum has just completed and placed on exhibition a group te 


“asphalt base’? — that is to say when it evaporates, the heavy oils left 
behind are asphaltum instead of paraffin. Wherever the petroleum oozes 
up from the earth in springs, this residuum of asphalt accumulates. The 
oil wells up continually from below and keeps it soft close around the spring, 
but elsewhere it is hardened into a solid mass mixed with earth or wind-blown 
dust. At the Rancho-la-Brea, in the centre of a broad open valley close to 
the city, is an extensive formation of this sort, made by oil springs which 
were probably much more active in former times than now. Here and there 
on the surface are little pools of semi-liquid asphalt, covered with a film of 
dust in dry weather, with water after a rain, yielding slowly beneath the 
weight and clutching with unbelievable tenacity whatever sinks beneath 
the surface. To the inexperienced eye the dust-covered surface looks like 
firm ground; except in the softer pools one can walk across it without any 
considerable yielding. But woe to the unfortunate animal that steps into 
one of the softer pools, or lingers on his way across a firmer surface to look 
about him or to drink of the water collected over the asphalt surface. His 
feet sink below the surface, the treacherous tar clutches them fast, and his 
most desperate struggles result only in sinking him deeper and deeper. 
Escape is impossible; he succumbs finally to exhaustion and little by little 
is sucked down and disappears. 

Such has been the fate of many small animals in the last few years. 
Larger animals too, cattle, horses and dogs have been caught in the asphalt, 
some dragged out by the aid of ropes, while others not seen in time for rescue, 
have perished miserably. But the tar-pits although cruelly effective to the 
limit of their size, are not now large or numerous enough to constitute a 
serious danger. 

At the time when these springs were active the asphalt pools were much 


291 


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Excavating for fossils at La Brea. Many white weathered fragments of bone are scat- 
tered over the surface. Oil-wells in the distance 


larger and more numerous and formed a death-trap of terrible efficiency for 
the numerous animals that inhabited the valleys and plains of that region. 
This was in the Pleistocene Period, during the Glacial Epoch, when much of 
the northern part of the continent was buried under great fields of ice. 
Southern California, far below the southern limits of glaciation had probably 
a less arid climate than now, and a very large and varied animal population, 
mostly of extinct species and some of them very widely different from the 
living animals of the region. 

Excavations for road asphalt in this formation were commenced in 1874 
by Major Hancock, the owner of the ranch. The material was melted down 
to free it from impurities and shipped in barrels to San Francisco and else- 
where. The work was not continued as the cost of purifying the product 
was too high for it to find a profitable market at that time. It served to 
call attention to the fact that the asphalt contained numerous bones or 
fragments of bones, and when examined by scientists it appeared that these 
were not modern bones but belonged to extinct animals. Prospecting for 
fossils soon showed that around the little oil springs or where springs had 
formerly come up, there were pipes or chimneys of soft asphalt, which were 
veritable ossuaries, packed full of the bones of these extinct animals, mostly 
in marvelous preservation. The excavations of the local scientific societies 
and the more extensive work carried on by the University of California have 
yielded many hundreds of skulls and tens of thousands of skeleton bones, of 
a great variety of animals large and small. The bones are impregnated 
with asphalt, otherwise little altered; but flesh and hide, horns and hoofs 

293 


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ASPHALT GROUP OF FOSSIL SKELETONS 295 


have completely disappeared, dissolved out by the petroleum and long since 
converted into bitumen, water and gases. The skeletons are never articu- 
lated; the bones are all jumbled up together in a crowded mass by the slow 
internal movements of the half-liquid asphalt in which they were entombed 
thousands of years ago. 

It is safe to say that the La Brea asphalt is the richest repository of fossils 
ever discovered, if we consider the variety of extinct animals found in it, 
the perfect preservation of their remains and the ease with which they can 
be extracted and cleaned up. It is practically unique: asphalt deposits of 
this type are common enough wherever an asphalt base petroleum comes or 
has formerly come to the surface, but bones have rarely been found in 
them and never upon any such scale as this. 

How many kinds of animals are represented in the collection is not yet 
known. Over fifty species of birds have been identified, and there are 
probably at least as many kinds of mammals. The most remarkable fact is 
the great abundance of carnivorous quadrupeds and birds of prey. Wolves, 
lions and sabre-tooth tigers, eagles and vultures are the most common of all 
the remains found; next to them stand the larger herbivora, bisons, horses, 
ground sloths and larger ruminants and wading birds; while remains of 
smaller quadrupeds and perching or ground birds are comparatively rare. 
This is a fact of grim significance, for it indicates that the larger quadrupeds, 
venturing out upon the seemingly solid surface and caught in the asphalt, 
served as a bait for animals and birds of prey, luring them from all the 
country round about and enticing them within the treacherous clutch of the 
trap. These in their turn, falling victims, served to attract others of their 
kind. And so the “death-trap of the ages,” as a poetically-minded Cali- 
fornian writer called it, self-baiting, automatically disposing of its prey, 
has collected and preserved to our time a truly wonderful series of the preda- 
cious animals and birds. The smaller animals, light and active and seldom 
venturing beyond the brink of the pool, were not often caught. 

In February of this year (1913) the writer paid a visit to this locality at 
a time when excavations were in progress for the University of California. 
The object was to study the conditions at the “tar-pits”’ as a guide to the 
construction of a characteristic group exhibit for the American Museum, 
and to secure by exchange with the Californian museums a full representa- 
tion of the fossil fauna. Every possible courtesy was received from the 
several institutions mentioned in getting together the necessary data and 
materials and especially from Professor J. C. Merriam of the University of 
California. The group as it stands is based chiefly upon the studies and 
conclusions of Professor Merriam, so far as we have succeeded in understand- 
ing and expressing them correctly. ' In effect, it is meant to convey a picture 
of the operation of this Pleistocene death-trap. No attempt is made to 
cover the skeletons with flesh and hide — this the visitor may imagine for 


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Restoration of the sabre-tooth tiger (Smilodon californicus) by Erwin Christman. A 
ground sloth (Mylodon) is nearly submerged in the asphalt pool 


himself; and add if he pleases the scanty vegetation of a dry country around 
the margins of the asphalt spring. 

Two ground sloths (Mylodon), great heavy, thick-haired, clumsy, clawed 
beasts distantly related to the living tree sloths, but as big as a grizzly bear, 
have been caught in the asphalt. In spite of their struggles indicated in the 
disturbed and broken surface of the pool, they have sunk down until only 
the head and fore limb of one, and the head of the other, appear above the 
black asphalt. 

A sabre-tooth tiger (Smilodon) one of the most powerful and dan- 
gerous of the extinct beasts of prey has been attracted by the struggles 
of the hapless ground sloths, and hastened to the spot to kill and 
devour them. But in his eagerness, he too has been trapped and is now 
vainly trying to extricate his feet, already beginning to sink below the 
surface. 

Meanwhile, a fourth animal, the great extinct wolf (Canis dirus) has 
come up. More wary, or as yet more fortunate, he has come over the solid 
hardened asphalt, and avoided the treacherous surface of the pool. He sees 
his ancient and dreaded enemy the sabre-tooth and the powerful and bulky 
ground sloths in difficulties where neither teeth nor claws will avail against 
his attack. He dare not yet spring in to attack them but leaps about on 
the margin of the pool in high excitement, barking out his real opinions in 
regard to sabre-tooth tigers, which under ordinary circumstances he would 
reserve to a safer margin of distance. The Smilodon, distracted for a mo- 
ment from his desperate attempts to free his feet from the entangling mass, 
296 


Restoration of the extinct wolf (Canis dirus) by Erwin Christman. Asphalt pool in 
foreground with a bursting gas bubble 
answers with a savage snarl, which we may interpret as a wish, soon to be 
fulfilled, that the wolf would bear him company in his troubles. 

Such is the little drama that our group sets forth. A realistic story it is 
—a characteristic incident which must have happened, pretty much as we 
have told it, again and again during the time — many thousands of years 
ago — when these tar-springs were active. 

That thousands upon thousands of animals, great and small, perished 
by this frightful death in the tar-pits of La Brea, is witnessed by their 
skeletons; that so large a proportion of them were savage beasts of prey 
may be to some a consolation, although nature accords no higher place or 
superior morality to the vegetarian over the carnivore. At all events it 
does not appear that the trap was seen by human eyes in the days of its 
vigor. No remains of man, tools, weapons, or other indications of his 
presence have been found associated with the extinct animals. There are 
various reasons for the belief that man is rather a recent arrival in the New 
World, and had not reached the Pacific Coast when these animals were 
perishing in such numbers in the tar-pits. Still he might have witnessed it. 

The fossil skeletons used in preparing this group were presented in ex- 
change by the University of California, through Professor J. C. Merriam, 
to whom we are also indebted for most of the evidence upon which their 


grouping is based, and many helpful suggestions and criticisms. 
297 


GUN-BEARERS OF THE EXPEDITION 


Wild men of the Cheringani Hills hunted with members of the expedition, giving 
loyal coéperation throughout the work 


298 


TRACKERS OF THE CHERINGANI HILLS 


HUNTING THE RHINOCEROS! IN BRITISH EAST AFRICA FOR 
CONSTRUCTION IN THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF A GROUP 
OF THIS FAST-DISAPPEARING SPECIES 


By W. S. Rainsford 


Photographs by Jenness Richardson 


66 FF I could only meet that great bull elephant, the bull of my dreams, the 

mighty tusker who will some day be seen by some lucky mortal, hide 

he never so cunningly, I think I could scarcely shoot him until I 
had hugged him for joy.” This remark shows the enthusiasm and keen 
determination of one of our persistent hunters and naturalists. Little know 
the people as they gaze in some natural history museum at some fine beast 
or bird, labeled with a half understood name, coming from a half unknown 
land — little do these people know at what cost paid in adventurous human 
life the stuffed specimen they admire is presented to them. Hunters, 
explorers, collectors, soldiers, civil servants, missionaries — the African 
sphinx follows her Grecian cousin’s example and may strangle them if they 
persist in the attempt to unravel her riddles. 

The ideal African hunter or expedition leader should have the endurance 
of a man under forty years old, should have a copper-lined stomach and be 
immune to tick, tsetse and mosquito. Climatic conditions should mean 
nothing to him. He should prefer the borderland of a swamp or even its 
pestiferous depths to the breezy upland if only he can win the one thing 
he is after. 

British East Africa has had many secrets wrested from her in the past 


1 Editorial Note:— The American Museum does not possess a group of the common 
black rhinoceros of Africa. In face of the fact that this rhino like the buffalo and zebra is 
positively doomed to extermination in the near future because an annoyance to settlers in the 
country, it seemed advisable to take steps to get material for such a group while rhinos of 
maximum size are still to be found. 

As to big-game conditions in British East Africa, unusual interest attaches to the follow- 
ing quoted from a recent publication of the New York ZoG6logical Society, Our Vanished Wild 
Life, by William T. Hornaday: 

‘As matters stand to-day in British East Africa, the big game of the country outside 
the three preserves is absolutely certain to disappear in about one-fourth the time that it 
took South Africa to accomplish the same result. The reasons are obvious: superior accessi- 
bility, more deadly rifles, expert professional guides and a widespread craze for killing big 
game. 

‘« ‘With care and economy, British East Africa should furnish good hunting for two 
centuries... Mr. Arthur Jordan has seen much of the big game of British East Africa, and 
its killing. Him I asked to tell me how long, in his opinion, the big game of that territory 
will last outside of the game preserves as it is now being killed. He said, ‘Oh, it will last a 
long time. I think it will last fifteen years.’ 

“Fifteen years! And this for the richest big-game fauna of any one spot in the whole 
world, which Nature has been several million years in developing and placing there!.... 

“The bag limit... is ruinously extravagant... . _Itis awful to think that for a petty sum 
[$250.00] any man may buy the right to kill 300 head of hoofed and horned animals of 44 
species, not counting the carnivorous animals that also may be killed. That bag limit should 


immediately be reduced 75 per cent.”’ 
299 


300 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


fifty years. ‘To-day the country with its railroad line and government 
road and its large population of colonists is no longer the place that it was 
for finding large game. The Third African expedition of the American 
Museum had received permission to kill four rhinos and three buffalo in 
British East Africa — in the wilderness, not in one of the game preserves — 
but felt considerable indecision as to the right locality for the work. Even 


Some of the wild men of the Cheringani Dorobo who worked for the expedition. None 
of these natives had met a white man before the leader of the expedition went among them 
in 1908 when on a previous visit to Africa 


three or four years ago good specimens of African mammals could be ob- 
tained along the Uganda railroad. They have now disappeared not only 
from there but also from many of the localities farther afield. Such is the 
case in regard to rhinos in the region south of the Uganda railroad and west 
of the Guaso Nyiro River near the German borderland. Rhinos are found 


To keep the expedition supplied with food a small herd of donkeys traveled between depots in 
the hills and the lower country. A donkey load is 120 pounds 


An African leopard. — ‘‘As matters stand to-day in British East Africa, the big game of the 
country outside the three preserves is absolutely certain to disappear in about one-fourth the time 
that it took South Africa to accomplish the same result.”’ 


301 


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OuLL,, “OYedls Jo pioy V 


TRACKERS OF THE CHERINGANI HILLS 303 


only of small size in the region of the Tana, also in the Serengeti Plains 
between Voi and Kilimanjaro, as also in the country south and east of Lake 
Rudolf and in that about Mt. Kenia. 

After much study of the question, the Nzoia Plateau especially the 
Cheringani Hills at its eastern part was chosen as the hunting ground, a 
small area, about one hundred miles by seventy in 
extent and some one hundred and fifty miles from 
the railroad. This choice of territory fortunately 
gave uS as companions and guides, the warriors 
of a little tribe there, the Cheringani Dorobo. 

In 1908 I had made friends with this small 
tribe of poison-hunters. Secure in the fastnesses 
of their dense woodlands, they had controlled the 
land for ages. Fear of the deadly poison of their 
arrows and the cunning secrecy of their deep- 
spiked game-pits had kept off the hunting safari; 
while the uncertain attitude toward the white men, 
maintained until quite lately by their neighbors, 
the Elgeyo tribe on the south and the Maraquette 
on the north, had closed the door effectually in 
that whole countryside to every expedition other 
than a military one. These very shy natives now 
agreed to come down from their mountain vil- 
lages and serve the new expedition. Half adozen 
real trackers were soon picked out among them. 
Three abreast where the ground was open they 
would follow the spoor at a fast walk, and interpreting the rhino’s brainless 
wanderings — signs which even to the safari leader’s experienced eyes were 
invisible — would gain knowledge as to where the game was going and where 
it would rest. 

The forest was so dense at times that we used some forty or fifty natives 
as signallers and beaters. The method took time to organize but worked 
well. The Cheringani were cautious when following rhino. It is very 
easy to shoot this animal in the open. In dense cover it is another matter, 
and beaters and trackers I must confess, spent much time safely if not use- 
fully up trees. When on the trail of buffalo, which also are easily shot in 
open country, only a few of the bravest would go into the black hollows that 
hid the beasts, and once a buffalo was wounded I had to go in with them or 
no one would go. Good fortune attended us however and in all the history 
of the expedition no one of the hundred and fifty men was seriously in- 
jured. The risk of hunting buffalo in wooded country is sadly proved, 
if proof were necessary, by the later fate of the very best of the natives I 
employed. He was a brave boy and wonderfully good as a tracker. After 


A well built Dorobo 


304 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


our expedition left the country another party hearing of its success secured 
the guidance of these Cheringani. This young native acted as gun-bearer 
and was killed by one of the first buffalo shot at. 


When the tracking led to success and an animal was killed, the expedition 


Hard work with our wagon. Deep ravines and swamp-edged streams made neces- 
sary considerable bridging and road-making 


made camp and remained on the spot until the heavy skin was thoroughly 
cared for. Mr. Jenness Richardson, the taxidermist of the expedition, was 
indefatigable and also trained many of the natives —some to unusual 
skill — in the work of preparing skins and caring for the skeletons. 

One of the great difficulties of the expedition was transportation of its 


large and heavy sup- 
plies through the 
country of the Cher- 
ingani. This country 
has forests unusual 
for East Africa. The 
altitude ranges from 
a little over 4000 feet 
above sea level in 
some of the lower 
parts to 10,500 feet 
where dense wood- 
lands cover the sum- 
mits of the hills. Im- 
passible ravines and 
deep swamp-edged 
narrow streams were 
met with everywhere 


One-year-old lion 


and made necessary considerable digging and rough bridging and road-making. 

