34 ^ CENTURY OF PROGRESS IN THE NATURAL SCIENCES 



the prevailing mores than to his own beliefs, he quipped: "Religion sits very 

 lightly on the males — they think it good for women and children." 



The notable event of 1877 was the visit of the botanists Hooker and Gray to 

 California. Traveling together they both recorded their impressions and from 

 their letters, fortunately rather fully published, we can gain some first-hand 

 knowledge of California in that era. In San Francisco they stopped at the Palace 

 Hotel, went to Mount Shasta with a pause at Chico : "the trip to Shasta involved 

 long stagecoach journey's, but they were most interesting. Returning to Sacra- 

 mento w^e went on to Truckee, where Lemmon joined us by appointment. We 

 gave one day to Mount Stanford and one to Tahoe, then took the overland train 

 as it came on at midnight." Hooker was alarmed at the destruction of the 

 sequoias in the Calaveras grove which they visited: "the doom of these noble 

 groves is sealed." Hooker also decried the wasteful lumbering practices that he 

 saw. After the trip. Gray put it succinctly when he wrote : "we should like to 

 do it all over, and more." 



There is no set of chaps so unblushing as naturalists; they are always wanting 

 something that the other party don't care a straw about. 



Thus wrote Alexander Agassiz, from Cambridge, Mass., April 9, 1879, to William 

 Sillern. Agassiz continues: 



Nevertheless, I am going to ask you to put yourself out for me and get me one 

 of the large Cuttle Fish which used to be so common in San Francisco market when 

 I was there. The room in the Museum [of Comparative Zoology at Cambridge] de- 

 voted to the beast and its nearest allies is nearly ready, and I am greatly in want of 

 a large Cuttle Fish to scare small boys and frighten women. I don't want him too 

 big, say not more than five feet when fully expanded. The Chinamen used to get them 

 very often, of all sizes, in their nets and then cut them up and sell them to unsuspect- 

 ing Frenchmen who mistook the species for frogs' legs. Now if Ralston^ has left any 

 Chinamen in San Francisco, can you speak to a promising specimen of Mongolian and 

 ask him to cling to a good specimen, if the species does not freeze to him. Then by 

 a judicious cutting open of his lower side, so as to let alcohol into his insides, put him 

 into a keg of alcohol and ship him, via Panama, to your humble servant, who will 

 receive him with open arms. 



The next time you visit the Blaschka glass flowers at Cambridge remember 

 Agassiz' cuttle fish in the next room ! 



A zoologist who was to figure prominently in the Academy's history later on 

 was Barton Warren Evermann, whose first California appointment was as super- 

 intendent of public schools at Santa Paula, in Ventura County, from 1879-1881. 

 He was interested in birds and plants at that time, especially birds. On his 

 twenty-second birthday, October 24, 1875, Barton Evermann married Meadie 

 Hawkins and she assisted him in preparing bird skins, and in collecting plants. 

 They assembled a good library but this was lost by fire in 1889 at Indiana State 

 Normal School. After his return to Indiana State University for advanced studies, 

 Evermann came under the lasting influence of David Starr Jordan, to weld a 

 friendship that was to yield rich rewards in scientific authorship. He was special 

 lecturer at Stanford in 1893-1894, and in the years between 1896 and 1902, 



4. William C. Ralston of Bank of California fame. The thousands of Chinese em- 

 ployed in the construction of the transcontinental railroad flocked to San Francisco 

 and by 1872 they constituted about half the factory workers in the city. The Chinese 

 Exclusion Act of 1880 was the result of the campaign to rid the state of Chinese 

 cheap labor. 



