374 Letters, Extracts, and Notes. 



XVII. — Letters, Extracts, and Notes. 



We have received the following letters addressed " To the 

 Editors of ' The Ibis ' " :— 



Sirs, — I thank you for your kind inquiries in regard to 

 our new Californian Museum. The following information in 

 regard to it you are welcome to use as you please. 



About two years ago Miss Annie M. Alexander, of Oak- 

 land, agreed to give $7,000 yearly for seven years to equip 

 and maintain a " Museum of Vertebrate Zoology/' on con- 

 dition that the Regents of the University should provide a 

 suitable building. The plans for the building as finally 

 determined upon, with its equipment, called for about 

 $14,000. 



The building, now completed, stands north of California 

 Field and adjoins on the east the new fertilizer Control 

 Laboratory. Externally it is a rectangular structure one 

 hundred and five feet long by fifty feet wide, covered with 

 corrugated galvanized iron. Within, the southern portion 

 of the ground floor has been built as an exhibition hall, fifty 

 feet by seventy-five feet, open to a skylight in the roof above, 

 with a gallery on all sides twelve feet in width at the second 

 floor level. In this hall will be mounted a number of groups 

 of large Californian mammals, arranged in semblance to 

 their natural surroundings, with backgrounds painted by 

 Carlos Hittell, the San Francisco artist. The groups are 

 now- being made by Mr. John Rowley, formerly taxidermist 

 of the American Museum of Natural History in New York, 

 employed here for this purpose by the managers of the 

 Alexander fund. The groups when completed will stand 

 behind plate glass under the light, so that visitors will see 

 them from beneath the gallery. In this way the best 

 possible advantage will be taken of the lighting effects, as 

 there will be no reflection from the glass of the cases. 



In the gallery, on the second floor, are to be arranged the 

 storage-cases of research-collections, and perhaps later on a 



