ONE of the new features of modern life—the result of the enormous development of the newspaper press and the vast increase in numbers of those who read and think in common—is the development of a sensitive "self-consciousness" of the community, a more or less successful effort to know its own history, to value the records of the past, and to question its own hitherto unconscious, unreflecting attitude in mechanically and as it were blindly destroying everything which gets in the way of that industrial and commercial activity which is regarded, erroneously, as identical with "progress." Beautiful old houses and strange buildings—priceless records of the ways and thought of our early ancestors—-which at one time were either guarded by superstitious reverence or let alone because there was room for them and for everything else in the spacious countryside—-have been thoughtlessly pulled down as population and grasping enterprise increased. The really graceful old houses of London and other towns, lovingly produced by former men who were true artists, have been broken up and their panelling and chimney-pieces sold to foreigners in order to make way for more commodious buildings, hideous in their ignorant decoration, or brutally "run up," gaunt, bare, and mis-shapen. The stones of Avebury, of Stonehenge, and of many another temple have been knocked to pieces by emancipated country-folk—no longer restrained either by superstition or by reverence—to mend roads and to make enclosures.

Happily the new self-consciousness is taking note of these things. That strange lumbering body which we call "the mother of parliaments" has dimly reflected the better thought of the community, and given a feeble sort of protection to ancient monuments. The newspapers have lately managed to excite some public interest in a fine old house in Dean Street, Soho, and to arouse a feeling of shame that the richest city in the richest Empire of the world should allow the few remnants of beautiful things of the past still existing in its midst to be destroyed by the uncontrolled operation of mercenary "progress." I have, in common with many others, visited this doomed mansion. It is a charming old place, of no great size or importance, and, with its well-proportioned panelled rooms and fine staircase, was destined to be a private residence. It is not large enough to be a museum, but its rooms might serve for the show place of a first-rate maker or vender of things of fine workmanship. There ought to be some public authority—municipal or departmental—with power to acquire such interesting houses as this, not necessarily to convert them into permanent public shows, but to keep them in repair, and to let them on lease, at a reasonable rent, to tenants, subject to the condition of their being open on certain days in the year to artists and others provided with orders of admission by the authority. In other countries such arrangements are made; with us they are not made simply because we have not assigned to any authority the duty of acting in this way for the public benefit. Our public authorities have little or no public spirit, and resemble private committees, councils, and individuals in evading and refusing even the smallest increase of responsibility and activity beyond that which they are compelled by law to discharge. Unless they are legally compelled to interfere, all records of art and nature may perish before they will incur the inconvenience of moving a finger! Consequently the only thing to be done is to assign such duties by law to an existing authority, or to one created for such purposes.

The same tale of destruction and irreparable damage has to be told of our dealings with the beauty of once unsullied moorland, meadow, marsh, forest, river-bank, and seashore. But the destruction has here been more gradual, less obvious on account of remoteness, and more subtle in its creeping, insinuating method, like that of a slowly-spreading infective disease. The word "country" has to a very large extent ceased to signify to us "outlying nature beyond the man-made town," occupied only in little tracts here and there by the immemorial tillers of the soil. The splendid and age-long industry of our field-workers has made much of our land a garden. Now they themselves are disappearing or changed beyond recognition, losing their traditional arts and crafts, their distinctive and venerable dialects, and their individuality. The land is enclosed, drained, manured; food plants produced by the agriculturist replace the native plants; forests are cut down and converted into parks and pheasant-runs; foreign trees are substituted for those native to the soil. Commons, heaths, and wild moorlands have been enclosed by eager land-grabbers, the streams are polluted by mining or chemical works, or if kept clean are artificially overstocked with hand-fed trout; whilst the open roads reek of tar and petroleum. The "wilderness" is fast disappearing, and it is by this name that we must distinguish from the mere "country," as much besmirched and devastated by man as are the sites of his towns and cities, the regions where untouched nature still survives and is free from the depredations of humanity. Many beautiful and rare plants which once inhabited our countryside have perished; many larger animals (such as wolf, beaver, red-deer, marten-cats, and wild-cats) have disappeared, as well as many insects, great and small, such as the swallow-tailed butterfly and the larger copper butterfly, and many splendid birds.

