734 CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 



An opportunity to study and explore a country so little 

 and so erroneously known as our Baja California does 

 not frequently ojEfer itself. Such an opportunity is in 

 our days a very rare one, so rare indeed that it is safe 

 to say that this is one of the very few left, and scien- 

 tifically almost any other country was within a few years 

 better known than this peninsula at our very doors. In- 

 deed when the Academy began these explorations, there 

 remained no other country within our reach which was 

 less known, more misjudged, less understood, and about 

 which more conjectures were made and less real facts 

 known. 



We could not possibly have chosen a better field, none 

 richer, none less worked, none more interesting, none so 

 inexhaustive, even if it had been in the Academy's power 

 to visit more distant lands. The Academy could have 

 had no other country entirely for itself. 



The great advantage of a thorough exploration of the 

 Cape Region is evident when we remember that the value 

 of every scientific collection consists in the completeness 

 of series of the species from a certain limited territory, 

 and not in the possession of scattered species or incom- 

 plete series from widely separate localities, no matter how 

 attractive and otherwise interesting these specimens might 

 be. 



To the Academy of Sciences then belongs the honor 

 to have grasped this opportunity at a time when the scien- 

 tific bodies and academies of the world are vieing with 

 each other to be the first ones in new fields of explora- 

 tions and scientific researches. Our terra incognita of 

 Baja California and Mexico has been a most fruitful one. 

 Large collections have been made and while their value 

 may not always be money value, it is safe to say that even 

 in this respect no other outlay in this direction could pos- 

 sibly have brought more satisfactory results. 



