New York State College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty
From Desi Alexander
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Film featuring various Cornell faculty with a focus on entomology, zoology, and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. Some footage looks to be circa 1925, but other clips may be from a decade later. The film was possibly created in part by Ephraim Laurence Palmer. Also a typed description of the film by Elmer S. Phillips. The film starts with a painting of Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz. Simon Henry Gage is seen teaching a student with a microscope in front of a poster about lamprey biology. Following that is footage of Anna Botsford Comstock meeting students and examining a turtle from Ephraim Laurence Palmer behind Fernow Hall. Comstock is then shown interacting with Daniel Carter Beard who is giving her a bear claw. Professors John Henry Comstock and Anna Comstock are then shown in their backyard garden with William A. Slingerland. Footage of the Stanford University Memorial Church and former President David Starr Jordan is seen with E. L. Palmer’s wife Catherine Palmer on the left. The next sequence at the house shows Jordan’s second wife Jessie Knight and Catherine Palmer. Jordan then examines a tree frog given to him by E. L. Palmer and then apparently asks what species it is. Next is seen a Louis Agassiz Fuertes painting and possibly Fuertes home shortly after he was killed. Stewart Park Fuertes bird sanctuary is seen next followed by Bailey Hall and Lua Minns Garden. The school room building that housed the Cornell Countryman then WESG and WHCU radio station is seen. Sigma Chi fraternity house Greystone is briefly pictured then Cascadilla Hall, the connection being Alice G. McCloskey, a professor of rural education, had lived in Greystone and would read to students in Cascadilla Hall on Saturday nights. The home of Liberty Hyde Bailey is next seen as well as footage of Bailey working inside and outside. The calendar seen in Bailey's office can be used to help narrow down the year the footage was recorded. Professor James George Needham is seen with students next to a pond. The Phillips description identifies the man in the third shot of this sequence to the right of Needham in profile as Ithaca High School teacher Dewitt Zein and the blond student behind Needham as Polly James from Texas. The location is believed to be in a McLean peat bog according to Phillips. What follows is a scene with Needham on the right and the women to his left is Eva Gordon who was E. L. Palmer’s assistant, and the man with a butterfly net is Frank Eugene Lutz. The next shot is of Needham with students wading through the “600” area of upper Six Mile Creek. A sequence of a student at a blackboard with Professor Herbert Hice Whetzel. Next is Professor Oskar Augustus Johannsen and his wife Harriet Alice Fuller Johannsen in their living room and back yard. Professor George Nieman Lauman is next seen in his Fernow Hall office. Professor Glenn Washington Herrick is seen with his wife Nannie Young Burke. Professor Gilbert Dennison Harris is then shown unloading a car with Mrs. Palmer and Russo Flower. Harris is then seen using a printing press in what is now the Paleontological Research Institute. The building was across the driveway from their home. Professor Albert Hazen Wright is then shown, possibly with his wife Anna Maria Allen. Phillips notes that Palmer purposely sped up the film for comedic effect here. Shots of men and women students in bathing suits working with nets in a stream follow and this is a natural history class of Professor Ephraim Palmer. Wright is possibly seen as a guest. Professor Robert Matheson is shown using a microscope. Finally Professor James Chester Bradley is pictured.
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