The average length of the common cod is about two and one-half or three feet, and the weight between thirty and fifty pounds, though sometimes cod are caught weighing three times as much. The color is a yellowish gray on the back, spotted with yellow and brown; the belly white or red, with golden spots in young specimens. Few members of the animal creation are more universally serviceable to man than the codfish. Both in its fresh state and when salted and dried, it is a substantial and wholesome article of food. The tongue is considered a delicacy. The swimming-bladders or “sounds,” besides being highly nutritious, supply, if rightly prepared, isinglass equal to the best of that which is brought from Russia. The oil, which is extracted from the liver, is of great medicinal value, and contributes considerably to the high economic value of the cod. The finest and palest oil is made from fresh and carefully cleaned liver, the oil being extracted either in the cold or by a gentle heat. Only the pale oils are used in medicine; the dark oils are too rank and acrid, and they are only used in dressing leather. The Story in the Telephone[14] On March 10, 1876, Alexander Graham Bell, standing in a little attic at No. 5 Exeter Place, Boston, sent through his crude telephone the first spoken words ever carried over a wire, and the words were heard and understood by his associate, Thomas A. Watson, who was at the receiver in an adjacent room. On that day the telephone was born, and the first message went over the only telephone line in the world--a line less than a hundred feet long. On January 25, 1915, less than forty years later, this same Alexander Graham Bell, in New York, talked to this same Thomas A. Watson, in San Francisco, over a wire stretching 3,400 miles across the continent. [Illustration: DR. ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL AT THE OPENING OF THE TRANSCONTINENTAL LINE In front of Dr. Bell is the replica of his original telephone, and to his left is the glass case containing a piece of the wire over which Dr. Bell and Mr. Watson carried on the first telephone conversation in the world.] In that memorable year of 1876, Dom Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, while visiting the Philadelphia Centennial, was attracted to Bell’s modest telephone exhibit, picked up the receiver, listened as Professor Bell talked at the other end of the room, and, amazed at the wonder of the thing, cried out, “My God--it speaks!” From that time, the first telephone exhibit became the center of attraction at the exposition. Had Dom Pedro lived to see the Panama-Pacific Exposition he might have listened to Professor Bell talking not merely from the other end of a room, but from the other side of a continent.