DR. THEODORE KAZIMIROFF a New York City dentist, is often called by his friends "the amateur archaeologist of Broadway." To officials of the Heye Museum of the American Indian he is known as one of the outstanding lay authorities on the Algonquin and Iroquois tribes. During the past 34 years Dr. Kazimiroff, now 39, has found more than 45,000 Indian artifacts, nearly all of them within the city limits of New York. He has also taken degrees at Manhattan College and New York University, married, fathered an 11-year-old colleague named Ted, Jr., attracted professional recognition for amateur work in the fields of botany, mineralogy, geology and zoology, and served as official historian of the Borough of the Bronx. His patients sometimes have to wait quite a while for appointments.

Dr. Kazimiroff has carefully catalogued his Indian collection and kept a running account that relates it scientifically to the prehistory of the American Indian. Some day he plans to present the results of all this work to the Heye Museum. Judging by the rate at which the collection is growing, the Museum may be pressed for room in which to house it unless Dr. Kazimiroff makes his presentation soon. This summer he hopes to reap several hundred new items from three promising sites on Manhattan Island where building construction is scheduled to get under way. "I expect to keep on digging for another 30 years at least," he says. "We have barely scratched the surface. We have a long way to go before we can claim we know very much about the way the Indian lived prior to the coming of the paleface."

Dr. Kazimiroff made his start in archaeology during the summer of 1919. His father was a nature student and the family spent a lot of time in New York City parks. On one of these nature walks young Ted's attention was caught by a sharp bit of flint in the shape of a triangle-a typical Iroquois arrow point. As Ted bent over to pick it up, the senior Kazimiroff gave his son the first rule of the good archaeologist: Never disturb an artifact until you have carefully noted its location and surroundings. "It was not many years before I learned the value of that rule from firsthand experience," he says. "Good records pay off. Not only do they lead you to other finds, but like the individual pieces of a growing jigsaw puzzle, each specimen helps to spell out the story- in my case the story of what men and women were doing on Broadway centuries before skyscrapers displaced the forests. It is in these stories that I find the fascination of amateur archaeology. Unless an object can be related to the lives of the people who made and used it, you have added nothing to your collection but a valueless souvenir.

"Archaeology has another strong appeal, too. Like psychoanalysis and other disciplines that center on people, archaeology is both an art and a science. Hence its study never becomes routine or dull. I sometimes get the discouraging notion that the perfect archaeologist would have to learn everything about everything, plus acquiring all the tricks of a master diplomat. Around New York City, at least, a gift for diplomacy and the ability to act fast are almost as vital to an amateur archaeologist's success as his trowel and notebook.

"An experience involving one of my most important finds illustrates this point. Back in 1938 when preparations were under way for the New York World's Fair, a group of promoters decided to build a trailer parking lot in the Ferris Point section of the Bronx, near the north end of the Bronx-Whitestone Bridge. Their plans called for excavating a large site adjoining residences in the vicinity. While driving out that way early one afternoon I noticed that the soil had been cut from three sides of a house so that it was left standing on a pillar of earth about six feet high. What attracted me chiefly was a burned patch in the earth midway up one face of the pillar-a patch with clean, dark edges about 18 inches across. That, I said to myself, must be the remains of an Indian fire pit. I knew the property owner could not permit the pillar to remain exposed for long because erosion would set in. The foundation needed the support of a concrete wall. Hence if the fire pit was to be investigated it was now or never. Experience had taught me that in New York City it pays to dig first and ask for permission later.

"So I pulled my car over to the site and went to work. I had scarcely touched the burned patch before an assortment of shells and fragments of pottery began to tumble out. The nature of the material convinced me that here was the site of an Algonquin burial ground, or at least of a village that had been inhabited for a long time.

"The work had been going nicely for about half an hour when suddenly the property owner appeared from around the corner, waving his arms and demanding to know precisely what I thought I was doing to his house. It seemed that he was not at all happy about the trailer project, despite the fact that he had already collected substantial damages from the contractors. My digging was just about the last straw. I talked fast, explained who I was, where I came from, the importance of the find to science and wound up with a strong appeal to his better nature. Finally he drove off to his job grumbling that I'd better have that hole filled in by the time he returned.

"I went on digging, and the farther I went, the more I found. When the sun went down, I hooked an extension light to the battery of my car and kept digging. It must have been about midnight when the owner returned. You should have heard him! By that time I had burrowed in so far that only my heels were showing. I scrambled out of the hole and tried to pacify him but it was no use. He telephoned the police. While he was talking I piled my notes and specimens into the car and commenced shoveling the dirt back into the hole. When I heard the approach of a siren, I lit out for home.

