our notes will be accessible 200 years from now." He added, "we are in the newest part of the new world where the population will be immense in fifty years at most." The Grinnell System (also Grinnell Method) is the procedure most often used by professional biologists and field naturalists. Survey of California fauna Grinnell's goal for the museum was to build a collection primarily of California species, with comparative examples from outside the state. Representative sample areas of California were surveyed broadly, then in detail. The first field expedition for the new museum was to the Colorado Desert in April 1908. In 1910 three months were spent in the field along the Colorado River to study the river's effect as a barrier in the distribution of desert mammals. The Mount Whitney area, called the Whitney transect, was studied in 1911, the San Jacinto Mountains in 1913 and from 1914 to 1920, a cross-section of the Sierra Nevada Mountains, including Yosemite was surveyed. The Lassen Peak area was studied by Grinnell, Joseph S. Dixon and Jean M. Linsdale from 1924 to 1929. The field surveys also provided source material for Game Birds of California (1918) and Fur-bearing Mammals of California (1937). Yosemite The 1914 Yosemite survey area consisted of in a narrow rectangle from eastern San Joaquin Valley, across the Sierra Nevada Range to the western edge of the Great Basin, including Mono Lake. There were 40 collecting stations, with one to five persons per station. The survey team collected animal specimens by shooting and setting out traps. Observations were recorded for animal behavior including their "workings", meaning nests or burrows. The survey team of eight researchers, including Grinnell and Joseph Dixon, produced 2,001 pages of field notes and 700 photographs . The research was published in 1924 as Animal Life in the Yosemite. Lassen Peak area There were 50 sites surveyed throughout the Lassen region of northern California which documented the distributions of more than 350 species of birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians, and collected more than 4,500 specimens. The results were published in the 1930 monograph Vertebrate Natural History of a Section of Northern California through the Lassen Peak Region. More than just a species checklist, this 600-page volume has behavioral observations and historic photographs. For many areas in the transect, the Lassen survey remains the most comprehensive vertebrate inventory yet conducted. The survey of California fauna was