FORESTRY. 



EDITED BY DR B. E. FERNOW, 



Director of the New York School of Forestry, Cornell University, assisted by Dr. John C. Gifford of the same 



institution. 

 It takes thirty years to grow a tree and thirty minutes to cut it down and destroy it. 



NATURE SANCTUARIES. 

 J. W. LLOYD. 



I should like to interest all naturalists, 

 game preservers, natural history societies, 

 village improvement clubs, and the like, in 

 the work of establishing Nature Sanctu- 

 aries; that is, places where, as far as may 

 be, all animal, vegetable and mineral na- 

 ture would be left free, wild and un- 

 changed. 



Now that the League of American 

 Sportsmen, the Audubon Societies and 

 others are working for bird and game pro- 

 tection as never before; since forestry is a 

 profession and the preservation of forests 

 is attracting national attention; now that 

 books on nature are multiplying and grow- 

 ing so popular as to be found in almost 

 every home; and that Yellowstone Park is 

 actually such a sanctuary, the time seems 

 ripe for this movement. 



What I have to propose is this : That 

 every township in -the United States buy 

 and set apart a piece of land, however 

 small, and dedicate it to Nature ; a place 

 where no wild animal shall ever be mo- 

 lested, tree cut, flower picked, or stone 

 removed. 



If you have at all the soul of a natur- 

 alist, think of being able to reach, within 

 an hour's walk, a place where the wild 

 birds and beasts are so unafraid, yet nat- 

 ural, that they fearlessly go on with all 

 the usual processes of their lives as in- 

 differently as if you were a tree, or a graz- 

 ing ox. 1 nmk of a place where the tree 

 lies where it falls ; where no texts or 

 odious advertisements are painted on the 

 rocks, no initials carved on the trees, no 

 flowers pulled, roots and all, no "improve- 

 ments" made ! What a place for the lover 

 of wild nature, of study for the student, of 

 rest for the weary ! Think what such an 

 untouched spot would look like at the end 

 of a century ! 



In almost every township in the United 

 States there is some bit of wild waste land, 

 practically valueless for agriculture, that 

 could be bought for a small sum and 

 turned into a sanctuary. The more bar- 

 ren, hilly, rocky, rugged or swampy, the 

 better. Often the more utterly valueless 

 such a place is, agriculturally or commer- 

 cially, the more picturesque it is to the 

 artistic eye, the more fitting in every way 

 for the uses of a nature park. It would 

 be an advantage, however, if in the spot 



chosen there should be a great variety of 

 surface, soil and condition, swamp and hill, 

 stream and pond, wet and dry, clay and 

 sand, slope and level, evergreen and de- 

 ciduous forest. 



In most of the forest States little would 

 be necessary except to enclose such an 

 area and leave it to nature. In the prairie 

 States it would, no doubt, sometimes be 

 necessary practically to create the sanctu- 

 ary by planting trees and introducing the 

 animals. The need of a place of the kind 

 is tenfold greater in the prairie than in 

 the forest lands, for many children in the 

 open regions have never even seen a wild 

 grove. To cultivate the soil thoroughly at 

 first, and make one thick, broadcast sow- 

 ing of mixed tree seeds and nuts, would 

 probably be all the work ever necessary, 

 even there, except fencing and buying a 

 few animals. 



How vastly superior such a place would 

 be to a formal park, with fancy pagodas, 

 concrete walks, arranged shrubbery and 

 signs of "Keep off the grass" ! How su- 

 perior to a menagerie of prisoned brutes, 

 or a museum of stuffed victims, to an act- 

 ual student of nature ! "Wild Animals I 

 Have Known" might then be the boast of 

 every schoolboy. 



The sanctuary should belong to the 

 community, although, of course, there is 

 nothing to prevent rich men from having 

 private ones on their own estates. The land 

 could either be presented to the township 

 by benevolent citizens, or bought by the 

 community, collectively, and held as pub- 

 lic property. The more everybody is in- 

 terested in its possession and maintenance, 

 the more its ends are likely to be sub- 

 served. 



While the ideal of such a place is that 

 of absolute wildness and undisturbed na- 

 ture, there would probably not be many 

 places where such an ideal could be quite 

 consistently carried out. Probably in all 

 places animals actually dangerous to hu- 

 man life would have to be excluded. Rat- 

 tlesnakes and copperheads would certainly 

 be condemned, though it is to be hoped 

 that all other snakes would be spared. 

 Weasels would probably have to be 

 checked or extirpated, not only because so 

 wantonly murderous to poultry, but be- 

 cause they might be equally so to birds, 

 rabbits, squirrels, etc., thus defeating the 

 very ends of the sanctuary; and unlimit- 

 ed otters might soon exterminate the fish 



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