NOVEMBEK 20, 1914] 



SCIENCE 



739 



been from the breeding grounds, old and 

 young, males and females, being subjected to 

 the strain of the process, the lack of proper 

 oversight and care, rendering it destructive in 

 the extreme. Adult females, young females 

 and female pups were regularly killed. The 

 driving was now limited toi the hauling 

 grounds, frequented only by the bachelors, or 

 young immature males, and these animals 

 alone were killed. The females, adult and 

 young, were everywhere protected from driv- 

 ing and from killing. This was the condi- 

 tion of the industry at the time it passed into 

 American control in 1868. The depleted herd 

 of 1834 had been restored to a maximum con- 

 dition of growth and for twenty years there- 

 after it yielded a fixed product of one hundred 

 thousand skins annually. 



That it has not continued to yield this 

 product was due simply to the fact that there 

 developed, after the year 1880, a new industry 

 carried on at sea, which by 1894 had exceeded 

 in its annual catch the maximum product 

 taken on land. Indiscriminate in its nature, 

 that is, including the females as well as 

 the males and causing the destruction of the 

 unborn and dependent young, male and fe- 

 male alike, the effect of pelagic sealing was 

 necessarily to throw the herd again into de- 

 cline and in the end to bring it to a state of 

 collapse similar to that experienced in 1834. 

 Neither land sealing as such nor pelagic seal- 

 ing as such was the cause of this. It was 

 due solely to the killing of females. Just 

 prior to 1911 the killing of females occurred 

 in the sea in connection with pelagic sealing. 

 Prior to 1834 it occurred on land in connec- 

 tion with the undeveloped and unperfected 

 Russian land methods. 



As the cessation of the killing of females 

 by the Russians after 1834 stayed the herd's 

 decline and provided amply for its recupera- 

 tion, so the suspension of pelagic sealing, ef- 

 fected by the treaty of July Y, 1911, is an ade- 

 quate remedy for the recent decline in the 

 herd and a guarantee for its restoration and 

 future protection. 



The suspension of land sealing, incorporated 

 in the law giving effect to this treaty of 1911, 



was a wholly unnecessary measure — wasteful 

 in the extreme, and certain in the end to be 

 harmful to the breeding life of the herd. 



George Archibald Clark 



SCIENTIFIC NOTES AND NEWS 



De. August Weismann, professor of zoology 

 at Freiburg since 186Y, died on November 6, 

 at the age of eighty years. 



The twenty-third annual meeting of the 

 American Psychological Association will be 

 held in affiliation with the American Association 

 for the Advancement of Science, the American 

 Society of Naturalists and the Southern Soci- 

 ety for Philosophy and Psychology at the 

 University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pa., 

 on December 29, 30 and 31. Professor R. S. 

 Woodworth, of Columbia University, is the 

 president and Professor R. M. Ogden, of the 

 University of Kansas, is the secretary. 



The American Phytopathological Society 

 has selected the Hotel Walton as headquarters 

 during its meeting in Philadelphia, Decem- 

 ber 29 to January 1. Members should make 

 their reservations at once. Material for the 

 pathological exhibition may be forwarded in 

 care of Dr. Allen J. Smith, Room 214, Medi- 

 cal Building, University of Pennsylvania. 



Martin G. Brumbaugh, Ph.D. (Pennsyl- 

 vania), governor-elect of the state of Pennsyl- 

 vania, was professor of pedagogy in the Uni- 

 versity of Pennsylvania from 1895 to 1900 and 

 from 1902 to 1906, since when he has been 

 superintendent of schools for Philadelphia. 



At the meeting of the Association of Amer- 

 ian Universities at Princeton University, on 

 November 7, President George E. Vincent, of 

 the University of Minnesota, was elected presi- 

 dent; President Arthur T. Hadley, of Yale, 

 vice-president, and Provost Edgar Fahs Smith, 

 of the University of Pennsylvania, secretary. 

 President John Grier Hibben, of Princeton, 

 and President Thomas H. McBride, of the 

 University of Iowa, were elected to the execu- 

 tive committee. 



At the meeting of the Association of State 

 University Presidents in Washington last 

 week. President Benjamin Ide Wheeler, of the 



