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SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. L. No. 1282 



can direct and carry them out witli any hope 

 of success. It therefore seems as if the speak- 

 ers themselves missed an important oppor- 

 timity and failed in an even more important 

 responsibility in addressing such audiences as 

 were gathered in Baltimore, and the vastly 

 larger circle that is reached when the ad- 

 dresses are published, without a word, and ap- 

 parently even without a thought, of what 

 might and ought to be done by scientific men 

 for the preservation from extinction or de- 

 struction of the hundreds of interesting spe- 

 cies of animals and plants and the many 

 places of unusual scientific interest that are 

 being sacrificed for the selfish interests of a 

 few, or even merely by neglect and indiffer- 

 ence, with resulting advantage to nobody. 



Obstruction of important conservation meas- 

 ures until everything that they were designed 

 to protect has been made away with, and laws 

 and efforts that fail of their purpose because 

 unwisely directed or inefficiently carried out, 

 would not be so frequent were it not for the 

 easy-going indifference and irresponsibility of 

 those who are the only ones who can fully 

 realize the needs and urgency of the situation, 

 and who should therefore feel it a duty to make 

 others understand also. We may be shocked 

 and indignant at the vandalism of the Huns 

 of ancient and modem times in respect to 

 works of art and the results of human in- 

 dustry, but we ourselves act no better toward 

 natural objects of unique interest, value and 

 beauty, and more intelligent generations in 

 the future who will find themselves deprived 

 of much that it was our duty to preserve for 

 them will no doubt regard us with the same 

 kind of feeling as we look upon the despoilers 

 of Belgium, France and Serbia. Yet there 

 are few scientific men who concern themselves 

 with such matters to any extent greater than 

 occasional expressions of regret; sentiments 

 which would seem more sincere if accom- 

 panied by some effort to assist the small 

 minority who do take up the burden of active 

 work to bring about a better order of things. 

 One often can not help wondering whether 

 zoologists, botanists and foresters do not as a 

 class care less about the living things they 



occupy themselves with than most other peo- 

 ple. If they are not to be open to such an 

 accusation, now that the war is over and a 

 period of economic expansion begun that will 

 be even more destructive to the small part of 

 the world that still remains in what we call 

 for lack of a better term its natural state, 

 there should be no delay in starting more ex- 

 tensive and efficient cooperative work on the 

 .part of scientific men and societies for the 

 preservation of those natural objects of scien- 

 tific interest and those species of animals and 

 plants that are most immediately threatened 

 with extinction or annihilation. 



Very few scientific societies or institutions 

 have any committee or representative with the 

 duty of engaging in such -vyork or cooperating 

 with others in it, or of watching out that 

 those to whom such work is intrusted by the 

 government or by societies supported by pri- 

 vate subscription are doing their work as 

 diligently and as effectively as the means 

 available will permit. Many more should 

 have them than is now the case. The need is 

 so urgent and immediate that a share of the 

 responsibility now extends to many associa- 

 tions and institutions whose main aims and 

 purposes lie so much in other directions that 

 under ordinary conditions they could justly 

 claim that to devote means and efforts for 

 such purposes would be outside of their proper 

 duties. But emergencies impose new obliga- 

 tions, and however unwelcome they may be, 

 if they are shirked the result can only be 

 discredit and regret after it is too late for any 

 remedy. 



ISTo one should delude himself with the idea 

 that because there are in this country certain 

 societies for the protection of birds and ani- 

 mals or because the federal government has at 

 length begun to take a small part in it, that 

 there is nothing more to be done by others. 

 One might suppose that after over twenty years 

 of agitation of the matter, and after abundant 

 evidence of much interest on the part of the 

 general public, that our native North Amer- 

 ican birds would now be receiving proper pro- 

 tection, but at the present time one of the 

 most discreditable and inexcusable acts of 



