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?
CHAPTER III
FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD
SOME men of unbalanced minds have lately proposed deliberately and completely to obliterate all the artistic work of past generations of man in order, as they openly profess, that they themselves and their own productions may obtain consideration. Even were they able to make such a clearance, it may be doubted whether the consideration given to their own performances would be favourable. These obscure individuals have immodestly dubbed themselves "futurists," and the name has been at once adopted as a mystification and advertisement by a variety of art-posers—probably unknown to the originators of the word—who have ventured into one or other of the fields of art without even the smallest gift, either of conception or of expression, or even of imitation. They receive undeserved attention from a section of the public ready to dabble in every newly-made puddle. I am led to refer to them because the abolition of the supremely beautiful things slowly evolved by Nature in the long course of ages, and the substitution for them of man's fancy breeds and races and garden paths, is not merely a parallel piece of folly, but is due to a mental defect identical with that of the genuine "futurist," namely, an intellectual incapacity which renders its victim insensible to the charm of historical and evolutional complexity.