446 CONFERENCE OF DELEGATES 



feeling that our self-constituted wild-flower protectors are sometimes 

 prone to an almost ludicrous exaggeration.' Fortunately we now possess, 

 thanks to the action of the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, 

 an efficient Wild Plant Conservation Board, which includes representatives 

 of most of the organisations that have the preservation of the flora of the 

 countryside at heart. Though there are various points connected with this 

 general problem as to which diversity of opinion is legitimate, there is 

 reason to think that the practical measures taken by particular local societies 

 may have to be guided by local conditions quite as much as by general 

 principles. But until this new Board has had time to formulate recom- 

 mendations which the Council for the Preservation of Rural England is in 

 a position to endorse, no useful purpose can be served by the expression of 

 individual views as regards debatable points. What is of immediate conse- 

 quence is that local societies can now depend on the assistance of a body 

 able and willing to aid them in conserving the flora of the countryside from 

 those dangers that menace it everywhere except on railway embankments 

 and in railway cuttings, whose owners are still permitted to prevent trespass 

 on their property without being held up to ridicule or subjected to censure. 

 What is of almost equal value is that we now possess an organisation capable 

 of reminding wild-flower protectors of the truth of Mr. Herbert's remark as 

 to the fondness for folly which advocates of rural and urban interests share. 



In one respect the new Wild Plant Conservation Board has an advantage 

 over any local society : it can treat the preservation of the flora of the 

 countryside as a self-contained activity, whereas our Organising Committee 

 hopes that local societies may be able to assist in conserving the fauna as 

 well as the flora of their own areas. Perhaps the Council for the Preservation 

 of Rural England may one day be able to set up a comparable Conservation 

 Board for our fauna, in spite of the obvious difficulty that whereas the 

 protection of our flora admits of some uniformity of system, in the case of 

 our fauna it is far from certain that measures called for as regards the pro- 

 tection of bird-life would be necessary or might be adequate as regards the 

 protection of insect-life. Anyhow, until such a Conservation Board is set 

 up, local societies can rely, as in the past, on the help of organisations like 

 the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds or the Entomological Society. 



The conservation of ' a place of natural beauty,' secured in order to safe- 

 guard the amenities of a local area, can never be passive. Passive manage- 

 ment of an estate means mismanagement, and is as detrimental to its appear- 

 ance as it is to the fauna it may shelter and to the flora which adorns it. 

 Those entrusted with its conservation will doubtless keep in mind the 

 sound maxim that ' when it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not 

 to change.' But they will observe, what the casual visitor may be pardoned 

 for failing to notice, that ' change and decay ' are as inevitable in wild nature 

 as in human aff"airs, and that ' leaving things to take their natural course ' 

 means the gradual replacement of forms of plant- and animal-life which it 

 is desirable to maintain, by forms whose increase must be carefully watched 

 and may need to be rigidly controlled. If the approval of intelligent visitors 

 is to be merited, those in charge of such a property must excercise an 

 unceasing ' constraint of nature ' : if the criticism of visitors whose emotions 

 are untempered by knowledge is to be avoided, those in charge of such a 

 property should, in doing what is necessary, strive to use ' the art that 

 conceals art.' 



But the conservation of the wild life of a local area may call for some- 

 thing more than the protection of the flora and the fauna present in a 

 property acquired to safeguard local amenities. That local area may 

 include places which the National Trust might not feel justified in regarding 



