ry newsletter MUSEUM OF COMPARATIVE ZOOLOGY Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts Volume 15, Number 2 Spring, 1985 Two New Members Join Faculty of the MCZ Dr. John D. Constable and George Putnam have joined the Faculty of the MCZ, the five-member govern- ing body of the MCZ. The Faculty reviews all administrative and budgetary decisions, and provides guidance and leadership for the MCZ’s director. The other current members are Harvard University President Derek Bok, David B. Stone and Robert G. Goelet. Both new appointees, who begin their five-year terms of office as of July 1, bring a wealth of relevant experience to their challenging new task. John D. Constable Constable’s association with the MCZ dates back to his Harvard undergraduate days as a Biology major. His honors thesis, published as an MCZ Bulletin, was a review of the MCZ’s herpetological holdings and included a description of two new species and a taxonomical revi- sion of many others. Constable went on to graduate from Harvard Med- ical School and is regarded as one of the world’s foremost plastic sur- geons. He holds appointments at Massachusetts General Hospital and other area hospitals and is a pioneer in burn reconstructive surgery. He is a member of the Herbicide Assessment Commission of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and has made frequent visits to Vietnam to help evaluate the ecological, medical and economic effects of herbicide spraying. Constable’s early interest in zool- ogy abides and his extensive travel includes several MCZ nature expe- ditions. He served as organizer and guide on the 1984 India expedition and will accompany the MCZ on the next India trip in February, 1986. He is an active member of the MCZ Trip Committee and the Advisory Board to the MCZ’s Public Programs. Constable is a Director of the World Wildlife Fund (U.S.), isa member of several natural history organiza- tions, and also serves as a trustee of the Opera Company of Boston, the Boston Ballet, the New England Wildflower Society, and is an over- seer of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. George Putnam is Chairman of The Putnam Management Fund, Inc., which along with its affiliated companies supervises institutional and mutual fund assets of more than $13 billion. Putnam joined the com- pany in 1951 as a security analyst, became Director in 1960, Executive Vice President in 1961, and later that year, President and Chief Executive Officer. He assumed his present post in 1970. A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School, Putnam was until recently Treasurer of Harvard University. Putnam’s broad range of interests are reflected in the organizations he serves. He is Governor and past Chairman of the Investment Company Institute; he is a member of the boards of American Mutual Insurance Company, The Boston Company, Inc., Boston Safe Deposit and Trust Company, Free- port-McMoRan, Inc., General Mills, Inc., Rockefeller Group, Inc., and American Public Radio. He is cur- rently a Trustee of the Massachusetts General Hospital, The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, the Bos- George Putnam ton Museum of Fine Arts, The Nature Conservancy, The Jackson Laboratory, and a Member of the Massachusetts Educational Loan Authority. An avid orchid gardener and lover of the outdoors, Putnam became interested in the MCZ through his participation on the 1984 trip to India and has served on the Advisory Board to the MCZ’s Public Programs for the past year. Richard Aronson Receives Award == 9s SY PS A Dissertation topics are arrived at in unexpected ways. Rich Aronson, who received his Ph.D. from Har- vard in March, 1985 and received the Best Paper Award at the American Society of Zoologists Annual Meet- ing, Ecology Division in 1984 for a paper based on his thesis entitled: “Ecology of a Paleozoic-Like Salt Lake Community”, first happened upon Sweetings Pond, a salt lake in the Bahamas, while learning how to SCUBA dive at the age of 13. He was struck by the abundance of octo- puses and brittlestars in the pond. After graduating from Dartmouth and while working on his Masters at Harvard, he was searching for a dissertation topic and remembered the Bahamian pond. His eagerness to return to all those brittlestars and octopuses yielded the necessary research funds for several productive field seasons devoted to finding out the reason for the dense invertebrate population as compared to the nearby coast, where they are vir- tually absent. The pond turned out not only to be a perfect subject for an ecological