Transcribing the field notes of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology

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.