18 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 



preservation. In every township throughout the 

 whole United States the destroyers of wild life 

 either are active in slaughter or are ready to become 

 active the moment they are left free to do so. 

 Every beast, bird, fish and creeping thing has its 

 human enemy. Americans are notoriously enter- 

 prising, restless and prone to venture. It is that 

 restless activity and indomitable nervous energy 

 that is manfully attempting "dry-farming" in the 

 West, desert-farming in the Southwest, and the 

 drainage of the Florida Everglades. Often the joy 

 of the conquest of nature outruns the love of cash 

 returns. Apply that spirit to forests, and it quickly 

 becomes devastation. Apply it to wild life, and it 

 quickly becomes extermination. 



Our conquering and pulverizing national spirit is 

 a curse to all our wild life. The native of India 

 permits the black buck, the sand grouse and the 

 saras crane to roam over his fields unmolested for 

 two thousand years. The American, and the Eng- 

 lishman also, at once proceeds to shoot all of that 

 wild life that he can approach within range. In 

 America, the national spirit may truthfully be ex- 

 pressed in the cry of the crazed Malay: "Amok! 

 Amok!" "Kill! Kill!" This is why the conserva- 

 tion of valuable wild life is in our country a fear- 

 fully difficult task, from which most people shrink 

 and seek something either more pleasant or per- 

 sonally profitable. 



It may be accepted as absolutely certain that if 



