22 HARDY ON PROVINCIAL ACCLIMATIZATION. 



throughout the northern continent since its first settlement by 

 Europeans : many animals, now on the verge of extinction, driven 

 off their still large domains, not primarily by the approach of civil- 

 ization, but by ruthless, wholesale and wanton modes of destruc- 

 tion. "One invariable peculiarity of the American people," says 

 the author of The Game Fish of the North, "is that they attack, 

 OA^erturn, and annihilate, and then laboriously reconstruct. Our 

 first farmers chopped do^vn the forests and shade trees, took crop 

 after crop of the same kind from the land, exhausted the soil, and 

 made bare the country ; they hunted and fished, destroying first 

 the wild animals, then the birds, and finally the fish, till in many 

 places these ceased utterly from the face of the earth ; and then, 

 when they had finished their work, that race of gentlemen moved 

 west to renew the same course of destruction. After them came 

 the restorers ; they manured the land, left it fallow, put in prac- 

 tice the rotation of crops, planted shade and fruit trees, discovered 

 that birds were useful in destroying insects and worms, passed laws 

 to protect them where they were not utterly extinct, as "udth the 

 pinnated grouse of Pennsylvania and Long Island, and will I 

 predict, ere long re-stock the streams, rivers and ponds, wdth the 

 best of the fish that once inhabited them." 



A home question for our subject would be, — In the hands of which 

 class of men does this Colony now find itself? And I fear the 

 unhesitating answer of the impartial stranger and visitor would be, 

 that in all regarding the preservation of our living natural re- 

 sources, we were in the hands of the destroyers. The course of 

 destruction so ably depicted by the author quoted, is being prose- 

 cuted throughout the length and breadth of Nova Scotia, and the 

 settlers of this Province bHnd to theii' own interests, careless of 

 their children, and utterly regardless of restraint imposed by the 

 laws of the country, worse than useless because not carried out. are 

 bringing about the final depopulation of our large Maid lands and 

 waters. It really becomes a question as to whether late interference 

 shall arrest the tide of destruction ere the entire extermination of 

 fish and game shall bring the country to a sense of its loss, and 

 finally to a wish for their reproduction. 



In such a state of affairs. Provincial Acclimatization would prove 

 an empty speculation, for any new animal or bird introduced into 