study but also an anachronism with characteristics similar to those of coastal habitats in the Paleozoic. The reason for the abundance of octo- puses and brittlestars was the absence of predatory fishes, a con- dition reminiscent of shallow marine communities prior to the explosive radiation of teleost fishes in the late Cretaceous. Predatory reef fishes now dominate Caribbean coastal habitats, probably preventing the occurrence of such dense inverte- brate populations. The brittlestars, Ophiothrix oer- stedii, are suspension feeders that sit on the bottom waving their arms to catch their food from the water col- umn. The octopuses, Octopus bri- areus are bottom-dwelling carnivores, feeding on _ crabs (including one as-yet-unnamed new species discovered by Aronson in the course of this study) worms, cockles, and the like. The octopuses do not eat brittlestars, allowing the two species to coexist. Aronson specu- lates that overfishing may drive Caribbean coastal communities toward the condition prevalent in the Paleozoic. Craig Harms assisted Aronson in his field work and paleontologist Hans Sues collaborated on a study of fossil brittlestars. Aronson is the recipient of a NATO Postdoctoral Fellowship for 1985-86 and will establish his base at the University of Reading, England, and the Plymouth Marine Laboratory to study the reason for the existence of dense beds of brit- tlestars in the English channel, where it is assumed there are large populations of predatory fishes. Education Department Hosts Student/Parent Open Houses On three evenings in May stu- dents brought their parents to see the results of their year’s course of study at the MCZ and challenged them to a student-designed scavenger hunt. This was a culmination of a year of in-class, in-museum science study. Attendance was high and parents went out of their way to express their appreciation for the program. The third year of the Cambridge Museum School Program was marked by financial insecurity due to the loss of Institute of Museum Services funding but generous con- tributions from the Harvard Office for Government, Community, and Public Affairs, and private donations made it possible to carry out the year’s work. The outlook for next year is still uncertain. The MCZ has submitted grant proposals to state and corpo- rate funding sources and the results will be forthcoming within the next two months. At this writing, the MCZ’s Institute for Museum Ser- vices grant proposal is still pending. When all the results are in, it will be lpossible to assess this program’s future. Itis not a coincidence that museum attendance figures have increased by over 10% for the first four months of 1985 as compared to the same period in 1984. Many of the children in the program have been seen on week- ends showing their parents and friends around the museum, some- times with sketch pads in hand. Another sign of the growing col- laborative relationship between the MCZ and the Cambridge Schools is the fact that Arlene Nichols, Museum Education Director, was invited to serve as one of four judges at the Cambridge High School Science Fair this spring. The MCZ Newsletter is published two or three times a year by the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard Unt- versity, Oxford Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138; McCarthy, Director. Editor: Gabrielle Dundon Photographer: A. H. Coleman James J. Kimberlyn Nelson Wins Award The American Society of Mam- mologists’ A. Brazier Howell Award for best student paper for 1985 has been awarded to first-year MCZ graduate student Kimberlyn Nelson. The work for which Nelson is being honored was her Masters thesis (Texas Tech University, 1984) on “Genetic interactions between hybridizing cytotypes of the white- footed mouse, Peromyscus leucopus.” Nelson is interested in the dynamics of contact zones between chromosomally divergent groups and the significance of such zones to the speciation process and as a source of new genetic variability. For her Masters work she employed protein electrophoretic techniques in her study. For her Ph.D. work at Harvard with Dr. Rodney Honeycutt as her advisor, she plans to integrate her findings to date with other genetic data such as mitochondrial DNA variation. There have not been many oppor- tunities to study genetic interactions in mammalian hybrid zones. Nelson had the good fortune to stumble upon her tailor-made research sub- jects when she was asked to collect some mice for a lab study while home in Norman, Oklahoma during the summer between receiving her B.S. from Baylor