^ffiiiiefin CHICAGO NATURAL^ HISTORY To/. 36 MUSEUM ^afi€€€n^ J\ro. y 49€S MEMBERS' CHILDREN EXPLORE THE WORLD MIRIAM WOOD, CHIEF RAYMOND FOUNDATION THE NEWEST, and one of the most rewarding activities de- veloped by the Museum in recent years for its members, has been the Members' Children Workshops offered on Saturdays during the fall. Presented in 1963 and 1964, these workshops have attracted more than 600 children in these two years. The programs were developed and given by staff mem- bers of the Raymond Foundation, which is one of the edu- cational divisions of the Museum. Their purpose was to introduce our young members to the story of the natural world and man. The subjects of the workshops ranged from cave men and Indians to spices, fall fruits and colors, rocks and minerals, fossils, insects, and animals without back- bones. The learning experience was structured to give the children an opportunity to meet our scientific staff, to work closely with Museum specimens and artifacts, and to seek answers to some of their questions about the world around them. In the first year, the programs were offered to youngsters from 1 to 13 years old, but younger ones, from 6 to 9, were included this year. Parents who brought their children had an opportunity to see progress being made in the Museum — major construction under way, research, and the prepa- ration of new exhibits. It was a pleasure to talk with these parents in small groups while they waited for their children. But this was just a side benefit for us; all the emphasis in the programs was on the children. They came with enthusiasm — some shyly, some exuber- antly, some bringing their own collections and books, but all with alertness and a zest for exploring everything in na- ture. Their enthusiasm was contagious and the Museum staff loved them. When the workshops were over, we asked the young people to give us their reactions so that we might incorpo- rate them in our planning for future sessions. One 10-year- old boy wrote: "I think you learn a lot . . . by just plain talking about facts and bringing out more facts." He seemed to be expressing the views of so many who eagerly talked, looked, examined, felt, sniffed, made tests, watched movies, and asked questions and more questions. The youngest ones worked with rocks in one workshop, and with insects in another. They seemed to get the most from handling; one 8-year-old put it: "There were insects to touch . . . and I liked dissecting a grasshopper." The fossil workshop prompted a 10-year-old boy to write "Fossils . . . it's my hobby; it's one job machines can't take over." More girls than boys participated in the spices program, where they sniffed aromatic herbs with delight, but at least one boy discovered that "spices were interesting because I hadn't tasted or given thought (s) to them before." After the experiments on rocks and minerals, this com- ment came: "I found out you can't tell rocks from the outside." The final line in the evaluation of a boy who signed his name and gave his age as 12 years, 8 months, was: "I wish you had one [workshop] on your plant exhibit. It is fan- tastic." And it is "fantastic," as is the whole world of nature and man, which offers us all so much to see, under- stand, and enjoy. We look forward with pleasure to more programs for our young members. Page 2 JANUARY OF NATURE In the workshops, youngsters discover spices, fossils, rocks, insects, and the animals hunted by prehistoric men JANUARY Page S CHICAGO NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM MUSEUM NEWS APPOINT NEW ANTHROPOLOGY CHIEF CURATOR DR. DONALD COLLIER has been ap- pointed Chief Curator of the De- partment of Anthropology at Chicago Natural History Museum as of Decem- ber 1, 1964. A member of the Museum's staff since 1941, Dr. Collier is a specialist in the Indians of South America and the Aztec and Inca civilizations of Mexico and Peru. As head of the Museum's Department of Anthropology, Dr. Collier replaces Dr. Paul S. Martin, who is retiring after 30 years as Chief Curator. Dr. Martin is president of the Society for American Archaeology, and expects to continue an active program of teach- ing and research as Chief Curator Em- eritus at the Museum. Donald Collier was born on May 1, 1911, in Sparkill, New York. He did his undergraduate work at Stanford University and the University of Cali- fornia at Berkeley, and received his Doc- tor of Philosophy degree in anthropology from the University of Chicago. After teaching at Washington State College, he came to Chicago Natural History Museum in 1941 as Assistant Curator of South American Archaeol- ogy and Ethnology. In 1943 he became Curator, retaining this position until his present appointment. Dr. Collier's research interests are in the culture history of the New World, especially the rise of the ancient civiliza- tions of Mexico and Peru. He has made three expeditions to South America and several study trips to Mexico for the Museum. In 1941-42, he directed a pioneer study of an archaeologically unknown area, the southern highland of Ecuador. In 1946 he excavated in the Viru Val- PageU JANUARY ley of Peru, and in 1946 he did archaeo- logical surveying and digging in the Casma Valley of Peru. His work in these coastal sites resulted in new knowledge of the beginnings of intensive farming and of pre-Inca village life between 2000 and 500 b.c, and the development of urbanization and the mass production of handicrafts that took place among the Incas between a.d. 1000 and 1500. In Mexico, he has studied Aztec and pre-Aztec art, the ancient system of mar- kets, and the relation of irrigation agri- culture to the rise of cities. As the son of John Collier, who for many years worked for the welfare of Indians in the United States and served as Commissioner of Indian Affairs from 1933 to 1945, Collier has also been in- terested in the Indians of North Amer- ica. He has studied several Indian tribes in Oklahoma, Montana, and South Da- kota. In addition, he has done archaeo- logical work in Arizona, and directed one of the early archaeological salvage projects in the flood area behind Wash- ington's Grand Coulee Dam. Collier's investigations into the pre- Columbian civilizations of Mexico and Central America have provided original material and authentication for the Mu- seum's exhibition hall on the Aztec and Maya Indians. The hall was completed under his direction in 1960. At present. Collier has begun to plan a complete revision and reinstallation of the Museum's exhibitions on the Indians of South America. Collier is a past president of the Cen- tral States Anthropological Society and a member of the executive board of the American Anthropological Association. He is a Lecturer in Anthropology at the University of Chicago. He also holds Dr. Donald Collier memberships in the Society for Amer- can Archaeology, the Institute of An- dean Research, Sigma Xi, and — reflect- ing his interest in art — the Renaissance Society of Chicago. Among his publications are a study of peyote — the plant, the cult, and the drug; an exposition of radiocarbon dating; culture studies of several American In- dian tribes; extensive reports of his ar- chaeological work in Ecuador and Peru; studies of Aztec and Maya art; a general book on North American prehistory, Indians before Columbus, written in col- laboration with Paul S. Martin and George Quimby (recently selected for the White House library); a book on Indian Art of the Americas; and numerous reviews. Collier is married to the former Mal- colm Carr, also an anthropologist. They have two college-age sons. 22 " Pound Pyrite Crystal Donated RECENTLY a fine specimen of pyrite (fool's gold) was donated to the Museum. Although pyrite is a fairly common mineral the particular interest of our specimen is its unusual size and the fact that it is essentially a single crystal with several well-developed cube faces. The faces are nearly six inches on a side and the specimen weighs near- ly 22 pounds. As such, it is by far the largest we have in our collection, and in fact it must be as large as or larger than any nugget of fool's gold on record i from the entire United States. It is worthwhile to record the story be- ' hind this donation. Mrs. Louise Helton of Copperhill and Mrs. Etoise Pate of Ducktown, Tennessee, visited the Muse- Dr. Bertram G. Woodland hefts 22-pound pyrite crystal um sometime ago. They carried back to Tennessee such a favorable impres- sion of their visit that they rememljered the Museum when an opportunity arose to show their appreciation in a practical way. The pyrite had been found in the Cherokee Mine of the Tennessee Copper Company at Ducktown, Ten- nessee. Mr. Oliver Hawk of the Ten- nessee Copper Company made the specimen available and Mrs. Helton and Mrs. Pate brought it to the Museum. Presentation was made in memory of Mr. Lynn Pate (Mrs. Pate's late hus- band) and Mr. Paschal Hughes, who were killed in a mine accident in the Ducktown area in 1963. Before making the trip to Chicago, Mrs. Helton wrote to Mayor Richard J. Daley, who made the arrangements for the presentation. In a letter to Mrs. Helton, Mayor Daley wrote : "I am taking the opportunity to thank you for the gift of pure pyrite crystal pre- sented to our Museum of Natural His- tory. Mr. E. Leland Webljer, Director of the Museum, informs me that this crystal is a valuable addition to their collection. "The city of Chicago is grateful for this fine specimen and is especially ap- preciative of the kindness expressed in making us the recipient of this valuable museum piece." The Ducktown area, also known as the Copper Basin, is a world-famous metal- liferous mining region, copper ore hav- ing been mined there since 1847. Since 1907 the sulfur present in the ores has been used in the manufacture of sul- furic acid, which is now one of the re- gion's major products. The ore cur- rently mined, about 1,300,000 tons a year, contains one per cent both of cop- per and zinc, twenty-six per cent sulfur and thirty-six per cent iron. Our speci- men of pyrite (iron sulfide) contains some pyrrhotite (another variety of iron sulfide) and chalcopyrite (copper iron sulfide). The zinc ore is reclaimed and sold to zinc smelters, while the iron, in the form of iron oxide, is sintered and sold as a high-grade iron ore. MUSEUM GIVEN $200,000 GRANT THE MUSEUM has received a grant of $200,000 from the Robert R. McCor- mick Charitable Trust for general sup- port of the Museum's programs of re- search and education. The gift is the largest private foundation grant received in the history of the Museum. In accepting the grant. Museum Pres- ident James L. Palmer said: "Chicago Natural History Museum is one of the Chicago institutions that serves all ages, from young children to senior citizens, and all levels of education, from the primary grades to the doctoral and post-doctoral level. Opportunities con- tinually arise for enlarging and strength- ening our contributions to knowledge and to the community. The generous support of the McCormick Trust is very gratifying as we seek to broaden the base of public support for the Museum. HOLIDAY SCIENCE LECTURES ONE OF THE most difficult, yet most important scientific frontiers of our time — the human mind — was probed by Dr. Francis O. Schmitt, Professor in the Department of Biology at Massachu- setts Institute of Technology, during the 1964 Holiday Science Lectures held at the Museum on December 28 and 29. More than 800 outstanding high school students from the Chicago metropolitan area were selected by their school principals to attend the lectures during Christmas vacation. Dr. Schmitt began his discussion {Continued on page 8) JANUARY Page 5 OUR SUDDEN SPATE OF NEW A Progress Report BOXES — crates — cartons — drawers. Truckload after truckload of them, all filled with fossil invertebrates, have arrived at Chicago Natural History Mu- seum from the Walker Museum of the University of Chicago. \Vhile the new quarters are being finished. Geology Department staff and assistants are un- packing, sorting, labeling, and putting the University specimens in standard Museum boxes and drawers. A year ago, our entire collection of fossil invertebrates occupied (to over- flowing) 1,672 drawers. The combined collections will be distributed (with space to grow) among 10,625. Stacked one on another, these drawers would tower slightly more than half a mile in the air. This enlarged collection will shortly take its place as one of the nation's top-ranking "libraries" of fossil inver- tebrate sfjecimens. For a library it is, not only in the sense that "There are sermons in stones, lessons in the running brooks," but in the use to which it will be put. Members of the Museum staff use the specimens daily as reference ma- terial in their research — but if this were their only use we might well be regarded as overindulged. University students use the collections both for learning to recognize and understand fossils and for guiding their first fledgling flights into research. Paleontologists from other institutions in this country and abroad consult this "library" to examine sjjeci- mens in their special fields. And, true to the uses of libraries, we lend speci- mens to qualified researchers for their study elsewhere. This practice confers a double benefit: on the scholar who gets the use of the material and on the Museum, whose specimens are thus checked in the light of the latest under- standing. All of these values and ser- vices will now be enhanced in propor- tion to the increased size of the col- lection. As we unpack the specimens, we find one area after another in which our horizon is broadened. To our fine col- lection of Mississippian crinoids from Crawfordsville, Indiana, is added a tier of drawers of not only more crinoids, but the rarer associated fossils that will reveal more of that ancient environ- ment. The large Tucker collection of Tertiary marine fossils adds many new localities and faunas to what we had. James Hall's overwhelming quantities of corals, clams, brachiopods, and other denizens of New York's Devonian seas clarify — as even his renowned lithograph plates and lucid discussions could not — the nature of these classic faunas. Each box we open reveals gaps filled and new research material available. The unpacking has kept up a bustle of activity throughout this past year, first in a basement room, later in the blocked-off half of a major exhibition hall — the only space we could locate that was adequate for the growing stacks of drawers. With space to put the speci- mens in standard-sized cardboard trays that fit without crowding into their new drawers, and with labels neatly trans- cribed, we discover with delight fossils from areas long since collected bare, and among them the prime specimens that fell to the lot of the first collectors. Transcribing the old labels brings us into almost personal contact with legen- dary figures of seventy or a hundred years ago, men whose names we have long known from their writings, as well as others who simply collected. One of the large individual collections was brought together by Charles L. Faber, known for a handful of publi- cations from Cincinnati in the '80's and '90's. Many of the labels, on a stiff rag stock, bear the heading "Q.C.N.H. So- ciety" in an antique typeface. For some days we were puzzled by this abrevia- tion, until it occurred to us that Cin- cinnati is sometimes called the "Queen City of the Ohio," and that there must have been an early Natural History So- ciety using that name. Some day we may find answers to other questions: — did Faber acquire the collection upon the demise of the Society? Was the whole Society just his own name for his own collection? There is no men- tion of a predecessor in the first number of the Journal of the Cincinnati Society of Natural History. Most of the speci- mens with these labels are from Ger- many, probably a reflection of Cincin- nati's German heritage (or of Faber's?). On a few labels, the locality is noted as "Wiirttemberg, Germany," on others Pages JANUARY Eugene S. Richardson, Jr. Curator, Fossil Invertebrates OLD FOSSILS on the Walker Collection as "Western Germany." But most are "WGer," which could be either. We decided that this more probably meant Western Germany, rather than Wiirt- temberg, and have so transcribed the labels. The labels of the Q.C.N.H. So- ciety included catalog numbers, but there were no corresponding numbers on the specimens, a sad omission when label and sjjecimen have drifted apart. Curiously, the numbers run only from 1 to 119, so that in this collection of many hundreds of specimens each num- ber is used several times. Perhaps the numbers refer to pages of a catalog yet to be found, rather than to individual entries. When Faber collected speci- mens himself, he jotted down a mini- mum amount of information on a scrap of newspaper wrapped with each lot. The habit of abbreviating also turns up on these. We found the notations "BM" on some scraps, "KCM" on others. At last, clues from more voluble labels led us to interpret these as "Booneville, Missouri" and "Kansas City, Missouri" — but still, there is al- ways a shade of uncertainty in such in- terpretations. Among the fossils of the Haines Col- lection, another part of the Walker Mu- seum trove, some are cryptically labeled "PCIll." Being by this time aware of what can be done with abbreviations, we shortly concluded that this probably meant "Peoria County, Illinois." In making this and other such interpre- tations, we depend, of course, on our Like a vast array of safe-deposit boxes, these drawers containing fossil invertebrates from the University of Chicago await their move into new permanent quarters now being constructed as an addition to the Museum building. With Assistant David Techter taking notes, Dr. Richardson puts numbers on the labels to guide the movers in placing the drawers in proper position in their new cabinets. general familiarity with fossils. The specimens are such as might well have come from Peoria County, but not from Perry, Piatt, Pike, Pope, Pulaski, or Putnam counties. The hundred-year old Haines Collection is interesting in many ways, and we are gradually form- ing an impression of its gatherer. Ap- parently she was Mary P. Haines, wife of Joshua Haines of Richmond, In- diana, and a woman of unusual attain- ments. Her specimens are neatly num- bered, each one with a small white paper rectangle pasted to the fossil and bearing a delicately inked number to correspond with a tidy catalog entry. Her interests were broad, as was her correspondence. While her collection is predictal)ly rich in Ordovician fossils from the vicinity of Richmond, there are also many others, including a num- Iser of Cretaceous specimens from Tex- as, probably sent by a friend. Among some papers — including her daughter's German lessons — was an alphabetical list of the plants that she had seen grow- ing in Richmond (including, she notes, garden plants), and a letter from a lady in California enclosing a fern, still sound enough to be placed in the Mu- seum's herbarium. The most extensive collection, and the most impwrtant comjxjnent of the Walker accumulation, is the vast collection of James Hall (1811-1898). This was bought by the University of Chicago from Hall's estate. But though thou- sands of specimens were unpacked and have now served in the instruction of generations of students, there was not room in the Walker Museum for all of it. Over three hundred wooden ijoxes re- mained to be unpacked at the time of the transfer to Chicago Natural History JANUARY Page 7 A corner of Exhibit Hall 36 has been blocked off to serve as a workroom for trans- ferring University specimens to Museum storage drawers. The drawers seen above contain about a quarter oj the expanding collection of fossil invertebrates that will eventually be housed in the building addition now under construction. Museum. It is the unpacking of these specimens that has been the most re- warding. Here are the fossils studied by America's greatest invertebrate paleon- tologist at the time when he was writing his renowned series of quarto volumes published "by authority of the State of New York." Here are proof sheets of the lithographed plates, with Hall's no- tations to the artists. Here also is a fine though inadvertent collection of Amer- icana in the form of old newspajiers, cigar boxes, pill boxes, used to wrap or contain the specimens. The greatest number of newspapers date from the 1870's and '80's, issuing from New York, Albany, Cincinnati, and many smaller towns. The oldest, from Waterville, New York, were printed in 1830 and served as packing for a quantity of plas- ter and sulfur molds of fossil crinoids. As it is pMDSsible that these molds may represent important lost specimens, they are being kept with all care in our new trays and drawers. Though a librarian may aspire to ob- tain copies of every book in a limited field, either in the original or in micro- film, our library of fossils can never be complete. Many sf)ecies of extinct in- vertebrates are known from single frag- mentary specimens; others, whose type material is now lost, are known from old, inadequate publications. Our goal, rather, is to have a good general repre- sentation of the field of fossil inverte- brates, and toward this goal each collec- tion brought to the Museum advances us. Tiffany, Tucker, Sampson, Sloss, Smith, VVeller, James, Jenni, Krantz, Bassler, Moore, Plummer — the roll of collections goes on. Some are small, some large, some important, others less so, but all were brought together care- fully and even lovingly, and each lends its character to the whole that is opening before us. They will now be blended with the collections already here — Roy, Head, Langford, Ward, Dyer, Nelson and others — each specimen put with others of its kind in a self-indexing ar- rangement. Thus both Museum staff and visiting scientists can efficiently use this magnificent resource, which is expected to take its place as one of the most renowned and useful of its kind. HOLIDAY SCIENCE LECTURES {Continued from page 5) of mental processes with a report on molecular organization and cell func- tion, molecular information processing and molecular neurology. His final subject was "The Science of the Mind : A New Synthesis." Each lecture was followed by a lively question-and- answer jjeriod. The Holiday Science Lectures, now in their third year at the Museum, afford outstanding high school students an opportunity to hear first-hand reports on work being done by eminent scien- tists of the nation. The lectures are presented nationally by the American Association for the Ad- vancement of Science in cooperation with scientific institutions in major cities across the country, under a grant from the Nation2d Science Foundation. Chicago Natural History Museum Founded by Marshall Field, 1893 Roosevelt Road and Lake Shore Drive Chicago, Illinois 60605 Telephone: 922-9410 THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES Lester Armour Wm. McConnick Blair Bowen Blair Walter J. Cummings Joseph N. Field Marshall Field Cliflord C. Gregg Samuel InsuU, Jr. Henry P. Isham William V. Kahler J. Howard Hughston M. McBain J. Roscoe Miller William H. Mitchell James L. Palmer John T. Pirie, Jr. John Shedd Reed John G. Searle John M. Simpson Edward Byron Smith Louis Ware Wood OFFICERS James L. Palmer, President Clifford C. Gregg, First Vice-President Joseph N. Field, Second Vice-President Bowen Blair, Third Vice-President Edward Byron Smith, Treasurer and Assistant Secretary E. Leiand Webber, Secretary THE BULLETIN EDITOR B, LcUad Webber, Director of the Museum CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Donald Collier, Chief Curator of Anchropolog^ Louis O. Williams, Chief Curator of Botany Raincr Zangerl, Chief Curator of Geology Austin L. Rand, Chief Curator of Zoology MANAGING EDITOR Paula R. Nelson, Public Relations Counsel Members arc requested to inform the Museum promptly of changes of address. Page 8 JANUARY PRINTED BY CHICAGO NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM PRESS .. 1 V "jp.?;'.^ ,a»-,V- --it ■'^-'iW-j CHICAGOjO^/l^ HISTORY ^^6r MUSEUM ^Omm^ Museum News 0«ISI»KI»IVI INTERNATIONAL PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBITION THE TOMATO hornworm on the cover, photographed by John Kohout of LaGrange Park, Illinois, is an example of the outstanding camera work that can again be seen at the Museum during the 20th Chicago International Exhibi- tion of Nature Photography. Sponsored by Chicago Natural History Museum and the Chicago Nature Camera Club, the competitive exhibition will run through February 21, 1965. Color trans- parencies will be projected on two Sun- days, February 7 and February 14, at 2:30 P.M. in the Museum's James Simp- son Theatre. A panel of five judges selected the pho- tographs and slides from thousands of national and international entries and assigned awards to the most outstand- ing. Museum staff on the panel are: Dr. Fred M. Reinman, Assistant Cura- tor of Oceanic Archaeology and Ethnol- ogy, and John Bayalis, Division of Pho- tography. The other judges are Samuel VV. Kipnis and Julius Wolf, well-known photographic exhibitors, and Mrs. Isa- bel B. Wasson, noted naturalist, lecturer, and photographer. MARCH PROGRAMS FOR CHILDREN Two SATURDAY programs for children will be presented in March at the Museum under the auspices of the Ray- mond Foundation. On March 6, Camp Fire Girl Day, the theme, "Indian Amer- ica," will be explored through color movies on Indian life in the forests, plains, and deserts. Following the pro- gram, direction sheets will be available for children interested in exploring re- lated Indian exhibits in the Museum. On March 27, awards will be given to youngsters who participated in the Mu- seum's Journey Program in the past year. Free and open to all children, the pro- grams will begin at 10:30 a.m. in the James Simpson Theatre. STAFF ACTIVITIES A sum of $32,100 has been awarded to Dr. Louis O. Williams, Chief Cura- tor of Botany, by the National Science Foundation for continuation of his bo- tanical field work in Central America during the next two years. Dr. Williams is currently in Central America collect- ing specimens and data on the little known plants of that region (see page 7). DR. RAiNER ZANGERL, Chief Curator of Geology, has been elected presi- dent of the Society of Vertebrate Pale- ontology. KENNETH STARR, Curator of Asiatic Archaeology and Ethnology, has been appointed a member of the Com- mittee on Far Eastern Civilizations at the University of Chicago. This follows his appointment last year to the Univer- sity's Committee on Southern Asian Studies. Dr. Starr is one of several Mu- seum staff members who, through ap- pointment to university faculties, partic- ipate in the teaching and supervision of doctoral candidates in the Museum fields of interest. FRED M. REINMAN, Assistant Curator of Oceanic Archaeology and Eth- nology, has been awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology from the University of California (Los Angeles). Dr. Reinman is interested in the in- terrelationships between environment, culture, and technology. His doctoral thesis is an investigation of the ways in which oceanic peoples have developed increasingly successful fishing tech- niques and implements to exploit the sea as a source of food. CHIEF CURATOR of Zoology Austin L. Rand has written the section on gnatcatchers and kinglets for a new book. Song and Garden Birds of North America, just published by the National Geo- graphic Society. DR. RUPERT L. WENZEL, Curator of Insects, and Mr. Henry S. Dybas, Associate Curator, attended the nation- al meetings of the Entomological Society of America, held in Philadelphia. Dy- bas served on the program committee and as chairman of the section on gen- eral entomology. Wenzel moderated a symposium on "Past Climates and Pres- ent Distributions of North American Insects." DR. GABRIEL EDWIN, Assistant Curator of Vascular Plants, spoke on repro- ductive mechanisms in plants at a meet- ing of the Illinois State Society of Mi- croscopists. GEORGE I. QuiMBY, Curator of North American Archaeology and Eth- nology, gave two speeches recently on his studies of the Indians and archaeol- ogy of the Upper Great Lakes Region from 1600-1820. One lecture, on In- dian villages, was given at the School of Architecture at the University of Illinois at Chicago. The other was presented at a workshop on archaeology sponsored by the Illinois Archaeology Survey and held at the University of Illinois at Ur- bana. Later Mr. Quimby returned to Urbana to conduct a seminar on eco- logical causality and culture for the De- partment of Anthropology. Page 2 FEBRUARY Spring Film Programs ON NATURE AND PEOPLE AROUND THE WORLD THE 123rd series of free illustrated lectures for adults will be presented in the James Simpson Theatre on Satur- day afternoons during March and April. The lectures begin at 2 :30 p.m.; seats are reserved for Members until 2 :25 p.m. Following is the complete schedule of programs. March 6 Ranching It in California Albert J. Wool Overlooking the ocean from Califor- nia's Santa Cruz