Our usual method of transportation was by ox team. Sometimes as 
many as thirty-two oxen were put in the iron chain that hauled our 
wagon. Almost two tons of fine salt were necessary for the preparation of 
the skins. A large tent in which many men could work on the skins had to be 


carried; also a great 
weight of posho, the 
natives food of 
ground meal. Our 
consumption of this 
was about two hun- 
dred pounds each 
day. Posho, as all 
well know who have 
left civilization far be- 
hind in African lands, 
is the cause of the 
chief difficulty of all 
explorers. It may 
be impossible to pro- 
cure, once off the 
main lines of travel, 
and must be had not 
at intervals but al- 
ways. The breaking 
up and ruin of expedi- 
tions is often due to 


Chita cubs. The chita or hunting leopard differs from all 
others of the cat family in the lack of retractile claws. It hunts 
antelope, reedbuck and kudu, stalking the prey with stealth and 
cunning preliminary to alightning-likerush. For a considerable 
distance it can outstrip the swiftest antelope 


305 


The expedition halted under a thorn tree ninety yards in diameter 


the failure to provide posho. In British East Africa government land regu- 
lations require that each porter engaged receive regularly his pound and a 
half of ground meal a day. Failing that, he has a grievance against his 
employer that frees him from any obligation to serve. Now one hundred 
men eat 150 pounds a day, i.e., 4500 pounds a month, or 27,000 pounds in 
six months. In our case we had been obliged to carry all this over one hun- 
dred and fifty miles on men’s heads or by donkeys before it was available. 

To keep the expedition in food I hired a small herd of donkeys (a donkey- 
load is 120 pounds) and kept it constantly traveling between depots in the 


We were obliged to transport the supplies and equipment of the expedition one hundred 
and fifty miles from the railroad to the Nzoia Plateau 


306 


TRACKERS OF THE CHERINGANI HILLS 307 


hills and the lower country under the guidance of capable and trustworthy 
natives. This plan asa rule worked well, but often the camp was denuded 
of all porters for days together, in order to keep up the ration supply. 

How the Cheringani have preserved their tribal life (they only number 
a few hundreds) is a mystery. Perhaps their preservation is chiefly owing 
to two things: their poverty and their poison. They are not, or have not 
been, owners of herds, and not to own herds in Africa is at least to avoid 


ee 


Bull buffalo head. The expedition had been given government permission to shoot 
three buffalo for a group in the Museum 


having to pay heavy insurance risks. Four-fifths of the fighting done be- 
tween tribe and tribe has been about cattle. Until the English came, the 
very existence of the cattle-owning people had been altogether dependent 
on its organization for war as among the Masai, or on its possession of a 
country in which the herds could be hidden or defended from the powerful 
cattle-raider. The Masai for instance, the great cattle-owning tribe, have for 
the first article of the tribal creed, “In the beginning God gave all cattle to 


These poison-hunters had unusual abil- 
ity in interpreting and following the rhino’s 
wanderings. 


Black rhinoce 


* 4 ” 
Pega, bes . 


I 


the Masai.’”’ Hence the natural and 
inevitable corollary, “The Masai have 
a right to any man’s cattle.” 

In their poison the Cheringani have 
a very terrible weapon and they are 
extraordinary in the suddenness of 
their movements. The making of 
the poison is a guarded secret. After 
some months they were willing to 
show me the tree it was brewed from, 
but as to the details of its produc- 
tion they were persistently silent. 
As in the poison-making of other 
lands, certain complicated rules must 
be obeyed and customs followed. 
The poison-maker must leave his hut 
and his women-folk for weeks or 
longer. He must live quite alone 
and work alone. So much I learned. 
The poison loses strength by keeping, 
so much they admit. I am inclined 
to think this loss is rapid. 

The Cheringani trade the poison 
made by them to the surrounding 
tribes. The Nandi, their neighbors 
on the other side of the Nzoia 


* Jenn Pate 


ros head. The main aim of the expedition was to procure material for a 


black rhinoceros group in the American Museum 


308 


Plateau, used it in their war 
with the Government a few 
years ago and several soldiers 
in the King’s African Rifles 
were struck by poisoned ar- 
rows. When men_ were 
wounded, the doctors told 
me, the poison seemed to 
affect the heart but yielded 
to arsenic and the wounded 
did not die. From what I 
have seen, one struck by poi- 
soned arrows such as the 
Cheringani make— if the poi- 
son be freshly brewed — can- 
not fail to die almost in- 
stantly. 

The unhunted region of the 
Cheringani range was chosen 
for the work of the expedition 
at the advice of Mr. Woos- 
man, Chief Game Ranger of 
British East Africa, whose 
great ability and experience 
gives his judgment value. 
The success of the expedition 
must be largely credited to 
the work of the trackers 


Capturing a viverrine cat alive 


chosen from the wildmen of the Cheringani Dorobo. They had had little 


experience hunting 
with white men 
previously but 
nevertheless gave 
us their steady co- 
dperation. I have 
had in past years 
considerable expe- 
rience of trackers 
and tracking but 
never before in Af- 
rica have I seen 
work done com- 
parable with that 
of the trackers of 


Silver-haired 


i P pig of the African forest. This is a species 
the Cheringani. rarely captured and more rarely photographed 


309 


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THE “FOSSIL FOREST” OF ARIZONA 


By George P. Merrill 


Head Curator of Geology, United States National Museum 


HE so-called “ fossil forest’?! of Arizona lies some six miles south of 
Adamana, a station on the Santa Fé Railroad, in Apache County. 
The expression “so-called” is used for the reason that it is not a 
forest at all, nor does it bear any resemblance to one, being rather a collec- 
tion of silicified logs. Could one imagine a collection of saw logs ponded 
back in a boom and waiting their turn at the mill, and that further this 
collection had become water-logged, sunken and buried by sediments, he 
would gain a very fair idea of the conditions which apparently at one time 
prevailed during the history of the region. There is nothing to indicate 
that the trees even grew near the locality where the logs are now found. It 
is apparent rather that they grew at some distant point and were drifted 
by stream action into eddies after having been reduced to mere trunks or 
logs through the loss of their leaves and smaller limbs. Here, in various 
stages of decay, they sank and became buried by the accumulations of sand 
and gravel and subsequently silicified. Nor are the logs now, with few 
exceptions, even in the position of their original entombment. The beds 
in which they once lay have been cut through by erosion and the logs settled, 
or rolled down to a lower level. In this process they became more broken and 
under alternations of blistering heat and freezing cold have been splintered 
and chipped, oxidized and polished, until the country for an area of many 
square miles is covered with a bewildering array of broken trunks and frag- 
ments of agate and jasper, varying from nearly colorless through yellow and 
red to the most brilliant carnelian. The few logs which remain in the posi- 
tion of their original entombment are widely scattered and the one best 
known to the tourist is that forming the so-called “natural bridge,’’ where 
an enormous log has been undermined by the action of temporary streams 
and remains supported at both ends spanning a chasm of nearly fifty feet 
in width and twenty or more feet in depth. 
It is apparent that there were at least four eddies in which the logs 
accumulated in the area now comprised within the reservation known as the 
Petrified Forest National Monument of Arizona. The first lies some six 


1 Note.— The area of the Petrified Forest is well represented in a map issued by the 
United States Geological Survey. The map published in December, 1912, is the result of a 
survey made two years previously and shows the location and topography of the six separate 
forests. The trees are perhaps millions of years old and consist to-day of many-colored 
agate, an exceedingly hard and tough stone. Visitors to the American Museum can see many 
interesting specimens from the Petrified Forest. In the gem room are several particularly 
fine polished slabs of agatized wood from near Adamana and in the mineral collection is a two- 
foot section of agatized log from the same region. In the corridor on the ground floor leading 
to the building-stone collection is a considerable series of specimens illustrating the several 
phases of growth and fossilization collected by Dr. E. O. Hovey under special permit from the 
Department of the Interior. 

311 


Photo by E. O. Hovey, 1911 


General view in the third forest.— The fossil forest of Arizona shows a natural division into 
separate so-called ‘‘forests.’’ The photograph presents a general view in the third forest quite typical 
of the whole region 


beet al ae | 


Photo by E. O. Hovey, 1911 


In the first forest.— The silicified logs have rolled} down from the upper sandstone layer under 
the influence of wind and water erosion of the rock containing them 


312 


THE FOSSIL FOREST OF ARIZONA 313 


miles south of Adamana. This area includes the natural bridge already 
referred to, and a considerable collection of broken trunks which, while 
interesting and instructive, cannot compare in point of beauty or size with 
the second, third and Rainbow forests further to the south and southwest. 
Both the second and third have suffered less through erosion than the first 
and the logs are less broken, and it is here that one gains the best impression 
of the enormous dimensions of these silicified monsters. Trunks occur of 
all sizes up to five feet or more in diameter and sixty or eighty or even a 


yi wee, by re 


im 


Photo by E. O. Hovey, 1911 


Spectacular effect of erosion in the first forest.—The lower portion shows clays of many 
colors and on the ground at the base are broken logs of petrified wood. An osprey has built 
its nest on the pinnacle of sandstone 


hundred feet in length. Of all the deposits, that known as the Rainbow 
Forest is the most fascinating on account of the richness of the colors, al- 
though from a geological standpoint it is a wreck. Few if any of the trees 
occupy their original position of entombment, but all are tumbled about in 
a confused, chaotic manner, in the numerous gulches and ravines which 
result from the spasmodic periods of erosion characteristic of arid regions. 
It is to be regretted that the average tourist, who devotes: season after 
season to European travel, does not feel that he can devote more than a 
portion of a single day to the investigation of these wonderful deposits of 


ol4 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


his own country. This necessarily limits him to the first, or possibly to the 
first and second forests. One should devote at least two days to them, 
passing the first day through the first and second forests and arriving at the 
third in season to camp at the one water hole within the entire area. The 
forenoon of the second day can well be given up to exploring the third and 
Rainbow forests, and the afternoon to the return to Adamana. Such a 
trip involves no hardship. Camping at the altitude of 5000 feet in the dry 
atmosphere is simply exhilarating and the small supply of food and water 
neeced can readily be carried with the outfit which is furnished by the 
superintendent at Adamana. 

The geology of this area was first worked out in detail by the late Pro- 
fessor Lester F. Ward, then connected with the United States Geological 
Survey. He described the region as consisting of the ruins of a former 
plain having an altitude above sea level of something like 5700 feet. This 
has now undergone erosion to a maximum depth of nearly 700 feet and is 
cut into innumerable ridges, buttes and small mesas with valleys, gorges 
and gulches between. The rock formations consist of nearly horizontal, 
alternating beds of purple, white and bluish marls, sandstones and shales, 
giving a lively and pleasing effect such as is characteristic of so many of the 
landscapes of the state. The beds in which the logs were entombed were de- 
posited at the bottom of a Mesozoic sea, where they remained until Tertiary 
times when the entire country was raised from five to six thousand feet 
above sea level. The logs throughout the area belong to a cone-bearing 
tree, of a single species, described by Dr. F. H. Knowlton of the United 
States Geological Survey under the name of Araucarioxylon arizonicum, a 
tree no longer found in the northern hemisphere, its nearest representative 
being a small cultivated form known as the Norfolk Island pine. 

As to how the trunks became petrified or silicified we are still somewhat 
in the dark. Silica is ordinarily one of the most insoluble substances, but 
nevertheless readily soluble in an alkaline solution — that is, one containing 
soda or potash. It is probable that the solutions permeating through these 
beds were of this nature and as the logs gradually decayed their organic 
matter was replaced, molecule by molecule, by silica. The wood is there- 
fore not “turned to stone,”’ but has simply been replaced by mineral matter, 
mainly silica. The brilliant red and other colors are due to the small 
amounts of iron and manganese deposited together with the silica, and 
super-oxidation as the trunks are exposed to the air. The more brilliant 
colors are therefore to be found in the small chips lying on or near the sur- 
face. 

Prior to 1906 these forests were on government and railroad lands and 
subject to the vandalism of curiosity seekers and those commercially in- 
clined. At one time a considerable industry was carried on in cut and 
polished sections of the sounder and more highly colored varieties, and 


elk bs Gea ot x ‘( 
Photo by E. O. Hovey, 1911 

Natural bridge, seen from above.— The log best known to the tourist is the one in the first forest, 
forming the so-called “natural bridge’. This log remains in the position of its original entombment 
but has been undermined by water until it is supported at the two ends only over a chasm fifty feet 
wide and twenty feet deep 


Photo by E. O. Hovey, 1911 
View of natural bridge from below.— The bridge has recently been reénforced by artificial stone piers 


315 


Photo by E. O. Hovey, 1911 

Scene about eight miles east of Adamana.— The ground is covered with chips broken 
off from the logs by Indians in making arrow points. Hammers of agatized wood were used 
in chipping the logs 


2 ti 


Photo by E. O. Hovey, 1911 
Only a few of the fossil trees remain intact.— The greater number cover the ground in 
a bewildering array of broken trunks and fragments 


visitors to the numerous expositions of late years will probably remember 
the striking examples shown by a firm with headquarters at Sioux Falls, 
South Dakota. Fortunately the matter attracted the attention of public- 
spirited men and in 1895 the territorial legislature of Arizona memorialized 
Congress, calling attention to the region and asking that the area be set 
aside as a national park. This was done after investigation by the Land 
Office and the Geological Survey, and a proclamation by President Roose- 
velt issued June 8, 1906, set it aside permanently as a public wonderland 
and playground. Subsequently in 1911, the area was resurveyed and re- 
duced in size and a new proclamation issued by President Taft. 

In order to preserve the forest indefinitely visitors are prohibited from 
breaking or injuring the logs in any way, although permitted to carry away a 
few pounds of chips picked up from areas set aside for the purpose. 


316 


MUSEUM COOPERATION IN THE TEACH- 
ING OF SCHOOL HYGIENE AND 
SANITATION 


By C.-E. A. Winslow 


Address before the Fourth International Congress of School Hygiene at Buffalo, August, 1913 


LL of us in attendance at this Congress are probably convinced that the sci- 
ence of life and health is the one thing which should be taught in the public 
schools whatever else may be neglected. I know however that there are 
many who are quite as insistent on the importance of grammar or arithmetic 

or history, drawing or French, carpentry or cooking or basket work; and the result is 
that many school boards shut their ears to us all alike. Nevertheless, I am ready to 
brave the obvious reproach of being merely another faddist by urging that the princi- 
ples of biology and public health should occupy a truly central place in the curri- 
culum of elementary and secondary schools, and I believe that the things for which 
such a Congress as this stands are not the idiosyncrasy of a few enthusiasts but, 
if properly presented, have behind them an overwhelming force of public opinion. 

It is an obvious truism that education is meant to prepare for living; and it seems 
clear that the most general and fundamental phases of the art of life should receive 
proportionate representation in the preparatory process. The average man uses his 
history once a day perhaps, his arithmetic somewhat oftener. Even his English 
grammar is on trial during a part of his working hours only, and his whole mental 
equipment is put by for a third of the twenty-four. He is living all the time however, 
and is either well or ill, happy or miserable, efficient or useless, largely as a result of 
the conduct and management of the delicate physical machine which is in his charge. 
He may be innocent of historic fact, of the multiplication table and of syntax, and 
yet be a useful and contented citizen. He cannot be either long without observing 
the laws of hygiene and sanitation. I fancy that any one with a child of his own will 
have no doubt that knowledge of what to eat and what not to eat and why, of the 
meaning and importance of fresh air, of the claims of exercise and rest, of the essential 
routine of body cleanliness, of how germ diseases spread and how they may be con- 
trolled, of the methods of rendering water and milk safe and the reasons therefor, of 
the dangers of insect-borne disease and of the essentials of public sanitation — are of 
even greater moment than those things which prepare for the intellectual and social 
life. 

There might be two reasons for the comparative neglect of this transcendently 
important subject, a neglect which still persists in spite of the encouraging develop- 
ment of recent years. It might be claimed that although it is desirable to keep 
healthy we have no body of knowledge which will enable us to do so. This was 
undoubtedly true in the past and is historically the reason why biology and public 
health have occupied so obscure a place in the curriculum. It is not true any longer. 
We have to-day a large number of principles and applications which enable us to keep 
the bodily machine in the best working order and to guard it against the insidious 
attacks of communicable disease. Or on the other hand, it might be held that, 
although essential and available, knowledge of how to live a healthy life could better 
be obtained in the home than in the school. It is obvious that this claim is wholly 
untenable, not only for the teeming populations of the tenements who come often 
from other countries with sanitary conditions of a lower grade than ours, but even for 
many of the most enlightened households, since in a subject growing so rapidly as 

317 


ols THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


sanitary science, knowledge ten or twenty years old is almost as good as none. There 
is no other single thing which the child needs so much to know as how to keep well. 
The knowledge which is essential is available; and it can be transmitted only by the 
school. 

The high schools in New York City have seen this need and this opportunity and 
have done much toward meeting it. In almost all of them the practical aspects of 
biology occupy an important place and in many of them, like the DeWitt Clinton 
High School and the Morris High School, the broader aspects of sanitation are well 
taught under the head of civic biology, while the larger girls’ schools, the Washington 
Irving and Wadleigh High School, have developed exceedingly promising courses in 
home sanitation as well. 

