Mr. White to Mr. Sherman.
London, April 17, 1897.
Sir: Referring to your instruction numbered 1479, of the 9th instant, which reached this embassy to-day, and to your cablegram of yesterday’s date, of which I inclose a copy, I have the honor to transmit herewith an advance copy of Prof. D’Arcy Thompson’s report on his mission to the Bering Sea in 1896, which I have just succeeded in obtaining at the foreign office at 2 o’clock, and which I hasten to send off by the dispatch bag, leaving in a few minutes.
It is dated March 4 last, but the inclosed copy is, I understand, the first which has been completed, and it was brought to me while I waited at the foreign office.
While there I ascertained from the under secretary that my note on this subject of the 10th instant had been sent to the Marquis of Salisbury, who is still in the south of France, by the first available messenger, after I left it at the foreign office, but that, up to the present moment, no communication has been received from his lordship in reference thereto.
I was further informed that a telegram had been received from the British ambassador at Washington, stating that you had assented, in behalf of our Government, to the request of Her Majesty’s Government that Prof. D’Arcy Thompson and others should again visit the Pribilof Islands this summer for the purpose of carrying on further investigations relative to the seal herd. It is apparently understood by the ambassador, and certainly by the foreign office, that this assent is not conditional upon that of Her Majesty’s Government to our proposal for a modus vivendi. * * *
I have, etc.,