From June 1905 through November 1906, a full 17 months, the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco sent out a group of eight sailor-scientists and three crew members on the schooner Academy to the Galapagos Islands to collect more and better specimens than Charles Darwin, or any other expedition, had collected in the past. While gone, the April 18, 1906 earthquake and fire destroyed their museum. The Academy collectors were unconstrained either logistically by their Ecuadorian hosts, or conceptually in terms of conservation. They believed, with some clear evidence, that time was running out and it would be a “damnable shame” if the emblematic giant land tortoises of the archipelago were to become extinct due to human and feral animal depredation. With the 78,000 specimens they collected, they brought the Galapagos back to San Francisco. Although they engaged in salvage zoology with the tortoises, they also collected, through the taxonomic specialties of the eight young collectors, a broad spectrum of the terrestrial biota. They caused no species to go extinct, with arguably one exception. With both vertebrates and invertebrates studied by taxonomists after the expedition, the biological material they collected has vindicated Charles Darwin.
