THE ANNUAL CONVERSAZIONE 
107 
This rather peevish description of what were really the 
incidents of an hour’s walk in a part of England once famed for 
its rural beauty seems to me to epitomize the troubles which 
must be borne (I hope not patiently) by many a fellow-member 
of the Selborne Society who walks, rides, bicycles or motors 
about England. Well, I have long since come to the conclusion 
that the interest of the educated mass of the English in the 
beauty and history of their own country is very small, while on 
the part of those who, under our present social organization, are 
still the uneducated classes, a sense of beauty seems to have 
completely disappeared. That it was there once is obvious from 
the style of cottage which existed prior to 1840, the style which, 
happily, still lingers in many parts of England. A love of 
beauty for beauty’s sake, a sense of proportion and of fitness in 
the distribution of things must have been present in the minds of 
the peasantry long before it learned to read and write. For this 
peasantry furnished many a mute, inglorious artist as mason, 
joiner, wood-carver, carpenter, hedger, or ditcher. I have 
watched rural England somewhat attentively for over thirty 
years. I can remember what it was like before the reign of 
paper, when it was possible to take walks through woods, over 
commons and downs, along the seashore, up the Welsh moun- 
tains, by the English Lakes, and not see paper, paper, paper, 
everywhere ; to sink down to rest among the pine needles or on 
some soft carpet of dead beech leaves and not put your hand 
on to a broken bottle which had contained beer, ginger-beer or 
whiskey. 
No part of England now seems secure from the paper curse, 
unless it be parks that are enclosed within high walls, the right 
of ingress to which having been possibly withdrawn from the 
general public because that public could go nowhere without 
strewing paper, flinging bottles, tearing down the branches of 
trees, or uprooting wild flowers and ferns. 
The devastation which is caused now year by year, owing to 
an ill-regulated love of botany, is deplorable. Between April i 
and July i, people of town and country origin alike sally out 
into the wild places, pick armfuls of blossoms, and then a little 
later, in their weariness, strew them over the dusty roads. The 
indigenous flora is being rapidly exterminated, or perhaps I 
should say transferred • from the wild places where it grew 
naturally, appropriately and beautifully, to more or less artificial 
gardens where it dies away, when people weary of it after a 
time, and naturally prefer the gaudy products of the florist. 
As to the wild fauna, I have remembrances on both sides 
of the balance. 1 can remember the south coast of England 
before there was any protection of birds, when it was very diffi- 
cult to get a close view of a gull, a rock-pigeon, cormorant, or 
guillemot ; while on some recent visits to the same coast I have 
actually been able to sketch or photograph these wild birds 
from close proximity. The success which has attended the 