In this work there seemed to be an opportunity for codperation between the 
newly organized department of public health of the American Museum of Natural 
History and the public schools of New York; and it is of this codperation that I wish 
to speak very briefly to-day. 

The existence of a department of public health in a natural history museum de- 
serves a word of explanation by the way, for it is, so far as I am aware, a unique 
circumstance. The American Museum is, I think, the first institution of its kind to 
grasp the opportunity of attacking the educational problem of public health by the 
use of museum methods. This development is really however, a natural, almost an 
inevitable one. Man is an animal and public health is one of the most important 
phases of his natural history. He is knit up with other animals and plants in a 
complex chain of interrelationships, beneficent and malign. The plants and animals 
which serve him for food, the microbes which cause some of his deadliest diseases, 
the insects and other animals which serve as intermediate hosts, and those which 
prey upon them in turn, all affect him and act as determining factors in the fate of 
nations and the progress of civilization. They are as much parts of natural history, 
broadly interpreted, as habitat groups of birds or preparations illustrating the rela- 
tions of insects to the plants or other insects upon which they feed. To show these 
things in graphic form by actual specimens, by models and by diagrams, is the task 
of a department of health in a natural history museum and it is a task which no 
other agency is so well fitted to accomplish. 

In the hall of public health of the American Museum we have now, after three 
years’ work, installed three fairly complete series of exhibits dealing with water supply 
and public health, with the disposal of city wastes and with bacteria, while a fourth 
series, illustrating the relation of insects to disease is well under way. The water 
supply series begins with the rainfall and shows by models, diagrams and relief maps 
how the amount and frequency of rain varies over the continental United States. 
The physical characters of waters are illustrated by samples of a highly colored water 
from the Dismal Swamp, of a hard well water from Iowa, of a turbid water from the 
Ohio River and the like. Glass models show the principal micro-organisms, the alge, 
diatoms and protozoa, which cause tastes and odors in water-supplies. The danger 
from polluted water is illustrated by relief maps of famous water-borne epidemics at 
Lausen, Switzerland, and in the Merrimac Valley. Methods of purifying water, by 
storage, filtration and disinfection are made clear by models, and finally the results 
of water purification are set forth in a series of diagrams. 

The models dealing with the disposal of city wastes include local illustrations of 
pollution of shellfish, floating baths and other dangers of the harbor waters of New 
York and a detailed presentation of the methods of treating city sewage by screening, 
sedimentation, filtration and disinfection. 

The bacterial exhibit consists of a series of glass models of the principal disease 
bacteria, 25,000 times natural size and of photomicrographs illustrating their relative 


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320 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


size and shape, and of actual colonies of many types of useful and harmful bacteria 
showing how mass cultures of the microbes look to the naked eye. 

The relation of insects to disease is a particularly fruitful field for museum work 
and is the one upon which we are chiefly engaged at the present time. The American 
Museum already has in its department of invertebrate zodlogy wonderful enlarged 
models of mosquitoes and the department of public health has just installed a model 
of the house-fly, enlarged forty diameters, which took its skilled artist-modeler, Mr. 
Ignaz Matausch, nearly a year to complete. A wide series of facts bearing on the 
life history of the fly are illustrated as well as the relation of the fly to disease, the 
practical methods for its control and the results achieved thereby. A similar, but 
more enlarged model of the flea (carrier of bubonic plague) is now under preparation 
and we have already installed models, some small and some life size, dealing with the 
rats which harbor the plague microbe and from which the flea carries it toman. The 
opportunity for future development 
here, and in connection with the 
mosquitoes of malaria and yellow 
fever, and a score of other disease- 
carriers, is a tempting one which we 
hope to develop in the next few 
years. 

This hall is our first opportunity 
to serve the public schools in their 
work of health education. They 
bring their classes to the Museum 
in one of the periods allotted to 
civic biology and in an hour with 
these models and diagrams learn 
more than they could get from 
books and lectures in a month. 

In addition to the hall, which is 
open to all the visitors to the Mu- 
seum (numbering eight hundred 


How Disease 1s PREVENTED. . .Pasteurizing 


means heating the milk to 150°-160° F. for 20 thousand a year), we arrange special 
minutes. This does not injure the milk.. .but lectures to the school children on 
kills all the germs of disease. . .Impure water the occasion of their visits. It is 


can be purified...by boiling it. Quoted from 
American Museum School Chart 


the policy of the Museum to pro- 
vide lectures (generally illustrated) 
on any subject within its field for any teacher who may ask it and for any number 
of pupils, from a score to a thousand. Or, if the teacher prefers to give the lecture 
himself, we provide hall, lantern slides and operator. The larger high schools send 
their classes twice a year near the end of each term for a talk on water or milk, or 
insect-borne disease, city-cleaning or some other topic which fits into the course of 
study at the time. 

New York is a large city however, and the children from many of the schools can 
come to the Museum only a few times a year. It was necessary to get our illustrative 
material into the schools themselves if it was really to be effective. For some time 
the American Museum has taken an active part in the nature study work of the 
public schools by circulating loan collections of birds, insects, mollusks, sponges, 
corals, woods, minerals and the like. Over 500 of these cabinets circulated in 491 
schools in 1912 reaching 1,275,890 children. Of this work President Osborn of the 
Museum has said, ‘‘Step by step a great system of codperation has been built up be- 
tween the regular course work in the schools and the visual instruction in the Museum, 


SCHOOL HYGIENE AND SANITATION o2l 


until the city of New York now affords the most brilliant example in the world of 
extension to the school system of all the resources of a great museum.” 

Here then was our example; and at the instance of some of the high school 
teachers most active in civic biology we have attempted to apply the same plan to 
public health extension work. 

Our first attempt was in the form of an album of large photographs dealing with 
the spread and prevention of communicable disease. These were mounted on 
cardboard panels twenty inches wide by thirty inches long, from one to four photo- 
graphs being borne on each panel. The first panel shows four of the more important 
pathogenic germs with the text: 

Many sicknesses, and particularly those which are catching or contagious, are 
caused by little living germs which grow in the body as a mold grows in jelly and 
make poisons that cause sickness and sometimes death. These germs are harm- 
less-looking things like microscopic sausages, so small that millions might lodge 
on a pin point; yet they are the cause of tuberculosis and diphtheria, typhoid 
fever and cholera and many other diseases. 

The second panel illustrates the sources of the disease germs, the sick person and 
the carrier [a patient in bed and a rather rough-looking individual carrying a milk 
bottle by the top in each hand]. The next panels show how disease is spread — by 
water [with a map of the famous Lowell epidemic]; by milk [a dirty cow barn]; by 
shellfish, by flies, by bathing in polluted water, and by contact. For the latter 
subject we posed and photographed children who came to visit the children’s room at 
the Museum. In one, two little girls are doing sums with a common pencil. The 
legend points out that 


These little girls are. doing sums with one pencil, which each in turn without 
thinking puts in her mouth. Whatever germs are in the mouths will be well 
mixed and any disease which either child has will be likely to spread to the other. 


In another panel one boy coughs in his hand and then with the same hand gives 
an apple to another boy who in the third picture eats it. Another panel shows two 
children waiting for a drink from a common drinking cup used by a larger companion. 
Next there follow a series of panels showing how such communicable diseases are 
prevented. One illustrates how milk may be pasteurized in the home. Another 
shows how to make a drinking cup by folding a square of paper. A table set for 
breakfast and a picture of a child washing her hands over a basin furnish texts for a 
discussion of the importance of using individual utensils and of personal cleanliness. 
Finally the series closes with pictures of an open sleeping-room window and of an 
outdoor gymnasium with the following legends: 

Not all persons who get disease germs come down with disease. If the body is 
strong and well it can often defend itself against its tiny enemies. One way to 
keep well is to have plenty of air in all sleeping rooms. Windows should be open 
at the bottom to let cool fresh air in and at the top to let the hot bad air out. In 
winter a screen of cheesecloth may be made for the bottom opening to prevent un- 
comfortable drafts. 

In the daytime the best way to keep well and able to resist disease is to stay out 
of doors in the fresh air and sunlight and strengthen the body by wholesome 
games. 

A second album, deals more specifically with the bacteria and their relation to 
the life of man. The first panel in this series again shows certain typical bacterial 
forms. The next four illustrate the relation of bacteria to disease by means of maps 
and diagrams of water-borne epidemics, typhoid fever and cholera, and of milk-borne 
epidemics, diphtheria and tonsilitis. The sixth deals with the relation of bacteria 
to decomposition and the practical method of controlling putrefactive processes, 
illustrated by a view taken in a canning factory. The seventh photograph, of flax- 


322 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


retting in the river Lys in Belgium, furnishes the text for a discussion of the use of 
microbes in the arts and industries. The eighth and last illustrates the effect of soil- 
inoculation with nitrogen-fixing bacteria by two samples of pea plants grown in poor 
soil, with and without microbic aid. 

This album is accompanied by a case of bacterial cultures showing how the 
bacteria appear in mass growths and how we detect them in water, milk and air. 
The cultures are mounted on flat wooden backs about twelve inches by fourteen inches 
with braces so that they can be stood up on the teacher’s desk. Each case holds three 
of these stands which fit neatly into a box easily carried by hand. The first stand 
bears a series of streak cultures showing the form and color of the surface growth of 
half a dozen striking species and illustrating the production of gas and acid in sugar 
media by bacteria, the coagulation of milk, and the destruction of a piece of meat by 
putrefactive forms. The second stand bears two plates showing colonies developed 
from a comparable portion of a good and a bad water and two plates showing colonies 
developed from a raw and a pasteurized milk and one showing colonies developed from 
germs deposited by the feet of a fly in walking across the plate. The third stand 
bears five sterile agar plates which may be opened and infected in the classroom with 
dust, saliva, finger prints or the like in order to show the children the resulting growth. 

The third of our traveling exhibits deals with insect-borne disease. In the album 
the various life stages of the mosquito — egg, larva, pupa and adult— are shown 
with photographs making clear, for the larva and adult, the differences between Culex 
and Anopheles. The control of these pests is illustrated by photographs of a swamp 
in New Jersey before and after drainage, by a picture of a mosquito squad oiling catch 
basins and by one of Mr. W. L. Underwood’s remarkable photographs of a goldfish 
eating larve. A diagram of the elimination of yellow fever in Havana, shows what 
may be accomplished by mosquito control in tropical sanitation. In a similar way 
are shown the life stages of the house-fly and its breeding places (a dirty stable and a 
back-yard dump). An efficient fly trap is illustrated and briefly explained and the 
importance of cleanliness in doing away with fly breeding is indicated by a series of 
photographs of the way in which garbage is cared for in the city of Minneapolis. The 
sanitary importance of fly-fighting in the South is emphasized by a diagram of 
the recent reduction of the typhoid death rate in Jacksonville. The album closes 
with large photographs of the louse and the flea as carriers of typhus and bubonic 
plague. 

This album is accompanied by a series of vials in which actual specimens of the 
four life stages of the fly and of the Culex and Anopheles mosquitoes are mounted in 
glycerine-agar so that the pupil may study them for himself and learn to recognize 
them in the back yards and pools near his own home. 

All this is of course only a beginning of what we may hope to do, even for the 
high schools. We have as yet scarcely touched the great underlying problem of the 
elementary schools where it is most vital that a sound basis should be laid for healthy 
living and where at present (in New York City) fifteen minutes a week is the maxi- 
mum time that can be spared for theoretical instruction in hygiene. We do feel 
however that we have done enough to show that museum methods of instruction 
may be made of use in the teaching of school hygiene and sanitation. President 
Osborn of the American Museum, in speaking of its general educational work has 
said, “‘ Already the child can see here what Aristotle dreamt of but never saw, and 
what Darwin and Huxley put into prophecy but did not live to see.” So in our 
special field we may teach the child the causes of diseases which were mysteries to 
Pasteur and Koch. We have the opportunity to spread through the great school 
population of New York a knowledge of the laws of health such as Hygeia never 
vouchsafed to any of her devotees in any other age than ours. 


SEA LAMPREYS AND THEIR NESTS 


By Louis Hussakof 


HERE has recently been placed on exhibition in the hall of fishes a 
group representing the nesting habits of the sea lamprey, the 
largest, and in some regards the most remarkable, of all the lam- 

preys. The group represents three large lampreys building a nest among 
the pebbles at the bottom of a clear, shallow stream, close to the bank and 
partly under a half-submerged log. The studies for the group were made 


ow ROR ae ete 
2 } 


mw oe - < 


The Nissequague River at Smithtown, Long Island, where the studies on the nesting 
habits of the sea lamprey were made. A large nest was found among the pebbles directly 
under the bridge 


323 


324 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


on the Nissequague River at Smithtown, Long Island, and the group is a 
faithful representation of the scene as it occurs in nature. 

Lampreys are among the most remarkable creatures of our waters, both 
for their extraordinary nesting habits and their anatomical structure, which 
is of great importance in the study of the lower vertebrates. Although 
eel-like in appearance, they are not eels; in fact they are not even fishes, 
in the strict sense of the word. They lack paired fins — the fins which 
correspond to the arms and legs of higher vertebrates — and they have a 
suctorial mouth which is of quite different structure from that of fishes. 
For these reasons and for others of a more technical kind, lampreys, to- 
gether with their allies the “hags”’, are separated from the true fishes as 
a distinct class, the Cyclostomata (in allusion to the round mouth). 

There are four or five species of lampreys inhabiting the lakes and streams 
of the northern hemisphere, and one occurs in the sea. The latter is found 
on the coasts of both Europe and America, and is the largest of all the 
lampreys, reaching a length of nearly three feet. 

In the spring sea lampreys enter fresh water in order to spawn. A 
clear, shallow stream with a pebbly bottom is usually selected, and here they 
build their “nests’’ — circular depressions in the river bottom about three 
feet across and a few inches deep at the center. Two or more lampreys are 
usually engaged in building a single nest, and their behavior is most extraor- 
dinary. John Burroughs characterized it as “one of the most curious spec- 
tacles”’ he had ever seen in our streams. 

The rooting up and transporting of the pebbles to make the nest is done 
entirely with the mouth, the tail not being used to fan it into shape as is the 
case with certain fishes, such as the sunfish or the black bass. The lamprey 
seizes a pebble or a stone with its suctorial mouth, lifts it from the 
bottom, turns in a graceful curve and carries it out of the nest; and then 
immediately returns for a second pebble. Sometimes instead of carrying 
the pebble out, it charges head-on against it and pushes it up the incline and 
out of the nest. It is surprising how large a stone a lamprey will thus 
transport; I have picked up half a brick as it was released by a lamprey after 
being tugged out of the nest. 

The eggs are scattered broadcast over the nest. They are very small 
(about 3 of an inch in diameter), pear-shaped, and so much like sand grains 


The sea lamprey is not an eel, and in fact, not really a fish. Together with the 
closely related ‘‘hags,’’ it belongs to a distinct class — the Cyclostomata (in allusion to 
the round sucking mouth) 


SEA LAMPREYS AND THEIR NESTS 325 


in color that it takes a trained eye to discover them. They hatch in about a 
fortnight, long after the nest has been deserted and scattered by the flow 
of the river. The larve differ greatly from the adults; so much, in fact, 
that they were once thought to be a distinct species, which was named 
ammocecetes. 

The ammoccetes lie in burrows in the sand, feeding on microérganisms. 
They live thus for three or four years before they metamorphose into lam- 
preys. The external changes in this process consist in the development of 
eyes, modifications in the form of the mouth, gills and of several other 
organs. Internally the transformation is no less profound. When the 
metamorphosis is completed, the lampreys migrate to the sea. Here they 
live three to four years — the exact period has not been definitely ascer- 
tained — until they reach maturity and are ready to run up streams for 
the purpose of spawning. 

After spawning the lampreys, it appears, die, none of them returning 
again to the sea. One may often encounter dead lampreys tangled in 
the tall grass here and there along the river bank, where they had crept in to 
die. There are several causes for their death after spawning, the most 
important one perhaps being, that they are attacked by microérganisms 
through the wounds which they have inflicted upon each other with their 
rasping teeth while on the nest, and that in their weakened condition due 
to the labor of tugging and transporting stones, they are unable to resist the 
inroads of the disease and therefore soon succumb. 


Three lampreys engaged in building a nest. They root up and transfer the pebbles, 
thus forming a circular depression some three feet across and a few inches deep. Photo- 
graph of living lampreys on the bottom of the Nissequague River. The new group in the 
American Museum is a faithful reproduction of this scene 


MUSEUM NOTES 


Since the last issue of the JourNAtL the following persons have been elected to 
membership in the Museum: 

Patron, Mr. Pauu J. RAINey; 

Fellow, Mr. Emerson MacMiI tin; 

Life Members, Dr. PerctvaL LoweLut and Messrs. Stantey Dory Brown, 
Russet Hastincs Mintwarp and Epwarp C. ParisH; 

Annual Members, Mrs. F. SCHNItEWIND, Misses Mary L. JoBE and JoSEPHINE M. 
Wei, Dr. G. L. Ronpensure, Prof. Wit~t1AM M. SLoAaNE and Messrs. JAMES 
ARTHUR, JEROME J. HANAUER, Hupert A. JupGE, Ropert McGrecor, GEORGE 
OBERDORFER and JAMES SPEAR. 


