SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 
UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 
WASHINGTON. D. C. 
March 15, 1937 
Dear Dr. Schmitt: 
I am MAD as H. . . ! S 
If I had sat down and done the job myself in the first place, I 
wouldn't have had to bother you about that key and I would have had several 
days less to worry about it; but d.,.n it all, why can't the Assistant 
Curator in this place do a little curating now and then 2 
Your letters of the I 2 th and 13th came this morning on the first 
mail. I copied out your alternative keys, with all instructions, and went 
to Mr. Shoemaker's desk with them. He had given up the key as impossible, 
and I don’t know what he intended to do, if anything, about it. (I hadn't 
told him that you were working on it, too. When I saw your keys, I scssc 
knew right away that trying to differentiate Call , and liiacantha on abdomens 
wouldn't work, because Mr. Shoemaker tried that and found that the abdomens 
were all alike (that is, all fi’. r e- jointed) . 
So, when he saw your keys, he said, "Wfell, you know I found that 
the abdomens were all alike. So I don't know what else we can do. They 
all seem to be so much alike &hd the descriptions aren't adequate enough 
ror me to tell them apart." (By the way, Call , has 7 spines. If you notice, 
the genus description said "posterior extremity with 3 spines," which is 
all right; the other 4 are higher up on the carapace. However, I changed it 
to read "posterior half of carapase with 7 spines.") 
He still had the specimens on his desk, and I said, "Let me see 
some of the specimens." He picked up a bottle or two and peered in through 
the glass. I said, "Oh, take them out and look at them." He said, "You can 
tnrough tne oottle." I said, "You cannot. You don't look at amphipods 
through the bottle." He said, "No, of course not, they're smaller." And I 
said, "Take out sakxsx each specimen and put it in a dish, and line them up 
here together where we can look at them." 
Everything I have been able to get him to do about the proof has 
gone that way. I feel afterward as though it has taken an actual physical 
exertion (and a big one) to get him to do anything. 
The minute he got the specimens out in a row I saw instantly the 
difierence between Call... and all the others. It's as aistsixaxxiks plain as 
the nose on your face, and I don't know where his eyes have been all this 
time. On either side of the "face" of Call . there are three very 
distinctive spines. In her description of £. asoer Miss Rathbun describes" 
them as follows: "Hepatic region surrounded by rather profound depressions, 
