DECAPOD AXD OTHER CRUSTACEA COLLECTED OX 
THE PRESIDEXTJAL CRUISE OF 1938 
(WITH INTRODUCTION AND STATION DATA’) 
Bv WALDO L. SCHMITT 
Curator, Division of Marine Invertebrates. ['. S. National Museum 
(With Turkt; Plates) 
INTRODUCTION 
In Jul_v and August of 1938 the President of the United States, the 
Honoralile hranldin D. Roosevelt, undertook an ins]iection cruise and 
fishing exj^edition from San Diego, Calif., to Pensacola, Fla., by way 
of the 1 anaina Canal aboard the C.S.S. Houston, the Smithsonian 
Institution was honored with an invitation to particijiate, and it was 
a great jirivilege and my good fortune to be the Naturalist selected to 
accomjiany the expedition. 
1 he ciuise, which began on July i6 and ended on August cj, covered 
a total of 5,888 miles in the brief space of 24 days, during which 14 
different collecting sto])s were made. These were distributed among 
the ])ossessions of fiAe dififeient nations.* iMexico {Lower California 
and Socoiio Island), h ranee ( Cli]3])erton Island), Ecuador (the 
Galaj.agos Islands). Costa Rica (Cocos Island), and Colombia (Old 
Piovidence Psland in the Caribbean). No collecting was done in the 
Canal Zone or in the Repulilic of Panama. 
All manner of collecting was undertaken, fishing, bird hunting, and 
botanizing, dredging, tide-])ool and shore collecting — indeed, all kinds 
of endeavor that might yield something of interest to the Smithsonian 
Institution and our N ational Collections. I he ichthyological(^5llection, 
which ]3erha])s took first ]3lace in the President’s interest, is one of 
the inost ingiortant that has ever come to the United States National 
^luseum from that section of the ICicific. 
In obtaining fish as scientific specimens, as well as for sport, the 
President was ably assisted b}" members of his personal partv : i\Ir. 
' For additional notes and illustrations, sec "The Presidential Cruise of 1938’^ 
HI. Explorations and Field-work of the Smithsonian Institution in 1938, pp, 
f-M, 1539- 
vSMITHSONIAN IVIUSCELl.ANEOUS COLLECTIONS, VOL. 98, NO. 6 
I 
