Page:A protest against the extension of railways in the Lake District - Somervell (1876).djvu/61



''The following short Protest and Letter, with the connecting paragraphs, a small Map of the district, and form of Petition to Parliament, are issued as a separate paper for gratuitous circulation, and for signature. All who love the Lake Country may thus help in the work. Copies of this paper may be had, gratis, from R. Somervell, Hazelthwaite, Windermere; to whom forms of petition when filled should be forwarded.''

cannot be denied that for some years the rapid extension of various industries has been doing much to change the face of our Country. What with Railways, Coals, Iron, and Chemicals, great tracts of country have been rendered frightful; while the general multiplication of smoking erections of all sorts has blackened earth and sky over still larger areas. It is evident that unless we are prepared to turn the country into a smoke-darkened shop some check must, sooner or later, be put upon this process. And as the threatened further encroachment of a railway upon one of the loveliest districts in England menaces it with the beginning of such destruction, it is needful that all who know the value of fine natural scenery, and feel the importance of preserving it, should make some resistive effort.

It is not merely the substitution of one kind of road and one kind of tractive power for another that is to be dreaded,—