Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 63.djvu/54

50 invitations were sent to people who do not generally visit the collection, and the results in attendance and interest were most gratifying. The daily attendance on the museum makes a total for the year of about 30,000, and this number steadily increases.

Several scientific societies find their home in the museum building. The botanical society has for many years held weekly meetings during the spring, summer and fall. The herbarium is in charge of the curator. The geological club uses the collections and reference books and as one result of its excursions specimens are added to the museum. By means of this club young people are given an interest in local geology and with this object in view the organization is making a careful study of the formations in and about Springfield, with excursions to interesting localities. The zoological club maintains a series of valuable meetings and has been fortunate in securing able lecturers from the many educational institutions in the near neighborhood. Meetings of all these societies are open to the public. There are now under consideration plans for the organization of holiday and vacation rambles whereby groups of children may be brought into sympathetic and intelligent relations with their surroundings and individually interested in particular phases of nature study. For mature minds regular lecture courses conducted on university extension methods are a possibility of the near future.

Another means of enlisting popular interest and promoting serious study has been found in special exhibits made from time to time. In the late winter, spring and early summer, the migrant birds that appear each month are displayed on the table and the specimens denoted by their scientific and popular names. Reliable reference books are near at hand. On the bulletin board a calendar is kept of the appearance of each species and a comparison made with the dates of previous years. These observations are printed in the annual report of the museum. The results for last spring, 1902, pointed to an unusually early arrival of many migrants. A similar arrangement is followed on the table devoted to botany, where one finds buds and blossoms as they appear. Early in the year the winter condition of certain plants is shown, and the progress in the development of leaf, buds and blossoms as they advance. On February 15, the chickweed, Stellaria lucidea, was found in bloom, and on the twenty-eighth, the skunk-cabbage, ''Symplocarpus. fætidus.'' The hood of the latter was cut so as to expose the spadix with its many flowers. Then followed in order, hepatica, bloodroot, marsh marigold, trailing arbutus and other spring flowers and tree blossoms. By the opening of June the exhibition had reached such an extent that another table was added. Twelve species of orchids were shown. One rare and beautiful flower, the Pentstemon grandiflorus, not supposed to exist east of the Mississippi, was found on the outskirts of the city.