full-grown salamanders of the group are such wax casts. The two others are cast from a model in clay made from a study of the living animal.

The background of the group, painted by Mr. Hobart Nichols of the American National Academy, is peculiarly successful in its effect of distance brought about by a broadly suggested treatment of river, trees and sky as in a mural decoration. The new group is on exhibition with the bullfrog group in the east tower of the second floor.

COÖPERATION WITH THE NEW YORK ENTOMOLOGICAL SOCIETY

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By Charles W. Leng

T the entrance to the east tower room on the third floor there is a sign reading "Local Collection of Insects in the Custody of the New York Entomological Society." This is the public evidence of the coöperation that is in force between the American Museum and this society. As such extensive coöperation is peculiar to this Museum, and in fact to its department of entomology, the history of its origin and results. may be interesting. The writer has always believed that the only excuse for the existence of societies, apart from their social features, is the accomplishment of work too comprehensive for an individual to undertake alone, while one of the functions of a public museum is to facilitate such associated efforts and preserve their results. It was therefore encouraging to find that the ideas of the American Museum's director and its scientific staff were entirely in harmony with these thoughts. Consultations were held with leading members of the New York Entomological Society as to the direction in which museum aid could profitably be applied. A permanent meeting place was the first step. Improvements in lighting, increased library facilities, the installation of current entomological literature in the meeting place, the purchase of needed books rapidly followed, and culminated for the time in the commencement of the Local Collection of Insects.

The knowledge of our local insects at this time was divided among about one hundred entomologists scattered over the city and suburbs. Each of these men knew something about a few insects from personal observation, knew their names, their habits and food plants, and something about the literature concerning them. Out of the hundred, a few of the older men knew more than the average, and their collections served to aid the others in obtaining names for their insects. For example Mr. William T. Davis of Staten Island, had a private collection in which, after more than thirty years of incessant field work and study, a goodly part of our local insects could be

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found accurately named by specialists, and labeled with exact locality, date of capture and often valuable ecological data in addition. To assemble the scattered information possessed by these entomologists, to form a local collection of insects, complete, accurately determined by specialists, labeled as it should be labeled, was the task undertaken by the Museum with the hearty coöperation of the members of the society. Individual response has of course varied with the amount of scientific spirit individually possessed, but all the really active members have contributed specimens as well as time to the improvement of the series. To represent the Local Collection as complete would be far from the truth; it is merely in active progress. Frequently on Saturday afternoons during the winter, eight or ten entomologists will be found hard at work, comparing specimens with descriptions, adding to the collection, exchanging one with the other, and bringing the Local Collection each time a little nearer to completion. At these meetings the taxonomic characters of each species are in turn pointed out, duplicates. from the larger private collections are distributed to the collections of the Children's Museum and of the Staten Island Association of Arts and Sciences and to the smaller collections; data of exact localities, food plants and dates of capture are collected and kept in permanent form; and every one present gains information and specimens personally as well as aiding the Local Collection by his attendance and gifts.

The number of species to be dealt with is appalling, certainly not less than fifteen thousand, and the taxonomic difficulties are increased by the microscopic size of many species, the absence of such comprehensive books as exist in Europe, and the neglect of certain orders by practically all local collectors. These difficulties must be overcome by the Museum staff, which is at present far too small in this department for rapid progress. The gaps in the Local Collection however, are gradually being filled, and a complete collection that will be of inestimable service to future generations of entomologists is actually in sight, as one of the first fruits of coöperation between the Museum and the New York Entomological Society.

Further results are to be noted in field work, which in coöperation with members of the Entomological Society has been prosecuted locally in Florida, in Newfoundland, Labrador and elsewhere, resulting in the addition to the Museum collections of many thousands of specimens annually. The work that has been done has enlisted also the aid of specialists outside of the society, who noting the activity resulting from this coöperation, have gladly contributed their information. Thus Mr. C. W. Johnson, Mrs. Annie Trumbull Slosson, Mr. E. A. Schwarz, Mr. J. H. Emerton, Colonel Thomas L. Casey, Colonel Wirt Robinson and others have been in active communication with the department.

