GOUCHER COLLEGE 
Baltimore, Maryland 
Er, lialdo L. ?cnn)itt 
Q 
Nal^ional 
yuseuBi 
Icrtagas, Florida 
I 
July 4, 19<5 
Washington* E, C. 
> > 
i? 
1 
Eear Er, Schmit t 
For nearly a week mj chief occupa:.,icn has been copying 
in',jo asj record the ffiSi^erial you left with ire, and iraking a sort, of 
preliminary analysis of cur result s. 
i 
These please me greatly. I find, for ^'xarcple, t.hat while 
they keep well within cer-jain limits the graj srjappers capture 
different species at different stations. Seven cut of ten taken on 
lA 1 . t . _ 
contained 14 Ge 
White Shoal illustrate the rriat.ter nicely. They 
bias, of which we found not more than four additional specimens 
in all the fishes, snappers and grunt s t.oget her, that we examined. 
Five out of ten from one of the s*,., 'at ions near Eird Key Feef, con- 
tained 8 Mithrax sculpt us of which we found only E ot her specimens 
in 254 other snappers, 
T believe tny knowledge of the iccal geography enables 
me to explain these variations con si st ently upon the hypcl^hesis 
that each colony of snappers feeds over a tract extending only a 
short distance froni its schooling place, and chooses generally a 
parw.'icular soi,.' of bcttoiii, which is inhabited in one place by cns 
sand-haunijing form, and in anoijher by adifferent; one. 
Think ± shaii nave ,.o collect, with Wr, Valent ine’ s as- 
sistance, some more material f roi critical sv:ations, and send it to 
you for exam ina^, don after your return from fcuth -^merico. In that 
way we shall clarify cur ideas, and advance cur prcgram by as much 
as we should gain in a considerable ‘..dme here, i 
■ 
success in 
■dth kind regards to ’’rs Schmitt, and test wishes for 
South America. I am. 
