viii OCCASIONAL PAPERS OF THE CALIFORNIA ACADEMY OF SCIENCES 
Number 158 
meetings held on 9, 16, and 23 October 1854) after which time the signatures were dated, so that the signature 
containing pages 15-18 of papers read at Academy meetings held on 30 October, 27 November, and 4 and 11 
December bears the date 25 December 1854, and the signature that begins with page 19, which contains the 
conclusion of Ayres’ remarks presented at the 11 December session as well as presentations at meetings held 
on 18 December and 25 December, were printed in the signature of pages 19-22 that bears a signature print 
date of 1 January 1855. In due course, the number of pages per signature increased to 8 and then 16 pages and 
the signatures were often, but not always, dated. 
From 1854 through 1875, the Academy’s scientific publications increasingly met the most rigorous stan¬ 
dards of journals of the day. Indeed, longer papers were offered for publication so that in 1868, during the 
tenure of Josiah Dwight Whitney, the head of the California State Geological Survey, as Academy President, 
a new Memoirs series (Fig. A) was begun that was to include among its presentations a seminal paper titled 
“Principles of the Natural System of Volcanic Rocks,” by Baron Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen (Fig. B) 
and another lengthy paper by Leo Lesquereux, “A catalogue of the species of mosses found up to the present 
time on the Northwest Coast of the United States, and especially in California.” Also during the Whitney peri¬ 
od, the Academy chose to change its societal name from California Academy of Natural Sciences to California 
Academy of Sciences, in part to recognize the diverse scientific interests of its expanding membership and the 
breadth of papers being presented at its meetings. Thus, the Proceedings became Proceedings of the California 
Academy of Sciences, although the new name was simply substituted for the older Proceedings of the 
California Academy of Natural Sciences as the title of its flagship publication. 
In 1876, the Academy suddenly found itself facing difficult times. Curiously, in 1876, it became the ben¬ 
eficiary of a munificant gift from the estate of millionaire recluse James Lick. It was a case of too much sud¬ 
den wealth and litigation over the distribution of the estate brought by Lick’s son that tied up what monies and 
property had been bequeathed to the Academy, not to mention internal dissension over how to use the new¬ 
found wealth. Thus, the Academy could no longer pay its obligations, most especially to the firm it had 
engaged to print its Proceedings. As a result, printed copies of the Proceedings volume for 1876 were not 
released to the Academy until early 1877, when the Academy paid the printer and acquired the press run. But, 
further publication of the Proceedings was suspended, and it was not until December 1887 that it would again 
publish a volume of Proceedings, starting with series 2, volume 1 with papers by Walter Bryant on 
birds,Waldemar Lindgren on mineralogy, James Graham Cooper on pulmonate mollusca, Carl and Rosa Smith 
Eigenmann on gobiid fishes, and others. 
During this period, some Academy members became so distraught at the Academy’s failure to continue 
publication of scientific papers that two other publications series, both reasonably short-lived, were launched, 
the Bulletin of the California Academy of Sciences (1884-1887) (Figs. E, F), and a quasi-Academy publica¬ 
tion, Zoe (1890-1908), started by Harvey Willson Harkness, Townshend Brandegee, and Katharine [Curran] 
Brandegee despite the fact that the Academy’s financial difficulties had been resolved and the Academy was 
again publishing its Proceedings journal. Furthermore, in 1890, the Academy also launched a new publication 
series, the Occasional Papers, initiated (Fig. C) primarily to handle larger papers, the first to appear being Carl 
and Rosa Smith Eigenmann’s 500-plus page revision of South American Nematognathi fishes (Fig. D). 
With the opening of its grand new museum building on Market Street in downtown San Francisco, the 
Academy’s financial difficulties seemed a thing of the past. Its new commercial building, a separate structure 
co-located with the museum, was thriving, and the rapidly expanding membership, which included faculty 
members from the neighboring universities of Berkeley and Stanford, and research departments with facilities 
for staff scientists and visitors, as well as facilities for the proper housing of collections and the library, seemed 
to assure a bright future. 
Figures (right) 
A. Title page of the Memoirs of the California Academy of Sciences, vol. 1, 1868. Inset: Josiah Dwight Whitney. 
B. Title page of Ferdinand von Richthofen’s seminal paper, Principles of the Natural System of Volcanic Rocks, published in the 
Memoirs series, vol. 1, 1868. Inset: Baron Ferdinand Freiherr von Richthofen. 
C. Title page of the Occasional Papers of the California Academy of Sciences, number 1, 1890. Townshend Stith Brandegee (inset) 
served as editor of the first volume 
D. Title page of Carl and Rosa Smith Eigenmann’s Revision of the South American Nematognathi Fishes, published in the Occasional 
Papers series, no. 1, 1890. Insets: Carl Eigenmann (left); Rosa Smith Eigenmann (right). 