Unper the title ‘My Oceanographical Cruises,’’ His Serene Highness, the Prince 
of Monaco spoke before the members of the American Museum and of the New York 
Academy of Sciences in the Auditorium of the Museum on the evening of October 27. 
He briefly reviewed his work of the past twenty-five years, from the time he began 
in a small schooner manned by two sturdy sailors, down to his work on the “ Hiron- 
delle’ a twin-screw steamer of 1600 tons, carrying a staff of trained scientists, pro- 
vided with laboratories and equipped with every device not only for studying the 
profoundest depths of the ocean, but also for capturing the fishes and cetaceans at the 
surface and exploring the air for miles above. 

With the aid of slides and motion pictures the Prince described the methods by 
which the air currents are studied, the conditions of moisture and temperature being 
registered by instruments raised by twin balloons so prepared that eventually one 
bursts, the other dragged downward by the weight of the apparatus, marking the spot 
where it floated. The methods were illustrated of making deep-sea soundings, secur- 
ing samples of the sea bottom at a depth of two or three miles and at the same time 
obtaining records of the temperature and samples of the water at various levels. 
The lecture concluded with an account of the denizens of the deep sea and the methods 
by which they are secured. In this branch of work the Prince of Monaco has been 
particularly successful, obtaining by cunningly devised nets and traps hundreds of 
specimens where others have secured but two or three. 


Dr. Bruno OETTEKING, who has received training in some of the best anthro- 
pological laboratories of Germany and Switzerland, is working over the skull collection 
made in the course of the Jesup expedition. The data are to be used in the final 
report on the physical anthropology of the Jesup expedition. 


Tue cover design of this number of the JouRNAL is from a photograph by Mr. 
Carl E. Akeley, taken in 1910 on his latest expedition to Africa. It represents a 
herd of impalla come to drink in the Tana River and is to serve as a study for a 
portion of the background of a hippopotamus group planned by Mr. Akeley as one 
of a series for the new African hall in the American Museum. The antelopes ap- 
proach the water timidly, probably smelling the tracks of lions and leopards which 
use the same runways to the river, and startled into fear of these enemies behind them 
and of the crocodiles in the water in front of them, by every sound of the monkeys 
in the trees and every movement of the hippos on the sand-bars a few yards away. 


On Friday evening, November 21, there will be a public meeting in the large 
auditorium of the Museum under the joint auspices of the American Museum of 
Natural History, the American Scenic and Historic Preservation Society, and the 
National Committee for the Preservation of the Yosemite National Park, with the 
codperation of many civic organizations throughout the United States, to protest 


326 


MUSEUM NOTES 327 


against the act pending in Congress proposing to grant the Hetch-Hetchy Valley in 
the Yosemite National Park for water-storage purposes. Addresses by Prof. Henry 
Fairfield Osborn, president of the Museum; Dr. George F. Kunz, president of the 
Scenic Society, Mr. Robert Underwood Johnson, chairman of the National Commit- 
tee; Dr. Douglas W. Johnson of Columbia University, and others will discuss the 
economic, geological and scenic features of the question at issue. The picturesque 
beauties of the Yosemite will be illustrated upon the screen. The importance of the 
occasion is indicated by letters from ex-President Taft, Cardinal Gibbons, Presi- 
dent-emeritus Eliot of Harvard University and other distinguished citizens in sym- 
pathy with the meeting. 


On the evening of November 3, the section of Geology and Mineralogy of the 
New York Academy of Sciences will entertain the members of the Academy and its 
Affiliated Societies at a general meeting and reception to be held in the auditorium 
and the adjoining Eskimo hall of the Museum. The speaker of the evening will be 
Prof. Ellsworth Huntington of Yale University, who will discuss the problem of 
climatic changes in the past, outlining and illustrating by lantern slides the evidence 
as shown in his investigations in central and western Asia and in California and the 
Southwest. This entertainment of the Academy in November by the Section of 
Geology is the first of a series of four social evenings to continue through the winter 
months. The further meetings will be under the auspices respectively of the Sec- 
tions of Biology, Astronomy and Anthropology. 


Dr. Rupotr WaGne_er, who is about to undertake an investigation of the several 
Spanish dialects in Mexico and to collect folklore from both the Indian and the 
Spanish-speaking populations, recently visited the Museum, paying especial atten- 
tion to the Mexican hall. 


. THe Nationau AssociaTION OF AUDUBON Societies met at the Museum on 
October 28, when the following officers were elected: Mr. William Dutcher, president; 
Dr. T. 8. Palmer, first vice-president; Dr. F. A. Lucas, second vice-president; T. 
Gilbert Pearson, secretary; and Jonathan Dwight, treasurer. In addition to these 
members the following were elected to the Board of Directors: Dr. J. A. Allen, Dr. 
George Bird Grinnell, Dr. Frank M. Chapman, Mrs. Mabel Osgood Wright, Mr. W. 
W. Grant and Mr. Charles Sheldon. The report of the secretary showed that the 
Society has expended more than $80,000 in bird protection during the last year. 
Junior Audubon classes under the direction of the Association have been organized 
and 52,000 members are enrolled. The Board of Directors at this meeting offered a 
reward of $250 for the arrest and conviction of the man who shot John C. Reinbold, 
game warden in Hackensack, New Jersey. One of the important features of the 
Association’s work during the past year has been its participation in arranging for the 
Niobrara Reservation in Nebraska, where a herd of elks has been established. 


Tue fourth annual Teachers’ Day of the American Museum of Natural History 
will be held at the Museum on the afternoon of Saturday, November 8. There will 
be brief addresses in the auditorium by Dr. John H. Finley, Commissioner of Educa- 
tion of the State of New York and Dr. William H. Maxwell, Superintendent of the 
Public Schools of New York City, after which the guests will visit the bird and 
mammal halls and gather for an informal reception and afternoon tea in the north 
bird hall. 


THE AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGISTS’ UNION will convene November 10 at the 
Explorers’ Club for the first meeting of its thirty-first annual congress. The pro- 
gram of the three days of the Congress will include sessions for the presentation of 


328 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


scientific papers, an inspection of the ornithological laboratories of the American Mu- 
seum, and a visit to the Zodlogical Park and Aquarium at the invitation of the New 
York Zodlogical Society. The members of the Union will be the guests of the Lin- 
nean Society of New York each day for luncheon at the Museum. 


Mr. N. C. Netson, having returned from his explorations of Puente Viesgo, 
almost immediately proceeded to resume his archeological reconnaissance in the 
Southwest. 


Tue first of a series of science stories for children of members of the Museum will 
be given on Saturday morning, November 1. Through the courtesy of Mr. Robert 
W. Priest of the Gaumont Company, Limited, of London, the Museum has secured 
the privilege of showing in this lecture the motion pictures taken by Herbert G. 
Ponting, F. R. G.8., on the last expedition of Captain Scott to the South Pole. The 
pictures give a marvelous revelation of the habits of the seals, penguins and gulls of 
the Antarctic, which having no acquaintance with man, have in consequence no fear 
of him, so that Mr. Ponting was able to approach within a few feet of them in taking 
the pictures. 


Tue fourth annual exhibition of the New York Aquarium Society was held at 
the Museum from October 6 to 12. The exhibition consisted for the most part of 
tropical fresh-water fishes which were attractively displayed in aquaria and looked 
as though they were swimming in quiet streams among the fine vegetable life of their 
natural habitat. Among the representatives of the Characin family were the rare 
Myletes which look like silver coins, the Leporinus with their long vertical stripes and 
the Gasteropelecus, an extraordinary-looking fish with a deep bladelike breast. There 
were various species of the Cichlids, the most notable of which were the Pterophyllum 
scalare, a little-known fish with elongated fins, which was brought from the interior 
of Brazil and exhibited in this country for the first time this year, and the “‘mouth- 
breeder” of Africa which carries its eggs in its mouth until they are hatched. The 
Tetrodon cutcutia which had never before been exhibited in the United States is 
especially rare and interesting. It has a hard beak like a parrot and is called a 
“blow-fish”’ from its habit of swelling up to intimidate its enemies. This is one of 
the few fresh-water representatives of an abundant salt-water group. The tooth 
carps family was represented by many forms, among them the rare Fundulus gularis, 
the male of which has a brightly colored tail, and the Belonesox which, more than any 
other species in the family, shows a close resemblance to the pickerel in feeding habits. 
Other rare and equally interesting fish were exhibited and much credit is due to the 
Society for its success in assembling a collection so unique. 


THE annual fall exhibition of the Horticultural Society of New York opened for 
private view at the American Museum on the evening of October 31 and continued 
for public view both day and evening through November 4. The display which was 
visited by some 170,000 people, was the most splendid of recent years, including 
several bush chrysanthemums fourteen feet in diameter and bearing two thousand 
or more flowers each. One of the minor exhibits occupying a small alcove in the hall 
of the Indians of the Plains was presented by the Park Department of Manhattan and 

tichmond on the work of the Bureau of Children’s School Farms. Descriptions of 
the shop work and the garden work, photographs of the children at work in the 
garden plots and samples of the vegetables and fruits grown in the gardens went far 
toward convincing the visitor that probably in no better way than this can the chil- 
dren of a great city be taught elementary agriculture and forestry, manual training, 
physical culture, and even sanitation and hygiene. 


The American Museum Journal 


VotumeE XIII DECEMBER, 1913 NuMBER 8 


CONTENTS 


Frontispiece, Portrait of Alfred Russel Wallace, 1823-1913 


Half tone by courtesy of Popular Science Monthly 


A Great Naturalist — Alfred Russel Wallace, 1823-1913 
HENRY FAIRFIELD OsBoRN 331 


South African Fossil Reptiles.................. RosBert Broom 335 


With portrait of Dr. Broom, the world’s chief authority on South African Per- 
mian reptiles. Article illustrated with photographs of fossil reptiles from Dr. 
Broom’s private collection, showing some ancestors uf modern mammals 


The Stefansson Expedition and Other Arctic Explorations 
A. W. GREELY 347 


‘Lov the: Maquiritares Sand’). ok ae Leo E. Minter = 351 


Report by the leader of the Museum’s lower Orinoco expedition 


Some Kitksan Totem Poles.............. ....- GEORGE T. EmMMons = 362 


An inland Indian race of the extreme northwestern part of British Columbia 
and their carved heraldic columns not hitherto reported upon 


AG WRecord: CSomhsh®: oo. 3 ee ee eis oe GEE IS TE BasHrorD DEAN’ 370 


Minseuny’ Notes. 6.405 es ei re at en ee eee ee 373 


Mary Cyntuia Dickerson, Editor 


Published monthly from October to May by the American Museum of Natural History. 
Terms: one dollar per year, fifteen cents per copy. Entered as second-class matter January 
12, 1907, at the Post-Office at Boston, Mass., Act of Congress, July 16, 1894. 


Subscriptions should be addressed to the AMERICAN MusEUM JOURNAL, 77th St. 
and Central Park West, New York City. 


The Journal is sent free to all members of the Museum. 


Sarasa ae 
os 


A GREAT NATURALIST 
ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE, 1823-1913 


By Henry Fairfield Osborn 


compared in history with the greatest intellectual periods in the 

history of Athens, of Rome and of Florence. Brilliant as were 
England’s achievements in art, literature and the spreading of civilization, 
her achievements in science outshine them all. No country has ever pro- 
duced such a constellation of stars of the first magnitude in the same brief 
period of time, especially in the sciences of geology and biology. The 
dominant figure of course is that of Darwin, whose influence upon the world 
of thought is to be compared with that of Aristotle only. Anticipating 
and surrounding Darwin were members of an unrivaled group of men, 
beginning with Sir Charles Lyell, a geologist, and including Sir Joseph 
Hooker, the botanist, Alfred Russel Wallace, the naturalist, and Thomas 
Henry Huxley, the anatomist and natural philosopher. 

Wallace, the last survivor of this remarkable group, died on November 7, 
1913, in the ninety-first year of his age and the sixty-fourth year of service 
and discovery. He followed by only a few months another member of the 
group, Sir Joseph Hooker, who was present at the Darwin celebration at 
Cambridge in 1909, the centenary of the birth of Darwin. 

Because the fame of Wallace rests chiefly on his codiscovery with Dar- 
win of the theory of natural selection he is sometimes thought of as Darwin’s 
contemporary but he was actually fourteen years younger and made the 
discovery of natural selection twenty years later than Darwin. He was 
always the first to recognize Darwin’s seniority and leadership. In his © 
remarkable journeys in South America and in the Malay Archipelago, filling 
the years 1848 to 1862, Wallace was influenced by Darwin’s classic work, 
best known as the Voyage of the Beagle. 

The simultaneous publication of the law of natural selection independ- 
ently discovered by these two great naturalists was followed on the part of 
Wallace by a lifetime of devotion to this chief principle of Darwin’s special 
theories of the causes of evolution. While Huxley was the stalwart defender 
of the evolution theory and of Darwinism in general without committing 
himself to either of Darwin’s special interpretations of the theory, Wallace 
devoted himself continuously to the support of Darwin’s special hypotheses. 
Yet almost from the first he differed from.Darwin in some very important 
particulars. He never could bring himself to believe that the mind and 
spirit of man were the results of the same evolution process as that which 
had developed his bodily structure and that of all the lower orders of animal 


The half tone of Alfred Russel Wallace is used by courtesy of Popular Science Monthly 
331 


P | \HE nineteenth century in Great Britain, the Victorian Age, will be 


332 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


creation. As early as 1864 he advanced the hypothesis that so soon as man 
learned to use fire and make tools, to grow food, to domesticate animals, to 
use clothing, and to build habitations, the action of natural selection was 
diverted from his body to his mind and that thenceforth his bodily form 
remained comparatively stable while his mental faculties improved. 

Five years later Wallace had definitely broken away from Darwin’s 
conceptions with regard to natural selection and developed the opinion that 
this law is wholly inadequate to account for several of the bodily as well as 
psychical characteristics of man, such as his soft and sensitive skin, his 
speech, his color-sense and his mathematical, musical and moral attributes. 
He drew the inference from this class of phenomena, that a superior intelli- 
gence has guided the development of man in definite directions and for 
special purposes, just as man guides the development of many animal and 
vegetable forms. 

Another striking divergence of the views of Wallace from those of Dar- 
win related to the theory of the origin of the very striking differences which 
exist between males and females in many divisions of the animal kingdom. 
Darwin in his theory of sexual selection advanced the idea that the female 
was attracted by the brilliant and gaudy appearance of the males, as for 
example among birds, and that throughout the animal kingdom generally, 
beauty of coloring is especially characteristic of the males, is consciously 
perceived by females and thus selected. Wallace, on the other hand, 
sought to explain all the instances of brilliant and gaudy coloring on other 
principles. Thus in 1868 he propounded an original explanation of the 
quiet colors of nesting birds, pointing out that when the nest is exposed to 
view the female is always inconspicuous in coloring or imitative of its 
surroundings, while the male of the same species may be conspicuously or 
gaudily colored. Among other varieties of birds where both the sexes are 
conspicuously colored he noticed that the nest is such as to completely 
conceal the sitting bird. 

Wallace specialized in the interpretation of the coloring of animals. He 
developed the theory of mimicry, or protective resemblance, the conception 
of which we owe chiefly to Bates and to Miiller. One of his famous observa- 
tions is that of mimicry in the leaf butterfly, which we find described in his 
delightful volume of 1869, the Malay Archipelago. In his own language his 
first observation of Kallima paralekta was as follows: 


This species was not uncommon in dry woods and thickets, and I often endeavored 
to capture it without success, for after flying a short distance it would enter a bush 
among dry or dead leaves, and however carefully I crept up to the spot I could never 
discover it till it would suddenly start out again and then disappear in a similar place. 
At length I was fortunate enough to see the exact spot where the butterfly settled, 
and though I lost sight of it for some time, I at length discovered that it was close 
before my eyes, but that in its position of repose it so closely resembled a dead leaf 


ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE 303 


attached to a twig as almost certainly to deceive the eye even when gazing full upon 
it. I captured several specimens on the wing, and was able fully to understand the 
way in which this wonderful resemblance is produced....All these varied details 
combine to produce a disguise that is so complete and marvelous as to astonish 
every one who observes it: and the habits of the insects are such as to utilize all 
these peculiarities, and render them available in such a manner as to remove all 
doubt of the purpose of this singular case of mimicry, which is undoubtedly a pro- 
tection to the insect. 


Another line in which Wallace ranks as one of the greatest naturalists 
is the geographic distribution of animals, beginning with his earliest observa- 
tions in the Malay Archipelago of 1869 and closing with the publication of 
his charming book Island Infe, which appeared in 1881. 

