have taken forward steps in learning that wild beasts and birds are by right not the property merely of the people alive to-day, but the property of the unborn generations, whose belongings we have no right to squander; and there are even faint signs of our growing to understand that wild flowers should be enjoyed unplucked where they grow, and that it is barbarism to ravage the woods and fields, rooting out the mayflower and breaking branches of dogwood as ornaments for automobiles filled with jovial but ignorant picnickers from cities.

In the present century the new movement gathered head. Men began to appreciate the need of preserving wild life, not only because it was useful, but also because it was beautiful. Song birds, shore birds, water-fowl, birds of all kinds, add by voice and action to the joy of living of most men and women to whom the phrase "joy of living" has any real meaning. Such stately or lovely wild creatures as moose, wapiti, deer, hartebeeste, zebra, gazelle, when protected, give ample commercial returns, and, moreover, add to the landscape just as waterfalls and lofty pine trees and towering crags add to the landscape. Fertile plains, every foot of them tilled, are of the first necessity; but great natural playgrounds of mountain, forest, cliffwalled lake, and brawling brook are also necessary to the full and many-sided development of a fine race. In just the same way the homely birds of farm and lawn and the wild creatures of the waste should all be kept. It is utterly untrue to say, as demagogues and selfish materialists sometimes unite in saying, that "the game belongs to the people "-meaning the loafers and market gunners who wish to kill it, and the wealthy and lazy gourmands who wish to eat it, without regard to the future. It is true that the game belongs to the people; but this rightly means the people who are to be born a hundred years hence just as much as the people who are alive to-day. In the same way, persons who own land, and, above all, persons who merely visit or pass through land, have no more right wantonly or carelessly to destroy birds or deface scenery than they have to pollute waters or burn down forests or let floods through levees. The sooner we appreciate these facts, the sooner we shall become a really civilized people.

Laws to protect small and harmless wild life, especially birds, are indispensable. Such laws cannot be enacted or enforced until

public opinion is back of them; and associations like the Audubon Societies do work of incalculable good in stirring, rousing, and giving effect to this opinion; and men like Mr. Hornaday render all of us their debtors by the way they efficiently labor for this end, as well as for what comes only next in importance, the creation of sanctuaries for the complete protection of the larger, shyer, and more persecuted forms of wild life. This country led the way in establishing the Yellowstone Park as such a sanctuary; the British and German Empires followed, and in many ways have surpassed us. There are now many such sanctuaries and refuges in North America, middle and South Africa, and even Asia, and the results have been astounding. Many of the finer forms of animal life, which seemed on the point of vanishing, are now far more numerous than fifteen years ago, having by their rapid increase given proof of the abounding vigor of nature's fertility where nature is unmarred by man. But very much remains to be done, and there is need of the most active warfare against the forces of greed, carelessness, and sheer brutality, which, if left unchecked, would speedily undo all that has been accomplished, and would inflict literally irreparable damage.

The books before me 1 are powerful weapons in this warfare for light against darkness. Mr. Hornaday's volume, in which he has been assisted by Mr. Walcott, consists chiefly of lectures delivered before the admirable Forest School of Yale University. It is really a full technical treatise which should be owned and constantly used by every man and woman who is alive to our needs in this matter. He shows how much has been accomplished in creating the right type of popular opinion. He is able to tell what we have accomplished in the creation of great National playgrounds, the National parks, which are National game preserves. Yellowstone, Glacier, Mount Olympus, Grand Canyon, Sequoia, and other parks represent one of the best bits of National achievement which our people have to their credit of recent years. The National forests should

The

also be made game reserves. No sale of game or market hunting should be allowed anywhere; fortunately, the infamous traffic

Wild Life Conservation. By William T. Hornaday. With a Chapter on Private Game Preserves by Frederic C. Walcott. Yale University Press.

Alaskan Bird Life. Edited by Ernest Ingersoll. Pub lished by the National Association of Audubon Societies. Menschen und Tiere in Deutsch-Südwest. By Adolf Fischer. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart und Berlin.

in millinery feathers has now been forbidden. The Federal migratory bird law is a capital piece of legislation. Mr. Hornaday shows the imperative need of protecting our shore birds; he shows the economic value of birds to the farmer; he deals with what must, alas! be called just severity with the attitude of the average "sportsman " toward

