30 Address of the President. 



present state of the country and its productions can scarcely 

 be overrated, and it would have been of much use to our 

 present working had some such existed at a much earlier 

 period. Nearly all parts of Great Britain have undergone, 

 and are still undergoing change, within the last fifty years 

 more than previously rapid and complete. 



Early population and the chase, for food or safety, dis- 

 persed the larger wild animals known historically to have 

 inhabited the country, and Bos primogennis, the wolf and the 

 black bear, or the beaver, exist no longer. The range of the 

 red deer, formerly extending over all our province, and much 

 farther south, is now far to the northward. Of our wild fowl, 

 the crane and bustard are extinct. The capercailzie was ex- 

 tirpated. The whole tribe of water-fowl have been materially 

 reduced, and some will shortly fail entirely. Extension of the 

 area of cultivation of itself would interfere with the state and 

 numbers of the wild animals and plants, but when, as within 

 the last twenty years, all the modern discoveries and appli- 

 ances of chemical, mechanical and engineering science have 

 been brought to bear, their influence has been so great, as 

 almost entirely to change the natural characters of a district, 

 and to drive away or extirpate many of the original animals 

 and plants. 



But while population and cultivation, wealth and luxury, 

 act as destructive agents, their influence acts also in various 

 other ways. The modern rage for " sporting," and for taking- 

 large tracts of land in the wilder parts of the country, for the 

 sake of the game found upon it, and the preservation of the 

 game by destruction of so-called enemies, has played a twofold 

 part, by destroying some species almost entirely, and allowing 

 others to increase to an extent prejudicial to many interests. 

 The recommendation of a so-called gamekeeper is, that he 

 should be an " accomplished trapper," a first-rate " vermin 

 killer;" almost every animal or bird, not something like a 

 grouse or blackcock, pheasant or partridge, comes within the de- 



