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FIELD MUSEUM NEWS 



November, 19SS 



FOUR MORE LECTURES 

 IN AUTUMN COURSE 



Four more lectures in Field Museum's 

 Sixtieth Free Lecture Course remain to be 

 given on Saturday afternoons during No- 

 vember. These lectures, illustrated with 

 motion pictures and stereopticon slides, are 

 presented in the James Simpson Theatre of 

 the Museum, and all begin at 3 p.m. Follow- 

 ing are the dates, subjects and speakers: 



November 4 — The Spell of Egypt 



H. C. Ostrander, Jersey City, New Jersey 



November 11 — Republics in the Clouds — 

 Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia 



Major James C. Sawders, Nutley, New Jersey 



November 18 — By Way of Cape Horn 



Alan J. Villiers, Melbourne, Australia 



November 25 — Amazon Twilight 



Earl Hanson, Carnegie Institution, Washington, 

 D.C. 



No tickets are necessary for admission 

 to these lectures. A section of the Theatre 

 is reserved for Members of the Museum, 

 each of whom is entitled to two reserved 

 seats on request. Requests for these seats 

 may be made by telephone or in writing 

 to the Museum, in advance of the lecture, 

 and seats will then be held in the Member's 

 name until 3 o'clock on the day of the 

 lecture. Members may obtain seats in the 

 reserved section also by presentation of 

 their membership cards to the Theatre 

 attendant before 3 o'clock on the lecture 

 day, even though no advance reservation 

 has been made. All reserved seats not 

 claimed by 3 o'clock will be opened to the 

 general public. 



CHILDREN'S MOTION PICTURES 

 —RAYMOND FOUNDATION 



Of the autumn series of entertainments 

 for children provided by the James Nelson 

 and Anna Louise Raymond Foundation for 

 Public School and Children's Lectures, live 

 more remain to be given on Saturday morn- 

 ings from November 4 to December 2 

 inclusive. The programs are presented in 

 the James Simpson 'Theatre of the Museum, 

 and each is given twice, at 10 a.m. and 

 11 A.M. Admission is free. The films to be 

 shown on each date are listed below: 



November 4 — Hunting Dinosaurs; The 

 Romance of Glass 



November 11 — The Frog; The Ants' Cow; 



The Mystery Box; From Dog to Airplane 

 November 18 — Musk Ox and Polar Bear; 



The Sky Splitter; Comets and Eclipses 



November 25 — A Furry Tale; The Puritans 



December 2 — Through the Year with 

 Animal Friends: Spring; Summer; 

 Autumn; Winter 



AN AQUATIC AROID 



By B. E. Dahlgren 

 Acting Curator, Department of Botany 



The well-known Indian turnip and the 

 skunk cabbage figure in our woods as rather 

 isolated representatives in the temperate 

 zone of a large group of plants that reaches 

 its highest development in the moist tropics. 

 The cultivated calla lily, the caladiums, and 

 the elephant ears are other familiar, though 

 exotic, members of the plant family, Araceae, 

 which in common botanical and horti- 

 cultural parlance is known as the "aroids," 

 aroid meaning arum-like. 



The chief features which the aroids have 

 in common are well illustrated by the calla 

 lily with its showy spike or spadix set with 

 minute, inconspicuous flowers, usually lack- 



ing petals and sepals. This lack is com- 

 pensated for by the presence of a large 

 sheathing spathe at the base of the entire 

 spadix. In the calla lily this spathe is white, 

 in other aroids it is green or spotted, in still 

 others brilliant scarlet in color. 



The aroid family is very large. Among 

 its many genera and their numerous species 

 there are found many variations on this 

 characteristic floral structure, just as there 

 are a large range and variation in the shape 

 and size of the leaves of these plants. In 

 some aroids the flowering spike is so small 

 and inconspicuous that only a careful search 

 will reveal its presence; in some others the 

 spadix is astonishingly large. It may be 

 as tall as a man, thicker than a man's arm. 



What is most remarkable about these 

 plants is their diversity of habit. They 

 include at least one floating aquatic, Pistia, 

 the water cabbage, many swamp plants 

 like the calamus, and numerous climbers 

 and epiphytes. The latter sometimes begin 

 life as climbers, then lose all connection 

 with the ground and continue to grow as 



Aninga Plant 



An aquatic calla lily which grows in profusion 

 along the banks of the Amazon. This exhibit in the 

 Hall of Plant Life was prepared by the Stanley Field 

 Plant Reproduction Laboratories. 



air plants, or put forth roots that may 

 reestablish contact with the soil. Others 

 begin their existence as epiphytes in the 

 tree tops and only much later reach the 

 ground with their pendent roots. 



Several of the aroids on the order of the 

 elephant ears furnish edible tubers of large 

 size. The most important of these, the 

 taro, is the chief starch plant of the entire 

 Polynesian region. The eddo of the West 

 Indies is one of several American relatives 

 that yield similar edible tubers. 



One of the best known of ornamental 

 greenhouse plants is a large climber with 

 perforated leaves and edible fruit, Monstera 

 deliciosa, which is represented in the Hall 

 of Plant Life (Hall 29). A recent addition 

 to this hall is a large aquatic aroid, a kind 

 of aquatic calla lily, Monlrichardia, of 

 tropical America. It is known in British 

 Guiana as mucca-mucca; in the Amazon 

 region it is called aninga. This aquatic is 

 a common sight in northern South America, 

 where it forms large patches or solid stands 

 fringing the muddy river margins in five 

 or six feet of water. Its tapering stem, which 

 may grow to ten feet or more in height, is 

 only a few inches thick in its upper part 

 but enlarges rapidly toward the base where 

 it may be from eight inches to a foot in 

 diameter. Its young shoots and large com- 

 pound fruits appear to be the favorite food 

 of the hoatzin, the primitive claw-winged, 

 crested bird called canje pheasant in Guiana, 

 and cigana in the lower Amazon. 



