THE PRESERVATION OF OUR FAUNA 187 



difficult to advocate, and yet, I must confess, it is the one 

 which appeals most to my mind. It is an ethical question, 

 and it is fair to say that its force cannot be urged with- 

 out admitting an element of all other arguments. Why 

 should it mean anything to us if a species becomes ex- 

 tinct, ceases to exist ? Nature's competitive struggle has 

 swept away untold forms without any call upon man's 

 influence, swept them away before man appeared upon 

 the earth, brushed them aside, the " thousand types," 

 actually to allow the development of the better fitted 

 creatures, amongst which man ranks so high. If man 

 be merely looked upon as a competitor in a highly com- 

 petitive world, there is no reason why we should bemoan 

 the fate of such types as were an impediment to his 

 development. Yet, I am sure that many share my 

 feeling of regret whenever they see evidence of depletion 

 in numbers of any species; probably they also share my 

 inability to explain why, when wanton destruction or the 

 influence of purely natural forces is causing this reduction, 

 a wave of sentiment, which has in it something of the 

 feeling of chivalry, impels them to uphold the cause of the 

 oppressed. Frankly it is not the death of the individual 

 which matters thus the humanitarian impulse fails to 

 apply it is the threatened destruction of some existing 

 form. 



We cannot argue, at any rate with ease, that we suffer 

 personally because the great auk foolishly refused to 

 develop wings and would persist in placing its egg on a 

 shelving rock up which men with clubs could climb as 

 easily as itself; is it a matter of inconvenience to us that 

 the Greenland right-whale possessed more blubber than 

 sense, and so allowed itself to be outwitted by the northern 

 whalers, who in their rapacity destroyed their own liveli- 

 hood ? Does it really matter that we never saw a living 

 dodo, or that Wicken Fen was made a preserved area too 



