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Monday, July 28, 1975
University Dally Kansan
Natural history museum exhibits KU's early days
By DAVID BARCLAY
Vancouver Staff Democrat
To pass the time before the University of Kansas opened in 1866, Francis Huntington Snow, one of the three original patrons of the museum, said that Snow shot were the beginning of a collection that is now the fourth largest museum of natural history owned by a university in North America.
Lewis Lindsay Dyce accompanied Snow on many of his early expeditions. Dyce came to the University broke in 1877 and camped where Dyche Hall now stands. During his first months as a student he supported himself by hunting.
By the time Dyche graduated and joined the faculty in 1884, Snow had given KU botanical, zoological and geological collections second in America only to those at Harvard. Dyche was enlarging his own collections of stuffed birds and mammals.
Dyche first earned national fame in 1893 when he displayed over 100 large stuffed animals at the Chicago World's Fair. Unlike other museum collections at that time, Dyche's stuffed animals were positioned in natural lifelike positions as a backdrop depicting animal habitats.
In 1894 and 1896 Dyche traveled to Greenland, where he collected specimens of polar bear, walrus, and caribou. On this expedition he won international recognition when he rescued the stranded arctic explorer. Commander Robert E. Peary.
Dyche traveled throughout Kansas and across the United States, lecturing and engaging with students.
He was so well known by 1897 that when the state legislature cut the salaries of KU's faculty, Dyche was the only one exempted. He did not accept any assistance persuade the legislature to allocate money to build a special natural history museum for KU's growing collection, then stored in old Snow Hall across from Watson Library and donated dollars was appropriated in 1901.
The exterior of the museum, described as Venetian romanesque by the architect, was modeled after the Cathedral of Saint-James in France. The entrance of the museum showed the most obvious resemblance. Its columns and archways were inspired by the cloister of the cathedral. The stones used to build the cathedral, which were married near Lawrence.
The carvings of beasts, birds and other creatures on its columns were intended to illustrate the building's purpose. The carved figures served at the site by two Italian craftsmen.
According to one account of the museum's staff, Fred Piclet, were allowed to carry one
of the gargoyles. It was a feathered creature which stood on a skull with its wings outspread and is said to be the original representation of the Jayhawk. It was taken down in 1962 to make way for a new addition.
The names of six men who have made outstanding contributions to science—Huxley, Darwin, Audubon, Cope, Agassiz, and Grey—were printed on the walls of the museum and, until recently, were covered by vines.
Audubon and Grey's names were covered up to the museum when it completed in 1925.
"It must be covered providence that the vines never covered Darwin's name," Alfred E. Johnson, curator of the museum, said recently.
The building is a national historic landmark.
KU banners and embloms covered the museum's uncompleted interior in 1902 for the inauguration of Chancellor Frank Strong and the evening dinner that followed. In 1909 Dyche was granted leave from the University to become state fish and game manager, and next little time in L.A. during the next few years, and Charles D. Bunker assumed much of the responsibility for the collections of recent vertebrates in the museum.
Bunker, a self-taught naturalist, apparently had an extraordinary ability to motivate his students. "Bunker's boys," as his students have come to be called, included Alexander Whetmore, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution; Remington Hibbard, professor of history at National Museum; William Henry Burt, a mammalologist at the University of California at Berkeley; and Claude Hibbard, a famous paleontologist.
In about 1914 Bunker discovered the dermestid method of cleaning skeletons. The method, now universally used, took its name from the brownish-gray dermestid beetle that feeds on the flesh of decaying plant tissues and was simply placed in a sealed container with the beetles after its skin or feathers have been removed. An active colony can completely strip a medium-sized bird in two days without damaging delicate bone structure. In 1938 the Bunker discovered, skeletons had to be boiled and scraped and were frequently damaged.
When Dyche died in 1915 of heart disease, rather than from complications of a gila monster bite as was at first suspected, the museum was named Dyche Hall.
Dyche went on 23 expeditions during his years at KU and collected 35 antelopes, 14 baffaluses, 10 grizzly and polar bears, 14 musk oxen, 17 penguins, 16 sealers, 48 elk, 40 moose, 10 lynxes, 10 warters, 7
caribou and 5 Greenland reindeer for the museum
Dyche justified collecting the large mammals, some of which were nearing extinction, by the very fact that they were endangered species. He thought that rare animals should be displayed in museums and used for research.
On November 30, 1932, the museum was closed by the Board of Regents after the state fire marshall declared it unsafe. The inside of the building was torn out and replaced in 1938, but its interior wasn't completed until June 6, 1941.
