accessories are a matter of secondary 

 importance, merely a setting. 



The first large group, the Bird Rock 

 group, placed on exhibition in 1898, was 

 not definitely planned as a habitat 

 group, but merely as a picture of part of 

 a famous and impressive bird colony and 

 to make "a permanent record of this 

 characteristic phase of island life." The 

 Cobb's Island group was the next and 

 the first real habitat group to be con- 

 structed, this subject being chosen partly 

 because it provided a large and interest- 

 ing group at small expense. 



Year after year this series of groups 

 has been extended, covering the country 

 from east to west and north to south, 

 until room is left for but one more and 

 that, it is hoped, will include the bird 

 life of the Arctic regions. 



The bullfrog and giant salamander 

 groups, which are among the latest to be 



added to museum exhib- 

 its, belong in still another 

 category and may be 

 termed synthetic, or life 

 study groups, bringing 

 together in one compos- 

 ite picture a number of 

 animals that probably 

 would not be found in so 

 small an area at any one 

 moment of the season de- 

 picted, but might all be 

 found there at some 

 moment of the season. 

 Such a group may, or 

 may not, represent a 

 particular spot; it does 

 depict the natural condi- 

 tions under which, the 

 animals are to be found 

 and shows them engaged 

 in the most characteristic 

 and interesting of their 

 varied occupations. In 

 this, the day of moving 

 pictures we may say that as the moving 

 picture condenses into five minutes' 

 time the events of days or weeks, so 

 these groups depict in a few square 

 feet of space the life and happenings 

 of a much larger area. 



The group in its latest form is to be 

 found in the Museum of the University 

 of Kansas, where it includes a great part 

 of the Museum, a special section having 

 been constructed to contain a large 

 cyclorama where the various North 

 American animals from plain to moun- 

 tain and from temperate to Arctic Amer- 

 ica may be viewed approximately as they 

 would be seen in nature.^ Somewhat 

 similar is the Laysan Island group, 

 executed for the State University of 



1 This prepared by and under the direction of 

 L. 'L. Dyche, is an amplification of his ideas as 

 shown in 1893 in the Kansas Building at the 

 World's Fair. 



61 



