O thou New Age that comest! welcome thrice-- More welcome than the ever-welcome birth Of the expected love-child of our youth! Bring us a nobler portion--nobler twice Than ever yet was given unto earth! Bring us our freedom--bring us love and truth. BOOK REVIEWS. [_In this Department of_ THE ARENA _no book will be reviewed which is not regarded as a real addition to literature._] President Jordan's Saga of the Seal. David Starr Jordan, President of Leland Stanford Junior University, has many times deserved well of his country. As a scientific man he has, we believe, given to the American public and the world a greater number of original monographs on important branches of current investigation than has any of his distinguished contemporaries. From his special department of ichthyology, in which he became an expert fully a score of years ago, he has branched into nearly all fields of scientific exploration, finding ever new paths, leading to new regions and new empires of knowledge. Upon this basis is builded Dr. Jordan's fame as an educator. In two great States of the Union he has presided over the affairs of high-grade institutions of learning. After a successful career as President of the Indiana University, he was selected from the great array of American scholars to preside over the destinies of Leland Stanford Junior University, at Palo Alto, California. But the onerous duties and responsibilities of these positions have hardly distracted Dr. Jordan's mind from 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]