ichthyologist; and who also is well conversant with the birds of our country. As the first Curator of Ichthyology of the California Academy of Sciences, Ayres wrote several many papers on the fish of California, despite poor facilities. In a letter to a colleague at the Smithsonian Institution Ayers pleaded for support for the fledgling academy: I am working along here in the dark as well as I can, with almost nothing in the way of books or means of reference, and what mistakes I make, some of you more advantageously situated must correct. Since there were no established scientific journals available, he turned to local newspapers to publish his descriptions of fish. In 1882 Ayres wrote an article in The American Naturalist, "The Ancient Man of Calaveras" about the Calaveras Skull, a human skull purported at the time to have been found in a mine in Calaveras County, California. He defended the claim that the skull was indeed of ancient origin. That the skull was of ancient provenance is now generally believed to have been a hoax. Ayres's name (cited in Latin as ayresii) is used in the binomial names of several species of birds and fish. See also :Category:Taxa named by William Orville Ayres References American ichthyologists American curators 1817 births 1887 deaths People associated with the California Academy of Sciences University of California, San Francisco faculty Yale School of Medicine alumni Yale School of Medicine faculty People from New Canaan, Connecticut Physicians from Connecticut 19th-century American zoologists Yale College alumni