"Field archaeology requires the development of intuitive gifts much like those of Sherlock Holmes. One of the most important of these is 'differential perception'-the ability to glance at a stretch of terrain and single out, almost subconsciously, any object or surface feature that departs from the natural state. Perhaps you spot the thin edge of a shell protruding from a bare patch in the grass on the summit of a hill. Mollusks do not grow on hilltops, so you investigate Or you may be at the beach and see a peculiarly roughened pebble which stands out in contrast with the myriad that have been polished by the sand. You look closely and discover that it is covered with peck marks-a proof of aboriginal handiwork.

"With practice, many features of the landscape which previously escaped notice will begin to catch your attention- a slight rise or depression in the surface of a vacant lot or hillside, a half-concealed entrance to a natural cave, subtle changes in the boundary or color of the strata exposed by a cliff or the walls of an excavation. It takes only a minute to check such clues and record them in your notebook. Most of your entries, of course, will ultimately prove disappointing. But every now and then you will strike it rich. Unless the site is in danger of immediate destruction, as is frequently the case when heavy construction is in progress, you should immediately report your find to the nearest professional archaeologist.

"As Kathleen Kenyon points out in her excellent book Beginning in Archaeology, all excavation is destruction, and therefore no inexperienced person should undertake it on his own. The best way to acquire experience is under the direction of a professional archaeologist. Most professionals welcome the assistance a serious amateur can contribute during excavations, particularly if the amateur discovered the site in the first place. You can always count on the professional to give you technical advice by telephone when a site is about to be destroyed and you have little time in which to work. Moreover, he will help you classify and interpret your specimens and will recommend the best methods of cleaning and preserving them.

"Archaeology leads into nearly all the sciences, but especially into botany and geology. In September, 1944, for instance, I was walking down Broadway when I noticed a large Scotch elm at the corner of Broadway and 280th Street. It was a magnificent specimen with a trunk nearly five feet thick. Since the Scotch elm is not native to the U. S., I realized that this obviously aged specimen must have been planted by very early colonists. I snapped a photograph, made a note to investigate the tree's history and within a few weeks located some old maps showing the location of buildings that had been erected by the colonists in the vicinity of the tree. Then through the courtesy of the Kingsbridge Historical Society I reviewed a collection of old drawings and early photographs of the area. Finally I came across one showing an elm of the familiar outline; the branching pattern of a tree is as characteristic as the fingerprints of a person. My snapshot and the early picture of the Scotch elm matched perfectly! A little more research uncovered the full story. The tree once sheltered Coxe's Tavern, a famed resort of the Revolution's gay blades. The Tavern stood on the ancient site of the longlost Algonquin village of Shorak Apkok.

"The story of the rediscovery of the site touched off some publicity, but everyone soon dismissed it. Seven years later, on the afternoon of May 1, 1951, I received an urgent telephone call from the Reverend William A. Tieck, pastor of 3 St. Stephen's Methodist Church. 'You'd better rush over here right away,' he exclaimed. 'They're cutting your tree down!' I made a hurried excuse to two patients in the office and dashed off. The giant elm crashed to the ground just as I arrived.

"A contractor was about to commence excavating the site for a new Post Office building. Remembering Shorak Apkok, I asked the contractor to call me if his power shovel bit into anything that looked like Indian relics. Two days later he telephoned: 'We're hitting bones, and if you want to do anything about them you better get over here. I can give you only a couple of hours.' I called George Younkheere, a fellow amateur, and we met at the site. Within a short time we established the fact that 230th and Broadway mark the location of a once bustling Indian village. Near the end of our precious two hours we located the skeleton of a white man with a musket ball in his chest [see photograph at right]. Unfortunately our operations were terminated at this point. A disgruntled employee of the contractor telephoned the police that we were digging up dead people. Local ordinances forbid the removal of human remains without a special permit. We hurried home jus ahead of the cops."

Dr. Kazimiroff is strongly attracted by the so-called "banner stones" of the Indians. These curiously shaped artifacts are peculiar to North America and are found east of the Mississippi from Florida to the interior of Quebec. Generally they are made of relatively soft stone and range in shape from flattened ellipsoids to fantastic winged forms. All share a common feature: they are pierced by a finger-sized hole which extends through their long dimension. From the study of banner stones left in progressive stages of manufacture, it appears that the hole was made by feeding sand and water to a drill made of hollow reed and rotated between the palms.

