NATURE AND MAN

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXII, 31 December 1938, Page 5

NATURE AND MAN

PICKNICKERS, PLEASE ! BE CAREFUL WITH FIRE • Edited by Leo Fanning) Long before the sun had struck his i stride for summer in the high heavens, ! fires —due to carelessness, stupidity and | deliberate vandalism —had swept away j hundreds of acres of native bush and j plantations. After a period of hot dry weather the air itself seems to be inflammable above parched grass or scrub. Minute particles of sun-scorched litter rise above the ground and are ready to help a thoughtless person to start a disaster. Flame flies with astonishing speed when the summer factors are favourable for its wild play. New Zealanders, think of this passage of an editorial in ''American Forests":— “Fire on the mountain! Fire in the swamp! Flames sweeping across the forests of the southern coastal regions or up in the Lake States! Lonely men on mountain tops and fire towers, watching, watching. The sight of smoke and the quick turn to the telephone. A report to headquarters and a hurried dispatch of men and materials to the newest front of the enemy. More fire! More fighting! More persistent struggle! “Men sweating and struggling—timber crashing! Men digging trenches, ploughing fire lines. Men travelling long hours to reach the fire, followed by hours of drudgery when neither time nor personal danger is considered in the urgent work of controlling the flames. “Thousands of men are led into this annual warfare, risking their lives, giving their all that the forests may be saved.”

In the United States of America, even with very elaborate precautions and propaganda for prevention of forestfires and well-planned organisation for fighting them, the annual tally of fires —nearly all man-made —runs to 150.000. MOTHER LOVE IN BIRDS That soulful Nature-lover. Archibald Rutledge, has a heart-warming article, “Wild Gallantry.” in the American “Nature Magazine.” Here is his tribute to the mother love of a mourning dove: “All living things are handicapped by infancy. It is during this period of defencelessness that Nature has endowed mothers, and to a far less and a different degree, fathers, with a valour that has as its purpose nothing less than the integrity of the species. They guard to-morrow with their lives, and life is uncertain in Nature’s world. “Walking through a grove of young pines one day, I was startled to have a bird fall, as if it had designedly hurl-

ed itself, at my feet. There it lay. with wings pitifully outspread, fluttering feebly. Recognising me as an enemy, it simulated helplessness in order to draw me away from its precious babies. The bird was a mourning dove. As I looked up in the small pine out of which this devoted mother had apparently fallen, I saw the frail nest, and in it the two young birds. The mother meanwhile was exposing herself to perii in order to distract me away from her young. In that fluttering bird there was more than a wild thing trying a common ruse: in it I saw Mother Love, mysterious, self-saorificial. holy. And I do not believe one should be accused of being merely sentimental if from such a scene he infers that the Creator not only made things, but. more marvellous still, provided for their continuance. Self-preservation is called the first law of Nature: but it does not seem to work with mothers. The preservation of their children often makes them completely self-forgetful. Perfect love, the Bible reminds us, casteth out fear. It is so. I have seen it with my own eyes.” A BRAVE LITTLE FATHER Here is Mr Rutledge’s praise of a father humming bird —“a knight-errant if ever there was one”: — “The smallest bird in the world, the only one that can fly expertly straight up and down, borne with the speed of a bullet with de*xtrous precision on gossamer wings, the ruby-throat has a great heart. If you do not believe me, try to approach his nest.

“One spring I discovered one of these tiny woodland bassinets, delicately bound with lichens to a low limb of a white oak. I used to take my writing near the nest in order to study these flowery elves. At the time of this incident, the mother was setting; and the male spent much of his time perched on a dead twig near her. Iridescent in his gleaming armour, he acted as both valiant sentry and as devoted lover. One afternoon when I was near, a big shadow skimmed across the grass. Looking up. I saw a great bald eagle beating his way powerfully to some distant haunt of his. He was flying just over the top of the oak. The little knight on guard-duty never hesitated an instant. Darting from his perch, mounting the sky like a beam of light, he either attacked, or simulated an attack on, the eagle, whose comparatively huge form bulked black in the sky. And th •» tiny champion put the dark marauder to ignominious flight! Perhaps the eagle thought the hummingbird was a bumblebee. At any rate, the largest and fiercest of our birds of prey beat a precipitous retreat. Then the fairy champion returned with defiant assurance to his perch; and it seemed to me that his wife looked at him adoringly, as if she were proudly murmuring to herself, ‘What a man! What a man!’ ” “In Nature we do not discover despondency, the handmaid of despair,” Mr Rutledge remarks. “We never find self-pity, which undermines virtue more subtly yet as effectively as arrant vice. Wild things do not resign or surrender; they will fight to the death. Even a butterfly will defend itself. All living things love life; and if we do not love it enough to make it seem worthwhile to ourselves and to others, a natural suspicion arises that there must be something the matter with us. Take self-pity out of life, and you would be making great progress in the redemption of humanity. It is really a disease; and. I take it, a disease incident to civilisation; for certainly, as we go back toward Nature, we find less of it; and in Nature’s home, none at all. Her children are valiant. Whatever may be their adversities, they do not complain; they are self-reliant; and they never lose hope. “Always it seems to me that too many people study Nature merely to learn about it. That is only the ante-room to the palace. Why not learn from Nature more about human nature and about life. Why not observe birds and animals with a sympathetic and discerning eye, finding in the way they live, in the way they endure, in the way they meet difficulties, that there is far more valour in the world than we had supposed, and that no human being can very well get along without it.”