Photoplay (Jan - Jun 1919)

Photoplay Magazine 42 stretched wide .to their utmost tensity. The pig having been killed by constriction, the right upper jaw moves outwards and away to encompass one end of the carcass, next the left upper jaw encloses the left side of the body, next the right and left lower jaws move forward upon the prey and pull in the lower part of it, until the pig is all in and gulped down by a tremendous series of slow swallows. The process of digestion takes from eight to ten days. In this snake-incinerator, the entire pig is reduced to nothingness — hide, hair, teeth, tail, squeal and all. I've had dentist friends of mine disbelieve my statement that snakes can digest teeth. For proof, I've let them put human teeth into the body of a rodent that was subsequently swallowed by one of my pet snakes; then the animal has been kept continually under observation, and it has been shown absolutely that no traces of the teeth anywhere remained. "Of equal interest with the land reptilians are the pictures of submarine monsters I obtained from Italy some little while ago. Pictures of devil-fish, I grieve to say, are often faked, but these were the real thing. The Italian submarine pictures were made in specially devised deep-watertanks at Naples and near Tahiti and Samoa. Actual colors of the deep were photographed by polychrome, and we reproduced them here in laboratory though the laboratory experts kindly assured us that no such greens, blues and pinks could possibly have been found at the bottom of the sea! I edited and titled the pictures and added to them some combats of my own between giant turtles and sea-monsters, but ninety per cent of the pictures were Italian and to Italian scientists the credit is due for this amazing record of the sea. "Now I am engaged in revealing the mysteries of Nature in the constructive efforts of its creatures. I may mention here the nests, hives and hills of the birds, bees and ants; the burrow of the trap-door spider which digs its home in the sand, encloses it in silk 'wallpaper,' and constructs at the top a weather-proof, hinged trap-door which is indistinguishable from the surface of the desert; the spider of the Tornado Zone which reinforces its tree nest with stout silk-and-paste ligaments at the leaf stem and the branch trunk; the prairie dogs, so common in the West, as skillful on the land as the beavers in the water, kicking the upturned soil into the hillocks with mathematical exactitude and tamping :t down with their heads, providing a rain-proof home which sudden storms cannot demolish. I have been working recently on subjects such as these, my aim being to show the truly creative intelligence that animates Nature." Ditmars' studio-laboratory at Scarsdale (N. Y.), is a magic workshop wherein the scientist performs his cunningest feats and makes his most delicate experiments. He is a modern Merlin of props, scenery and lights, an enchanter who gets much out of little, like the mediaeval philosopher extracting gold from lead. Props? You would laugh to see them. Red, white, pink and neutral gray sands; sticks and bark from trees of every country in the world; jars of particolored shells ami marine specimens from the Seven Seas; trays of bones, ancient and modern; eggs assorted and as the produce men say "extra fine;" mosses, plants, the paraphernalia of tropic or temperate vegetation. For every little animal that he pictures there, Ditmars makes a habitat identical with its natural conditions. He constructs the prairie burrows, he builds the rattlesnake den. Inputs the insect on the bough, the sea-devil in the tank, the crustacean among the marine rocks and sands, and then he lights, directs, turns the motion picture crank, and even projects the negative right there. The building, a substantial structure, is 100 feet long by thirty-five feet in width. It contains all the appliances of the skeptics and think I have succeeded." Did You Know — That the only song the katydid sings is one of courtship, and that sung only by the male; that keen rivalry often occurs for the hand of some fair katydid, and that the he-katydid who sings the prettiest is the chosen suitor? — That the lizard catches flies by darting out his tongue in the shape of an umbrella? — That the trap-door spider has a weatherproof, hinged door to his home, indistinguishable from the surface of the earth? — That a python can swallow a pig four times its own size — and still have room for dessert; that this same snake is alleged to be able to digest human teeth? — That in the ocean there are fish able to instantly change their color to that of their surroundings — "chameleons of the sea"? up-to-date movie factory, together with many special 'wrinkles." The extreme elaboration, complexity and yet space-economy of the lighting system would interest an expert, but it would be Greek to most of us. Suffice it to say that the special difficulties are overcome by special means. For instance, the glare from the electric arcs bothers the little animal folk even more than it does humans and prevents their '"acting," but Ditmars solves the problem simply by placing a ground glass screen in front of the arc, thus illuminating the scene and the animals by a soft, diffused light. He watches very carefully the shadows, corners and under sides of the picture, bunch lights being used in addition to the big arcs to light these up. For occasional daylight work, the large top of the studio can be lifted off. Raymond L. Ditmars is a city boy with a love of animals strongly developed by park wanderings and by some youthful experiences as a lad-of-all-work in the menagerie tent of a big circus. His parents used to live in a Harlem apartment house over against what was then the northern wilderness of Central Park. The boy knew every nook and cranny of the wildwood. and its creatures. He caught his fir>t snakes on the rocky ledge where now the steep steps go down from Columbus avenue to the Park Circle. Bringing home the snakes in his pocket, he encountered the parental wrath which was only partly appeased when a neighboring taxidermist assured the family that the quarry were nonpoisonous grass snakes of a harmless variety. He was finally allowed to keep the snakes and to add to their number, amassing a collection of several score which he attended to and photographed religiously. At fourteen he got a job in the American Museum of Natural History. For seven years he worked there, being finally promoted Assistant Curator of Insects. Then he went into newspaper work, writing animal stories, for the New York Times, and filled pages with the astonishing facts about the wild creatures to be found in the parks and in the out-of-the-way corners of New York. Then, one day. 'no hied to The Bronx to interview Director Hornaday of the newly started Zoological Park. He found his future chief in a hut of the wilderness and started in. After obtaining all the journalistic facts about the new project, he said: "I've a collection of three hundred snakes on an upper floor of my home which I'd like you to look at !" "Three hundred snakes!" said the Director, astonished. "Boy. where did you get them?" "Collected them." said Ditmars briefly. Director Hornaday came to see the collection, and young Ditmars promptly offered them to the New York Zoological Park. "Yes, we are pleased to accept them as the nucleus of New York's Reptile Collection, but — " he laid a friendly hand on the lad's shoulder, "on one condition, when they go to the Park, you go with them!" And that's how Raymond L. Ditmars became a member of the New York Zoological Staff just twenty years ago. In that decade of uninterrupted labor he has received academic degrees from many learned bodies in various lands, has written, illustrated and published two enormous tomes on "The Reptiles of North America" and "The Reptiles of the World." under Mr. Hornaday's supervision has augmented the mammals and reptiles of the park to the largest collections of their kinds in the world and has found time in the last live years to study the animals moving-pictorially. His series of fifty-three subjects constitute the first definite transference of a natural science from a literary and a "still"-illustrated form to a moving picture form. "Once," said Mr. Ditmars. after a lecture, "a gentleman told me that he couldn't believe that dormouse and python stuff without seeing it. I took up motion pictures to silence such