Mountains is a beauti- ful country of rolling hills, towering red- woods, and clear mountain streams — a "land of heart's desire" such as city dwellers long for but seldom attain. The first film in the Museum's spring series offers a chance to get away from it all as Albert Wool treats us to a portrait of the joys and wonders of western ranch life. Filmed on his own 1,300-acre cattle ranch on the Pacific shore, his motion picture follows the farming and ranch- ing operations from planting time to hay harvest, from calving time to roundup. Along the way you will enjoy bountiful wildlife, take to the surf on horseback along the Pacific, and see the action at junior horse shows and rodeos where youngsters compete for fun and glory. Old meets new in Clifford J. Kamin' s film on Mexico to be shown March 20. March 13 North to Hudson Bay David Jarden Twenty times in as many years, David Jarden and his Indian guides have pit- ted their frail canoe against the caprices of nature in Ontario's vast northland. This time his film records an 850-mile trip down the Winisk River to Hudson Bay, along the coast, and then by inland canoe route from James Bay to Mooso- nee. Captured in natural color are the wildlife, fishing, Indians, woodcraft, and beauty of the great forests that cover this northern region. It is a strange hinter- land, bright with a myriad of wild flow- ers. You will see caribou graze at will, watch thousands of Canada geese gather for their fall migration, experience the finest fishing, thrill to shooting rapids. March 20 Mexico — On the Trail of Cortes Clifford J. Kamen Few men in history have approached the remarkable achievement of Hernan- do Cortes. Clifford Kamen's film fol- lows the great adventurer's invasion route into Mexico and tells the almost unJjelievable story of the conquest of the Aztec empire. But the film not only re- creates the past; it also offers a fresh in- terpretation of contemporary Mexican life as it has been affected Ijoth by its Mayan and Aztec traditions and the in- troduction of Spanish culture. Mr. Ka- men's well-known animated maps and art work add a unique dimension to this fascinating portrayal of Mexican history and culture. {Continued on page 8) FEBRUARY Page S IN SPEAKING of 3 museum science department as an organ- ism with definite structural parts and functions, I am aware of the limitations of the metaphor. But such a de- partment is an organism of sorts, and as such it has super- ficial similarities with real organisms. For example, science departments do evolve, thereby increasing in physical and functional complexity; they also tend to suffer as a whole if one part within them malfunctions; as in real organisms, changes in one part of the body have to be in harmonious relation to the rest if the whole is to function properly. All these things are pertinent to an understanding of the vast changes that are currently under way in the Department of Geology. The early evolutionary history of the department con- sisted primarily of (1) filling its maw with food, in the form of collections (in contrast to real organisms, museums ingest a lot, digest some, but eliminate very little); (2) adding brain cells (curators and assistants); and (3) building up the sen- sory apparatus, in the form of microscopes and a host of other tools for investigation. Since the overall size of the body was clearly defined and limited to the third floor of the northwest quadrant of the Museum building, and since the acquisition of items 1 to 3 above spanned a develop- mental period of some 69 years, it was no great surprise to discover that the body would hold no more. As a matter of fact, the collections of fossil invertebrates, fossil plants, and rocks had grown well beyond the storage capacity, with the result that large numbers of specimens could no longer be properly housed and had to be kept under tables, on top of tables, and inaccessibly piled on top of storage cases. Even worse, vital research equipment had to be installed in vari- ous nooks and crannies all over the department. Organisms such as domestic dogs and, even more so, man himself are prone to overindulge if tempted with glori- ously succulent vittles, and such a fate befell the Department of Geology when it was faced with the prospect of taking over the famous collection of fossil invertebrates in the Walker Museum of the University of Chicago. The moti- vation was not all greed, however. Many arguments lead- ing to the decision that this vast collection should come to the Museum had merit beyond the simple and defendable proposition that a museum collection is the more useful to scientific inquiry, the larger it is. It was perfectly clear at the outset that if this collection were to be accepted the organism would have to undergo further physical growth to nearly twice its former size, and along with this a complete metamorphosis: namely, a pro- found redesigning of the parts. At this writing the depart- ment can best be described as a disaster area. There is building and rebuilding going on everywhere while the former contents of the department have to be shunted here and there as dictated by the demands of the construction. But now the new shapes begin to appear and we can recog- nize the look of the future. To begin with, the collections, formerly stored in various rooms along the corridors of the third floor research area, {Continued on page 6) Page I, FEBRUARY THE NEW of the 1 Second floor collection storage area 2 Mezzanine collection storage area 3 Third floor stack room, General Library 4 Geology map room 5 Geochemical laboratory 6 Rock-sectioning laboratory 7 Shipping and receiving room and elevator 8 Student and assistant offices and study areas 9 Thin-section laboratory RAINER ZANGERL Chief Curator, Geology ANATOMY »ology Department 10 Photo laboratory, dark room, and diagnostic X-ray machine 1 1 Exhibit preparation rooms 12 Office oj departmental artist and illustrator 13 Offices and workrooms oj curators. University of Chicago prO' fessors, assistants, and visiting scientists 14 Chalmers X-ray spectrograph laboratory 15 Divisional paleontology library 16 Maurice L. Richardson fine-preparation laboratory 17 Preparation laboratories 18 Collection areas for biostratonomy, fossil fishes, fossil amphib ians and reptiles 19 Classroom 20 Geology library 21 Geology office 22 Office and workroom of Chief Curator 23 General Library 24 Museum artists 25 Editors of scientific publications 26 Harris Extension 27 Washroom 28 Supply storage {Drawing by Lido Lucchesi) FEBRUARY Page 5 are to be put into an enormous central hold, a space created by filling in the light well that was formerly enclosed by the departmental quarters. The study collection will occupy approximately two-thirds of the 252,000 cubic feet of new space; the balance will become the stack room and some offices of the General Library. Large as it is, the new stor- age range does not accommodate all the collections of the Geology Department; biostratonomy as well as fossil fishes, amphiliians, and reptiles either remain where they now are, or will be moved to storage rooms adjacent to the former well. As is true of any biological metamorphosis, the reorgan- ized anatomy is, in part, a compromise with the old. This came clearly to our attention when we worked on the plans for the research area. There were many limitations im- posed by the building in its former condition, and it was not possible to achieve an ideal solution in all respects. Ideally, Assistant Henry Hot back prepares specimens for study in the rock-sectioning laboratory. all offices should have access to natural light; ideally, cura- tors should be close to their collections, the laboratories they most frequently use, and the specialized libraries they most often consult. While these and many other considerations could probably be satisfied if one were to design a structure from the ground up, it soon became obvious that the layout of the present building would not accommodate them. The new plan, however, will be a functional organism, and such compromises as had to be made were mostly ones of convenience rather than efficiency. Curators will have offices combined with adjacent work rooms, permitting them to keep acid bottles and specimens off their desks (see plan for location of offices along the outer wall of the building). Only one laboratory, the Chalmers X-ray spec- trograph laboratory, was placed along the outside walls of the building in order to remove it as far as convenient from possible vibrations produced by the air-conditioning plant at the bottom of the former well. Because there will be a Page 6 FEBRUARY concentration of paleontologists in the west half of the de- partment, a divisional paleontology library is also located there. On the north side adjacent to the former well there will be mostly laboratories, as follows : the geochemical labora- tory (in its present location), a rock-sectioning room that will house the diflferent rock-cutting devices, a thin-section laboratory, a photo laboratory with dark rooms and diag- nostic X-ray machine, and a shipping and receiving room next to the elevator that will service the hold in the interior of the former light well. This room will be used to unpack crates that are shipped in from the field and for packing or unpacking shipments of specimens being sent for study to or from other institutions. Furthermore, there are two offices to be used by students and assistants, and a shop to serve in connection with the preparation of exhibits. On the south side adjacent to the former well there will be the Maurice L. Richardson fine-preparation laboratory, equipped with instruments that permit the cleaning of ex- tremely delicate fossils. A large portion of the fossil fish collection will be housed on this side, and a classroom where Professors E. C. Olson and Ralph G. Johnson of the Uni- versity of Chicago and various members of the curatorial staff expect to teach and hold seminars. Student cubicles for graduate students engaged in thesis work are located in a number of places. Finally, there will be changes in the area of the depart- mental library, the departmental office, and the office of the Chief Curator. By removal of the semipermeable mem- branes that now partially subdivide the geology library, a very notable gain in capacity will be efTected. The geology office will be moved to what is now the map room, and the Chief Curator will gain a workroom of his own (he intends to continue to do research). In summary, the Department of Geology will have a new anatomy, a new size, and, hopefully, a revitalized efficiency. Dr. Tiber Perenyi, Departmental Artist, discusses an exhibition model with Dr. Eugene S. Richardson, Jr. The high volcanoes of western Guatemala have a fair cover of virgin forests tvhich contain plants still unknown to botanists. LOUIS O. WILLIAMS Chief Curator, Botany PLANTS WITHOUT NAMES ONE OF the first things that an observant person wants to know when he goes to a new region is the names of the conspicuous and more important plants around him, espe- cially if those plants affect his everyday life, or even make life possible. Although the naming of plants is as old as man, the sys- tematic study of the world's vegetation, with an attempt to attach precise scientific names to each of the kinds of plants in the world, has been going on for only a little more than two hundred years. There are in the temperate and arctic regions of North America perhaps some ten thousand species of flowering plants. These are quite well known, and most of them have been given scientific names. In the tropics of the Americas, however — in that region between the Tropic of Cancer and the Tropic of Capricorn — vast expanses still are relatively unexplored. Areas as large as Illinois have never been lived in or studied by a botanist the year around. The whole of Nicaragua, which is right on our door step in this travel-by-jet era, is mostly unknown botanically. Of the flowering plants alone, it is estimated that there are some 100,000 to 125,000 known species in the American tropics. Capable botanists studying the flora of these re- gions think that as many as one out of every four of its flowering plants may still be unknown and unnamed. If this estimate is correct, then there should be some 130,000 to 1 80,000 kinds of flowering plants in the neotropics. Ferns, algae, fungi, mosses, and liverworts are other great groups of plants found in our tropics. No one knows how many kinds of these plants there are, and our scientific knowledge of them is much less, even, than of the flowering plants. It is possible — even p)robable — that there are more kinds unknown to science than are known. Exploration of our tropics and research on the vegeta- tion proceed hand in hand. It will be a long time before the vegetation of the American tropics is as well known as, for example, that of the United States. To place the prob- lem in perspective: it has been estimated recently that it would take one hundred botanists one hundred years just to carry on the exploration and study necessary to compile a flora of neotropical flowering plants. Progress in many other sciences depends upon a knowl- edge of the plants and vegetation that cover the face of the earth. Research in the botany of the American tropics is an open field beckoning to those who would participate in a scholarly science in which exploration and discovery make living enjoyable and rewarding. FEBRUARY Page 7 Spring Film Programs {Continued from page 3) March 27 Man Looks to the Sea Stanton A. Waterman For a new and challenging horizon, many Americans in their characteristic search for adventure are looking to the sea. Through a series of brilliant, full color film sequences, we can share Stan- ton Waterman's exploration of this strange milieu. He shows us divers risk- ing their lives in the blue depths of the Pacific to harvest precious black coral; the attack patterns of the shark, spec- tacularly photographed from an under- water cage only eight feet away; a wild wrestling match with a timid, tenacious octopus tickled out of its den; a dazzling marine collection of rare and colorful reef fish in the out islands of the Ba- hamas. Highlights of the film are un- derwater shots of the incredible leaps made by the porpoises at feeding time in the Miami Seaquarium, and the ac- tual sound track of porpoise "talk." April 3 Trailing Lewis and Clark to Oregon Thayer Soule In 1803 the Louisiana Purchase more than doubled the size of the United States. President Thomas Jefferson per- suaded Congress to authorize an explora- tion of the new territory, from Cahokia, Illinois (then an American outpost on the east bank of the Mississippi) all the way to the Pacific. Everyone knows how Lewis and Clark were chosen for the task and how Sacajawea, an Indian girl, was Instrumental in their success. Now this stirring phase of American history comes to life in a film made almost en- tirely within ten miles of the actual Lewis and Clark route. The motion picture not only tells the story of the historic ex- jjedition, but shows the undreamed of chcmges that have occurred in the terri- tory during the 160 years since Lewis and Clark forged their way to the sea. Turkish girl from Gene Wiancko's ' Ancient World — Athens to Cairo. The April 10 The Ancient World — Athens to Cairo Gene Wiancko From Athens to Cairo is a distance of only 700 miles; yet within a circle en- clc«ing these two cities were enacted many of history's greatest epics. Here, the still-magnificent relics of mankind's ancient glories stand in a living world of beauty and charm. In our film journey from Athens to Cairo we cross the paths of Jesus and Mohammed, Socrates and Alexander the Great, Suleiman the Mag- nificent and the crusaders, Phoenicians and pharaohs. King Tutankhamun and King Paul. The ways of life in the east- em Mediterranean world today are mov- ingly portrayed, and even the ancient world seems to live again. April 17 Waterway Wildlife Karl Maslowski The complete dependence of man and wildlife upon an abundance of good fresh water is the theme of this dramatic color motion picture. A woodchuck browsing on a hilltop meadow; bass spawning in a limestone creek; factory workers turning out steel, glass, and cloth — all rely equally on adequate sup- plies of uncontaminated water. A noted naturalist and conservationist, Karl Mas- lowski contrasts the areas devastated by man with the beauty of still unsfwiled waterways and their wildlife communi- ties. We hear the voices of such water- way dwellers as tree frogs, wood ducks, and Canada geese, and glimpse the fam- ilies of red fox and muskrat, cottontail and deer. April 24 Hiawatha Country Fran William Hall Longfellow's image of Hiawatha's country is one of timeless appeal. An area of soaring mountains and sparkling waters, it is one of America's last great wilderness regions. Today ore boats ply the Gitche Gumee, and remote villages, almost forgotten by time, are emerging into modern life. Fran William Hall captures the spirit of this land in a film that shows us the glorious Lake Supe- rior "circle," the fabulous iron country around Duluth, Ontario's mooselands, the top of the Soo, Michigan's Upper Peninsula, famous Pictured Rocks, Cop- per Harbor, and the vast north woods. Chicago Natural History Museum Founded by Marshall Field, 1893 Roosevelt Road and Lake Shore Drive Chicago, lUinois 60605 Telephone: 922-9410 THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES Lester Armour Wm. McCormick Blair Bowen Blair Walter J. Cummings Joseph N. Field Marshall Field Clifford C. Gregg Samuel Insull, Jr. Henry P, Isham William V. Kahler J. Howard Hughston M. McBain J. Roscoe Miller William H. Mitchell James L. Palmer John T. Pirie, Jr. John Shedd Reed John G. Searle John M. Simpson Edward Byron Smith Louis Ware Wood OFFICERS James L. Palmer, President Clifford C. Gregg, First Vice-President Joseph N. Field, Second Vice-President Bowen Blair, Third Vice-President Edward Byron Smith, Treasurer and Assistant Secretary E. Leland Webber, Secretary THE BULLETIN EDITOR E. Leland Webber, Director o( the Museum CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Donald Collier, Chiel Curator of Anthropology Louis O. Williams, Chief Curator of Botany Rainer Zangerl, Chief Curator of Geology Austin L. Rand, Chief Curator of Zoology MANAGING EDITOR Paula R. Nelson, Public Relations Counsel Members are requested to inform the Museum promptly of changes of address. Page 8 FEBRUARY PRINTED BY CHICAGO NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM PRESS CHICAGO NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM MUSEUM NEWS Cover From New Photographic Exhibit THIS month's cover — a delightful photographic study of a Korean boy imprinting his footsteps on the mud flats of his native countryside — is from a new exhibit titled "The Character of Korea" opening at the Museum on April 1. In 55 black-and-white photographs, the exhibit depicts the beauty and character of Korean rural life at the present time. The exhibit is sp)onsored by the Amer- ican-Korean Foundation, a private, non-profit group which undertakes pro- jects in Korea in the fields of culture, education, health, welfare, and econom- ic development. The pictures are the work of the widely-known artist-photo- grapher ^Vallace C. Marley, motion picture coordinator for the United States Department of Defense. The ex- hibit comes to the Museum in the course of a two-year, nationwide tour. More than a million Americans have visited or seen military service in Korea since its liberation from Japanese rule in 1945, but few of these have seen the country except under the chaotic con- ditions of war. "The Character of Ko- rea" provides a unique opportunity to experience the ancient traditions of ru- ral life in peaceful, primitive farm vil- lages; to explore the countryside; and to enter more deeply into the spirit of Korea itself. Paleontology Library ON THE day after Christmas, 1945, a $500 contribution arrived in the mail from a Lansing, Michigan, radiol- ogist. Dr. Maurice L. Richardson, who wrote of his appreciation for the many pleasant afternoons he had spent study- Maurice L. Richardson ing the Museum ex- hibits. Since the donor expressed in- terest in vertebrate paleontology, his gift was set aside in a fund to support pale- ontological research. From this begin- ing, the Maurice L. Richardson Paleontological Fund has developed and grown through consistent and increasingly generous contributions by Dr. Richardson. The income from the fund has been used for the purchase of specimens and laboratory equipment, but primarily for field work — in Illinois, Indiana, Wyo- ming, Montana, Utah, Arkansas, Con- necticut, Alberta, Quebec, and Austra- lia. The collections thus made have been the basis of years of staff research, and from the research have come, and will come, many scientific publications. As the fund and its scientific produc- tivity have increased, so has the interest of Dr. Richardson, who visits the Mu- seum several times each year to chat with the curators and the Director, catch up on current research and scien- tific publications, and pick up a few books in The Book Shop to satisfy his omnivorous reading appetite. Seldom in the history of the Museum has any- one taken as personal and sustained an interest in the work being aided by his contributions. The Board of Trustees, wishing to honor Dr. Richardson, sought a suit- able means of doing so. As new con- struction and remodeling of the Depart- ment of Geology has progressed, and as the new paleontology library took shape, it seemed eminently fitting that this library be named in his honor. Thus, at its January meeting, the Board designated it the "Maurice L. Rich- ardson Paleontological Library." Space was allocated on the west side of the third floor, and hopes are that the li- brary will be fully installed and equipped by the time of Dr. Richard- son's fall visit. Future students and scientists will find the rich resources of this library a well-suited tribute to one who has so generously aided the re- searches which the library contains. (elw) Norman W. Nelson Business Manager ON FEBRU.^RY 1 , Mr. Norman \V. Nel- son was appointed Business Man- ager of Chicago Natural History Mu- seum. In this newly created position, administrative responsibility will be del- egated to Mr. Nelson for the business and financial operations of the Mu- seum. In addition, certain personnel and other operational matters, includ- ing the ojjeration of the Museum build- ing, will come within the jurisdiction of the Business Manager. Mr. Nelson will work with present department and division heads in the conduct of his of- fice. The scientific and educational de- partments; the library; and the public relations and membership di\isions will {Phase turn to page 8) Page 2 MARCH Net-fishing in the lagoon off the northern coast oj New Guinea Fred M. Reinman, Assistant Curator Oceanic Archaeology and Ethnology FISHING IN OCEANIA SINCE very early times, the sea has been a source of food for peoples fortunate enough to live along its margins. In many areas, fishing, the gathering of shellfish, the hunt- ing of different kinds of sea mammals, and the capture of turtles have furnished important supplements to a diet of terrestrial plants and animals. The earliest firm evidence for the use of food from the sea comes from the Mousterian site of Devil's Tower in Gibral- tar, where limpets and mussels were recovered from nearly all levels of the excavation. Even earlier evidence of the use of fish is said to come from Africa, and fish remains have also been found below a dated level of 40,000 years ago at Niah Cave in Borneo. These remains, however, apparently refer to fresh-water varieties of fish and indicate that at this early time the sea had yet to become an important source of food. At later periods, beginning in the Mesolithic, large shell mounds are known from many areas of the world. These mounds contain many kinds of shellfish, fish bones, and the remains of other aquatic animals from both fresh and salt water, which indicate an increasing utilization of the aquatic resources of man's environment. In addition to faunal remains, the archaeologist also finds tools indicating the importance of the aquatic environment as a source of food. These finds — although rare in the early {Continued on next page) MARCH Page S periods — begin in the Upper Paleolithic. By Mesolithic and Neolithic times, they include nearly the entire range of fishing and sea hunting equipment: harpoons, gorges, stone net and line sinkers, fishhooks, net fragments, traps, hook-making im- plements, and many others. From the simplest shoreline gathering (sometimes called strand-looping) to the more highly complicated techniques for sea mammal hunting and fishing, methods for taking food from the sea were developed gradually over a long period of time. Probably the earliest was to take fish or shellfish by hand, or, at most, to use a simple pointed or sharpened stick to spear or prize the quarry from the rocks or water. Sea mammals and turtles which periodically came ashore could also be taken quite easily with simple implements such as clubs, knives, ropes, and spears. Among these early foods from the sea, shellfish has con- tinued- to play an important part in the diet of many peoples. However, as a staple food source, shellfish collecting is gener- ally associated with a relatively low level of cultural attain- ment. Among primitive groups th^t actively fished or hunted sea mammals, shellfish played only a minor dietary role. To exploit more fully the inshore areas of the sea, more highly developed technological devices were needed. In many cases, these were probably not new inventions, but were ap- plied to the sea by simple transfer from land-oriented hunting activities. Examples of such devices are nets of various types, spears, arrows, clubs, traps, and perhaps the gorge. All of these implements could be used without a great deal of modi- fication, simply requiring the addition of weights or floats to counteract or utilize the buoyancy of the water. Once these inventions or transfers had been made, primitive man gained a reliable supplement to his diet without having to leave the shallow waters of the reef or the shoreline. Still greater utilization of the sea required two further advances : the use of some form of boat or raft, and the inven- tion of the fishhook. With the first, man was no longer con- fined to the beaches and shallow inshore waters, but was able to exploit ofTshore areas for new foods or to capture animals that used the water as a means of escape. With the second device, the fishhook, man no longer needed to limit his exploi- tation to the sea's surface waters, but was now able to explore and utilize the sub-surface levels and successfully capture mid- and deep-water fish. In Europe, neither the boat nor the fishhook appears in the archaeological record until the end of the Mesolithic peri- od. Offshore or deep-sea fishing in Europe did not really be- come eff"ective until after the advent of the Neolithic and the beginning of farming. With the growth of towns and large populations, the demand for products of the sea resulted in a more efficient fishery, which included deep-sea fishing, as well as whale and other sea mammal hunting. THIS general sequence of events in world prehistory can also be traced in the archaeological records of localized cultures. When men enter a new area having access to the sea, they will generally make increasing use of this aspect of their environment once it is recognized as a potential source of food. Any lessening of available food supplies from the land can also stimulate this turning to the sea, and in Oce- ania we have an example of this. As groups migrating out from the Asian mainland left behind the large islands of In- donesia and New Guinea and began to populate the smaller Oceanic isles, they found that the abundance of land flora and fauna decreased from west to east. Hunting and the gathering of wild plants yielded less and less food. On the low atolls, the possibilities for horticulture were restricted to tree and root crops. The difficulties of maintaining adequate supplies of pig, dog, and chicken were such that, by the time the easternmost areas of Polynesia were settled, man's de- pendence upon the sea as a source of protein had become very great. In eastern Polynesia the number of sea fishing and hunting techniques employed testifies to the importance of sea food to these islanders. The wide variety of implements used by the primitive Oceanian in his quest for food included nets of all kinds, per- manent stone and portable basketry traps of different shapes and sizes, weirs and fish fences, spears and fish arrows, the harpoon, fish poisons, and, in most areas, the fishhook. If we divide the potential fishing area of an Oceanic island or atoll into two major zones — inshore and offshore — and further di- vide these zones according to the layers of the water in which the various fishing implements are used — surface and sub- surface — we may then analyze the fishing techinques