m that time on it is
merely a question of giving them the proper food and keeping the troughs
clean. When they are five or six months old we set them free."

"Do you do any work except salmon hatching here?" Colin asked, as, after
a morning spent in the station, they walked toward the pier.

"No," the foreman answered, "we distribute a million and a half young
fish every year and that keeps us busy enough."

"Well," said Colin, shaking hands, "I'm ever so much obliged, and I
really feel now as if I knew something about a hatchery. And I've had a
share in one experiment, anyway!"

On his return to the cottage he found the professor getting out
fishing-tackle.

"Going out again?" queried Colin.

"I thought you might like to try a little sport-fishing," was the
answer; "you said you were going down to Santa Catalina, and you might
as well get your hand in. You can stay over another day, can't you?"

"I suppose I could," Colin answered, "and I should like to catch a
really big salmon with a rod and line, not only for the fun of it, but
because I happen to know that Father's never caught one, and I'd like to
beat him out on something. It's pretty difficult, though, to get ahead
of Dad!"

The professor shook his head with mock gravity.

"That's not a particularly good motive," he said, "and I don't know that
I ought to increase any boy's stock of conceit. It is usually quite big
enough. But maybe you won't catch anything, and I'll chance it."

"Oh, but I will catch one," Colin declared confidently; "I'm going to
try and get one of the hundred-pounders that I've read about."

"You'll have a long sail, then," his host replied, "because fish of that
size don't come far south of Alaskan waters. Twenty-five or thirty
pounds is as big as you can look for, and even those will give you all
the sport you want."

"Very well," Colin responded, a little abashed, "I'll be satisfied."

"It's rather a pity," the professor said, when, after lunch, they had
started for the fishing-grounds in a small catboat, "that you haven't
had a chance to go up to The Dalles to see the salmon leaping up the
falls and the rapids. I think it's one of the most wonderful sights in
the world."

"I've seen the Atlantic salmon jump small falls," Colin said, "but I
don't think I ever saw one larger than ten or twelve pounds."

"I have seen hundreds of them fifty to eighty pounds in weight leaping
at falls in the smaller Alaskan rivers. I remember