^ . CORRESPONDENCE CITED. 



I made instant assent, and Mr. Hitchcock mailed a copy of my letter, above cited, 

 I to Dr. D. S. Jordan, care of Swarthmore College, Pa., where he was at this time. On 

 Tuesday, January 12, 1904, Mr. Hitchcock received from Dr. Jordan a long letter in 

 reply to mine thus sent to him, and on Friday, .January 1-5, 1904, Mr. Hitchcock read 

 Dr. Jordan's letter to me, in his office at the department. Asking his stenographer 

 to take down my words, I made the following reply to Dr. Jordan's letter. (I retained 

 this copy of those notes.) 



"I am much indebted, Mr. Hitchcock, to you for this courtesy on your part, in 

 reading that letter from Dr. Jordan, which you have just received, to me — a personal 

 letter? Well, then, of course, its text is confidential between us. But what I have 

 to say now concerning it I give to yoa for any use, public or private, that you may 

 desire. 



"I assume that the Secretary and yourself can have but one object in view touching 

 the past and present status of our fur-seal herd; that that object is to become at once 

 possessed of the whole truth in the premises, and nothing else, either of a personal 

 or of an impersonal relation, to this business. At the outset, and before I take up a 

 brief review of this long, rambling, personal letter which you have just read, I must 

 say that Dr. Jordan's assertion that I have 'had no scientific training' is a gratuitous 

 falsehood. He knows it, too; he knows now and he knew 20 years ago that I 

 came to the Smithsonian Institution in the winter of 1861-62; that I at once entered 

 the family of Joseph Henry, its director, as his private and confidential secretary: he 

 knows that I was engaged then, officially, as the artist of that establishment; he knows 

 that my whole time, when not busy with Prof. Henry, was occupied with natui-al- 

 history work and investigation under the immediate direction of Spencer F. Baird 

 and a corps of his able associates in the Smithsonian Building. At that time I was 

 trained bv these men so well that when it became jiossible for the Smithsonian to 

 select a man, in April, 1872, fit for the work of making a complete and original bio- 

 logical survey of the then entirely unknown seal herds on the Pribilof Islands, I was 

 then selected from 18 active, well-trained candidates for this task — selected by 

 Joseph Henry and Spencer F. Baird for this especial mission, because they deemed 

 me the best fitted. 



SCIENTISTS LAUD WORK. 



"The result of my work so pleased these real scientists, when I returned and fin- 

 ished it, that they never failed, by word of mouth or in writing, to laud it; it has also 

 received world-wide approbation, and is to-day the same authoritative, unshaken 

 volume in the naturalists' library that it was when first issued, 20 years ago. 

 Jordan knows all this; he presumes, however, upon yoiu" ignorance of it; he, there- 

 fore, humiliates himself at the very opening of this letter to you. He has had no 

 such training under such able men as I have had; few men ever have. This is all 

 I intend to say about myself. It is imperative that I should say as much, since it 

 has been fairly forced upon me by the impudent, patronizing, and arrogant language 

 of reference to myself in this letter, reflecting upon my ability and my motives." 



I. In his letter you observe that he does not submit a single statement of fact, or 

 a single figure to deny the tabulated statements of fact and figures which are embodied 

 in my letter of January 8 (1904) to the department; he advances nothing but a series 

 of unfounded and unsupported "opinions" and "beliefs." He does so because he 

 is utterly unable to do anything else in the premises. 



II. He starts in by making the mistake of attempting to break the force of ray pres- 

 entation of the condition of affairs on the seal islands by descending to insinuation 

 and implications, in effect, that I am "unfriendly" to the lessees of the islands — that 

 I am "hostile" to them and hence I am trying to injure them. What are the facts 

 in this regard? 



In 1890, after the repeated sight of the lessees' men killing cow seals '"in milk," 

 in three successive drives on St. Paul Island (prior to July 20), I ordered this illegal 

 and improper work of the lessees to stop; I did so, because they were violating the law 

 under my eyes, and I had no alternative, if an honest and competent public officer. 

 Of course this action aroused the "hostility" of the lessees. Was it wrong on my 

 part? No. 



SECRET TREASURY PERMIT. 



Again, on April 22. 1891, I intercepted and prevented the granting of a secret 

 Treasury permit, dated "April 11," 1891, to kill "60,000 seals" if they, the lessees, 

 could find them on the Pribilof Islands during the season of 1891 ; this also aroused 

 more of that "hostility" of the lessees. But this permit was an infamous and 

 scandalous one, and President Harrison on that account was compelled to veto it 

 Mav 3. 1891. 