and im- plements used at each level of each zone (Fig. 1.) Such an INSHORE HABITAT Water surfoce JiA-L^ j OFFSHORE HABITAT ^y reef flot Lagoon y^^ — .....a^loce Zone ^"'N. Sut-surfoce N^^^ Zone Fig. 1. Schematic cross-section of atoll. analysis soon makes clear that the prime target of the Oceanic fisherman was the surface waters of inshore reefs and lagoons. This area produced most of the sea food the islanders used. Relatively few types of fishhooks were used to exploit these shallow waters. The Oceanic spinner hook (Fig. 2), especially designed for taking bonito and closely related surface feeding fish, and the gorge (Fig. 3), were the main implements. The Oceanic spinner hook varied only in detail over the whole area of its use. It consisted of a shank, fish-like in form, made from some type of pearl or other shiny shell material. In areas where pearl shell was scarce, other materials, such as bone, wood, or stone, were used; in such cases a thin layer of pearl or other shell was usually affixed to the shank, presum- ably to act as a lure. Attached to the shank was a point made of bone, pearl, turtle, or other shell (later metal), which was Page k MARCH unbarbed for easy removal of the fish. The spinner hook was used without bait and trolled behind a moving canoe. In Oceania the gorge, like the spinner, was primarily used in the surface layer of the sea. The gorge is a very old but effective catching and holding device, which archaeologically precedes the fishhook and which has been retained in many areas where fishing with hooks is also done. It consists of a slender wooden stick or bone splinter, pointed at each end, with a line attached to its center. When baited, the gorge is set so that it lies closely parallel to the line. When the fish swallows the bait, the tension on the line pulls the gorge cross- wise in the fish's stomach, piercing its sides and effectively preventing the fish's escape. Gutting is usually required to remove the gorge, and the fish is rarely able to pull himself free. Since the gorge is more effective than the hook in hold- ing the catch it would seem to be the best choice for devices that are left unattended, such as the lines of floats used to take flying fish. This is its greatest use in Oceania. To catch fish that fed in the sub-surface layer of the lagoon and in the deep waters of the offshore zone, many types of fishhooks were made from pearl, turtle, and coconut shell, or from bone, wood, and occasionally teeth (Fig. 4). Such hooks were baited, and generally used with a hand-held line rather than a pole. Either permanent or temporary sink- ers were added to get the hooks to the proper depth for fish- ing. Differences in the size and shape of these hooks suggest that their makers had rather specific ideas about the types and sizes of fish that could be taken with each. A still more specialized instrument is the ruvettus hook (Fig. 5), named for the deep-dwelling species, Ruvetlus, which it was designed to catch. The ruvettus hook was made in a range of sizes from about six inches to over a foot in length. A U- or V-shaped forked branch of a tree forms the shank and point leg of the hook. Fastened to this is a V-shaped point of wood which forms a barb directed back toward the shank, reducing the clearance between point and shank to less than an inch in the larger hooks. The ruvettus is set in depths of up to 2,000 feet, with bait and a sinker attached to the line. In attempting to remove the bait, which is affixed to the point leg, the fish works his jaw between the point and the shank and is firmly secured. Similar hooks were used to take sharks. A knowledge of the kinds of fishing equipment used by pre- historic fishermen, the zones in which these implements were used, and the kinds and amounts offish taken with them, is important for the Oceanic prehistorian. Fishing equip- ment constitutes an important category of implements recov- ered from the archaeologist's excavations. It is necessary to have some idea of how such equipment functions in a cul- ture in order to make valid inferences about the diet, so- cial organization, and general economic conditions of the makers of the equipment. More specifically, analysis of different types of fishhooks contributes evidence as to the way in which the marine habitat was exploited in Oceania, and, taken in conjunction with the rest of the fishing complex, will enable the archaeologist to make more precise interpretations of the role of fishing in the Oceanic economy. Fig. 2 (above): Oceanic spinner hooks. Sizes range from 3 to 4 inches. Fig. 3 (right): Gorge. The slender bone splinters swallowed by the fish are at the bottom of the photograph. These splinters are l^A to 2 inches long. Larger ones may approach 6 inches. /-Si uO 6 6 Fig. 4 (above): Fishhooks used below the surface of the lagoon or in deep offshore waters. Sizes range from 2 to 3 inches. Fig. 5 (right): Ruvettus hook. MARCH Page 5 DDWIGHT DAVIS, Curator of Anat- omy, died February 6th at the age of 56. He was at the height of his career as a comparative anatomist when his monumental work on the giant panda was published just two months before his death. As a biological discipline, compara- tive anatomy is an old field that had its time of intensive work and glory in the past century. Its history is studded with such famous names as Cuvier, Gegenbaur, Fiirbringer, Wiedersheim, Owen, Goodrich, and many others. The technical literature in the field is all but overwhelming in its extent. Under these circumstances one may legitimate- ly ask whether a man can still make an outstanding contribution in this disci- pline and measure up to some of the illustrious scientists of the past. I think Dwight Davis did make a major con- tribution and his name will rank among the foremost comparative anatomists of the 20th century. My reasons for this near-prophetic statement stem from my close acquaint- ance with Dwight's character and work habits. He was a perfectionist in all D. DWIGHT DAVIS 1908-1965 his endeavors, and his work habits can best be described as meticulous. More- over, he was not content merely to build upon the philosophical foundations and the methodology of his science, as they had been laid out liy his predecessors, by pragmatically adding to the body of knowledge. Instead, he felt that the time had come for the field to explore new vistas and to undergo a change in direction. Characteristically, he pre- pared himself ijefore he ventured to put his ideas on paper; he read and even translated a large part of the exceed- ingly difficult German literature that deals with the philosophic foundation of the science of comparative anatomy and the history of the discipline, as a first step toward an assessment of what the future role of his science should be among the ever-growing family of bio- logical sciences. Then he proceeded to test his ideas, developed over many years, on a prob- lem close at hand, the comparative an- atomy of the giant panda. His anatom- ical work on this animal dates back to the late thirties, and began with a wind- fall: in 1937 the Chicago Zoological Park acquired Su Lin, a giant panda that lived there until April, 1938. When Su Lin died, its body was embalmed and injected at the Mu- seum. Davis's original purpose was merely to establish its systematic relationships, which were still under dispute at that time. This ques- tion was soon settled, and replaced by prob- lems of far broader bio- logical significance. By the mid-fifties most of the anatomical and comparative ana- tomical evidence was at hand and Davis had established beyond rea- sonable doubt that the giant panda is a bear. But it is not merely an- other bear; it is, struc- turally, an "exagger- ated" bear. What brought about these differences? Could the field of comparative anatomy con- tribute to such a question? Davis thought that it could; although he utilized in- sights gained in other biological disci- plines, he nevertheless felt that the com- parative anatomical contribution was most important and fimdamental. In a marvelously well-written introduction to his memoir on the giant panda he has set forth his ideas on the potential power of comparative anatomy as an explana- tory science. Dwight Davis was born in Rockford, Illinois, on December 30, 1908, the son of a minister. Already as a boy he had an interest in natural history, and es- pecially in animals. He was educated at North Central College in Naperville, and did some graduate work at the University of Chicago Medical School. In 1930 he started his career at what was then the Field Museum of Natural History as an assistant in the Division of Osteology, and in 1941 he became Curator of Anatomy. Under his cura- torship the Division of Anatomy became well known all over the country and even abroad, and it served as the meet- ing place for scientists of a broad variety of specialities. Davis's scientific interests did not lie exclusively in comparative anatomy. In the early part of his career he worked and published on herpetological topics. Later on he felt the need, in connection with a growing interest in functional anatomy, for first-hand observations of animals in the field; thus he took part in a number of expeditions, most no- tably one to North Borneo in 1950 which resulted not only in many important observations, but in a very fine sys- tematic study of the mammals of the lowland rain forest of North Borneo. In all, Davis published over 50 scientific papers, and numerous semi-popular articles and iiook reviews. Dwight was not a gregarious person; he felt ill at ease in large groups and would usually seek out one or two {per- sons with whom he felt a community of interest. He also abstained from conversation unless he had something worthwhile to contribute; he saw no sense in talk for its own sake. As a colleague he was often difficult, unap- Page 6 MABCH proachable, sometimes caustic. But these were, so to speak, the work-a-day clothes of his character; beneath them was an entirely different man, congen- ial, friendly, even warm, but only his closest friends ever really knew this side of Dwight's personality. Those of his colleagues who did not know him well nevertheless admired him and respected the quality of his intellectual capabili- ties. He was especially envied for his talent at organization and the polish of his performance, which were particu- larly evident in the delivery of an ad- dress or a lecture. These attributes were clearly the result of the fact that Dwight would never do anything casually. It was either done right, or not at all, and, true perfectionist that he wa.s, he never quite satisfied himself with the quality of his own accomplishments. Contrary to what might be supposed, Dwight was always ready and eager to cooperate with others in both profes- sional and leisure-time projects. During the late forties Davis became a photographer. It looked like a hobby, but was much more than that. To him it was a pleasurable means of re- cording and documenting observations, especially of phenomena related to nat- ural history. For this purpose he made use of still as well as motion pictures. Although Dwight Davis was not a regular university professor, he super- vised graduate training of a number of students at the Museum, was appointed Lecturer in Zoology at the University of Chicago in 1950, held a visiting pro- fessorship at California Institute of Tech- nology during 1954, and served as act- ing chairman of the Department of Zo- ology of the University of Malaya dur- ing the fall and winter of 1962-63. In 1958 he was invited as a participant to the International Biological Congress at the University of Malaya at Singapore in celebration of the centenary of the formulation of the theory of evolution by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. Davis was a member of several so- cieties: the American Society of Mam- malogists, of which he was a trustee dur- ing 1955-61; the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists; the Society for the Study of Evolution, which Anasazi Indian ritual. From exhibit seen on Spring Journey. NEW CHILDREN'S JOURNEY Ap.ACHE, Pima, Pueblo, Navajo — all . are Indians of our Southwest des- ert country. Yet each tribe met the challenge of desert living in a different way. "Indians of the Desert Country", Chicago Natural History Museum's spring Journey, will give children a glimpse into the lives of these Indians. Sparse vegetation, little water, and extreme temperatures were some of the problems to be met. The Navajo In- dians, as seen in detailed miniature models of their summer and winter en- campments, found the answer in sheep herding — wandering with their flocks in search of forage plants. The Hoho- kam Indians, forerunners of the Pima tribe, however, were able to settle in one place and establish large towns as well. A diorama of one of their settle- ments and extensive irrigation systems that made this possible is on exhibit. War bonnets and arrows of the Apa- che Indians on display indicate their traditional pattern of living — hunting and raiding. Highlight of the self-guided Journey is a life-size reproduction of a Pueblo "apartment" interior. In it, an In- dian family is busy with the daily tasks of weaving, cooking, and making pot- tery. Here, too, Journeyers will dis- cover for themselves how the walls, the storeroom, and even the religious sym- bols seen on the wall were adapted by the Pueblo Indians to the Southwest desert country. Many other exhibits showing the col- orful rituals and ceremonies, costumes, tools, and weapons of these Indians can be seen on the Journey. Boys and girls interested in taking the Journey may pick up information and a Journey questionnaire at the Museum doors. The spring Journey on "Indians of the Desert Country" is available from March through May. he served as managing editor of the journal. Evolution, since 1961; and the American Society of Zoologists, which appointed him chairman of the Divi- sion of Vertebrate Morphology during 1961-62. His Alma Mater, North Central Col- lege, conferred upon him an honorary degree of Doctor of Science in 1963 in recognition of his outstanding work as a comparative anatomist. Dwight Davis will be missed on the staff of the Museum, as elsewhere. He left a profoimd impression on those who maintained close contact with him; the impact of his ideas and his personality survives among those of us who treasure the good fortune of having known him. Rainer Zangerl Chief Curator, Geology MARCH Page 7 BUSINESS MANAGER {Continued from page 2) continue to report directly to the Di- rector. Thus the creation of the posi- tion of Business Manager is essentially a restructuring of the Director's office, which will allow the Director more time to devote to institutional planning and development. To his new fxjsition Mr. Nelson brings wide administrative exfjerience as cor- porate executive and financial officer. He was associated with the Cherry- Burrell Corporation of Chicago and Ce- dar Rapids, Iowa, beginning as a clerk after graduation from college and rising through a number of positions to be- come Vice President-Finance and a member of the Board of Directors. He has also been an officer and director of associated companies manufacturing food packaging and processing machin- ery, both in the United States and Mex- ico. Mr. Nelson was born in Stambaugh, Michigan. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Commerce from Northwestern University in 1937, and in 1944 was licensed as a Certified Pub- lic Accountant by the State of Illinois. He is married and the father of three sons. The Nelson family particularly enjoy the outdoors, and have camped in most of the national parks of the country. Mr. Nelson's avocation is mu- sic, and he has been active in organizing and directing several choral groups. STAFF APPOINTMENTS THE FOLLOWING Staff appointments and changes have also been an- nounced by the Director. Department of Zoology Hyman Marx, Associate Curator, Reptiles Library Chih-wei Pan, Cataloger; Supervisor East Asian Library N. W. Harris Public School Extension Lido Lucchesi, Preparator Division of Photography Homer Holdren, Associate Photographer Guard George Lamoreux, Captain tTAVYL ^AERCAPTA^ THE TURKEY VULTURE'S SENSE OF SMELL Austin L. Rand Chief Curator, Zoology V'ULTtjRES are part of Nature's sanitary corps, which also includes mammals, such as hyenas; insects, such as some flies and beetles; and bacteria. These help to remove the bodies of animals that have died in field and forest. In more primitive human societies, vultures may help remove garbage from villages. In man's more highly organized societies, the vulture as a sanitary aide is passe. Yet Dr. Kenneth E. Stager of Los Angeles County Museum has brought to our attention a new way in which vultures have been useful to modern man. The turkey vulture in recent years has helped the field engi- neers of the Union Oil Company of California locate leaks in their large natural gas lines. When a leak was suspected in a pipeline in rough country where patrolling was difficult, a high concentration of the odoriferous ethyl mercaptan, attractive to turkey vultures, was introduced into the line. Subsequent patrols noted where turkey vultures concen- trated along the line, went there, and found the leak. This took advantage of the turkey vulture's sense of smell, and focuses attention on the fact that most birds are thought to have little or no ability along these lines. Whether or not the turkey vulture was an exception had been debated for over a century. Experiments had been reported that were claimed to show that turkey vultures had no sense of smell while others were reported that showed it did have one. Obviously there was a discrepancy to be searched out. This Curator Stager has done and reported the results in a paper published in 1964 and entitled "The Role of Olfac- tion in Food Location by the Turkey Vulture (Cathartes aura)." The answer proved a very simple one. There is more than one kind of vulture. In the United States there is the black vulture and the turkey vulture. Curator Stager demonstrated very convincingly that the black vulture has no useful sense of smell and finds its food entirely by sight. On the other hand, the turkey vulture does have a sense of smell and uses it to aid its eyes in finding food. Those who reported that the turkey vulture had no sense of smell were using the wrong sjjecies in their experiments. Curator Stager has given us another example of the im- portance of museum-type attention to the species and its correct taxonomy. It is basic to other fields of biological research. Page 8 MARCH PRINTED BY CHICAGO NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM PRESS NATURAL^ . HISTORY ^^, ^USEUNi^I;^/ -* ^V< Vol 36 No. 4 1965 fc J^. I «», \ Searching for evidence of marsupial evolution in Australii "i^^^air CHICAGO NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM MUSEUM NEWS NEW STAFF APPOINTMENTS A C) ^ LTHOUGH the Museum has long possessed rich ^ethnological coUect- tions from many Ne- gro African cultures, and is noted for its exhibits in this field, there has been no Leon Siroto African specialist on the staff since the retirement of the late Dr. \Vilfred D. Hambly in 1953. It is with pleasure, therefore, that announce- ment is made of the appointment of Leon Siroto as Assistant Curator of Af- rican Ethnology, beginning March 1. A specialist in Negro African culture history and art, Mr. Siroto has been engaged in research on the traditional African societies, and especially their material culture and art styles, since 1950. In 1960-61, under a grant from the Ford Foundation, he carried out field research on the culture history of Negro peoples living along the Sangha and Ogowe River systems of the then French Congo (Brazzaville) and Gabon. Aided by a Fulbright fellowship, he has also made extensive studies of African ethnographic materials in the museums of England, France, Belgium, Switzer- land, Holland, and Scandinavia. Mr. Siroto has been particularly in- terested in investigating the premises underlying the use of masks in African societies, and the historical development of weapons by various African groups. His doctoral dissertation, based on his field research, discusses the use of masks in leadership competition among the BaKwele people of western equatorial Africa. Mr. Siroto became an anthropologist after beginning his career an as ento- mologist. He received the Bachelor of Science degree in entomology from Ohio . State University in 1944. In 1945 he Page 2 APRIL . was awarded the M.A. degree in science education by Columbia University. Af- ter several years as a Plant Quarantine Inspector with the United States De- partment of Agriculture, Mr. Siroto again entered Columbia University to pursue graduate work in anthropology. Mr. Siroto has taught at Queens Col- lege and Georgetown University, and has published articles on African art and weapons. He is a member of the American Anthropological Association and a Fellow of the Royal Anthropo- logical Institute of Great Britain. MR. GEORGE R. FRiCKE has joined the Raymond Foundation education- al staff as lecturer in biology. In this position, he replaces Mrs. Maryl Andre, who has resigned. Mr. Fricke received the Bachelor of Science degree from Wisconsin State University, at Stevens Point, Wisconsin. He did his major work in conservation and biology, with emphasis on zoology and wild life. In the Museum, he will be working in the wide range of edu- cational programs which the Raymond Foundation offers. EXPLORE PROGRAM FOR CULTURALLY DEPRIVED ANEW program to explore ways in which museums can help the na- tional effort to provide compensatory education for the culturally deprived child is now under way by Chicago Natural History Museum in coopera- tion with the Urban Child Center of the University of Chicago. To develop techniques for solving this problem, Mr. Ernest Roscoe, lecturer in geology with the James Nelson and Anna Louise Raymond Foundation, one of the Museum's educational divisions, has been appointed a Research Associate in the Graduate School of Education of the University of Chicago, where he will work several days a week under the general direction of Dr. Robert D. Hess, Professor of Education and Director of the University's Urban Child Center. The Raymond Foundation has long been concerned with making the Mu- seum's educational resources more avail- able to children from disadvantaged, urban backgrounds. "We must find ways to attract these young people," Roscoe said, "who may not even know that we exist, and make their visits to our halls meaningful and understandable." During the next five months, Roscoe will visit urban schools, day nurseries, and settlement houses. He will confer with teachers, principals, and other edu- cators, and also observe and work with the children themselves. Some of the basic questions he will investigate are: How can the Museum's educational re- sources (both intramural and extension) be made most useful to culturally de- prived children? What kinds of natural history and anthropological materials should be developed for use with these children? What educational methods are most effective in reaching the dis- advantaged at levels from pre-school through high school? Should auxiliary programs be developed for teachers and parents? How can the Museum's pro- grams be integrated with other existing programs? "By finding answers to such questions as these," said Miss Miriam Wood, Chief of the Raymond Foundation, "the Museum can look forward to increasing its contribution to the massive national effort now being directed toward broad- ening the intellectual horizons of the culturally deprived child." STUDENT SCIENCE FAIR SCIENCE projects designed by Chicago- land students will be on exhibit in Stanley Field Hall from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday May 15, during the An- nual Chicago Area Science Fair. MEMBERS' NIGHT MAY 7 Chocolate Tret IF THERE are those who think that newness is not a characteristic of museums, let them come to Chicago Natural History Museum on May 7, when "What's new?" sets the theme for Members' Night. Among the attractions of the Museum's annual open house will be: a major exhibition hall, now in the final stages of complete modernization; a new conservation laboratory, open to Members for the first time prior to its dedication later in May; a preview oj the $875,000 Museum building addition, now at the halfway point in con- struction; and a new expedition to Afghanistan, plans for which are just under way. When Members and their guests arrive, they will be invited to ascend immedi- ately to the second floor, where the renovated Hall of Useful Plants awaits them. Here, in a setting made brilliant through the use of bold colors and imaginative display techniques, are the plants and plant products indispensable to man. Among the exhibits (most are completed; some nearly so) are plant dyes — forerunners of modern, synthetic colors; resins — essential to varnishes, medicines, perfumes, plastics, and adhesives; and fibers — from which we get scrub brushes, rugs, burlap, and fine linen. Nearby displays illustrate plants that have been dubbed "pacifiers." Some of these, like tobacCo, are smoked, Others, like betel nuts, are chewed. Also shown are marijuana, opium, mescal, cocaine, and the hallucinatory mushrooms that are important in the life of many primitive societies. Exhibits on gums depict the origins of food additives that have become increas- ingly important in our diet, as a check of the labels on many kinds of packaged foods will show. Housewives with well-stocked spice shelves will want to match their varieties against the more than 40 spices on exhibit. While examining the spices and their origins, see if you can point out the orchid without reading the label. Notice, too, the attractive way boards from old packing cases have been used in the background. Cases showing the production of tea and coffee, with a miniature replica of a tea plantation, are nearing completion. There is also an exhibit on legumes, without which civilization might not have been possible; and a nearly completed exhibit on natural rubber, upon which our wheeled civilization depends. Toward one end of the hall are newly finished models of well known vegetables. (Upstairs on the third floor. Members will have an opportunity to see how these marvelously realistic plant models are made.) Before leaving the hall, walk around once more just to look at the murals. These depict man's concern with plants from prehistoric times to but a short while ago. In keeping with the botanical theme of Members' Night, Dr. Louis O. Williams, Chief Curator of Botany, who has spent a "life-time" in the tropics, will give several short lectures during the evening on the origins and romance of useful plants. The lecture room adjoins the botany hall on the second floor. In addition to the lectures, movies of botanical subjects will also be shown. On the opposite side of the second floor, in the Hall of Fossil Plants and Inver- tebrates (Hall 37), a special exhibit of paintings will depict the beginnings of life in ancient seas, through the Age of Reptiles, the evolution of mammals, and the coming of man. The paintings were created for the 1965 World Book Tear Book, to illustrate the article on "Out of the Sea: The Life Story of a Continent." The copy was written by Dr. Eugene S. Richardson, Jr., the Museum's Curator of Fossil Invertebrates. Reprints of this handsome and informative article will be available in the hall for Members and their guests. Moving on to the third floor. Members will want to view the new conservation laboratory in the Department of Anthropology. First of its kind in the Midwest, the laboratory contains the latest equipment for preserving archaeological and ethnological specimens, such as ancient bronzes and wooden sculpture, clothing, household goods, or weapons. Here in the laboratory, artifacts are examined by X-ray, microscope, or chemical analysis; washed or cleaned by chemical or electro- (Continued on page 8) APRIL Page S Paula R. Nelson australian expedition discovers landmark fossil site ANNOUNCEMENT of an expedition to Australia always quick- L ens our interest. Scattered pictures spring to mind: aborigines running toward a rain cloud; archaic lungfish that come to the water's surface to breathe; flightless birds; mammals that lay eggs; and above all the ubiquitous mar- supials, mammals that nurture their young in external pouches. Which aspect is to be explored? It hardly matters. In every field of exploration — paleontology, botany, zoology, or ethnology — the Australian continent, free since the Creta- ceous to develop its own distinctive modes of life — beckons us toward the unusual, the unique, the unknown. It is from a 12-months' paleontological expedition "down under" that William TurnbuU, Associate Curator of Fossil Mammals, has recently returned. With him, as co-director of the expedition, was Ernest L. Lundelius, Jr., Associate Professor of Geology at the University of Texas. Technical Above: the Grange Burn, where the