14 SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 



of Nicaragua, this island is a part of the Republic of Colombia. 

 There was no sport fishing at Old Providence. Game fish were scarce 

 or absent, a few mackerel and two young barracuda constituting the 

 catch by the fishing parties. On the other hand, the shore and reef 

 collecting and dredging were very productive. Two new species of 

 goboid fish were caught in a tidepool, also a small rockfish new to the 

 Museum collections, as well as a new form of marine plant. 



Our arrival at Pensacola on August 9, the twenty- fourth day, 5,888 

 miles out from San Diego, marked the conclusion of a most successful 

 cruise. Over and above a host of other scientific material — geological, 

 botanical, and zoological — 83 different species of fish were caught by 

 one means or another. Still other species were seen, but for want of 

 specimens could not be identified, such as the large green parrot fish 

 at Clipperton. About 250 individual fish, representing about 60 dif- 

 ferent species, were brought back to the Museum for study and 

 permanent preservation in the National Collections. 



The larger game fish are most inadequately represented in ichthyo- 

 logical collections throughout the world, not so much for want of 

 facilities for storing them, as because of the difficulties attendant upon 

 their preservation at the time of capture and their transport to their 

 final resting place, which in the past necessitated large and often 

 unwieldy tanks and almost unmanageable quantities of preserving 

 fluid. Aboard the Houston, however, it was a relatively simple task 

 to place the specimens desired by the Museum in the large cold storage 

 freezers of the ship, and then, on arrival at port, to pack them with 

 dry ice in wooden packing cases, suitably insulated with corrugated 

 paper, for safe shipment to Washington. The fish were unpacked 

 there still hard frozen. When thawed out in tanks of tap water, they 

 returned to practically the identical fresh condition in which they had 

 been placed in cold storage. Many of the fish still retained much of 

 their original coloration, having apparently undergone little or no 

 change from the time they were brought aboard ship. This is but one 

 of many instances in which a large ship with ample facilities of all 

 kinds can render science inestimable service. 



To the President, as Commander-in-Chief of the Navy and of this 

 expedition, and to Captain Barker and the officers and crew of the 

 U.S.S. Houston, the Smithsonian Institution is indebted for a wealth 

 of valuable material, including some 30 forms new to science which 

 will be described in technical publications of the Institution. 



