Part 40 (1/2)

”Well?”

”I was wondering, Mr. Prelatt, whether I would have any time aside from the fish-traps and the collecting, and if so, if I might work with the man who is going to take that up.”

The director shook his head.

”No,” he answered, ”there are two men working on that subject together.

Besides which, you will have but very little time, at least for a couple of weeks. Then, if you feel that you would like some research work, I'll tell you what I want done.”

Colin soon found that the demands upon him by the chief of the collecting staff not only were very heavy, but that they required considerable ingenuity. Frequently he would be asked for starfish and it would be necessary to go to a well-known shoal at some little distance, perhaps in the _Phalarope_ or other of the government boats. There they would dredge with 'tangles,' a tangle being an iron frame with yards and yards of cotton waste dragging behind in which the spines of sea-urchins and the rough convolutions of starfish easily become entangled.

Occasionally more distant trips, such as those to the Gulf Stream, would be made on the _Fish Hawk_, the largest of the Bureau's boats, named like all the others, after sea birds.

The hauling of the fish-trap, usually done in boats from the _Blue Wing_, never palled in interest. Every day the visit to the trap had the expectant thrill the miner finds when prospecting in a new stream. There was always the excitement of possibly finding new species, true gold to the scientist.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE _BLUE WING_ AT THE GOVERNMENT FISH TRAP, WOODS HOLE.

_Photograph by C. R. W._]

”I've found at least three new species,” said Mr. Wadreds to him one day, ”right out of the same trap you're haulin'. And sometimes, when there has been a long-continued storm and the wind's settin' in from the southeast, the traps have jest had numbers o' tropical fish.”

”Why should the wind bring the fish?” asked Colin.

”They come up with the weed, lad,” was the old collector's reply. ”When a storm rises the big ma.s.ses o' gulf weed are broken up an' drift on the surface before the wind. A great many semi-tropical fish live on the weed an' the little creatures that make their homes in it, an' so they come followin' it away up here. Then we find them in the traps and by seinin'. We've caught b.u.t.terfly fish an' parrot fish in the seines up here several times.”

”We get menhaden in the trap princ.i.p.ally now,” the boy said; ”why aren't they used for food? They look all right. Are they poisonous, or something?”

”Oily,” was the reply; ”an Eskimo might like 'em, but no one else. But the menhaden fishery is valuable just the same, for there's more oil and better oil got every year from menhaden than there is whale oil.

Nearly all fish manure is menhaden, too. But they're not a food fish.”

”Nor are dogfish,” said Colin, ”but I see that the M. B. L. mess table has them once in a while. We get lots of mackerel and other varieties that are good eating. I wonder why they eat dogfish?”

”Partly to try it out,” the collector said. ”A dogfish is a shark, as you know, and mos' people don't like the idea of eatin' any kind o'

shark. But it is a waste to have a good article o' food entirely neglected by the public an' so the Bureau and the M. B. L. have tried usin' dogfish on the table as an experiment to get an idea of its value as food.”

”It tastes all right, too,” said the boy. ”I had some yesterday.”

”O' course it does, but the name is against it. Both dogfish and catfish are good eatin', but there is a prejudice against 'em, because people don't eat cats an' dogs. But they have been canned an' sold under various names, such as 'ocean whitefish,' 'j.a.panese halibut,' an' 'sea ba.s.s.'”

”They have a vicious look, though!”

”They are vicious,” was the reply, ”but you mustn't believe all you hear. Why, at the last International Fishery Congress a speaker told of a plague o' dogfish which not only attacked lobsters, but swallowed pots an' all.”

Colin looked incredulously at his friend.

”That's the story,” the other said; ”you don't have to believe it. I don't.”

”But after all, a dogfish is a shark, and aren't sharks the most vicious creatures o' the sea?”

”I shouldn't say so,” the old collector answered. ”I reckon the moray is really more vicious. He's always huntin' trouble. A shark is always hungry, that's all. Fishes have different kinds o' tempers, you know, an' often it's the smallest creature that's the meanest.”

”Common fishes?”

”There isn't anythin' that swims that's meaner than a 'mad-Tom,' an'