Students of Indian lore used to think that the banner stones were primarily ornamental and were fitted onto a shaft and waved like a banner. But this early hypothesis is not supported by evidence, Dr. Kazimiroff says. A. C. Parker, of the University of the State of New York, pointed out that the stones might have been used as flywheels on pump drills. There are forms in the shape of a pickax which could have been used as supports for pipes or, as some insist, as knitting needles for making nets. Dr. Kazimiroff suggests that any of the stones would serve admirably as a tool for dressing and rounding the shafts of arrows.

"It is most interesting and challenging," he says, "that nearly all these strange artifacts were made either prior to or immediately following the advent of the white man in North America. Banner stones belong to the prehistory of the Indian. It would seem that either some object from Europe replaced it o the intrusion of Europeans so modified the delicately balanced culture of the Indian that his banner stone became obsolete. Some day the puzzle of these stones may be solved.

"They have already shed some light on the Indian's ways. For example, in 1932 my friend John Johnson picked up a fragment of dark green soapstone on a beach along the Sound just north of the Bronx. It seemed to be part of a banner stone, because one edge bore a section of the characteristic hole. In 1939 the two of us were walking along the same beach when John stopped suddenly and began staring over my shoulder. When you are out with John, it is easy to get the feeling that this 'differential perception' business can be carried too far; his practically verges on the supernatural. But this time instead of turning in the direction he was looking I happened to glance down at the sand between his feet, and there was the upturned end of a beautiful dark green stone. I gave him a mighty shove, stooped down and claimed it. We brushed the sand away carefully, made our notes and then lifted the stone for examination. It was the bottom half of a banner stone. Its color reminded us of the fragment Johnson had found seven years before. That night we fitted the two pieces together and they matched! We have a local rule that the fellow who finds the biggest piece of an artifact takes possession of the whole thing. So John gave his fragment to me. I now had the bottom half and one upper quarter. In 1942 Ralph Robertson, another member of our gang, was casually combing the same stretch of beach and chanced to pick up the remaining fragment, about 200 feet from the point where I had made my find. The collection of this particular artifact thus spanned 10 years and represented the work of three persons.

"Now that we had the complete stone, what did it tell us? We knew that this variety of soapstone occurs only in a relatively small region of New England. Thus its presence on a beach near the Bronx indicated trade between the Indian tribes of New England and those of New York. If all those who picked up artifacts manufactured from this and similar rocks would make accurate notes and inform others of their finds, the growing accumulation of data might one day enable archaeologists to map these ancient trade routes. Many routes, of course, have already been determined approximately by this method.

"I would give a great deal to complete the assembly of a certain banner stone in my collection. Its workmanship is the most beautiful I have ever seen. Doubtless it is of Algonquin origin, for the stone work of these quiet people was far superior to that of the warlike Iroquois. Howard Smolleck picked up the first fragment of this kind. In 1937 three of us, including Johnny Johnson, packed our sleeping bags and other gear for a weekend on Staten Island in the neighborhood known to residents as 'Indian burial ridge.' The abundance of sea food had made this seaward region a favorite site for the Algonquins for many centuries-and hence a happy hunting ground for us. By late afternoon of the final day each of us had picked up three or four arrow points, but nothing of particular interest. Then Howard, who was off by himself, spotted a yellowish bit of stone that looked like a triangular chip from the unglazed edge of a dinner plate. We decided it was doubtless part of a banner stone, but one feature puzzled us. A tiny indentation, a sawtoothlike depression, marked one corner. This set us really scouring the area. A little later Johnny found a second fragment, but it did not fit with Howard's piece nor carry the strange marking.

"In 1940 near the same location I discovered two large notched sections, and one of them fitted with Howard's fragment. We visited the site many times after that, but without luck. Then one dull, threatening day in 1942 I spent several hours there all by myself. A few sprinkles were enough to start me home. When I reached the ferry that connects Staten Island with Manhattan I learned that fog had halted traffic on the lower bay and to kill time I strayed over to the Staten Island Museum of Arts and Sciences for a chat with the curator. He was occupied with a visitor. Browsing by myself through some of the display cases, I found a chip that looked as though it belonged with our banner stone. I asked the curator for his records on the chip. Sure enough, it had been found right on our spot-half a century before. The curator insisted that I take it home with the compliments of the Museum. It proved to be the missing link that tied all our fragments together. You might call this an example of successful field work inside a museum! Two large sections of the opposite wing are still missing. We often wonder if they are buried beyond recovery in the field or, almost as bad, gathering dust among the curios of some souvenir hunter. Perhaps another half-century will turn them up. If so, we may some day crack the riddle posed by those challenging notches."