One of the most interesting and pleasant phases of the movement of which Mr. Hornaday is one of the leaders is that which deals with the rapidity with which animals accustom themselves to protection and multiply when given the chance to do so. In New York and New England white-tail deer have enormously increased in numbers during the last thirty years. In Vermont the deer were absolutely exterminated forty years ago. Then a dozen were introduced from the Adirondacks. These have thriven and multiplied literally over a thousandfold. forty years the original twelve individuals have increased to such an extraordinary degree that at present hunting under proper restriction is permitted, and five or six thousand deer are killed annually, without diminution of the stock. Mr. Hornaday is an entirely sane and rational man; he heartily approves of hunting, of sport carried on in legitimate fashion, as it can be, without any diminution of the amount of game. shows that in the case of the Yellowstone elk it is urgently desirable that there should be a great increase in the killing, especially of cows; for in the absence of a sufficient number of natural foes they have increased until they now die by thousands each winter of starvation. (By the way, I venture to point out that when the cougars in the Yellowstone dwell away from the deer, antelope and sheep, and prey only on elk, they do no damage.) Our prime duty, at present, as regards the immense majority of large or beautiful or useful mammals and birds, is to protect them from excessive killing, or, indeed, from all killing. But when genuinely protected, birds and mammals increase so rapidly that it becomes imperative to kill them. If, under such circumstances, their numbers are not kept down by legitimate hunting-and some foolish creatures protest even against legitimate hunting-it would be necessary to have them completely exterminated by paid butchers. But the foolish sentimentalists who do not see this are not as yet the really efficient foes of wild life

and of sensible movements for its preserva. tion. The game hog, the man who commercializes the destruction of game, and the wealthy epicure-all of these, backed by the selfish ignorance which declines to learn, are the real foes with whom we must contend. True lovers of the chase, true sportsmen, true believers in hunting as a manly and vigorous pastime, recognize these men as their worst foes; and the great array of men and women who do not hunt, but who love wild creatures, who love all nature, must discriminate sharply between the two classes.

The Audubon Societies, which have done so much good work, have rarely done a better piece of work than in publishing the charming little book on "Alaskan Bird Life" which has been edited by Ernest Ingersoll. It has been prepared for free distribution among the people of Alaska. Surely, societies that do such work are entitled to the heartiest support from all good citizens. But something ought to be charged for the book. Let schoolteachers have it free by all means; give it as a prize to exceptional pupils; but let the average man or woman pay something for such a first-class little volume. It is a book of really exceptional merit; no bird lover in the United States or Canada-not to speak of Alaska-can afford not to have it in his or her library. It is all excellent; but best of all are the portions contributed by Mr. E. W. Nelson. Mr. Nelson is one of our best field ornithologists, and also one of our best closet scientific systematists; and to extraordinary powers of observation, and intense love of the wilderness and of wild creatures, he adds the ability to write with singular power and charm. Nothing better of its kind has ever been done than his account in this little volume of the bird life, at all seasons of the year, in the Yukon Valley and on the islands and along the seacoast. His ear is as good as his eye. He is the first writer to do justice to the musical notes, especially the love notes, of the "sou-sou-southerly" duck, which in winter we know so well on Long Island Sound. He tells of the Lapland longspur, singing on the wing like a bobolink; and of the noisy cock ptarmigan crowing his challenge as he springs a few yards in the air when he is still the dominant figure on the snowy spring plains, before the hosts of water-fowl arrive. Mr. Nelson is the first observer graphically and fully to portray the life history of the strange emperor goose.

He is almost the first observer to describe the songs-for they are songs-of the shore birds; and particularly attractive is his description of the aerial love dance and love song of the tiny and gentle semi-palmated sandpiper. I cannot forbear quoting his account of the bird chorus that greets the oncoming of one of the spring storms:

"The evening before the onset of one of these spring storms was commonly heralded on the tundra, even in the clearest weather, by wonderful outbursts of cries from the larger water-fowl, and these would continue for half an hour before the birds settled down for the night. Thousands of birds took part in producing the tremendous chorus. It was made up of the notes of numberless loons in small ponds joined with the rolling cries of cranes, the bugling of flocks of swans on the large ponds, the clanging of innumerable geese, the hoarse calls of various ducks, and the screams of gulls and terns, all in a state of great excitement, apparently trying to outdo one another in strength of voice. The result was a volume of wildly harmonious music, so impressive that these concerts still remain among my most vivid memories of the north.'

