PAPERS AND MEMORIALS 
ON THE PROTECTION OF WILD ANIMALS 
AND PLANTS, 
AND 
THE PRESENT CONDITION AND FUTURE 
MANAGEMENT OF EPPING FOREST. 
INTRODUCTION. 
Among the many objects which may usefully engage the attention of a 
local Society of students of Natural History and lovers of Nature, none can 
be of greater importance, or more general interest, than the endeavour to 
check the wanton destruction of our native animals and plants, and by 
argument and example to retard as much as possible the effacement of 
the primitive conditions and features of the districts comprised within 
the sphere of its action. Much of the beautiful in Nature, in the 
vicinity of our large towns, has been ousted by the necessarily vast but 
too often reckless extension of buildings, while many a quiet garden, 
croft, or coppice has escaped the “jerry builder ” and railway only to be 
clutched by the remorseless aerial demon of smoke, and blackened, 
choked, and withered as his own. We must, perforce, accept these evils 
as inevitable, until science and common sense shall, in the happy future, 
have abolished Erebus ; builders and landlords shall have adopted honesty 
as the better policy ; and tenants and tax-payers shall begin to think t 
speak, and act for themselves, demanding their rightful heritage of pure 
air, sound dwellings, and free space. We cannot check the builder or the 
auctioneer, and we are generally helpless puppets in the hands of the 
railway promoter. We must admire smoke since we so obstinately and 
wastefully refuse to consume or to banish it. But we can (and sometimes 
we do in a small way) control the birdcatcher, the fern and plant grubber- 
up, and the rowdy ; and we may even yet induce game-preserving land¬ 
lords and farmers to see the selfish error of their ways in classing all 
God’s wild creatures as either “vermin” or “game”; the one section 
doomed to destruction in the gross that the other may be cosseted, 
guarded, and fattened for the mere pleasure of its destruction in detail. 
It is in forming and leading public opinion in the direction of an 
appreciative and loving care for the wild beauties and free pensioners of 
Nature that we are convinced local scientific societies may do the state 
