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FIELD MUSEUM NEWS 



January t 19SS 



Field Museum of Natural History 



Founded by Marshall Field. 1893 

 Roosevelt Road and Lake Michigan, Chicago 



THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES 



Sbwelx L. Avery 

 John Borisn 

 William J. CHAUoats 

 Marshall Field 

 Stanley Field 

 Ernest R. Graham 

 Albert W. Harris 

 Samuex Insull, Jr. 

 Gyrus H. McCormick 



John P. 



William H. Mitchell 

 Frederick H. Rawson 

 George A. Richardson 

 Fred W. Sargent 

 Stephen C. Simms 

 James Simpson 

 Solomon A. Smith 

 Albert A. Spragub 

 Silas H. Strawn 

 Wilson 



OFFICERS 



Stanley Field President 



First Vice-Presidenev temporarily unfitted 



Albert A. Spbague Second Viee-Presidenl 



Jambs Simpson Third Vice-President 



Stephen C. Simms Director and Seer^ary 



Solomon A. Smith . . . Treasurer and Assistant Seeretanf 



FIELD MUSEUM NEWS 



Stbphbn C. Simms, Director of the Museum Editor 



CONTRIBUTING EDITORS 



Berthold I^UFER Curator of Anthropology 



B. E. Dahlgren Acting Curator of Botany 



Oliver C. Farrington Curator of Geology 



Wilfred H. Osgood Curator of Zoology 



H. B. Harte Manaffing Editor 



Field Museum is open every day of the year during 

 the hours indicated below: 



November, December, January 9 A^. to 4:30 p.m. 



February, March, April, October 9 A.M. to 5:00 P.M. 

 May, June, July, August, September 9 A^. to 6:00 p.m. 



Admission is free to Members on all days. Other 

 adults are admitted free on Thursdays, Saturdays and 

 Sundays; non-members pay 25 cents on other days. 

 Children are admitted free on all days. Students and 

 faculty members of educational institutions are admit- 

 ted free any day upon presentation of credentials. 



The Museum's natural history Library is open for 

 reference daily except Saturday afternoon and Sunday. 



Traveling exhibits are circulated in the schools of 

 Chicago by the N. W. Harris Public School Extension 

 Department of the Museum. 



Lectures for schools, and special entertainments 

 and tours for children at the Museum, are provided 

 by the James Nelson and Anna Louise Raymond 

 Foundation for Public School and Children's Lectures. 



Announcements of free illustrated lectures for the 

 public, and special lectures for Members of the Museum, 

 will appear in Field Museum News. 



A cafeteria in the Museum serves visitors. Rooms 

 are provided for those bringing their lunches. 



Chicago Motor Coach Company No. 26 buses go 

 direct to the Museum. 



Members are requested to inform the Museum 

 promptly of changes of address. 



MEMBERSHIP IN FIELD MUSEUM 



Field M useum has several classes of Members. 

 Benefactors give or devise $100,000 or more. Contribu- 

 tors give or devise $1,000 to $100,000. Life Members 

 give $500; Non-Resident (Life) and Associate Members 

 pay $100; Non-Resident Associate Members pay $50. 

 All the above classes are exempt from dues. Sustaining 

 Members contribute $25 annually. After six years they 

 become Associate Members. Annual Members con- 

 tribute $10 annually. Other memberships are Corpo- 

 rate. Honorary, Patron, and Corresponding, additions 

 under these classifications being made by special action 

 of the Board of Trustees. 



Each Member, in all classes, is entitled to free 

 admission to the Museum for himself, his family and 

 house guests, and to two reserved seats for Museum 

 lectures provided for Members. Subscription to Field 

 Museum News is induded with all memberships. The 

 courtesies of every museum of note in the United 

 States and Canada are extended to all Members of 

 Field Museum. A Member may give his personal card 

 to non-residents of Chicago, upon presentation of 

 which they will be admitted to the Museum without 

 charge. Further information about memberships will 

 be sent on request. 



BEQUESTS AND ENDOWMENTS 



Bequests to Field Museum of Natural History may 

 be made in securities, money, books or collections. 

 They may, if desired, take the form of a memorial to 

 a person or cause, named by the giver. 



Cash contributions made within the taxable year 

 not exceeding 15 per cent of the taxpayer's net income 

 are allowable as deductions in computing net income 

 under Article 251 of Regulation 69 relating to the 

 income tax under the Revenue Act of 1926. 



Endowments may be made to the Museum with the 

 provision that an annuity be paid to the patron for life. 

 These annuities are tax-free and are guaranteed against 

 fluctuation in amount. 



ATTENDANCE AGAIN INCREASES 



The steady increase in the number of 

 visitors to Field Museum, noted for years 

 past, continued during 1932. At the time 

 of going to press with this issue of Fiexd 

 Museum News there was every indication 

 that the total for the year might reach 

 1,800,000 persons, as the number up to and 

 including December 18 was 1,789,722, many 

 more than in any previous year of the 

 Museum's history. This represents an 

 increase of about 20 per cent over 1931, 

 when the number of visitors was 1,515,540. 

 The increase in rate is shown by the fact 

 that the 1931 gain over 1930 was approxi- 

 mately 13.5 per cent. 



