National Parks — The Need of the Future. 29 



I need not descant upon that which the love of nature is and 

 ought to be to each and all of us. The love of nature is the 

 very simplest and best of those pleasures the power of enjoying 

 which has been implanted in us. It is the most easily accessible 

 of pleasures, one which can never be perverted, and one of 

 which (as the old darky said about the watermelon) you cannot 

 have too much. It is a pleasure which lasts from youth to age ; 

 we cannot enjoy it in the form of strenuous exercise with the 

 same fullness in age, because our physical powers are not 

 the same, but we have perhaps a more perfect enjoyment 

 in some other ways, because we have the associations and 

 memories of those who have in bygone days visited beauti- 

 ful scenes with us, and also the associations with which poetry 

 clothes lovely nature. Therefore there is nothing which in the 

 interest of pure enjoyment we ought more to desire and study 

 to diffuse than the beauties of nature. Fortunately, the love of 

 nature is increasing among us. It is one of the tests of civiliza- 

 tion that people should enjoy this simple pleasure instead of 

 those more violent and exciting pleasures which may become 

 the source, in extreme forms, of evil. The love of nature, I 

 say, is happily increasing among us, and it therefore becomes all 

 the more important to find means for safeguarding nature. The 

 population is increasing, too, and the number of people who 

 desire to enjoy nature, therefore, is growing larger, both abso- 

 lutely and in proportion. But, unfortunately, the opportunities 

 for enjoying it, except as regards easier locomotion, are not 

 increasing. The world is circumscribed. The surface of this 

 little earth of ours is limited, and we cannot add to it. When a 

 man finds his house is too small, he builds more rooms on to it, 

 but we cannot add to our world ; we did not make it, it was 

 made for us, and we cannot increase its dimensions. All we can 

 do is to turn it to the best possible account. Now, let us 

 remember that the quantity of natural beauty in the world, the 

 number of spots calculated to give enjoyment in the highest 

 form, are limited, and are being constantly encroached upon. 

 There are four forms that this encroachment takes. There is 

 the desire of private persons to appropriate beautiful scenery 

 to themselves, by inclosing it in private grounds around their 

 houses and debarring the public from access to it. We in 



