Introductory Address. 9 



tion of marine life ; and in our marine laboratories, explorers have 

 studied the life history of the most useful forms. 



The knowledge gained has enabled us to breed and multiply at 

 will ; to protect the young fish during the period of their in- 

 fancy — when alone they are liable to wholesale destruction — finally 

 to release them in the ocean, in those waters that are most suit- 

 able to their growth. The fecundity of fish is so great, and the 

 protection afforded them during the critical period of their life so 

 ample, that it may now be possible to feed the world from the 

 ocean and set the laws of Matthews at defiance. Our geographers 

 of the sea have shown that an acre of water may be made to pro- 

 duce more food for the support of man than ten acres of arable 

 land. They have thrown open to cultivation a territory of the 

 earth constituting three-quarters of the entire surface of the globe. 



And what shall we say of our conquests in that other vast ter- 

 ritory of the earth, greater in extent than all the oceans and the 

 lands put together — the atmosphere that surrounds it. 



Here again America has led the way, and laid the foundations 

 of a Geography of the Air. But a little while ago and we might 

 have truly said with the ancients " the wind bloweth where it 

 listeth, and we know neither from whence it comes nor whither it 

 goes"; but now our explorers track the wind from point to point 

 and telegraph warnings in advance of the storm. 



In this department, the Geography of the Air, we have far out- 

 stripped the nations of the world. We have passed the mob- 

 period of research when the observations of multitudes of individ- 

 uals amounted to little, from lack of concentrated action. Organi- 

 zation has been effected. A Central Bureau has been established 

 in Washington, and an army of trained observers has been 

 dispersed over the surface of the globe, who all observe the con- 

 dition of the atmosphere according to a pre-concerted plan. 



The vessels of our navy and the mercantile marine of our own 

 and other countries have been impressed into the service, and thus 

 our geographers of the air are stationed in every land and traverse 

 the waters of every sea. Every day, at the same moment of ab- 

 solute time, they observe and note the condition of the atmosphere 

 at the part of the earth where they happen to be, and the latitude 

 and longitude of their position. The collocation of these observa- 

 tions gives us a series of what -may be termed instantaneous 

 photographs of the condition of the whole atmosphere. The co- 

 ordination of the observations, and their geographical representa- 