These ornithological sketches by Mr. Nelson are masterpieces of vivid and truthful portrayal of wild nature. They are as well done, from the standpoint of the nature lover and the man of letters, as Hudson's delightful "Naturalist in La Plata" and "Idle Days in Patagonia." These two volumes of Hudson's are literature, just as White's "Selborne and Burroughs's writings are literature. Nelson writes with as strong charm as Hudson; he has the same love and understanding of wild life, and in addition he is a trained scientific man of the first class and an adventurous wanderer in the wilderness. A man who combines such qualities is very rare, and it is a pity not to utilize him to the utmost. Some first-class publishing firm, like Scribners, should insist upon Mr. Nelson's writing an American ornithology which would take rank as both a literary and a scientific classic.

The third volume is Mr. Fischer's sketch of men and beasts in German southwestern Africa. He describes the fell destruction, the almost complete annihilation, of the won

derful big game fauna of these southwestern African wastes by the white hunters and the black and yellow men whom they armed in the nineteenth century. It was a butchery so appallingly wasteful that it is melancholy to read of it. He also describes the steps taken by the German Government during the last decade to undo this wrong, especially by the establishment of carefully guarded game reserves. As in our country, as soon as the effort was seriously made it was entirely successful; eland, kudu, wildebeests, zebras, and many other wild creatures have once again begun to grow plentiful, and on these reserves are gradually losing their fear of man. Mr. Fischer's account of the desert and its dwellers shows keen sympathy and understanding. The mighty wilderness creatures of Africa surpass those of all the other continents in size, beauty, strangeness, number, and variety; and to allow this magnificent fauna to be needlessly butchered to satisfy the ignoble greed of hide and trophy hunters is a crime against our children's children. There are vast tracts of country that are useless for agriculture and of most use as game preserves managed in the interest of all people, both those existing and the unborn. England and Germany have done a fine work in the interest of civilization by their preservation of the African fauna in sanctuaries and by good game laws well enforced.

This is one of the many, many reasons why the present dreadful war fills me with sadness. The men, many of whom I have known-Germans, Englishmen, Frenchmen, Belgians-who have been opening the Dark Continent to civilization, and who on the whole and of recent years have done their work so wisely, are now destroying one another and ruining the work that has been done. I knew many of the men, Englishmen and Germans, who have done most for the creation and success of these game preserves-Schilling, Hamilton, Jackson, Götzen, Harry Johnson, Buxton. In all essentials they resembled one another. The admirable work they did was of the same character, alike in the British and in the German possessions. It is cruel to think that their splendid purposes and energies should now be twisted into the paths of destruction.

HAMILTON W. MABIE, Associate Editor

"MURDER IS MURDER"

The facts in the case of the attack upon striking workmen at the railway station of Roosevelt, New Jersey, on Tuesday of last week, as reported in the press the day after, seem to establish a case of murder. With one exception, noted below, the accounts published immediately after the occurrence agreed in stating that the shooting was unprovoked, that it had not been preceded by criminal action on the part of the strikers, that the strikers were unarmed, and that the resulting death of one of the strikers (this number may very probably have been increased since this. was written) and the wounding of about twenty others, were totally unjustified either by law

A strike had been going on at two fertilizing works. The strikers believed that the Owners of these works were about to bring in strike-breakers. In accordance with their legal right, the strikers were trying to meet any strike-breakers who might arrive in the town and, if possible, dissuade them from taking the strikers' places. In carrying out this purpose the strikers entered a railway train with the consent of the railway men in charge of the train. They found no strikebreakers on the train. On leaving the train these strikers and the others who were standing about were attacked and fired upon by a body of specially appointed deputy sheriffs. One account (in the New York "Times") alleges that the deputy sheriffs assert that one or more shots were fired by the strikers, and that the strikers had piled sleepers upon the track in order to stop the train. But even this account adds that policemen and citizens agreed with the strikers in their declaration that the attack was unprovoked, and that the strikers fired no shots, threw no stones, and committed no violence. ...

Who were these deputy sheriffs? They were not salaried, regular officers of the State, county, or town. They were men who

had been obtained by the employers from a private detective agency to act as guards for the works. They had been appointed temporary deputy sheriffs by the sheriff of the county. In other words, the situation was almost exactly the same as that which existed in the terrible fighting which took place in the West Virginia mine troubles and later in the Colorado mine troubles.

Apart from the special circumstances of this particular case, it furnishes once more a tragic illustration of the wrong way of dealing with labor trouble. To allow private individuals to hire armed guards paid by them, who shall have the legal power to deal with strikers outside of the property of the employers, is merely to court private war. As to this the New York" Evening Sun" rightly says: "The Roosevelt incident will only be another of those barriers of bitterness between labor and capital which intelligence and fair-mindedness on both sides could remove, and which such stupidity only heightens. . . Swearing in irresponsible ruffians as deputy sheriffs in labor disputes and allowing them unlimited gunplay is a most dangerous, inexcusable practice of many employers, and it contributes to render more remote an era of industrial peace or co-operation."

