Harvey Williams, age 10, of Stilwell, 0 . a., for his question:

What is a pilot fish?

The pilot fish likes to get his dinner the easy way. He will follow slow moving ships hoping for scrape to be thrown overboard or he will follow the hungry sharks, hoping for scraps left over from their gobbling. He is a streamlined beauty, about two fast long and marked with five dark bands around his body.

In times past, the pilot fish enjoyed a reputation which he did not deserve. It was believed that the pilot fish would pilot a lost sailing ship to safe harbor and the ancient Greeks held him to be a sacred animal. But, so far as we know, he never goes ahead of the ship. He simply follows behind   where the scraps are likely to fall.