Abstract
IT is only too true that man is slowly but surely destroying the beautiful wild animals and plants of the world, and is substituting for them queer domesticated races which suit his convenience and his greed, or else is blasting whole territories with the dirt and deadly refuse of his industries, and converting well-watered forest lands into lifeless deserts by the ravages of his axe. It is not too late to rescue here and there larger and smaller areas from this awful and ceaselessly spreading devastation. In remote lands there are large tracts which may be taken in charge by the local government and rescued from destruction, and to some extent this has been done. Even in our over-crowded European states there are still lovely bits of forest, marsh-land, and down which man has not yet irretrievably befouled, and from which he has not yet driven by assault nor removed by slaughter the beautiful living things which nature has guided and nurtured in their seclusion. There is yet time! Some of these little scattered fragments of our great mother's handiwork can still be preserved even in England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, so that future Britons may not utterly curse us, but enjoy, with gratitude to those who saved them, the precious living relics of the world as it was before man destroyed it.
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LANKESTER, E. Nature Reserves . Nature 93, 33–35 (1914). https://doi.org/10.1038/093033c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/093033c0