The appeal prefixed to the original Address in 1911 announced theissue of the present supplement in 1912, and asked experts and otherleaders of public opinion to set the subject on firm foundations bycontributing advice and criticism.
The response was most gratifying. The twelve hundred review copiessent out to the Canadian press, and the hundreds more sent out togeneral and specialist periodicals in every part of theEnglish-speaking world, all met with a sympathetic welcome, and wereoften given long and careful notices. Many scientific journals, likethe Bulletin of the Zoological Society of America, sportingmagazines, like the Canadian Rod and Gun, and zoophil organs, likethe English Animals' Guardian, examined the Address thoroughlyfrom their respective standpoints. The Empire Review has alreadyreprinted it verbatim in London, and an association of outing menare now preparing to do the same in New York.
But though the press has been of the greatest service in the matter ofpublicity the principal additions to a knowledge of the question havecome from individuals. Naturalists, sportsmen and leaders in publiclife have all helped both by advice and encouragement. Quotations froma number of letters are published at the end of this supplement. Themost remarkable characteristic of all this private correspondence andpublic notice, as well as the spoken opinions of many experts, istheir perfect agreement on the cardinal point that we are wantonlyliving like spendthrifts on the capital of our wild life, and that thegeneral argument of the Address is, therefore, incontrovertiblytrue.
The gist of some of the most valuable advice is, that while theAddress is true so far as it goes, its application ought to beextended to completion by including the leasehold system, side by sidewith the establishment of sanctuaries and the improvement andenforcement of laws.
Such an extension takes me beyond my original limits. Yet, both forthe sake of completeness and because this system is a most valuablemeans toward the end desired by all conservers of wild life, Iwillingly insert leaseholds as the connecting link between laws andsanctuaries.
But before trying to give a few working suggestions on laws,leaseholds and sanctuaries, and, more particularly still, beforegiving any quotations from letters, I feel bound to point out again,as I did in the Address itself, that my own personality is really ofno special consequence, either in giving the suggestions or receivingthe letters. I have freely picked the brains of other men and simplyput together the scattered parts of what ought to be a consistentwhole.
LAWS
It is a truism and a counsel of perfection to s