During this restoration period, the museum's collections were placed in storage around the campus, and specimens rapidly deteriorated. Rats shredded the labels on the bones stored under the stadium. Dust and moisture damaged other
Dyche Hall
specimens. Responding to these losses, Governor Walter A. Huxman signed a bill allocating $55,000 in emergency funds to rebuild the inside of the museum.
When Dyche was opened again in 1941, the museum's main attraction was a landscape panorama of the largest single group of mounted animals on display in the world. More than half of the 200 mammals in the display were the same ones that Dyche had acquired years earlier. In another, again, they were placed in a realistic reproduction of their natural surroundings.
It took S. T. Dickenson, the museum's staff artist and a one-time davileville set painter, 13 months to paint the 500-foot backdroom.
During the summer of 1942, the School of
Fine Art's painting and drawing department, located in Strong Hall, was moved to the third floor of the museum. The move was made when the University admitted 500 students in 1967. It was insisted that housing and classes be centralized and leased the west wing and entire top floor of Strong Hall, the only building large enough and safe enough for military barracks. The art department was moved in by the faculty and classrooms which followed.
According to Karsan records, a pair of great horned owls nested under the northeast eaves of Dyce from about 1941 to 1950. The owls and their young were closely related to other owls in the ethnology department, and several scientific papers were written about the owls.
A fire in the tower of Dyche Hall in December 1949 destroyed $3,500 worth of small animal skeletons and specimen boxes. Firemen said that during the fire, members of the museum staff were in the smoke-filled tower room pleading with the museum to donate valuable skeletons and specimens. The fire was quickly controlled.
Under the direction of E. R. Hall in the 1950's, the panorama underwent additional modification. A 15 by 20 foot tropical display, requiring thousands of handmade leaves and hundreds of flowers, stems and foliage, to create a natural Vera Cruz, Mexico, were made to collect specimens, and research data and to take photographs for the exhibit.
When the tropical exhibit was completed, the older part of the panorama looked tacky by comparison and had to be improved. he animals were arranged in a sequence of eight panels on the northern side and an acrylic board on the northern tip of Alaska to a tropical life zone in Central America. Dickenson repainted the background of the panorama and George Young modernized the foreground. The sod for the great plains sections was dug in 1952 and then covered with a curator of the museum, painted cranes and weese on the ceiling of the panorama.
"I climbed up there like Michelangelo," Mengel said. "The ceiling is a dome and I had to distort everything to make it come out right."
Work on the panoorama continues. Dusting the animals and touch-up painting are part of routine maintenance. Smaller animals in the exhibit are occasionally replaced.
The museum has five major divisions: birds, mammals, fossils, and amphibians.
The division of paleontology is on the second floor of Dyche, herpetology and ichthyology are on the fourth floor, and the mammals and mammalogy are on the seventh floor.
Describing what the public sees as only the tip of a super iceberg, Meng said that
less than one tenth of one per cent of the museum's collection is on display.
The museum contains more than 4.5 million specimens.
Excluding the fossils, he said, the skin and skeletal collections and collections preserved with alcohol must be kept away from light, moisture, dust and insects.
Mengel said that the bird skin and skeletal specimens in the museum number over 10,000.
"The whole idea of building a skeletal collection started here," Mengel said. "We have the second most prominent bird skeletal collection in the world. We are the only museum in the world that has co-organized fossil bird remains with skeletal remains."
As visitors enter the museum on the floor, they face the panorama of North America.
The fossilized remains of amphibians.
reptiles, birds and mammals are displayed on the third floor.
Seventeen skull casts showing the upper jaw of a human, sculptured dioramaes of Java man, Peking man, Naanderthal man and Cro-Magnon man in their natural habitats are also on the skeleton.
An American Indian exhibit and the horse Comanche, the sole survivor found on the battlefield by the relief troops after Custer's last stand, are also on the fifth floor.
A large fur collection, dating back to Danee, is kept in cold storage on the seventh floor.
Collections of live snakes, stuffed birds and a live honeybee hive are on the sixth floor. On rare occasions visitors can observe lakes lay their eggs or bear liver young.
Between 75,000 and 100,000 visitors come to the museum each year.
Satellites could help monitor water quality
By BRAD JONES Kansan Staff Reporter
Satellites could help determine the quality of water in Kansas reservoirs, Harold Yarger, a research associate at the Geological Survey, said Friday.
Yarger, in conjunction with the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) for photogrammetry experiments determined that other photography orbiting satellites could help scientists determine the turbidity and silt content of water samples. By analyzing water summers from the reservoirs
NASA granted the use of two satellites: Skylab, which was used in the recent Apollo-Soyuz space mission, and the Earth Resources Technical Satellite (ERTS).
