View of the "Riviera: Proposed Site of the Museum of Comparative Oology, 

 Looking North from the San Marcos Building 



taking. We have set out to accomplish something that has never been done before 

 We have learned that a knowledge of birds' eggs is an almost unwielded key to some 

 of the secrets of evolutionary science. We have learned that the egg is the stable ele- 

 ment, the conservative factor, in a cycle of change, which elsewhere may move very 

 rapidly. The egg is significant in every one of its physical aspects. It preserves invio- 

 late the records of the past, records which elsewhere have been overlaid or obliterated. 

 An egg is an archive of phylogenetic evidence. We propose to assemble the archives, 

 to preserve them under ideal conditions, to study them, to decipher them, and from time 

 to time to render an orderly account to the scientific world of our translations and 

 findings. 



This is a world problem and we require world material. The study of oology in 

 America has hitherto been nearly confined to North American material, only a frag- 

 ment, say a twentieth, of the whole. For this reason, in part, no great progress has 

 been made. We find that a collection gains in scientific value as by a sort of geo- 

 metrical progression when new and distant material is added to it. It is our intention, 

 therefore, to provide space and suitable housing for the nests and eggs of the birds 

 of all the world. 



To this end we have in view the erection, upon a sloping hillside overlooking 

 Santa Barbara, of a closely grouped series of buildings. These will be some twenty- 

 two in number of two unit types, one 22x40, the other 32x54 feet in dimensions. All 

 construction will be of reinforced concrete, fire-and-quake-proof, with top lighting and 

 dry heating. Besides an administration hall, a library building, a lecture hall, and 

 workrooms, space has been allowed for the housing of a representation of over 15,000 

 species of birds, reckoning for each bird a unit of space of not less than 2075 cubic 

 inches. 



The entire group of buildings proposed, with their furnishings, will cost in the 

 neighborhood of $200,000; and the completed whole, including maintenance, endow- 

 ment, and research expeditions will require well over half a million dollars. Need- 

 less to say, this is the ultimate plan, a plan whose realization may require a period of 



Page seven 