expedition uncovered a landmark fossil deposit. {Note basaltic rocks overlying the fossil soil.) Right: Bill TurnbuU and son dig out the site. assistance in the field research was provided by the directors' wives, Mrs. Priscilla TurnbuU and Mrs. Judith Lundelius — both trained geologists. The expedition set out to find evidence that would illum- inate the obscure origin and evolution of Australia's an- cestral marsupials. During the Mcsozoic (see geologic table on page 6), the pouched mammals, perhaps under pressure from their more successful relatives, the placentals, had pushed into the outermost regions of the southern hemisphere. One of these regions — Australia — was separated from the other land masses of the world in the Cretaceous. The con- Page i APRIL Fossil hunting at these sites proved disappointing. Above: a limestone quarry. Right: a coal bed outcrop. Cover: a site where earlier collectors had found a nearly complete skeleton of an Oli- gocene marsupial. tinent became a sanctuary, where the old marsupial line, free from placental competition, could experience a new re- surgence. Marsupials spread everywhere over Australia, evolving an abundance of species adapted to every possible environment (desert or forest, burrow or tree top) and diet (witness koalas that subsist solely on eucalyptus leaves). This adaptive radiation, which must have taken place during the Tertiary period, unfortunately left little trace. The fossil record of marsupial history is, as Turnbull puts it, "pitifully scanty." Moreover, no dates are known for the few remains of Tertiary mammals that have been found in Australia. The difficulty is that the terrestrial strata of mammals whose bodies had been washed by ancient streams to the sea. Still another possibility would be the fossil soils that had been protected from leaching by overlying basalts laid down during the volcanic upheavals of the Tertiary. The great advantage of all these coast-line formations was that they might be correlated by their interfingerings with marine rock sequences whose dating is known. In Melbourne, therefore, the expedition members set up their home base. Here the National Museum of Victoria acted as their host and cooperated in every way with their research. From this base, the expeditionary party set up a series of field camps equipped for fossil collecting and pro- Processing specimens at afield camp {lejt). Shown below, left to right: handling hulk samples oj matrix preparatory to wet-siev- ing; wet-sieving; drying the residues so that they may be examined for fossils. Australia have never been correlated with other land or marine rock sequences for which dates are known. The Museum expedition hoped, first of all, to discover one or more deposits of Tertiary fossils that would help fill in the record of marsupial evolution. Secondly, the paleontologists wanted to find evidence that would make it possible to date Australian fossils more precisely. The great risk was that they might fail to locate any Tertiary fossils at all. To increase the odds in their favor, Turnbull and Lundelius would need to identify and explore the most promising geologic formations. THE Australian continent contains some of the earth's old- est rocks. Across the western two-thirds of its surface stretches the archaic pre-Cambrian shield. Ranging the eastern margin, from the northern shore to Tasmania, are highlands uplifted mainly in the Mesozoic. The most exten- sive sequences of Tertiary formations lie along the southern coast and in Tasmania. Here, promising localities would be outcrops of coal beds and freshwater limestones. Marine sediments found near the shore might also contain fossils of cessing. Collecting is a^^matter of the paleontologist calling upon all his knowledge and experience to identify likely sites; then chipping out, digging up, or simply hauling away the rocks, soils, and sediments in which fossils might be buried. Processing means separating the fossil specimens from these matrices. This was done by wet-sieving — back-breaking work, in which sediments are washed and sifted through several grades of mesh screens that are gently agitated while partially submerged in tanks of water. Back at the Mel- bourne base, Monash University generously made space available for this task. Wet-sieving produces residues which must be dried and then painstakingly picked over. Every bit of sediment is examined — often under a microscope. If the searchers find fossil remains, good; but weeks of effort may turn up nothing but mineral concentrates. Yet even these have their uses: analysis of the minerals, or in some cases of ancient pollens found, can provide insight into the environmental conditions of the past. Such knowledge helps other paleontologists identify promising sites for future prospecting. {over) APRIL Pages § w PALEOZOIC MESOZOIC CENOZOIC 2" =• » 230 '600 million years ago TRIASSIC JURASSIC CRETACEOUS TERTIARY QUATERNARY g 3 > PALEOCENE EOCENE OLIGOCENE MIOCENE PLIOCENE PLEISTOCENE « » 2 —=■-2 230-181 million years ago 181 « 135 million years ago 135-65 million years ago 65-55 million years ago 55-38 million years ago 38-26 million years ago 26-12 million years ago 12-1 million years ago 1 million years ago to the present ^ When fossils are found (most commonly teeth) the yield per volume of residual sediments must be assessed. Add to this the paleontologist's general knowledge of how rarely fos- sils occur in the beds being sampled, and it is possible to estimate the volume of original matrix which must be taken to produce an adequate sampling of the fauna. Through months of such work, at dozens of localities, the paleontologists persisted. There were no dramatic finds. In the coal bed outcrops, not a sign of bone turned up. However, the expedition did keep samples of coal bed con- centrates for future analysis. Though Turnbull and Lun- delius searched outcrops of freshwater limestones where work- ers of an earlier generation had found fossil deposits, there were no new finds. Many of these outcrops, they learned, had been quarried out for agricultural lime. Turnbull and Lun- delius arranged with the National Museum of Victoria, the University of Melbourne, and the Victoria Mines Department to borrow the specimens found decades before, so that they could be studied at Chicago Natural History Museum and eventually be made known to science. The near-shore collecting, on which the expedition had laid high hopes, proved especially disappointing. Eighty years before, a nearly complete skeleton of Wynyardia, an op- possum-like Oligocene marsupial, had been discovered in a marine formation; and at another shore-line locality a Mio- cene faunal deposit had been unearthed. But the Museum party was able to uncover only a few fossil fragments from marine conglomerates. And by wet-sieving the beach sands, they got a single half of what is "probably"a marsupial tooth. YET just such a fragment now opened up a whole new avenue of discovery. Some eleven years before, Mr. E. Gill, of the National Museum of Victoria, had found a single mammalian tooth in a fossil soil outcrop on the Grange Burn near Hamilton in western Victoria. The ex- {ledition members decided to follow up this slender clue. Here, they struck pay dirt. Almost immediately, mam- malian teeth turned up in material taken from the top layers of the Grange Burn outcrops. The party set to work, digging out and wet-sieving nearly three tons of fossil soil. This yielded some 500 pounds of concentrate. Though only a small portion of the residues could be examined during the next few weeks, more than 30 teeth, or fragments of teeth, representing six species of early marsupials, were found. This was a faunal deposit of immense value. But were the specimens from the Tertiary, the crucial period for marsupial adaptive radiation? The stratigraphic evidence seemed clear, but other workers in Australia had initially judged their finds to be Tertiary only to recognize, on further analysis, that they were no older than Pleistocene. Page 6 APRIL Dr. Ian MacDougall, of the department of geophysics at the Australian National University at Canberra, offered to run a potassium-argon test on a sample of the basalt overlying the fossil soil. His test showed the basalt to be 4.35 million years old. The Grange Burn fossil marsupials were firmly Tertiary. In a report to the National Science Foundation, which had helped to support the expedition's work, Turnbull and Lundelius summed up the significance of the radiometric dating of the Grange Burn material : "It provides: (1) a check on the stratigraphic age; (2) a firm tie to the world-wide chronology; (3) the opportunity for better age-determinations of other ter- restrial faunas in Australia; and (4) the first positively dated pre-Pleistocene fauna for that continent. This unquestionably is the most important accomplishment of the expedition." BEFORE leaving Australia, the expedition rounded out its work by investigating several more recent faunal lo- calities, including a classic area for Australian paleontology, the Wellington Caves of New South Wales. This site is one of the best-known Pleistocene marsupial deposits on the continent. Large collections have been made by a number of scientific institutions, but the internal strati- graphy of the cave deposits has never been studied. Many earlier workers reported that stratigraphic levels simply could not be made out, and thus the possibilities of reconstructing the fossil history were severely limited. The Museum expedition worked intensively for a week in the Wellington Caves. At the end of this period, Turnbull reported: "We believe that we have enough evidence to show that stratigraphy does exist with the deposits and can be interpreted. If we are right, the best thing we can do here is to try to document this . . ." The paleontologists mapped and photographed the caves and dug copious sam- ples from each of the various strata they could discern. Here in the Museum, they will compare materials from each level to see if they hold evidence of faunal changes. "If future study supports our theories," Turnbull adds, "we will have shed new light on marsupial development in the Pleistocene, and greatly enhanced the value of earlier collections. A scientific expedition — however carefully its goals are chosen, its methods refined — is always a risk venture. "We knew," Turnbull says, "that our chances of succeeding were even slimmer than most, since a century of searching before us had turned up such a meager fossil record. There is particular satisfaction, therefore, in reporting that some of our Australian expedition's most important objectives have been achieved." MUSEUM expeditions in 1965 will again carry scientific research into many areas of the world. Highlights of this year's schedule are expeditions to Afghanistan and Guam. Mr. and Mrs. William S. Street of Seattle, who led a highly successful expedition to Iran for the Museum three years ago, are now planning to go to Afghanistan in June. There they will collect specimens for a faunal study of Afghanistan's mammals. Since no such study has ever been undertaken, the expedition expects to solve many problems as to just what species do occur in that remote and beautiful coimtry. Mr. Street's personal goal is to resolve, if possible, the disagreement as to whether there are more than one species of mountain sheep whose ranges come together in Afghanistan. -H- EXPEDITIONS 1965 Accompanying the Streets will be two graduate students in mammalogy, selected from applicants in all parts of the country. Appointed by the Museum as Expedition Fellows are Jerry Hassinger of the University of California at Davis, and Hans Neuhauser of the University of Georgia. Mr. and Mrs. Street have been appointed to the honorary staff of the Museum as Field Associates, in recognition of their continuing contributions to science through expedition- ary work. Also in June, Dr. Fred M. Reinman, Assistant Curator of Oceanic Archaeology and Ethnology, will leave for a year of research on Guam in the Marianas Islands. Aided by a grant from the National Science Foundation, Rienman will conduct archaeological surveys and excavations to learn more of Guam's prehistoric people. He is especially in- terested in studying their exploitation of the sea as a food source. Dr. Louis O. Williams, Mrs. Williams, and Mrs. Dorothy Gibson, Custodian of the Herbarium, have just returned from a two-months' field trip into Central America. They were accompanied during part of the trip by Chester Laskow- ski, a graduate student from the University of Michigan and by Professor Antonio Molina of Escuela Agricola Panameri- cana in Honduras. Field work was done in Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica. Exploratory trips were made into two previously unvisited rain forest areas in Costa Rica, one on the Atlantic, the other on the Pacific slope near the Panamanian border. The specimens and information gath- ered are basic to floristic and systematic studies of the plants of Central America now in progress. In the United States, much of this year's field work will (Continued on next page) >:-:\ 't APRIL Page 7 be carried out in the western half of the country. Dr. Paul S. Martin, Curator Emeritus of Anthropology, will return to eastern Arizona, site of his investigations into the culture and history of the people living in that region from 5000 b.c. to A.D. 1400. Dr. Rupert L. Wenzel, Curator of Insects, will make a short field trip into the Southwest to collect parasites of bats, especially flies of the family Streblidae. He hopes to obtain additional specimens of some recently discovered, undescribed species for a paper he is preparing on Streblidae of North America. Extending his paleoclimatic studies into South Dakota and Montana, Dr. John Clark, Associate Curator of Sedi- mentary Petrology, will continue his search for ancient vol- canic ash deposits, sandstones, and fossil animals which will help to interpret the geography and climate of North America 30 million years ago. Dr. Robert H. Denison, Curator of Fossil Fishes, will revisit the Canon City, Colorado, area seeking remains of the oldest known vertebrates. These rare fossils occur in 450-million-year-old sandstones. While small fragments of their armor have been discovered, Dr. Denison hopes to find better material that will give some clues to the appear- ance of these primitive, fish-like vertebrates. The Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming will be the site of field work by Dr. Patricio Ponce de Leon, Assistant Cura- tor of the Cryptogamic Herbarium, and Mr. Robert Stolze of the Department of Botany. In Wyoming, they will gather plants from this relatively uncollected area for the Museum's herbarium as well as for exchange with other institutions. Dr. Edward J. Olson, Curator of Minerals, will be one of the few heading east. He will travel to New York State to collect spinel crystals for exhibit and exchange purfxjses. Two of the Museum's staff planning field trips in the Midwest during 1965 are Mr. George I. Quimby, Curator of North American Archaeology and Ethnology, and Dr. Eugene S. Richardson, Curator of Fossil Invertebrates. Mr. Quimby will again be exploring the Upper Great Lakes region for sites inhabited by Indian tribes from 1600 to 1760. Dr. Richardson will continue his search of strip mines in Illinois for fossils of the Pennsylvanian period. In addition to the expeditions and field trips by Museum staff, field associates and collectors working in collaboration with the Museum will be gathering data and specimens in many parts of the world. Through them. Museum research will continue during the year in Nepal, the Philippines, South America, New Guinea, and 1^ many islands of the South Pacific. MEMBERS' NIGHT - MAY 7 lytic means; impregnated or coated with preservatives. In addition to demon- strations of these techniques, a selection of rare artifacts from Italy, Tibet, and other areas will be displayed, some shown "before" and others "after" being re- stored to their original beauty. The Library and the Department of Geology have arranged a walk-through of the new Museum building addition, now in the midst of construction. This addition will provide new stack space and offices for the Library; new techniccd processing, classroom, and research laboratories for the Geology Department; and will house the famed Walker Collection of fossil invertebrates. The walk-through will give Members their first opportunity to see the new space and visualize its completed appearance. Curators will be on hand to guide visitors through the storage area, and we predict reactions of amazement at its tremendous size. In other behind-the-scenes areas of the third floor, Members will see the genesis of the forthcoming Street expedition to Afghanistan (see page 7). Displays in vari- ous curatorial laboratories will also trace the geography of South American mam- mals, show the difference between certain whale species, and examine variation and convergence in birds. On the ground floor, in the divisions of fishes and reptiles, curators will discuss specimens collected on recent expeditions to the Indian Ocean and Borneo. On the fourth floor, visitors may view research drawing of snail shells and anatomy, see five cases of a new exhibit-in-progress, and handle the magnificent furs and skins that are always a special delight of Members' Night. The Museum's open house begins at 6:00 p.m. and ends at 10:00 p.m. Dinner will be served in the cafeteria until 8 o'clock; refreshments will also be available on the second floor and in Stanley Field Hall. Free shuttle bus service will operate from Jackson and State to the Museum's south door, starting at 6:00 p.m. The buses will run at approximately 15-minute intervals, following the regular shuttie bus (No. 149) route and making stops along Michigan Avenue at Jackson and at Balbo. The last bus leaves the Museum at 10:45 p.m. Chicago Natural History Museum Founded by Marshall Field, 1S93 Roofcvelc Road and Lake Shore Drive CHICAGO, ILLINOIS 60605 Telephone: 922-9410 THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES Lester Armour Wm. McCormick Blair Bowen Blair Walter J. Cummings Joseph N. Field Marshall Field Clifford C. Gregg Samuel InsuU, Jr. Henry P. Isham William V. Kahler J. Howard Hughston M. McBain J. Roscoe Miller William H. Mitchell James L. Palmer John T. Pirie, Jr. John Shedd Reed John G. Searle John M. Simpson Edward Byron Smith Louis Ware Wood OFFICERS James L. Palmer, President Clifford C. Gregg, First Vice-President Joseph N. Field, Second Vice-President Bowen Blair, Third Vice-President Edward Byron Smith, Treasurer and Assistant Secretary E. Leland Wehber, Secretary THE BULLETIN EDITOR E. Leland Webber, Director of the Musetun CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Donald Collier, Chief Curator of Anthropolo^ Louts O. Williams, Chief Curator of Botany Rainer Zangerl, Chief Curator of Geology Austin L. Rand, Chief Curator of Zoology MANAGING EDITOR Paula R. Nelson, Public Relations Counsel Members arc requested to inform the Museum promptly of changes of address. Page 8 APRIL PRINTED BY CHICAGO NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM PRESS HISTORY T^^tf ^o.s MUSEUM t^^ ^9es Gallus Indicus cum panico crcruleo Indico • Meta P. Howell, Librarian The Museum Library in Transition "All that mankind has done, thought, gained, or been, it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books." CARLYLE THE LIBRARY has been in existence since the early days of Chicago Natural History Museum. It comprises the general Library, the four departmental libraries (anthro- pology, botany, geology, and zoology) and the respective divisional libraries. The general and departmental libraries are on the Museum's third floor, in the four wings of the building; so also are the divisional libraries, with the excep- tion of the fish and reptile divisional libraries on the ground floor, and the lower invertebrate library on the fourth floor. The Museum Library is designed to support the research needs of the scientific staff by accumulating and maintain- ing literature that contributes to the effectiveness of their scientific investigations. Emphasis is placed on the acqui- sition of serial publications of scientific societies and research organizations because they contain the original research re- ports which are of first interest to the scientist. The tax- onomic approach to the sciences, in particular, necessitates the acquisition of entire runs of serial publications both old and new, in many languages, that contain the descriptions of names of new genera and species and embody the results Page 2 MAT of systematic research. Serials, therefore, form the major part of the Library's holdings. The ever-widening range of the Museum's scientific re- search has led automatically to expansion of the number of volumes in the Library. Moreover, the extensive exchange- of-publications program has also increased the size of the Library collection, especially during the past ten years when the volume of published research reports has greatly accel- erated. This pattern of augmentation has established Chi- cago Natural History Museum Library as one of the nation's foremost sources of specialized information. There are now more than 165,000 volumes on the natural sciences in its combined collection. Currently we are the only museum library to be a United States Government Depository re- ceiving selected publications under the Depository Library Program. Due to the overlapping fields of interest of the John Crerar Library and this Museum's Library, and to avoid costly duplications in the two collections, an acquisition pro- gram is practised on a cooperative basis. Many titles, pri- marily descriptive natural history required for use with speci- men study collections, must be together in one location. For this reason, John Crerar Library has transferred hundreds of serial publications on the natural sciences and selected titles within the scope of natural history to Chicago Natural History Museum Library. The foresight of John Crerar Li- brary in placing this material in a focal location has served the two-fold purpose of making it easily accessible to the curatorial staff and their colleagues for taxonomic research as well as to scholars and students in general. SOME of the Library's most valuable acquisitions have come as gifts and bequests. One of the most notable special collections given to the Library is the collection of Orientalia bequeathed to the Museum in 1934 by the late Dr. Berthold Laufer, former Chief Curator of Anthropology and well-known sinologist. The collection in content spans the en- tirety of East Asiatic history and culture — art and archeology, biography, geography, history, literature, philosophy and religion, science, and industry. The books are written in both Occidental and Oriental languages, and include 7,809 volumes in Chinese and Japanese. More than 250 Tibetan xylographs (books printed from woodblocks) are also con- tained in the collection. These fine woodblock editions date from the Ming (a.d. 1368-1644) and Ch'ing (a.d. 1644- 1911). The present East Asia Library stems from this nucleus collection. It is housed in a separate room and is a divisional library of the Department of Anthropology. The wide range Opposite: Li Shih, a hook by Hung Kua {A.D. 1117-84), with this edition published in 1871 . It contains reproductions of rubbings oj inscribed and decorated tombstones dating jrom the Han Dynasty {207 B.C. -A.D. 220) {East Asia Library). Right: Color plate of the koala {Phascolarctos cinereus), from The Mammals of Australia by John Gould {1804-1881), pub- lished in London in 1863 {Ayer Collection). The original oJ this photograph is life-size and exquisitely hand colored. and diversity of this collection is being augmented by acqui- sition of older publications and those currently published, thereby bringing this material up-to-date on the languages, peoples, and history of the Far East. As a result of Dr. Laufer's gift and further comprehensive acquisition, the East Asia Library enjoys the reputation of containing many rare, irreplaceable, and unique items. The contribution made by the late Mr. Edward E. Ayer to the collection of ornithological works is of signal impor- tance. Due to Mr. Ayer's great interest in natural history, he took an active part in foimding the Field Museum, now Chicago Natural History Museum. After the organization of the Museum, he presented to it his rare and priceless library of ornithological works. Many of the volumes are of folio size, richly bound, and illustrated with magnificent hand-colored plates of both birds and mammals. The origi- nal collection has been augmented with hundreds of impor- tant acquisitions, including long and complete runs of the most outstanding serial publications in this subject field. A unique and most welcome gift came to the Library in 1948 through the generosity of Miss Thora M. Riley and Mrs. Emilie Conzelman Riley, the widow of the well-known {Continued on page 7) MAT Page :i CHICAGO NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM MUSEUM NEWS Exhibits MAY 17 marks the opening of the Museum's annual exhibition of art work by the Junior School of the Art In- stitute. The more than 60 paintings, drawings, and prints by Chicagoland art students will be on display in Hall 9 through June 13. From exhibit of children's art All the pictures in the exhibition are interpretations of various Museum ex- hibits. The young artists, who range in age from 6 to 16 years, make regular class visits to the Museum to study the many patterns, forms, and shapes found in the Museum's exhibits on nature and man. THE 15th Annual Amateur Hand- crafted Gem and Jewelry Competi- tive Exhibition opens June 1 in Stanley Field Hall. All entries are prize-win- ners in the Chicago Park District's 1965 amateur lapidary competition. Remember . . . Members' Night, May 7 Page 4 MAY Members Invited to Hear Talk on Expedition MEMBERS are invited to hear Loren Woods, Curator of Fishes, recount highlights of the recent International Indian Ocean Expedition. Woods spent six months on this scientific venture, which was sponsored jointiy by UNESCO and the United States Program in Biol- ogy. He will present the illustrated talk to the Winnetka Chapter of the Izaak Walton League on May 25 at 7:45 p.m. at the Winnetka Community House, 620 Lincoln Street, Winnetka. Staff Activities IN COOPERATION with the National Sci- ence Foundation, the Museum will offer a ten-weeks' summer course in the- oretical and practical archaeology at the Museum's field station in Vernon, Ari- zona. The course will be open to eight male undergraduate students from col- leges and universities, who will be chosen to participate on the basis of their apti- tude, scholarly achievement, and an- thropological interest. The program is under the direction of Dr. Paul S. Mar- tin of the Department of Anthropology. He will be assisted by James N. Hill and John M. Fritz. A TWO-YEAR Study of the classification and distribution of about 1 ,000 spe- cies of land snails inhabiting the South- ern Hemisphere has begun under the direction of Dr. Alan Solem, Curator of Lower Invertebrates. His project is be- ing aided by a $20,500 grant to the Mu- seum from the National Science Foun- dation. Late this year. Dr. Solem and Mr. Laurie Price, of Kaitaia, New Zea- land, will travel to Samoa and Tonga to collect specimens of land snails for their research. I ^^^^^E i r I T V S s Museum Pan Am THE 75th anniversary of the founding of the Pan American Congress, fore- runner of the present Organization of American States, was celebrated on Pan American Day, April 14, at a tea held at the Museum in cooperation with the Pan American Council of Chicago. Because of its long association with Latin America, the Museum was espe- cially pleased to co-sponsor this event. Since its founding in 1893, the Museum has worked with scientists, scholars, and institutions south of the border to en- large our knowledge of the land, the his- tory, and the culture of the Americas. More than 240 Museum-published re- search reports have disseminated this knowledge throughout the world. Celebrates ican Day During 1 50 expeditions to Central and South America, the Museum amassed collections vital to the study of Latin America's plants and animals; its agri- culture, minerals, and volcanoes; its con- temporary Indian tribes, and the van- ished civilizations that flourished before Columbus. These collections now rival or surpass those of any other institution in the world. Representative samples are displayed in the Museum's exhibi- tion halls; reserved portions are used in research by scientists and scholars throughout the Americas and abroad. The Museum's present roster of re- searchers in Latin America includes Dr. Louis O. Williams, botanist; Dr. Donald Collier, Aztec and Inca specialist; Mr. On display at the"},Pan American Tea was the "Bolivar''' head, a recent gift of Mrs. A. W. F. Fuller of London. Here it is viewed by Mr. Joseph Redding, President of the Pan American Council, Col. John A . Reilly, Director of Special Events for the City of Chicago, Museum Director E. Leland Webber, and Dr. Donald Collier, Chief Curator of Anthropology. In 1826, General Simon Bolivar, hero of the war for independence from Spain, presented the head to the British Consul General in Lima. 7 he figure was made in central Peru during the Spanish Colonial period of the late I6th Century. Dr. Rupert L. Wenzel, Curator of Insects, explains a display on his research in Latin America to Miss Judith Pelzmann, Exec- utive Vice President of the Pan American Council. Dr. Wenzel is preparing for pub- lication the first comprehensive treatise on the fleas, mites, and ticks of Panama. The vol- ume is an indispensable aid to knowledge of many disease-carrying parasites. Chicago Natural History Museum Founded by Marshall Field, 1893 Roosevelt Road and Lake Shore Drive Chicago, Illinois 60605 Telephone: 922.9410 THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES Emmet R. Blake, ornithologist; Mr. Philip Hershkovitz, mammalogist; Dr. Alan Solem, malacologist; and Dr. Ru- pert L. Wenzel, entomologist. In reviewing their work, and the Mu- seum's 72 years of cooperation in Latin America, Museum Director E. Leland Webber stated : "The results of the scientific work we have undertaken in collaboration with our Latin-American colleagues can be easily assessed. The intangibles — which have developed out of a long history of good will and mutual endeavor among institutions and individuals — though less readily measured, certainly stand today as of equal significance." Lester Armour Wm. McCormick Blair Bowen Blair Walter J. Cummings Joseph N. Field Marshall Field Clifiord C. Gregg Samuel Insull, Jr. Henry P. Isham William V. Kahler J. Howard Hughston M. McBain J. Roscoe Miller William H. Mitchell James L. Palmer John T. Pirie, Jr. John Shedd Reed John G. Searle John M. Simpson Edward Byron Smith Louis Ware Wood OFFICERS James L. Palmer, President Clifford C. Gregg, First Vice-President Joseph N. Field, Second Vice-President Bowen Blair, Third Vice-President Edward Byron Smith, Treasurer and Assistant Secretary E. Leland Webber, Secretary THE BULLETIN EDITOR E. Leland Webber* Director of the Museum CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Donald Collier* Chief Curator of Anthropology Louis O. Williams, Chief Curator of Botany Raincr Zangerl, Chief Curator of Geology Austin L. Rand, Chief Curator of Zoology MANAGING EDITOR Paula R. Nelson, Public Relations Counsel Members are requested to inform the Museum promptly of changes o{ address. MAY Paged John Clark, Curator Sedimentary Petrology Lucky Accidents THE great majority of our Museum's collections are made systematically, as parts of research projects carefully planned by our curators. Occasionally, however, we find something of importance accidentally, while we are other- wise engaged — rather like searching a lawn for fourleaf clo- vers and finding a ten-dollar bill. Two such happy accidents which occurred recently have brought fine additions to our geological collections. The first came last October, when Mrs. Clark and I were on vacation in the Great Smoky Mountains of Tennessee. Since my particular research concerns stream-deposited rocks about 30 million years old, this trip was obviously not to be a busman's holiday: the rocks in the Smokies are more than 600 million years old, marine in origin, and very poorly ex- posed. I had no particular interest in them. We planned Page 6 MAY Only the hardest rocks, like these boulders of quartzite in Pigeon Creek, Tennessee, are naturally exposed. Mudstones like the one on the oppo- site page, are ordinarily hidden beneath the forest plants and soil. to spend our days photographing autumn scenery, studying trees, and bird-watching. However, the road cuts along the parkway near Gatlin- burg had recently suffered four major slumps. Jagged gray blocks of rock lay in jumbled heaps where entire hillsides had slid over the road. Naturally I stopped to look at them, while Mrs. Clark stalked a towhee with her binoculars. The first rock I inspected showed that these were not the usual slates and quartzites at all. Rather, these were rocks that had once been soft muds deposited in deep water, prob- ably in the sloping trough of a very ancient sea. The plastic muds had been broken, folded, and squeezed into all man- ner of weird structures as they slumped down into the lower parts of the irregular trough. The muds had com- pacted just enough to preserve the identity of individual lay- ers, before each mass slipped and moved. After movement and deep burial, mountain-building pressures had hardened them into solid rock without altering them enough to destroy the original structures (see Photograph II). \'ery recently, errors in construction of this parkway had triggered slumps of the solid rock, which tore away the thick mantle of weathered soil and revealed the ancient record fresh for inspection. Three special events — a particular environ- ment of origin, just the right amount of later alteration, and an engineering accident — had to happen, through 600 mil- lion years of time, in order to produce these rocks and bring them to the attention of one geologist who wasn't looking for them. Muds deposited in marine troughs are not rare; in fact, some are forming today. However, the great majority have been so metamorphosed that their original structures have been destroyed. More recently-formed sediments are so soft that they can be collected and studied only with great diffi- culty. These were perfectly preser\ed and easily available: a really lucky accident. I brought a few samples back to the Museum, and a month later Kenneth Kietzke of our Department and I took the Museum truck back to the Smokies. The National Park Service willingly granted us permission to collect. In two days we hammered out 147 specimens, totaling about one and a half tons, which gave us an excellent representation of all the major geologic structures present. Our Museum previously had nothing like this collection; few, if any, mu- seums in America do. OUR SECOND lucky accident came on the return trip. Ken and I had decided that, since our Museum had never done systematic collecting in Tennessee, we would stop at every promising outcrop on the return trip and take samples of the invertebrate fossils. These grab-sample collections might serve as a geologic road-guide for future work. At our sixth stop we found richly fossiliferous rock, with a pro- fusion of brachiopods, crinoids, bryozoans, and other inter- esting but common invertebrates. Suddenly we noticed something else — a tiny shark tooth. Although these, too, are not uncommon in rocks of Mississippian age (about 330 million years old), they prompted us to take a closer look. Then we made our really lucky discovery : a small black bone ! It couldn't be shark, because they don't have actual bones, and it didn't look right for fish bone. Since Ken and I are not specialists in the other vertebrates of that extremely ancient age, we simply picked up every little slab that showed even a chip of bone, packed all of them carefully, and brought them home. The original find has now been removed from the matrix and identified by our colleagues in the Geology Department. It is, without doubt, part of the skull of a small, very prim- itive amphibian (see Photograph I). This is not quite the oldest known amphibian, but it is almost so. Amphibian bones of Mississippian age are very rare, and have been found in very few places in America; moreover, until now our Museum has had none of them. So a bird-watching vacation produced a unique collection of sedimentary structures, and a routine, road-log inverte- brate collection turned up a rare Mississippian amphibian. Accidents like these help to build our Museum, to spice our lives, and to develop in us a certain humility. Every time we find something we didn't expect, we wonder how often we may have overlooked something else equally important. We have no way of knowing. /. Bone from the ear region of a very primitive Mississippian amphibian. The picture is several times enlarged; the animal would have looked something like a mud-puppy about 8 inches long. II. This rock was once sojt, plastic mud at the bottom of an ancient sea. Before the upper, gray part was deposited, nearby slumps crumpled and squeezed the black and white layers. Then the gray layers were deposited over the torn edges, and after that the whole mass was very little disturbed. The Museum Library in Transition {Continued from page 3) American entomologist, Charles \'alcntine Riley. Charles Darwin, author of the Origin of Species, had an Illinois cor- respondent — the man who became the first state entomolo- gist of Illinois, Benjamin D. Walsh. The gift consists of eighteen letters written by Mr. Darwin to Mr. Walsh, during the period from October 21, 1864 to April 3, 1869. The collection includes nine holograph letters and nine written by an amanuensis. All are signed '■^Charles Darwin,'" and all are enclosed in their original postmarked envelopes. Among the Library's unique collections are the original paintings by the late Louis Agassiz Fuertes, made on the Field Museum-CA/ca^o Daily Neivs Abyssinian Expedition of 1926-27. These paintings represent the last work of this skilled and talented artist and ornithologist. They were purchased by Mr. C. Suydam Cutting after the artist's death, and presented to the Library by him. As a member of the expedition, which traversed a large part of Abyssinia (Ethi- opia), Mr. Fuertes found opportunity for life studies of African birds that were varied and unusual. The collec- tion of 1 08 paintings includes a few of mammals. Although not strictly in the area of special collections, the divisional libraries house literature in specific fields. As an example, the Reptile and Amphibian Division Library contains the collection of thousands of reprints on herpe- tology bequeathed to the Museum Library by the late Dr. Karl Patterson Schmidt, former Chief Curator of Zoology. This is one of the finest, most complete, and important literature study collections on reptiles and amphibians ever assembled, and is invaluable in the research work in herpe- tology. The Geology Library has also been the recipient of note- worthy gifts. Dr. George Frederick Kunz, who was a Patron and a Corporate Member of Chicago Natural History Mu- seum, and internationally known as a mineralogist and gem expert, gave his famous collection of many hundred volumes to the Library. Another gift worthy of mention is the five- volume collection of photomicrographs of more than one hundred meteorites, presented to the Library by Mr. Stuart H. Perry. The photomicrographs were made during the course of Mr. Perry's studies on the metallography of mete- critic iron. These five volumes contain more than 1,400 photographs, each accompanied by Mr. Perry's valuable in- terpretation of the structure revealed. Only three such sets have been made and these have been distributed to the United States National Museum, the University of Michigan (where Mr. Perry conducted his studies), and this Museum. As A consequence of the continuing growth of the Library, there have been many problems in the overcrowded stacks and cramped working quarters. To keep pace with changing conditions, to improve working areas, and to cope with an ever-rising work load, plans for re-organization of the Library were taken into active consideration more than two years {Please turn the page) MAT Page? ago. At that time, the Museum's Administrative Office di- rected the Librarian to prepare an estimate of current space needs and a projection for the next twenty years. Estimates were made from figures reflecting the growth of the Library in the past twenty years, and by considering the increase in publications which will result from new research programs throughout the world. The decision to fill in the former lightwell in the north- west quadrant of the building at two levels, to provide space for expansion, was most encouraging. The third floor level was assigned to the Library for stack and office space, and when the Museum received a grant from the National Science Foundation, construction began. The new addition to the Library, now nearing comple- tion, nearly doubles its present 96,000 cubic feet of space. The greater portion of the addition will be filled with double- faced, free-standing, light gray steel book stacks with ad- justable shelves. A suspended acoustical ceiling in off-white enhances the brightness of the new stack area. The side walls will be painted pale blue with white flecks; the end walls are insulated glass and aluminum to admit light. Vinyl asbestos tile will be used on the floor. Good lighting is assured with the installation of continuous fluorescent fixtures along the length of the stack area. In addition to stack space, the new area will provide office space for the Librarian, the Secretary, and the Serials Librarian; a Receiving Room for all incoming material; and a Browsing Room for the scientific staff. In the latter area the scientific staff may gather, undisturbed, to review and discuss the daily incoming periodicals and books. All rooms in the new addition are air conditioned. A short corridor connects the new addition with the Reading or Reference section of the Library, which is the public service area and center for information, open to any reader interested in the natural sciences. Museum Members, teachers, students, scholars pursuing advanced studies, col- leagues, and other researchers make full use of our resources and services, testifying to the importance of our Reference Division as a focal point in the Midwest for information on the natural sciences. * Improvements under way in the Reading Room include air conditioning, a more convenient arrangement of facil- ities, and a new look achieved by carrying out the same dec- orative scheme as that in the new addition. An added feature will be an illuminated exhibit case with adjustable glass shelves for the display of unique and special items in the Library collections. The present Cataloging and Technical Processing Divi- sions are located in areas partially roofed in glass. The heat of the summer sun on the glass contributes to extremely uncomfortable working conditions, and to the general de- terioration of books housed in those stack sections. In re- modeling these areas, the books shelved in both rooms will be transferred to the new addition. The stacks now in the Cataloging Room will be dismantled and removed, which will give sufficient space for a more functional work area. A new suspended acoustical ceiling and attractive lighting fixtures will add to the functioning of this room. Title page of Volume 2 of Ornithologiae, by Ulisse Aldrovandi (7522-1605), published in Bologna in 1600 [Ayer Collection). Cover: Illustration Jrom the above volume. In the Technical Processing Division, badly needed space for the assembly and preparation of material to be bound, for minor repair jobs, and for the work of labeling and marking books, will be provided by the removal of the stacks now occupying almost the entire room. This section will include the new area designated for the Library's extensive map col- lection, which is presently housed in two separate locations. Another section of the Technical Processing Room will house the microfilm and microcard readers, and, eventually, photo- duplication equipment. The Library is now in the throes of construction of the new addition and remodeling of the other areas described. Completion of the work will result in vastly improved con- ditions in every section. It is recognized that the concept of a modern research library requires much looking and planning toward the future in order to fit the program of tomorrow as well as today. We hope that the needs of the Museum Library will be satisfied by the new construction for the next fifteen or twenty years. Page 8 MAT CHICAGO/> y^jf/ N ATU p.^\iIfilil€Ti^ r^ HISTORY ^o/.36 MUSEUM /«^ •i # ^< ^ # I % '\ Drawing by Gustave Dahlstrom Underwater Archaeology in Lake Michigan George I. Quimhy, Curator North American Archaeology and Ethnology UNDERWATER archacology is the re- covery, analysis, and interpretation of human and cultural remains of the past by archaeologists. It differs from above-water archaeology only in the special skills and techniques that are needed to work under water. So far, it seems to have been easier to teach diving to archaeologists than to make compe- tent archaeologists out of divers. There is, however, a lack of archaeologists who are also divers, though no lack of divers who are not archaeologists. Some of the latter tend to become underwater Page 2 JUNE pot hunters or treasure seekers who do as much damage to underwater archae- ological sites as their land-bound coun- terparts do to above-water sites. One acceptable solution to the prob- lem is to have competent divers work in cooperation with and under the direc- tion of a professional archaeologist. The ideal solution would be to have a num- ber of archaeologists acquire sufficient training and skill in diving so that they could supervise and direct experienced divers in underwater excavation of ar- chaeological sites. Conceivably, either combination could undertake important scientific work on the bottom of Lake Michigan. Although I have never been on the bottom of Lake Michigan, I am able to outline in tentative form the ar- chaeology of this region from 8500 B.C. to A.D. 1700. This can be done by using the data of geology, ethnology, history, and archaeology to make in- ferences about the signs of human ag tivity that should be found by divd on the lake bottom. Lake Michigan is a large body of wa- ter. It is 307 miles in length, has a max- imum width of 118 miles, a maximum ^kpih of 923 feet, and a surface area of • ^^400 square miles. In late glacial times, at about 8500 B.C., the retreating ice uncovered suc- cessively lower outlets on the east side of the Lake Huron basin, thereby con- siderably lowering the water levels of what is now Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. Between 8500 b.c. and about 7500 B.C. the water level in the Lake Huron basin was lowered to a plane 390 feet below the modern lake level, and the water in the Lake Michigan basin dropped to a point 350 feet beneath the present level. This low-water stage is called Chippewa in the Lake Michigan basin and Stanley in the Lake Huron basin. The duration of the Chippewa-Stan- ley stage is not now known, but post- glacial uplift of the land and the rise of the North Bay outlet caused water levels to rise again in the Huron and Michigan basins, so that about 3000 b.c. the water levels were near or at their modern ele- vation of 580 feet. What is here im- l^^rtant about this radiocarbon-dated ^^ologic history of the lake basins is its meaning for paleo-geography and arch- aeology both above and under water. Between 8500 b.c. and 3000 b.c. the Upper Great Lakes region, which in- cludes the Lake Michigan basin, was inhabited by Indians who made their living by hunting, fishing, and food gath- ering. In the early part of this long span of time there were groups of late Paleo-Indians whose culture was of a kind I have elsewhere called Aqua-Piano. They lived by the lake shore on the main- land or on islands for a part of each year and used various forms of large lanceo- late knives and spearheads of chipped flint characterized by rather straight par- allel ripple flaking. These Indians occu- pied the region from about 8500 b.c. to perhaps 4500 b.c. Their culture was succeeded by those of the various groups of Archaic Indians who were in the region from about 4500 ^^c. to sometime after 1500 B.C. The I^B-chaic Indians used various forms of notched or stemmed knives and spear- heads of chipped flint as well as lanceo- late and trianguloid forms. Some of the Archaic cultures were manifested by va- rieties of spearheads and knives made of native copper by cold hammering and annealing. Sites of the Aqua-Piano tradition as well as many Archaic sites are associ- ated with fossil beaches and strand lines, indicating that these peoples maintained settlements along the shores of the Up- per Great Lakes. In the northern part of the region these sites, especially the earliest, are on fossil beaches and strand lines that were uplifted, in some places several hundred feet, by the post-glacial upwarping of the land. But in the Lake Michigan basin the same fossil beaches and strand lines may be as much as 350 feet beneath the present mean water level. If the Aqua-Piano groups of Indians moved their shore-line settlements lake- ward as the water levels fell, there should be sites in Lake Michigan all the way down from the present level to 350 feet beneath this level. By the same token, as water levels rose, first Aqua-Piano and then Archaic sites should exist from 350 feet beneath the surface to the pres- ent level. (Archaic sites are also associ- ated with a late beach stage which was 25 feet above the modern water level.) So on the bottom of Lake Michigan there should be ancient Indian sites and artifacts dating between 8500 b.c. and about 3000 b.c. Where might such sites be found? In the northwestern part of the Lake Michigan basin in Door County, Wis- consin, and Delta County, Michigan, one can see wave-cut cliffs and sea caves in the limestone hills. Moreover, the lake bottom, which is also limestone, has a topography resembling that of the land. From soundings and observations of scuba divers I know that there are also cliffs and caves beneath the water. Be- cause the above-water caves in this area were occupied by Archaic Indians, I would expect that the underwater caves, prior to their submergence, were also occupied by Archaic Indians who lived there at an earlier time, or by Paleo- Indians of the Aqua-Piano tradition. About 7500 B.C., what is now the bot- tom of northwestern Lake Michigan would have been an area of rocky shores backed by a limestone escarpment at least 350 feet high. There probably were spectacular waterfalls and there must have been numberless ledges, caves, and rock shelters suitable for occupancy by Indians. South of this area, the bottom of Lake Michigan to a depth of 350 feet would have consisted of more or less rolling land that sloped toward the shore of Lake Chippewa and was covered with deciduous forests. Remnants of this for- est have been found in Lake Michigan near Racine, Wisconsin. Underwater archaeological sites should be present in the fossil beach and strand lines that mark the former low-water stages in this area. Underwater sites later than about 2500 B.C. should be lacking in the Lake Michigan basin because there have been no appreciable low-water stages since that time. It is possible that divers might encounter sunken dugout canoes that had become waterlogged, or they might find artifacts that had been eroded from shore-line sites and redeposited in deep waters. But, in general, the oppor- tunities for underwater archaeological research on prehistoric Indian remains that are more recent than about 2500 B.C. seem to be meager. With the advent of the Historic Peri- od, which began shortly after a.d. 1600, the opportunities increase again. Arti- facts have been recovered from historic sites and wrecks under the water. For instance, along the south shore of Lake Superior some historic sites are now un- der water or washed away because of the drowning of that shore caused by differential upwarping of the northern part of the Lake Superior basin. There are artifacts and washed-out sites under Lake Superior's waters in the vicinity of La Pointe and Long Island. In the rivers draining into Lake Superior, Lake Huron, and Lake Michigan there are the possibilities of recovering Historic Period artifacts lost in canoe wrecks. Notable recoveries of such items already have been made in Minnesota and On- tario. In the Lake Michigan basin there probably are no Historic Period sites be- neath the water, but there should be (Continued on page 8) JUNE Pages Museum News e Exhibit on Museum activities in Stanley Field Hall. Dr. George Wells Beadle, Pres- ident of the University of Chi- cago (center), tours the new geology facility with Museum Director E. Ldand Webber (left) and Dr. Rainer Zangerl, Chief Curator of Geology (right) . In the Hall of Useful Plants a visitor examines an exhibit of rare botanical books published from 1552 to 1756. Below right: Dr. Louis 0. Williams, Chief Curator of Botany (cen- ter) takes Members through the new Hall. From a member's point of view ON THE evening of May 7, 2,556 Members, their families, and their guests, enjoyed a unique view of new developments in research and education at the Museum. The record crowd gave a major share of attention to the new Hall of Useful Plants, which displays the plants and products on which man's pleasures, economic welfare, and progress depend. Other centers of attraction during the Museum's annual open house were the Library addition and the new facilities for research and grad- uate education in geology, now at the mid-point in construction. Cover from Exhibit of Children's Art THIS month's cover — a painting of giraffes, by Germaine Paul, aged 13, of Chicago — is typical of the children's art being shown at the Museum through June 13. The more than 60 art works in many media were made by studei^^ in the Junior School of the Art Institu^* These young artists, who range in age from 6 to 16 years, visit the Museum regularly with their art classes to study the varied patterns and forms found in the Museum's exhibits on nature and man. Visitors to the art show are enjoy- ing the youngsters' bright and imagina- tive impressions of Museum displays. Lapidary Exhibit Continues EXQUISITELY cut gems, jewelry of orig- inal design, collections of polished stones, and many decorative objects fash- ioned from rock materials are on display at the Museum through July 5, in the annual exhibition sponsored by the Chi- cago Lapidary Club. Summer Hours BEGINNING Saturday, June 26, the Museum will be open until 8 p-^B four evenings a week, on Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. These are the nights of the Grant Park con- Pagei JUNE '5 certs. The Museum cafeteria will serve dinner until 7:30 p.m. On other days the Museum is open until 6 p.m. Sum- mer hours will remain in effect through Labor Day (September 6). Staff News THEODORE HALKiN, Artist in the De- partment of Anthropology, was awarded the Logan prize of $1,500 for his entry in the 68th annual exhibition of artists of Chicago and vicinity held at the Art Institute. His prize-winning work is a sculpture entitled "Fountain No. 1." For the Museum, Mr. Halkin designed the exhibition hall on "China in the Ch'ing Dynasty," which opened in Jan- uary of 1964. He is currently working ^Mu the Tibetan hall, which has been ^^plsed to the public for complete re- designing and reinstallation. AT the annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology held re- cently in Urbana, Dr. Paul S. Martin, Chief Curator Emeritus in the Depart- ment of Anthropology, was installed as President. Other members of the De- partment who participated in the meet- ings were: Dr. Donald Collier, who chaired a session on South American archaeology; George L Quimby, who was program chairman for the meetings and gave a report on a 17th century pre- historic site in Michigan; and Dr. Fred Reinman, who chaired a session on ar- chaeological work in California and the Pacific islands. New Summer Journey for Children ■^ ^^n, ) lARSH dwellers" the Museum's new summer Jovirney for chil- will be in effect during June, July and August. The Journey acquaints youngsters with the many varieties of plants and animals found in swamps and marsh lands around the Chicago area. By Journeying to selected exhibits within the Museum halls, children will learn to recognize many different marsh plants. One is the American lotus, whose submerged roots and buds pro- vide food for beavers and muskrats. The arrowhead, another common marsh plant, has underwater corms or root- stocks that are gathered and stored by muskrats for food. Marsh-dwelling animals are also fea- tured on the Journey. Muskrats, for example, make their houses of mud and reeds that grow along the water's edge. The large bull frog, whose deep boom- ing call is heard at night, also lives in wet lowlands. A marsh-dwelling rep- tile is the Massasauga, or swamp rat- tler — the only poisonous snake in the Chicago area. Even fishes are included in the Jour- ney, since some species, such as the northern pike, spawn in marshes around the edges of lakes. Other fish feed or seek shelter in the marshes. .Birds are probably the most conspic- uous and beautiful marsh dwellers. The red-winged blackbird nests in reeds growing in the water. Herons are found on the edges of marshes, where they prey on fish, frogs, and other small aquatic animals. The least bittern is often present, but is shy and secretive, blending in with the reeds and grasses. Exhibits of these birds and their hab- itats are stopping-places on the new Journey. In addition to identifying many marsh dwellers, Journeyers