The Inheritance 21 
will go to the museums we have bequeathed 
them as their portion, and looking at draw- 
ings and sections of forest trees, and at stuffed 
bison, wapiti, antelope, mountain sheep, and 
egrets—all designated as extinct—will reflect 
upon the uses we made of our patrimony. 
And they will turn to the herbaria for many 
flowers of our wild garden that shall have 
ceased to exist—uprooted by the thoughtless. 
But they shall not say we have failed to 
protect our songbirds. Nor shall they say 
we have made no effort to save the forest— 
even though too late. They will merely 
wonder why we did not begin in time; that 
anything so obvious could for so long have 
escaped our attention. They will feel that 
some of us loved our great wild garden; that 
some of the old heirs cherished their beautiful 
estate and strove to preserve, or at least 
not to mar it, that in so far as we could 
further it, the children we loved and their 
children’s children should come into their 
inheritance. And more than this, they shall 
truly feel that at least we taught them to know 
their estate—its birds and flowers and trees 
—in a way and to an extent that we our- 
selves had not been taught. 
Among these future heirs will doubtless 
