what Smithson did for America, Lick hoped to accomplish for California. The present paper is not intended as a historical sketch, but to present the Academy of to-day, the result of years of struggle, and to suggest to Californians that they stand by this great monument to science, and give it the substantial aid it deserves in bequests and donations.

The ultimate result of the gift of Mr. Lick was to give the Academy of Sciences the magnificent building on Market street-a home that gives ample accommodation to the various specimens, and at the same time produces a large and ever increasing rev

offices, while the museum is in the rear, reached by a fine entrance and hall in the center of the building, and by a richly designed staircase of California marble, a work of art in itself.

The rooms upon the ground floor are devoted to a well-equipped lectureroom, where the meetings of the Academy are held, and where science is popularized for the benefit of the people by means of lectures illustrated by the stereopticon and delivered by distinguished scientists. On this floor is a room devoted to the woods of California and the Pacific Coast, which will be a revelation to the visitor, showing the economic value of our

restoration from the hair and skeleton found some years ago in the ice beds of Northern Russia, and makes a most imposing show. About it are the tusks, skull and bones of other extinct elephants, as the mastodon of several species, some of which had three and four tusks; the dinotherium, which had two tusks in the lower jaw, turned down, all suggestive of the wonders of the proboscidea, of which the Asiatic and African elephants are the only living representatives. The Academy is rich in fine casts and paleontological specimens ; a fine cast of the megatherium stands behind the mamVol. III-16

beneath the giant is placed a modern sloth not over a foot in length. Here is the shell of the greatest turtle that ever lived. When it was discovered in India some years ago, it is said that several men could crawl into it and use it as a hut. The animal was in all about twenty feet long.

Equally remarkable is the glyptodon, a fine cast of which stands near at hand, an animal once common in South America, encased in a remarkable armor like that of the armadillo of to-day. In a case handsomely exhibited are numbers of striking animals of a past age. Representing the

cephalopods or cuttle-fishes is a long, columnar object, the orthoceros Titan, which once formed a part of a gigantic squid-like creature that might have been thirty or fifty feet long, and whose weight must have been many tons. Gigantic shells as large as cartwheels, monster sea lizards, whale-like creatures with long necks and tails, others that were veritable seaserpents, are represented here. Among the fossil birds is the cast of a huge creature, the moa, some of which were twelve or more feet in height, and lived within a few hundred years in New Zealand, and were hunted by the natives of the islands. The academy also has casts of the bones of the "Dodo." the giant pigeon that became extinct within the memory of man, and of the egg of a giant bird from Madagascar, and many

more too numerous to mention.

The academy has a comprehensive paleontological collection, em

bracing charts, casts, fossils, pictures and relief maps, the specimens numbering over fifteen thousand, and containing a number of rare and valuable type specimens, all included in the CrockerStanford collection, a gift to the society. On this floor is the collection of mammals, a gift of Mrs. E. B. Crocker of Sacramento, which attracts attention and contains prepared specimens of a number of rare animals, including Ward's famous orang-outang. various parts of the whale are all here, from the whale bone to the foetus. The mammalial fauna of the world is well represented, from the curious duck-bill that lays eggs like a reptile,

The

yet suckles its young, to the elephant and other forms.

The mammals are in charge of Mr. Walter E. Bryant, who has held the curatorship. since 1887, when the

The Megatherium.

Some idea

department was founded. of the growth of the various departments may be obtained from the fact that in 1887 this one embraced one hundred mammals mounted for exhibition purposes and six for study, while to-day specimens run up into the thousands, the study series being particularly valuable, and arranged so that they can be used by the student for comparison. for comparison. The aim of the curator has been to establish an extensive working series of Pacific Coast mammals, particularly those of California, and as rapidly as possible add those of North America at large and foreign. lands. The study collections are kept