Nor is this all. Entomology is essentially a practical science, and although one of the youngest, one of the most important in its relations to

problems of evolution and distribution on the one hand and to economic and medical science on the other. Its actual importance is undoubtedly underestimated even by generally well-informed people. The damage wrought by domestic insects, by those of the garden, by those of the forest and the farm, as well as by the insect carriers of disease, is enormous. Already the collections of insects in the American Museum aggregate more than one million specimens, the care of which it may be parenthetically mentioned devolves upon four persons. The foundation for future work necessarily rests on stable, established nomenclature, which involves a wearisome study of descriptions and comparison of specimens, and this is what the Local Collection is designed to facilitate. The superstructure involves the study of the relation of insects to their environment. It is in this respect that the coöperation between the scientific staff of the Museum and the members of the Society has already brought forth the most gratifying results. The Journal of the Society was once largely filled with contributions from outsiders; it is now difficult to find space for all the articles contributed by members of the Society. The minutes of the Society a few years ago record interesting captures, exchanges and taxonomic characters, those of to-day the habits of the larvæ, the distribution of insects in time and space, and discussion from an entomological point of view of the most intricate points of science. The association of the practical entomologists of the Society with the trained scientific staff of the Museum has taught the entomologists to group and to present their facts more logically and see their chosen science from new points of view, while to that staff the importance of entomology may have become more evident.

Such are some of the results of coöperation of the Museum with a scientific society in four short years. What will be the results in twenty years? Is it too much to anticipate on the one hand, the accumulation in the American Museum of the greatest collection in the world, better arranged, better named, more useful to science than was ever known elsewhere; and on the other hand the growth of the New York Entomological Society, with the library, collections, field work and scientific staff of the Museum at its service, into the greatest of all entomological societies, surpassing in its usefulness anything heretofore conceived, and embracing in its scope every department of entomology? The writer believes that the beneficial results of coöperation are already too plain to doubt its value, even if the consummation that we hope for may not thus be speedily attained.

MUSEUM NOTES

SINCE the last issue of the JOURNAL the following persons have been elected to membership in the Museum:

Patron, MR. RODMAN WANAMAKER;

Fellow, MR. CHARLES DEERING;

Life Members, MRS FRANK PIERCE FRAZIER, MRS. W. R. GRACE, MRS. D. HUNTER MCALPIN, MRS. JOHN MARKOE, MRS. FRANCIS EYRE PARKER, MRS. Louis D. RAY, MRS. W. WATTS SHERMAN, MISS JEAN WALKER SIMPSON and MESSRS. F. GRAY Griswold, Paul A. ISLER, JAMES DE LANCY VERPLANCK, HAMILTON FISH WEBSTER and SOLOMON WERTHEIM;

Sustaining Members, MESSRS. JOHN W. FROTHINGHAM, WILLIAM R. STEWART and OSWALD W. UHL;

Annual Members, MRS. J. E. ALEXANDRE, MRS. GLOVER C. ARNOLD, MRS. VALLÉ AUSTEN, MRS. ARTHUR M. Dodge, Mrs. HERMAN LEROY EDGAR, MRS. E. EHRMANN, MRS. DOUGLAS L. ELLIMAN, MRS. LEO EVERETT, MRS. JOSEPH A. FLANNERY, MRS. F. NORTON GODDARD, MRS. CLENDENEN GRAYDON, MRS. ADELINE S. JORDAN, MRS. R. S. KILBORNE, MRS. JOHN MAGEE, MRS. JOHN R. MORRON, MRS. FREDERIC B. PRATT, MRS. WILLIAM B. RICE, MRS. TIMOTHY GIBSON SELLEW, MRS. RAMSAY TURNBULL, MRS. W. K. VANDERBILT, MRS. C. W. WETMORE, MISS EDITH BEADLESTON, MISS HELEN C. FRICK, MISS ELLEN G. GILBERT, MISS ANNIE C. GODDARD, MISS ELIZA R. GREENWOOD, MISS H. MAUD HENRY, MISS CECILE DEnis de LaGARDE, MISS SARAH W. MASTERS, MISS HARRIET S. PHILLIPS, MISS ETHEL THOMP SON, DR. MARY GODDARD POTTER, DR. GEORGE B. PALMER, and MESSRS. L. O. ARMSTRONG, JULIUS B. BAER, WILLIS A. BARNES, CHARLES K. BEEKMAN, J. PHILIP BENKARD, GEORGE R. BROWN, S. W. CHILDS, HENRY A. CLARK, SEYMOUR L. CROMWELL, JOSEPH R. DILWORTH, L. W. DOMMERICH, JOHN TRUITT FARREL, George A. GALLIVER, WALTER L. GOODWIN, ARTHUR F. GOTTHOLD, C. H. GUYE, WILLIAM H. HARRIS, ARCHIBALD HARRISON, NATHANIEL T. HAWKINS, THOMAS A. HINE, WILLIAM WICKHAM HOFFMAN, G. BEEKMAN HOPPIN, KARL JUNGBLUTH, WILHELM KAUPE, JOHN KNOX MCAFEE, MAX A. MOSLE, J. ARCHIBALD MURRAY, FREDERIC R. NEWBOLD, ALEXANDER J. PORTER, HORACE C. PRATT, AMOS L. PRESCOTT, HANS REINCKE, ALBERT LINCOLN SALT, WILLIAM B. SCAIFE, WILLIAM H. SCHMIDT, PAUL SCHWARZ, R. SIEDENBURG, JR.. L. H. SOMERS, L. LEE STANTON, W. T. STANTON, JESSE ISIDOR STRAUS, W. STURSBERG, E. J. TAYLOR and GEORGE W. THOMSON.

