i94i CATALOGUE OF FISHES OF TORTUGAS 



XI 



lished there. Some years later the coaling station was wrecked by a hurricane 

 and the small garrison was removed. 



It so happened that shortly after the establishment of the coaling station on 

 Garden Key, the Carnegie Institution of Washington was looking for a favor- 

 able location for a marine biological laboratory. The Tortugas keys in many 

 respects afforded an ideal site for such a station. The islands are far from the 

 mainland and the water about them therefore is free from contamination and 

 from sediment brought down by streams. The Gulf Stream passes by only a few 

 miles to the south, and water-borne organisms drift to the shores. For these and 

 perhaps other reasons the Tortugas Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution was 

 established in 1904, on a site leased from the United States Government, and 

 maintained until 1940 as a research center. 



A wide range of conditions, supplying various habitats for fishes, exists in the 

 immediate vicinity: stretches of bare sand, areas overgrown with turtle grass and 

 algae, coral reefs, channels of a depth of 10 to 20 fathoms between the keys, and 

 deep water to the southward. The large drifts of sargassum that come in shore 

 from time to time offer still another habitat for certain fishes. 



Further descriptions of the Tortugas archipelago appear in publications of the 

 Department of Marine Biology (Tortugas Laboratory) of the Carnegie Institu- 

 tion of Washington; many restricted areas are described in this catalogue; and a 

 concise general description of the atoll by Dr. E. W. Gudger is found in Carnegie 

 Institution of Washington Publication 391, 1929, pages 151 and 152. S. F. H. 



NEW GENERA AND SPECIES 



The investigation disclosed a few new genera and 29 new species. Some of 

 these had been described briefly by Dr. Longley in various Year Books of the 

 Carnegie Institution of Washington (see bibliography, p. xii). New descriptions 

 of these, as well as of several species not previously described, are included in a 

 preliminary paper entitled "New genera and species of fishes from Tortugas, 

 Florida," by Longley and Hildebrand, Carnegie Institution of Washington Pub- 

 lication 517, Papers from Tortugas Laboratory, volume 32, paper XIV, pages 

 223 to 285. In the present work, the new genera and species are not described, but 

 references to the preliminary paper are given. S. F. H. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY OF PUBLICATIONS BY WILLIAM H. LONGLEY 

 BASED ON HIS STUDIES AT TORTUGAS 



The papers by Dr. William H. Longley listed herewith are based wholly or in 

 part on his work at Tortugas. Some of these will cast considerable light on phases 

 of his studies not dealt with in the present volume, which he intended to write 

 up more fully later in one or more separate volumes. Some, but not all, of the 

 publications listed are referred to in the text. 



