File:The American Museum journal (c1900-(1918)) (17539425493).jpg

Title: The American Museum journal
Identifier: americanmuseumjo14amer (find matches)
Year: c1900-(1918) (c190s)
Authors: American Museum of Natural History
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York : American Museum of Natural History
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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STORY OF MUSEUM GROUPS 65 Iowa by Mr. Homer R. Dill, where the visitor gazes about him at the imposing assemblage of albatrosses and other sea fowl, while beyond the blue Pacific stretches to the horizon. Aside from these the bison and moose groups in this Museum, by Richardson and Rowley, are the largest that have been made, and although they have been on exhibi- tion for twenty-four and twenty years respectively, they compare favorably with those of to-day. The African mammals by Mr. Carl E. x\keley in the Field Museum, are among the finest of their kind for pose and character, but the "Four Seasons," in the same museum and also by Mr. Akeley, depicting the Virginia deer in spring, summer, autumn and winter, rep- resent high-water mark in this direction, combining as they do pictorial beauty with scientific accuracy of detail. It was while engaged on these groups that Mr. Akeley perfected the method of making the manikin, or artificial body on which the skin is placed, so as to combine strength, light- ness and durability, and also devised methods for the rapid reproduction of leaves and a compound stronger and more durable than wax. The need for making leaves in large quantities is shown by the fact that in the "Four Seasons," the svmimer group alone called for sev- enteen thousand leaves. Such, briefly, is the story of museum groups; they have grown from the little box containing a pair of birds and a square foot or two of their im- mediate surroundings, to entire colonies of flamingos and albatrosses and the broad sweep of land or sea shown in the Orizaba and Laysan groups. No one man can justly claim credit for the beauty and accuracy of such groups as may to-day be seen in our larger mu- seums; many have contributed to this perfection and some stand preeminent among the rest. To each and all his just meed of praise. Some, whose work might now provoke a smile, labored hard and earnestly in the face of many discouragements to lay the foundations on which we build to-day. Some of whom the present generation has never heard, held out a helping hand to the youthful would-be taxidermist and by aid and encouragement started many of our best men on their career, and some, keen observers of nature, endowed with artistic spirit and possessed of technical skill, have perfected what others began.
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Head of mountain sheep, in tlia Brooli- lyn Museum. Mounted by Remi Santens, for many years at Ward's Establish- ment, now at Carnegie Museum, ^Pittsburgh

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