FUK-SEAL HEED OF ALASKA. 43 



Maj. E. W. Clark makes this official entry in the St. Paul log or 

 journal after long experience with the foxes of St. George: 



Tuesday, December 17, 1901. 

 The season of trapping was a little under two weeks, taking off Sundays and the 

 holiday. All the men came into the village for one or two days during the trapping. 

 The fox herd on this island seems to have increased slightly rather than diminished 

 during the last two or three years. I learn that the seal meat saved and put out last 

 year as food for the foxes was scarcely tasted by them. Evidently they did not suffer 

 for the want of food. Year before last I understand that no seal meat was offered 

 them, but the last year and this year there was trapping, and this year the animals 

 seemed a trifle more abundant than last. I am by no means satisfied that an artificial 

 supply of food is necessary on this island for the maintenance of the herd, or even for 

 its increase (p. 160). 



With the sending out of tliis improper circular, as above described,, 

 the old influences got busy and actually persuaded President Taft to 

 send a message on January 8, 1913, to Congress (S. Doc. No. 997, 62d 

 Cong., 3d sess.) in which he urged Congress to repeal the close-time 

 law of August 24, 1912, and does so on this improper and untruthful 

 statement of Dr. Jordan in the premises. 



No attention was paid to the request of Mr. Taft, and he was very 

 promptly informed by leading Senators that they would not change 

 the law. 



This did not prevent that discredited scientist from making another 

 visit to the Senators and Members by sending them the following 

 letter (with an inclosure of a reprint of his ''economic circular" 

 above cited, in the Nation), to wit: 



Office of the President, 

 Leland Stanford Junior University, 



Stanford University, Cal., March 31, 191.3. 

 On January 25 the writers called to your attention the need of repeal in the matter 

 of certain fur-seal legislation of August 24, 1912. The Sixty-second Congress, in its 

 third session, took no steps in the matter. On the other hand, it cut from the sundry 

 civil bill the appropriation for the maintenance of the force of Government agents on 

 the fur-seal islands, reducing this force to a single caretaker on each island. The bill 

 failed because of the veto of the President and must come up again in the special 

 session. As the act suspending land sealing was a blow aimed directly at the integrity 

 of the treaty of July 7, 1911, suspending pelagic sealing, so the recent act is a blow 

 aimed at the defense of the herd on its breeding grounds, inviting the raiding of the 

 the islands. We have put the bearing of both these measures clearly in a letter that 

 is being mailed to each Member of the Sixty-third Congress. A copy of this letter is 

 inclosed. Will you not take up this matter anew and urge upon Congressmen, per- 

 haps the President himself, the need of rational action in the interests of the fur seals? 



David Starr Jordan. 

 George Archibald Clark. 



Soon after this letter was generally received (Apr. 10, 1913) the 

 Secretary of Commerce put a quietus on the subject by directing the 

 Bureau of Fisheries to dismiss the ideas advanced by Dr. Jordan and 

 carry out the law to the letter. 