"

The battle at Roosevelt again raises the question whether a State constabulary, such as exists in Pennsylvania and has done such excellent work both in dealing with strike conditions and in securing quiet and order in country districts not properly policed, should not be instituted both in New York and in New Jersey. In Pennsylvania in one case we are told that the conduct of the State constabulary was so manifestly fair and impartial, so clearly intended not to favor one side or the other, but to preserve order and enforce law, that when the State constables left the place they had guarded they were loudly..cheered by strikers and by the people of the place. Certainly it would be better to call upon the State for

such assistance than to employ professional mercenaries and dub them deputy sheriffs.

THE EARTHQUAKE IN ITALY

Another terrible disaster has befallen Italy. In 1908 an earthquake at Messina and vicinity, in Sicily and South Italy, killed some 77,000 persons and made as many homeless. Last week's earthquake was in central Italy. It centered at Avezzano and Sora in the Abruzzi Mountains, and perhaps sixty other towns and villages, killed some 30,000 and made many thousands homeless. The property loss is estimated to exceed $60,000,000.

The principal shock was succeeded by others of far less severity but of far wider extent. They were felt in the Ionian Islands, in southernmost Italy, in Switzerland, and even in France. In Switzerland they were accompanied by alarming avalanches. That the shocks were not volcanic in origin would seem to be indicated by the fact that Vesuvius has remained quiet.

Avezzano is sixty-seven miles east of Rome, on the railway which crosses Italy to Castellamare on the Adriatic Sea; it is an important sugar-manufacturing town, its mills representing a property value of about $3,000,000. The greatest loss of life does not seem to have occurred in the factories, most of which have been built according to modern ideas. Far different is the case with regard to dwellings. Throughout the Abruzzi region primitive methods obtain and the houses are simply masses of badly put together stones and timbers. Some time ago the Government announced a programme of concrete and steel construction. Where this has been adhered to the loss of life has been small.

Avezzano is now a waste. Mr. Marconi, the famous inventor, has visited it, and says, as reported:

Avezzano has absolutely ceased to exist. In Messina some buildings, especially the palaces along the sea-front, give one the impression that they are still intact, their façades having survived the shock, while only their interiors fell in. Not so with Avezzano. No wall there remains erect. It seems as if the town had been ground to powder by some gigantic machine.

Only about a thousand of the 12,000 population of Avezzano escaped injury. At Sora, twenty-four miles south, a town of six

thousand people, most are homeless. Illustrations of these towns appear on another page. But the most pathetic loss has been in the isolated districts of the Abruzzi, where thousands of mountaineers live in lonely solitude, far from towns and villages. Even under the most favorable circumstances communication is wretched. But now, when snow covers the mountains, communication is well-nigh impossible.

RELIEF

The most imperative demands of the wounded and homeless are for medicines and surgical treatment, for food and shelter. Especially pathetic is the cry for food. Cattle have been killed and harvests destroyed, so that those who have saved their lives despair of continued existence.

The Italian Government and people have nobly responded to the appeal. Thousands of soldiers, with supplies of food, clothing, blankets, and medicines, were instantly despatched to the Abruzzi to rescue the imprisoned and to preserve order in the towns. The soldiers present an extraordinary appearance as they come from the ruins; entire detachments are covered with a fine plaster dust and are white as millers.

The King has been indefatigable in his efforts, hurrying from point to point in the afflicted region, directing and supervising the relief work, cheering the victims, and devoting special attention to transporting the orphans to Rome, where, at the Queen's initiative, a part of the royal palace has been turned into an orphan asylum. Though it was but a few days after the birth of the Princess Maria, the Queen insisted on being carried in a wheeled chair through the new asylum, so that she herself might speak to the orphans. The King has contributed $60,000 to the assistance of the Abruzzi orphans. Many of them are suffering mentally as well as bodily, having ever before their eyes the horrible death of relatives and friends.

The Italian Government has appropriated a great fund for relief, and finds itself in the enviable position of being able to decline the proffered aid coming from other countries. The Italian Red Cross instantly grasped the opportunity to prove its worth, and hurried ambulances and tents to Avezzano. It has rescued and helped many sufferers, but its work is also one of prevention. It is exercising great care to avert disease epidemics in the earthquake zone, threatened as it is