The Living Museum vol. 01, no. 01; May, 1939

              THE LIVING MUSEUM


Illinois State Museum        Springfield, Illinois
Located on Fifth Floor of Centennial Building
Vol. I  No. I May  1939
A monthly guide toward a keener understanding and enjoyment of the Illinois State Museum
as a living thing--a Museum whose exhibits
are planned for popular enjoyment without loss
of scientific accuracy.
When the first red flowers
bloom in Illinois, the
ruby-throated hummingbird
arrives, visits columbine,
honeysuckle, and bergamot
all summer, and goes back
to Yucatan when the last
red salvia succumbs to
frost.   He came speeding
north at the rate of 500 miles a day, swooped
like a low-zooming bullet in the trough of
the Gulf waves, and now, the only one of his
kind east of the Mississippi, he builds a
tiny, lichened nest high in a tree.
Hummingbird eggs, two to a nest, are just
the sige of a navy bean, and the young at
first are no bigger than honey-bees.
Hummers in the tropics are odd creatures.
Some have beaks longer than their bodies.
Some have sickle-beaks for probing into curved
blossoms.  Natives of Trinidad, who used the
hummer's silky feathers for royal robes, called the island "Iere", Land of the Hummingbirds
The exhibit of hummingbirds near the east
end of the Main Hall shows, better than most
books, the marvels of this queer tribe.


Thorne Deuel,   Chief   Virginia S Eifert, Editor