Bibliography and Zoological Taxa of Paul Bartsch - Smithsonian ...

derson had been dredging off the Florida Keys in
his little vessel the Eolis, land and freshwater collections
were also made. One may safely assume
that this introduction to the rich and varied landsnail
fauna of Cuba made a lasting impression on
Bartsch, and led to his numerous later expeditions
to the Greater and Lesser Antilles, to his several
monographic studies, and many lesser publications
on West Indian land snails.
With Bartsch's interest in educational activities
it is not surprising to find him becoming involved
in the planning and preparation of exhibits. One
of his ideas was to install a series of faunistic displays.
In 1913 the Acadian faunal exhibit was installed,
and a year later followed by those of the
Virginian and Floridian faunas. One of Bartsch's
purposes in joining the Barrera expedition was to
gather material for a Caribbean faunal exhibit.
One of Bartsch's innovative projects was the District
of Columbia faunal exhibit, on public view
in the early part of 1914. The District Room, with
its display of animals and plants found in and
about the District of Columbia, and situated for
many years in several rooms off the ground-floor
lobby near the north entrance of the Natural History
Building, was one of the popular exhibits for
local school children, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts,
as well as others interested in nature.
In October 1914 the Divisions of Mollusks and
Marine Invertebrates were combined into one division
with Bartsch as curator. This step was
taken, according to the Annual Report of the U.S.
National Museum, for economical and administrative
reasons. The Division of Marine Invertebrates
had been headed for some time by Richard Rathbun
who unfortunately could give the Division
only slight attention because of the increasing duties
that fell to him as Assistant Secretary and Director
of the Museum. This fusion of the two
divisions with Dr. Bartsch in charge as Curator
continued until 1920, it being deemed impractical
during the war years to go back to the old arrangement.
Bartsch complained that his time available
for research was diminishing with the growing size
of collections and his increasing responsibilities,
and he requested a subdivision of his domain. Finally,
in April 1920 a Division of Echinoderms was
formed, and later in November of that year, Waldo
L. Schmitt was made Curator of Marine Inverte-
SMITHSONIAN CONTRIBUTIONS TO ZOOLOGY
brates, and the two divisions were once more separate.
About 1916 Bartsch began the study of shipworms,
largely because of the United States Navy's
request for assistance in combatting the destruction
of some of their marine structures in tropical
waters. Not only did he initiate pioneer work in
the classification of these boring mollusks, but he
became keenly interested in the chemical treatment
of wood as a preventive measure and suggested several
novel procedures along this line.
In the spring of 1917 he accompanied Henderson
to Cuba and then Haiti, the trip lasting two
months. These two were companions again in 1920
when both attended the first Pacific Science Congress
in Honolulu. This close association between
Henderson and Bartsch ended with Henderson's
sudden death on January 3, 1923. For fifteen years
Henderson had spent much of his time in the Division,
working on both land and marine shells,
and had contributed greatly through the expeditions
that he sponsored, collections that he purchased,
and by the donation of his own large
collection.
During these years Bartsch continued to publish
papers on Philippine land snails, his breeding experiments
with cerions, shipworms, and to a lesser
extent on the minute marine gastropods. He began
a study of the molluscan collections gathered in
the Gulf of California in 1911, a project, however,
that was never completed. He continued his yearly
visits to the Florida Keys in connection with his
Cerion experiments, and in addition he spent the
month of May 1923 in Cuba and Puerto Rico and
two weeks in August 1923 on San Salvador in the
Bahamas with his son Henry, where he collected
23,000 specimens. In connection with his Cerion
studies, he made a three-day trip to Cuba to collect
a series of two species of Cerion before going on
to the Tortugas. In all these West Indian trips he
always recorded his observations on the birds he
saw and collected, and he published during these
years several ornithological notes.
On his annual trips to the Tortugas Laboratory,
Bartsch became interested in the underwater photographic
work being carried on by W. H. Longley,
and in August 1923 he experimented with a new
submarine motion picture camera case at the Tortugas
Laboratory, exposing several hundred feet of
film in ten to twenty feet of water. In the follow-