454 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1956 



As each woman passed a checker on the way down to the pier she was 

 given a metal token, for each of which she collected the equivalent of 

 about 2 cents (U. S.). The minimum weight of any stalks accepted 

 by the buyer, who pays the grower about 6 cents a pound for them, is 

 18 pounds, but the heaviest of these stalks easily weighed twice this. 

 A woman might well carry nearly a ton of bananas from morning to 

 midnight, when the steamer sailed, if she worked the entire time. 



Here too we met Stephen Haweis, longtime resident artist of 

 Dominica, who painted several of the color plates for Hildebrand's 

 account of fishes in the Smithsonian Scientific Series. Among other 

 things, Haweis is interested in the conservation of "mountain chick- 

 ens," a delicacy much sought after by natives and Europeans alike, so 

 much so that they are becoming scarcer by the year. The mountain 

 chicken is neither bird nor fowl, but a large frog, Leptodactylus fallax, 

 found now only in the mountain streams of Dominica. A specimen as 

 much as 6V2 inches long may weigh as much as a pound. Tasting like 

 breast of chicken, the flesh is firmer than that of the frog's legs served 

 in the States. 



On March 28 we moved up the coast hoping to explore the Layou 

 River Valley, a surprisingly beautiful place according to the captain, 

 but, to our disappointment, the surf on the river bar was impassably 

 high. Instead, we cast anchor in Prince Rupert Bay off the town of 

 Portsmouth, where we were able to secure an additional length of 

 stout tow line needed for contemplated dredging on the Saba Bank 

 later during the cruise. We got another crinoid here off Portsmouth, 

 and at night with the electric light lured two myctophids, fishes with 

 rows of small luminous spots on each side. 



On our way in to Pointe a Pitre, Guadeloupe, we passed just the 

 type of reef over which we wanted to collect. It looked so good and 

 was so close in that Dr. Chace remarked that it could well be the type 

 locality for a number of the crustaceans first described from this island. 

 On the natural history of their West Indies the French zoologists in the 

 early days published a number of fine papers, but very little has ap- 

 peared since. On the quay we met Dr. Blanche again. He had made 

 a direct and quicker trip up from Fort-de-France. With him was 

 Dr. Stehle, the now resident French botanist. An all-day field trip 

 to the uplands had been arranged for Drs. Smith and Clarke. But 

 the pleasure of the meeting of two longtime friends who had only 

 known each other through correspondence rather overshadowed the 

 fieldwork this day. Nevertheless, Dr. Smith obtained some specimens 

 of remarkable interest in the forest adjacent to the Institute for Agro- 

 nomic Researches, as a result of Dr. Stehle's intimate knowledge of the 

 flora. Of particular interest were the little yellow-flowered iridaceous 

 Trimezia martinicensis and a species of Polygala which has an odd 

 known distribution of only Guadeloupe and Cuba. 



