MUSEUM NOTES 
murals for the Plains Indian hall will begin 
at once. The series will include eight panels. 
Added to his many years spent in study of the 
Indian and in recording Indian life, Mr. 
Deming made new studies for the work last 
summer, especially among the Blackfoot 
Indians of Glacier National Park. [A por- 
trait of Mr. Deming is shown on page 91.] 
As a number of its Anthropological Series, 
the Museum will soon publish a paper by Mr. 
M. D. C. Crawford on prehistoric Peruvian 
fabrics. Mr. Crawford’s familiarity with all 
the materials, implements, machinery and 
processes of present day weaving has enabled 
him to analyze and describe the processes by 
which these cloths were made. 
The Museum’s collections from the ancient 
graves of Peru contain the cotton and wool 
in all stages from the raw state to the finished 
yarns, and contain also looms with cloth in 
process of manufacture. The fabrics be- 
sides being some of the most beautiful ever 
woven have always excited the wonder and 
admiration of those who know anything about 
weaving by their technical qualities. It is 
difficult to understand how a primitive people, 
with the simple tools at their command, could 
have produced cloth technically better than 
can be made by the wonderful looms of 
to-day. In some of the fabrics the cotton 
thread has three times as many turns to the 
inch as the best cotton thread commonly 
used in our mills, and the twist is remarkable 
for its evenness. Some have a warp of forty- 
two fine cotton threads to the inch, crossed 
by two hundred and eighty-two ply woolen 
threads to the inch. This weft had been 
beaten so compactly that the instrument 
used in mills to count the number of threads 
to the inch is useless, and the cloth has to be 
fastened down firmly and the threads drawn 
out, one at a time, with a hooked needle point, 
under a magnifying glass, the counting of an 
inch taking three and a half hours. 
Some twelve hundred specimens of arche- 
ological and ethnological material from vari- 
ous parts of the world have been deposited 
by the Museum at Barnard College, Columbia 
University, to be used as a study collection by 
its students of anthropology. 
ATTENTION may be called to the fur-seal 
group just opened to the public in the North 
American mammal hall, adjoining the re- 
143 
cently constructed beaver group. The back- 
ground, which is remarkable for its illusion 
of distance, was painted by Mr. Albert 
Operti. It shows a part of Kitovi rookery 
at the Pribilof Islands. 
From recent cable advices we learn that 
James Chapin with about one-fourth of the 
collections of the Congo expedition left 
Boma on the western coast of Africa January 
31. He is expected to arrive in New York 
the latter part of March. 
THE exhibits in the Jesup North Pacific 
Indian hall are being rearranged and the cases 
repainted to produce a more harmonious 
color scheme. 
THE opening lecture of the fifth series of 
the Museum’s “Science Stories’? for the 
children of members was given on Saturday 
morning, February 20, by Admiral Robert E. 
Peary. His subject, “Children of Ice and 
Snow,” proved of great charm and he gra- 
ciously repeated the lecture and showed the 
Arctic pictures a second time, to the overflow 
audience of children who waited. 
Mrs. WiuuraM H. Buiss of New York has 
enriched the Museum’s gem collection with a 
very beautiful .blue aquamarine, weighing 
144.51 carats. It is a Brazilian stone from 
Minas Geraes, cut in an oblong brilliant, and 
easily exceeds in color beauty and size any 
of the aquamarines previously brought from 
that locality. 
Tue photograph reproduced in sepia 
opposite page 102 of this JouRNAL, is a copy 
of one of two new mural canvases by Mr. 
Will S. Taylor. It represents Indians of the 
Tlingit tribe engaged in a shamanistic cere- 
mony for curing the sick, and was recently 
put in place on the east side of the North 
Pacific hall. Any reproduction of this pic- 
ture not in color is unfortunate, since in the 
color lies a considerable part of its power. 
The scene is an interior with steps leading 
down into a room like a pit. Weird figures 
in dim light sway to the chanting of Voices 
and the beat of a drum, while in the circle 
of firelight, the shaman in ceremonial dress, 
his hair adorned with clipped eagle down, 
dances about the man to be cured. The 
second new canvas represents Haida Indians 
in a house-building ceremony. [A portrait 
of Mr. Taylor is given on page 90.] 
