16 IOWA STUDIES IN NATURAL HISTORY 
ment property and on an island, we would be entirely isolated 
and thus avoid the intrusion of the swarming population. 
Before I left I found that several of the influential officials, 
including Dr. Johnston of the Board of Health, would approve 
this concession in our favor if a formal request were made by 
the University authorities. 
Sir Francis Watts, who was ealled on official business to An- 
tigua shortly before my visit to Barbados was ended, urged me 
to consider the availability of English Harbor for such an ex- 
pedition as ours; and when we dropped anchor in St. Johns 
Harbor, Antigua, on the return trip, he sent me a note on the 
government launch urging me to come ashore, as he wanted to 
take me over to English Harbor with him. An automobile 
awaited us at the landing, and Mr. Collens, government chem- 
ist, stationed at St. Johns, accompanied us on the delightful 
ride across the island to English Harbor. After a brief inspec- 
tion of the immediate surroundings I became quite as enthu- 
siastic an admirer of this historic and beautiful spot as was Sir 
Francis. The buildings at the old dockyard, as is usually the 
ease where Britain does the work, were of massive stone and 
brick construction, although old and unoccupied for genera- 
tions except sporadically for summer encampments of the An- 
tigua Defense Foree. The Officers’ Quarters were commodious 
and cool, and there was any amount of room for laboratory 
uses. A stone seawall surrounded the dockyard on three sides, 
and there was such a display of marine life as would be hard to 
match anywhere else, the most conspicuous being an immense . 
ageregation of huge serpulid worms with wide-spread tentacle 
crowns a foot across when fully expanded. A half hour’s in- 
spection convinced me that here was an ideal spot for collect- 
ing and laboratory work, and Sir Francis believed that the Col- 
onial Government would place it at the disposal of our party. 
Antigua is surrounded by almost innumerable reefs and islets, 
and indented with deep bays, offering an exceedingly broken 
coastline and hence great variety of habitat for shoal water 
forms. There is much more to attract the land naturalist than 
at Barbados, and the human population is relatively scanty, con- 
siderable areas being original jungle with practically undis- 
turbed flora and fauna. 
