The American Museum journal (1912) (17972082168)

Title: The American Museum journal
Identifier: americanmuseumjo12amer (find matches)
Year: 1900 (1900s)
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



Text Appearing Before Image:
Temperate Zone Clearings, alt. 5000 ft. Tropical Zone Rio Blanc a, alt. 1000 ft.
Text Appearing After Image:
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 trans- parencies, 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 gen- erous support for several years has brought into existence some of the best in the series of bird habitat groups. These benefactors of the 104