SIEUR DE MONTS NATIONAL MONUMENT 5 



fauna is quite as great as the Aesthetic interest, and much 

 more specific. 



The wild fife of any region constitutes almost the entire 

 material with which Natural History and Biology must work; 

 without this material in abundance and wide variety they 

 can not pursue at all their valuable researches. Plenitude 

 of living organisms is as important to them as seed to the 

 farmer or stone to the mason. 



We are performing, therefore, a most useful service in 

 the cause of Science in helping to preserve and multiply 

 those forms which are the subjects of her study. 



As a basis, too, for special research particular species 

 may become essential. We all know of Darwin's wonder- 

 ful experiments with pigeons, and the importance of the re- 

 sults obtained. How much might he not have been handi- 

 capped, if all the pigeons had been ruthlessly slaughtered and 

 exterminated — as our own wild pigeons were — before their 

 domestication had become established? 



Similarly, the researches of modern Biology into the 

 nature of the life process itself — researches which promise so 

 much in the interest of science and for the benefit of the 

 race — are dependent largely upon the presence of certain 

 specific organisms as subjects of investigation, and, at any 

 moment, some fresh variety of bird or animal may prove of 

 paramount importance for the successful prosecution of 

 this great work. 



For Animal Psychology, again, which is now casting 

 illumination upon such vexed questions as the migrating and 

 homing instincts of birds — with the fascinating suggestion of 

 a sixth sense, the mysterious sense of direction — as well as 

 upon other problems of research which have an even more 

 intimate connection with human behavior, all the higher 

 forms of life, in widest possible variety, are essential as 

 subjects for investigation. 



There remains, in addition still, the more exclusive 

 biologic interest in the protection of our birds as objects 

 in themselves of study. Here, again, abundance and variety 

 of forms are essential for the investigation of such questions 



