Page:The Zoologist, 4th series, vol 1 (1897).djvu/350

322 "Churches, monuments, tombs, castles, old houses, bridges, streets, ruins, historic documents, coins, paintings, carvings, very old people.

"Celebrated trees, loggan stones, rocks, caves, geological sections.

"Effects of lightning, storms, floods, landslips, earthquakes, &c.

"Rare birds, beasts, fishes, plants, and fossils, remains of pre-historic men and animals."

The work pleading to be done is, in fact, so overwhelmingly extensive that it may be refreshing to hear of some work pleading to be not done. For fostering a love of natural history, the ideal method long practised was to encourage young people, and beginners in general, to make collections of eggs and birds, of butterflies and beetles, of flowers and fossils. It still remains absolutely essential that a student should have materials for his study. But the enormous increase in the number of collectors, often having only a commercial or other quite unscientific object in view, has made it necessary for the lovers of nature to protest loudly against rapacity and ravage. Of some butterflies it has been lately said that "their extinction will only be checked by the extinction of 'the mere collector' and the dealer who supplies him." As for eggs and birds, that zeal for rare specimens which, in a former age, would have qualified a man to be president of a learned society, is now more likely to subject him to prosecutions and penalties. That is, perhaps, for us the necessary way of forming a healthy public opinion, just as our ancestors thought that scourge and gibbet, rack and faggot, must be freely used to keep the social machine in order. Of course I know that revenge is sweet, and that it is delectable to bring others round to our way of thinking under compulsion. Still our Union will be content to produce the effect rather in a different manner, by spreading knowledge, by showing that it is for the common benefit and general happiness not to have the fauna and flora of the district devastated, and by gradually persuading the spirit of the age that things rare and strange and beautiful, when open to all, should be under the protection of all, and should be appropriated only for legitimate use, and not sacrificed to greediness or vanity.

One other point must be mentioned, which concerns the