PAPERS AND MEMORIALS
ON THE PROTECTION OF WILD ANIMALS
AND PLANTS,
AND
THE PRESENT CONDITION AND FUTURE
MANAGEMENT OF EPPING FOREST.
INTRODUCTION.
Among the many objects which may usefully engage the attention of a
local Society of students of Natural History and lovers of Nature, none can
be of greater importance, or more general interest, than the endeavour to
check the wanton destruction of our native animals and plants, and by
argument and example to retard as much as possible the effacement of
the primitive conditions and features of the districts comprised within
the sphere of its action. Much of the beautiful in Nature, in the
vicinity of our large towns, has been ousted by the necessarily vast but
too often reckless extension of buildings, while many a quiet garden,
croft, or coppice has escaped the "jerry builder" and railway only to be
clutched by the remorseless aerial demon of smoke, and blackened,
choked, and withered as his own. We must, perforce, accept these evils
as inevitable, until science and common sense shall, in the happy future,
have abolished Erebus ; builders and landlords shall have adopted honesty
as the better policy ; and tenants and tax-payers shall begin to think
speak, and act for themselves, demanding their rightful heritage of pure
air, sound dwellings, and free space. We cannot check the builder or the
auctioneer, and we are generally helpless puppets in the hands of the
railway promoter. We must admire smoke since we so obstinately and
wastefully refuse to consume or to banish it. But we can (and sometimes
we do in a small way) control the birdcatcher, the fern and plant grubber
up, and the rowdy ; and we may even yet induce game-preserving land-
lords and farmers to see the selfish error of their ways in classing all
God's wild creatures as either "vermin" or "game"; the one section
doomed to destruction in the gross that the other may be cosseted,
guarded, and fattened for the mere pleasure of its destruction in detail.
It is in forming and leading public opinion in the direction of an
appreciative and loving care for the wild beauties and free pensioners of
Nature that we are convinced local scientific societies may do the state