72 IOWA STUDIES IN NATURAL HISTORY 
mens entirely lose their colors in the common preservatives and 
are most unattractive objects after a few hours. Casts and 
color sketches were taken of a few of these and may yet afford a 
hint of the actual appearance of some of the tropical fishes. 
Balanoglossus was found by Dr. Fisher in digging up the 
sand in shallow water, though it was not very abundant. This 
strange protocordate was, in life, much larger than the pre- 
served laboratory specimens that I had seen before. It is ex- 
ceedingly delicate and fragile and apt to go to pieces during the 
hardening process. We succeeded in preserving only a few of 
these problematic offshoots from the ancestral tree of the ver- 
tebrates. 
Crustacea.—Perhaps the quantity of specimens collected in 
this group was greater than in any other, as is usually the case. 
The income of material was so great and constant that Mr. En- 
sign, to whom the group was assigned, was unable to attempt 
identification and had to devote himself to assorting and putting 
them away. Dr. Mary J. Rathbun of the National Museum has 
kindly furnished the names of most of the species mentioned 
below, and any mistake in identification should be accredited to 
the writer. The largest crustacean secured was the well-known 
spiny lobster or ‘‘cray-fish’’ of the West Indies, (Palinurus) 
and a more striking and gaudily colored creature would be 
hard to find. Some specimens would probably measure as much 
as four feet from tip of antenne to the end of the tail. 
Although a vicious looking animal, with bristling ‘‘feelers’’ and 
conspicuous horns and spines, it is really quite harmless and 
ean be handled with impunity, as it has no effective weapons 
whatever, being devoid of the formidable chele of the real lob- 
ster or cray-fish. Some of our party took a gastronomic rather 
than zoological interest in this huge crustacean, and this is ex- 
cusable when we see the large amount of delicate white flesh 
that is taken from a fair-sized individual. Greenlaw was past 
master in the art of catching, as well as of preparing this succu- 
lent animal, and most of us were not too absorbed in zoological 
contemplation of Palinurus to resist it when served according 
to Greenlaw’s formula. 
One of the most remarkable macrurans in the collection is 
Parribacus antarcticus, differing from the Hawaiian form in our 
