Staff Notes 



D, 



Museum News 



Shell Club to Meet 



A he recently organized Chicago 

 Shell Club will meet in the second floor 

 meeting room of Chicago Natural His- 

 tory Museum on Sunday, November 8, 

 and on Sunday, December 13, at 



2 :00 p.m. Meetings of the club are open 

 to all persons interested in shell collect- 

 ing or shells as art objects, and Museum 

 Members, especially, are invited to 

 attend.  



Black Hills Field Study 



L/r. Bertram c. woodland, Cura- 

 tor of Igneous and Metamorphic Pe- 

 trology, has returned from a five-weeks' 

 field trip to the Central Black Hills re- 

 gion of South Dakota. There he con- 

 tinued his study, begun last summer, of 

 the deformations in metamorphic rocks 

 (see the three photographs on this page). 

 While in the field he recorded much 

 data on folded rocks and collected nu- 

 merous specimens, including many com- 

 plete folds, for detailed laboratory study. 



These specimens are carefully marked 

 in such a way as to enable him to restore 

 their orientation prior to collection. 

 Thus all new information derived from 

 laboratory analysis may be referred to 

 true geographic coordinates. 



The object of Dr. Woodland's work 

 is eventually to arrive at the geometry 

 of the deformed rocks and to elucidate 

 the history and mechanics of the earth 

 movements that have affected this geo- 

 logically complicated area.  



"r. austin l. rand, Chief Curator 

 of Zoology, and two members of the 

 Division of Birds, Mr. Emmet R. Blake, 

 Curator, and Mr. Melvin A. Traylor, 

 Jr., Associate Curator, attended the an- 

 nual meeting of the American Orni- 

 thologists' Union held recently at the 

 University of Kansas, in Lawrence. Dr. 

 Rand is outgoing President of the 

 A.O.U. Mr. Blake is a member of the 

 Union's Check-list Committee, and Mr. 

 Traylor is Chairman of the Endowment 

 Committee. 



In September Traylor attended the 

 Second Pan-African Ornithological Con- 

 gress in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa. 

 His paper on the taxonomy of a group 

 of African birds, the Combassous, which 

 he gave at this meeting, developed out 

 of his work for Peters Check-List of Birds 

 of the World. After the Congress Traylor 

 spent a month examining ornithological 

 collections in a number of museums in 

 South Africa and the Rhodesias. 



IVIrs. meta p. howell, Librarian, at- 

 tended the annual convention of the 

 American Library Association held re- 

 (Continued on next page) 



Types of structure being studied by Dr. Wood- 

 land are shown in these outcrops. Far left: 

 crests of flat-lying light folds. Left: trough of 

 fold plunging steeply toward viewer {hammer 

 indicates scale). Above: close-up of small- 

 scale steep folds (6-inch ruler indicates scale). 



NOVEMBER Page 5 



