20 G.^RTH 



literature fails to reveal this, or that Professor Ekman has failed to 

 recognize it from the literature, ma}- be laid to the predilection of s\-s- 

 tematists for writing for those of our respective specialties, rather than 

 presenting the facts essential to an understanding of the overall distri- 

 bution pattern in a form available to ecologists and zoogeographers. 

 Let us consider Ekman's sources: for the mollusks, Schenck and Keen 

 (1936) ; for the decapod crustaceans, W. L. Schmitt (1921) ; for the 

 echinoderms, W. K. Fisher (1911, 1928. 1930) ; for the fishes, Jordan, 

 Evermann, and Clark (1930): truly a boreal element among zoolo- 

 gists. (The number of ranges of northern species that stop at IMonterey, 

 I maintain, represents not the distribution of species, but of early zoolo- 

 gists, to whom the Southland was terra incognita.) To be sure, the 

 coastline from San Luis Obispo to Monterey M-as inaccessible before 

 the opening of San Simeon Highway; that from Malibu to Ventura 

 before the opening of Alternate U. S. Highway No. 101. Of the Chan- 

 nel Islands, only Santa Catalina could be reached by public transpor- 

 tation, while the Mexican islands of Los Coronados, Cedros, San Benito, 

 and Guadalupe were, and still are. attainable only by sea-going ex- 

 peditions. Finally, the mainland of Baja California south of Ensenada 

 has but recently been traversible by roads of more than dubious quality. 



Field work of the Allan Hancock Foundation and its laboratorj' 

 vessel, the J'elcro IJ,. has been concentrated in the region it is now pro- 

 posed to define. In Februan-, 1947, a series of shore stations was made 

 from Santa Barbara north to Monterey for the purpose of delimiting 

 more closely the faunal change that occurs in the littoral zone in the 

 \-icinity of Pt. Conception. In March and April, 1949, the Velero IV 

 explored the west coast of Lower California and the Gulf of California, 

 and in December, 1949, a cruise was made to Guadalupe Island, Mexico. 

 In April and May, 1950, a voyage was made to Magdalena Bay, with 

 a stop at San Benito Islands. In April, 1951, a cruise was made to 

 Viscaino Bay and Cedros Island, while in October and November, 1951, 

 collecting was done at Turtle Bay and Pta. Eugenia. In Januarj' and 

 Februan,-, 1954, the west coast of Lower California was again visited 

 enroute to Acapulco, Mexico. In addition to these longer voyages, 

 niimerous short trips to all the Channel Islands were made in the course 

 of sur\"eys of the offshore basins. As a result of this work the Southern 

 California — northern Lower California littoral is becoming better known 

 faunisucally than would have been thought possible a few decades ago. 



In developing a warm-temperate fauna I shall draw most of my 

 examples from the brachj-uran Crustacea. Not only are they the group 