Adding to the attendance figure some 

 700,000 children reached by extra-mural 

 activities conducted by the James Nelson 

 and Anna Louise Raymond Foundation for 

 Public School and Children's Lectures, and 

 the Department of the N. W. Harris Public 

 School Extension, it is found that the educa- 

 tional influence of the Museum benefited 

 a total of approximately 2,500,000 persons 

 in 1932. 



The year 1932 was the sixth consecutive 

 year in which attendance exceeded one 

 million. It is interesting to note that the 

 total for the past five years has been approxi- 

 mately 6,840,000, or about 1,000,000 more 

 than the total of 5,839,579 visitors received 

 in the entire twenty-five years and some 

 months during which the institution was 

 located in its first building in Jackson Park. 



STANLEY FIELD LABORATORIES 



CREATE UNIQUE EXHIBITS 



By B. E. Dahlgrek 

 Acting Curator, Department of Botany 



The exhibits in the Hall of Plant Life 

 (Hall 29) represent the most notable effort 

 made in any Museum to provide a display 

 of plants instead of only plant materials 

 and products. 



During the early years of the Museum's 

 existence the absence of any means of 

 exhibiting plant forms constituted a formi- 

 dable obstacle to the development of interest 

 in botany. The poor appearance of dead 

 plants has always been discouraging to 

 those who have attempted to make a 

 museum botanical display. It is probably 

 to this fact that one must ascribe the 

 absence of botanical exhibits in most natural 

 history museums, often extending even to 

 the failure to recognize the plant kingdom 

 as existent. It was generally considered 

 to be next to impossible to produce a 

 satisfactory permanent museum exhibit of 

 plant forms as they appear in the natural 

 living state. 



In recent years, however, great advances 

 have been made in museum technique. A 

 higher standard of skill and of artistic 

 performance, guided by scientific considera- 

 tions, has come to be applied to the prepara- 

 tion of exhibits. Perishable forms that 

 once were the despair of the museum expert 

 are today represented by reproductions so 

 well executed that they are scarcely dis- 

 tinguishable from the living plants. In the 

 same manner it has become possible to show 

 satisfactory representations of details of 

 structure and to include lifelike models of 

 microscopic forms of plants and animals. 



An effort made in 1909-10 at Field Museum 

 to solve the problem of botanical exhibits 

 resulted in the production of the breadfruit, 

 papaya, and several other cases now in the 

 Hall of Plant Life, and served to establish 

 fairly definitely the form and general 



character of the exhibits in this hall. This 

 also made it evident that the production 

 of a satisfactory botanical exhibition would 

 require careful planning, collecting in near-by 

 and distant localities, and continuous 

 employment of skilled and specially trained 

 workmen. 



In 1916 President Stanley Field personally 

 undertook to carry the considerable expense 

 of the continuation of this work. The 

 Stanley Field Plant Reproduction Labora- 

 tories of the Museum have since functioned 

 as a part of the Department of Botany and 

 have provided the altogether unique exhibits 

 that are gradually filling the large Hall of 

 Plant Life. 



The collection as a whole is designed to 

 present a general view of the plant world, 

 past and present, by showing typical forms 

 characteristic of its main divisions from 

 bacteria upwards. The flowering plants 

 shown constitute the larger part of the 

 display and include a large number of 

 useful and interesting plants that are of 

 particular importance to man. 



Material for exhibits of plants not of 

 local occurrence, has been obtained by 

 special Museum expeditions. Specimens 

 have been gathered and studies at first 

 hand made in several tropical American 

 countries, especially those known for their 

 botanical gardens, such as Jamaica and 

 British Guiana. These contain many im- 

 portant plants of distant parts of the world 

 and often afford special facilities for the 

 work that must be carried out in the field 

 as a preliminary to the preparation of 

 exhibits in the Museum laboratories. 



Though much still remains to be done 

 before this collection can be considered to 

 be well balanced and representative, it may 

 confidently be asserted that in no other 

 miiseum, and in no botanical garden even 

 under the best of conditions, can so many 

 important plants from so many different 

 places be seen at one time in their most 

 characteristic state of flowering and fruiting 

 as in the Hall of Plant Life in Field Museum. 



Long Mining Drill Cores Shown 



Much prospecting for mineral deposits is 

 done by diamond dnll, consisting of a rotat- 

 ing pipe armed at its lower end with diamond 

 teeth. The teeth grind a ring of rock, leaving 

 a central core which passes into the pipe and 

 can be raised for study. Two drill cores 

 exhibited in Frederick J. V. Skiff Hall (Hall 

 37) attract the attention of mining men on 

 account of their length. Although records 

 of the rock passed through in thousands of 

 feet of drilling are often secured, the indi- 

 vidual pieces of core are usually short, due 

 to the brittleness of rock. One of the cores 

 in the Museum, a cylinder of limestone 

 six feet seven and one-half inches long, and 

 two inches in diameter, was drilled from a 

 depth of 670 feet at Waltonville, Illinois. 

 This was thought to be the longest bit of 

 core ever taken out in one piece until a 

 longer piece came to the Museum from 

 Colorado. The core from Colorado is a 

 granite cylinder ten feet long, and two inches 

 in diameter. 



Research on Extinct Whales 



Dr. Remington Kellogg of the Carnegie 

 Institution, Washington, D.C., recently 

 spent some time at Field Museum making 

 an exhaustive study of the fossil whale 

 skull brought from Patagonia by the 

 Marshall Field Paleontological Expedition 

 to that country. Dr. Kellogg is preparing 

 a monograph on extinct whales. 



