Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 55.djvu/111

Rh the joint commission, except in so far as it specially affected seal life in Bering Sea and the measures necessary for its proper protection and preservation.

"Facts, causes, and remedies" were the subjects to be considered. There is an old saying that the flavor of the pudding may often be revealed by chewing the string, and no long and exhaustive investigation was necessary to enable the American commissioners to arrive at what Mr. Clark admits to be the "facts, causes, and remedies" for the Bering Sea problem. Not many weeks were occupied in the field, it is true, for the commission was delayed in its appointment and notification, and the season was nearly over when it reached the islands. But, as Mr. Clark justly remarks, one member of the commission, Dr. Merriam, was already exceptionally well informed concerning the habits of the fur seal, and some things may be so in evidence that even a physicist can see them.

It is true that the joint report of the commission of 1891-'92 was meager, and the explanation lies close at hand in the unwillingness of the American commissioners to swerve from what they were convinced was absolutely true. Mr. Clark will look in vain for the "handwriting of diplomacy mingled with that of science," for the appearance of which in the report of the commission of 1897 he offers apologies, except, indeed, it be the diplomacy of going straight at the facts without concealment or evasion, on which Americans have sometimes prided themselves.

The joint report was limited to that, and only that, on which the commissioners were actually agreed, and the American commissioners have explained in their separate report that had they been willing to concede certain points the joint report would have been greatly augmented in volume. Mr. Clark has reviewed the conclusions of the commission of 1897, which he justly considers a most important and valuable document. It has not escaped his attention that in a number of the paragraphs of this report the American commissioners have committed themselves to the approval of several doubtful statements, such as that "the pelagic industry is conducted in an orderly manner, and in a spirit of acquiescence in the limitations imposed by law"; that a certain number of females may be killed without involving the actual diminution of the herd; the "tendency toward equilibrium theory"; that the herd is still far from a stage that threatens extermination, and others. These statements he excuses as "balm for the wounded feelings of the pelagic sealer"; "a concession to diplomacy"; "a diplomatic concession to take the sting out of the real admission"; "another concession to diplomacy," etc. I do not wish to be understood as questioning the necessity or wisdom of inserting these paragraphs in the joint report, but is it not a little strange