Dr. Kazimiroff recently took us on a personally conducted tour of his collection. It is largely housed in the oversized basement of his home, along with a shop fitted out for cleaning and processing specimens. One display case drew our attention. It held a row of skulls, and we could not help noticing that the teeth had been treated with special care. We asked the doctor for his professional opinion of the Indian's oral pathology.

"I can tell you this much," he said, "if folks today had teeth like theirs, I'd have to become a full-time archaeologist or starve!"

RECENTLY Ira S. Bowen, director of the Mount Wilson and Palomar Observatories, reported in the Journal of the Optical Society of America some fresh and interesting information on difficulties that were experienced in adjusting the mirror of the 200-inch telescope.

"The first of the difficult optical problems encountered in the construction of this instrument," he wrote, "arose from the great size of the 200-inch mirror, combined with the fact that it must retain its figure in all orientations and when exposed to the temperature changes of the outside air at night. Thus it can easily be shown that the flexure of a circular disk under its own weight varies directly as the fourth power of its diameter and inversely as the square of its thickness. Even if one follows the usual practice of keeping the mirror thickness a constant fraction of the diameter (normally about one eighth), the flexure increases as the square of the aperture. Likewise the problems caused by thermal distortion increase rapidly with the size of the mirror, since the time required for a mirror to come to thermal equilibrium after its surroundings have made a sudden change in temperature varies as the square of the thickness of the mirror.

"In order to attain a maximum stiffness with a minimum weight, the 200-inch mirror was cast with a ribbed structure. The over-all thickness of the structure is 24 inches, while the maximum thickness of any section is only four or five inches. This of course has the added advantage that the time of reaching thermal equilibrium is reduced by a factor of about 25 compared to a corresponding solid disk. To decrease thermal effect further, Pyrex glass was used rather than ordinary plate glass.

"In spite of these efforts, however, the 200-inch mirror is a very flexible mirror, compared to most small mirrors. Thus its flexure under its own weight is the same as that of a 60-inch mirror one seventh of an inch thick. Given the conventional three-point support, it would deflect 500 to 1,000 times the permissible amount. Obviously it was necessary to provide a very elaborate support system to eliminate distortion as the telescope moves from one position to another. For this purpose the mirror was laid out in 36 approximately equal sections, each centered about one of the 36 circles in which the ribs meet. For each of these sections a balance-type support was provided. The supports were so designed as to supply, in all orientations of the mirror, components of force, both normal and parallel to the surface of the mirror equal to the corresponding components of the gravitational pull on the section of the mirror assigned to the support. It was found necessary to design this support system to balance the gravitational forces with an accuracy of .1 to .2 per cent. In operation the mirror floats on this system of balances. Three of the balances located at 120-degree intervals in the outer row are locked in position to define the mirror.

"It is therefore obvious that for very large mirrors of this type the support system must be considered as an integral part of the optical unit. The only significant tests of the mirror are those in which the mirror is resting on its support system in the range of orientations in which it will be used in the telescope. It was therefore necessary to do the final figuring of the mirror in the dome on the mountain, on the basis of tests made under these operating conditions. This in turn required the use of a star as a source, which introduced the various complications that arise from 'seeing' conditions caused by turbulence in the atmosphere. Thus if one takes an instantaneous photograph of a knife-edge test on a large mirror using a star as a source, one sees the pattern shown here [see upper two photographs on the left]. In general, this schlieren-type pattern of the air turbulence is moving very rapidly across the field with the velocity of the upper air currents. Such a pattern therefore covers up all but the grossest knife-edge effects caused by errors in the mirror surface. If, however, instead of making visual observations or taking short exposure photographs, one uses a much fainter star so that exposures of 20 to 80 seconds are required, it is found that the turbulence pattern gives a very good representation of the mirror errors [see lower photographs above].

"The grinding and preliminary figuring of the mirror was carried out in the optical shop in Pasadena between 1986 and 1948. This work was done by Marcus Brown working under the supervision of Dr. J. A. Anderson. During this period all tests were made with the axis of the mirror in a horizontal position. The mirror was moved to Palomar Mountain in November, 1947. After nearly a year and a half of adjustment and modification of the support system the final figuring was carried out by Don Hendrix. A total of only nine hours of polishing was required for the final figuring on the mountain. The accompanying tests, however, took a total of five months. By providing for this adjustment of the support system, followed by final figuring on the mountain, we were able to avoid the difficulties that have been encountered in some large reflectors in which the performance in astronomical work was much poorer than that promised by the laboratory tests."