Wallace like Darwin enjoyed the closing years of his life in the quiet 
surroundings of a beautiful English country home, and continued even to 
his ninety-first year to be a great force in the world’s thought. His powers 
as a writer were prodigious and in rapid succession in his later years he 
brought out his volumes My Life, the Wonderful Century, the World of 
Iife, and Social Environment and Moral Progress. In the World of Life 
he no longer believes in the Darwinian explanation of natural selection as 
adequate to account for the wonderful adaptations which we find in the 
animal world. He regards life as “a manifestation of creative power, direc- 
tive mind and ultimate purpose.’”’ He thus returns in his later years to the 
teachings of his boyhood, to those which prevailed before the publication of 
the Origin of Species. His final creed is found in one of the closing para- 
graphs of the World of Infe (p. 421): 


In the present work I have endeavoured to suggest a reason which appeals to me 
as both a sufficient and an intelligible one: it is that this earth with its infinitude 
of life and beauty and mystery, and the universe in the midst of which we are placed, 
with its overwhelming immensities of suns and nebule, of light and motion, are as 
they are, firstly, for the development of life culminating in man; secondly, as a vast 
school-house for the higher education of the human race in preparation for the 
enduring spiritual life to which it is destined. 


DR. ROBERT BROOM 


Dr. Broom, Croonian lecturer before the Royal Society, London, in 1913 and late professor of 
geology and zodlogy (1903-1910) at Victoria College, Stellenbosch, South Africa, is the world’s chief 
authority on South African paleontology. He has been in America for some months engaged in 
important comparative research on his almost unequaled private collection of South African Permian 
reptiles and the American Museum’s large Permian collections from North America 


334 


SOUTH AFRICAN FOSSIL REPTILES 


FOSSILS EXCAVATED FROM THE BLUE SHALES OF SOUTH 
AFRICA PROVE REPTILES TO BE THE ANCESTORS OF MAM-— 
MALS. THESE MAMMAL-LIKE REPTILES LIVED 
MOSTLY BEFORE THE APPEARANCE OF DINO- 
SAURS, CROCODILES, LIZARDS AND TURTLES 


By Robert Broom 


Late professor of geology and zodlogy, Victoria College, Stellenbosch, South Africa 


mammals, and few questions are more interesting to the layman. 

Up to 1859 when Darwin published the Origin of Species very few 
worried much about the origin of anything. The prevailing belief was that 
somewhere about the year 4004 B. c. the Almighty created all animal forms 
just as we find them to-day. A few scientists had before this time come to 
the conclusion from their examination of the fossils found in the rocks that 
there were serious difficulties in the old view, and many attempts were made 
to harmonize the scientific facts with the old traditions, but for the most part 
those who held views differing from their fathers were cautious in expressing 
them. After 1859 the full and free discussion of the problems gradually 
led to a general belief in evolution and scientists began to try to trace lines 
of descent. With some groups the lines of evolution were fairly manifest 
but with the warm-blooded animals the case presented the greatest difficulty. 
No other forms seemed at all nearly allied and while it was natural to assume 
that they must either have sprung from lizard-like reptiles or salamander- 
like amphibians, there was no clear evidence to decide the question. 

In 1876 Owen in describing the fossil reptiles of South Africa pointed out 
numerous mammal-like characters seen in them and in 1880 definitely ex- 
pressed the view that the primitive mammals living to-day in Australia are 
the direct descendants: of a reptilian ancestor such as he had described. 
Huxley on the other hand favored the descent of the mammals from a sala- 
mander-like form and the contest between those who believe them de- 
scended from amphibians and those who look on reptiles as the ancestors 
has been waged ever since — sometimes rather vigorously. 

When Cope in 1880 studied the remarkable Palveosniee -_fin-backed 
reptiles found in the old Permian rocks of New Mexico and Texas, he came 
to the conclusion that he had found, if not the mammalian ancestors, at 
least forms allied to them, and in this I believe he was quite correct. 

Between 1888 and 1905 Professor Osborn published a considerable num- 
ber of papers dealing with the origin of mammals in which he argued that the 
ancestor of the mammal was probably a member of that group of very 
mammal-like reptiles found in South Africa and called Cynodonts. This 
view of Osborn’s seems at first sight opposed to that of Cope’s but in all 

335 


Pr rss no question is so interesting to biologists as the origin of 


396 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


probability both views were correct, the Pelycosaurs being a side branch 
from a direct line very near to the early mammalian ancestors, the Cyno- 
donts being probably the immediate ancestors of the mammal. 

Baur who worked here in America and died some fifteen years ago, was in 
favor of the reptile origin. Seeley adopted a rather curious view. He 
believed that the egg-laying mammals came from reptiles but that other 
mammals arose from amphibians. On the whole the Germans have favored 
the amphibians as ancestors, while English opinion although somewhat 
divided, has mainly been in support of the reptilian theory. The majority 
of Americans, doubtless influenced by Cope and Osborn, have always favored 
the descent of the mammals from a reptilian ancestor. 

I became interested in the question in 1885 and practically resolved then 
that I would contribute what I could to the solution of the problem. In 
1892 I went to Australia and spent some years in studing the egg-laying 


Pareiasaurus serridens Owen. A restoration of a skeleton founded on the specimen in 
the South African Museum. Though not a mammal-like reptile it resembles them in having 
powerful limbs and the body lifted off the ground. The skeleton is from eight to nine feet 
in length and stands about three and one-half feet high 


mammals and marsupials. In 1897 I went to South Africa and have been 
working in that region for the last seventeen years. In these seventeen 
years nearly every specimen that has been picked up there has passed 
through my hands. 

We call our South African deposits the Karroo formation — naming it 
from the Karroo desert — and there is probably none in the world of greater 
interest. This formation is extensive, covering the greater part of the 
interior of Cape Colony, almost the whole of the Free State and much of 
the Transvaal, Basutoland and Natal, an aggregate area of 200,000 square 
miles. The formation is composed of bluish shales much like slate in color 
and of mudstones and there is little doubt that it has been formed of the 


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338 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


mud brought down into a large basin by a huge river such as the Amazon. 
Besides being of great extent, this deposit is also of great thickness, in some 
parts probably as much as 10,000 feet thick. 

If you look upon this area as a series of rocks 10,000 feet thick and 
200,000 square miles in area, and imagine it the face of a book of the history 
of the world, you see that it is simply a matter of our turning over the pages. 
There is not another part of the world that will give the records so com- 
pletely — a continuous record of the land animals of the world for about 
three million years. Sometimes we cannot read the record clearly but we 
can make out most of it. This period is not only very fully recorded but 
there is no period of the world’s history so interesting except the period 
when man came upon the earth. It is a period when crocodiles, lizards, 


Galepus jouberti Broom, one-half natural size. A complete skeleton of a small member 
of the Dromasaurians, one of the earliest of the mammal-like reptiles. The head [at the left 
below] is folded back so that in this photograph it is seen very obliquely but with care all the 
rest of the skeleton may be easily traced 


turtles and reptiles appeared for the first time; and the study of the records 
shows us the warm-blooded four-footed forms in the process of evolution. 
The greater part of the Karroo formation lies in the center of Cape 
Colony. This large area has a scanty rainfall of from five to fifteen inches 
in the year but as most of the rainfall is due to thunder-storms during a 
short period, there are usually nine months in which no rain falls, and the 
vegetation is almost entirely composed of low Karroo bushes. The whole 
scenery is in many ways strikingly similar to that of Arizona. ‘There are 
extensive plains that are almost dead level produced by the action of wind 


SOUTH AFRICAN FOSSIL REPTILES 309 


eroding exposed surfaces and filling up the hollows. Jutting out from the 
plains are the kopjes and mountains. These are preserved through being 
protected by sheets of igneous rock. In the plains, owing to the fact that 
almost the whole surface is covered with wind-blown dust, it is impossible 
to see any fossils except where the ground has been washed by a flood. On 
the sides of the hills in many places the shale is denuded of vegetation and 
exposed, and it is on these exposed slopes that most fossils are obtained. 
Unfortunately if a slope is steep it is extremely difficult to excavate any 
specimen even if discovered, the best localities being gentle slopes and the 
beds of rivers. 

The distribution of fossils is very uneven. In some places one may travel 
and search over every slope of shale for forty miles without seeing a scrap of 
bone; in other places, sometimes in a small area of a few hundred square 
feet, a large number of specimens may be obtained. Bones are usually seen 
readily because their color is lighter than the shale. To many of the Dutch 
farmers and to members of their families, we are indebted for some of our 
best specimens, and even the Hottentot goatherds are often useful in spot- 
ting specimens while out on the hills watching their flocks. 

The oldest animals we meet with in the Karroo formation in any number 
are of middle Permian age, shall we say of the year 18,000,000 8. c. These 
are of especial interest from the resemblance they bear to the American 
Permian reptiles from Texas and New Mexico. One of the largest and 
best-known animals is called Pareiasawrus. It is a large-limbed reptile, 
about nine feet in length and standing about three and one-half feet in 
height. In many points of its organization it shows affinities with the 
American reptile Diadectes, of which a mounted skeleton is to be seen in 
the American Museum. Another group of animals contemporaneous with 
Pareiasaurus is the reptilian group of Dinocephalians. These also were 
large reptiles with very powerful limbs. Although herbivorous and having 
no remarkable specialization of the spines of the vertebrz, they are never- 
theless fairly closely allied to the very remarkable American fin-backed 
Pelycosaurs, of which skeletons are to be seen in the American Museum. 

One of the most striking peculiarities of the Karroo reptiles is that al- 
most all agree with Pareiasaurus and the Dinocephalians in having power- 
fully developed limbs. How these have been evolved is a matter of doubt 
but there can be little question that it was this strengthening and lengthen- 
ing of the limbs that started the evolution which ultimately resulted in the 
formation of the warm-blooded mammals. 

The best-known and in some respects the most remarkable of the Karroo 
reptiles, belong to a group named by Owen, the Anomodonts, from their hav- 
ing horny beaks like the turtles or birds with in addition in many forms a pair 
of large walrus-like tusks. The first specimen was discovered as far back as 
1844 and was called Dicynodon but although many skulls have been dis- 


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SOUTH AFRICAN FOSSIL REPTILES 341 


covered only three or four fairly good skeletons have been found. In limbs, 
shoulder and pelvic girdles and essential structure of the skull and in the 
number of joints of the toes, they strikingly resemble the mammals and 
although the curious development of the beak obscures the mammal-like 
character of the skull it is essentially built on the mammalian plan and there 
is little doubt that although the Anomodonts are a side offshoot from the 
mammalian stem they are closely allied to the mammalian ancestor. 

A form nearly allied to Dicynodon is called Endothiodon. It has no 


Endothiodon uniseries Owen. A more perfect skull than that belonging to the mounted 
skeleton [see page 340] 


large tusk but a number of small teeth. Although much rarer than Dicy- 
nodon, fortunately an almost complete skeleton has been discovered which 
has recently been mounted in the Museum laboratories by Mr. Charles 
Falkenbach under my direction, and of which a photograph is given. The 
extremely mammal-like condition of the limbs is very manifest, and there 
is little doubt that the animal waddled about somewhat after the manner of 
the pigmy hippopotami of Liberia, seen at the New York Zodlogical Park. 


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and of the smallest known 


The skull of the largest known form of Hndothsodon, 


Endothiodon whaitsi Broom and Emydops minor Broom. 


of the Anomodonts 


RELATIVE SIZE OF ALLIED SOUTH AFRICAN REPTILES 
J 


Dicynodon whaitsi Broom and Diictodon galeops Broom. The skull of one of the largest forms of 
Dicynodon and of one of the smallest allied forms. This specimen of Dicynodon whaitsi is a female in 
which the tusk does not project but it is present in the specimen deeply embedded in the bone 

Formerly all those specimens of dicynodont reptiles in which there was no manifest tusk were 
placed in the genus Oudenodon. Oudenodon was also placed by Owen in a distinct family. For years the 
question was debated by all workers on South African reptiles whether Oudenodon might not be the 
female of Dicynodon and all have concluded that the evidence seemed rather to favor their being dis- 
tinct forms. No known specimen of Oudenodon sufficiently resembled any known specimen of 
Dicynodon to be manifestly the female of that species. Within recent years however it has become 
quite certain that Oudenodon is the female of the tusked Dicynodon. In at least three species of Dicy- 
nodon we have a manifest series of tusked and tuskless specimens and the same also occurs in other 
closely allied genera. In some species there is a rudimentary tusk, in others apparently no trace of 
tusk, while just possibly in some of the larger forms, such as Dicynodon (Kannemeyeria), most proba- 
bly the female is also tusked 

Exactly what the function of the tusk may have been is unknown. Many suggestions have been 
made which are manifestly incorrect. - Pretty certainly the tusks have nothing to do with the pro- 
curing of food as the females in which they are absent doubtless got on as satisfactorily. Probably 
they were in Dicynodon at least, secondary sexual characters like the spur in the duck-billed platypus 

343 


344 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


Attention may be called to the relatively enormous size of the skull and the 
curious way in which the long point of the lower jaw passes up into the groove 
in the upper. 

We find many other mammal-like reptiles of which the Therocephalians, 
Dromasaurians, and the Cynodonts are the most important. Although 
these insectivorous and carnivorous types are less mammal-like in some 
respects than the Anomodonts, they agree more closely with the mammals 
in the construction of the skull. They all have long, slender limbs adapted 
for running. The earlier members such as the lower Therocephalians, have 
the number of toe joints as still found in the lizards and most reptiles, viz.— 
2, 3, 4, 5, 3; but the Anomodonts, the lower Dromasaurians and the higher 
Cynodonts have the same number of joints in the toes as is retained in our- 
selves viz.— 2, 3, 3, 3,3. It is rather interesting to look at one’s hand and 


Inostrancevia alexandri Amalitsky. A photograph of a skeleton of one of the large mam- 
mal-like reptiles found fossil on the banks of the Dvina River in north Russia. The skeleton 
is of large size, the skull being about two feet in length and is extremely closely allied and 
perhaps identical with some forms found in South Africa 


realize that the fingers have all these joints because a remote ancestor took 
to walking with the feet under the body supporting it off the ground rather 
than with the feet to the side as in the lizards and crocodiles. 

The Cynodonts occur in the Triassic formation and a few survive into the 
Jurassic. In most points of structure they are extremely mammal-like and 
it is frequently impossible if the specimen is at all incomplete to say whether 
we are dealing with one of the Cynodonts or a mammal. The lower jaw is 
almost entirely formed by a large single bone, the posterior bones being 
small, and the bone on which the jaw hinges is also small thus foreshadowing 
the mammalian condition, the dentary bone, the angular, articular and sur- 
angular being quite small, as is also the quadrate bone. The teeth are in 
most forms of a carnivorous type, composed of sharp incisors, long sharp 


Scymnognathus angusticeps Broom. This is one of the South African forms closely 
allied to the better known Russian Inostrancevia alexandri 


canines and cusped molars, the cusps being almost exactly like those of the 
carnivorous mammals. 

A couple of months ago I discovered that in the Cynodonts the incisors, 
canines and premolars are preceded by an earlier set exactly as in ourselves. 
It would probably be inappropriate to call them milk teeth as it is very 
unlikely that the Cynodonts provided their young with milk, but there can 
be no doubt that the young had a first temporary set of front teeth like most 
mammals. 

Besides solving the question of the origin of the mammals, the Karroo 
fossil beds have thrown some light on the origin of birds. There has been 
considerable discussion as to whether birds were derived from flying bat-like 
reptiles called pterodactyls or from the dinosaurs. Some have even gone 
so far as to derive the flying birds from the pterodactyls and the running 
birds such as the ostrich from the dinosaurs. Dr. Lucas is one of those who 
favors a double origin for the birds. Professor Osborn some years ago 
argued in favor of the birds and dinosaurs having come from a common 
ancestor in Permian times. A few years ago I maintained, as the result of my 
studies on the development of the ostrich, that the ancestor of the bird 
though not a dinosaur was nearly a dinosaur, and that the bird and the ecarni- 
vorous dinosaur were derived froma group of primitive dinosaur-like reptiles 
that were capable of running on their hind legs. A recent discovery in 
South Africa reveals just such a type as we required for the common ancestry 
of the birds and the dinosaurs and this form is also not far removed from 
the ancestor of the pterodactyl. The birds, pterodactyls, and carnivorous 
dinosaurs are all probably sprung from a small reptile such as the one 
recently discovered in South Africa and named by me Euparkeria. 

Another interesting fact that seems to be brought out by our study of the 


345 


South African fossil 
forms is that it was 
probably the devel- 


opment of the active 
Cynodonts that led 
to the development 
of the active reptiles 


SD 


S 


Skull of Bauria cynops Broom, about one-half natural size. such as Euparkerva. 


