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[[letterhead]]
Goucher College
Baltimore, Maryland
[[/letterhead]]

Tortugas, Florida, 
July 4, 1925

Dr. Waldo L. Schmitt
U.S. National Museum,
Washington, D.C.

Dear Dr. Schmitt:

For nearly a week my chief occupation has been copying into my record the material you left with me, and making a sort of preliminary analysis of our results.

These please me greatly.  I find,for example, that while they keep well within certain limits the gray snappers capture different species at different stations.  Seven out of ten taken on White Shoal illustrate the matter nicely.  They contained 14 Gebias, of which we found not more than four additional specimens in all the fishes, snappers and grunts together, that we examined.
Five out of ten from one of the stations near Bird Key Reef contained 8 Mithrax sculptus of which we found only 5 other specimens in 254 other snappers.

I believe my knowledge of the local geography enables me to explain these variations consistently upon the hypothesis that each colony of snappers feeds over a tract extending only a short distance from its schooling place, and chooses generally a particular sort of bottom, which is inhabited in one place by one sand-haunting form, and in another by adifferent one.

Think I shall have to collect, with Mr. Valentine's assistance, some more material from critical stations, and send it to you for examination after your return from South America.  In that way we shall clarify our ideas, and advance our program by as much as we should gain in a considerable time here. 

With kind regards to Mrs Schmitt, and best wishes for success in South America, I am, 

^[[Cordially yours,
W. H. Longley.]]

Transcription Notes:
I've used the markup recommended by the TC for handwritten text in typed pages -@siobhanleachman