will learn about the values of marshes to wild life and to man. Animals get both food and cover from the marshes. Marsh plants provide birds with nesting materials. Because marshes hold and store water, they are important in flood control. Fa- miliarity with marsh lands and the wild life they shelter adds another dimension to our enjoyment of the outdoors. This muskrat exhibit is a stopping point on the summer journey. Chicago Natural History Museum Founded by Mariball Field, 1893 Roosevelt Road and Lake Shore Drive Chicago, Itlinoii 60605 Telephone: 922-9410 THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES Lester Armour Wm. McCormick Blair Bowen Blair Walter J. Cummings Joseph N, Field Marshall Field Clifford C. Gregg Samuel Insull, Jr. Henry P. Isham William V. Kahlcr J. Howar Hughston M. McBain J. Roscoe Miller William H. Mitchell James L. Palmer John T. Pirie, Jr. John Shcdd Reed John G. Searle John M. Simpson Edward Byron Smith Louis Ware d Wood OFFICERS James L. Palmer, President Clifford C. Gregg, First Vice-President Joseph N. Field, Second Vice-President Bowen Blair, Third Vice-President Edward Byron Smith, Treasurer and Assistant Secretary E. Leiand Webber, Secretary THE BULLETIN EDITOR E. Leiand Webber, Director of the Museum CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Donald Collier, Chief Curator of Anthropology Louit O. Williams, Chief Curator of Botany Raincr Zangerl, Chief Curator of Geology Austin L. Rand, Chief Curator of Zoology MANAGING EDITOR Paula R. Nelson, Public Relations Counsel Members are requested to infortn the Museum promptly of changes of address. JUNE Pages RARELY WILL readers of the bulletin consider garbage to be golden. To archaeologists and botanists, how- ever, garbage can prove to be even more valuable than gold. One such instance is illustrated by discoveries in the Tehua- c5n valley, in the southeastern corner of the state of Puebla, Mexico. The Tehuacan valley is a large trough just inside the Sierra Madre Oriental which separates the states of Puebla and Vera Cruz. The other side of the valley is formed by the lower but very rugged masses of the Sierra de Zapotitlan. From the town of Tehuacan, which lies at an elevation of about 5,600 feet, the valley drops to about 2,000 feet where the major river drainage cuts through the moimtains to the east. The rainfall is rather low and markedly seasonal (the annual 15 inches at Tehuacan falls primarily from June through September), and the natural vegetation is thorn- scrub-cactus forest. During the summer rainy season the trees are clothed in full foliage and the shrubs often bear flowers and fruit. In marked contrast, few of the plants have leaves during the dry season; the landscape is largely shades of brown and tan. Ever since the discovery of an evolutionary series of corn cobs at Bat Cave, New Mexico, archaeologists have been aware that the refuse of ancient people inay yield evidence for the domestication of crops and the attendant social ad- vance called civilization. Among the foremost searchers for archaeological plant remains is Richard S. MacNeish, Chair- man of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alberta, in Calgary. In the hope of tracing the stages in the domestication of corn, MacNeish excavated a series of dry caves in northern Mexico in the state of Tamaulipas. These excavations provided exciting evidence for the activi- ties of local Indians from about 7000 B.C. to historical time, but did not reveal the hoped-for transition from wild to cultivated corn. MacNeish reasoned that the answer must lie further south in Mexico. Another excavation at Santa Marta Cave in Chiapas again yielded valuable data, but not the elusive transition. MacNeish's conclusion was that the correct area must lie between these northern and southern sites — but where? A search of geological and geographical articles, weather records, and travel accounts finally led MacNeish to look at the area around southeastern Puebla. Here, geological formations promised caves and rock-shelters, the climate was dry, and several large springs furnished year-round water. Investigation proved that there were indeed caves in the Tehuacan valley. A school teacher, hearing of MacNeish's interest in caves with plant remains, directed him to the large rock-shelter that afterwards became known as Coxcatlan Cave. A test pit dug within this cave yielded corn cobs that were large near the surface but which became progressively smaller downward. 'Formerly Associate Curator of Vascular Plants in the Museum's Department of Botany; now Botanist for the Crops Research Division, Agricultural Research Service, United States Department of Agricul- ture. By C. Earle Smith, Jr.^ Garbage is Golden In the Tehuacan valley of Mexico archaeologists have discovered the beginnings of agriculture in North America C With his first test samples, MacNeish went to Paul C. Mangclsdorf, world authority on corn, and asked for his opinion. Mangclsdorf agreed that MacNeish appeared to have an evolutionary series for corn which might show the transition from wild to cultivated plants. In order to prove this, though, the stage must be carefully set. A full scale excavation of Coxcatlan Cave would provide basic infor- mation, but there might turn out to be only intermittent occupation represented at Coxcatlan. Other caves mu^^ also be excavated. Because not all of the people had liv^^ in caves during the later history of the valley, village sites would have to be found and excavated. If the excavations furnished plant remains, pottery, tools, and ornaments in Pages JUNE '^ Exterior view of two Tehuac&n valley caves from which plant remains were recovered Excavating within the Coxcatldn cave (photograph courtesy of the Trustees of Phillips Academy) f^mm^ the volume hoped for, no archaeologist working alone could do the complete job. MacNeish then decided to approach the many specialists who would be needed to assist the archaeological work and aid in interpreting the finds. He also applied for funds to hire field help to make the excavations, sort the samples, and transport specialists to the area. The R. S. Peabody Foun- dation, of Andover, Massachusetts, agreed to act as sponsor- ^ig agent and home base. Thus the Tehuacan Archaeological- I^Btanical Project, with MacNeish as director, was born. The National Science Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation agreed to support the Project in a three-year program. As the work advanced, more and more people joined the group. Scientists mapped the geography and geology of the region and surveyed the irregation systems. A laboratory was organized where textiles and pottery could be examined. Specialists studied the faunal remains and the human skeletal materials that were found. Others worked on the local ethnobotany as well as the ancient plants and pollens. I was asked to analyze the plant materials other than maize, beans, and squash.* THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL record proved a most remarkable one. Altogether, five caves were excavated along with five open sites. No one cave or site furnished an unbroken record of artifacts (Coxcatlan Cave was the most complete record), but the combined record covers a time span from 10,000 B.C. to A.D. 1500. From the open site excavations, the recovered evidence is solely in the form of pottery, stone, and bone artifacts. The evidence from the protected caves is a remarkable assortment of durable artifacts mixed with discarded sandals, bits of string, torn rags, discarded nets, and — garbage ! Over 50,000 individual pieces of plants were found in the cave deposits. Perhaps as important as anything else that the artifacts disclosed is the fact that the Tehuacan valley people ap- parently were never forcibly invaded or displaced. Thus the archaeological record is a smooth one, showing the con- tinuous development of one society over a long period of time. Concomitant with the development of material as- pects, such as the arts of ceramics and weaving, the growth of agriculture from a gathering economy could be traced. Yet the valley people were not a self-contained group sealed off from the rest of Mexico; this is proved by the variations shown in their arts and also by the cultivated plants that were introduced into the valley agriculture. Major finds include some of the earliest cloth known for North America. In a stratum dated about 5700 B.C., frag- ments of twined cloth were found in associated burials of two adults and a child. The condition of the remains suggests that a ceremonial burial had taken place: the Tehuacan people had developed social ideas involving deities for whom rituals were required. Another of the important artifactual finds in the Tehua- can excavations is the earliest pottery known for North America. A number of pieces of crude pottery, belonging to strata dated at 2300 b.c. to 1500 b.c, were made with thick sides and rough exteriors. The shapes were the same as those of stone vessels used in earlier times. No claim can be made that the manufacture of ceramic vessels was invented in the area, but there is no doubt that these early vessels show no sophistication in the art of pottery making. Perhaps the most important bits of evidence are provided by the plant materials. For the first time, modern man has seen the remains of wild corn. Paul C. Mangelsdorf has 'Chicago Natural History Museum has recently published two of Dr. Smith's technical reports on his work with the project. They are: "Agriculture, TchuacSn Valley," Fieldiana: Botany, Vol. 31, No. 3 (January 22, 1965); and "Flora, Tehuacdn Valley," Fieldiana: Botany, Vol. 31, No. 4 (February 26, 1965). JUNE Pager Left: This straight pin, taken from the Tehuacdn excavations, is dated about 100 B.C. It wa^ made from a cactus spine and a strip of maguey fiber tied in a turks-head knot. Center: Fiber from the maguey plant was used to fashion this sandal found in the Tehuacdn valley. It is about 15 centuries old. Right: Fruit, dating from A.D. 300, found in the Coxcatldn Cave. confirmed that the earliest corn cobs, dated at about 5,200 B.C., are wild corn probably gathered from the nearby areas. From these earliest cobs, the Tehuacan excavations furnish series of cobs which detail the evolution of maize into several races that still grow in Mexico today. Although the Tehua- can maize is both wild and the earliest known, the area was not the only one in which maize was being domesticated. Other (and later) strains of maize found in the excavations, including some hybridized with the wild grass, Tripsacum, were probably imported from a nearby area of Mexico. The earliest avocado seed known was found in one of the earliest levels of Coxcatlan Cave. It can be dated as of at least 8000 b.c. In later levels, avocado seeds become more numerous and show evolution of size and shape. Toward the upper part of the deposit, the seeds are more elongate and much larger. This is the first evolutionary series known for a fruit tree. The two fragments of cotton boll discovered in a level dated 5700 B.C. are of interest for another reason. For many years, some geneticists and anthropologists have argued that American cotton is the product of hybridization between a wild American cotton and an Old World cotton carried across the Pacific by man. The Tehuacan cotton bolls prove that the American hybrid cottons were in existence before the time when there is any evidence to suggest that man crossed the Pacific in a latitude at which cotton could have survived the passage. Scotty" MacNeish's determination to find the evidence for the beginnings of agriculture in America and his effort to enlist the cooperation of scientists in many ficl^^ have been spectacularly rewarded. The work of the Tehua- can Archaeological-Botanical Project has firmly established the transition from gathering to agriculture, the evolution of maize and avocados, and the age of hybrid cotton. It has also created an awareness that Tehuacan is only a small part of the story. Many additional excavations are needed to fill in the details of the domestication of crop plants and the formation of villages and social institutions, before we will be able to trace the full history of man in America. Underwater Archaeology {Continued from page 3) wrecks of freight canoes. And if La Salle's trading ship, the Griffin, sank in a September storm in 1679, as re- ported by Father Hennepin, then the wreckage most probably lies on the bot- tom of northern Lake Michigan. This would be the first shipwreck in Lake Michigan, and the only one prior to A.D. 1700. References Borhegyi, Stephan F. de. "The Chal- lenge, Nature, and Limitations of Un- derwater Archaeology." Diving into the Past, ed. J. D. Holmquist and A. H. Wheeler. St. Paul: Minnesota Histor- ical Society, 1964. Hough, Jack L. "Geologic Framework," Great Lakes Basin, ed. Howard J. Pincus (Publication of the American Associa- tion for the Advancement of Science, No. 71) Washington, D.C.: 1962. . "The Prehistoric Great Lakes of North America," American Scientist (Easton, Pa.), Vol. 51, No. 1, pp. 84- 109. Goggin, John M. "Underwater Ar- chaeology: Its Nature and Limitations." American Antiquity (Salt Lake City), Vol. 25, No. 3, pp. 348-354. Quimby, George I. Indian Life in the Upper Great Lakes 11,000 B. C. to A.D. 1800. Chicago: 1960. • . "A New Look at Geochronol- ogy in the Upper Great Lakes Region," American Antiquity (Salt Lake City), Vol. 28, No. 4, pp. 558-559. ^s V . "The Griffin," Chicago Natural History Museum Bulletin (Chicago), Vol. 35, No. 5, pp. 3-5. Page 8 JUNE PRINTED BY CHICAGO NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM PRESS ■9-rr Afghanist€Mi CHICAGO' NATURAli H STORY ^o/.se MUSEUM gu^ CHICAGO NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM Museum News COVER: At Navy Pier, one of two especially equipped travel- alls (one donated by Interna- tional Harvester) is loaded a- board a ship bound for Karachi (photograph by John Bayalis). LEFT: Mr. Jerry Hassinger, expedition fellow (left), Mrs. Janice K. Street, Mr. William S. Street, and Dr. Joseph Cur- tis Moore, Curator of Mam- mals. During the past six months. Dr. Moore has been helping to plan the scientific as- pects of the Afghanistan mam- mal survey. Honor Expedition Leaders LAST MONTH Museum Trustees and their guests attended a dinner at the Museum honoring Mr. and Mrs. William S. Street of Seattle, who are leaders of the Museum expedition to Afghanistan. The Streets are former Chicagoans, Mr. Street having been general manager of Marshall Field and Co. from 1943 to 1946. He was president of Fred- erick and Nelson's department store in Seattle until his retirement in 1963. The purpose of the expedition is to make the first complete survey ever un- dertaken of Afghanistan mammal spe- cies, and to bring back to the Museum for this study perhaps 2,000 sample spec- imens of the animals found. Both Mr. and Mrs. Street are ex- perienced hunters. Among the animals they hope to collect in Afghanistan are the snow leopard, the huge Marco Polo sheep, whose horns spiral out to nearly four feet across, the gazelle, the Asian black bear, and smaller game down through about 100 other species to the tiniest shrew. This is the Streets' second major ex- Page 2 JULY pedition for Chicago Natural History Museum. Exactly three years ago they launched a similarly highly mobile, seven-month expedition to Iran, bring- ing back 1,723 specimens, many of which had never been represented in museum collections in this country. Readers who recall the series of delightful letters writ- ten by the Streets from their camps in different parts of Iran and published in various issues of the Bulletin during 1962- 63, will be interested to know that Doug- las Lay, who was their expedition fel- low, has studied those specimens and has submitted for publication by the Museum the resulting 400-page scien- tific report on the mammals of Iran. The Streets left Chicago for Afghan- istan on June 13. At Karachi, West Pakistan, they were joined by two ex- pedition fellows for the 800-mile drive to Afghanistan up through the Khyber Pass. The senior fellow, Mr. Jerry Hassin- ger, left his doctoral studies at the Uni- versity of California in January to help purchase, pack, and ship the expedi- tion's two travelalls and 5500 pounds of other gear. He also studied Asiatic mammals in the Museum, and planned the detailed itinerary that would enable the expedition to accomplish the great- est amount of scientific discovery. The other expedition fellow, Mr. Hans Neu- hauser, left his graduate studies at the University of Georgia in June for three weeks of preparation at the Museum be- fore flying out with Hassinger to join the Streets at Karachi. Hassinger hopes to submit his study of the terrestrial mammals of Afghan- istan as a dissertation for the doctorate degree, and Neuhauser expects to focus on the bats of Afghanistan and to utilize his study as a thesis for the masters de- gree. Both expect to submit their re- search to the Museum for publication. When the main part of the expedition drives out of Karachi (about the same time this article appears), another sec- tion of it that has already left the Amer- ican University of Beirut in Lebanon will be driving a Land Rover more than 2,000 miles to converge with the Streets upon Kabul. Dr. Robert Lewis, a pro- fessor at Beirut and the world's author- ity on Middle Eastern fleas, was invited to join the expedition as its medical entomologist. He will make a scientific survey of the fleas of the mammals of Afghanistan, a work that will have im- mediate medical importance because of the ability of fleas to transmit diseases to humans. Dr. Lewis' graduate stu- dent, Mr. Sana Isa Atallah of Jordan, accepted an appointment as the expe- dition's preparator, and accompanies him from Beirut. It is an extraordinary new develop- ment in the mobility and planning of expeditions to undertake a complete sur- vey of the mammal species of a whole country in one expedition. The Streets have already done this for Iran, how- ever, and are now well prepared and manned to bring this oflf for Afghan- istan. JOSEPH CURTIS MOORE (Museum News continues on page 7) Drawing by Tibor Perenyi Edward J. Olsen Curator, Mineralogy MOST PEOPLE find it difficult to imag- ine the enormous span of geologic time. To be told that the earth is five billion (5,000,000,000) years old, or that such-and-such a rock is "only" two hun- dred million years old (200,000,000) means almost nothing to us. The num- bers are too large and too far out of pro- portion to the span of our own lives. The geologic column is a representation of the long road of geologic time, with signposts along the way marked with curious names like Jurassic, Permian, Silurian, Cambrian, Pre-Cambrian, etc. By and large, we tend to think of geo- logic time as something quite apart from our own lives. Most of us never stop to think that we ourselves live in a geo- logic epoch. We are first-hand ob- servers of a tiny piece of the old earth's geologic history. It is rather fascinating to consider this Are we still living in the ice age, with another glacial period ahead? A review of recent evidence throws light on this question. and to wonder in just what geologic age we are now living, and where we are heading in the immediate future. There is a considerable body of evidence from which we can draw definite conclusions. Let us begin by reviewing our immediate geologic past. During the past 325,000 years, much of the northern hemisphere passed through a vast glacial period, which is called the Pleistocene Epoch. It con- sisted of seven periods of general climatic cooling, with four major and three mi- nor southward thrusts of huge circum- polar ice sheets. In North America, for example, thick ice sheets pushed southward from the Canadian arctic and covered the northern portion of the United States down to the present Ohio River valley in the midwest, and not quite so far south out on the Great Plains. Each southward push was followed by a period of warming and melting, with decay of ice and its retreat northward; this is called a glacial interstage. Although we can clearly map the areal extent of each of these glacial advances, we are not absolutely certain of the thicknesses of the great ice sheets. The best estimates suggest that they were probably 5,000 to 6,000 feet high at their centers, thinning to about 100 feet thick along the advancing edges. When such enormous volumes of water are frozen and piled up on the land, the {Continued on next page) JULY Pages volumes of the oceans naturally de- crease, and mean sea level is lowered. During glacial interstages the increased melt water from the receding glaciers again raises the mean sea level. Thus sea level changes are good measures of glacial advances and retreats. Along the seacoasts of continents and oceanic islands, waves pound away year after year and gradually cut benches into the rock. If sea level then rises or falls a new bench level is cut above or below the old one. In low latitudes, where living coral reefs occupy coast lines just below water level, the reefs themselves are often cut into a series of benches by changes in sea level. With the advent of the carbon-14 dating method, the ages of such reef benches can be determined, because the coral animals deposited their carbon-bearing reef material at the time of the bench- cutting wave action. Thus it is possible to relate past sea level changes with time. Here it must be added that it is only possible to find ages for the last single period of sea level rise. This is because bench levels corresponding to more an- cient sea level changes are destroyed by each younger cycle of wave action. Thus the carbon-14 "clock" is reset after each cycle of sea rise and fall. Fj. SHEPARD (reference 4), a well- known oceanographer from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, has compiled a group of carbon-1 4 dated sea level changes from different coasts around the world. The dates are de- termined on samples of rock, usually corals, collected from benches that are presently submerged, that are now at sea level, or that are above present sea level. In addition to Shepard, other oceanographers (references 1, 3, and 5) have reported dated sea levels. All these have been compiled together into Fig. 1. Individual points, each representing a dated sea level, are shown in this fig- ure. The points are slightly scattered, reflecting errors of analysis in the car- bon-14 dating, as well as some samples where the rock was affected by chemical changes. Some scattering is also due to small, minor, short-term oscillations in sea level. Nevertheless, a smooth curve may be drawn between the points. Pageh JULY This curve presents some fascinating features. The lowest point determined is that of a wave-cut bench which is 290 feet below the present sea level, and is 17,000 years old. We have no older dates until we come to some levels which were 10 to 20 feet above present sea level around 35,000 to 40,000 years ago. It was mentioned before that only the last period of sea level rise can be dated. However, while this is generally true, an obvious exception is possible. If the sea ever stood higher than at present, and if sea level then fell, this higher level, no matter how old, would be preserved well above the pounding action of waves. Thus the 35,000 to 40,000 year old levels have been preserved, while wave action, during the period of descending levels, has destroyed all lower benches made between 35,000 years ago and the time when sea level started to rise again and mcikc new ascending levels. It may be concluded, therefore, that sometime between 35,000 years ago, when the sea was higher than at present. mum glacial advance, when the most amount of water was frozen up on land. Another interesting feature of this curve is its shape. From 18,000 years ago almost to the present, sea level gen- erally rose with the melting away and retreat of the very last glacial advance. The rise was not, however, at a constant rate, as can be seen from the curve. Starting out around 18,000 years ago, the sea level began to rise at a rate of less than five inches every 100 years. The rate of rise reached its maximum around 10,000 years ago when it was about 35 inches every 100 years, or a rate of rise seven times faster than at its start. Since that time the rate has been steadily dropping, and for at least the last 2,000 years the rate has been zero. There are, of course, minor oscillations of short duration — 100 to 300 years long — due to minor climatic fluctuations, but the overall effect is that the sea level has reached its peak. Several oceanographers, in fact, argue that the rise reached its peak about 3,000 100' - 1 1 1 ) Present I—. -A^' • ^ .^-r- sea level •^4 'S* •^ • N \ 100' — •* \* — 200' - * \' - 300' A nn' — I 1 i Ik.olsen 10,000 20,000 30,000 40,000 YEARS IN PAST " FIG. 1. Graph showing changes in mean sea level during past 50,000 years. and 17,000 years ago, when it was 290 feet lower than at present, sea level reached a minimum. If we simply draw a smooth curve through the points we can obtain a rough idea how far the level dropped, and at what time. The "trough" in our curve is at about 310 feet below present level, about 18,000 years ago. This "trough" would then correspond to the last period of maxi- to 4,000 years ago, and sea level has ac- tually started to fall again slightly. Bench levels that old have been found which lie 8 to 10 feet above the present level of the sea. For example, van An- del (reference 5) reports a bench level on the Brazilian coast which is 8| feet above present sea level and is 3,660 years old. This level is not considered to be due to a minor fluctuation. YEARS FIG. 2. projected 25,000 IN FUTURE 100,000 200,000 300P00 YEARS IN PAST Graph showing changes in oceanic surface water temperature during the Pleistocene Epoch {solid line), and into the future {dashed line). {Based on Emiliani, reference 2.) 