Preface 



If the Museum \isitor has a half hour to devote to the Hall of Habitat Groups of 

 Birds (Hall 20) he can spend less than a minute on each group. This is not long to view 

 the scenery as shown from vantage points in five continents, several islands, and 

 Antarctica. Few people would travel to these places without elaborate preparations, 

 guides, and maps, and cameras and notebooks to record their impressions in per- 

 manent form. In this hall presenting habitat groups of birds, the landscapes and the 

 birds have been brought together from points as far apart as the Bering Sea and 

 Antarctica; and the Chicago area, Scotland, Indo-China, the Kalahari Desert, New 

 Zealand, and Laysan Island are represented. In this booklet the thoughtful visitor has 

 a ready-made guide to what is to be seen, and after he has finished the trip, an illus- 

 trated record of what there was to see. 



These habitat groups represent two stages in the development of this type of exhibit. 

 The groups in the east end of the hall present an early kind of display in which the 

 exhibit can be viewed from two sides, and in which the background is painted on two 

 flat walls. The groups in the west end of the hall present the modern type of habitat 

 cxhiljit, with curved panoramic background. Looking into such an exhibit is like 

 looking out of a window onto the natural scene. The natural objects in the foreground 

 blend with those painted on the curved wall so that it is difficult to tell where one 

 leaves off and the other begins. 



The earlier exhibits were prepared under the direction of Mr. Charles B. Cory, the 

 first Curator of Ornithology in the Museum, most of the recent exhibits were in- 

 stalled under the direction of Mr. Rudyerd Boulton, Curator of Birds until 1945, and 

 the latest under the direction of Dr. Austin L. Rand, the present Curator of Birds. 



