188 WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 



single acre on which nature was being assisted by 

 man. 



None are so blind as those who will not see. It 

 is impossible to place ideas mechanically within 

 empty minds. Sometimes the inertia of ignorance 

 is as fixed and immovable as the foundations of 

 Mount Washington. At other times, it slowly 

 yields to persistent education. Just how many 

 generations are necessary to transform a confirmed 

 tree-cutter into a true forest conservator remains 

 to be seen. 



The preservation and increase of the forests is 

 a very different matter from the salvage of the birds 

 and beasts. Man and nature, jointly or severally, 

 can replant a denuded forest, and the lapse of time 

 will bring the renaissance. With forests, there is a 

 modicum of time available in which to act. With 

 wild life, it is a case of now or never. A fauna once 

 destroyed can not be brought back! The destroyers 

 of wild life are so omnipresent, persistent and 

 relentless that the defenders and preservers must 

 act at once, or very soon it will be hopelessly too 

 late. No power on earth can repopulate China with 

 the wild species that were 'hers when she had forests, 

 and before the era of extermination. 



Of the many blighting influences that bear down 

 upon wild life, and promote its destruction, one of 

 the most serious is local disregard for protective 

 laws, and the disloyalty of juries, and sometimes 

 of judges, also, to their sworn duty. In the western 