100 100 200 - 300'- 401 1 1 Present sea level 1 1 c*^ 1 1 1 1 1 1 ^ 1 1 _ r*_T^ - h>«*» / / *\ / N — / / / / * \ / ^ / •V / _ / \ / / \ / 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 .1 1 K.OLSEN 20,000 10,000 YEARS IN FUTURE 10,000 YEARS IN PAST 20,000 30,000 40,000 FIG. S. Graph showing changes in mean sea level during the past 50,000 years and projected info the future. Thus there are apparently two inter- pretations of the most recent data. The first says that sea level is now at its peak and its rate of rise is zero, any higher levels being due to minor fluctuations. The second view is that sea level reached a peak at about 1 feet above the present level around 3,000 to 4,000 years ago, and is now starting to drop at a very slow rate. It is not possible to solve this problem by making present-day measurements over short periods of time. We would need the overall effect of the sum of fluc- tuations over the next thousand years. However, as with any scientific question, when one avenue of evidence leads to two possible interpretations, we can turn to another, independent avenue of in- vestigation to try to "break the tie." TEN YEARS ago. Dr. Cesare Emiliani of the University of Chicago com- pleted a monumental piece of work which bears directly on this problem (reference 2). He examined the aver- age temperature record of ocean waters over the last 325,000 years by an in- genious method devised by Nobel Prize winner, Harold Urey. The method is based on the fact that the chemical ele- ment, oxygen, has two important iso- topes, oxygen-16 and oxygen-18. An isotope of a chemical element is the name given to atoms of that element which are the same in every way as the element's other atoms, except they weigh a little more or less. In the case of oxy- gen atoms, one out of every 500 present on the earth weighs a little more than the other 499 of them. That is, there is one oxygen-18 atom to every 499 oxy- gen-16 atoms. It is known that the microscopic ani- mals called plankton, billions of which oc- cur throughout the oceans of the world, deposit minute shells around themselves. These shells are composed of several chemical elements, including oxygen. Urey determined that the percentage of oxygen-18 relative to oxygen-16 in plank- ton shell material increased when the av- erage temperature of the ocean water decreased. So Emiliani collected the fossil shell remains of microscopic plank- ton from sediment cores dug from ocean bottoms. These remains covered a span of over 300,000 years into the past. Care- ful analyses of the proportions of oxy- gen-18 to oxygen-16 were performed and then translated into average tem- peratures of the oceans in which the plankton lived. The results are shown in the graph in Fig. 2. In this graph, each of the tempera- ture highs corresponds to a major or minor glacial interstage, and each of the lows to a major or minor glacial ad- vance. It should be noted that the dif- ference in temperatures from the lows to the highs is only about 11°, from 73 °F. to 84°F. Emiliani collected his fossil specimens mostly from lower latitudes where temperatures would not have dropped severely even during a glacia- tion in higher latitudes. In lower lati- (Contintied on page 8) JULY Pages the FLEMINGS of KATHMANDU melvin a. traylor, jr. associate curator of birds ABOUT a year ago there was published The Fabulous Flem- ings of Kathmandu^, the story of Drs. Robert and Bethel Fleming and the United Christian Medical Mission to Nepal. It is an inspiring story, first, of their struggles to get permis- sion to enter the country, and then of the growth of the mission from a small clinic in Kathmandu to modern hospi- tals in Kathmandu and Tansen and numerous clinics in outiying villages. No one who reads this book could fail to be stirred by the courage and dedication of Bob Fleming as superintendent of the mission, and his wife, Bethel Fleming, as medical chief of the hospital. Their contribution to the people of Nepal in introducing modern medicine can only be appreciated when it is realized that as recently as 1 5 years ago foreigners were barred from the country and there was no medical service in our sense of the word at all. However, while we at the Museum are proud of the Flem- ings and the dedicated work that they are performing, we are also happy to realize that it was through Bob Fleming's association with the Museum that his first opportimity to visit Nepal arose. As Bob says, they entered Nepal "on the wings of a bird," and it was his interest in birds that brought him to the Museum, first as visitor, then as collector, and now as Field Associate and co-author of three publications on the birds of Nepal. It was in 1937, when on leave from the Woodstock High School in Mussoorie, India, to earn his Ph.D. in education at the University of Chicago, that Fleming first came to the Museum. Seeing an Indian pheasant on exhibition that he considered to be mislabeled, he boldly requested per- mission to speak to the curator. Thus began an associa- tion that has brought to the Museum several thousand birds, and to Fleming the delight of traveling the length and breadth of India and eventually reaching Nepal. When Fleming realized that the Museum would actually pay him to pursue his passion for birds, he received a brief but inten- sive course in collecting — one chicken skinned joindy with curator Emmet R. Blake — and was sent on his way with the minimum of equipment and our most fulsome hopes. These were justified, for the accession cards for the following years read like a gazetteer of India — Punjab, Assam, Manipur, Mussoorie — as Fleming used his long Christmas vacations to further his collecting. By 1 949 Fleming's heart had settled on Nepal, still closed to foreigners but with a wealth of fascinating birds. How- ever, a foot had been put in the door to Nepal by two Ameri- Pagee JULY Dr. Fleming examines a pheasant eolleeted for the Museum (photograph by Toge Fujihira). cans, Walter Koelz and Dillon Ripley, who had collected there the two previous years. In mingled hope and des- peration Fleming requested permission to go there through our embassy in India. To his amazement, permission was granted almost immediately, and there ensued an eager p)eriod of preparation. Financial support was offered by the late Boardman Conover, Research Associate and Trustee of the Museum, and Dr. Bethel took over a 1 50-bed hospital at Fatehgarh so that Dr. Carl Taylor of the Presbyterian Mission could accompany Bob. In October of 1949 the party reached Tansen in west Nepal, and the next three months were spent collecting along the Kali Gandahk River, reaching within 30 miles of the Tibetan border and altitudes up to 18,000 feet. But exciting as he found the birds in this unknown coun- try, Fleming was even more impressed by the tremendous need for medical assistance. \Vherever he and Dr. Taylor camped word quickly spread that there was a doctor in the party, and soon there was a constant stream of patients arriving, all desperately needing attention. The slender medical resources that they had brought in with them were soon exhausted, and Fleming realized that medical work was the most important way in which his mission could help the Nepalese. This belief was the genesis of the United Christian Medical Mission to Nepal, although its consum- mation was to require another four years. Although the first request to start a medical clinic in Nepal was refused, the friends that Fleming had made among the governing Rana family asked him to return, both to collect and to bring medical assistance. In October of 1951 he was back again in west Nepal, this time accompanied by Dr. Bethel, son Bob, and the Dr. Carl Friedericks. While the two Bobs were off collecting, the two doctors established a clinic in Tansen. After treating 1,500 patients in 40 days, they returned to India even more convinced that their mission lay in Nepal. Again, though, they were disappointed when their request was not granted. It was not till 1953 that they were to succeed. In January of that year the Flemings were able to make their first trip to Kathmandu, the capital of the country. By now the political climate had changed, the king had been restored to power, and outside aid was being sought. After collecting in the hills around the Kathmandu Valley, Bob gave a lecture to 80 of the leading people of the capital, exhibiting his birds and explaining their hopes for the mis- sion. Whether it was the impact of his sparkling personality (and it is a personality impossible to resist) or whether it was just that the time was ripe, not long after their return to Mussoorie they received word that their prayers had been fulfilled; they were invited to start a medical mission in Kathmandu and Tansen. By January, 1954, the mission, however modest in the beginning, was a reality, and its growth during the ensuing years is a fascinating part of Miss Fletcher's book. We at the Museum have followed that growth with affection and pride, for we have felt, however indirectly, that we have a part in the mission. In the meantime. Dr. Fleming has not let the responsi- bilities of being superintendent of the medical mission keep him from his interest in birds. The results of his earlier trips were published in collaboration with Chief Curator of Zoology, Austin L. Rand-, and subsequent vacation peri- ods have found Fleming always in the field. His travels have taken him from Nepal's far western border with Garh- wal to the far eastern border with Sikkim, and it is doubtful if any man, foreigner or Nepalese, has seen as much of the country as he. In 1960-61 he participated in the World Book Scientific Expedition to the Himalayas, and I have had the pleasure of collaborating with him in publishing the results of these collections'. During this past year he has been able to devote full time to his scientific efforts through the medium of a Fulbright grant. Young Bob, Jr. has shared his father's interests since the early days when he first accompanied him into the field. He himself is now teaching at Woodstock School and working on his Ph.D. thesis, which will be, naturally enough, on the birds of the Himalayas, This is good news for all of us, for it puts off indefinitely the day when we need be concerned that there will be no Flemings associated with the ornithology of India. ' Grace Nies Fletcher. The Fabulous Flemings of Kathmandu (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, 1964). ' Rand, A. L. and Fleming, R. L. "Birds from Nepal," Fieldiana: Zoology, Vol. 41, 1957, pp. 1-218. ' Fleming, R. L. and Traylor, M. A. "Notes on Nepal Birds," Fieldiana: Zoology, Vol. 35, 1961, pp. 447-487. * ."Further Notes on Nepal Birds," ibid., 1964, pp. 495-558. MUSEUM NEWS Summer Programs For Children The Museum's summer series of free movies for children begins July 8 and runs for six successive Thursdays. The programs on the last four dates are sched- uled so that children may attend the Grant Park Young People's Concerts at 11:00 A.M. Julys 10 and 11:15 A.M. The Restless Sea Story of one of the "New Frontiers" in science: the sea's currents, tides, bi- zarre plants and fish, and the effects of volcanoes on the ocean floor. July 15 10 and 11:00 A.M. The Enduring Wilderness Some of the scenic areas of Canada, where native plants and animals are being preserved for our enjoyment. Cartoon also July 22 10 and 1 P.M. Tales of Children How children live in the mountain villages of southern Spain and Bolivia and the fiord country of Norway. July 29 10 and 1 P.M. Animals From Latin American jungles to our own area. Cartoon also August 5 10 and 1 P.M. Australia The strange and interesting creatures of the continent "down under." August 12 10 and 1 P.M. Ranch Life Early days in California and a little spoofing of Western movies. Cartoon also South American Hall Reopens The Hall of Ancient and Modern In- dians of South America (Hall 9) is now reopened after having been closed since 1962. During that period the space occupied by the hall was remodeled to make room for a special exhibition area, adjacent to Stanley Field Hall, for the display of temporary exhibits. Visitors to the reopened hall will find it rich in materials from the ancient cultures of Colombia and Peru and the recent Indian tribes that live in the tropical forests east of the Andes. Among the archaeological materials are painted effigy and portrait jars which bring to life the ancient Chimu people, whose civilization reached its height in the eighth century of our era. Three new cases display the elegant pot- tery made from the first to the eighth century by the Nazca and Paracas peo- ples of Peru. Outstanding among the artifacts made by recent Indians are ceremonial cos- tumes used by the head-hunting Jivaros of Ecuador and Peru. On a backing of bark cloth or woven human hair, these dance skirts and headdresses boast intricate and lovely designs fashioned of shell, seeds, dyed bird bones, monkey (Continued on next page) JULY Page 7 OUR GEOLOGIC AGE {Continued from page 5) tudes, also, a complete fossil record is more likely to be present. It docs not actually matter, of course, where the cores were collected, for the relative changes in temperature, and when they occurred, remain the same. Oceanic temperature changes are always very much less than those on the continents. This is because it takes a very long time to change the temperature of a large body of water, whereas it takes only a short time to change the temperature of air. From Fig. 2 we see that there are seven highs and seven lows. All the highs are around 84°F., whereas the lows vary considerably, corresponding to major or minor glacial advances. The most recent low occurs at 18,000 years ago, marking the most recent glacial ad- vance (which, incidentally, covered Chi- cago). Referring back to Fig. 1, we see that the sea level was at its lowest just about 18,000 years ago. Thus two in- dependent lines of evidence give the same result. This is always encourag- ing. In addition, Emiliani has calcu- lated that the maximum drop in sea level could have been at most 325 feet. Fig. 1 shows an appro,\imate drop of 310 feet, which is quite close to his predicted value. On the other hand, the graph showing sea level change shows a peak around 35,000 to 40,000 years ago, while the graph for temperature change shows a minor broad peak at 77°F. around 45,- 000 to 50,000 years ago. This difference can be explained by the lag between changes in temperature and sea level. For example, when temperatures grad- ually drop, more and more water re- mains frozen on land, thus dropping sea level almost as quickly as the cooling trend sets in. But when a warming trend begins, and large masses of ice begin to decay and melt, not all the melt water returns to the oceans right away. Due to the weight of the ice sheet, the ground underneath is often depressed in shallow basins which become new lakes. Also, glaciers carry and deposit large quanti- ties of broken rock, called glacial till, which often dam up the rivers and creeks through which drainage had previously Page 8 JULY occurred . The lake country of northern Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, and Ontario is an example of a region just recently glaciated. Most of these lakes are decreasing in size as the drainage paths to the oceans become unclogged. Thus, after a temperature rise and gla- cial decay and retreat, it will take sev- eral thousand years for all the melt water to drain off to the sea and raise it to its preglacial level. From Fig. 2 we see that the average oceanic temjjerature reached a maximum about 6,000 to 7,000 years ago, and has dropped since then. Here, then, appears to be the answer to the problem of in- terpreting recent sea level changes. It seems that a peak in sea level could have occurred 3,000 to 4,000 years ago. This would mean about a 3,000 year lag be- tween temperature peak and sea level peak, and it indicates that sea level is averaging a slow rate of drop at present. What does this mean? If we project the sea level drop into the future, in a smooth continuation of the curve in Fig. 1, we find a "trough" at about 15,- 000 years from now (Fig. 3). Emiliani, on the basis of the temperature drop over the past 6,000 years (Fig. 2) pre- dicts the beginning of another glacial advance in about 10,000 years. This would put the maximum glaciation at about 15,000 years from now! Here then, is the answer to our origi- nal question. We live in the Pleistocene Epoch still. Our whole civilization has been born and has grown in the seventh glacial interstage (Fig. 2). Ten thou- sand to 15,000 years sounds far off, as indeed it is. Human beings, however, have been around almost two million years. Our ancestors have lived through seven glaciations already. It is not likely that our descendents, 500 generations from now, will succumb to so well-known an enemy as the eighth glacial advance from the north. References 1 . FAiRBRiDGE, R. w. Proceedings of l/ie Royal Society of Western Australia (Perth), Vol. 34, 1947, p. 35. 2. EMILIANI, c. Journal of Geology (Chicago), Vol. 63, 1955, pp. 538-578. 3. RUSSELL, R. J. Science (Washington, D. C), Vol. 139, 1963, pp. 9-15. 4. SHEPARD, F. P. Ibid., Vol. 143, 1964, pp. 574-576. 5. VAN ANDEL, T. H. Ibid., Vol. 145, 1964, pp. 580-581. MUSEUM NEWS {Continued from page 7) teeth, and beetle wings. A new case shows examples just received by the mu- seum of brilliant featherwork made by the Urubu Indians of Brazil. This shrunken human head^ thought to he of a European woman, is one of four such speci- mens once more displayed in Hall 9, Chicago Natural History Museum Founded by Marshall Field, 1S93 Roosevelt Road and Lake Shore Drive Chicago, Illinois 60605 Telephone: 922-9410 THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES Lester Armour Wm. McCormick Blair Bowen Blair Walter J. Cummings Joseph N. Field Marshall Field Clifford C. Gregg Samuel Insull, Jr. Henry P. Isham William V. Kahler Hughston M. McBain J. Roscoe Miller William H. Mitchell James L. Palmer John T. Pirie, Jr. John Shedd Reed John G. Searle John M. Simpson Edward Byron Smith Louis Ware J. Howard Wood OFFICERS James L. Palmer, President Clifford C. Gregg, First ViccPresidcnt Joseph N. Field, Second Vice-President Bowen Blair, Third Vice-President Edward Byron Smith, Treasurer and Assistant Secretary E. Lcland Webber, Secretary THE BULLETIN EDITOR E. Lcland Webber, Director of the Museum CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Donald Collier, Chief Curator of Anthropology Louis O. Williams, Chief Curator of Botany Rainer Zangerl, Chief Curator of Geology Austin L. Rand, Chief Curator of Zoology MANAGING EDITOR Paula R. Nelson, Public Relations Counsel Members are requested to inform the Museum promptly of changes of address. PRINTED BY CHICAGO NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM PRESS CHICAGO NATURAL^ HISTORY -vuse MUSEUM .j^u^^uu ^ffauetln j\ro. 8 4965 .^^^^^H^^^F "^ J .^ Liiii^^^^^%.i9 '-^^^p^^ ?Sf«^ ^H fc^^^^B^^MlpH^.^ :sp-~^ggB^Hy^ ~^^ .^ - 'Wfc'^^^^^^^^^^^^^B ^^^^ ' ^ ^^^^^^^^^^K EfcT"" '**' «. George I. Quimby, Curator North American Archaeology and Ethnology Exploring an Underwater Indian Site THE FIRST underwater exploration of an Indian village site on the bottom of Lake Superior was undertaken jointly by Chicago Natural History Museum and The University of Michigan's Museum of Anthropology on June 19 in the cold waters off Naomikong Point in Chippewa County, Michigan. Discoveries made by the diving members of the expedition showed that the site was an Indian village of the Middle Woodland period occvipied at about the time of Christ and subsequently submerged under rising water levels. But we are getting ahead of our story. How this expedi- tion came into being and why we chose Naomikong Point is an important part of our narrative. In the last few years Mr. C. Sprague Taylor, lumberman and historian of Newberry, Michigan, and his son, Charles, had noted flint arrowheads and fragments of pottery on the beach at Naomikong Point. In the winter of 1963 Mr. Tay- lor brought photographs of some of these artifacts to Chicago Natural History Museum for me to examine. And in Octo- ber of 1964 Mr. James R. Getz, Museum Field Associate, and I visited the Naomikong Point site in the company of Mr. Page 2 AUGUST Taylor and his son. Collecting conditions were not ideal at the time. Snow covered the ground to a depth of several inches, a north wind swept over Lake Superior, and fresh bear tracks crossed the trail into the site. Nonetheless a number of water-worn arti- facts were found on the beach and some were even observed being tossed up by the waves. It was obvious that the speci- mens were coming from beneath the water, but the big ques- tion was this: was there really an ancient Indian village site on the bottom of Lake Superior or had the artifacts been washed into the lake by. wave action cutting into the shore? The question could only be answered by exploring the Lake Superior waters off Naomikong Point. In the spring of 1965 we made our plans for an under- water archaeological survey of the area. We would use divers, establish a system of measurement, and study the landward side of the beach as well as the lake bottom. If the site looked promising a University of Michigan field party would conduct intensive investigations later in the season, under the direction of Dr. James B. Fitting, Curator of the COVER : Mrs. Marilyn Fifield {left) checks equipment Jor under- water photography oj 2,000-year-old Indian village site on bottom oj Lake Superior. Diving with her is John Quimby {right) . Left : Preparing to dive. Inset : Dr. James Fitting examines artifacts brought up from the sunken village. (Photographs by C. S. Taylor.) Great Lakes Division of the University's Museum of Anthro- pology.' We notified Mr. Taylor of our intentions and the University of Michigan applied to the United States Forest Service, custodian of the land, for a permit to excavate. On May 30, in a plane piloted by Mr. and Mrs. Thomas B. Fifield of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, I flew over the area in an efTort to determine if any cultural remains under water could be seen from the air. Although we maintained an elevation of less than 400 feet, bad weather hampered our objective and we shifted our aerial operations to sites in the Lake Michigan basin. Meanwhile, back at Naomikong Point, some expert sur- veying was under way. A professional surveyor, Mr. Eino Sainio, assisted by Mr. Taylor, precisely located and restored the meander corner on the shore between sections 8 and 9 and set station posts 1 00 feet apart along the shore line. These station posts were to be our reference points for all measure- ments made under water. By means of 100-foot ropes marked in ten-foot sections and sightings by engineers' compasses we would be able to locate accurately and map the position of all underwater finds. We were now ready and the exploration date was set for Saturday, June 19. ' I would like to express my appreciation to Dr. Fitting for sup- plying his analyses of the data described in this article. ierwater photograph oj 2,000-year-old pottery vessel in situ ojf shore Naomikong Point, Michigan. {Photograph by Marilyn Fifield.) On the appointed day we assembled at our meeting place. Most important to our expedition was the presence of Mr. Richard Ruppenthal, not only because as District Ranger of the Hiawatha National Forest he was in charge of the area we were entering, but also because he had a large truck with 4-wheel drive that could carry our divers and all of our equip- ment through the woods to the shore of Lake Superior. With Mr. Ruppenthal was Mr. Herman Cameron, Presi- dent of the Bay Mills Indian Council, whose ancestors had lived at Naomikong Point. Our divers were Mr. and Mrs. Fifield, their son, George, and my son, John. Mr. Taylor acted as expedition photog- rapher, and the land-bound archaeologists consisted of James Getz, Dr. Fitting, and myself. Mrs. Molly Fitting acted as recorder and Mr. Donald Janzen, graduate student at the University of Michigan, cata- logued the finds as they were brought ashore. Those of us on foot walked down the rough logging road to Lake Superior, following the truck that carried our divers and equipment. Where there had been falling snowflakes on our October trek to the site, there were now large mos- quitos in the same abundance. Upon reaching the shore, we unloaded the truck and car- ried our equipment across a small neck of land to the site. The four divers put on their wet-suits, masks, weights, tanks, snorkels, and whatever else they needed, then placed our red and white diving flags on buoys anchored offshore some 300 feet. The weather was ideal. Although the water temperature was in the 40's, the sun was shining, visibility was excellent, and the lake was calm. The divers worked under water in 1 00-foot squares based on station posts set at 100-foot intervals along the shore. Pottery fragments and flint chips found by divers were placed in bags made of window screening. These were brought ashore and catalogued according to the 100-foot square in which they were found. Special finds such as collapsed pottery vessels in situ, large clusters of sherds, or groups of fire-cracked stones indicative of hearths, were marked by buoys, stakes, or rock cairns by the diver, who then reported his discovery to the shore-based archaeologist in charge of that particular sector. Then the location of the find was fixed by measurement and compass direction from a shore point related to the line of station posts placed 100 feet apart. Next the find was photographed in situ under water; and finally it was carefully removed, placed in the screen bags, and brought ashore for recording, cata- loguing, and analysis. One of the archaeologically significant finds was that of a whole pot. Although it was broken, all of the pieces were in place on the lake bottom. Moreover, the sherds were en- crusted with carbonized food remains, showing that the pot probably had broken while food was being cooked in it, and that broken pot, food and all, had fallen into the hearth where it remained until found by one of our divers. {Please turn the page) AUGUST Page 3 It was this find and several others that proved conclu- sively that there was a village site under water and that the artifacts had not just been washed into the lake by wave ero- sion of the shore. For one thing, wave action would have resulted in considerable smoothing of the pottery. It would look as if it had been sanded. Moreover, the carbonized en- crustation would have been worn away. And, finally, the broken pieces would have been scattered around and would not have been found in one place. The other significant finds bearing on this problem were hearths marked by clusters of fire-cracked stones, and a pot- tery sherd with powdered red ocher still adhering to it. The hearths could not have been washed into place and the pow- dered red ocher would not have remained on the sherd if it had been tumbled in sand and rock by wave action. Thus the evidence clearly shows that there is an Indian village site beneath the waters of Lake Superior just off Naomikong Point. The explorations of our divers indicate that the ancient village extended in an east-west direction for about 500 feet and up to about 300 feet along a north-south axis. However, since this was a limited and preliminary sur- vey the explorations are incomplete and the village area may turn out to be larger than this. The age of the site can be determined by the kind of pot- tery found in it. The pottery found by our divers consisted of Middle Woodland types which elsewhere have been radio- carbon dated at 200 b.c. to about a.d. 200. This pottery was made of fired clay tempered with small particles of stone and decorated with various kinds of stamped impressions. The kinds of stamps used in decorating the pottery included pseudo-scallop shell, and bar and dentate stamps. The 300 or so sherds collected were studied and analyzed in detail at the University of Michigan. According to Dr. Fitting, the overall distribution of the kinds of Middle Wood- land pottery found at Naomikong Point is co-terminus with a zone of pine-hemlock-northern hardwood forest that ex- tends westward from New York to Manitoba. This zone is called the Lake Forest formation. And since the various manifestations of Middle Woodland culture found within this zone seem to be generally related to each other, Dr. Fitting believes that the name "Lake Forest Middle Woodland" would be an apt term for the entire regional tradition. Local expressions of this tradition, however, are recog- nizably different from each other and can be separated as cultural variants; thus the Naomikong Point finds are a new variant of the Lake Forest Middle Woodland. Other mani- festations of the Naomikong Point variant may be found on the south shore of Lake Superior at some future date. At the present time its closest relationships are with Middle Wood- land materials found recently at a site on Isle Royale and at another site on Bois Blanc Island near Mackinac Strait. How did an Indian village site that existed 2,000 years ago come to be under the waters of Lake Superior in 1965? We know from geological evidence that the north shore of Lake Superior has been rising for thousands of years and is still rising. Between the Nipissing stage of about 3000 b.c. and the present, the north shore has been upwarped at least a Paged AUGUST hundred feet in some areas. This upwarping is caused by expansion of the land that had been compressed by the tremendous weight of the ice in the continental glaciers that covered the area for thousands of years during the last Ice Age. When the glacial ice melted, the land began to rise. And since the north shore is rising more than the south shore the waters are flooding or drown- ing the south shore. If one can picture a tilted basin with one side up higher than another, one can visualize how the waterward margins of the low side become submerged even though the volume and level of water remain unchanged. This situation is anal- ogous to what has happened to the south side of Lake Superior. The Middle Woodland Indians living at the time of Christ probably had a village some considerable distance from the lake shore. In all likelihood this site was covered by humus or by blown sands after it was abandoned by these Indians. In any case, it seems likely that the Middle Woodland occu- pational debris was buried before encroachment of the water. Then, as the shore line receded before the eroding waters washing on it because of the tilting of the Lake Superior basin, the buried village site became submerged. Wave action de- stroyed the soils and any cultural levels above the Middle Woodland village, but did not cut into the site itself probably until this century. Now the waves are excavating the top portions of the old village which at the present time is on the bottom of Lake Superior. And it was this wave-excavated part of the 2,000- year-old site that was seen and surveyed by our divers on this first underwater exploration of a Middle Woodland village site in the Upper Great Lakes region. Above : Fragments of pottery, decorated with stamped impres- sions, found in the underwater site. Left: Ancient knives of chipped quartzite from the bottom of Lake Superior. {Photographs by Dr. James Fitting.) w^ Shape of leaves, the flower, thejruit, and an unpleasant odor help to identify the Jimson-weed, or thorn apple. 