Transcribing the field notes of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology

Author: Grinnell - 1925 Location: San Diego, California Date: March 3, 1925 Page Number: 2451

[last spec. #6258]

2 p.m., at the Natural History Museum, in Balboa Park. Here in the interests of launching an MVZ "expedition" into Lower California. Left Berkeley on "Owl" Friday night (Feb. 27). Spent Saturday at the Los Angeles Museum, Exposition Park, and Saturday night with Lee Chambers. Came to San Diego, Sunday forenoon; and since then have been meeting various people; and especially, waiting to see Jose Maria Gallegos, the Mexican official who is supposed to be mainly influential in the granting of permits for an entry into Lower California. But, Sr. Gallegos hasn't returned to the Hotel Brewster (his headquarters here) from a trip he and Laurence Huey undertook two weeks ago down to the vicinity of San Quentin. They went under the auspices of the Museum here to collect some mammals and were supposed to be be back Sunday. But delays on the order of the day, seemingly, in this life-zone! Also it is said that a fellow-Mexican is on Gallegos trail with a knife, by reason of an alleged unpaid debt of $800.00 - settled by a Mexican judge, but not settled in the eyes of the creditor! So - I wait, and MVZ party (Borell in Berkeley and Lamb in Los Angeles) waits. Poco tiempo! I have met several fine people here: Mr. L. M. Klauber, an engineer, and his friend H. R. Peckham, both informative and ready to help

Collector: Grinnell-1925 Location: San Diego Date: March 4, 1925 Page Number: 2457 (8) (?)

I had nearly two hours' visit with Senor Jose Maria Gallegos, really the man I came down to see. He proved affable to a degree; promised to do everything in his power for the University party, and if words count he is an ally. However, he was far more eager to tell me, in his rather broken English, about his own accomplishments and aims than to learn anything from me. He had a typed report of his own to the Mexican headquarters at Mexico City, from which he read and explained long excerpts. It covered his various local trips with Huey, the Calif. Acad. Sci. people and others - narrative with records of some of the birds and mammals taken - illustrated profusely with photos, in many of which he himself appeared conspicuously! I noted many statements and forms of expression obviously taken from U.S. reports, translated. He is thus imitative, as also is the "museum" work he is undertaking at Tijuana, Mexicale and Juarez. At these points the Mexican government, thru him, is establishing little museums of natural history, for "education of the children and amusement of the tourists." On the whole, tho childishly self-important, I liked Gallegos; he is gentlemanly anyway, which some Americans are not! Returned to Los Angeles in P.M.; there via "Owl" to Berkeley.

Collector: Grinnell - 1925 Location: San Diego Date: November 1, 1925 Page Number: 2614

This morning, 9-10, I called in Mr. + Mrs. Frank Stephens at their old home, now in the heart of modern residence district, 3746 Park Blvd. I found Mr. Stephens (now 76 he told me) quite vigorous, of both mind and body, and I had a very pleasant visit with him. Among items of news was the death, of typhoid down in Mexico somewhere, a month or so ago, of Jose Maria Gallegos, who was the Mexican museum representative at Tijuana. No successor has as yet been appointed. One thing of interest Stephens showed me was a 4-foot section of a young pine trunk from portions of which the bark had been gnawed "by Porcupines". This sample Mr. Stephens got, himself, in July, 1923, one-fourth mile above the hotels at Bluff Lake, San Bernardino Mountains, in a grove of young pines many of them showing similar "sign". I examined the section (4 inches in diameter at one end, 2 1/4 inches at the other) closely, but could see none of the characteristic lower-incisor marks on either the bared wood or the adjacent bark; so I doubt it's being Porcupine work, tho Mr. Stephens is sure it is, and he very much resented my intimation otherwise. Wright M. Pierce knows more about this "evidence"; no actual specimen of Porcupine has ever been forthcoming from the San Bernardino, altho rumors of their presence there keep bobbing up.