A lone California Elephant Seal stands at the right of the entrance to the Zoological Museum. His epitaph reads: "the species has been reduced through persecutions, as it yields rich oil . . ." A Siberian Sea Otter looks out from the next glass case. "This species is now on the verge of extinction at the hands of the fur hunters."

These two stuffed beasts set the theme of the Zoological Museum--the struggle between man and beast, and the survival of the fittest. It is something to shame men everywhere, and to frighten them too. For this struggle has not been a one-way persecution. Beasts, it seems, have harkened to the biblical injunction, "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."

The stuffed Bengal tiger, his stripped fur bristling, has a notorious past. "Many districts of India have been terrorized by this species which has acquired a taste for human flesh, but the number has been much reduced at present." It is unclear whether the reduction was in tigers or districts. A lion across the aisle glares from his glass cage. "In the wild state lions usually live up to their reputation of daring and ferocity. They prey upon large animals, especially zebras and antelopes, and in occasional instances have acquired the man-eating habit."

This variegated collection owes its origin to Louis Agassiz, the renowned Harvard scientist, who migrated from Italy in 1847 and brought his zoological specimens with him. He first stored them in a shanty by the Charles, near the present site of Anderson Bridge, but by 1860 had collected enough funds from the Massachusetts Assembly, the University, and friends to build on wing of the present University Museum. The Zoological Museum, which has occupied that wing ever since, has ranked among the top zoological exhibits in the world. Fifteen rooms of stuffed and skeletoned animals comprise the public display; most of the collection is stashed away for research purposes.

The zoologists' intention is, of course, beyond reproach. To trace man's ancestry to the ape and the chimpanzee is a noble purpose. And this purpose they have made explicit wherever possible; they have placed a mother monkey, for instance, with her stuffed infant over her knee.

The horrible Darwinian implications of the whole display, though, are too great to leave one's conscience unburdened, particularly when one owes his very existence to some of these stuffed species. Perhaps the zoologists have tried to laugh away any feelings of guilt, with the Proboscis Mankey as the butt of their joke. Like Rostand writing of Cyrano, the placard describes Proboscis as of "large size, bright colors, and grotesque nose . . . curiously elongated and flexible . . . The special use to which he puts it is doubtful."