ared
to interfere in others. But all experience shows that an easily worked
system will ensure a _maximum_ of gain and a _minimum_ of loss.

Up till quite recently Nature had her own animal sanctuaries in vast and
sparsely settled lands like Labrador. But now she has none. There is no
place left where wild life is safe from men who use all the modern means
of destruction without being bound by any of the modern means of
conservation. And this is nowhere truer than in Labrador, though the
area of the whole peninsula is equal to eleven Englands, while, even at
the busiest season along the coast, there is not one person to more than
every ten square miles. Since the white man went there at least
three-quarters of the forests have been burnt, and sometimes the soil
burnt too. Wild life of all kinds has been growing rapidly less. The
walrus is receding further and further north. Seals are diminishing.
Whales are beginning to disappear. Fur-bearing animals can hardly hold
their own much longer in face of the ever increasing demand for their
pelts and the more systematic invasion of their range. The opening up of
the country in the north will mean the extinction of the great migrating
herd of barren-ground caribou, unless protection is enforced. The coast
birds are going fast. Some very old men can still remember the great
auk, which is now as extinct as the dodo. Elderly men have eaten the
Labrador duck, which has not been seen alive for thirty years. And young
men will certainly see the end of the Hudsonian and Eskimo curlews very
soon, under present conditions. The days of commercial "egging" on a
large scale are over, because eggs of the final lay were taken like the
rest, and the whole bird life was depleted below paying quantities. But
"egging" still goes on in other ways, especially at the hands of
Newfoundlanders, who are wantonly wasteful in their methods, unlike the
coast people, who only take what the birds will replace. The
Newfoundlanders and other strangers gather all the eggs they see, put
them into water, and throw away every one that floats. Thus many more
bird lives are destroyed than eggs are eaten or sold, because schooners
appear towards the end of the regular laying season, when most of the
eggs are about to hatch out--and these are the ones that float. But even
greater destruction is done when a schooner stays several days in the
same place. For then the crew go round, first smashing every egg they
see,