6 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 



to be more seriously studied. It is well that the 

 entomologists are doing their utmost to find para- 

 sitic insects that may prey upon the insect species 

 that are so destructive to forests and to crops. 



The appalling destruction of wild life that for 

 forty years we have been witnessing on every hand 

 is chargeable to greed, slothfulness and ignorance. 

 The same low order of intelligence that denuded 

 China of her forests, and turned her hillsides into 

 gullied barrenness, has swept away fully 95 per 

 cent of the birds and mammals of America that 

 were most useful to man. Had the game-birds and 

 game-quadrupeds of the United States been prop- 

 erly and conscientiously conserved from the 

 beginning until now, the wild buffalo, elk, deer, 

 turkey, grouse of various species, ducks and geese 

 would to-day be yielding to us each year $10,000,- 

 000 worth of good food that had cost only half a 

 million dollars for warden services to manage it and 

 protect it from unlawful killing. 



The destruction and preservation of our wild 

 life has now progressed so far that we can view the 

 future with the lamp of experience. With the past 

 spread out before us like a map, we can see when 

 and wherein we have erred, and we can also measure 

 the practical results of some of our own toil in the 

 field of wild-life conservation. We now are able, 

 with the aid of a little logic, to draw a few con- 

 clusions so correct that they are as firmly fixed as 

 the foundations of the Rocky Mountains. Regard- 