Here and there in these islands are to be found bits of "wilderness" where some of the ancient life—now so rapidly being destroyed—still flourishes. There are some coast-side marshes, there are East Anglian fens, some open heath-land, and some bits of forest which are yet unspoilt, unravaged by blighting, reckless humanity. It is a distressing fact that some of the recent official attempts to preserve open forest land and commons for the public enjoyment have been accompanied by a mistaken attempt to drain them, and lay them out with gravel walks, to the complete destruction of their natural beauty and interest. The bog above the Leg of Mutton Pond, on Hampstead Heath, where I used to visit, years ago, the bog-bean and the sun-dew, and many a moss-grown pool swarming with rare animalcules, has been drained by an over-zealous board of guardians, animated by a suburban enthusiasm for turf and gravel paths. The same spirit, hostile to nature and eager to reduce the wilderness to vulgar conventionality, has tamed the finer parts of Wimbledon Common, and is busy laying down gravel paths in Epping Forest. In the New Forest the clamour of the neighbouring residents for "sport" has led to the framing of regulations by the officials of the Crown (it is a "Royal" forest), which are resulting in the destruction and disappearance of rare birds which formerly nested there. Many a distant common threatened by the builder has been preserved as an open space by golfers. Such preservation is like that of the boards of conservators, useless from the point of view of the nature-lover. The health-seeking crowd spreads devastation around it. The rare sand-loving plants of the dunes, and the "bog-bean," the "sun-dew," and other refugees from human persecution on our once unfrequented heath-lands, are remorselessly trodden down or hacked up by the golfer. Other destroyers of nature's rarer products are those who greedily search for them and carry them off, root and branch, to the last specimen, in order to sell them. These dealers are "collectors," indeed, but must not be confused with the genuine "naturalist," who may allow himself, with due modesty, to secure a limited sample of treasures from nature's open hand.

Under these circumstances a society has been founded for the formation of "nature-reserves" in the British Islands. Its object is to secure, by purchase or gift, tracts of as yet unsullied wilderness—of which some are still, though rarely, to be found—where beast and bird, insect and plant are still living as of old—untouched, unmolested, undisturbed by intrusive, murderous man. The society's object is to enter into relations with those who may know of such tracts, and to arrange for their transference—if of sufficient interest—to the National Trust. The expense of proper guardianship and the admission to the reserve of duly authorized persons would be the business of the society. Its office is at the Natural History Museum in Cromwell Road, and Mr. Ogilvie Grant, the naturalist in charge of the ornithological collections, is one of the secretaries. Sir Edward Grey and Mr. Lewis Harcourt and several of our most distinguished botanists and zoologists are members of the council. All who sympathize with the objects of the society should write to the secretary for further information.

Already two tracts of land were secured as nature-reserves before the society came into existence. One of these is Wickham Fen, not far from Cambridge, renowned for its remarkable plants and insects. It was purchased and placed in the hands of the National Trust by a public-spirited entomologist. Another reserve, which has been secured, is far away on the links or dunes of the north coast of Norfolk, and is of especial interest to botanists. No one—either golfer or bungalow-builder—can now interfere there and destroy the interwoven flora and fauna, the members of which balance and protect, encourage and check one another, as is Nature's method. The interaction of the various species of wild plants in this undisturbed spot is made the subject of continual and careful study by the botanists who are permitted to frequent it. More such "reserves" and of different characters are desirable. Should we, of the present day, succeed in securing some great marsh-land, one or more rocky headlands or islands, and a good sweep of Scotch moor and mountain, and in raising money to provide guardians for these acquisitions, we shall not only enjoy them ourselves but be blessed by future generations of men for having saved something of Britain's ancient nature, when all else, which is not city, will have become manure, shooting greens, and pleasure gardens.

In Germany and in Switzerland a good deal has been done in this way. Owing to the existence of "forestry" and a State Forest Department in Germany—which has no representative in this country—there is machinery for selecting and guarding such "reserves." A large sum is assigned annually by the Government to this purpose. Last year an international congress, attended by delegates from the English society, as well as by representatives of many other States, was held, and much useful discussion as to methods and results took place.

