(b) Articles in the Public Press. We believe in the power of the public press as a molder of the opinions of the community, and feel that we must enlist the interest and co-operation of the newspapers throughout the country. To do this generally will require carefully considered, nation-wide plans; but a great deal may be done in every locality by the printing of the addresses referred to above. Where this is not possible abstracts may always be published, as well as summaries of shorter talks and discussions. Now and then a short, pointed article should be prepared and printed in the local paper. Here we feel the need of admonishing writers to be brief. No communication should attempt to be exhaustive. Better far to say a little at a time, and to come back to the subject again and again, than to say it all at once. Short, suggestive articles are generally read, while long ones usually become so dry that few read them.
(c) Books and Pamphlets. For certain classes of people the appeal through the more permanent form of publication is far more effective, and therefore there is in our work a need of the book writer, and the writer of pamphlets. Here, quite naturally the writer must possess to a marked degree the ability to present the matter in such a sustained way that his book or pamphlet will be read throughout. Probably the most effective writing of this class is that which appears in our illustrated magazines where by the aid of half-tone reproductions of striking photographs the interest of the reader is held much more certainly. Such articles collected into small books or pamphlets would go far towards stimulating a proper state of mind in regard to the conservation of our natural resources.
It occurs to us also to suggest that now and then our state experiment stations might quite legitimately devote a bulletin to Conservation.
II. WORK IN THE SCHOOLS.
While the community as a whole is receiving such suggestions as are possible through the agencies mentioned—lectures, addresses, newspaper articles, books and pamphlets—there is a vastly more effective means at our disposal in the public schools, dealing as they do with no less than twenty millions of children. We suggest that teachers everywhere be urged to include in all the studies that pertain to nature something in regard to the preservation of natural objects. This need not be much in amount, and it should be brought in with care and wisdom. We are reminded that once a very good cause was much discredited in the schools by the rash unwisdom of its advocates who insisted upon such an overdose of advice and admonishment that acute nausea resulted. So we would suggest that in the following studies care should be taken on the one hand to suggest conservation while on the other hand still greater care should be taken not to overdo the matter.
(a) Nature Study. Along with an appreciation of Nature there should be inculcated the feeling that others after us should have the opportunity of enjoying the same beauties that we have.
(b) Geography. As now generally presented this deals more with the earth and what it contains, than with its political divisions. Thus the soil, the forest cover, the streams, the water supply, all fall within this rejuvenated science, and here most readily can be inculcated the principles of conservation, as applied to the soil, the forests, the streams, and the underground waters.
(c) Botany. When the pupil’s attention is more specifically drawn to the plant covering of the earth, in the study of botany, it is not at all difficult to impress upon him the desirability of preserving the vegetation of the present day for the generations that are to come after us. No lover of plants can contemplate with pleasure the thought that for the botanists of the twenty-first century certain curious orchids, some rare trees, and possibly some Golden Rods, may be as completely extinct as are the Paleozoic Calamites and Lepidodendrids. The latter perished from the face of the earth, and we know of them now only by the fragments that have been preserved in the fossils which we dig up from the old rocks. Extinction has been the fate of many a plant, and extinction of plants now living is by no means improbable. The botanical teacher should preach the doctrine of preservation, the preservation of the plants of the present for the people who come after us.
(d) Zoölogy. So, too, the teacher of zoölogy should improve his opportunity to help create a feeling favorable to the conservation of the present animal life. Especially do we need a propaganda of conservation in relation to the birds of the country. And here we remark that there are methods of presenting this part of zoölogy which emphasize rather the living bird in the tree than the dead bird in the cabinet. And these methods are happily displacing those that suggested if not required the death of every bird studied. We are well aware of the fact that it is not so much the killing of birds for study that threatens the extinction of some species, as the wanton killing for the sake of killing, and as in the case of birds of fine plumage, the killing for the money value of the dead birds. Yet we realize that the place to begin is to educate the children of the schools not to kill birds for any purpose. When they have regard for the life of a bird they may be trusted not to kill one needlessly.
(e) Geology. In this the pupil comes to see the foundations of the earth, fortunately little of which man may injure or deface. And yet how thankful we are that on the hills of New England there have been preserved in their original ruggedness the great masses of granite that have withstood the elements for millions of years. And who is not gratified that the great wall of the Palisades on the Hudson River has been saved for all time? These cliffs were valuable for crushing into gravel for road-making, and for the quarrying of building stone, but certain men of finer sensibilities felt that the Palisades had a far higher value for their grandeur and beauty. And so the Palisades were saved.