30 IOWA STUDIES IN NATURAL HISTORY 
stewards had changed from blue uniforms to white and the easy 
chairs and couches in the lounge had also been, transformed with 
light colored covers. 
I found a letter in my state room from Secretary Fell inform- 
ing us of preparations for our comfort there; I was glad to learn 
that the Government had consented to turn over the island of 
Makuluva for our use and that the coral reefs in that vicinity 
were alive and flourishing. . 
A letter received before we left Iowa from my friend, Dr. 
Alfred G. Mayor, who had visited Suva in 1920, had given me 
the impression that many of the reefs around Fiji were in poor 
condition from a biological standpoint, and he intimated that we 
might have to hunt for living reefs suitable to our purpose. When 
I received that letter I little knew that Dr. Mayor, who worked 
with me many years ago at Alexander Agassiz’s laboratory at 
Newport, was to die in a comparatively short time after writing 
me regarding Fiji. We learned of his death shortly after our 
return. He was one of the most delightful companions that I 
have known, and I have often watched him as he made his won- 
derfully life-like plates of meduse and other delicate marine or- 
ganisms that he limned so skilfully, and wondered at his unsur- 
passed mastery of pencil and brush. With his passing America 
lost one of its most accomplished marine zoologists. 
On leaving Honolulu we started on another long leg of our 
journey. The first one, from Vancouver to Honolulu, was 2,435 
miles; and the second one, Honolulu to Fiji, was a little longer, 
2,780 miles. We were now well within the tropics and could en- 
joy the life on deck. The sea was beautifully calm and the heat 
not at all oppressive as we resumed the daily routine of life on 
a long voyage. 
We saw but a single vessel, except in and near Honolulu, 
after leaving Victoria, indeed the Pacific is a vast lonely sea, 
singularly devoid of living things on or above the surface. A 
couple of black-footed albatrosses followed us a day or two after 
leaving the American coast, but very few other birds were in 
evidence. ven the gulls so familiar to voyagers on the Atlantic 
were conspicuous by their absence, and for days at a time not a 
living thing was seen over the heaving expanse of waters. A few 
schools of flying fish occasionally broke from the surface and 
fluttered along just skimming the crests of the waves for a few 
hundred feet to dive again, but they were by no means so abun- 