The notion of creating a nature-reserve on a small scale seems to have originated with Charles Waterton, the traveller and naturalist, who in the middle of last century converted the estate surrounding his residence near Pontefract in Yorkshire into a sort of sanctuary, where he made it a strict rule that no wild thing should be molested. For some years now the attempt to create "nature-reserves," on a far larger scale than those of which I have been writing, has been made where civilization is planting its first settlements in primeval forest and prairie. The United States Government, impressed with the rapid destruction and disappearance both of forests and of native animals which have accompanied the opening up by road and rail of vast territories in the West, created in 1872 the national "reserve," called the Yellowstone Park, which is some 3300 square miles in area. We are assured that here under proper guardianship the larger native animals are increasing in number; whilst the great coniferous trees, which were in danger of extermination by the white man, are safe. Similar reserves have been proclaimed in parts of Africa under British control, but though that known as Mount Elgon—an ancient volcanic cup, clad with forest, and ten miles in diameter—seems to have been effective, and to have furnished in Sir Harry Johnston's time, ten years ago, a refuge for the giraffe, it is scarcely possible, at present, to provide an efficient police force to protect areas of something like 1000 square miles against the depredations of native and commercial "hunters" provided with modern rifles.

In May, 1900, I was, with the late Sir Clement Hill, appointed "plenipotentiary" by her Majesty Queen Victoria to meet representatives of Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, and the Congo States in a conference, presided over by the late Marquis of Linlithgow, at the Foreign Office. The conference was arranged by the great African powers in order to consider and report on the means to be taken to preserve the big game animals of Africa from extinction. We spent an extremely interesting fortnight, and finally agreed upon a report, the upshot of which was that whilst certain animals, such as the giraffe, some zebras and antelopes, the gorilla, and such useful birds as the vultures, secretary bird, owls, and the cow-pickers (Buphagus), should be absolutely protected, others should be only protected at certain seasons, or in youth, or in limited numbers, and others again should be killed without licence or restraint at any time, such being the lion, the leopard, the hunting-dog, destructive baboons, most birds of prey, crocodiles, pythons, and poisonous snakes. The question of large "nature-reserves" was discussed. It was agreed that such reserves should be maintained for the breeding-places and rearing of the young of desirable animals, and that the destruction of predatory animals or an excess of other forms should be permitted to the administrators of such reserves. Thus it is clear that no absolute "nature-reserves" were considered possible.

In fact this is the case whether the reserve be large or small. Once man is present in the neighbourhood, even at a long distance, he upsets the "balance of Nature." The naturalist's small "nature-reserve" may be ravaged by predatory animals driven from the outlying region occupied by man, or again, the absence from the "reserve" of predatory animals which act as natural checks on the increase of other animals, may lead to excessive and unhealthy multiplication of the latter. Man must "weed" and artificially manage his "reserve" after all! Man brings also into the neighbourhood of reserves, great and small, disease germs in his domesticated animals, which are carried by insects into the cherished "reserve," and there cause destruction. Conversely, the animals maintained in a reserve carry in their blood microscopic parasites to the poisons of which they have become immune by natural selection in the course of ages. They act as "reservoirs" of such microscopic germs. These germs carried by flies or other insects to the carefully reared cattle imported by civilized man from other regions of the world into the neighbourhood of such "reserves," cause deadly disease (such as the tsetse-fly diseases or trypanosome diseases) to those imported cattle, as also to man himself. Whilst, then, we may do something to retain small tracts of our own country in the modified state which it attained after the earlier inhabitants had destroyed lion, bear, wolf, and other noxious animals, as well as great herbivora, such as giant deer, red deer, aurochs (or great bull), and bison—yet in reality a true "Nature-reserve" is not compatible with the occupation of the land, within some hundreds of miles of it, by civilized, or even semi-civilized, man.

Nothing but the isolation given by a wide sea or high mountain ranges will preserve a primeval fauna and flora—the indigenous man-free living denizens of the isolated region—from destruction by the necessary unpremeditated disturbance of Nature's balance by man once he has passed from the lowest stage of savagery. At present we are faced by this difficulty in Africa. Not only the white settlers have large herds of cattle, but before their arrival the native races had imported Indian cattle. These cattle are destroyed by "fly disease," the germs (trypanosomes) being carried by the tsetse-fly to the domesticated cattle from wild buffalo which swarm with the germs but are uninjured by them. Consequently, if the rich pasture lands of Africa—at present unutilized—are to be occupied by herdsmen, the wild game, buffalo and antelopes, must be destroyed. In many regions they have been destroyed. Is this destruction to be continued? If Africa is to be the seat of a modern human population and supply food to other parts of the world, the whole "balance of Nature" there must be upset and the big wild animals destroyed. There is no alternative. The practical question is, "How far is it possible to mitigate this process?" Can a great African "reserve" of 100,000 square miles be established in a position so isolated that it shall not be a source of disease and danger to the herdsmen and agriculturists of adjacent territory?