American Big-Game Hunting 
aside by presidential proclamation. Most of them 
include rough timbered mountain lands, unfit for 
cultivation or for settlement. They will serve by 
far their most useful purpose as timber reservations, 
natural reservoirs which will yield year after year a 
never-failing supply of water. Mr. Noble had the 
wisdom and the independence to lead public opinion 
rather than to follow it, and he set an example 
which it is hoped his successors will emulate. 
Nor was he content to stop here. Realizing the 
rapidity with which commercial greed was sweep- 
ing out of existence important marine species of the 
Northwest, he caused Afognak Island, in Alaska, to 
be set aside as a perpetual reservation for salmon 
and sea-lions, and planned the establishment on 
Amak Island of a reservation for walrus, sea-otter, 
and sea-lions, and of still another on the Farallones 
for sea-lions and sea-fowl. These two refuges for 
the great marine mammals of our western seas have 
not yet been established, but the good work set on 
foot by Mr. Noble should be continued to com- 
pletion with as little delay as possible. 
Much more remains to be done. We now have 
these forest reservations, refuges where the timber 
and its wild denizens should be safe from de- 
struction. What are we going to do with them? 
The mere formal declaration that they have been 
set aside will contribute but little toward this safety. 
It will prevent the settlement of the regions, but 
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