426 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1958 
(April 18, 14, and 15), and off Bird and Green Islands in Nonsuch Bay 
on the way to Barbuda (April 23, 24). While at Barbuda, the better 
part of 2 days (between April 27 and 29) was given over to land and 
littoral collecting about Spanish Point on the boisterous, spray- 
drenched, windward shore of that island. 
Mr. Bredin, who had planned on participating in our several activi- 
ties for a full 3 weeks, had to leave after a week. John Finlay, 
too, left shortly after, but not until he had aroused in Dr. Shuster the 
desire to make a critical statistical study of a small or dwarf form of 
the fighting conch, Strombus pugilis, that he had dredged up in con- 
siderable numbers in the channel between Tortola and Jost Van Dyke. 
Dr. Shuster’s enthusiasm for detailed analyses of racial differences 
within mollusk species was carried over to the genus Vasum, following 
John Finlay’s visit to a St. Johns curio shop, where he met Mrs. Leslie 
Allen, of Hartford, Conn., residing at the Mill Reef Club, who told 
John of the occurrence of Vaswm nuttingi (strictly speaking, Vasum 
globulum nuttingi) in Carlisle Bay. John tells me that without her 
explicit directions he would not have come upon this species during his 
brief stay in Antigua. Thus it was that he obtained the first specimens 
of the species he had ever seen, with the aid of local children who 
volunteered their services. Though we were not aware of it at the 
time, this species had previously been taken in English Harbor and 
along the rocky shores of Falmouth Bay, from which two areas came 
the original material described by the late John B. Henderson, noted 
collector and one-time Regent of the Smithsonian Institution. He 
found them while taking part in the Barbados-Antigua Expedition of 
the University of Iowa, in 1918. 
This interest in shells and in Vaswm in particular led to our be- 
coming acquainted with Dr. William T. Bode, of West Sacramento, 
Calif., who, with his wife, two daughters in their teens, and a younger 
son, was spending the current scholastic year as a Fulbright fellow 
conducting a manual-arts workshop for a selected group of Antiguan 
school teachers. In their spare time, the Bodes became greatly inter- 
ested in the local molluscan fauna, amassing a very comprehensive 
collection and a wealth of firsthand information about the environ- 
ments favored by the various species. Just a few days before our 
departure they took Dr. Shuster to some of their favorite collecting 
grounds in others of the many bays indenting the shores of Antigua, 
where they got considerable numbers of at least two different forms 
of Vasum globulum nuttingi. Dr. Shuster himself quite unexpectedly 
found other varieties in even greater quantity about Spanish Point, 
Barbuda, on the surf-beaten windward side of the island on the 
occasion of our visit there on April 29. Noting the appreciable differ- 
ences exhibited by this species of Vaswm from bay to bay around:-An- 
tigua and from Barbuda, Dr. Bode and Dr. Shuster decided to collab- 
ee 