This is the most primitive of the very mammal-like reptiles belong- For possibly two 
ing to the group of Cynodonts. The dentition, it will be observed, 
is like that of the mammal except in that the grinding teeth are 
simply little pegs not unlike those found in the armadillo carnivorous mam- 


million years the 


mal-like reptiles had 
an abundant supply 
of food in the form 
of the small Anomo- 
donts. In lower Tri- 
assic times the small- 
er Anomodonts seem 
to have become ex- 
tinct for some rea- 
son and the carnivo- 

Skull of Nythosaurus larvatus Owen, slightly reduced. Thisis rous forms had to 
one of the most mammal-like of the reptiles belonging to the obtain a new diet 


Cynodonts. Were it not for the composite character of the 
lower jaw it might readily be regarded as a mammal 


which was probably 
a little lizard-like 
animal called Pro- 
colophon, and _ pos- 
sibly other small 
freptiles of a similar 
type. It was possi- 
bly this new activity 
that gave rise to 
the Cynodonts. In 
upper Triassic times 
the Procolophons be- 


Skull of Sesamodon browni Broom. This is another type of Came extinct and 
cynodont reptile which is in some respects more like the mammal the small Cynodonts 


than any other Y 
were driven to at- 


tacking the more active types like Huparkeria. The rivalry between 
these forms resulted in the greatly increased activity of both, the active 
four-footed forms becoming the primitive mammals and those which run 
on their hind legs gave rise to the theropodous dinosaurs and the ancestral 
birds. The further evolution of the bird was doubtless the result of its 
taking to an arboreal habit and developing feathers. 

346 


THE STEFANSSON EXPEDITION AND 
OTHER ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS 


By A. W. Greely 


Major-General, United States Army, Retired 


the attention of geographic travelers since the attainment of the North 

Pole has ceased to be a polar quest of primary and overwhelming 
importance. Polar exploration is not dead, it has been reborn in spirit and 
revivified into daring and persistent action. 


| T is interesting to note the great variety of Arctic plans that have engaged 


During the year 1912 at least a dozen schemes of exploration were 
launched, of which more than one-half assumed definite form as to organi- 
zation and in their equipment. In view of the recent and unexpected dis- 
covery of Nicholas Second Land, it may be of interest to the readers of the 
AMERICAN MusEUM JOURNAL to have set before them the aims and opera- 
tions of the principal Arctic expeditions, eight in number, which are now 
being carried forward, or were recently accomplished, through the efforts of 
seven separate nationalities. 

Three of these parties took the field during 1912, two devoting their 
energies to Greenland, while the third was in the nature of a preliminary 
voyage around Spitzbergen. The German polar expedition for the making 
of the northeast passage around Asia in 1913 was commanded by Lieuten- 
ant Schréder-Stranz who sailed in the “Herzog Ernst” for preliminary explo- 
rations to the northeast of Spitzbergen. Failing to push north along the east 
coast owing to heavy ice, he finally succeeded in reaching Treurenberg Bay, 
where his ship was beset and frozen in. Death and disaster were the fate 
of the party, with no additions to geographical knowledge. 

The two expeditions for the crossing of Greenland were more fortunate, 
both in action and in results. The Swiss expedition, under Dr. A. de Quer- 
vain consisted of three Europeans, two Eskimo, four sleds and twenty-nine 
dogs. Without accident they crossed the inland ice from Disco on the west 
coast, to Angmagsalik on the east coast. The highest point in their route 
was 2,550 meters, about 8,370 feet. 

Captain J. P. Koch, Royal Danish Navy, already distinguished in the 
field of exploration, wintered 1912-1913 on the inland ice of the east coast 
near Cape Denmark, in about 78° north latitude. Starting April 20 this 
year with five horse-drawn sledges his party crossed to Proven, a short dis- 
tance to the south of Upernivik. The highest point attained on the glacial 
ice cap of Greenland was about nine thousand feet. Although Greenland 
has been previously crossed by Nansen, Peary and De Quervain an eminent 
geographical authority says: “ Koch’s crossing is probably the finest achieve- 
ment of all, owing to the great width of the inland ice at this latitude.” 

The present year of 1913 has been a year of beginnings among the Arctic 
explorers, among whom it is to be said Commander Wilkitzky is not classed. 

347 


348 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


The Russian expedition of Captain Sedof sailed late in the summer of 1912 
with the intention of making Franz Josef Land its base of operations for 
visiting the Pole. 

Another expedition to Franz Josef Land has a sentimental as well as a 
physical aspect. This Arctic Archipelago it will be recalled, was discovered 
by the Austro-Hungarian expedition of Weyprecht and Payer in August, 
1873, when their ship “Tegetthoff’’ was beset. It was first visited by Payer, 
whose charts of the region have been the subject of much discussion and of 
material modifications. Now after forty years, his son, Jules de Payer, a 
French citizen, is to make a scientific survey of this Arctic country. From a 
land base he hopes to cover the region through the use of a power boat and 
two aéroplanes. 

The American Museum expedition under Donald B. MacMillan for the 
exploration of Crocker Land, and that initiated by Captain Amundsen for a 
drift from Bering Strait across the north-polar basin, are too well known 
to need comment here. The same remark may be made as to the aims and 
the progress of V. Stefansson, who so distinguished himself in Arctic 
America as the representative of the American Museum of Natural History. 

While the Arctic explorers specifically mentioned were striving for defi- 
nite results, the world awakened one morning to learn that what might be 
called the “first blood” had been drawn by a Russian officer, Commander 
Wilkitzky, Imperial Russian Navy, while engaged purely on a work of 
domestic economy and of national interest. His voyage was the prosecu- 
tion of the survey of the coast waters of northern Asia. For several years 
Russian officers have been busy in determining and charting a safe and re- 
liable maritime trade-route between the valleys of the great rivers of Si- 
beria and the remainder of the empire. 

The discovery of this new Arctic land is but one of many creditable 
chapters in the history of maritime explorations made by Russian officers 
and explorers during the past quarter of a century. Unfortunately the 
publication in Russian text only of the results of these voyages seriously 
limits the dissemination of the knowledge. Among such Russian texts may 
be mentioned the Riabouchinsky expedition to Kamtchatka, under the direc- 
tion of the Imperial Russian Geographical Society. One distinguished 
Russian geographer, General Jules de Schokalsky, Imperial Navy, has con- 
tributed from time to time memoirs of importance, especially relative to the 
sea-route to Siberia — so important to the whole empire. 

As to this route, stimulated by the circumnavigation of Asia by Norden- 
skidld, and by the successful demonstration by Wiggins of summer naviga- 
tion in favorable seasons between Europe and the Yenisei, Russian officers 
have done daring work of interest and importance in the dangerous ice-clad 
Siberian ocean. Among these explorations are the well-known surveys of 
Colonel A. J. Vilitsky in the Obi and Yenisei regions, and the extended 


ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS 349 


voyages and journeys of Baron Toll in the archipelago of New Siberia, 
where he eventually perished. Vaguer is the knowledge had of the explora- 
tions of A. K. Volossovich between the Lena and the Kolyma, and of T. P. 
Tolamchef eastward from the Kolyma to Bering Strait. The surveys of 
Tolamchef had an important though indirect bearing on the discovery of 
Nicholas Second Land, for it was his favorable report on the possibility of the 
sea-route via Bering Strait that led the Imperial government to despatch 
the recent squadron under Commander Wilkitzky. Thus it happened that 
Wilkitzky adds his name to the roll of fame in the annals of the Russian navy. 

The extent of Nicholas Second Land and its exact relations to Crocker 
Land and the sought-for land of Stefansson, are not clearly understood by 
the general public. This is largely due to the inaccuracies and exaggera- 
tions which marked the original announcement of this discovery. Pub- 
lished in haste, the accounts were discussed with even greater precipitation. 

One geographer, doubtless inaccurately reported, was heralded by the 
press as authority for the statement that the new land would prove to be 
“the same as discovered by Rear-Admiral Peary.” It was added that 
“Peary claimed to have discovered what is probably the west side of it, 
while the Russians may have discovered the east side.” 

Fortunately this inaccurate newspaper report did not gain large cur- 
rency. A mere glance at the chart of the Arctic regions — rarely accessible 
— discloses that Crocker Land and Nicholas Second Land are more than 
twelve hundred miles apart. It is another physical fact that the “Fram ”’ 
drifted across the eastern half of the north-polar basin along a route that 
lies between the two lands. 

In some quarters there arose doubts as to whether or not Stefansson 
had been forestalled in his aims by Wilkitzky as Scott had been by Amundsen 
in the Antarctic. That the Canadian authorities were at first in doubt as 
to the true relations of the two lands, was asserted by the daily press. 

Fortunately such fears and apprehension are groundless. Nicholas 
Second Land can in no way extend eastward to such an extent as even to 
approach the lands which are believed to exist in the million square miles of 
unknown regions within the Arctic circle. Crocker Land is situated in the 
western hemisphere, in about 104° west longitude, while Nicholas Second 
Land is in the eastern hemisphere, in about 100° east longitude. The two 
lands are therefore on diametrically opposite sides of the north-polar ocean. 

Meanwhile, on the report of Commander Wilkitzky it is known that 
Nicholas Second Land is not of continental dimensions, but rather is a 
narrow land, probably of closely-joined islands. It may perhaps be some 
two hundred miles long by forty or fifty wide, having possibly half the area 
of the islands of Nova Zembla. 

Certainly all readers of the AMERICAN MusEUM JOURNAL will rejoice with 
the writer that our Canadian friends, with their able leader Stefansson, have a 
free and unvisited field of exploration open to their Arctic expedition of 1913. 


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TO THE MAQUIRITARES’ LAND 


By Leo E. Miller 


Leader of the Upper Orinoco Expedition of the American Museum 


results of the Upper Orinoco expedition within the confines of a 

short magazine article is a difficult undertaking, partly on account 
of the great distance traversed and partly because of the numerous discover- 
ies and incidents of interest and importance attendant upon the exploration 
of this all but unknown part of South America. 

In the latter part of November, 1912, the writer, accompanied by Mr. 
F .X. Iglseder as assistant, sailed from New York to Trinidad and thence 
across the Gulf of Paria and up the Orinoco to Ciudad Boli’var, two hundred 
and forty miles from the mouth of the turbulent muddy stream. Here a 
week was spent in provisioning the expedition and in chartering a sloop to 
carry ourselves and the rather appalling amount of cumbersome equipment 
to the foot of the cataract of Atures, the first effectual barrier to navigation. 
The low stage of the water at this, the dry season, together with the numer- 
ous, barely submerged rocks and shifting sand-banks render steamboat 
navigation so hazardous that no attempt is made to ascend higher than the 
mouth of the Apure. Sailboats of light draft are therefore the only craft 
available. This latter mode of travel is further facilitated by the preva- 
lence of a steady easterly breeze which with darkness often assumes the 
proportion of a squall or chiguaco as it is called. 

The journey from Ciudad Boli’var to Vagre, the port of Atures consumed 
seventeen days, from December 17 to January 2. A half day had been 
spent at Caicara and a full day lost below El Infierno waiting for a strong 
enough breeze to take us through that seething gorge. 

Dugouts served to convey the luggage from Vagre to Zamuro a short 
mile away, and thence the league to Atures on the south bank of the Rio 
Cataniapo, was covered in ox-drawn carts and other dugouts. At the 
town of Atures we were hospitably received by General Roberto Pulido, 
governor of the Department of the Upper Orinoco, and next day proceeded 
to Salvajito, another league overland. Here we found anchored a trim 
kerosene launch, capable of taking the expedition to Maipures, the next 
stage of the journey, in half aday’s time. But great was our disappointment 
to learn that the owner requested the modest sum of four hundred dollars 
for the service. By no dint of argument could he be persuaded to reduce 
this figure, for in true Venezuelan style he reasoned that we were sorely in 
need of his services and must eventually concede to his demand. But in 
this he was mistaken. One other way of travel lay open, —namely, by a 
small dugout canoe, and to this recourse was of necessity taken, although 
three trips were required to transport all the equipment. 


\ NY attempt to give a comprehensive account of the movements and 


351 


302 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


Finally, on January 6, in the afternoon, I started with three natives — 
the canoe so heavily laden as to leave less than three inches of free board 
above the water — and reached the port of Maipures on the Rio Tuparo 
before noon of the eighth. Alp 

The canoe and two men were immediately sent back to Salvajito, with 
instructions for Mr. Iglseder to come with the next load. In crossing the 
rapids of Guajibo, a short distance below the mouth of the Tuparo, one of 
the natives was lost together with the canoe, and the rest of the party re- 
mained stranded on an island nearly two days, until rescued by a passing 
party of Guajibo Indians. 

The portage at Maipures is only three miles across savanna country, 
interspersed with huge granite boulders and small clumps of forest. During 
my enforced stay I had ample time to explore the surrounding country and 
visit the rapids, three in number, which here obstruct the river. The falls 
of the Carretia, said to be about thirty feet high, block the eastern arm of the 
Orinoco, which is divided into two branches by the great Isla de Raton. 
Small collections were made, as well as photographs taken of the rapids, 
vegetation, and wonderful granite formations. It would be difficult indeed 
adequately to describe some of these towering blocks of stone, cracked and 
weathered into fantastic shapes, partially covered with creepers and sur- 
rounded by a low growth of spiny palms and gnarled stunted trees. Clumps 
of pineapples, cacti, and various species of thorny shrubs growing in cracks 
in the ledges impart to patches of the country a desolate and decidedly 
desert-like appearance. 

Along the river huge masses of rock were exposed by the low water, 
showing caves, grottoes and other marvelous formations. Many of the 
sloping ledges are honey-combed with hundreds of pot-holes of various sizes 
and degrees of perfection. 

A large piragua conveyed the expedition to San Fernando de Atabapo 
in six days’ time. We had anticipated easily securing the required native 
help here, but found that nearly every available man had gone to the rubber 
camps up the river. It required several days to enlist the number sufficient 
for our purpose. Then began the arduous voyage on the upper Orinoco. 
Great playas stretched along the banks almost continually, some of them 
many miles in length. In many of these, vast numbers of turtles deposited 
their eggs at night which were eagerly sought in the early morning by 
Indians and “coro-coro”’ ibises. Sand-flies, which first became troublesome 
in Atures, were always present in incredible myriads making the hours of 
daylight almost unbearable. 

The delta of the Ventuari was reached February 8, and for three days we 
struggled in the rapids that end in a decided fall named Santa Barbara. 
The strong north wind and monstrous waves added greatly to the difficulty 
and danger of running this series of rapids. Numberless islands, some of 


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Vagre, the port of Atures, was the first stop after passing Cuidad Boli’var where the final pro- 
visioning of the expedition had been accomplished. At Vagre the outfit of the expedition was portaged 
around the rapids 


Loading the outfit at Atures. The expedition traveled by dugouts one mile on from Vagre and 
thence in ox-drawn carts to Atures town along the south bank of the Rio Cataniapo. Atures gives 
the first experience of the terrible insect pest of the upper Orinoco 
354 


Atures town on the Orinoco. The river here presents the northern face of the forty miles of 
rock and cataract blocking navigation. The cataract sends up a roar heard continually not only 
at the town but also fully a mile away 


Loading equipment at the port of Maipures. A dugout canoe was the means of travel from 
Salvajito (a league overland from Atures) to the port of Maipures — a dugout so small that three 
trips were necessary for the transportation 


355 


396 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


considerable size and all heavily forested, block the mouth of the Ventuari, 
while the many channels into which the river is divided are thickly sprinkled 
with granite boulders, amongst which the water swirls and rushes at a terrific 
rate. 

Life on the upper Orinoco at this season is at its height. It was unusual 
not to pass a number of rubber camps in the course of a day’s travel, which 
always presented a scene of life and activity. It was hard to believe that 
within a few short weeks all signs of life would vanish and the sites of the 
camps themselves disappear in a rapidly rising, muddy lake. At many of 
these camps we were hospitably received, while at others the reception bor- 
dered on open hostility so that we deemed it safer to spend the night aboard 
the little craft or on some vast sand-bank beneath the brilliant con- 
stellations. 

Daily we strained our eyes for a first sight of the stupendous stone forma- 
tion which was our goal, and in the afternoon of the twentieth we were re- 
warded with a first faint view of Duida, the mysterious mount of the 
Maquiritares. It loomed dim and indistinct in the far distance, a high 
flat-topped plateau, but presently the mists shifted and revealed two peaks 
of equal height on the southeast end. A moment later the whole was 
hidden by rolling masses of vapor. We did not have another view until 
several days later. 

There are two things so typically characteristic of the Orinoco that I 
cannot refrain from giving them mention. One, the large flocks of hoatzins 
that appear morning and evening in the dense brush that lines the river 
banks and the other, the schools of porpoises that appear unexpectedly at 
almost any time of day or night. The latter often remain in the immediate 
vicinity of a boat an hour or more, coming to the surface frequently to raise 
their long narrow snouts from the water, give a deep coughing sound and 
disappear. 

