THURSDAY, MARCH 
260,* = TOI 4: 
THEODORE ROOSEVELT AS NATURALIST. 
Theodore Roosevelt. An Autobiography. Pp. 
xii+647. (London: Macmillan and Co., Ltd., 
Home.) Price 10s, -6ds net: 
HE autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt is 
a very interesting book to the politician or 
to the political anthropologist; but here I am 
rightly restricted to reviewing only that part of the 
book which touches on natural science. 
When Mr. Roosevelt entered upon office as 
President, he found the American Government as 
represented by Congress and the Senate, compara- 
tively indifferent to the conservation of beauty in 
the United States—hbeauty in the form of magnifi- 
cent trees, magnificent wild beasts, remarkable 
and beautiful birds, and romantic landscapes. 
American Senators and Congressmen did not see 
—any more than British Chambers of Commerce 
see—that all such things were assets of great 
national value, of economic importance, indeed. 
The destruction of bird life throughout the United 
States was already causing far-reaching plagues 
of insects, which consumed fruit and vegetables 
on the extravagant scale in which all natural 
movements are carried out in North America. 
American politicians did not appreciate’ the 
frightful damage which was being done to the 
whole North American Continent—Canada as well 
as the United States—by the unchecked forest 
fires and the lumberman’s lust for destruction 
amongst the timber of the United States’ forests, 
without any thought of simultaneous measures 
being taken for reafforestation. 
Mr. Roosevelt was not, of course, the first or the 
greatest pioneer in a movement which has already 
had most beneficial results in the 
of beauty and natural resources, and has cul- 
minated in the attempt of the United States to 
set right the bird question throughout the world. 
Already in the ’eighties and ‘nineties of the 
last century the idea of national parks had 
come into existence. The Yellowstone region 
was set apart as a reserve in which natural 
phenomena, natives trees, and native’ wild 
beasts could continue to exist for the won- 
derment and delight of a new ‘generation. 
The Yosemite Valley and the big trees of Cali- 
fornia had been similarly protected from unreason- 
ing destruction. But Theodore Roosevelt, though 
he had won his spurs as a hunter (and the best 
book that he wrote about wild life, by-the-by, is 
not his excellent work on East Africa, but “ Out- 
decor Pastimes of an American Hunter’’), had, 
NO, 2907, VOL. 93)| 
conservation 
by the time he became Vice-President, conceived 
a great love for the natural beauties of a Jand- 
scape and the presence therein of bird and 
beast. 
During his seven and a half years’ tenure of 
the United States Presidency Mr. Roosevelt 
established, or caused to be established, fifty-one 
national bird reservations in seventeen of the 
United States, as well as in Porto Rico, Hawaii, 
and Alaska. Amongst these reservations was the 
celebrated Pelican Island rookery in Indian River, 
Florida—now world-famous from the beautiful 
scenes depicted by photography and kinemato- 
graphy; the Mosquito Inlet reservation in Florida 
(chiefly for the protection of the manati), the re- 
servation of the Klamarth lake and marsh in 
Oregon (chiefly for the wild ducks, geese, and 
swans of the western United States); the Tortugas 
Quay, Florida, for studying the habits of sea- 
birds and migratory birds; and the great bird 
colonies (for the protection of albatrosses and 
petrels) on the Island of Laisan in the Hawaii 
group, in which direction he intervened after the 
appalling revelations of bird slaughter by the 
plumage hunters were made known through the 
efforts of Dr. Hornaday, Mr. James Buckland, 
and others. His influence brought about the 
creation of five national parks—in Oregon, in 
South. Dakota, Oklahoma, North Dakota, and 
Colorado, and the organisation of four big game 
reserves in Oklahoma, Dakota, Montana, and 
Washington, and.game laws and game reserva- 
tions in the vast territory of Alaska. 
Mr. Roosevelt also secured the enactment of 
measures which in the United States not only 
saved the remains of the bison from extermina- 
tion, but have led to the gradual increase in 
numbers and possible future existence of this 
remarkable bovine. But he has not yet succeeded 
in making the American Republic call the bison 
by its right name, instead of the misleading title 
of buffalo. He is, I fear, rather an advocate for 
the retention or adoption of a whole series of 
American misnomers—elk instead of wapiti; bob- 
cat instead of lynx, mountain-lion instead of puma. 
In most cases these American terms are the more 
to be regretted since, with the exception of the 
puma, nearly all the great mammals of North 
America had representatives in the fauna of tem- 
perate Eurasia, and the English names for these 
creatures (wapiti, it is true, is Canadian) have a 
great ancestry going back to the earliest develop- 
ment of Aryan speech in the days of improved 
stone implements. 
What Mr. Roosevelt did for forest preservation 
is set forth somewhat meagrely in the book under 
