justice to the menu, even unto the coffee Notes are 

 compared on the days' work; the captain spices the con 

 versation with a story of adventure in China Seas or In- 1 

 dian Ocean, and the picture is complete if some poor 

 neophyte rinds the rolling uncomfortable, and steps out 

 " to see how the trawl is dragging." 



Dinner is over, and the trawl is pulled in: sometimes' 

 it is empty, sometimes it brings such a weighty load that 

 the whole force with pulleys and boat, hooks can hardly 

 raise it over the rail. Once it brought up, from seventy 

 fathoms a huge granite boulder, three feet thick, and 

 weighing half a ton; once it brought a barrel of sea- 

 cucumbers, Pentaeta frondom ; once two barrels and 

 more of lobsters, and the last time it was used it caught 

 two hundred full-grown skates Rata eglcmteria, to say 

 nothing of other fishes, sponges, and pectens. The 

 trawl takes only large things which are soon disposed 

 of, and the dredge is put over again; and if it is rocky 

 the "tangles" are allowed to drag The "tangles" are 

 simply great mops of spun-yarn attached to an iron bar 

 to be dragged over the bottom: the fibres of the mops 

 entangle star-fishes, crabs and sea-weeds, and I have 

 seen seven or eight thousand star-fishes brought up at 

 once. It has been proposed to use this machine in free- 

 ing oyster beds from these their deadly enemies. A few 

 hauls of the dredge will gather more material than can 

 be taken care of before midnight, and by supper-time 

 our ship is snugly made fast to Palmer's wharlY 



Prof. Putnam American Naturlisl, Dr. Holder Ameri- 

 can Museum of Natural History, Mr. Wyckoff of the 

 Tribune, Dr. Edmonds, Commissioner of Fisheries, Vt, 

 Col. feftne, New Haven, and Commissary General F$tQ$ t .-,,,, 



The United States Commission of Fish and 

 Fisheries. 



THE "LABORATORY." 



My last letter described a dredging trip in Block Is- 

 land Sound, and came to a close with the arrival of the 

 "Bluelight" in Noank harbor. The field work, if we 

 may so call it, of the day being over, a task quite as im- 

 portant remains, the assorting and s t udy of the mater- 

 ial collected. Let us take a glance at the headquarters 

 of the dredging party. A large room, in dimensions some 

 sixty feet by thirty, occupying the second story of a 

 large building at the foot of Main street and accessible 

 by a flight of outside stairs, has been transformed from 

 a sail-maker's loft to a working laboratory; once this 

 was the public hall of Noank and its walls still bear a 

 reminiscence of former fair or festival in the staring, 

 green letters of a "Welcome." To the naturalist it is 

 now ;i veritable palace, a storehouse of treasures more 



T3T 313 



