362 
States, with Mr. George Clark, Secretary of the 
Committee, arrived at San Francisco on the 25th. 
Mr. Macoun, the Canadian Commissioner, had 
already left the Pribyloff Islands, and the 
British Commissioner, Professor Thompson, was 
about to leave on H. M.S. ‘Amphion.’ Mr, 
Lucas, of the United States Commission, re- 
mained behind for a week. President Jordan 
is reported in a press dispatch to have said that 
the breeding grounds showed a shrinkage of 
about 15 per cent. over the conditions of last 
season, and the hunting grounds a shrink- 
age of 33 per cent. This is about what was 
predicted by the American Commission last 
year. The primary cause of the shrinkage of 
females on the breeding grounds is the pelagic 
catch of last fall and this spring. To this is 
added the loss due to starvation of orphaned 
pups in 1894, which should this year have lived 
to give birth to their first pups. This starva- 
tion in 1894, affecting, as it did, in a like meas- 
ure the male herd, is the cause of the diminu- 
tion of the killable seals on the hunting 
grounds. The decline of the herd is every- 
where more distinctly marked than it was last 
year, owing to the effects of the resumption of 
pelagic killing in Bering Sea after the modus 
vivendi of 1893. For 1898 the shrinkage will 
be still greater, through the destruction, in 1894, 
of unborn pups with females killed. Branding 
of young female seals, which will be begun 
' after September Ist, will be carried on by 
Colonel Murray, chief agent on the islands, 
and E. F. Farmer, electrician. The skins of the 
branded cows which returned this year to the 
islands show clearly the permanency of the 
mark and its efficiency to render the skins un- 
salable, without injury to the animal or to the 
herd. 
THE London Times has published a letter two 
and a-half columns in length from Mr. Herman 
Liebes, one of the lessees of the Prybiloff Islands 
seal rookeries, in which he presents the case 
for the United States in a temperate and reason- 
able manner, much more likely to prove con- 
vincing than the recently published letter of 
Secretary Sherman. The communication should 
make it clear to the ordinary reader that the 
decrease of the herd is not due to the loss of the 
seals killed on land, which are only young 
SCIENCE. 
(N.S. Vou. VI. No. 140. 
bachelors not serving harems, but to pelagic 
sealing, where at least 80 per cent. of those 
killed are females which are both pregnant and 
leave young to die of starvation on the islands. 
Since 1890 the annual catch of seals by the 
pelagic sealers amounts to an average of 88,916, 
as compared with an average of 15,770 from the 
islands. 
THE MISSOURI GEOLOGICAL SURVEY. 
THE following editorial comment appears in 
the Journal of Geology: 
“The State of Missouri has recently had deep 
disgrace thrust upon it by the removal of the 
efficient director of the Geological Survey, and 
by the appointment of men to its care and con- 
duct who possess, according to information that 
we deem trustworthy, not only no competency 
to perform their duties, but not even a plausible 
semblance of competency. These appointments 
have apparently no other motive than the con- 
ferring of personal or political favors. No 
causes of complaint, we are informed, were 
even alleged against the previous conduct of 
the Survey, or against the officials in charge of 
it. The scientific public has had ample demon- 
stration of the vigor and energy with which the 
Survey has been prosecuted, the promptness 
with which its results have been published, and 
the adaptation of the work to the development 
of the economic as well as the scientific re- 
sources of the State. It appears, therefore, 
that the moneys appropriated by the State of 
Missouri for the laudable purpose of investiga- 
ting and advertising its resources, and of in- 
forming its people concerning their own 
sources of material and intellectual wealth, are 
being virtually diverted from the purposes 
specifically indicated by the statutes of the 
State, and are being used for the personal and 
political interests of the Governor and his 
friends in the form of payment for worthless 
services. We are not sufficiently informed in 
the technicalities of law and the processes of the 
Courts to know how legal action in a case of 
this kind can be instituted and maintained, but 
if the appointees are as obviously incompetent 
as information indicates, they are simply con- 
suming the funds of the State to no purpose 
save their own, and we think that an effort 