WITH seeming logic on their side, many writers and periodicals have recently renamed Palomar Mountain "Mount Palomar," obviously to parallel the name of Mount Wilson. The Observatory's astronomers insist on calling it Palomar Mountain. Which is correct? The answer depends upon the answer to another question. Has the outside world a right to change a long-established geographical name against the will of the local residents?

Palomar means dovecote. The name was given the mountain by the early Spanish settlers. From about 1860 to 1880 many people called it Smith Mountain, after "Long Joe" Smith, a rancher who lived on it until he was murdered by a ranch foreman infatuated with Smith's Indian wife. Between 1880 and 1900 the name Palomar regained equal currency with Smith. The Ninth Annual Report of the State Mineralogist in 1889 called it Palomar Mountain.

In 1900 the several dozen residents of the mountain top petitioned the U. S Board on Geographic Names for the restoration of the original name, and asked that the local post office be renamed from Nellie (the name of the postmistress) to Palomar Mountain or Palomar. The U. S. Board on Geographic Names, established by Congress to provide a central authority for standardizing geographic names and their spelling for official use in the Federal Government departments, approved the name Palomar and disapproved Smith. The Board's peculiarly punctuated decision read: "Palomar: mountain . . . (Not Smith.)." Following this ruling, the U. S. Geological Survey's local topographic map in the edition of 1903 designated the mountain as "Palomar Mt."

All this took place years before the Palomar Mountain Observatory was thought of. Thus the name Palomar Mountain was not given to the mountain by the Observatory. Nor has the Observatory wished to change the name even if it could. J. A. Anderson of the Observatory wrote some years ago: "We sincerely hope that Palomar Mountain will always retain its present beautiful name."

In 1945 the U. S. Post Office issued a special three-cent stamp depicting the dome of the 200-inch Hale telescope and designating it as Palomar Mountain Observatory. Clean and simple in design, this azure blue stamp, shown on the preceding page, as canceled at Palomar Mountain, Calif., has uncommon artistic merit, and is prized by philatelists for additional reasons.

Palomar Mountain is not a typical mountain peak but a rectangular fault block of crystalline rocks six miles across at the top, thrust up about 4,000 feet above the surrounding country. Its top is a rolling plateau. The Palomar Mountain post office lies near one edge of the plateau. The small and unincorporated hamlet or concentration of houses near the post office is designated as Palomar on an Army Map Service topographic map issued in 1942. The post office near the hamlet of Palomar serves about 25 families in the locality during most of the year and several times as many in summer when the tourist cabins are filled. The observatory is at the center of the plateau, three miles from the village.

Adalind S. Bailey, postmistress a Palomar Mountain, points out that "'Palomar Mountain' has dignity and character, which 'Mt Palomar' lacks, besides which Mt. Palomar is incorrect."

It has often been said that the name Palomar Mountain is irregular and eccentric because the generic word "mount" should properly precede the name of a mountain. A check of the names of the U. S. peaks of 13,500 feet elevation and over, most of which are in the Rockies and Sierras, shows that only 24 are called "Mount," while 59 are named "Mountain." Such names as Bald Mountain, Pole Creek Mountain, Rolling Mountain, Fisherman Mountain and Table Mountain would sound peculiar if they were reversed. Two famous mountains in Georgia are Kenesaw Mountain and Stone Mountain. If non-residents should call these Mt. Kenesaw and Mt. Stone the residents of Georgia might blow up higher than Everest Mountain.

There is no logic about names.

PATRICK MOORE is secretary of the part amateur, part professional British Astronomical Association's Lunar Section, of which H P. Wilkins, author of the 300-inch map of the moon, is the director. Moore, with the collaboration of Wilkins, has written a book titled A Guide to the Moon, and W. W. Norton and Company has published it ($3.95). Though it assumes no knowledge by the reader of lunar science (selenology) it proceeds well into the study of the moon's mapped detail (selenography). It contains a simple map of the moon, with a feature-by-feature description of its surface, by the use of which a selenologist may become a selenographer. Because of its more advanced chapters on the lunar atmosphere (one 10,000th as dense as that of the earth), on the origin of the craters (volcanic), on the surface changes (some of which are accepted by Moore), on life on the moon (scanty and primitive), on the other side of the moon (about like this side), and on future journeys to the moon (realistically discussed), a selenographer will find it a worthwhile addition to his library. Moore is now helping Wilkins prepare a complete description of the lunar surface based on the 300-inch map, to be published within the year.

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