14 BULLETIN OF THE BUREAU OF FISHERIES. 



flora nevertheless contains more than 250 titles. Moreover, it has not been thought 

 worth while for the purposes in hand to make any very thorough examination of the 

 works preceding the publication of the Invertebrate Animals of Vineyard Sound, since 

 Verrill and his collaborators have there included the rather scanty records of their 

 predecessors. .\nd only such statements were considered by us as relate directly to the 

 occurrence of species within the limits of the region defined hereafter. 



Another source of the data accumulated in the course of our "census" was the 

 wealth of infonnation acquired during the past 40 years bj- the veteran collector of 

 the United States Fish Commission, Mr. Vina! N. Edwards. Much of this, it is true, 

 has already been incorporated into a score of different published papers, with or with- 

 out due acknowledgment of the real source of the information. It is safe to say that 

 most of the lists and synopses of Woods Hole species that have appeared since the first 

 report of Verrill are based in large measure, if not primarily, either upon records made 

 by Mr. Edwards himself or at least upon material collected by him. The descriptions 

 and, in a large measure, the determination of the species have, however, been the work 

 of others. It was found by us that Mr. Edwards still possessed copious notes relating 

 to the yield of fish traps, fyke nets, seining trips, and tow-net collecting which had never 

 been utilized; and that he had gathered much material which had not yet been iden- 

 tified. Such records have been abundantly employed in the course of our work, and, 

 in general, Mr. Edwards has been continually called upon for information during the 

 preparation of the faunal catalogue. Indeed, one of the motives which originally 

 prompted its compilation was a desire to incorporate in a permanent form the valuable 

 but still unpublished data in the possession of this indefatigable collector and observer. 



From time to time notes of value have been contributed by various investigators 

 belonging to the local scientific colony, who have become experts upon one or another 

 group of animals or plants; and in certain cases considerable manuscripts have been 

 furnished us, notably by Messrs. W. R. Coe, J. A. Cushman, W. C. Curtis, C. W. Hargitt, 

 Lynds Jones, Edwin Linton, J. P. Moore, A. L. Treadwell, and C. B. Wilson. Likewise a 

 card catalogue, which had been formerly maintained by the Marine Biological Laboratory 

 as a receptacle for ecological notes, was put at our disposal by the director of that labora- 

 tory, and a considerable number of these data were found to be relevant to our purposes. 

 Mr. George M. Gray, the curator of the same institution, has also responded liberally to 

 the numerous queries which we have put to him, and thus we have profited to a large 

 degree from his wide experience as a collector. At the commencement of the present 

 undertaking the practice was encouraged, among investigators in the Fisheries Labora- 

 tory, of recording the results of collecting trips of any sort or of observations or dis- 

 coveries which they might make by chance relating to local ecologv. Later a printed 

 form was devised whereby such random records could be entered upon single cards. 



Finally, although it was no part of the Survey, as at first planned, to include the 

 littoral or intertidal zone, it was thought desirable to carry on a certain amount of careful 

 shore collecting in order to obtain definite local records for the catalogue. With this in 

 view, parties from the laboratory visited Nobska Beach and Point, Great Pond, Tashmoo 

 Pond, Vineyard Haven, Lagoon Pond, Katama Bay, Cedar Tree Neck, Menemsha Bight, 

 Tarpaulin Cove, Robinsons Hole, Nantucket Harbor, No Mans Land, West Falmouth 

 Harbor, Scraggy Neck, Wareham River, New Bedford Harbor, and Round Hill Point. 

 No such exhaustive inventory was made at these shore stations as was the case with the 



