The animals are often arranged in family or social groups that the student or spectator can gleam something more than an impression of how an isolated specimen looks. Physical geography, geology, botany and other studies now enter the field of taxidermy.
In preparing a new setting for the African buffalo group, built in the National Museum about a year ago, the three animals are to be left in their original positions, which indicate alarm, just as they were first discovered by the hunters, but in addition they are to be represented as standing on the edge of an African papyrus swamp. The ground-work of the group will present the effect of the marshland where the buffalo live, the grasses and plants being added, that a complete picture of the African swamp may be effected.
Since nearly all grasses and foliage are subject to decay and shrinkage, with constant loss of original form and color, they, like the skins of the animals, are especially prepared. Few grasses, as a rule, can be dyed or preserved in anything like their natural form, but, fortunately, to this end the papyrus lends itself very well. The plants having thick stems are opened, and the pithy inner removed; they are then bent or curved and secured in the position desired, wired and filled with plaster. When the plaster is set, the plants are painted to represent their colors in life, and grouped together with other grasses to form a setting for the animals.
When the African buffalo group was first assembled) as no African material was yet at hand, it was decided to use temporarily cosmopolitan foliage which was to be found here as well as in Africa. Although the artistic effect proved very satisfactory, the museum officials determined to have this group as technically correct in every detail as the lion, the hartebeest, and the rhinoceros groups already on exhibition, and finally arrangements were made whereby the native African material was obtained. Several cases of papyrus plants and arundo grass were secured from the natural habitat of these buffalo, and the animals, set in their true environment, will soon be placed on exhibition again.
SCIENTIFIC ITEMS
We record with regret the death of Professor August Weismann, the distinguished German zoologist; of Dr. Henry Gannett, geographer of the U. S. Geological Survey; of Bernard Richardson Green, civil engineer and superintendent of the Congressional Library, and of Mr. G. R. Mines, professor of physiology in McGill University, who died while making experiments in his laboratory on the action of the heart, apparently as the result of some failure in the apparatus.
Professors Roentgen, Lenard and Behring have each recently been reported to have repudiated the gold medals conferred on them by scientific associations in Great Britain, and have donated them to the Bed Cross or other relief work, and now it is said that the Hanbury medal has likewise been donated for relief work by its recipient, Dr. E. Schmidt, professor of pharmacology at Marburg.
The past and present members of the scientific staff of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research gave a dinner at Delmonico's to Dr. Simon Flexner on October 16, in celebration of the tenth anniversary of the opening of the laboratories of the institute under his direction.—At the celebration of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Johns Hopkins Hospital a portrait of Sir William Osier, by Mr. Sargeant, was presented.
The National Academy of Sciences will hold its autumn meeting at the University of Chicago on December 7, 8 and 9.—The American Association for the Advancement of Science and the national scientific societies affiliated with it will hold their convocation week meetings at the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, during the week beginning on January 3.
