BARBADOS-ANTIGUA EXPEDITION 17 
The trip home from Antigua was uneventful, excepting a 
piece of good fortune encountered in Washington, when Mr. 
John B. Henderson expressed a desire to accompany the expe- 
dition and take along his launch and its equipment; together 
with Captain Greenlaw, who had for years acted as his skipper 
on various dredging expeditions to the Bahamas, Cuba, and the 
Florida Keys. The question of a suitable launch for dredging 
had worried us not a little. There appeared to be but one 
boat that would do for our purpose at Barbados, and that was 
sold to other parties before our visit there. We heard of noth- 
ing that appeared suitable at Antigua. Even if there could be 
found a launch that would do, prices had risen so as to be pro- 
hibitive, and the matter of equipment in war time would either 
be exceedingly expensive or utterly impossible. It will there- 
fore be easy to appreciate my feeling of relief at Mr. Hender- 
son’s exceedingly generous, although tentative, proposition, 
which at that time was merely indicative of a strong desire on 
his part that might, or might not, materialize later. 
Upon my reporting at lowa City, the members of the party 
decided to divide the time of the expedition between the islands 
of Barbados and Antigua, provided that quarters could be se- 
cured at Pelican Island and English Harbor; formal requests 
from President Jessup to the Colonial authorities resulted in 
these quarters being generously placed at our disposal free of 
charge. These very material concessions, with many others, we 
owe mainly to Colonial Secretary (now Governor) Fell of Bar- 
bados and his Excellency, Governor T. A. V. Best of Antigua. 
Sir Francis Watts was also very helpful in both eases. 
And now we were confronted by the question :—Should such an 
undertaking be carried out under war conditions? The Univer- 
sity authorities took the position that those of us who could not 
engage directly in war activities should do all that we could to 
further the interests of our several departments. Previous 
experience had shown that the cheapest and best method of se- 
curing material in the natural sciences for both undergraduate 
study and graduate research was to go for it and obtain it in 
quantity, at the same time gaining the experience of permanent 
value to teachers of studying specimens alive in their natural 
surroundings. Moreover, President Jessup and Dean Seashore 
agreed that, having secured the very considerable concessions 
