possibly finding new species, true gold to the scientist.
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 fishery