Toward the Orinoco, Duida presents a bold front — a sheer cliff hundreds 
of feet in height. The seven miles of intervening country, between river 
and mountain, consist of marshes and undulating plains covered with a 
dense growth of thorny vegetation. Progress through such country is 
extremely difficult and upon reaching the base of the mountain at this point 
it seemed that we should doubtlessly be obliged to make wide detours as the 
barren cliffs are apparently unscalable. 

It was therefore decided to ascend the Rio Cunucunuma, a small stream 
coming from the northeast and entering the Orinoco at right angles. Once 
within the comparatively narrow confines of this cafo, the surroundings 
are vastly different from the Orinoco and as wild and tropical as one could 
well wish. 

The forest is of towering height generally extending to the edge of the 
water, forming impregnable walls covered with a dense and even growth 


The canoe on its second trip, while crossing the rapids of Guajibo, here met disaster; one of the 
natives was lost and the others of the party were imprisoned on an island two days until rescued 
by passing Indians 


The savanna country about Maipures is interspersed with huge granite boulders in small 
clumps of forest. Sometimes rocks of fantastic shape tower to great heights amid vines, palms and 
gnarled trees. 

Maipures is at the southern face of the great rocky bulwark that crosses the river and 
divides it into the lower and the upper Orinoco SINT 


The interior of a rubber camp. On the upper Orinoco the expedition found difficulty in securing 
help because all natives had gone to the rubber camps along the river beyond. In February these 
camps present scenes of life and activity to be replaced in a few weeks by primeval solitude 


Method of making portions of the trip up the river Cunucunuma. Raudal de Sina near the 
encampment of the Maquiritare chief. The expedition’s temporary camp was made on the shore 
and the trail to Duida begun 


358 


TO THE MAQUIRITARES’ LAND 309 


of creepers. Myriads of palms, tall and slender and of many species, rear 
their heads above the dark green canopy. The water of the stream is of a 
deep reddish color and so clear as to permit an unobstructed view of the 
teeming life that flits like shadows over the sandy bottom. Notable among 
these are rays and electric eels of formidable size, adding very materially 
to the dangers of navigating the smaller streams. 

A number of Indian plantations which we visited were entirely deserted, 
but the large conical huts furnished convenient stopping places for the nights 
and the fields provided an abundance of fruits and vegetables. 

We made slow headway on account of the swift current and numerous 
cataracts. After seven days of the most strenuous kind of work we reached 
Yacare, the encampment of the Maquiritare chief, Antonio Yarecuma, a 


Duida stands some seven miles from the river. A trail was cut across the intervening 
low hills with foot-bridges of felled trees over the small streams to our base of operations at the 
foot of the mountain. Duida is not an isolated mountain “island ’’ as supposed but connected 
by hills with the Ventuari and Parima ranges 


short twenty miles from the mouth of the river. Finding the place deserted, 
we descended a short distance to near the mouth of a small creek known to 
the Indians as the Sina. Here a tract was cleared and a temporary camp 
pitched. 

Duida, which was usually visible a few minutes at or near ten in the 
morning, rose boldly but a short distance away. Between us lay a series 
of low hills covered with comparatively open forest and swampy valleys 
intersected with small streams. A short time after our arrival our captain 
succeeded in recruiting five Indians and the entire force was at once set to 
cutting a trail to the foot of the mountain, where the base of supplies and 


Maquiritare Indians live in small groups scattered at short distances along the river in the 
vicinity of Mount Duida. Neither these nor other Indians of the Orinoco region make good 
assistants on a scientific expedition 


The Madquiritare plantations had been wholly deserted for the rubber camps but we were 
grateful for their huts as shelter at night 


360 


TO THE MAQUIRITARES’ LAND 361 


operations was to be established. Several windfalls of considerable width 
had to be cut through and trees to serve as foot-bridges felled across a num- 
ber of streams. This required considerable time but the work on the whole 
progressed most satisfactorily and in a week nearly four miles of trail, or 
over half the estimated distance to the mountain had been completed. 

Then came the first signs heralding the approach of the rainy season. 
The mists that now perpetually enshrouded Mount Duida assumed a deep 
gray tint and there sprung up suddenly and at frequent intervals cold winds 
that swept over the forest with cyclonic velocity — bringing many of the 
great forest trees crashing to the ground — accompanied by vivid flashes 
and ominous rumblings that clearly told of the forces at work among the 
lofty peaks. 

The Maquiritares, in common with many tribes of South American 
Indians, are imbued with the belief that the mountain fastnesses are the 
abode of evil spirits and at the first clash of the elements our Indians showed 
great uneasiness, finally disappearing under cover of night, taking the boat. 
Their departure, while appalling at first thought, was not a serious matter 
on account of the close proximity of Yacare to which numbers of Indians 
would return at the close of the rubber season, but a few weeks off. Pro- 
visions and ammunition we had sufficient for six or eight months. 

At this time Mr. Iglseder suffered a severe attack of malaria and the 
men were immediately sent down the river on an improvised raft to bring 
a boat from Trocoapure, a rubber camp on the Orinoco. When they re- 
turned beriberi had set in and Mr. Iglseder’s condition was so serious that 
retreat was not only necessary but instant flight imperative. Favorable 
conditions attended the return and in nine days San Fernando de Atabapo 
was reached. 

The collections of birds are large and have yielded a number of new 
species and one genus new to science. Other results of the expedition are 
most interesting and surprising. Mount Duida is not the isolated moun- 
tain “island” as was supposed, but is connected with the mountains of the 
Ventuari and Parima Range by a series of hills. Its elevation is compara- 
tively low, being less than six thousand feet. Any attempt to reach the top, 
which to all appearances is rugged bare granite, should be made from the 
west, as the slope is gradual and forested for a considerable distance up. 

To secure the best results, assistants should be taken from Trinidad, as 
both Venezuelans and Indians are untrustworthy and totally lacking in in- 
telligence. The dry season is much shorter than in the lower Orinoco and 
work must be pushed with all possible speed. 


Totem poles in the almost deserted village of Kitwinskole ! 


SOME KITKSAN TOTEM POLES 


By George T. Emmons 


Lieutenant, United States Navy, Retired 


NDER the general name of Tsimshian, are included the three dia- 
lectic divisions of that linguistic stock which occupies the extreme 
northwestern coast of British Columbia and the valleys of the 

rivers that reach the sea thereabouts. 


Norre.— The Museum has on exhibition a large number of totem poles from various 
parts of the North Pacific Coast, and many of the most valuable collections made by Lieute- 
nant Emmons are the property of the institution. 


1A wealth of elaborately carved heraldic columns is to be found in the old and almost 
deserted village of Kitwinskole on the Kitwinskole River some twenty miles inland from 
Kitwingach, on the old trail to the Nass River. These columns are fast going to decay, but 
are still treasured by the owners who return here for their potlatches and burial ceremonies. 
The photograph shows the northern portion of the village from in front of the house of the 
head chief of the Lakyebo clan. 


362 


SOME KITKSAN TOTEM POLES 363 


Specifically, this name belongs only to the dwellers of the seaboard. Its 
meaning, “in the Shian”’ (the native name of the Skeena River) marks them 
as sojourners within the confines of the river, and this they were, for their 
permanent villages were on the coast and they resorted to the lower river 
only during the fishing season to procure their winter food supply of salmon. 
The inhabitants of the valley of the Nass are known as Niska and those 
who live on the upper reaches of the Skeena and its tributaries, beyond 
the canon, are the Kitksan [Kitishian]— “people of the Shian,” implying 
a permanency of residence on and an ownership of the river. This inland 
division claims to be the parent stock from which both the Tsimshian and the 
Niska have descended. 

The oldest local traditions of the Kitksan go back to the subsidence of 
the flood, when those who were saved landed on the north bank of the river 
just below and across from the mouth of the Bulkley and founded Tahm lah 
halm which is so often mentioned in song and story. Here they remained 
for many generations until they became a great people, and to express their 
numbers, the old native who gave me the following account of their disper- 
sion said that when the geese in their migration were passing over the village, 
the assembled multitudes would raise a mighty shout and the frightened 
birds would fold their wings and fall to the ground. After a season of 
extreme cold, snow continued to fall late in the spring long after the salmon 
should have run in from the sea, and starvation looked the people in the face. 
Driven to desperation and resentment against the spirit of the cold, an old 
chief soaked a dried salmon in water until it assumed a fresh appearance, 
and spitting it after the manner of cooking the fresh fish, he went without 
the doorway and in a loud voice reviled the ice spirit saying, “ You have no 
strength, you are but a weakling, you cannot hurt us and keep the salmon 
away. See the fresh new fish I took this morning, see it ready for the fire!” 
This so incensed the spirit that it sent a mighty flood, the ice in the river 
gorged and then the water rose and bursting its bounds swept all before it, 
and in consternation the people fled and in small bands sought new homes, 
some following the river to the coast, others crossing overland to the bars 
while those who remained settled at favorable points along the upper river. 
Other versions of the dispersion are quite different in detail but all agree in 
the fact that the want of food after an extended period of extreme cold 
caused an exodus and a division of the people. 

The Kitksan comprise seven geographic divisions that might best be 
termed village communities or bands, each one of which has a fixed village 
within well-defined territorial limits for hunting, fishing and berry-gathering 
although travel by the river is open to all. These divisions take the names 
of the villages with the prefix of Kit, “people.” Each community is com- 
posed of two or more of the four totemic clans living together through the 
necessity of intermarriage and for social and protective purposes. The 


304 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


villages are all on the main river or its tributaries, the houses are arranged in 
one or two parallel lines on elevated beaches overlooking the water. The 
clans are grouped together. But to-day under missionary influence the old 
villages are being deserted for new sites or when still inhabited the primitive 
communal houses are giving place to small modern dwellings, and with the 
building of the Grand Trunk Railway through the country every vestige of 
the old life will soon disappear as will the people themselves. 


THE KILLER-WHALE [AT THE LEFT] AND “ BEAR-UNDER-WATER” AS CREST 
FIGURES IN FRONT OF A CHIEF’S HOUSE 


In some instances individual crest figures are placed on platforms in front of the 
houses and serve the same purpose as the heraldic columns in displaying the emblem. 
In the village of Kishpiyeoux in front of the house of Gaal, chief of the Kish-hash clan, 
are large painted wooden figures of the two principal crests of the division — the killer- 
whale, indicated by the curved dorsal fin with the circular hole in the base below the 
horizontal white stripe, and the mythical “ bear-under-water”’ in which a horizontal 
striped dorsal fin rises above the back of a bear figure. Between these two is a tall, 
slender, tapering pole, carved and painted to represent a snake. The head is black 
and a black line extends the entire length down the middle of the back. It is slightly 
octagonal in form and the sides are adzed to represent scales. The snake is a crest 
of Chief Gaal’s direct family, not a general clan emblem. It comes to them from the 
killing of an immense water-snake by one of the family in early days, after it had 
destroyed many people and its last victim was a young woman of the family who is 
represented by the carved head half hidden by the grass, below the snake’s mouth. 
This use of the snake as a family crest and its display on a totem pole is the only 
instance of the kind that I have seen among the Kitksan or other divisions of the 
Tsimshian people 


SOME KITKSAN TOTEX POLES 365 


The social organization of the Kitksan is 
founded on matriarchy, and consists of four 
exogamic clans composed of households, each 
under its immediate house head, but all ac- 
knowledging the general authority of a hered- 
itary chief who presides over the councils in 
the discussions of all family affairs. The clan 
is the unit of political and racial life. Indi- 
viduality without the clan does not exist. 
The act of one is assumed by all, and a very 
exact code of well-formulated laws governs the 
relations of these bodies to one another. The 
members of a clan may marry in any of the 
other three divisions. Descent being in the 
mother’s line, rank and property always re- 
main in the clan. The brother or the mater- 
nal nephew succeeds to the chieftainship and 
the wife of the deceased retains her position 
in the household only by marrying the suc- 
cessor. Ate 

The clans take their names from their prin- 
cipal emblems, the wolf, the eagle and the 
raven or frog, except in the case of the Kish- 
hash — “people of the fire-weed ’”’ — who are 
represented by two or more equally important 
animal motives. A number of subsidiary em- 
blems are claimed by each clan and others of 
less importance belong to households only. 


In Kitwingach is a very elaborately carved column 
of the Kanhada clan in which the frog crest is repre- 
sented to the exclusion of the raven. At the base is a 
bear figure in the position of having been strangled in 
the noose of the twisted rawhide snare; above this is a 
frog, then a story of the household is told by the canoe 
with three heads: — In a Haida raid on the village a 
woman of the family was carried away to the Queen 
Charlotte Islands. Her captor treated her so cruelly 
that she killed him and cut off his head, and making 
her escape in a canoe with her child she crossed to the 
mainland and finally reached her home. The canoe 
typifies her escape, and the three heads represent in 
succession the mother, the child and the husband. 
Above the canoe is a human figure holding a frog and 
seated on the head is the small owl mardex (which is a 
clan emblem) holding a frog te tee 


366 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


Another column of the Kish-hash clan illustrates 
the story of the bear that lives in the moon and carries 
children away from the earth. At the base is repre- 
sented the great horned owl (gwute gwu nooks) a clan 
crest; above, three children, and finally the bear with 
its head through the full moon, which latter is also a 
crest of this family. Beyond and to the right is a 
very old and beautifully carved Kish-hash: column 
representing two owls and several small human figures 


The emblem is displayed 
upon articles of ceremonial 
dress and festival parapher- 
nalia but more particularly 
and with greatest effect 
upon the heraldic columns 
or totem poles that charac- 
terize the villages of this 
people. 

These carved columns 
which form the most con- 
spicuous and attractive fea- 
ture of the old settlements 
differ materially from those 
of the coast tribes. They 
never form the entrance of 
the house as with the Haida, 
nor are they used as mor- 
tuary receptacles for the 
ashes of the dead. They 
are never placed within the 
house forming the supports 
for the roof beams as with 
the Tlingit and others, nor 
do they stand in contact 
with or alongside of the 
dwelling, but in every in- 
stance they form a quite 
regular line parallel with and 
the distance of a broad road- 
way in front of the houses. 
They are less massive than 
those of the coast, which is 
the natural consequence of 
the smaller tree growth of 
the interior, but while often 
slender they are very tall. 
Cedar is the wood generally 
used and much preferred 
from its fine grain, lightness 
and supposed durability. 
Some columns are elabo- 


THE SAVAGE “HOW-HOW” IS A FAMILY CREST 


In the village of Kitwingach, on a line with the old grave enclosures, but standing 
by itself in an open space between the two rows of houses, is a boxlike platform on 
which stands the rather crude figure of an animal known as “how-how.” As the 
story goes: — In old times a savage animal different from any known to the country 
made its home on a wooded island in the Skeena River and preyed upon travelers and 
hunters camping thereabouts, until finally it was killed by one of the Lakyebo 
clan. To commemorate this exploit it was taken by his household as a particular 
crest and as such is displayed:both in this manner and surmounting carved columns 
in front of the houses. 

The legends of the Tsimshian and associate people are replete with stories of 
mythical beings and fabled monsters that are believed to exist or to have existed, and 
from encounters or association with these by their ancestors, families have assumed 
crests that have no known prototype. But these are generally of the water or the 
air and are very complex in form, while the representation of the how-how is a simple 
animal figure, although wholly unlike that of any species common to this locality. I 
would suggest that the story might be really true, and that the animal unknown to 
this people might have been a mountain lion, so common to the more southern and 
interior portions of British Columbia, that had wandered across the mountains and 
failing to find a sufficient food supply in its new home had attacked stray travelers 
along the river. The bear is the only dangerous mammal in this section and the 
people are so well acquainted with it that they could never mistake it for any other 
animal. And the native artist in his greatest latitude would never represent the 
bear form with the peculiar type of tail which always characterizes the representations 
of the how-how and which corresponds so well to that of the lion 


367 


308 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


rately carved throughout their length and those of greater girth are more 
often hollowed out or flattened along the bank for ease of handling. Others 
are carved with one or more figures at the base and at the top with the inter- 
vening surface adzed or the natural 
tree trunk with the branches and bark 
removed. I believe that when erected 
all columns were painted in the native 
colors of red and black and sometimes 
white but time and the elements have 
obliterated all traces of color in the 
older ones. 

