Transcribing the field notes of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology

Page Number: 10

General Index (for specific localities, see page headings)

Grinnell, J 1925

San Diego, Calif. Sections 1,3

Lassen Section, Calif. Section 2

Lower California, Mexico Section 3

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.