rom his central motive and aim of scientific investigation.
Through all the years of his busy career he has prosecuted his
researches with the most conspicuous success.

Meanwhile, he has endeared himself to the American people as an able
publicist, whose writings and leadership have become potent in many
lines of our public policy. President Cleveland had the good judgment to
select Dr. Jordan to preside over the inquiry into the condition of
affairs in Bering Sea. The fur-seal imbroglio had already become an
international menace; the peace of great nations was threatened by it.
It has thus fallen to Dr. Jordan's lot in his official position to
conduct an inquiry of the highest importance. He is the United States
Commissioner in charge of the fur-seal investigation, and it is this
fact and the results of this fact that now bring him to the fore in a
literary production, the only adverse criticism on which is its brevity.
Would it were longer.

In 1896 Dr. Jordan published his "Observations on the Fur Seals of the
Pribilof Islands." This was a _preliminary_ report. But it is
nevertheless replete with statements of the bottom facts and of
generalized information from which a clear notion of the condition of
affairs in the fur-seal regions must be derived. It is not of this work,
however, that we shall at the present speak, but rather of Dr. Jordan's
later production, "Matka and Kotik; a Tale of the Mist-Islands."[18]

[18] "Matka and Kotik; a Tale of the Mist-Islands." By David
Starr Jordan, President of the Leland Stanford Junior
University and of the California Academy of Sciences; United
States Commissioner in charge of Fur-Seal Investigations. One
volume, square duodecimo, illustrated, pp. 68. San Francisco:
The Whitaker & Ray Company, 1897.

It appears that during his investigations from a scientific and official
point of view the author's mind has been profoundly impressed on the
sentimental and poetic side by the conditions in which he found himself
in the Pribilof Islands. The result of this profound impression is the
little work before us. Though it is done in prose it is none the less a
poem; it is the Saga of the Seals. It is a poetic appeal to all
Christendom in the simple and dramatic way of Frithiof and his
contemporaries.

"Matka and Kotik" will be a revelation to those of Dr. Jordan's friends
and admirers who were not already acquainted with the