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.

[Illustration: 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 masses 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 butterfly fish an' parrot fish in the seines up
here several times."

"We get menhaden in the trap principally 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