or water at the foot of the lighthouse. Often the light can be seen twenty miles away.

Some of the lights are fixed lights, and may be either red or yellow. Others revolve so that they flash forth at intervals. Each lighthouse has its characteristic light. For instance, a light on Marthas Vineyard

flashes once in ten seconds, and every fourth flash is red. Provincetown has a red light that flashes every fifteen seconds. Boston Light flashes white every thirty seconds. The government prints a catalogue of all the lighthouses. This tells the kind of light given out by each of them. All ships carry the catalogue, and if a vessel goes astray in a storm it can usually tell where it is as soon as it sights the light of a lighthouse.

The lighthouses are made as conspicuous as possible so they can be quickly recognized in the daytime by their shape or color. One will be white, another red, another striped horizontally red and white, another banded in a black and white spiral.

Besides maintaining lighthouses the government has established life-saving stations where men are ever on the watch during the stormy part of the year to rescue people from wrecks. Hundreds of persons are rescued from death every year, and millions of dollars' worth of property saved.

Fishing, ship-building, and commerce once brought prosperity to the little towns along the Maine coast, but in recent times these industries have concentrated in places with good railway connections. Many of the young people have sought work and a livelier environment in the cities, and the seaboard population has decreased. Every village used to send schooners to the fishing banks. Now very few sail except from Portland. The shore fisheries are, however, important, and more than seventy factories are engaged in canning lobsters, clams, and small herring.

The lobsters are caught in cage-like traps called lobster pots. The pots are weighted with stones and lowered to the bottom where the lobsters crawl around among the rocks and seaweed. Inside of each pot is a fish head for bait, and when the lobster crawls in to get it he is too stupid to find his way out of the small inward-projecting opening.

Clams live buried in the mud flats. The flats are exposed to view at low tide. Then the men and boys dig the clams out much as a farmer digs potatoes.

In Europe various little fishes have long been canned as sardines, and since 1875 the industry has developed on the coast of Maine. When herring are feeding, they swim at the surface of the tidal currents and can be caught in weirs. The weirs are closely woven brush fences built out from the shore with the outer end curved nearly back on itself and finally turned a short distance into the enclosure, but having a small open space for an entrance. As the school of herring moves along with the tide the brush fence turns them into the enclosure, where they continue to swim slowly around

in a circle without finding the blind entrance. Presently a boat containing a seine arrives. The seine is stretched across the entrance, and the boat moves around the inner side of the enclosure paying out the

net until its ends are brought together. At its lower edge is a purse line which is drawn to close the bottom of the seine. Then the entire seine is hauled in so that the fish are in a sufficiently reduced space to be taken with dip-nets into the boat. Small steamers collect the catch and deliver it at the factories, where the fish are cleaned while fresh by men, women, and child workers. Then they are soaked in brine, dried on wire flakes, cooked in hot oil for two or three minutes, and packed in small tin boxes. Many full-grown herring are smoked. The heads and other refuse are made into fertilizer.

The Maine coast is a very attractive summer resort region. No matter how hot the weather may be inland, the sea breezes and cool water usually make the air along shore quite comfortable. The coast is delightfully bold and picturesque, and the little steamers that thread the channels among the islands bring a multitude of visitors to it every year. Some places have become prosperous simply through supplying the wants of the warm weather cottagers and

boarders. One of the largest of the summer colonies is that which dwells on the islands of Casco Bay. Many of the families that have vacation homes there are from Canada and the Western States.