On Feb. 15, 1873, Mr. Lick offered to the California Academy of Sciences a piece of land on Market Street, the site of its present building. Professor George Davidson, then president of the academy, called to thank him, when Mr. Lick unfolded to him his purpose of giving a great telescope for future investigation of the heavenly bodies. He had become deeply interested from reading, it is said, about possible life on other planets. It is supposed by some that while Mr. Lick lived his lonely life in Peru, a priest, who gained his friendship, interested him in astronomy. Others think his mind was drawn towards it by reading about the Washington Observatory, completed in 1874, and noticed widely by the press. Mr. Lick was not a scientist nor an astronomer; he had been too absorbed in successful business life for that; but he earned money that others might have the time and opportunity to devote their lives to science. Mr. Lick appears to have had a passion for statuary, as shown by his gifts. At one time he thought of having expensive memorial statues of himself and family erected on the heights overlooking the ocean and the bay, but was dissuaded by one of his pioneer friends, according to Miss M. W. Shinn's account in the _Overland Monthly_, November, 1892. "Mr. D. J. Staples felt it his duty to tell Mr. Lick frankly that his bequests for statues of himself and family would be utterly useless as a memorial; that the world would not be interested in them; and when Mr. Lick urged that such costly statues would be preserved for all time, as the statues of antiquity now remained the precious relics of a lost civilization, answered, almost at random, 'More likely we shall get into a war with Russia or somebody, and they will come around here with warships, and smash the statues to pieces in bombarding the city.'" Mr. Lick conferred with his friends, but had his own decided wishes and plans which usually he carried out. On July 16, 1874, he conveyed all his property, real and personal, over $3,000,000, by deed of trust to seven men; but becoming dissatisfied with some members of the Board of Lick Trustees, he made a new deed, Sept. 21, 1875, under which his property has been used as he directed. A year later he changed some of the members, but the deed itself remained as before. One of the first bequests under his deed of trust was for the telescope and observatory, $700,000. Another, to the Protestant Orphan Asylum of San Francisco, $25,000. For an Orphan Asylum in San José, "free to all orphans without regard to creed or religion of parents," $25,000. To the Ladies' Protective and Belief Society of San Francisco, $25,000. To the Mechanics' Institute of San Francisco, "to be applied to the purchase of scientific and mechanical works for such Institute," $10,000.