The Sea and the Cave 81 



of Speleologists. He was enthusiastic, but we finally con- 

 cluded that there was not enough of an interested group to 

 make it worth trying. 



I have had grand experiences exploring caves. In the 

 spring of 1 9 1 1 , Dr. Carlos de la Torre, of the University 

 of Havana, found among the notes which he had inherited 

 from his old teacher, Felipe Poey — a very great naturaHst 

 indeed, and one whose contributions to the natural his- 

 tory of Cuba are well known — the statement that there 

 was a cave near Cojimar which had red shrimps in it. Don 

 Carlos and I took a guardano — one of those little canopy- 

 topped rowboats that ferry one about the harbor of Ha- 

 vana — and crossed over to Morro Castle. 



On the little beach just by the battery of the Twelve 

 Apostles there lived an old fisherman named Lesmes. He 

 had been a collector for Poey and was knowledgeable in 

 all sorts of ways. We questioned him and he said, "Yes, 

 there is a cave back in the scrub, several miles from here, 

 which has shrimp in it which look as though they had 

 been boiled." The upshot was we started out to find the 

 cave. We wandered through the hot, dusty growth of 

 beach-grape trees for a couple of miles and came to what 

 had obviously once been a small cave, the roof of which 

 had fallen in. 



Sure enough, swimming about in the crystal-clear water, 

 which here stood quite near the surface of the ground, 

 were to be seen fairy shrimps of the most heavenly crimson 

 hue, slender and most delicately formed, with white tips 

 to their appendages, as if they had stepped about delicately 

 in white ink. We collected a number of these and in due 

 season sent them to Miss Mary Rathbun, the famous car- 

 cinologist of the Smithsonian Institution. She wrote me 



