VALUE OF WILD LIFE TO THE NATION 15 



If we ask ourselves wherein lies the chief value of our 

 wild life from the recreative standpoint, the reply would 

 undoubtedly be in its relation to human efficiency. What 

 man is there who, after months of unremitting toil, takes 

 down his gun, rod, or camera, and, seeking the silence of the 

 open air for a week or two, does not come back physically 

 and mentally refreshed and remade ? What can ever equal 

 the reinvigorating effect on body and mind of days spent 

 out in the open. 



When you steal upon a land that man has not sullied with his intrusion, 



When the aboriginal shy dwellers in the broad solitudes 



Are asleep in their innumerable dens and night haunts 



Amid the dry ferns, in the tender nests 



Pressed into shape by the breasts of the Mother birds; 



How shall we simulate the thrill of announcement 



When lake after lake lingering in the starlight 



Turn their faces towards you. 



And are caressed in the salutation of colour? 



— D. C. Scott. 



Nothing can ever equal our wild life as a means of in- 

 creasing human efficiency where the tendency of modern 

 life is to work under the high pressure of city conditions. 

 As our population increases the need will become greater, 

 and unless every possible step is taken to conserve the wild 

 life for the refreshment of the men of the future we shall 

 gradually lose this unequalled source of national vigour. 



So much has been written on this almost inexhaustible 

 theme that little that is new can be said, even if a more 

 lengthy treatment of this aspect of the value of our wild 

 life were desirable; but its value as a means of increasing 

 and maintaining our self-reliance and resourcefulness should 

 not be lost sight of. Nothing calls for resourcefulness so 

 much as the quest of wild life, when the beaten tracks of 

 a more civiUzed life, where everything is provided for one, 

 are left and one has to return to the primal competitive 



