ARMY WAGONS, WAR DEPARTMENT, GOVERNMENT BUILDING.
The next remarkable fish that attracted his eye—or rather, repelled it—was the file-fish. This creature, if it was the file-fish, had a strong family resemblance to an unequally cooked and lumpy buckwheat cake, and was hardly thicker. It was an animated pancake swimming edge up. But what interested Philip was its method of propulsion. Along its back ran a fin for nearly the fish’s whole length, and this fin waved in a curving line like the path of a serpent. Philip had heard Harry wonder why ships were not propelled by some such device, and he resolved to tell his cousin that Nature was ahead of him in using that means of going through the water.
Then Philip walked along the curving corridor with ornamented columns that led to the main building. Just as he entered this part of the central hall, he saw a clever bit of advertising. It was headed, “They say it’s hot in Southern California,” and below was a statement of the daily temperature contrasted with that of Chicago. For that day the California temperature was 67° as contrasted with Chicago’s 73°.
GUNS, TORPEDOES, AND FLAGS: GOVERNMENT BUILDING.
Philip did not find this main building as interesting as the aquarium part. There were many models of fish, but they seemed very tame after the live ones. In the Netherlands exhibit (as, indeed, in most of them) was a model fishing-boat, but Philip did not know enough entirely to comprehend the purpose of the different devices shown, so he gave them only a glance. The exhibits of nets were likewise of small interest to him, though a fisherman would, no doubt, have been long entangled in their meshes.
The red disk on a white field that again marked the Japanese show promised him more entertainment, and he entered the inclosure. Here he found several fine little models, the most novel being that displaying the method of fishing with cormorants. A little boat full of fishermen was upon the painted waves, and in the bow was a torch made of an iron basket wherein flamed some material that had been soaked in oil. In the model this was represented by dyed wool. Each fisherman held in his hand a cord fastened to a ring fixed tightly around a bird’s neck. The birds were swimming about and diving for fish. When a fish was caught, the bird was hauled in, deprived of his prey, and sent out to try again.
THE WORLD’S FAIR POST-OFFICE: GOVERNMENT BUILDING.