Although Skylab does not function unless occupied by astronauts, STM transmits information to Skylab.
Varger said that the density of solids in the water was measured by the strength of the strain.
For Yarger's experiment, the satellites traveled over eastern Kansas and were programmed to activate special sensors which would track their movement below onto special computer tape
The tapes were later fed into a video camera computer which arranged the data
The brighter the reflection is, the clearer
the water will be underneath the surface, he
looks better.
From the negatives, Yarger said, the waters depths of slits and rocks could be deeper, could be deeper.
"Although a great deal of information can be gathered by studying the black and white negatives," he said, "we are able to analyze the tapes in special computers for a better understanding of what the pictures are supposed to tell us."
ERTS is equipped with a multispectral scanner (MSS) which takes pictures in four different wavelengths covering 100 square miles of land. The Skylab takes photographs in 10 narrower wavelength bands of a somewhat larger area.
I rarger than that because of the narrower wavelength detectors in Skype, it was more efficient.
Although it has not been determined how the information could be used in a practical sense, Yarger said, the immediate purpose of the information for Kansans would be to help fish hatcheries decide when the water in spawning ponds contain too much silk and oil. If too much silk or oil was said, can generate disease and cause retarded growth in fish.
Yarger said that the new process would aid in the management of fresh water resources by serving as an early warning system in controlling the formation of silt.
NASA became interested in the project to see whether inland water supplies could be monitored and to establish the practical usefulness of satellites to the public.
The General Electric Corporation, which is in the forefront of development equip ment to analyze the computer tapes and photographs, is also involved in monitoring the Cheapeake Bay and Potomac River, Yarger said.
Movie explores mental poverty
By IAN KENNETH LOUDEN
The late Italian director Vittorio De Sica knew much about pain and poverty. De Sica, who died early this year, also knew much about love and beauty. In his book *Love and Beauty* (1978) the *Bicycle Thief*, "Shoeshine", "Two Women" and "The Garden of the Finiz
Physical pain can be a blessing for the mental poverty of his environment.
Continis." De Sica showed the good and bad sides of it in Italy.
In his final film, "A Brief Vacation," De
his once again reveals much about his
ship.
Clara, played by Florinda Bolkan,
discover that she has tuberculosis and
Clara, the main character in "A Brief Vacation," was born in the poor southern part of Atlanta and grew up live in industrial Milan with her crippled insensitive Italian lover, lazy housemate and new child.
must leave her factory job and her family.
She is happy to leave both.
She goes to a resort in the Alps to take a cure. Although Clara, who is poor, must depend upon Italy's national health plan, the women she befriends are very rich.
But wealth is only one contrast. Clara loves the resort because it is the first time in her life she has had time to think and evaluate herself. She is happy to endure the pain of a lung aliment just to get away from the mental poverty of her limited environment. The rich women, however, want to return to their carefree lives.
Clara is recognized as being strong. "She looks so human," one woman says.
Her new friends depend upon her. One, a singer who strongly resembles the late Jane Craig, has been married to die. She tells Clara to appreciate life while she can. Another friend, a rich model, gives expensive clothes to Clara and depends on her for intermittent交介 with her rich married boyfriend.
Clara even experiences a much too brief affair. She says that for the first time in her life she had to deal with cancer.
Yet, Clara must return home. Her mother-in-law wants her factory pay check. Her husband lusts after her body. And her children need her love. She is a newly
awakened round peg returning to a stifling societal square hole.
Like most of De Sica's films, "A Brief Vacation", is romantic and realistic. It is the realism, however, that marks the ending and thus dominates the film.
The ending of "A Brief Vacation" seems cruel, unfair. Clara has realized her potential. She isn't any longer the quiet stolid Calabrian who has always been dominated by her family. She is a feeling, intelligent woman with a strength that was envied by other women in the clinic. But if she returns to return home is a curse, not a blessing.
While on a bus *Clara* takes one last dreamy look at the resort clinic where she spent her brief vacation. The viewer is angry, and a question is raised. Which is worse? To live in mental poverty all one's life and never know happiness or to exert control over it, you return to poverty—a poverty that is mental as well as physical?
As the movie ends, Clara loses sight of the clinic. She leaves behind a man's love, the nurse. So much is missing in the future. The nurse is solemnly and alone. The film grows dark. So does Clara's future.
But only Clara can answer that question.
Only Claria will know because she must
know what is being said.
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