There came to his mind old readings confirmed now by direct vision.

He was not the kind of sailor that sails along regardless of what exists under his keel.

He wanted to know the mysteries of the immense blue palace over whose roof he was usually navigating, devoting himself to the study of oceanography, the most recent of sciences.
Upon taking his first steps in the Aquarium, he immediately pictured the marine depths which exploration had divided and charted so unequally.

Near the shores, in the zone called "the littoral" where the rivers empty, the materials of nourishment were accumulated by the impulse of the tides and currents, and there flourished sub-aquatic vegetation.

This was the zone of the great fish and reached down to within two hundred fathoms of the bottom,--a depth to which the sun's rays never penetrate.