NOVEMBEE 13, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



703 



agriculture. He was honored by election to the 

 presidency of the Eoyal Society in 1906. 



Dr. Saunders possessed a pleasing personal- 

 ity and was much beloved by those who knew 

 him well. He was kind and considerate to all 

 and ever ready to listen and help those who 

 came to him for guidance and assistance. He 

 was a good administrator, consistent, quiet and 

 firm, with an excellent judgment of men and 

 affairs, and these qualities no doubt contrib- 

 uted largely to his success as chief officer of 

 the Experimental Farms. He never exagger- 

 ated to force home a truth, no matter how im- 

 portant it was, but contented himself in all 

 his writings with a plain statement of the 

 facts as observed and of the deductions that 

 might safely be drawn therefrom. Anything 

 of the spectacular or sensational, for the pur- 

 pose of publicity or advertisement, were par- 

 ticularly abhorrent to him. 



The name of Dr. Saunders is honorably and 

 inseparably identified with the establishment 

 and work of the Dominion Experimental 

 Farms. To this end he labored long and 

 earnestly and, as is well known, successfully. 

 Canada gladly and gratefully acknowledges 

 the benefits which those services have bestowed 

 upon her agriculture. 



Frank T. Shutt 



THE MUSEUM OF VEBTEBEATE ZOOLOGY 

 OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 

 Among the research museums of America is 

 one which in view of the brief period of its 

 existence and the relatively small fund avail- 

 able for its maintenance has made such phe- 

 nomenal growth and published such important 

 results that it deserves the consideration and 

 respect of all American naturalists. I refer to 

 the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology of the Uni- 

 versity of California. This institution is only 

 six years old, having been established in 1908 

 through the liberality and public spirit of Miss 

 Annie M. Alexander. For years previously 

 Miss Alexander had been engaged in amass- 

 ing collections of West Coast mammals, and 

 had conducted important expeditions reaching 

 northward far into Alaska. There being at 

 the time no museum on the Pacific coast with 



which she could cooperate in building up the 

 splendid research collections she had in view, 

 she sought and obtained the cooperation of the 

 State University at Berkeley. During the first 

 year a temporary building was erected, the 

 cost of which was shared equally by the uni- 

 versity and Miss Alexander. 



Modern work in systematic zoology has 

 demonstrated over and over again the futility 

 of attempting critical studies of the relations 

 and variations of species, or of the problems 

 of their distribution, without the illuminating 

 aid of large series of specimens from many 

 localities. Keenly alive to this need. Miss 

 Alexander, by her own efforts and those of her 

 assistants in the field, has already brought to- 

 gether the largest collections ever made of 

 West Coast terrestrial vertebrates — collections 

 sure to be of inestimable and increasing value 

 as time goes on. Her field explorations have 

 extended from the deserts and mountains of 

 southern California northward and westward 

 to Prince William Sound in Alaska. Among 

 the areas already worked in detail are the great 

 interior valley of California, the Colorado 

 Desert and other deserts and mountains of 

 southern California, Owens Valley, the Mt. 

 Whitney region, the Trinity Mountains in 

 northern California, Humboldt Bay on the 

 northwest coast, the Modoc and Goose Lake 

 region of northeast California, certain moun- 

 tains and deserts in northern Nevada, Van- 

 couver Island and other parts of British Co- 

 lumbia, and the Sitkan and Prince William 

 Sound regions in Alaska. 



The magnitude of the collections — consist- 

 ing mainly of birds, mammals, reptiles and 

 batrachians — is surprising in view of the rela- 

 tively brief period covered by the field work, 

 the museum already containing more than 

 21,000 mammals, about 25,000 birds, more than 

 1,300 sets of birds' eggs, and upwards of 5,500 

 reptiles and batrachians. 



Based on these rich collections, the univer- 

 sity has issued a series of highly important 

 faunal and systematic papers, illustrated by 

 plates, text-figures and maps, some treating of 

 the faunas of special areas, others of the spe- 

 cies of particular groups. In nearly all cases 



