346 APPENDIX. 



and utterly regardless of restraint imposed by the laws of the country, 

 worse than useless because not carried out, are bringing about the 

 final depopulation of our large wild areas of land and water. It really 

 becomes a question as to whether late interference shall arrest the 

 tide of destruction ere the entire extermination of fish and game 

 shall bring the country to a sense of its loss, and finally to a wish for 

 their reproduction. 



In such a state of affairs, provincial acclimatisation would prove 

 an empty speculation, for any new animal or bird introduced into 

 our woodlands requiring freedom from molestation for a term of 

 years, would be quickly hunted down and destroyed. 



Leaving, however, these important questions of protection or 

 extinction of already-existing indigenous species in the hands of those 

 who hold the means of ordering these matters, I will now call your 

 attention to what might be done to increase our stock of useful wild 

 or domestic animals, birds or fish, could they be ensured the necessary 

 wardship. We will consider first whether our large woodland districts 

 demand and would bear foreign colonisation, and for what types their 

 physical conformation seems best adapted. 



Even in its most undisturbed and wildest depths the North 

 American forest has always been noted for its solitude ; the meaning 

 being the great disproportion of the animal to the vegetable king- 

 dom. It seems as if nature had exhausted her energies in shading 

 the ground with the dense forest and the rank vegetation which 

 everywhere seizes on the rough surface beneath. It is impossible to 

 say to what extent animal life might have once existed in the primeval 

 forest ; but no one who has taken a day's walk in the woods, either 

 near to or far from the haunts of man, can fail being impressed with 

 the apparent absence of animal life. The European visitor, in a 

 suburban ramble through the bush, wonders at the scarcity of game 

 birds, rabbits, or hares, but is astonished when told that in the 

 deepest recesses of the wild country he will see but little increase of 

 their numbers. A canoe paddled through lake after lake of our 

 great highways of water communication, will startle but a few pairs 

 or broods of exceedingly timid waterfowl, where in Europe they 

 would literally swarm. Surely, then, here is room for the work of 

 acclimatisation, in a country where so much toil is undergone in the 

 often fruitless pursuit of sport. 



The undergrowth of our wild forest lands, the field for acclima- 

 tisation which we have under immediate consideration, consists of 

 an immense variety of shrubs, under-shrubs, and herbs, annual or 



