NEW MUSEUM EXHIBITS THAT CARRY THE OBSERVER INTO A SNOWBOUND FOREST OF NORTH GERMANY, A TROPICAL MEXICAN JUNGLE AND UNDER THE WATERS OF A MISSISSIPPI LAKE

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By Frederic A. Lucas

HREE noteworthy groups have been added to the exhibits of the American Museum. One of them, the group of wild boars, given by Mr. Walter Winans, depicts a winter scene in a North German forest. A driving snowstorm has covered hills and trees with light powdery snow, and as the wind dies down toward sunset the boars are abroad for their suppers. In the foreground a big tusker has strayed into a neighbor's

A portion of the Orizaba bird group in which the Rio Blanca is seen pouring its waters down through the tropical forests of Vera Cruz. [The part of the background that pictures the Rio Blanca is at the left in the group and does not show in the general view on the following page]

domain and a bitter fight is on. The mother pig hastens up to see that no harm befalls her six months' old piglets but they, accustomed to quarrels, doze or feed unmindful of the combat going on so near them.

This group by Frederick Blaschke is in one way an innovation, in that part of the background including the trees is modeled in low relief, aiding to contribute to the apparent depth of the scene.

From the edge of a tropical forest [the real foreground] stretch miles of similar forest far below the observer and beyond to Mount Orizaba [the
Group prepared under the direction of Frank M. Chapman from field studies made in 1910. Background painted by Robert
painted background].
Bruce Horsfall from sketches made at Mount Orizaba by Henry A. Ferguson and Louis Agassiz Fuertes; birds mounted by Henry C. Raven; acces-
sories made and group assembled by William Peters

Transparencies at the sides of the group [see following pages] show scenes from different altitudes in the country portrayed in the painted background, from the tropical forest to the cold summit of Mount Orizaba

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some time in preparation, but it is well worth waiting for. From the upper side of a gorge through which runs the Rio Blanca, the observer gazes through the vine-hung tropical forest to where Mount Orizaba bathed in sunlight rises, more than 18,000 feet, its head crowned with perpetual

snow.

In the foreground are tropical birds motmots which swing their tails like pendulums, trogons, parrots, tanagers and big-beaked toucans, while here and there humming birds hover over rare orchids. On either side of the group is a series of transparencies, showing how the character of the country changes as one goes upward from the plain, passing through the dense forest to the barren higher levels of the mountain and its top capped with snow. As Mr. Chapman tells us in the label, we have here a section of country more than three miles high and to find on a level the changes to be met with in these three miles we would have to journey from Vera Cruz to Maine, a distance of three thousand miles.

The background is by Robert Bruce Horsfall, the birds by Henry C. Raven, while the accessories were made by and under the supervision of William Peters by whom the whole was assembled.

The Orizaba group has been made possible through the North American Ornithology Fund, and the Museum's indebtedness is acknowledged to those contributors to this fund whose generous support for several years has brought into existence some of the best in the series of bird habitat groups. These benefactors of the

Museum are

Franklin Brandreth,

John L. Cadwalader, James C. Carter,
Mrs. Louisine W. Havemeyer, H. B.
Hollins, Mrs. Morris K. Jesup,
Charles Lanier, Miss Carolyn Morgan,
Henry Clay Pierce, Henry W. Poor,
F. Augustus Schermerhorn, Mrs.
Phillip Schuyler, Mrs. John B. Trevor
and Mrs. Robert Winthrop.

The third is the paddlefish or spoonbill sturgeon group in the hall of fishes. It is as barren in respect to vegetation as the Orizaba group is luxuriant. A group of this character is perhaps the most difficult proposition that the preparator has to encounter. There is absolutely nothing in the way of accessories to help him and he has to solve as best he may the problem of making a school of fishes hanging in mid air look as though swimming in water. The casts of fishes were made by Dwight Franklin and James C. Bell, while Albert Operti has deftly painted the remainder of the school.

The spoonbill, which may weigh one hundred and sixty pounds, is a market fish, one of the most valuable of those taken from the Lower Mississippi. Moreover its roe makes a caviar of good quality and adds to the profits of the spoonbill fishery. The species is known only in the Mississippi and neighboring waters however, and so has not the importance commercially that it would assume if more widely distributed. The casts for the group were obtained on a Museum expedition to Moon Lake, Mississippi, in 1909 and both the field study and the work on the group have been carried on by means of the Cleveland H. Dodge Fund.