nearer the truth, showing at a glance on each sheet of paper the picture of what is going on over the entire world in each order of phenomena, showing this even more clearly than it could be seen in nature, for on paper the phenomena are to some extent analyzed and dissected for easier comprehension of their components. We have leisure to examine separately and at the same time, by the superposition of charts having the same scale, the salinity, the temperature of the surface and of the depths, the meteorology, the contour of the bottom, its mineralogic constitution, the currents, waves, and all else. These charts permit us to combine, analyze, synthetize, experiment, sum up in every way, without fatigue or danger, without travel or loss of time. The scientist considers nature without leaving his laboratory, whither gathers the entire world to show itself in its slightest details and to unveil its mysteries.
I have not spoken of the author of theoretical and practical oceanography, founded on experimentation and measurement, as rigorous, considering the imperfections of the instruments employed, as in our own time. Marsigli founded it at one stroke. Born in Italy in 1658, successively engineer in the service of the Emperor Leopold I, slave in Turkey, member of the Academy of Sciences of Paris and of the Royal Society of Loudon, covered with glory, ignominiously degraded from all his titles and honors, a veritable Bohemian of science, who studied the sea in Provence and published the first didactic treatise on oceanography in Holland, and whose funeral eulogy was pronounced by Fontenelle. Marsigli rose suddenly, having had neither master nor precursor. Nothing was lacking to his work. It was complete—too complete, for though admired and appreciated by a few rare, eminent minds, among others the illustrious Boerhaave, he did not found a school. Oceanography, invented by Marsigli in the last years of the seventeenth century, fell into oblivion. One and a half centuries later, about 1842, his studies were taken up without much success by a Frenchman, Aimé. In spite of these two men of genius, who were merely isolated workers, the merit of important discoveries, and especially of methodical work continued uninterruptedly during a hundred years, gives to the United States the right to call themselves the founders of oceanography.
Applications of sciences result in new discoveries. The periods of ambition, of geographic discoveries, scientific discoveries, observations, generalizations, commercial or political interests, are evidently not clearly defined. They intermingle as they succeed one another. The mind goes back more than once over its steps, because attention is awakened by some point which has been passed over without attaching to it sufficient importance. Phenomena are connected with one another as are the studies to which they give rise. It is necessary for the success of the fishing industry that the formation and character of the sea bottom be noted and submarine lithology be observed, because