'TT'he family of plants to which the po- -*- tato belongs is popularly called the potato, or nightshade, family. Botanists universally refer to the family as "the Solanaceae." This large and, to man, important group of plants contains mem- bers that produce such foods as potatoes, tomatoes, sweet and hot peppers, and eggplants. Tobacco is also an econom- ically important member of the family; and several drugs come from the Sola- naceae. An old and important drug is belladonna, used to relieve pain. Atro- pine, commonly used by oculists to dilate the pupil of the eye to facilitate exami- nation, comes from the same plant. Sev- eral ornamentals are also found in the family: petunias, so conspicuous in an- nual plantings around Chicago, are an example. Weeds are to be found in the potato family, too. Weeds have been defined as "plants out of place." One of these plants is the Jimson-weed, which is also called thorn apple, Jamestown-weed, apple-of-Peru, and stramonium. When the spiny fruits are conspicuous then per- haps the commonest name is "thorn ap- ple." Stramonium is the name of the drug that comes from this plant; it is an alkaloid that is used much as is bella- donna. Vacant lots and ciJtivated fields around Chicago often contain plants of Jimson- weed, which is probably a native of Amer- ica. Normally no one would pay much Louis O. Williams Chief Curator of Botany Ihorn apples are not for eating attention to the plants if it were not that children sometimes pick the thorn apples and test them out to see if they are good to eat. All parts of the Jimson-weed are toxic but the seeds contain a greater amount of the toxic alkaloid than do other parts of the plant. Every year the Museum receives fran- tic telephone calls about children who have eaten a plant and are sick. The plant described and the symptoms given often indicate that another child has ex- perimented with thorn apples. Symptoms that may be present in poi- soning from Jimson-weed include: di- lated pupils, delirium, thirst and dry mouth, lack of coordination, headache, nausea. If these symptoms, or part of them, appear in a child and it is sus- pected that he has eaten from a wild plant, he should be taken to a doctor or a hospital immediately. In any plant poisoning, specimens of the plant causing the distress should be taken to the hospital so that they may be accurately identified, for not all poisons are treated in the same way. The spiny fruit (half as big as your thumb to the size of a small egg), leaf shape, and the disagreeable odor of the plant will all help in the identification of this weed. We suggest that you destroy Jimson-weeds around your property, or if there are too many, then show them to children and explain that they are not to be eaten. AUGUST Pages A youngster attending last jeafs workshop proudly displays his insect collection. An invitation to FALL WORKSHOPS for MEMBERS' CHILDREN AN OPPORTUNITY' to meet Museum staff, and work with specimens and materials from the Museum's scientific collections, is again offered in a series of unique workshops open to the children and grandchildren of Members. These workshops will be held on Saturdays in October. Designed by the Raymond Foundation to stimulate and develop interest in the study of nature and man, the work- shops have been enthusiastically received by Museum Mem- bers and their families since the fall of 1963. This year, classes are offered for four different age groups: there are seven sessions for boys and girls aged 10 through 13; two for children aged 8 and 9; two for those 6 through 9; and one for children 6 and 7. All workshops last about one and one-half hours. Reservations are necessary, and an application form is enclosed with this month's Bulletin. Since workshops are limited to small groups, and it is not always possible to ac- commodate all applicants, we urge you to mail in your reser- vations early. Resei-vations will be accepted in the order in which they are received. Each applicant accepted will re- ceive a confirmation card which will serve as an admission card to the workshops. Page 6 AUGUST Following is a complete schedule of dates, hours, and workshop subjects: October 2 Indians of the Woodlands and Plains 10:30 A.M. or 1:30 p.m. For ages 10-13 Harriet Smith in charge In different regions, Indian tribes developed a life that fitted their kind of country by exploiting materials furnished by nature. In this workshop, youngsters will handle these raw materials and see for themselves how their qualities were utilized in the making of tools, weapons, and household equip- ment. Movies that show how Indian tribes lived in the wood- lands and western plains before the settlers came give a basis for class discussions comparing different Indian ways of life. October 2 Birds 10:30 A.M. for ages 6-9 1:30 P.M. forages 10-13 George Fricke in charge What birds live in the Chicago area? How can we attract them to our yards? This workshop introduces youngsters to the common birds whose appearance and habits should be familiar to all. In both sessions, study of feathers and Mu- seum specimens will help tell the story of birds. October 9 Insects 10:30 A.M. for ages 6-9 1 :30 P.M. for ages 10-13 George Fricke in charge Insects are the easiest animals to collect, and October is still early enough to start your own collection if you know where to look and how to begin. This workshop will help boys and girls to identify insects of the Chicago area, and to make their own collection. October 16 Cave Man to Civilization 10:30 A.M. or 1:30 p.m. For ages 10-13 Edith Fleming in charge A movie on the life of the cave men, which shows how they hunted prehistoric animals, opens this workshop. In the following discussion-demonstration period, boys and girls will examine real tools used by cave men thousands of years ago, learn how they were made, and compare them with tools of today. October 16 Boneyard Zoo 10:30 A.M. or 1:30 p.m. For ages 6-7 Ernest Roscoe in charge Fossil remains of ancient fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals will be investigated in the exhibition halls and through examination of specimens. October 23 "Rockology" 10:30 A.M. for ages 8-9 Ernest Roscoe in charge A beginner's introduction to rocks and minerals by means of specimen study, demonstrations, and informative sessions in the exhibition halls. Topics include: what are rocks? how are they formed? what characteristics are useful in identify- ing rocks and minerals? October 23 Rock and Mineral Kingdom 1 :30 P.M. for ages 10-13 Ernest Roscoe in charge A more advanced program on rocks and minerals. In- cluded is practice identification of specimens with the aid of a key. October 23 Spices: Trail-Blazers to New Lands 10:30 A.M. or 1:30 p.m. For ages 10-13 Marie Svoboda in charge Spices were once so much in demand that the search for them drew explorers to strange and distant lands. What were these spices worth their weight in gold? Where did they come from? How do we use them today? Boys and girls will have a chance to explore these questions by means of specimens and exhibits. October 30 World of Fossils 10:30 A.M. for ages 8-9 Ernest Roscoe in charge Youngsters will learn the main ways in which plants and animals become fossils, and how to identify the major groups. Stress is on the fossils likely to be found in the Chicago area. Highlights of the session include a movie and work with specimens. October 30 ^ft''':il^-'^'-it^ Life Through the Ages '^^ ■^^^ 'j^' 1 :30 P.M. for ages 10-13 'Mi 5^ \ Ernest Roscoe in charge ' ' ' An introduction to geology from the historical point of view, including the development of plants and animals from the Cambrian Period to the Ice Age. The session offers a movie and work in the exhibition halls with question sheets, as well as handling of specimens. AUGUST Page 7 CHICAGO NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM MUSEUM NEWS THE MUSEUM LIBRARY ON EXHIBIT Chicago's banking and financial cen- ter along LaSalle Street is enlivened these days by a series of exhibits in the win- dows of the American National Bank and Trust Company of Chicago. En- titled "A Salute to Chicago's Libraries," the displays call attention to the many technical, research, and other specialized libraries that provide essential resources for the continuing growth of the city's intellectual and cultural life. The Museum Library, under the lead- ership of Mrs. Meta P. Howell, Librar- ian, has been pleased to cooperate in the setting up of the window display on Chi- cago Natural History Museum. With the help of Mr. John R. Millar, Chief Curator Emeritus of Botany, a colorful and varied group of materials from the Museum collections has been assembled to illustrate the relationship of the Li- brary to Museum scholarly and scien- tific inquiry. Museum Members are well aware of the important services that the Library furnishes not only to the Museum staff but to scientific colleagues resident or visiting in the city, and (through inter- library loan) in other parts of the coun- try. The Library is also responsible for an exchange of publications with major educational and scientific institutions in nearly every country of the world. In an article published in the May, 1965, Bulletin, Mrs. Howell described the Library's holdings and services, and out- lined the major expansion of its facilities which has just been completed. Prehistorian Appointed When the Museum's hall on the Stone Age of the Old World (Hall C) was completed in 1933, the latest theories on prehistoric man were incorporated in the exhibits. As many new discover- ies have been made since that time, plan- ning for re-installation of the hall will be one of the inajor projects to be under- taken by the Museum's new Assistant Curator of Prehistory in the Department of Anthropology. Dr. Glen H. Cole was appointed to this position as of June 1, 1965. His two-year appointment has been made with the assistance of a grant from the Mrs. Meta P. Howell, Museum Librarian, and Mr. Allen P. Stultz, President of the American National Bank and Trust Com- pany oj Chicago, view the exhibit on the Mu- seum'' s Library in one of the bank's windows overlooking Washington Street, near LaSalle Street, in Chicago. Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthro- pological Research. Dr. Cole will also make an inventory and assessment of the Museum's Euro- pean and African prehistory collections, and do research on the paleolithic cul- tures of East Africa and South Arabia. Dr. Cole is a graduate of Reed Col- lege and received his Ph.D. in anthro- pology from the University of Chicago. He has done archaeological field work in Illinois, Colorado, northern Mexico, Arabia, and in East, Central and South Africa. Chicago Natural History Museum Founded by Marshall Field, 1893 Roosevelt Road and Lake Shore Drive Chicago, Illinois 60605 Telephone: 922-9410 THE BOARD OF Lester Armour Wm. McCormick Blair Bowen Blair Walter J, Cummings Joseph N. Field Marshall Field Clifford C. Gregg Samuel Insull, Jr. Henry P, Isham William V. Kahler J. Howard TRUSTEES Hughston M. McBain J. Roscoe Miller William H. Mitchell James L. Palmer John T. Pirie, Jr. John Shedd Reed John G. Searle John M. Simpson Edward Byron Smith Louis Ware Wood OFFICERS James L. Palmer, President Clifiord C. Gregg, First ViccPresidcnt Joseph N. Field, Second Vice-President Bowen Blair, Third Vice-President Edward Byron Smith, Treasurer and Assistant Secretary E. Leland Webber, Secretary THE BULLETIN EDITOR E. Leland Webber, Director of the Museum CONTRIBUTING EDITORS Donald Collier, Chief Curator of Anthropology Louis O. Williams, Chief Curator of Botany Rainer Zangcrl, Chief Curator of Geology Austin L. Rand, Chief Curator of Zoology MANAGING EDITOR Paula R. Nelson, Public Relations Counsel Members are requested to inform the Museum promptly of changes of address. Page 8 AUGUST PRINTED BY CHICAGO NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM PRESS H^K\\^p.^JDiilletin i HISTORY ^^. se ^0.9 MUSEUM ^M#'UL'likM,"M/u 'M'Mi OCTOBER Page 5 Expedition truck beside camp at Paghman it' letter Kabul, Afghanistan August 2, 1965 JAN and I landed in Kabul June 23. The further delay of M.S. Hastings with our shipment suggested that we leave Tehran direct for Kabul instead of Karachi. A good thing, too ! That time was well spent in establishing contacts with government officials and in gradually learning the ropes. On June 26 I received a cable from Henry Selz of the CARE Mission in Karachi, advising the Hastings had ar- rived. He had the shipment off the boat and cleared in 48 hours. Shanawaz, Ltd. and International Harvester had the cars serviced and ready to go almost simultaneously. I flew to Karachi on the 28th of June, intending to fly back after clearance was completed, but when I found how ready everything was to go, I decided to stay with mammalogists Jerry Hassinger and Hans Neuhauser and make the trip up to Kabul with the shipment. Jan meanwhile, in Kabul, hired a cook and was buying provisions. From one point of view it was a good choice to motor back to Kabul, but from the personal point of view it was an endurance con- test. The Pakistan scenery was interesting, but the heat was so unbearable that one nearly lost interest in anything but survival! Our two cars, trailer and truck left Karachi at 6 p.m. on the 29th, and arrived at Hyderabad about 10 p.m. Shana- waz, Ltd. sent a man along to check the cars that night, which he did from midnight to about 2 a.m. At 5 a.m. we were up and away shortly thereafter. That day I got a taste of what it is like to ride in heat registering about 118°. We Page 6 OCTOBER finally arrived at Rahim Yar Khan, where arrangements had been made to stay at the Lever Bros. Compound (they manufacture a number of products here) where they take pity on poor travelers like us, bless them. Slept in the home of Mr. Howe, the manager, in, of all things, an air-condi- tioned room. Restored, we spent the next day with wet bath towels over our heads and dripping water, as often as we could find water to soak in. By-passed Lahore and Rawalpindi with a short cut through the desert and then decided to drive on at night. Arrived at Campbellpore about 3 a.m. Slept on the front seat until 6 a.m. and then to Peshawar, where we arrived Friday, July 2. With every- thing closing at noon, I took on the chore of clearing Paki- stan Customs while the men went to bed in the Dean Hotel. With the help of a sympathetic major in the Pakistan Cus- toms we cleared the shipment ourselves. The land of historic Khyber Pass belongs to Pakistan but it really is Pushtu country and in some ways considered "No Man's Land." Must have taken us an hour to nego- tiate it. No photographing is allowed. The Militia there reminded me of pictures of Pancho \'illa, men with black mustaches, each with a rifle and one or two bandoleers of cartridges slung over his shoulder. Along the way various British regiments have put their insignias on the cliffs for all to see. On one disastrous retreat only one British soldier reached safety; it's easy to understand why. A handful of defenders could run over the tops of mountains bordering the pass and with plenty of cover pick off the poor invaders struggling to escape below. This particular stretch of coim- try is ruled by local chiefs and naturally attracts many try- Mr. and Mrs. William S. Street, Field Associates of the Museum, here report on the progress of the Afghanistan Expedition, which left Chicago in mid-June (see Bulletin, July, 1965) and is engaged in collecting mammals and their parasites in that country. rom AFGHANISTAN ing to escape justice and get asylum in it. All along above us we could see the Militia squatting on rocks watching the road below. Seeing it one almost has the feeling it's play acting, but when I proposed to take a picture of one of the men at the entrance gate, he clearly wasn't playing. He gave me a negative answer and was pretty serious about it, too. Needless to say, I slept that afternoon and night and the next day we made Kabul in the early evening, about 1150 miles all told. All the road through West Pakistan is paved for one car, with shoulders on each side. We played chicken with every car coming in our direction. If he was bigger than we were, we veered first. If he was smaller, he moved first. There were a few nonconformists; so there always was the unexpected. Glad Jan wasn't along. She wouldn't have had a nerve left that wasn't in shreds. Dr. Lewis, our Medical Entomologist, and Sana Atallah, his graduate student assistant, arrived at Kabul the night of July 4, having driven from the American University at Beirut; so the party was now complete. The shipment was now through Customs, and we were ready to repack and get out of Kabul as soon as possible. In this process Brian Rear- don, the local representative of International Harvester, and his wife, Helen, have been of tremendous help. His five years of experience really count. Our first camp was at Paghman from July 12 to July 23, only about ten miles from Kabul, altitude 8,000 feet. This was an area Jerry wanted to check on because mammal specimens had been previously collected there. We col- lected over 200 specimens and obtained some nice series of species previously reported but very limited in quantity. Next we went to Shumbul village in the Shibar Pass area of the Hindu Kush, on the road east to Bamian. Here our camp was at 8,500 feet, and we worked up to 9,800 feet, the height of the pass. As in Paghman, this was a place pre- viously collected and again we added good series of certain mammals where earlier collectors got only very few. To date our collecting is doing very well. With four men out collecting and Jan and I available part time for that, and all of us skinning when necessary, I can see that we are very likely to exceed the numbers of the Iranian trip. We have found that if we have a big result in some 24 hours of trap- ping and hunting we can put up almost fifty specimens under pressure. We returned to Kabul with some 350 specimens of mam- mals and from these Dr. Lewis had obtained about 800 fleas and over a thousand ticks, etc. Before you gulp at these flea figures, remember we have to catch the mammal before we can collect its fleas, and not all individual mammals have fleas. Bob Lewis is delighted with our ecto-parasite collect- ing. He and Sana are both good mammal collectors them- selves so they contribute tremendously to our result. How- ever, from the mammal collecting viewpoint only, getting ecto-parasites frequently means an extra visit to the traps, usually about 10:30 p.m., making bedtime for the collector about midnight and then up at five to pick up the rest of the traps. This is because the parasites tend to leave a body that gets cold. After about four days in a row of this kind of going I try to insist on the men slowing up. My guess is Map showing route of expedition ■i '•j' ■^, U. S. S. R. /'■'? ^ : ■^ 1 ^■'> ; ..._.J i •''' 'T / •^. . 'V /•v. ,''" ^ \ / ■>iwPESHAWA« >.. < "^ C ^•>*CAMPBEtlPORt N :> / 7 <. ! '^ /" -W -^ ^. \ ^ ; \ : ( ^ ... ; r ( 1 ''^■i C> <■' ^- I ] ^ •-- \ / .' ^ / / / 1 . ~\ 1* — . (Ihyderabad'. ' ^ifc. ^\ ■^ii^-crr^Hj^i^^v-ir-r^ — ="-=^vH,^g^^/ '\ KARACHI^ .-ci' ^m^. INDIAN OCEAN \^ 1 \-;^»w^ 1 OCTOBER Page 7 they arc now beginning to realize that a six-months expe- dition is different from a two or three-week trip. So, as time goes on, we will pace ourselves better. We are camping high where the nights are cool. The land about us is thoroughly cultivated in every piece possible (and some impossible spots from our point of view). Culti- vation is, of course, along the rivers which provide the irri- gation in the mountainous areas. Crops are wheat, barley, peas, corn, potatoes, alfalfa, with some patches of other veg- etables. We've seen stands of wheat three and a half feet high. All is planted in very small patches of not more than one or two acres. Grain is cut by hand sickle (they are do- ing it now) and threshed by beating it or running animals over it. The mountains generally appear bare from a distance but when one is collecting plants as Jan is doing (I'm No. 2 boy in this work) it is surprising to see the variety. I think she has almost 100 specimens already and mostly all dif- ferent species. PROGRAMS AT THE MUSEUM The fall lecture series for adults continues on Saturday afternoons during November. The programs are given in the James Simpson Theatre, beginning at 2 :30 p.m. Reserved seats are held for Museum Members until 2 :25 p.m. Follow- ing is the schedule of the November programs. Descriptions of the entire series were published in last month's Bulletin. November 6 November 13 November 20 November 27 Monsoon Mosaic (India) Telford H. Work Scotland and Wales Ed Lark A Second Look at Africa Arthur C. Twomey High Horizons, Colorado Wilderness William Ferguson The Illinois Audubon Society's 1965-66 series of free na- ture film programs begins on October 31 with the showing of Teton Trails. Mr. Charles Hotchkiss will narrate the film in person. The program begins at 2 :30 p.m. in the James Simp- son Theatre. Cadette Girl Scouts are invited to three programs at the Museum designed to help them earn nature proficiency badges. The projects center on Trees and Wild Plants (Oc- tober 9), Birds and Mammals (October 16), and Rocks and Minerals (November 7). The programs begin in the James Simpson Theatre at 10:15 a.m. with a movie on the day's subject and then continue into the Museum halls for study of related exhibits. Our camp life is the best. We hate to come to town for we're actually more comfortable in camp. Beds are better, no noise, less likely to come down with something (if we're careful and while we are in the high mountains), good food prepared by Nadir, our cook, and served by Abdul, his helper. After we located Syed Mohammed (he had been recommended to us) and got him up from Kandahar, he turned out to be good at driving and interpreting but was also fat and lazy and not too trustworthy. So he went back after ten days to Kandahar, and we have found a man named Lai Mohammed to drive and interpret. With him we think we're in luck. Each of us except Dr. Lewis and Sana (who by living in Beirut so long are definitely immunized to some degree) has had one or two bouts with dysentery, accompanied by tem- peratures between 1 00 and 1 02 . Most of us have lost weight (I'd guess about ten pounds or more) and are happy for it. Generally speaking, Kabul has been very enervating to Jan and me. During the day we often exhaust our capacity and can do nothing but sit and try to cool off in the evening. High (6,000 ft.) and dry it takes a toll for a while. Until December, January and February we won't encounter too much cold weather unless we're high (10,000 to 15,000 ft.) in the mountains and by winter we'll be heading south to the desert. For two weeks we have had an Afghan student from the Kabul University Agricultural School, Aminnudin by name. Must have been quite an experience for him but he learned to skin, clean skulls, and go night hunting and trapping with the men. — William S. Street CHICAGO NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM Founded by Marshall Field, 1893 Roosevelt Road and Lake Shore Drive Chicago, Illinois 60605 Telephone: 922-9410 THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES Lester Armour Wm. McCormick Blair Bowcn Blair Walter J. Cummings Joseph N. Field Marshall Field* Clifford C. Gregg * Deceased Samuel Insull, Jr. Henry P. Isham William V. Kahler Hughston M. McBain J. Roscoe Miller William H. Mitchell James L. Palmer John T. Pirie, Jr. John Shedd Reed John G. Searle John M. Simpsoa Edward Byron Smith Louis Ware J. Howard Wood OFFICERS James L. Palmer, President Clifford C. Gregg, First Vice-President Joseph N. Field, Second Vice-President Bowen Blair, Third Vice-President Edward Byron Smith, Treasurer and Assistant Secretary E. Leland Webber, Secretary DIRECTOR OF THE MUSEUM E. Leland Webber CHIEF CURATORS Donald Collier, Department of Anthropology Louis O. Williams, Department of Botany Rainer Zangerl, Department of Geology Austin L. Rand, Department of Zoology THE BULLETIN Edward G. Nash, Managing Editor Kathleen Wolff, Associate Editor Page 8 OCTOBER CHICAGO l^filllJi HISTORY roi.3e ^«.y/ MUSEUM ^y<»>e»Hiet /96S J»..v # \ kS , *^ >- « A 44 A* -•- S -^ - !j^ lft.'^:4 r».'d .^ fe A*^ ■^^* / ^ V ^ ^fC^ ^>* f ^ Robert F. Inger, Curator, Amphibians and Reptiles COLD BLOOD WARM CLIMATE OUR general knowledge of natural history is largely based on observations made in the Temperate Zone. That is not surprising since most biologists have lived and worked (and still do) in the Temperate Zone. The tropics have been relatively neglected. To a certain extent, this regional limi- tation has caused biologists to think in fixed terms that may be misleading. For example, we tend to think that most animals have an annual rhythm. The yearly cycle of the seasons in the Temperate Zone has profound effects, as we all know, on the activities of animals. Birds migrate north and south on a regular sched- ule. Frogs call only at certain times, and each species has its own particular breeding season. Insects are dormant in the winter. And so on. Through expermentation and ob- servation we have learned that changes in length of day, increasing temperatures, and in some cases regular changes in rainfall may trigger these various kinds of cyclic behavior in animals. We can also understand easily why these creatures must behave cyclicly. Frogs are cold-blooded. Their body tem- peratures drop as temperatures in the environment fall. At near-freezing temperatures, their movements are as slow as molasses in January and at much below 32° they freeze to death. Insects have the same limitations. Birds are warm- blooded and can keep their body temperatures high. But they need food, which becomes very scarce in winter. Any bird species which feeds on insects must move south in the fall or die of starvation. The parts of the tropics that support rain forest, besides being very warm all year, have heavy rainfall in every month. The cold-blooded animals can remain active at all times. Since plants thrive throughout the year, food, both animal and vegetable, is abundant continuously. One of the trig- gering signals for Temperate Zone animals — changing day lengths — is weak or even absent near the equator where the difference between the longest and shortest days is only a few minutes. We know that in the continuously humid tropics plant species rarely exhibit regular seasonal or cyclic behavior. But we know very little about the annual behavior patterns of the animals in that environment. To learn something about the annual patterns of tropical reptiles and amphibians was one of the major goals of the Borneo Zoological Expeditions, 1962-64. Participants in these expeditions were the late Dr. Bernard Greenberg, F. Wayne King, William Hosmer, James P. Bacon, Jr., and myself. The bulk of the field work was carried out by King, Hosmer, and Bacon. The Expedition was supported by National Science Foundation. Page! NOVEMBER The basic field plan called for collecting and preserving twenty to forty individuals of several species of frogs and lizards each month. By recording the date and habitat in- formation for every animal caught, we hoped to be able to detect any changes in abundance and position of these species during the year. The preserved specimens were to be examined in the Museum laboratory; the presence and number of eggs in the females would reveal the pattern of reproductive activity. We knew from previous experience that snakes would not be caught in sufficient numbers to give us adequate monthly samples. And they were not. The numbers captured each month were sufficient for four species of lizards and six species of frogs. The frogs lived along stream banks and were active only at night, All four lizard species were tree dwellers, but two were active only at night and two only during the day. Climate in the rain forest is in reality composed of a num- ber of microclimates. The microclimate in the tree crowns is very different from the climate close to the ground. The sun shines through the open branches of the tree crowns, be- coming filtered out by successive layers of branches until Left, native collector gathering data from typical Bornean forest stream; cover, Phoxophrys nigrilabies, a rare lizard native to Borneo, in a defensive posture. near the ground one sees only scattered flecks of sunlight. As a result, the air in the tree crowns is heated each day to a greater extent than is the air near the ground; relative hu- midity drops more during mid-day up in the tree crowns than below the canopy formed by the branches. An animal, such as one of our arboreal day-time lizards, is active only when the temperature is high. Our nocturnal lizards not only are active in the trees when the temperature is low and hu- midity high, but they also sleep on the ground under logs during the day and avoid the higher temperatures altogether. Thus the two sets of lizards lived in diflferent microclimates. None of these species showed any change in position or numbers during the year. Moreover, it is clear that they breed throughout the year. In each monthly sample of lizards, for example, we found some females with eggs ready to be laid. All adult males contained sperm. This result is not surprising for, as we have seen, the cli- mate of the rain forest neither imposes the necessity nor provides the triggering signals for cyclic activity. The fact that the nocturnal and diurnal lizards lived in different microclimates had no effect. One of the other results of our study was not expected. Our collecting yielded adequate samples for estimating the number of eggs per clutch in 9 species of lizards. The 85t4^- .■.>i'--'>- SEPT. 1 SEPT. 2 SEPT. 3 1 / s. / N w / \ 82'.- - - — y N •^ y V / v •— DAY NIGMT DAY NIGHT DAY i '^^iy^l^-'^^^^'-^^ii-:::- ll 1/ iJ ^m ~-' .