University and entering Texas Tech. The 40 mice she collected all turned out to be hybrid and formed the basis for her next two years of research work. Nelson located the center of the zone exactly ten miles from her home and while, she observes, others seek out exotic localities for their research animals, she is delighted that her continuing field work provides her with a legit- imate excuse to visit her family. Visitor Scott R. Shaw is completing a year in the MCZ’s Entomology Depart- ment as Visiting Curatorial Associate working on the Hymenoptera (wasp) collections. This is the third year of an NSF Collections Improvement Grant which has funded yearly appointments to work on those areas of the vast entomology collections that are most in need of attention. The two previous years were devoted to Diptera (flies) and Lepi- doptera (butterflies and moths). Shaw is particularly interested in parasitic wasps, an extremely abundant group characterized by the female’s laying her eggs on or in another insect, such as a caterpillar or beetle. The developing larva eventually destroy their host. There are so many of these wasps in the New England area that it is difficult to find insect populations in imma- ture stages without an associated parasitic wasp. They are one of the major causes of mortality in insects and can be credited with keeping down the number of insect pests in the region. Since there has not been a resident specialist in the MCZ on this group since Charles Brues left in 1945, the collections provided ample employment for Shaw’s curatorial talents. Shaw speculates that these wasps have been avoided by many modern researchers because many of them are very small (some are so tiny that they live out their entire larval lives in a single insect egg) and their overwhelming numbers. In the family Braconidae, for example, it is estimated that there are 40,000 species of which only 10,000 have been described. In the Ichneu- monidae, which is estimated to include 60,000 species, 75% remain unstudied. Staff Notes M. Deane Bowers, Hessel Assis- tant Curator of Lepidoptera and Assistant Professor of Biology, has received a National Science Foun- dation Visiting Professorship for Women, a new program designed “to provide opportunities for women to advance their careers in engi- neering and in the disciplines of science supported by NSF” and ‘’to encourage women to pursue careers in science and engineering by pro- viding greater visibility for women scientists and engineers employed in industry, government and academic institutions.’” Bowers plans to aug- ment her research repertoire by learning chemistry techniques with Dr. Frank Stermitz, an organic chemist at Colorado State University. She will take up her duties there as Visiting Professor for one year, starting in February, 1986. Bowers works on a group ot chemicals, the iridoid glycosides, which are found in plants in the snapdragon and honeysuckle fami- lies and are used by insects as clues to locating suitable food plants. Some butterflies store these chemicals to make themselves unpalatable to potential predators. Jeffrey Jensen, first-year graduate student, has been awarded a three- year National Science Foundation graduate fellowship to support his thesis research work on speciation in cichlid fishes. Incoming graduate student Ernest Wu, who will also be working on evolutionary questions using fishes as his research animals, has also been awarded this fellow- ship which assists students with both tuition and personal funding. Kenneth I. Miyata 1951-1983 On October 14, 1983 Kenneth Ichiro Miyata died in a fishing acci- dent in Montana. He was then thirty- two years old, just at the beginning of multiple careers. He was already and simultaneously an author whose first book was about to come out, a nature photographer whose pictures were very publishable, a world class fly fisherman, and a well-known and respected herpetologist, collaborat- ing with the top men in the field. He had just begun a job with Nature Conservancy International. Born in Los Angeles, Ken was sansei, third generation Japanese American. He was raised in Covina, a suburb of Los Angeles. He learned about wildlife and fishing in the mountains just north of that urban sprawl. Even before kindergarten he was sketching snakes and lizards. At 10 he was taught fly-casting by his grandfather in the West Fork of the San Gabriel River. At 12 he was tieing his own trout flies. By 18 he was earning a living selling them. He graduated summa cum laude from Berkeley. He did salamander mapping for David Wake