NATURE-AND MAN

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 83, Issue 42, 20 February 1939, Page 6

NATURE-AND MAN

LESSONS FROM THE WILD IN FITNESS CAMPAIGNS

(Edited by Leo Fanning). The men and women who are working so well in many districts for the making and maintaining ot physical fitness can learn much from wild lite. In “Nature Magazine” John Lindsey Blackford reveals impressively the spirit of the wild in which courage, endurance and sacrifice are fused. “Infinite patience, matchless endurance, unswerving loyalty, and incomparable fortitude —of such is the spirit of the wild,” he writes. “There is readiness for self-sacrifice, 100, yet we find wild life hoping, striving, carrying on, even until death. Deep-rooted is its love of life. Each individual is ruled by the instinct to share in and contribute to the destiny of the race. Each wild creature lives wisely according to the tenets of its being. This, then, is the spirit that characterizes the wild, whether it be in vast wilderness or in small nearby covert; and it is through association and kinship with life in the wide outdoors that we may

ever hope to renew within ourselves those ennobling instincts. “It is in the surging run of salmon, the seasonal tides of vast aerial hosts, and the great trecks that still take hoofed herds across continental tundras that this spirit becomes dominant, victorious. Therein truly is expressed that perfection of the intangible which we can best and most simply call the spirit of the wild.. “It is through their surprising morale that wild things triumph over the but seldom mitigated harshness of their environment. By this undying, this deathless spirit of living things is expressed the most marvellous part of creation. We know that in the spirit of the wild Creator speaks to us. How can we truly worship Him if we wantonly or heedlessly destroy and despoil the wildlife, the forests, the land and the waters which He has created?”

Rape of the Lund. Here is a striking lesson on man’s ill-treatment of Mother Earth, a poem, “Rape of the Land,” by Greta Gratz, in “Nature Magazine”: — The naked land rose dripping from the sea And gulped drafts of the encircling air; While sunlight, glinting on her rocky breast, Made rainbow’d patterns through the changing mist. Millenniums passed like minutes on the dial of time; Air, water, sunlight, heat and cold Cracked her stony visag?—made it soft; Made her body fertile for all growing things; And Life, beginning who knows where. Laid down the magic mixture of its source And gave as heritage to living things—the age-less soi> .Sublime and fertile continent, marching proudly from the sea! Then rose the primal forests, dimaisled and majestic. Limned against the heavens in unbroken, far-flung stretches; Sweeping downwards to the grasslands, Plains and prairies, where the bison’s Thundrous poundings sent the echoes Through the multicoloured canyons. Here the wild geese drove their wedges

Over well-marked ancient flyways. Here with airy grace, the horned goat Clung to edges of eternity. ' Here the waters in widowed swamnlands Singing over pebbly brook ways, Plunging ower precipices, Roaring tumultuous at. floodtide. Gave the continent its life-stream. Rainwashed, sunklsscd, windswept, growing, creeping to the sea! Now rose the roaring din of man-made things, Displacing God’s own murmurings; The forests stripped, the waters fouled, The grasses dead, the soil defiled; A vital land’s fertility Reduced to stark sterility! There is nothing beyond the horizon For men who cannot see! Blowing, flowing, the anchor-less living earth Runs bleeding back to the sea! A Hair-Puller. In "Feathered Friends" (Australia) K. A. Hindwood tells this story of the white-eared honeyeater:—‘‘When nestbuilding commences, these birds will perch on one’s clothes or head and remove, or attempt to remove, hair or wool for the purpose of lining their nests. At first thought it seems truly remarkable that a wild bird will fearlessly alight on a human being. However. when we study the habits of the species, we will see that that which at first may appear so astonishing is, in reality, tile expression of a welldeveloped and natural practice. ‘‘ln order to understand properly the reason why the white-eared honeyeater seeks nesting material from humans, we must call to mind a period, not so long ago, when the sparse aboriginal population roamed : the land hunting the native animals. The blackfellow had been living thus ■ for thousands of years, and there had | arisen a state of balance, comparatively static, between himself and his environment; consequently animals

like the kangaroo, the wallaby, the opossum, and the bandicoot, while never very numerous, managed to survive in fair numbers. Here then was an ever-present source of supply of nesting material for the whitecared honeyeater which had obviously developed the habit of cosily lining its nest with hair or fur from these animals.

’’With the coming of the white man and his deadly destructiveness with firearms, the animal population was greatly decimated. Thus near settlements where the native fauna has been reduced in numbers or even exterminated, we have the spectacle of the white-eared honeyeater turning to domestic animais and to man himself for the desired nesting material. One is tempted to remark, from the habit the bird had of perching variously on dogs, goats, pigs, deer and men, that it shows no special regard for man’s own opinion of his exalted place in the animal kingdom.” Well, I wish that New Zealand had a bird which would perch on some persons’ heads and give the hair a very strong tug as a reminder of the need of more action for the protection of native birds.