Ma7i Chester Memoirs, Vol. Ixvi. (1921) 



Presidential Address. 



The Preservation of Our Fauna. 



By The President, 

 T. A. Coward, M.Sc, F.Z.S., F.E.S. 



{October I^th, 1921.) 



Your Society in honouring- me by electing- me as President 

 has given an opportunity of disseminating some of the views 

 which to my mind are of national importance. Nay, I go 

 further ; they are of international importance, and though I 

 can speak best about the effect of protection in our islands, 

 the need is as great in other countries, though the constituents 

 of the fauna differ, and the destructive agencies may not be 

 the same. The Memoirs go to all parts of the world ; perhaps 

 in other lands some may realise that, before it is too late, it 

 is a duty to posterity to preserve and protect those creatures 

 whose existence is so much within the power of predatory 

 man. 



The subject of this address is the Preservation of the 

 Native Fauna, but exactly the same necessity applies to the 

 Flora ; to the botanist I leave the pleading for his branch, 

 though indeed in many instances the two cannot be separated. 

 The destruction of the food plant may mean the end of those 

 creatures which feed upon it ; the annihilation of one particular 

 insect may destroy the plant that it fertilises. 



Later, I shall have something to say about the alien or 

 colonist fauna, but the remarks on the whole apply rather to 

 the native or ancient fauna, those animals which inherited this 

 land of their birth before we, mostly descended from alien 

 invaders or colonists, decided that the land was ours, not 

 theirs. It is a strange ethical question this proprietorship — 

 and Man, thinking himself Lord of Creation, demands, like 

 '' Cunning- Old Fury," the right of Life or Death over all the 

 so-called lower animals. 



November 30th, ig2i. 



