ffalo-fish, and catfish as soon as the
water should recede and leave the fish stranded in lakes and pools. One
Sunday, Colin took the power-boat up the river and had a chat with the
men at Bellevue regarding the nature of the work. He found that the
flood dangers were small above the junction of the Missouri and
Mississippi Rivers, and when an opportunity arrived to do some fish
collection in the overflows, the boy thanked the superintendent of the
station, and said he would rather keep to the mussel work. This, a day
or two later, came to the notice of Dr. Edelstein.

"I haf observed," his chief said, "that you haf been taking much more
interest lately in your work. Why is it?"

"I have been trying to do a little investigating on my own account,"
Colin said confusedly, "and there's a lot of fun in working things out
all by yourself."

"Haf you any objegtions to telling me what you haf been gonsidering?"

"Not at all, sir," Colin answered. "I'd be glad to show you, if you'd
care to see. I've been trying to find out the cause of the difference in
the secretions of the mussels that have very bright pearly shells and
those that are dull. But I haven't got very far along yet."

"Fery good subject," was the reply; "let me see your notebooks."

Colin brought him a number of small notebooks filled with records of
experiments that he had been doing in the evenings, and over some of
them the gem expert smiled.

"You haf done a great deal of unnecessary work," he said, "work that I
gould haf told you had no bearing on the results, but it isn't time
wasted at all, for you will haf learned more that way than if I had told
you. And you haf two series of eggsperiments that are very useful. If
you only had time to make the series gomplete, the information would be
of value to the Bureau."

"Would you include them in your report, sir, if I completed the series?"

His chief leaned back in his chair.

"Seriously," he said, "I think your eggsperiments on the garacter of
the secretions are very interesting. You don't know as much organic
gemistry as you should, but if you will take a few suggestions from me,
I think your work would be worth publigation."

"You mean in your article?" asked Colin.

"No," was the answer, "in your own."

"My article! You mean that I should write it up?"

"Why not?"

"But I don't know enough!"

"If we all waited until we thought we knew enough about a subject," the
scientist answered, "there