Strange Specimens

Professional ichthyologists of the Smithsonian Institution and the American Museum of Natural History fidgeted last week. The Yacht Ara was in port at Miami, Fla., carrying--besides her owner, Commodore William K. Vanderbilt, amateur ichthyologist--a fresh cargo of exotic marine life from pregnant Pacific depths. There were six-inch sharks--white and gray streaked, tinged with orange; a strange eel; a phosphorescent deep-dwelling fish; and a score or more of other creatures which no one in the Vanderbilt party was scientist enough to identify, if indeed the specimens were identifiable and not new species altogether. Here was a chance denied to stay-at-home ichthyologists by sea-dredgers of the omniscient and loquacious William Beebe type-- a chance to exercise their knowledge by recognizing, perhaps to share the excitement of failing to recognize, strange spoils of the sea; a chance also, when Commodore Vanderbilt publishes his book on the collection, to come in as consulting experts for ichthyological glory.