_ It is by means of these carvings 
that this people without letters, have 
recorded and preserved their history, 
which includes their legends of origin, 
their hero tales, their clan affiliation 
and particularly such household or 
family events as are of more than 
passing interest. The erection of the 
column usually follows the succession 
to the head of the family or the build- 
ing of a new house, and besides honor- 
ing the memory of the dead it in- 
creases the importance of the living 
and reflects glory upon the clan at 
large. Human and animal figures, one 
superimposed upon the other, are rep- 
resented. These are generally in low 
relief because of the character of the 
field of ornamentation — which is a 
tree trunk of moderate diameter and 
considerable height standing wholly 
without support. The front and sides 
of the pole are carved while the back 
is a solid plane surface which preserves 


Before the advent of Europeans the coast and river tribes were continually carrying on 
war by means of raids. In one of these a great war party of Haidas ascended the Skeena 
River and surprised the people of Kishpiyeoux when many of the men were away. They 
burned the village and took back to their island home many women as slaves. One of 
these later made her escape in a small canoe and returned to the village. Upon her death 
a memorial column was raised to her memory. She is represented at the base, and a small 
Haida canoe suspended across her body illustrates her means of escape. The eagle, her clan 
emblem, is shown over her head and surmounting the pole. This woman killed her husband 
and cut off his head before making her escape with her child and originally there were three 
carved wooden heads in the canoe 


SOME KITKSAN TOTEM POLES 369 


the strength of the column to withstand the heavy winds that sweep 
through these river valleys. While most of the figures are more or less con- 
ventionalized, particularly those of human beings, mythical animals and 
bears, yet the Kitksan are very independent in their treatment of most 
other animal forms, and represent them in many different positions very 
true to nature. This is particularly so in the case of the bird figures that 
so often surmount the poles. It is customary to give the clan or house crest 
the place of honor at the top of the pole and more often too at the base, 
while more for ornamental purposes it may figure in many positions be- 
tween, where also may be pictured some family story or exploit or some 
connection through marriage. Every figure represented here has some clan 
or household significance although the present generation cannot always 
account for the appearance of human figures on some of the older columns. 
To-day the old columns are fast going to decay and their places are not 
being supplied by new ones. And with the loss of interest in this custom is a 
growing ignorance which in a few years will result in much difficulty if not 
in an impossibility in interpreting these old stories in carved tree trunks. 


Totem poles in the village of Kitwingach in front of the house of a chief of the Kanhada 
clan 


A RECORD SUNFISH 


By Bashford Dean 


HE Museum has recently acquired a mounted specimen of a monster 
sea sunfish, Mola mola, which was taken in 1910 off the coast of 
southern California. It appears that its captor, Mr. D. H. Buxton, 

“hooked it while angling.”’ The sunfish has the reputation of being one of 
the most abnormal of queer fishes. It is dise- 
shaped, and appears “all head.” It has 
lost the hinder trunk region and with this 
the spinal cord— to a degree indeed unique 
among back-boned animals. Thus the spinal 
cord of a sunfish a yard long measures only a 
small fraction of an inch in length. 

Sunfishes are typically open- sea forms, seen 


10 feet in length 
11 feet in vertical measurement 
occasionally from the deck of 
sometimes swimming at the 
sides, and sometimes tilted. 
“seale” obliquely into the 
turbed and are said sometimes 
the surface like porpoises. But in general little 
is known of their habits. It is not possible 
to explain the “adaptations” which this fish 
is supposed to have undergone, and the steps in its evolution. Several 
of its earlier stages however, are known and they show how the tail re- 
gion comes to be changed. Furthermore a clue as to the s“cause” of 
its modifications was obtained by chance when the puzzle of the repro- 


an ocean liner, 
surface on their 
They — usually 
water when dis- 
to jump above 


370 


A RECORD SUNFISH 371 


duction of eels was studied; for it was discovered that young eels were 
often found in the stomachs of small sunfishes, and from what we now 
know of the natural history of eels, it seems clear that at one stage of its 
life the sunfish lives in deep water.' Its curious shape therefore may in 
some way be connected with its living under conditions of great pressure, 
where most fishes develop huge heads and spindling trunks. 

Small specimens of sunfish are fairly common in the warmer seas. Large 
specimens however rarely come to the hands of the naturalist, so the present 
fish has a certain merit since it is apparently the largest of its kind to find 
its way toa museum. Dr. David Starr Jordan records that a specimen 
taken in 1893 near Los Angeles, weighed in life 1800 pounds, and measured 
eight feet two inches from snout to tail. The present specimen was ten 
feet, one inch in length when caught and nearly eleven feet in vertical 
measurement. The only record of a larger specimen known to the writer, 
was given in a popular magazine several years ago where a photograph 
was reproduced of a sunfish which had been killed by a steamer’s propeller 
blade near the harbor of Sydney. This specimen, it is said, measured ten 
feet in length and was no less than fourteen feet in vertical measurement. 
Its weight was 4400 pounds. 

There can be no.question that the present specimen had attained great 
age, although its age cannot be estimated definitely. By analogy with other 
fishes it could hardly have been less than twenty years old and it may have 
been nearly a hundred. It shows an interesting old age character in the 
wrinkles which appear at many points, as shown in the photograph. These 
“wrinkles” are thin ridges formed originally from folds of skin whose sides 
had grown together — so completely in fact, that sections show that the 
ridge is solid, leaving the inner surface of the skin quite smooth. Thus the 
“wrinkles” are normal features, not due to defective taxidermy, as one at 
first suspects. Similar wrinkles appear in the photograph, which was taken 
of the fish as it was hoisted out of water. The tail of the present specimen 
had been badly injured, probably by attacks of sharks or of killer- 
whales, but its outline is to a large degree regenerated. 

1 Since this was written, a paper of Dr. Pellegrin (Bull. Soc. Zool. de France, vol, xxxvii. 
p. 228) has been received, which indicates that sunfishes collect and spawn (April) in definite 


areas (banks) in relatively deep water — as in the bay of Port-de-France. The eggs are 
minute. 


Photo by Walter L. Beasley 


VIEW OF MEMORIAL HALL IN THE AMERICAN MUSEUM 
This photograph taken during the exhibit of the Horticultural Society of New York and showing six of the bush chrysanthemums which attracted so 


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MUSEUM NOTES 


SiNcE the last issue of the JouRNAL the following persons have been elected to 
membership in the Museum: 

Life Members, Messrs. C. M. Berasrresser, Henry W. Borrrcer, RoBERT 
Borrrcer, Louis J. Bonry, JAMES C. Brapy, J. Howarp Forp, A. V. de 
GorcourtA, WILLIAM KENNON JEWETT, Wi1LL1AM LaTrHRoP Ricu, THomas F.. Ryan, 
Byron L. Suiru, ALFRED G. VANDERBILT; 

Sustaining Members, Messrs. W1itu1AmM Brucr-Brown, Davin LIEBMANN, 
Ewautp H. ScHNIEWIND; 

Annual Members, Mrs. G. Fatx, Mrs. E. Freunp, Mrs. Epwarp A. Gross- 
MANN, Mrs. Freperick A. Hatsry, Mrs. BhAncHE W. Hutt, Mrs. Percy JAcKson, 
Mrs. Joun A. Josepy, JR., Mrs. A. W. OpeNuyM, Mrs. Wuuu1AM A. Perry, Mrs. V. 
Sypnry Roruscuinp, Mrs. WintiAmM Cummincs SHANNON, the Misses Anicr H. 
ANNAN, LILLIAN BENET, CAROLINE CHOATE, Lucy Hunt, M. E. Lownpss, Entity F. 
Spooner, May Sterns, Dr. Orro Sussman and Messrs. Joun Dunpar ADAMS, 
Winturop W. Atpricu, LEon SAMSON ALTMAYER, C. L. AuGER, THomaAs H. BARBER, 
Ira Barrows, JosePpH H. Benpix, D. J. Benontret, Max Brnswanacer, THomas K. 
Boces, Henry L. Cammann, Epwarp B. Camp, Water F. CuHapprey, H. C. 
CHATFIELD-TAYLoR, Hucu J. CutsnHoim, A. P. Cuapp, J. WILLIAM CLarK, ALBERT 
CiaysureH, A. De Wirr CocHraNnE, AARON COLEMAN, FREDERIC M. CREHORE, 
WiuuraM H. Davinas, J. M. DirreNnHOEFER, GEORGE EHRET, JR., CHARLES EWINa, 
Wituram J. Fuesu, M. Franxkrort, GrorGE C. Fraser, Ropert A. GARDINER, 
Louts GoupsmituH, I. E>win GoLpWASSER, FRED H. GREENEBAUM, ALFRED HARRIS, 
J. Armory Hasxeup, H. C. HermerpincEer, JoHN LockMAN HeLMuTH, HAROLD 
Herrick, M. H. Hirscusperc, BertrHotp 8. HorkHErmerR, W. Trustow HYDE, 
Guy B. Jonnson, J. Henry Kanrs, JoHN CLAPPERTON Kerr, LEE Kouns, JAcos J. 
Lesser, ArTHUR E. LonpERBACK, ANGus 8. Macponautp, THomas 8. McLane, 
Herpert R. Marnzer, SAMUEL Marcus, FREDERICK MatHEstvs, JR., H. F. Noyss, 
Wii1am Barcuay Parsons, AARON 8. PENNINGTON, WiLLIAM D. N. PERINE, SETH 
Low Pierrepont, Rupotew Recut, L. ReicHeENBAcH, Henry B. H. RIPLey, 
Wituam M. Savin, Hewtert Scupper, Jr., R. D. Surpman, Micuaet M. 
SHOEMAKER, AuGUSTINE J. SmiTH, FREDERIC O. SPEDDEN, J. CLINTON SPENCER, 
WiuuiAM FREDERICK STAFFORD, SPENCER W. STEWART, FREDERIC J. STIMSON, 
Joun R. Srrone, Sterrert TATE, Ropert THorNE, H. W. Van WaAGENEN, E. 
RopBins WALKER. 


Tue electric lighting of large buildings has progressed so rapidly that what seemed 
admirable a decade ago is now hopelessly behind the times. In this respect the Mu- 
seum has fared badly; not only is the power insufficient to operate all the old in- 
candescent lights at once, but even at the best they contrast but poorly with the 
modern tungsten lights. The view of memorial hall taken during the recent exhibit 
of the Horticultural Society of New York, shows well the vast improvement of the 
present lights over the old-time clusters. The light though brilliant is soft, and while 
every part of the hall is illuminated and shadows are obliterated, the eye of the ob- 
server is not strained. This shows what might be accomplished throughout the 
building were funds available for the replacement of the old lamps by new, since the 
present engine power is sufficient for a complete installation of tungsten lamps. 
The small lecture halls, the hall containing the exhibit of the department of public 
health and that containing the collection of local birds have been equipped with new 
fixtures and tungsten lamps, and these give more than a hint of the improvement 
that might be effected in other halls. 

373 


3/4 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


Dr. CarLos DE LA Torre of the University of Havana, Cuba, has made a very 
interesting and valuable addition to the collection of conchology in the department 
of invertebrate zodlogy. This material was secured by Dr. F. E. Lutz in his recent 
visit to Cuba and consists of land shells, many of which are described by Dr. La Torre. 
The genus Urocoptis forms the larger number of these and the cotypes which accom- 
pany them add immensely to their immediate interest. There are many specimens 
of the round-mouthed shells, a number of Helicide and some very interesting and 
striking examples of Cerion. The gift embraces 139 species and 655 specimens. 


A sertes of three lectures has been planned for the classes of blind children that 
visit the Museum. In the first of these on December 18, Admiral Robert E. Peary 
will recount some of the experiences of his memorable Arctic journey which resulted 
in the attainment of the North Pole. 


On December 31, Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn will read a paper on “ Final 
Results of the Phylogeny in the Titanotheres’ before the American Society of 
Palzontologists 


A sErtss of three lectures has been planned for the classes of blind children that 
visit the Museum. In the first of these on December 18, Admiral Robert E. Peary 
will recount some of the experiences of his memorable Arctic journey which resulted 
in the attainment of the North Pole. 

On December 31, Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn will read a paper on “Final 
Results of the Phylogeny in the Titanotheres”’ before the American Society of Pale- 
ontologists. 


A PANEL recently completed in the tertiary mammal hall of the American Mu- 
seum shows the geographical distribution of rhinoceroses, past and present. These 
animals now surviving only in the Oriental and Ethiopian regions were abundant in 
the Tertiary over all the northern continents. Skulls of the principal types, existing 
and extinct, are arranged in the four sections of the panel representing North America, 
Asia, Europe and Africa. Their evolutionary history in this continent from their 
first appearance in the Eocene to their extinction in the Pliocene is also set forth. 


Tue American Anthropological Association and the American Folk-Lore Society 
will hold their annual meetings at the Museum, December 29-31. 


Tue thirty-first stated meeting of the American Ornithologists’ Union, held at the 
Museum from November 11 to 14, was one of the most largely attended in the history 
of the association. The one hundred and twenty members who registered repre- 
sented twelve states, and several Canadian members were also present. Illustrated 
papers of especial interest were those on “Birds of the Bogoté Region of Colombia” 
by Dr. F. M. Chapman; “Crossing the Andes of Peru,” by Dr. Wilfred H. Osgood; 
and “Birds of the South Atlantic,’’ by Mr. Robert C. Murphy. By the courtesy 
of Mr. Robert W. Priest of the Gaumont Company there was a special exhibition of 
the Scott motion pictures showing the animal life of the Antarctic. The next 
meeting will be held in Washington, D. C., during April, 1914. 


Dr. W. D. Marruew has been invited to contribute to the series of Silliman 
Lectures at Yale University, commemorative this year of the centenary of the birth 
of James Dwight Dana. His subject will be the ‘Tertiary Sedimentary Record 
and its Problems,” the dates of the lectures, December 18 and 19. 


A NEw group in the reptile series that is being constructed under the supervision 
of Miss M. C. Dickerson, will be opened to the public at about Christmas time. 
The new group pictures a rocky island with desert plants and hot sunshine, off the 


MOST OU} Pos{STA eTdoed QOO'OLT ‘HIOA MON JO AJoPoS TeANITMONIOH ON} JO IAIIxO Tres OUP JO eowenuy}u0s oy} Jo Sep Mog oy} Sun 


WNaSnNW 3HL OL JONVYLNA HOS SANIT NI ONILIVM SHOLISIA 


yug *H yo1epatg fq 070Yd 


376 THE AMERICAN MUSEUM JOURNAL 


coast of Lower California and shows the lizards of the locality, the chuckawallas, 
iguanas and other smaller species. The reptiles of the group were collected by Dr. 
Charles H. Townsend on the “ Albatross” expedition of 1911, which was made 
possible through the courtesy of the Department of Commerce and Labor at Wash- 
ington and the generosity of Mr. Arthur Curtiss James. 


Dr. CLuark WIssLER has been elected vice-president of the Section of Anthropol- 
ogy and Psychology of the New York Academy of Sciences'and Dr. Robert H. Lowie 
has been reélected secretary of the Section. 


In the alcove of the North American archeology hall of the Museum a mural 
series of unusual interest has recently been completed. It consists of five polychrome 
frescoes, three of which are enlarged copies of the frescoes on the walls of the cavern 
of Font-de-Gaume in France and two are enlarged copies from the ceiling of Altamiar 
in Spain, the latter having been reproduced in color in this magazine for December, 
1912. The originals of these are handed down to us from the Old Stone Age and 
represent paleolithic art at its highest point of perfection. The date of these cavern 
paintings is problematical but it is safe to say that they were painted at least twenty- 
five thousand years ago. The copies in the Museum were made by Mr. Albert Operti. 


Dr. C. V. Hartman, curator of ethnology of the Naturhistoriska Riksmuseum of 
Stockholm, who is well known to American investigators for his researches in Costa 
Rica, recently spent several days at the Museum. 


Tue Museum has taken this year a step in the direction of practical public ser- 
vice by including in its members’ courses a series of lectures on the ‘Principles of 
Healthy Living,” which have been greatly appreciated by the teachers in the public 
schools and by those interested in public-health work. 

The first lecture on November 12 was by Walter B. James, trustee of the Museum 
and professor of clinical medicine at the College of Physicians and Surgeons, on the 
“Body and its Surroundings”; the second lecture, November 19, was by H. C. 
Sherman, professor of food chemistry at Columbia University, on “Food”; the 
third, November 26, by T. A. Storey, professor of hygiene at the College of the 
City of New York, on “ Exercise and Rest”’; the fourth, December 3, is to be by 
Frederic 8. Lee, professor of physiology at Columbia University, on ‘Fresh Air’’; 
and the fifth, December 10, will be given by C.-E. A. Winslow, curator of public 
health at the American Museum, on ‘‘Control of Germ Diseases in the Household.” 
The lectures are to be printed in book form by G. P. Putnam’s Sons. 


AN eight or nine foot specimen of the peculiar nurse shark, Ginglymostoma cirra- 
tum, from Florida has recently been received at the Museum, having been brought 
alive to the New York Aquarium. Plaster molds of it have been made and a cast 
will be placed on exhibition. 


Tue department of anthropology has recently purchased from Mr. G. A. Paul 
of Oldtown, Maine, a collection from the Micmac Indians. The Museum has 
hitherto possessed very few specimens from this tribe and such specimens are rare 
in most institutions. The collection includes some old specimens of beadwork and 
various utensils showing carving similar to the characteristic work of the northeastern 
New England tribes. 


Durinc the latter part of December and throughout the coming January, there 
will be a special exhibit of photographs of the Indians of the Southwest, by Mr. 
Frederick Monsen, well-known for his artistic work. The pictures will be hung 
in the west assembly room and in the aisle of the hall of the Woodlands Indians 


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