The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries Part 40

"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'

they're frequent in all the rivers o' the middle west an' south. A 'mad-Tom,'" he continued in answer to the boy's questioning look, "is a small catfish with spines. Most boys in riverside villages have their hands all cut up by 'mad-Toms.' O' course there are scorpion-fish an'

toad-fishes in tropical waters, an' their poison will cripple a man for a while, but there's no fish that's fatal."

"I thought there were lots of poisonous things in the water," Colin said, "jellyfish and other things like that."

"Well," replied the collector, "a jellyfish can be tolerable poisonous.

The Portuguese man-o'-war, pretty enough to look at when it floats on the water, with long streamers o' purple threads flowin' out behind, is the only thing that I ever heard of that killed a man."

"A jellyfish? How?"

"It was all his own fault," was the reply. "It was down in the Bahamas, off Na.s.sau, as I remember. The sea was just alive with jellyfish, an'

this young fellow that I'm tellin' about, he swam around a good deal an'

once or twice had run into a jellyfish without gettin' stung. There's only some o' them that sting."

"I thought all of them did a little?"

"No, only a few. Well, this chap knew enough, I reckon, to keep away from a Portuguese man-o'-war usually, but either he had got reckless or didn't think of it. Some of his friends shouted out to him to take care, but he laughed back, tellin' them they were foolish to believe old stories, and to show that he didn't care, in a spirit o' 'dare' he dived plumb under the jellyfish. But he misjudged his distance an' came up clean in the middle of it an' the stingin' hairs just closed all over on him."

"There are hundreds of them, too, aren't there?"

"Thousands of stingin' filaments in some o' them. He gave one wild scream an' went down. When he came up and his friends were able to grasp him he was paralyzed as though he had suffered an electric shock, an'

before they could get him to sh.o.r.e his body had broken out in a violent rash. The doctors couldn't do anythin' for him an' he died three days later."

"Have you ever been stung?"

"I know enough to keep away from a jellyfish," was the blunt rejoinder; "but I had a nasty time with a torpedo once."

"The electric ray?" queried Colin. "That fish that looks like a small sea vampire only it hasn't a whip-like tail?"

"That's it," said the older man. "It was when I was just a youngster, I was haulin' in a net, when my feet slipped from under an' I went headlong into the middle o' the net, and a torpedo landed on the back o' my neck. I reckon he must have shocked the spinal cord or something because I was fair paralyzed for an hour or two. You're sure to get one yourself," he continued, "because they use torpedoes for research work a good deal, but a shock in the hand or on the arm pa.s.ses away in a few minutes, so that you don't need to worry about that. The electric eels--which are not eels at all, though they look like it--are the worst of all, but since they live only in South American rivers, I suppose they won't bother you much."

"As long as I don't find any in the fish-trap," said Colin, laughing, as Mr. Wadreds nodded and went on his way, "I won't mind, and I'd just as soon not have to handle any dogfish that swallow lobster-pots as a habit, but if I do I'll come to you for help."

All in all, Colin thought Woods Hole the most interesting place in which he had ever been. Unlike other summer resorts, a spirit of earnest vigor pervaded the little settlement. The houses nestled in the wooded low hills behind the town, and though so near the sea, flowers could be made to grow luxuriantly, as a famous and beautiful rose garden bore witness.

To the southeast, over a spit of land that was little wider than a causeway, the road ran to the Marine Biological Laboratory and the Bureau of Fisheries station, holding their commanding positions overlooking the harbor. The great government pier smacked of the stormy sea, for it was used also by the Lighthouse Service and huge red buoys lay in dozens on it awaiting their hour to warn the tempest-driven mariner of the perils that lay below them.

Nearer in, where the pier was severed from the sh.o.r.e, the opening being crossed by a short swing bridge, was a small inclosed inner harbor where lay the launches and boats of the two laboratories. Upon the sh.o.r.e itself was a stone-walled tank, set between the Residence building and the Laboratory proper, and therein large fish which had been caught in traps or elsewhere, and which were too big for the indoor tanks, flitted as dark shadows within the pool. Smaller fish were in the Aquarium in the first floor of the laboratory opposite the wide s.p.a.ce where stood the serried rows of hatching troughs.

Here were many most interesting fish--among them that constant delight of the landsman, the puffer, which, when disturbed, rapidly inflates itself, rising to the surface of the water until it becomes apparently so large a mouthful that its would-be devourer is fooled into believing the morsel too big to swallow. Then, the danger removed, the puffer releases the gulped-down water and swims away. Here also were strange fish, like the eighteen-spined sculpin and the sea-robin, walking over the bottom on three free rays of each of the pectoral fins. Upon the top story of the same building were preserved in a rough museum various other strange forms, not all from Woods Hole waters; the remora, or sucking fish, that fastens on sharks and becomes a constant pa.s.senger enjoying a free ride, specimens of which were often in the Aquarium; the deal-fish, which alone among its tribe has a long slim fin projecting upwards from the tail almost at right angles to it; the blenny, whose facial expression has caused it to be known as the sarcastic blenny; the graceful sea-horse, who swings on seaweed with a prehensile tail like that of a monkey--and the male of which hatches the eggs instead of the mother, and not the least extraordinary, the three-cornered trunk-fish whose front view is the most unfishlike apparition possible. These and hundreds of others Colin learned to know from the collections.

It was with great delight that Colin heard of the presence of his friend Mr. Collier, who was working on the plans for a model of Bryozoa, and who had with him his staff of gla.s.s-workers and modelers. The boy found it hard to tear himself away from this laboratory and struck up quite a friendship with a j.a.panese colorist on the staff. Also, he was fortunate in meeting and knowing Mr. Cavalier, the artist of animal life, and from him the boy learned a great deal of the picturesque and aesthetic elements of the life which he painted and modeled with such surpa.s.sing skill. Scores of other workers, writers, and scientists of all kinds had rooms in the wonderfully interesting workshops of Woods Hole.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HATCHERY AND LABORATORY BUILDING, WOODS HOLE.

_Courtesy of the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: RESIDENCE AND FISHERIES BUREAU HEADQUARTERS, WOODS HOLE.