Preservation of the Wild 



1,500 years of age when Aristotle was fore- 

 shadowing his evolution theory and writing his 

 history of animals; 2,000 years of age when Christ 

 walked upon the earth; nearly 4,000 years of age 

 when the "Origin of Species" was written. Thus 

 the life of one of these trees spanned the whole 

 period before the birth of Aristotle (384 B. C.) 

 and after the death of Darwin (A. D. 1882), the 

 two greatest natural philosophers who have lived. 

 These trees are the noblest living things upon 

 earth. I can imagine that the American people 

 are approaching a stage of general intelligence 

 and enlightened love of nature in which they will 

 look back upon the destruction of the Sequoia as a 

 blot on the national escutcheon. 



VENERATION OF AGE. 



The veneration of age sentiment which should, 

 and I believe actually does, appeal to the Ameri- 

 can people when clearly presented to them even 

 more strongly than the commercial sentiment, is 

 roused in equal strength by an intelligent appre- 

 ciation of the race longevity of the larger animals 

 which our ancestors found here in profusion, and 

 of which but a comparatively small number still 

 survive. To the unthinking man a bison, a wapiti, 

 a deer, a pronghorn antelope, is a matter of hide 



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