in the Department of Conservation. With excellent recommendations, he entered Harvard. I met him first in the Miami Airport when he joined my group that was about to visit Puerto Rico, the Dominican Repub- lic, Venezuela, Colombia, Panama and Jamaica. He was never again long out of touch with tropical America, making more than 20 trips and adding Costa Rica, Ecuador and Peru as well as the Galapagos Islands. Ecuador he came to know best, becoming an expert on its her- petofauna. Between 1976 and 1982 he led several Friends of the MCZ trips as well as Earthwatch-sup- ported research expeditions; he was collecting data for his thesis and at the same time proving to be a very effective recruiter for field biology. His thesis, for which he was given a Ph.D. in 1980, was one of thickest ever produced at Harvard—but it was not padded. Its major chapter on patterns and factors in diversity in world herpetofaunas—still to be published—will be important. Meanwhile—mostly unknown to me—he was teaching, sometimes very informally and casually—just those he met or who came to him— but sometimes more formally, both fly fishing and nature photography. There was a period of uncertainty after the degree; some called it drift- ing. Ken had the skills of a scientist, but he did not want to be an aca- demic. He applied, with reserva- tions, for the vacant Curatorship of Herpetology at the San Diego Nat- ural History Society. Although he was one of the “short list’, his failure to commit himself was recognized. He was not chosen. He then obtained a Post-doctoral Fellowship in the Department of Herpetology at the National Museum of Natural History and was finishing his year of study when he was hired by Nature Con- servancy. He had been there for only a few months and had gone on a short vacation—a condition of his acceptance of the job—to go to a fishing spot he had often visited, when, quite alone, he drowned after taking a picture. He was never inactive during the time either before or after his degree. The period of uncertainty was a reflection of his unwillness to give up any of his careers. While doing his thesis, and after, he was trout- fishing (making firm friends from all walks of life in that special frater- nity), writing or planning the writing of herpetological articles and formal papers, fishing articles, and the book on ‘Tropical Nature’” posthumously published by Scribners, photo- graphing all the while. He was superb at all of these things but until he was hired by Nature Conser- vancy, he did not have any secure way to make a living. His “hobbies” were expensive, his love of them compulsive, his pursuit of Academia at best desultory. He was attempting something that in the crass world around him was very difficult. He carried his science into the sport of fishing, taking notes on each fish for his microcomputer, as though he were about to invent a science of fly-fishing. (Those who are afficionados of the sport would say he was well on his way to doing so.) He brought to the observation and collection of frogs, lizards and snakes the joy, the patience, the field knowledge, the hands-on knowl- edge that were also his in fishing and photography. He brought to his writing as well a sense of the joy that he felt in the field but also the dis- cipline and accuracy that made him very genuinely a scientist. In every respect except the economic—and that tide was turning at the time of his death—he was already at his young age a conspicuous and extraordinary success. Only when Ken died, did I dis- cover how little I knew about him, about his multiple lives. I then found that I was not alone. Yet while Ken was quiet, he was not at all secretive. He put no effort into the separation of his several lives. He entered each fully, combined more than one when he could. Mark Skinner tells of him that “he carried his camera whenever he was outside, so that up to his thighs in water, he had this expen- sive Nikon in a back pouch. It was as if he couldn’t bear to be doing only one of the things he loved.’’ His sev- eral lives did touch—wherever and whenever it was natural for them to do so. He just lived the lives he wanted to—much more than most of us ever do. (There was also the corresponding pattern—inevita- bly—of reluctance to do those things he did not enjoy.) It is true tragedy when death comes to the young, before whom the world is just opening. In Ken’s case the loss is not only to his family—an extended family with roots all over the United States and in Japan as well—nor to me nor to his other friends often totally unknown to each other—but also to each of the several fields in which he had already made a stellar place. Great things were expected of him, and we who knew him knew that in each area the expectations would have been realized. It is the personality that we most remember. Many adjectives could and have been used regarding him— all with some special sense. Honest in the rigorous sense, honest about himself, self-knowing. And with the other face of honesty—intolerance of fraud, fuss and pretence. Ambitious in the most important sense— hav- ing the wish and the will to be first rate. Gentle—in the sense of a nat- ural friendliness that is the reverse of demanding, that gives without requiring return. My acquaintance with parts of Ken’s life and with many of his friends and family really began after his death. I had hoped with the aid of the memories of his friends to pull together an adequate but very per- sonal portrait of a friend whom I knew too briefly and incompletely. That portrait will not be written; the task has defeated me. Ken deserves a better memorial than I am to pro- vide. However, there are other memorials possible. Three memo- rials are already in place: 1. His book. Coauthored with Adrian Forsyth, the book was writ- ten with separate chapters by each author. Ken’s chapters bear his dis- tinctive stamp. Those who wish to know him better than they did and those who never knew him will relish ‘Tropical Nature” by Forsyth and Miyata.* It is a book that should be supplementary reading for any course in ecology. 2. Anarchive of memorabilia, espe- cially reminiscences of Ken, that is accumulating at the MCZ, and to be added to the formal archives of the Museum. In addition, the Miyata family deposited Ken’s field note- book—superbly detailed accounts of each of his field trips—in the Department of Herpetology, MCZ as well as a set of his herpetological slides (an equivalent set will be kept in the National Museum of Natural History). I invite all those who knew Ken to send slides, reminiscences or anecdotes to the MCZ for inclusion in Ken’s personal archives. These reminiscenses will be available for inspection only with the consent of the sender. The notebooks and her- petological slides will be accessible to any serious researcher—as Ken would certainly have wished. 3. A Memorial Fund has been established at Harvard University, the income to be used for graduate or undergraduate field research in *Book available from the Special Sales Department, Scribner Book Company, 115 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10003 ($16.50 + $1.50 postage and handling). herpetology. Gifts to this fund are solicited. Contributions may be sent to the Museum of Comparative Zoology with a covering letter spec- ifying the Miyata Fund, attention Dr. James J. McCarthy, Director. The gifts will be acknowledged by the Recording Secretary, Harvard Uni- versity and by Dr. McCarthy. Ernest E. Williams Children Interview MCZ Scientists After two years of using the MCZ exhibits as a resource for science classes as part of the Cambridge Museum School Program, fourth graders from the Agassiz, Peabody, and Longfellow schools recently had the opportunity to learn about what goes on behind the scenes from staff members and graduate students. Participating in the interviews, for which the students were specially prepared by their classroom teach- ers, were Dr. Ruth Turner and Gary Rosenberg (Mollusks), Scott Shaw, Linda Wiener and Charles Vogt (Entomology), Anna Haynes, Jose Rosado, and Gregory Mayer (Her- petology), Robert O’ Hara (Birds), Wayne Maddison (Invertebrates), Robert Holmes (Paleontology), “te : cos ? * i a“? > rer) x $ — 1 id ~ ~~ ~~“. my = * ~~. David Glaser, Judith Donaldson, Kenneth Weber, and _ Leonard Diggins (Population Genetics), Marilyn Massaro, Sylvia Feder and Jane Winchell (Mammals), William Metropolis (Mineralogical Museum). Museum teacher Winifred Eisan, who coordinated the program, reports that not only were the mem- bers of the MCZ community extremely cooperative, they seemed to enjoy the encounter as much as the students did. The classroom teach- ers, who accompanied their classes, also appreciated the opportunity to learn about the workings of a sci- entific research and teaching insti- tution and the importance of maintaining scientific collections. Jose Rosado, Herpetology, is interviewed by students from the Peabody School. Jane Winchell and students from the Peabody School in the MCZ’s Mammal Department. Photos by Winifred Eisan First Day of Issue Stamp Ceremony Held at MCZ een Signing programs at the First