ITHACA, N.Y. -- Two lectures at Cornell University, the first by noted whale biologist Roger Payne, accompanied by his wife, the actress Lisa Harrow, and the second by entomologist May Berenbaum, will be open to the public, free of charge. The lectures are part of the Cornell class, The Naturalist's Way.

o Guest lecturer Payne will speak on Nov. 18 at 4:30 p.m. in Call Alumni Auditorium on "Listening to Whales: What Humanity Can Learn." He will be assisted in the presentation by his wife, a noted actress who has appeared with the Royal Shakespeare Company in England and whose acclaimed films include "The Last Days of Chez Nous" and "Sunday." After earning a Cornell Ph.D. in biology in 1961, Payne traveled worldwide to document behavior and communication of whales. He is the author of "Among Whales" and co-author of "The Whale Watcher's Guide."

o Berenbaum, also a guest lecturer, will speak on Nov. 25 at 4 p.m. in the Biotechnology Building's first-floor seminar room on the topic "Gut Reactions: Cytochrome P450 Plant-Insect Interactions." Also a Cornell biology Ph.D. (1980), Berenbaum studies chemical communication between insects and their host plants and heads the entomology department at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is better known outside scientific circles as the originator of the Insect Fear Film Festival, an annual, semi-educational event that screens commercial motion pictures involving insects

The Naturalist's Way course was developed and offered for the first time this year by Thomas Eisner, Cornell's J. G. Schurman Professor of Chemical Ecology. In addition to dealing with the art of discovery, the course features presentations by eminent scientists from Cornell and other institutions.