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Conservation of Natural Resources in California. 21 



THE CONSERVATION OF OUR NATURAL RESOURCES. 



A Story with a Moral. 



The conservation of our natural resources is a subject which has 

 received little attention in the past; but the facts in the case are so 

 simple, the principles so elementary, and our duty so clear, that they 

 might be fitly presented in a story like one of the old fairy tales that 

 we all loved when we were boys and girls. Such a story would run 

 like this: 



Once upon a time there was a young man who had been given a great 

 property in a distant region, and who left home to take possession of it. 

 When he reached his property he first made himself acquainted with it. 

 As he explored it and studied its value he began to think how he would 

 make his living out of it. The problem was not a hard one. He found 

 that his property was wonderfully rich, and supplied his needs at the 

 cost of far less exertion than he would have had to make at home, for 

 it was a fair land, well watered, well timbered, abounding in game and 

 fruits, with broad meadows for cattle and horses and sheep, and with 

 no small store of rare and curious minerals and an outcrop of excellent 

 coal. Life was easy, and he lived lavishly and joyously, after the initial 

 hard work of moving in and building his house and raising his first 

 crops was over. He had far more land than he^could use, far more 

 game, and what he lacked he was able to buy from home with furs, with 

 timber, with minerals, and with the surplus of his crops. 



By and by he saw and liked a girl, and finally married her. Together 

 they prospered on the property, which seemed too rich to make it neces- 

 sary for them to trouble about the future. Game was still plenty, though 

 less so than at first ; the timber, though growing less, was still abundant 

 enough to last longer than they could hope to live; by breaking new 

 land they could always count on marvelous crops ; the coal was a little 

 harder to get at, but still close to the surface, and besides the man only 

 dug out the easiest to reach, and when the earth began to cave in he 

 merely started again at a new place. His stock, grazing on the meadows, 

 had trampled out some of the grass, but there was still no lack. That 

 some day strangers would possess their property when they had done 

 with it, and would find it somewhat run down, did not trouble these two 

 good people at all. 



But children came to them with the years, and by and by these 

 children began to grow up. Then the point of view of the man and his 

 wife changed. They wanted to see their sons and daughters provided 

 for and settled on this property of theirs, and they began to see that 

 what was enough and to spare for them would not support all their 



