VALUE OF WILD LIFE TO THE NATION 15 
If we ask ourselves wherein lies the chief value of our 
wild life from the recreative standpoint, the reply would 
undoubtedly be in its relation to human efficiency. What 
man is there who, after months of unremitting toil, takes 
down his gun, rod, or camera, and, seeking the silence of the 
open air for a week or two, does not come back physically 
and mentally refreshed and remade? What can ever equal 
the reinvigorating effect on body and mind of days spent 
out in the open, 
When you steal upon a land that man has not sullied with his intrusion, 
When the aboriginal shy dwellers in the broad solitudes 
Are asleep in their innumerable dens and night haunts 
Amid the dry ferns, in the tender nests 
Pressed into shape by the breasts of the Mother birds; 
How shall we simulate the thrill of announcement 
When lake after lake lingering in the starlight 
Turn their faces towards you, 
And are caressed in the salutation of colour? 
—D. C. Scott. 
Nothing can ever equal our wild life as a means of in- 
creasing human efficiency where the tendency of modern 
life is to work under the high pressure of city conditions. 
As our population increases the need will become greater, 
and unless every possible step is taken to conserve the wild 
life for the refreshment of the men of the future we shall 
gradually lose this unequalled source of national vigour. 
So much has been written on this almost inexhaustible 
theme that little that is new can be said, even if a more 
lengthy treatment of this aspect of the value of our wild 
life were desirable; but its value as a means of increasing 
and maintaining our self-reliance and resourcefulness should 
not be lost sight of. Nothing calls for resourcefulness so 
much as the quest of wild life, when the beaten tracks of 
a more civilized life, where everything is provided for one, 
are left and one has to return to the primal competitive 
