130 EEPOET OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1887. 



North Bridgton, Maine; High School, Syracuse, New York; Tulane 

 University, New Orleans, Louisiana ; Drake University, Des Moines, 

 Iowa; Clyde High School, Clyde, New York; All Saints School, 

 Sioux Falls, Dakota; Dana Natural History Society, Albany, New 

 York; Public Schools, Carthage, New York; Fayetteville Public 

 Cabinet, Fayetteville, New York ; Miami University, Oxford, Ohio. 



Special sets of duplicates were also furnished the Museum of Com- 

 parative Zoology at Harvard College and the American Museum of 

 Natural History, New York. They were selected from the collections 

 of the Fish Commission by Prof. A. E. Verrill and sent directly from 

 New Haven. 



RESEARCHES. 



During the summer the curator completed for the Fish Commission a 

 first report upon the surface-water temperatures of the Atlantic coast 

 of the United States, based upon observations made at twenty-four of the 

 more exposed light-houses and light-ships, beginning with Petit Manan, 

 in eastern Maine, and ending with the Tortugas, in southern Florida. 

 This report covers a period of five years, from January 1, 1881, to Jan- 

 uary 1, 1886, and includes 32 graphic charts, representing the yearly 

 temperature at each station, by ten-day means, and the yearly and 

 mean isotherms for the entire coast, plotted for every 5° F. The ob- 

 servations were taken specially for the Commission by the light-house 

 keepers, whose services were kindly granted for that purpose by the 

 Light-House Board. The reductions and original plottings were made 

 by Miss M. J. Bathbun and the curator, and the final charts for en- 

 graving were prepared by Mr. C. E. Gorham. The report has been in 

 type since last October, and will form apart of Section in of the quarto 

 Fishery Beport. Miss Bathbun also continued during the summer the 

 work of reducing and mapping other series of temperature observations, 

 mainly those taken at more enclosed stations of the Light- House and 

 Signal Services. The object of this work has been to determine the 

 bearing of temperature upon the migrations of such economic fishes as 

 the mackerel and menhaden. The zoological studies of the curator, 

 while at the Wood's Holl Station, were mainly limited to the parasitic 

 copepods collected by the Fish Commission, and many drawings and 

 descriptions were prepared. 



During the winter and spring the writer examined and identified 

 most of the species of deep-water and littoral Madreporaria and Hydra- 

 corallce obtained by the steamer Albatross during the previous three 

 years, on the Atlantic coast south of Cape Hatteras, and in the Gulf of 

 Mexico and Caribbean Sea. Only a few species that are possibly new 

 were discovered, but many of doubtful identity will be taken to Cam- 

 bridge, Massachusetts, during the summer, for comparison with the 

 Blake collections, described by the late Count Pourtales. 



Nearly all of the corals of the genera Madrepora, Porites, and Syna- 

 rcea have also been carefully determined, and reports upon the same 



