University police are searching for individuals who allegedly set a fire outside 17 Quincy St. early Wednesday morning and left a threatening note addressed to President Bok.

University police officers responded to a reported brush fire on the Quincy St. side of the brick building at 2:47 a.m. Wednesday and quickly extinguished the fire before calling in Cambridge Fire Department investigators.

The Harvard Corporation meets regularly at 17 Quincy St., the building where recent Presidents of the University lived. Bok lives in the Brattle St. area.

Arson?

"It looks like it was a set fire," University police Captain Jack Morse said yesterday, adding that the police found a can of charcoal lighter fluid on the ground to the left of the building's entrance.

A note addressed to Bok was found in a bag near the can of fluid, a spokesman for the Cambridge Fire Department said yesterday.

The note is "of a threatening nature," Daniel Steiner '54, general counsel to the University, said yesterday, adding that the letter did not directly threaten Bok's life.

Unpleasant

Steiner said police have the note but he decline to release the contents. It is an "unpleasant incident" that "we regret very much," Steiner said, adding that extra security precautions are being taken.

A source close to the police said yesterday investigators are trying to determine whether the fire was a serious attempt to burn down the building and harm Bok or merely a symbolic act by a group upset with something Bok or the Corporation has done.

The fire was apparently set when two books of matches--found later on the ground near the building's entrance--were thrown into the can of lighter fluid. A bush near the building's entrance burned, and the ivy which scales the building's front side caught flame.

University police sent the evidence to a state police forensics laboratory yesterday, Saul A. Chafin. chief of University police, said yesterday.

A spokesman for the forensics lab yesterday declined comment