214 
led to his appointment as secretary of the 
university, a title a little later changed to 
that of academic secretary. 
Although his office duties were of the most 
exacting nature, he nevertheless found time to 
do some teaching. In 1911-12, he offered a 
course in commercial teachers’ training in the 
department of education, which he later broad- 
ened to general secretarial training 
In 1896, when David Starr Jordan was made 
the United States member of the Interna- 
tional Fur Seal Commission, Mr. Clark was 
appointed secretary to the commission. Jn 
this capacity Mr. Clark accompanied the com- 
mission to the Pribilofs, where he spent many 
weeks on the seal islands, studying the seals 
on the rookeries and doing the exacting cler- 
ical work of the commission. 
He remained as secretary to the commis- 
sion during the entire period of its existence 
and visited the seal islands again in 1897 and 
1898. During the sittings of the commission 
in Washington in the winters of those years 
to Mr. Clark fell the almost herculean task of 
collating, arranging, classifying and present- 
ing to the commission in proper form for their 
consideration, the stupendous amount of his- 
torical, commercial, political and biological 
data which the State Department, the Treas- 
ury Department, and particularly the commis- 
sion itself, had assembled. To do this re- 
quired unusual. abilities in a number of lines, 
including diplomacy, as well as the strength 
of body and will to work eighteen to twenty 
hours every day for several weeks. No one 
but Dr. Jordan, chairman of the commission, 
and one or two others connected with it, ever 
knew or realized the invaluable service which 
George A. Clark rendered our government in 
those critical days. ; 
The interest in fur-seal matters developed 
then remained with Mr. Clark to the last. It 
was he who planned and actually took the first 
reliable census ever made of the fur-seal herd. 
So great was his interest in the fur-seal prob- 
lems and so clearly was his exceptional grasp 
of those problems realized by the government, 
that he was again sent to the islands in 1909, 
1912 and 1913, by: Hon. Charles Nagel, Secre- 
SCIENCE 
[N. 8. Von. XLVIII. No. 1235 
tary of Commerce and Labor and George M. 
Bowers, Commissioner of Fisheries. In each 
of those years he made a careful census of the 
fur-seal herd. It was the belief of Mr. Clark 
and those then in charge of the fur-seal sery- 
ice in the Bureau of Fisheries that a reliable 
census of the herd for a series of years, to- 
gether with carefully carried out marking, 
weighing and other observational studies of 
the seals, would put the government in posses- 
sion of knowledge regarding the age of matu- 
rity, reproductive period, rate of natural in- 
crease, natural mortality, rate of growth, hab- 
its of the yearling and two-year-old males and 
females, and a number of other problems con- 
cerning which the lack of definite knowledge 
has been the cause of most of the disputation 
regarding fur-seal matters. 
So long as killing seals in the open sea was 
lawful and practised, some of the most impor- 
tant of these questions could not be solved. 
With the cessation of pelagic sealing, resulting 
from the convention of July 7, 1911, entered 
into by the United States, Great Britain, 
Japan and Russia, it then became possible to 
make such a scientific study of the fur-seal 
herd as would give the government the exact 
knowledge so long and so seriously needed. 
The government would then be in a position 
to formulate and put into effect a rational 
policy for the management of the fur-seal 
herd. 
The season of 1912 was the first in which 
there was no pelagic sealing. The fur-seal 
herd was then the smallest in its history. 
Then was the time to begin its scientific 
study, according to a carefully thought-out 
program, to extend over a series of four or 
five years. It was believed that period would 
be sufficient to solve the vitally important 
problems before the herd became so large as 
to render a census a physical impossibility. 
This was clearly seen by Mr. Clark and the 
Bureau of Fisheries, and the census and in- 
vestigations were promptly begun. They were 
carried through in the seasons of 1912 and 
1913, but unfortunately, changes in method, 
personnel and scope, since 1913, have made 
coordination of results difficult if not im- 
