THE BERING-SEA CONTROVERSY. 73 



ultimate efforts. Every species, every individual exists by virtue 

 of having striven to attain these ends. In the structure of each one 

 is the record of the attainment, partial or complete, as the case may be. 

 And each man and woman of us is toiling in his or her way toward 

 the same goal, unconscious of that something within us, greater than 

 ourselves, that "guides us, blindfold but safe, from one age on to 

 another." The burs and " stickers " that cling so persistently to our 

 clothes are but a part of the same great effort. It is the only way 

 sweet cicely, desmodium, the bur-marigold, and their kin have of 

 traveling through the woods, and so on from forest to forest, from 

 swamp tangle to swamp tangle. They live their lives as truly as a 

 man lives his, with equally as good a purpose that is equally as well 

 attained. Each embodies those essential qualities of living that the 

 great teacher discerned when he bade men " consider the lilies of 

 the field." 



EXPERT TESTIMONY IN THE BERING-SEA 

 CONTROVERSY. 



By Pbof. T. C. MENDENHALL. 



THE intelligent public, fickle and uncertain as it is, has ap- 

 parently not entirely withdrawn its interest from one of the 

 most important and suggestive of modern diplomatic entanglements, 

 the Bering-Sea controversy. Although thought to have been 

 finally settled by arbitration in 1893, the Paris award seems to con- 

 stitute only the beginning of a new phase of the subject. The valu- 

 able investigations and interesting reports of the last American com- 

 missioner, Dr. Jordan, and of his English colleague have seemed to 

 keep the matter alive in the public mind, and to the interested and 

 informed reader they have furnished a fresh example of that curious 

 tendency among scientific experts to come to conclusions diametric- 

 ally opposed to each other, although starting with essentially the 

 same data. Of course, everybody knows that it is essential to the 

 proper carrying on of a scientific investigation that it be commenced 

 with no preconceived notions as to how it is coming out, and that 

 judgment should wait on fact, ever ready to incline this way or that, 

 in obedience to the compelling laws of thought. Justice to the man 

 of science obliges the admission that, take him in his laboratory or 

 library, with no end in view except that of getting at the truth, he 

 generally lives fairly well up to this high standard, and easily, too. 

 But transform him by the magic influence of a handsome retainer, 

 or any other like incentive, into a scientific expert, and he is a horse 

 of another color. He must now assume a certain theory to be true, 



TOL. LII. 7 



