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 cause
way, 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 shore, 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 shore 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 space 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 passenger 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 glass-workers and modelers. The boy found it hard to tear himself away from this laboratory and struck up quite a friendship with a Japanese 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 æsthetic elements of the life which he painted and modeled with such surpassing skill. Scores of other workers, writers, and scientists of all kinds had rooms in the wonderfully interesting workshops of Woods Hole.
Hatchery and Laboratory Building, Woods Hole.