MUS. COMP. ZOOL 
LIBRARY 
Published monthly by The Agassiz Association, ArcAdiA: Sound Beach, Connecticut. 
Subscription, $ 1.50 a year Single copy, 15 cents 
Entered as Second-Class Matter June 12, 1909. at Sound Beach Post Office, under Act of March 3, 1897. 
Acceptance for mailing at special rate of postage provided for in Section 1103, Act of October 3, 1917, 
authorized on June 27, 1918. 
V (flume XIII. NOVEMBER, 1920 Number 6 
Sound Beach and The Agassiz Association. 
Residents of Sound Beach for more 
than ten years readily recall the little 
primitive post office building that stood 
on a cape in the central part of the 
town at present known as “the village 
of business.” I say “cape” because it 
was on a little point of higher land that 
jutted out into a swamp or frog pond 
used in the winter by the boys and girls 
as a skating pond since the days of the 
Indians. If it had not been for The 
Agassiz Association coming to Sound 
Beach there is every reason to believe 
that that long unpurchasable lot would 
still be held for the unknown future. 
But when The Agassiz Association 
arrived trucks and carts began to move 
and the frog pond and skating pond, a 
revelry of swamp growth, beautiful in 
any situation other than the business 
center of the town, was filled in at a 
cost of more than one thousand dol- 
lars. The influence of the AA did that 
and later in the changes of the re- 
moval of ArcAdiA to its present loca- 
tion that land was made available for 
business purposes. 
But what became of that little post 
office? It did not take wings and fly 
away but was put on a truck and rolled 
off like a lunch wagon, which it re- 
sembled as it advanced down Sound 
Beach Avenue. 
Every Sound-Beachite more than 
ten years old knows of those days, a 
matter merely of remembering what 
seems to have occurred only yesterday 
in the rapid flight of time, but few 
know that The AA came to Sound 
Beach to exploit this beautifnl summer 
resort through the mails so that soon 
increased post office facilities would be 
needed and Sound Beach would begin 
to grow rapidly. 
The earliest plans called for putting 
the administration building, shown in 
the accompanying illustration, against 
that little post office and to pass maga- 
zine and first-class mail through a 
chute direct from our mailing room 
into the post office, and in quantities 
soon so enormous that the little build- 
ing could not stand the pressure and 
would necessarily be removed and a 
larger one take its place. That mail 
chute was labor saving and effective 
but it was never actually put into prac- 
tice for the simple reason that in the 
interior arrangements of the adminis- 
tration building it was found necessary 
to have the mailing department at the 
other end of the building. But that 
Copyright 1920 by The Agassiz Association, ArcAdiA: Sound Beach, Conn. 
