But in the
morning you will have a chance to see how it is done, and then the
results--when they are published--will seem more interesting."

"Have you been associated with the Bureau of Fisheries, Professor Podd?"
Colin asked.

"Not directly," the other replied. "I should have enjoyed it, and it
seems to me a work of the first importance, but every man is apt to
think that about his own work, or work that is like his own. But I can
tell you what decided me, nearly twenty years ago, to give all my spare
time to the fishery question."

"What was that?" asked Colin.

"It was a phrase in a lecture that Dr. Baird, the founder of fish
culture in America, was giving about the need of the work. He pointed
out that there was more actual life in a cubic foot of water than in a
cubic foot of land, and closed by saying, 'The work of conserving the
Fisheries of the United States will not be finished until every acre of
water is farmed as carefully as every acre or land.'"

"I never quite thought of it as farming," said the boy.

"Nor had I, before that time," the professor said. "But ever since then
I have seen that we of the present time are the great pioneers, the
discoverers, the explorers of this new world. Instead of blazing our
trail through a wilderness of trees we dredge our way through a
wilderness of waters; instead of a stockade around a blockhouse to
protect us against wild beasts and wilder Indian foes, we have but a
thin plank between us and destruction; instead of a few wolves and
mountain-lions to prey upon the few head of stock we might raise, we
have thousands of millions of fierce, finny pirates with which to do
battle, and we work against odds the old pioneers could not even have
estimated!"

"That's great!" cried Colin, his eyes shining.

"The surface of the sea," the professor continued, warming to his
subject, "reveals no more of its mystery than the smoke cloud above the
city tells the story of the wild race of life in its thronging streets,
or than the waving tips of a forest of mighty trees reveal the myriad
forms below. Each current of the ocean is an empire of its own with its
tribes endlessly at war; the serried hosts of voracious fish prey on
those about them, fishes of medium depth do perpetual war upon the
surface fish, and some of these are forced into the air to fly like
birds away from the Nemesis below."

"And much is still unknown, isn't it?"

"We are discovering a new world!" was t