Day of Issue ceremony were (front to back) U.S. Postal Service General Counsel Louis Cox, Professor Ruth D. Turner, MCZ Director Pro- fessor James J]. McCarthy, and stamp designer Peter Cocct. Having their programs signed are museum artist Laszlo Meszoly (1) and the Reverend Calvin Wright (ahead of him in line). On Thursday April 4, the first United States stamps featuring seashells were issued in a ceremony at the MCZ. The podium guests included Louis A. Cox, General Counsel, U.S. Postal Service, Dr. James J. McCarthy, MCZ Director, Philip L. Sullivan, Boston Postmas- ter, Reverend Calvin T. Wright, President, Boston Malacological Club, Dr. Ruth D. Turner, Professor of Biology and Curator of Malacology in the MCZ, and Dr. R. Tucker Abbott, President, American Mala- cologists, Inc. Peter Cocci, the designer of the stamps, was an honored guest and the Harvard University Band played musical selections. A set of first day covers designed by students in the Cambridge Museum School Program were on sale, as well as the official MCZ cover, designed by Laszlo Meszoly. [he students whose designs were chosen for the covers were: Lena Entin, Agassiz School; Hannah Wunsch, Agassiz School; Erik Brown, Graham-Parks School; Marilyn Soto, Longfellow School; Yuval Zoran, Peabody School; and Tandarra Rothman, Peabody School. To mark the occasion, Mr. Cox composed the following poem, with which he closed his remarks: Sell thee more pretty postage, oh P.O., As the swift seasons flow, Set stamp designs a-twinkle; Reticulated Helmet, Frilled Dogwinkle, Scallop ‘n Neptune ‘n Lightning Whelk, I think’ll, As twenty-two cent stamps, Let mollusks all be philatelic champs! Travel Program The Friends of the MCZ continue to travel to ever more exotic desti- nations. Upcoming trips include: Zambia, Zimbabwe, and Bot- swana: ‘A special safari for those who wish to visit a part of Africa that is still unspoiled and where the game is spectacularly abundant’ with Scientific Guide Melanie Stiassny and Gabrielle Dundon. The first August trip filled up so rapidly that a second one, (August 16-September 2, 1985) combined with the Denver Museum of Natural History and led by Robert Dorit is now forming. A few places remain at this writing. Another departure scheduled for January 19-February 6, 1986 is already filled and names are being accepted for the waiting list. The Nature and Culture of India, February 1-March 1, 1986, led by Dr. John D. Constable, Dr. James Moore, who has spent two years in India studying langur monkeys, and Rosanne Kumins, gives lucky par- tipants an opportunity to benefit from the Friends first triumphant India trip in 1984. While the best aspects of the original intinerary have been retained, exciting new destinations have been added. Bro- chures are in the mail. Circumnavigation of Madagascar: The first opportunity to cruise around the world’s fourth largest island, February 11-March 4, 1986 with Scientific Guides Professor A. W. Crompton, a noted paleontologist who will lecture on the evolutionary significance of the island, and Dr. Alison Jolly of The Rockefeller Uni- versity, who has been studying Madagascar’s lemurs for the past Gavials catching fish at Romulus Whitaker's Crocodile Farm near Madras, India. Photo by Rosamond W. Purcell, taken on Friends of the MCZ 1984 India expedition. ee « ‘ twelve years. This trip aboard the M.S. Ambassador offers the ideal way to explore Madagascar’s unique flora and fauna. Brochures for this historic expedition, which is also the MCZ’s first joint offering with the Harvard University Alumni Association, are in the mail. Salen-Lindblad Cruis- ing, the operator of this cruise, has reserved the entire vessel for our group. George Gaylord Simpson 1904-1984 With the death of George Gaylord Simpson paleontology has lost its foremost scholar. Rarely indeed is a field so dominated by the thinking of a single person; George G. Simp- son shaped modern paleontology. Simpson’s connection with Har- vard began in 1958, when he resigned from the American Museum of Natural History in New York where he had worked for 30 years. As an Alexander Agassiz Professor in the MCZ, he devoted himself primarily to research and wrote several important books dur- ing his association with Harvard. Although he gave some lectures each semester, Simpson never offered a course of his own. Both he and his wife, the distinguished psycholo- gist, Anne Roe, developed serious heart conditions during the 1960s. Simpson therefore submitted his resignation in 1967 and retired to the more benign climate of Tucson, Ari- zona, and