and the Maritime Provinces. 27 



The natural home of the rabbit being in such a climate, and all those 

 means having been provided for keeping it in check, it could not in that 

 country increase in sufficient numbers to become a pest ; but when it was 

 carried to Australia, it was placed where it could breed and thrive unstint- 

 edly, and none of its enemies were transported with it. You know what 

 the result has been : the rabbits have increased in such overwhelming 

 numbers that the country is injured to a prodigious extent. Whole tracts 

 have been laid waste by the pests, and extensive farms and sheep ranches 

 have been ruined. If Nature's conditions had been observed, the great 

 evil that has been brought upon Australia would have been avoided." 



" But, Doctor," said the Judge, " sometimes she makes mistakes ; think 

 of the thousands of species which have become extinct." 



Photo, by W.L. Underwood. I ND T A " N LtTCK. 



" Nature does not make mistakes," he replied quietly ; " if species have 

 become extinct, their mission has ended, or the conditions under which 

 they were created, from some cause changed : we see those changes con- 

 stantly occurring. Humboldt has said that wherever man appears on the 

 earth, he provides the conditions for his own extinction in the destruction 

 of forests. The wisdom of this statement is not generally appreciated, 

 but the great scientist was right. 



" Man is an improvident creature, and in his careless destruction of 

 everything for present use, he takes no thought of the needs of coining 

 generations, or ignores them entirely. ' After me the deluge ' seems to be 

 his motto, and he has lived up to it faithfully. His wasteful extravagance 



