The Days of a Man 



D896 



A capable 

 group 



rhe 



British 

 commis- 

 sion 



for the service. As secretary and recorder I chose Clark, then 

 academic secretary of Stanford University.^ With us went 

 also Joseph Murray, then acting as special agent of the Treasury 

 Department, afterward chief agent of the islands for a second 

 term. 



Captain Moser and his first officer, Lieutenant Parmenter, 

 were deeply interested in the work and furnished the triangu- 

 lations and measurements on which our maps were based. 

 Stejneger's services were invaluable, the more so as he had 

 already spent a summer on the Commander Islands, making 

 an elaborate investigation of the Russian Fur Seal. Lucas, a 

 comparative anatomist of high rank, devoted himself to a study 

 of the structure and habits of the animals of the Pribilofs. 



Townsend had been for a number of years the scientific 

 expert of the Albatross, and had several times made maps show- 

 ing the yearly decrease of the Pribilof rookeries, on which the 

 abandoned territory of one year was invaded the next by the 

 delicate "seal grass" or foxtail — Alopecurus vierriami. The 

 mapping and photography for our commission was therefore 

 especially assigned to Townsend, and was executed with re- 

 markable skill. He afterward became director of the New York 

 City Aquarium at Battery Park, while Lucas later took charge 

 of the Brooklyn Museum of Natural History, and then of the 

 American Museum in New York. 



The accuracy of Clark's records and his large familiarity 

 with stock breeding made him an extremely valuable member 

 of the commission. Afterward he was several times sent by 

 the Government to take general charge of the islands during 

 the summer, and to count the herd from year to year. He thus 

 ultimately became the highest authority on the life and habits 

 of the Fur Seal, a subject on which he wrote numerous papers 

 as well as governmental reports. 



The British commission was headed by D'Arcy Wentworth 

 Thompson, professor of Zoology in the University of Dundee 

 — a scholarly naturalist with a wide range of interests, literary 

 as well as biological.^ Associated with him were James Macoun 



^ See Chapter xviii, page 445. 



* All of Thompson's numerous bags and boxes were labeled " Behring Sea 

 Mission." Seeing them on the pier at Liverpool, a bystander inquired: "Now 

 where are the missionaries.? " And one day when the professor appeared in his 



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