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May 3, 1956

Dr. Remmington Kellog 
Waldo L. Schmitt
Smithsonian Bredin Caribbean Expedition

Just a word to report Dr. Chace's and my return to duty at the Museum.

The Bredin expedition was for more successful than first anticipated in view of size of vessel and limited time.  However, we were enabled to make number of interesting observations; of shrimp commensal with anemones, windrows of red crab megalope on the beach, thousands of them at one time and in one long drift, a phenomenon which experience of the natives, fishermen and others seem never to have been noted before.  Also, I was enabled to realize a twenty year ambition of landing on Redonda Island, a place difficult of access except on most favorable weather which was vouchsafed us this time, and from which Dr. Foshag has long desired samples from a phosphatic deposit occurring there.

We left Trinidad on March 13 on the schooner "Freelance" with Mr. Bredin, visiting Grenada and several of the Grenadines, making Martinique on the 22nd.  Here Mr. Bredin left for the States, after the American Consul at Port de France, Mr. William B. Cobb, Jr., had taken us on a tour of the island.  On April 9, Mr. Ernest N. May, Mr. Bredin's brother-in-law, joined the expedition for the rest of the cruise.  It was Mr. May who financed Dr. Kreiger's and Mr. Morton's expedition to the West Indies about 10 years ago.

Dr. Clarke was picked up at Roseau, Dominica, on April 25.  The subsequent stops and his personal activities he enumerated for you:

Guadeloupe, Antigua, Redonda (mentioned above), Nevis, St. Christopher, Virgin Gorda, and Tortola.

He and Dr. Smith departed for Washington from St. Croix by air on the 19th and 20th respectively.  Dr. Chace and I gathered a most satisfactory lot of crustacea still enroute and yet to be counted, certainly numbering several thousand specimens.  Included among numerous invertebrates were several crinoids taken alive, starfish, sea-urchins, sea-hares, and cephalodods.

An accession for the material collected, and a more formal report on the activities of expedition will be forwarded in due course.

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