i88 Natural History Bulletin. 



leadership of Professor Arey for the study of the anatomy of 

 these huge Echinoderms. In spite of its apparent rigidity^ 

 this star-tish is able to turn its rays over its back until the tips 

 of opposite rays meet above the disk. 



Others of the party took boats and went collecting around 

 the rocks on either side of the harbor entrance, where they 

 secured quite a quantity of moUusks and gorgonians, some of 

 the latter being afterward killed with the poh'ps nicely ex- 

 panded, by plunging the whole colonv into hot, but not boiling"^ 

 water. 



m\s might have been expected, the morning light revealed 

 the white sails of numerous boats, all speeding toward the 

 "Emily E.Johnson." It is safe to say that the occupants of 

 every one of them would not have been greatly disappointed 

 at an entire failure to get the schooner off the sand. Erom 

 the earliest times, a wreck has been regarded as a special 

 "God-send" by the natives of the West India Islands, and they 

 can hardly be blamed for looking at the matter in that light. 

 They are almost without exception poor men who have a hard 

 struggle for their daily bread. A wreck often means com- 

 parative affluence to a whole community, and men in more 

 favored countries are frequently only too glad to profit by the 

 misfortunes of others, and are often willing to bring disaster 

 upon others just as truly and criminally as the man who runs- 

 a vessel on the rock. Most of the little boats that gathered 

 around the schooner had something to sell in the shape of 

 fruits or vegetables. Their occupants were nearlv all negroes 

 of the regular Bahama type, great talkers with an\- amount 

 of time to spare, and no fools when it came to bartering. 



In the forenoon a number of us went to the town of Harbor 

 Island to attend to various items of business. The island itself 

 lies north and south a little way from the main islr.nd of Eleu- 

 thera, and is about three miles long by half a mile wide. On 

 the east a range of high sand-hills separates the town from the 

 sea, which here breaks upon a beautiful sand-beach said to be 

 the finest in the Bahamas. The west side of the island is low 

 and much of it wooded. Here the town proper faces the 