UNDER the auspices of the American Geographical Society, the American Museum of Natural History, and the Norwegian National League, Captain Roald Amundsen will give at Carnegie Hall on the evening of January 14 his story of the discovery of the South Pole. President Henry Fairfield Osborn will introduce Captain Amundsen and the American Geographical Society will present to him a gold medal in recognition of his historic work as the discoverer of the Northwest Passage and of the South Pole.

MR. NELS C. NELSON, assistant curator in anthropology, has just returned from an archeological expedition to the Southwest. This expedition confined its work almost entirely to the Rio Grande drainage. A systematic search for archæological sites was begun at Ysleta del Sur, a few miles below El Paso, and completed northward to the latitude of Santa Fe. Within this section of the drainage 115 sites of more or less interest were located and about half of these were inspected. Actual excavations were conducted in two localities. First a group of seven large Tanos pueblo ruins, located on the border of the Galisteo Basin twenty-five miles south of Santa Fe, were worked to the extent of determining their age and culture relations; and later one entire Keresan pueblo ruin, located on the Jemez National Forest seven miles north

west of Cochiti, was cleared. Besides digging trial trenches and examining refuse heaps, four kivas and 573 ground-floor rooms were cleared. The débris removed from these rooms ranged in depth from two to twelve feet and represented, with a few exceptions, two and three story houses. The resulting collections comprise sixty more or less complete human skeletons and about two thousand artifacts.

THERE has recently been placed in the forestry hall a bronze bas-relief of Morris Ketchum Jesup, president of the Museum from 1881 to 1908, as an expression of the admiration felt for Mr. Jesup by the late Mr. John J. Clancy. The panel is by Mr. James E. Fraser and is very convincing both as a portrait and as a work of art. In historic and decorative value it is in the spirit of the plans for development of this hall, that it shall remain a fitting memorial to the man who brought together what is to-day the world's greatest collection of the trees of North America. A photograph of the bas-relief will be reproduced in the January JOURNAL.

PRESIDENT HENRY FAIRFIELD OSBORN gave an address on the subject, "Recent Developments in the Theory of Evolution," at the Pratt Institute Free Library before a meeting of the Long Island Library Club on December 5.

PROFESSOR HUGO DE VRIES, of the University of Amsterdam, lectured at the Museum on "Experimental Evolution" Friday evening, December 6, before the members of the American Museum of Natural History and the New York Academy of Sciences. At the close of the lecture an informal reception was tendered Professor de Vries.

THE department of education entertained some four hundred crippled children from the various public schools of the city on December 16. The children were carried from the schools to the Museum by special conveyance provided through a transportation fund, the gift of Mr. Henry Phipps. At the Museum they saw Mr. Carl E. Akeley's African moving pictures and heard him tell the story of the pet monkey "J. T. Junior," who, captured during the first month of Mr. Akeley's African travels, remained a member of the exploring party for two years.

THE total number of children from the public schools attending the fall course of lectures given by the Museum was 16,601. The subjects of the lectures were under three heads: American history and civics; geography of the world, and great industries of North America.

MR. VILHJÁLMUR STEFÁNSSON of the Museum's Arctic expedition recently returned to New York, has addressed during the past month various organizations interested in geographical exploration on the subject of his experiences in the Coronation Gulf region. The list includes the Geographical Society of Philadelphia, National Geographic Society in Washington, Harvard Travelers Club in Boston, and Peary Arctic Club, Explorers Club and Campfire Club in New York. On January 7 Mr. Stefánsson will lecture in New York before the American Geographical Society.

DR. J. A. ALLEN gave recently in Science a preliminary note on his latest researches as to the time of extinction of the musk ox in northeastern Alaska. It seems that reports made by the Stefánsson-Anderson Arctic expedition not merely confirm previous evidence of living musk oxen in this region as recently as fifty to sixty years ago but also emphasize what has been said before by important additional information. The new facts rest on knowledge existing among natives and white residents of the region and on collections made by the expedition, skulls