ew England fishing-vessels."

"What was the cause, sir?"

"The statistical division of the Bureau ascribed a great many of the
fatalities to badly-built vessels, so that a number of them foundered at
sea in bad weather."

"How could the Bureau help that?"

"It did help it wonderfully," the director answered. "A thorough
investigation was set on foot and all kinds of vessels examined. The
experts of the country were consulted and hundreds of models made to
find out just which was the most seaworthy. The fishing-fleets of all
the world were visited, and as a result a schooner was built and called
the _Grampus_, which became a model for all that was most to be desired
in fishing-vessels. The boat-builders of the country since then have
followed that type, and the loss of life from vessels of the _Grampus_
type in the last ten years has been less than one-fourth of that from
the older vessels in the ten years preceding. From the port of
Gloucester alone, this has meant in the ten years a saving of over six
hundred lives."

"That's getting results!" said Colin admiringly.

"And the commercial results, while they don't compare in importance with
the saving of life, of course, are even bigger. The winter cod-fishery
of New England was absolutely revolutionized by the introduction of
gill-nets with glass-ball floats, the catch becoming three times as
large, while at least one hundred thousand dollars was saved annually in
the single item of bait. Scores of new fishing-grounds have been
located, and apparatus has been devised which enables the fishermen to
exploit grounds which they previously had been unable to reach.

[Illustration: TESTING THE OCEAN'S CROP.

Experimental haul on the Bureau's vessel, the _Fish Hawk_, to determine
the character of the population of shore waters.

_Courtesy of the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries._]

"There are so many different things being accomplished that it's hard to
name them all, but you can see for yourself that some one has got to
collect the figures on fisheries in order to determine how the industry
is progressing. If a town reports a bad season, when all the other ports
have been fortunate, the Bureau finds out why. If the catch of a certain
fish is decreasing all over the country, then this species must be
turned over to the fish culturists for artificial hatching and increase
of supply, and so on in a thousand directions. The statistical end has
to get the figures. We base all