continued his writing career with undiminished vigor and output. Simpson was born in Chicago on June 16, 1902, but spent his boyhood years in Colorado. An enthusiastic teacher excited him about paleon- tology, and he pursued graduate work in this field at Yale University, after undergraduate years at Colo- rado and Yale. He earned his Ph.D. in 1926 by writing a pioneering monograph on the previously neglected but highly important group of small Mesozoic mammals that lived as contemporaries of dinosaurs before the conventional “age of mammals’’. This work at once won him a world-wide repu- tation. He followed these studies with two expeditions to Patagonia, and published several monographs on the fossil mammals of South America, a field in which he became—and remained until his death—the world authority. These empirical researches almost inevit- ably led him, in the late 1930s and 40s, to theorize about evolution and about the theory of systematics. Through Tempo and Mode in Evolution (1944), he became one of the archi- tects of the evolutionary syntheses, demonstrating that the phenomena of macroevolution (evolution above the species level) could be rendered consistent with Darwinian processes within populations. His Meaning of Evolution (1949) immediately became (and perhaps still is) the finest “popular” account of Darwinian evolution. He revolutionized vir- tually any subject that he chose to study, and left an indelible impact not only on paleontology and evolu- tionary theory but also on the theory of systematics, on biogeography, and on the use of quantitative methods in zoology. Simpson was a man of extraordi- nary erudition and almost unlimited talents. He was a fine linguist who developed considerable facility in most ordinary European languages and also developed considerable knowledge of Arabic, Mongolian, and Sanskrit. Simpson wrote beau- tifully, and his books are also dis- tinguished by their excellence as prose. After his return from Pata- gonia he published Attending Mar- vels, one of the best travel books ever written. He recognized the obliga- tion that scientists have to make their knowledge available to the general literate public. He therefore wrote numerous essays, some gathered in two volumes, and highly readable books on horses, penguins, fossils, and the history of life. His bibliog- raphy of nearly a thousand titles and more than a score of books is staggering. This outpouring of written words was not matched by fluency in con- versation. In fact, during meals and in social encounters, he often remained almost totally silent. This reticence in oral communication perhaps explains why he trained so few graduate students (none, for instance, at Harvard). He did his best teaching through writing, and reached thereby an immense audi- ence, as documented by the fact that his books were translated into almost all major languages. Simpson’s list of medals, honorary memberships in academies and societies all over the world, and honorary degrees, is awesome. He scarcely missed a single honor for which he was eligible. Despite various illnesses that pla- gued him throughout his life, he kept on working actively to within a few days of his death by pneumonia on October 6, 1984. With the death of G. G. Simpson, science has lost one of its grand masters. Alfred W. Crompton Stephen J. Gould Ernst Mayr First Ernst Mayr Grants Awarded A recent generous gift has made possible the endowment of a pro- gram of grants in systematics, in honor of former director and prom- inent evolutionary theorist, Ernst Mayr. The grants are awarded to systematists who need to make short visits to museums in order to undertake research needed for completion of taxonomic revisions and monographs. They are partic- ularly designed for scientists who might otherwise have difficulty in obtaining access to museum speci- mens that are necessary for their research. Preference is given to studies that use the MCZ collections although applications to work at other museums are also considered. The first three recipients of Ernst » Mayr Grants are: Cora Lee Clark, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Biology at the University of New Mexico, who will use her grant to study the vole genus Phenacomys in the MCZ’s mammal collection; Steven D. Werman, a Ph.D. student at the University of Miami, who will study the large col- lection of genus Bothrops a new- tropical viper, in the MCZ’s herpe- tology collection; and Dr. Charles Crumly, currently a Visiting Cura- torial Associate in the MCZ Herpe- tology department, who will travel