CHAPTER XVIII 



CONSERVATION AND EXPLORATION IN LABRADOR 

 By WILFRED T. GRENFELL 



IT is patent to the most casual observer that coincident 

 with the increase of population in any country the weaker 

 creatures must inevitably go to the wall. This is as true 

 of the aboriginal inhabitants as it is of the lower animal 

 kingdom. Before men, armed with modern weapons of 

 destruction, and with ever increasing means of transport, 

 almost all the barriers behind which weaker Nature shelters 

 herself are disappearing. In the Northwest the buffalo 

 and the elk lands had to give way before cultivation, the 

 prairies almost to the Arctic Circle are submitting to the 

 taming hand of man, and the entrance of roads and rail- 

 way tracks and growing townships ultimately make it 

 practically impossible and even inadvisable to protect and 

 preserve the wild creatures in their natural habitat. It is 

 true that some animals can be domesticated and properly 

 propagated in captivity, and so saved from extinction ; but 

 many others must be lost to mankind unless large areas 

 can be found where natural conditions make it easy and 

 economically wise to assign sanctuaries for them. Unfor- 

 tunately there seems to be a low level limit beyond which 

 it is impossible for a particular species to recuperate, and this 

 is especially the case with birds. On the other hand it has 

 been shown that instinct teaches animals, and birds in par- 

 ticular, the districts in which they are safe, however small 



443 



