300 A BOOK-LOVER'S HOLIDAYS 



beautiful wild things sometimes seek to cham- 

 pion them by saying that "the game belongs 

 to the people." So it does; and not merely 

 to the people now alive, but to the unborn 

 people. The ''greatest good of the greatest 

 number" applies to the number within the 

 womb of time, compared to which those now 

 alive form but an insignificant fraction. Our 

 duty to the whole, including the unborn gen- 

 erations, bids us restrain an unprincipled pres- 

 ent-day minority from wasting the heritage of 

 these unborn generations. The movement for 

 the conservation of wild life, and the larger 

 movement for the conservation of all our natural 

 resources, are essentially democratic in spirit, 

 purpose, and method. 



On some of the islands we found where green 

 turtles had crawled up the beaches to bury 

 their eggs in the sand. We came across two 

 such nests. One of them I dug up myself. 

 The eggs we took to the boat, where they were 

 used in making delicious pancakes, which went 

 well with fresh shrimp, flounder, weakfish, 

 mackerel, and mullet. 



The laughing gulls and the black skimmers 

 were often found with their nests intermingled, 

 and they hovered over our heads with the same 

 noisy protest against our presence. Although 



