OBITUARY NOTICES. 
495 
The plea ultimately based upon the principle named is as 
follows: The Government of the United States avers that 
the Alaskan seal is an amphibious animal, which has its fixed 
home on Alaskan islands, and that from this home it never 
long departs, because of its fixed animus revertendi; that this 
fixed animus revertendi gives to the breed an economic apti¬ 
tude of great value, and that however far they may roam 
from land they can still be definitely related to the soil on 
which they increase and multiply. 
As has been stated, Dr. Welling, at the time of his accept¬ 
ance of the presidency of Columbian College, placed directly 
before him the growth of the college into a university, not 
that he deemed the aggregation of the four faculties as con¬ 
stituting a university—he dreamed of something more, and 
cherished this dream as a waking principle and, working by 
its guidance for twenty years, succeeded in putting in place 
the completing element of the university, the School of 
Graduate Studies. 
On the evening of October 4, 1893, many of his friends 
and colleagues who had shared with him the aspirations for 
this consummation now joined our joy of realization with 
his as he inaugurated this new school. On this occasion he 
spoke with unusual vigor upon “ The Science of Universal 
History, its Methods and its Delations to the Physical Sci¬ 
ences.” 
It was a fitting theme for one whose studies along that 
line had been fraught with such success. It was most ably 
treated, and is, as if by purpose, a capstone and crown of 
an active scholarly life. 
His walk among us came down to such a recent date that 
it would be useless to speak of the impress which his culture 
and genial nature have left upon us. Suffice it to say that 
wherever w r e find a pupil who lived close within the light of 
his thought, upon such an one we see the world’s signet of 
approval as a broad and tolerant mind. 
Coexisting with the administration of a university in 
fact as well as name was the thirst for universal culture— 
