Reptiles in the West Indies 125 



rate In my mind. One of the pleasantest of them, however, 

 came as a distinct surprise, and I am sure that my dehght 

 when I heard that AlHson Armour planned to take the 

 Utowmia on a long cruise through the West Indies may 

 be well understood. There were many islands which I had 

 never visited, although I had studied collections made on 

 almost all of them and I had a great desire to see those 

 localities even for a short time. 



This cruise was undertaken primarily to secure con- 

 fidential information for one of the government depart- 

 ments in Washington, and I had a long list of seeds which 

 the Office of Plant Introduction wanted me to secure in 

 the Lesser Antilles for introduction into Florida. The 

 zoological collections of vertebrate animals from the West 

 Indies in the Museum at Cambridge are so complete that 

 there was no object in collecting on a wholesale scale, but 

 there were special things here and there that I wanted 

 very much. 



Actually more good accrued to the Museum than might 

 have been reasonably expected. I will cite one or two 

 conspicuous examples. For instance, we reached Pointe a 

 Pitre in Guadeloupe not long after a devastating hurricane. 

 The little local Natural History Museum in this town was 

 long ago named for old I'Herminier, a French naturalist 

 who first made known the fauna of this very interesting 

 island and its dependencies. The roof of the museum had 

 been blown off and his collection of birds left in pitiful 

 condition. They had been removed from their cases and 

 stood about the floor in the hope that they would dry 

 out after the tempestuous rain which had fallen upon them. 

 It took but a glance to see that I'Herminier's two specimens 



