388 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 39 



relict species and of nature's equilibrium would have a place on any 

 board which is to control the destinies of preserves for wild life. 

 When I first knew eastern Massachusetts, many public-spirited citi- 

 zens gave freely to the State wild forest lands for State reservations 

 which were to be kept forever wild. The project was put into the 

 hands of a commission, with a distinguished landscape architect at 

 its head. To the commission the maintenance of wild, natural con- 

 ditions was indeed a "project." Original donors of land and lovers 

 of nature protested in vain. Undershrubs were cleared out, destroy- 

 ing the nesting haunts of various native birds ; the dead leaves, which 

 supply the humus for many rare plants and the hiding places 

 of many small animals, were raked up; and everything unwittingly 

 done to make the areas forbidding to sensitive and retiring species. 



Naturally, we cannot expect all so-called human progress to be 

 held up because nature is in the way. Man's mastery over nature is 

 one of his proudest boasts. The highly trained and often over- 

 cultured landscapist is in one respect only a step removed from the 

 unschooled French-Canadian habitant. The latter will cut down, 

 with almost religious fervor, his enemy, the native forest; then, 

 almost instantly, he will plant foreign trees and shrubs about his 

 church and home! So long as man has the passion to alter the 

 perfectly balanced conditions of life which nature, through count- 

 less ages, has developed, the rare and retiring plant or animal has 

 no more chance of survival than has the human fugitive aristocrat 

 in the dictator-ruled countries which are so upsetting to lovers of 

 human liberty. Let the conventionalizer of landscape confine his 

 useful art to areas which may appropriately be conventionalized and 

 where nature is admittedly "conquered" by man. 



The plights of the bison, the prairie hen, the Labrador duck, the 

 passenger pigeon, the great auk, and scores of other birds and mam- 

 mals are familiar. Our last refuge of the great auk or penguin was 

 Funk Island, off the coast of Newfoundland, There it was far from 

 settlements ; but Nordic fishermen, realizing the wickedness of fishing 

 on the Sabbath, spent their Sundays on Funk Island and gave exer- 

 cise to their fervor by clubbing to death the last remnants of these 

 ancient and primitive birds. This wicked slaughter can in no way 

 be attributed to their resentment that Anatole France in Penguin 

 Island had ascribed human attributes and human souls to these 

 dignified birds. The slaughter was finished before the publication of 

 Penguin Island, 



In the well-meant enthusiasm to "do something," altogether too 

 many of the restricted spots which still retain some elements of the 

 original life bequeathed to us from the past are being converted into 

 artificial and man-made tracts. Rare and relatively inconspicuous 