to museums in three states to study the phylogenetic history and distri- bution of Indotestudo, an Indo-Asian dwelling land tortoise. The Agassiz Museum Shop, which is a joint venture of the MCZ and the Mineralogical Museum, has a spruced-up image since new man- ager, Jane Anderson, took over in Meet the Teacher Winifred Eisan and friend stand in front of examples of students’ work mounted for the benefit of parents visiting during this spring’s open houses. Winifred Eisan is completing her second year of teaching children from four Cambridge public schools in the Cambridge Museum School Program funded by the Massachu- setts Council for the Arts and Humanities, Harvard’s Office for Government, Community, and Public Affairs, and_ private contributors. A native of San Francisco, Eisan taught on the elementary level in Jane Anderson Appointed Museum Shop Manager January. With a background in art history and design and experience in both merchandising and museum work, Anderson is bringing about significant improvements in the shop’s management which are lead- ing to increased revenues. A thorough reevaluation of shop policies and procedures was under- taken last fall by former Assistant Director of Public Programs Cherrie Corey (now Assistant Director for Conservation and Technical Studies at the Fogg Art Museum) and a valuable blueprint for future devel- opment and growth emerged. Among the new measures that have been insitituted recently are the development of museum-related products, increased discounts for staff members, the stocking of books authored by MCZ faculty members, and frequently changing displays. Sonoma County for eight years prior to moving to the East Coast in 1981. She developed programs and hands- on exhibits for the Discovery Room at the Springfield Science Museum as well as helping plan special events such as ‘’Dinosaur Day” before join- ing the MCZ staff in 1983. Wheeler Papers Donated A large collection, of books, sci- entific papers, and ephemera from the private library of William Morton Wheeler, who was Professor of Biol- ogy at Harvard from 1908-1933 and MCZ Curator of Entomology from 1926-1933, will be distributed among the MCZ Library, the Department of Entomology, and the University Archives. The donation was bequeathed by Wheeler’s two grandsons, William M. Wheeler Jr. of Chestnut Hill and Paul S. Wheeler of Baltimore. An authority on ants, Wheeler was also a renowned writer, linguist, scientific historian, and _ social philosopher. The donation includes 187 histor- ically valuable books dating from 1671 to 1938, 35 boxes of adminis- trative and scientific papers, eight boxes of reprints and six boxes of illustrations. Stop by the Shop by Jane Anderson Puta dino in your day with one of the new Agassiz Museum Shop products. Waking up isn’t half as bad when you have coffee to look for- ward to in an English ironstone mug emblazoned with a parade of red or gray prehistoric creatures ($3.50). Starting in the morning with the mysteries of the Cretaceous makes the vastness of time stretch far beyond the breakfast table and could give you a new perspective with which to face the immediate. After breakfast slip into a com- fortable 100% cotton hand silk- screened and dyed Agassiz Museum T-shirt ($10.00). There are a variety of colors and designs available. Try a black and white graphic lizard motif if your schedule includes something progressive yet stylish such as an MCZ exhibit opening. Meeting your would-be publisher for lunch? How about bold black pter- anodons against a red sky for that forceful touch? And, of course, there’s a stunning turquoise shirt with a splattering of lavender ste- gosauruses appropriate for any occasion. Not dressy enough? We have a full line of unusual and fine shells, gemstone, amber, crystal, bone and even fishscale jewelry ($1.50-$35.00) to complement any outfit. Now, all dressed up and nowhere to go? Why not come down to the Agassiz Shop and buy a good book by one of our own published scientists—Gould, Levi, Lewontin, Mayr and Wilson—and ponder the wonders of nature as you wander the halls which have been home and inspiration to scholars for over a century. After such an exhausting day, just turn out the lights, watch your glow- in-the-dark dinos ($.75) phospho- resce benignly and count the friendly winking star decals ($1.50) on your bedroom ceiling until you fall into dreams of the return of Halley’s comet and all the educational and commemorative posters, star charts, astrodomes, coloring books, T-shirts and pencils ($.30-$10.00) you can buy at the Museum Shop.