Conservation of Natural Resources in California. 



LEARNING FROM HISTORY. 



The following is an extract from a paper by A. B. Benton, before the 

 Tri-counties Reforestation Committee, in Southern California. It cer- 

 tainly affords food for thought. 



The editor of one of our great weekly journals has written: "Prob- 

 ably the works for which President Roosevelt will be longest remembered 

 are his efforts for the conservation of our national natural resources." 



The fountains must be renewed, the field must be planted, the fire 

 must be checked, and by us or we will justly merit the contempt of 

 mankind. We are not the first, but the last of the nations who have 

 squandered their birthright. The splendid nations of old time, Egypt, 

 Babylonia, Asia Minor, Greece, India, China ; where our race began its 

 career, where the arts and letters and commerce and architecture were 

 born and flourished in glorious achievement for centuries and cen- 

 turies do you think their lands were sterile then? Do you conceive 

 them as poorer in lavish gifts of nature than is our land? Do you 

 suppose the teeming millions of their inhabitants so prospered in the 

 deserts which we find there now? Believe me, the deserts there are of 

 men's making, and their desolation was brought about by their own 

 hands. We look on the poor ruins of these once mighty empires with a 

 complacent pity, but I have little doubt that the spirits of the men of 

 old, if they are cognizant of our doings, have greater reason for a 

 scornful pity than have we, for they began civilization and had little 

 before their time to take warning, while we, latest of all, I verily believe 

 have been as reckless as any of the great nations, ancient or modern. 



There are many, even in this day, who can learn nothing from history 

 for their own profit. The world of men for thousands of years has been 

 experimenting with civilization of higher and lower types. Enough 

 of their experiences have been written to teach us every lesson we need 

 to learn had we the wit to read them aright. The treasures of ancient 

 and medieval research, their economics and philosophy have been opened 

 to this age a thousand fold more widely than to any age whatsoever 

 before us. If it, with the histories of the good and bad of all ages before 

 it, not in dead languages, nor locked in secluded temples and cloisters, 

 but in its living tongues, and in multiplied libraries if, with all this 

 before it, it follows the blunders and mistakes and follies of the old ages 

 because it will not see, and seeing learn, then our civilization deserves 

 not only to perish as miserably as the most miserable failure of them 

 all, but will richly merit the epitaph of Justice Dogberry to "be 

 written down an ass ! " 



We voters of America are the bankers of the nation's resources. 

 Infinitely more valuable is our trust than that of money, stocks or 

 bonds, because once dissipated, it may not be replaced. If we are to 



