192 CARNEGIE INSTITUTION OF WASHINGTON. 



buildings, while fragments of wood and trees were driven through 

 half-inch planks in a number of places. Our windmill and one labora- 

 tory building were wholly destroyed, as were also the lower part of the 

 kitchen and dining-room, where the waves dashed through them, and 

 minor damage was done to the dock and other structures. Due to the 

 high cost of materials and labor, and the practical impossibility of 

 obtaining an adequate supply of building materials, it was decided to 

 defer making permanent repairs until this year. 



Due to the necessity of keeping our men at work on these repairs 

 to the laboratory, it was deemed inadvisable to invite many investi- 

 gators to study at Tortugas this summer, and accordingly only a few 

 who had been there in past years and whose researches required 

 extension or completion came to Tortugas. Our force, thus freed 

 from other duties, was enabled to complete the restoration of the 

 laboratory, aquarium, windmill, and dock-houses; so the station will be 

 in as good form as ever for the reception of investigators in 1922. 



Perhaps the most serious damage done by the hurricane was the 

 destruction of a considerable length of the brick sea-wall of the moat 

 surrounding Fort Jefferson. This moat, with its semi-stagnant water, 

 was the source of our supply of Cassiopea and other animals used so 

 extensively in our physiological researches, and when the wall was 

 destroyed pure sea-water entered the moat and these creatures have, 

 in consequence, disappeared. This loss, should it be permanent, would 

 probably force us to abandon the laboratory. The fort has been wholly 

 abandoned by the Navy, and we therefore undertook to repair the 

 breach in the moat-wall in the hope that Cassiopea and other forms 

 may reappear in the moat by 1922. 



The total abandonment of Fort Jefferson by the Navy, with the 

 abolition of the trips which the naval tug used to make between Key 

 West and Tortugas, puts us to the expense of making every trip for 

 supplies to Key West in our own vessels, the distance being 68 miles. 

 The Tortugas have thus become the most isolated islands off the coast 

 of the United States. 



After the hurricane of 1910, many echini, such as Toxopneustes 

 and Hipponoe, developed upon the reef-flats of the Tortugas, but 

 the hurricane of 1919 seems to have been destructive in this respect, 

 for these forms, so important for work in experimental embryology, 

 are at present very rare at Tortugas. In fact, it is the opinion of 

 naturalists who have collected in the Florida- West Indian region that 

 within recent years the shallow-water animals have progressively 

 become more and more rare; nor can this be attributed altogether to 

 partial extermination by man, for many forms untouched by the 

 fishermen are thus affected. 



It is of course well known that in Oligocene times many species of 

 corals were found in both the Atlantic and Pacific and have since 



