90 Bird Day Book 



DUTY OF THE CITIZEN TOWARD WILD LIFE 



BY WILLIAM T. HORNADAY 



(Dr. Hornaday, the author of "The American Natural History," has 

 written this sketch expressly for the Alabama Bird Day Book.) 



WE HOLD that the real men and women of today owe to 

 posterity a duty in the preservation of wild life that cannot 

 conscientiously be ignored. The wild life of the word is not 

 ours, to dispose of wholly as we please. We hold it in trust, 

 for the benefit of ourselves, and equal benefits to those who come 

 after us. As honorable guardians we have no right to waste and 

 squander the heritage of our children and grandchildren. It is our 

 duty to stay the hand that strives to apply the torch. 



We received from the hand of Nature a marvelous continent, 

 overflowing with an abundance of wild life. But we do not own it 

 all ; that it is not all ours to destroy if we choose. Nature was a mil- 

 lion years, or more, in developing the picturesque moose, the odd 

 mountain goat and the unique antelope. Shall we destroy and exter- 

 minate those species in one brief century? The young Americans 

 of the year 2015 will read of those wonderful creatures, and if they 

 find none of them alive how will they characterize the men of 1915? 

 I, for one, do not wish in 2015 to be classed with the swine of Mauri- 

 tius that exterminated the dodo. 



The most advanced educators of America are awake to the vital 

 necessity of forest conservation. The twenty-one forestry schools 

 now in existence in our country have for their foundations the neces- 

 sity for forest conservation. Educators and statesmen, and the men 

 of means who support good works, all are awake to the vital neces- 

 sity of systematic effort in arresting the march of forest destruction 

 and providing for the perpetuation of our forest wealth. If by 

 neglect of duty we were to allow the vandals to sweep off all timber 

 from the United States during the present century, we would be 

 regarded as monsters. Fifty years hence, our children would blush 

 for their parents. And yet, in effect, through our mistaken princi- 

 ples and the dominant influence of the destroyers, we are now, at 

 this hour, permitting and witnessing the annihilation of our game- 

 birds and game-quadrupeds, everywhere in the United States outside 