NOVEMBER GUIDE-LECTURE TOURS 



Conducted tours of exhibits, under the 

 guidance of staff lecturers, are made every 

 afternoon at 3 p.m., except Saturdays, 

 Sundays, and certain holidays. Following 

 is the schedule of subjects and dates for 

 November: 



Wednesday, November 1 — Egyptian and Etruscan 

 Burials; Thursday — General Toiu-; Friday— Races of 

 Mankind. 



Week beginning November 6; Monday — Animal 

 Life in Cold Lands; Tuesday — Lacquer, Rubber and 

 Turpentine; Wednesday — Peoples of the South Seas; 

 Thursday — General Tour; Friday — Primitive Musical 

 Instruments. 



Week beginning November 13: Monday — Prehistoric 

 Plants and Animals; Tuesday — Looms and Textiles; 

 Wednesday — Halls of Plants and Their Uses; Thurs- 

 day — General Tour; Friday — North American Archae- 

 ology. 



Week beginning November 20: Monday — Indians 

 of Plains and Deserts; Tuesday — Skeletons, Past and 

 Present; Wednesday — Crystals of Economic and 

 Decorative Value; Thursday — General Tour; Friday — 

 Trees and Wood Products. 



Week beginning November 27: Monday — Asiatic 

 Animal Life; Tuesday — Men of the Stone Age; Wednes- 

 day — Winter Birds of the Chicago Region; Thursday — 

 Thanksgiving holiday, no tour. 



Persons wishing to participate should 

 apply at North Entrance. Tours are free 

 and no gratuities are to be proffered. A new 

 schedule will appear each month in Field 

 Museum News. Guide-lecturers' services 

 for special tours by parties of ten or more 

 are available free of charge by arrangement 

 with the Director a week in advance. 



Gifts to the Museum 



Following is a list of some of the principal 

 gifts received during the last month: 



From Museo Nacional — 183 herbarium specimens, 

 Costa Rica; from Van Cleef Brothers — 12 specimens 

 of rubber material, Sumatra; from Professor Martin 

 C&rdenas — 50 specimens of plants, Bolivia; from Ford 

 Motor Company — 8 planks of Tapajos woods, Brazil; 

 from Companhia Ford Industrial do Brasil — 45 

 herbarium specimens and 34 wood specimens, Brazil; 

 from Rev. Brother Elias — 97 herbarium specimens, 

 Colombia; from Desert Laboratory of Carnegie Insti- 

 tution of Washington — 185 herbarium specimens, 

 Arizona and Sonora; from C. H. Mueller— 460 her- 

 barium specimens, Nuevo Le6n; from John W. Jennings 

 — a specimen of jasper, Arkansas; from Arthur J. 

 Lay — 2 fluorspar specimens, Illinois; from Charles 

 Maricott — 14 specimens claystones, Michigan; from 

 B. E. and Frances C. Axe — a gold nugget, Yukon 

 Territory, Canada; from O. J. Dowling— ^ specimens 

 sylvite, New Mexico; from James H. Quinn — 2 speci- 

 mens of fossil mammals, and shell and skull of a fossil 

 turtle, Nebraska; from Thomas K. Birks — a tiger 

 salamander and a lamprey, Wisconsin; from the 

 Charleston Museum — 6 chain pike and 16 grass pike. 

 South Carolina; from Edward Brundage, Jr. — 45 

 salamanders, a frog, and a snake. North Carolina; 

 from United States Department of Agriculture — 3 

 bundles of bamboo culms and a box of leaves, Georgia; 

 from Dr. Alfred E. Emerson — a western wood frog, 

 Wyoming; from Klauss Abegg — 2 toads, a snake, 

 2 white-tooted mice, and 2 red squirrels, Michigan; 

 from Mr. and Mrs. William Haskell Simpson — a silk 

 embroidery and a painting in colors on silk, China, and 

 2 painted pottery jars, New Mexico; from Claud M. 

 Longenecker — 2 prehistoric stone axes and 60 projectile 

 points, Indiana: from Homer E. Sargent — 13 rugs, 

 blankets, and a garment, Algeria and Tripoli, and an 

 old scrape, Mexico. 



NEW MEMBERS 



The following persons were elected to 

 membership in Field Museum during the 

 period from September 16 to October 15: 

 Contributors 

 Prince M. U. M. Salie 

 Non-Resident Life Members 

 Knox Hearne 

 Associate Members 

 John L. Cochran, Austin Guthrie Curtis, Jr., W. E. 

 Denkewalter, Dewey A. Ericsson, Mrs. William 

 Sherman Hay. 



Annual Members 



Edward A. Berger, Herman Black, John G. Curtis, 

 William C. Flanagan, David F. Gladish, Mrs. Harry 

 Hart, Mrs. Virginia W. Haskins, Miss Ray Hilliker, 

 Scott A. Holman, Ralph H. Honecker, Mrs. Charles 

 S. Kiessling, Dr. Joseph M. Leonard, Robert D. 

 Mowry, Willis D. Nance, Dr. Harry A. Olin, Peter 

 P. Person, Mrs. Arno P. Rayner, Reynold S. Smith, 

 L. Parsons Warren. 



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