Museum Wants

Manhattan's ingenious American Museum of Natural History last week got ready to exhibit the newest trick in museum educational work. Back of a picket fence the visitor sees a stuffed hen looking at a painting of other hens and a rooster in a barnyard (see cut). As the visitor looks a loudspeaker narrates: "The hens in the barnyard seem to us all very much alike. We would have great difficulty in distinguishing one from another if we did not put rings or other identification marks on their legs. But to the hen every other hen in the yard is a personality."

At that instant a stage trick of lighting makes the background fade out, and a scene of a barnyard as a hen sees it comes into the visitor's view. The rooster is enormous (see cut). The loudspeaker continues: ". . . for there is a social system in the barnyard. One hen ... can peck another hen . . . without being pecked back, and a third hen can peck still a fourth . . . without fear of retaliation. The rooster stands at the head of this social system, but beneath him,' in a definite social order, are arranged the various hens. This social system does not owe its existence merely to strength. Bluff or circumstances frequently enter into the establishing of an order. If two hens, strangers to one another, should meet, the first one to be frightened becomes subordinate to the other in the social system. . . .

"A hen high in the social system does not ordinarily peck those low in the system. The others give way to her whenever she appears. On the other hand, the hen low in the system may be very cruel toward its subordinates.

"The social system plays an important part in the life of the hens. Those low in the system secure less food and are unable to keep themselves as neat as the hens near the top of the order. A sick bird drops to the. bottom of the social system because there is little sympathy among hens or possibly because the other hens fail to recognize the sick individual as one of their group.

"Hens may keep their position in the pecking order throughout life. They remember other individuals in their set after isolation of half a year. Among birds, only parrots are superior to hens in the length of time they can remember faces. Pecking orders are found in many groups of animals but are often modified by other social factors."

WPA workers assigned to the museum by the Government built the barnyard exhibit and are at work on five others which show how different creatures see the world. To a dog all things are grey, because dogs are colorblind. Fish are nearsighted and the refraction of water distorts the feet of a fisherman standing on a bank. The mosaic structure of a fly's eye gives him a multitude of images. A turtle's world is a shifting scene of bright spots because light Attracts its eyes. A huge chameleon will turn the color of the clothes of the person who may stand before the photocell which constitutes its "eye."

Director Roy Chapman Andrews of the American Museum will open these displays on June 8. On that day, far out over the Pacific, the moon will eclipse the sun for the longest period (7 min. 4 sec.) in 1,200 years. It is also the second Tuesday in June, the most popular day in the year for committing suicide.

Last week Dr. Andrews pointed to his museum's new exhibits as honest tender of what he could do with $10,779,925 which his trustees want to add to the present $16,176,640 endowment of their $62,000,000 establishment. They "have cases of material in their cellars, multitudes of ideas in their curators' heads, which they want to show the public. In a new Hall of Man they want to show "man's embryology, development of his body, unfolding of his behavior, his genetics, and a resume of his achievements over the ages." They want a microvivarium to show how ameba and other one-cell animals live. They want to show how to farm frogs, how to make pocketbooks from snake skins.

The museum trustee who last week undertook to head the campaign for the $10,779,925 is Lawyer Alexander Perry Osborn, eldest son of the museum's late President Henry Fairfield Osborn. Out of Princeton in 1905, out of Harvard Law School (he edited the Harvard Law Review) in 1909, young Perry Osborn became special guardian of the infant children of John Jacob Astor after that multi-millionaire sank with the S. S. Titanic (1912). During the War, he organized the War Credits Board. He served as chairman of the committee for the reorganization of the Army General Staff. Currently Mr. Osborn, 52, having resigned directorates in a finance company, a printing company, an oil company, is a director of the Western Pacific Railroad.

Biggest argument for donations which Mr. Osborn has is the museum's increasing popularity. Attendance . exceeded 1,000,000 in 1932 and rose steadily to 2,491,582 last year, will surpass that this year. Through motion picture and lantern slide shows and circulating collections, curators last year reached another 40,000,000 minds.

The American Museum's consistent increase of attendance is unique among U. S. museums of natural history. In 1933 Chicago's Field Museum took care of 3,269,300, last year 1,191,437. In 1933 Los Angeles' Museum of History, Science & Art attendance was 1,276,911, last year 597,079. It and other museums attribute their peak popularity to Depression when free entertainment and shelter attracted full houses. This year attendance is generally increasing, apparently due to new interests which museum directors are stirring in their communities. And every new interest stirs a hope for gifts in the management's heart.

Philadelphia's Academy of Natural Sciences, like Manhattan's American Museum, is also out to raise millions. But this is a new idea. Until last March when he conducted an astonishingly successful Symposium on Early Man, Charles Meigs Biddle Cadwalader, 51, the museum's unpaid managing director thought of raising merely $374,915 from other rich Philadelphians "for a five-year educational program." Up went Mr. Cadwalader's imagination and requests to $10,000,000 for endowment and $8,000,000 for a new building. And the trustees of this oldest (125 years) museum of natural history in the U. S. upped him to the unpaid job of president.

Chicago's Field Museum last week appointed Clifford Cilley Gregg, 42, Boy Scout patron and onetime executive of Marshall Field & Co., to be director. He is not contemplating any drive for funds. But he "could use some" to mount, for example, a group of storks from Poland.

National Museum in Washington, like every other museum, needs money. Fifteen million specimens worth $130,000,000 are packed into the great new building on Constitution Avenue. But the regents of the Smithsonian Institution, who oversee the National Museum, find that they need more room. They want $6,500,000 for new wings, and last week hoped that President Roosevelt would somehow help.

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