and sportsman.  But supposing all this does happen.  The mines, water-powers and lumbering will only create small towns and villages.  There will surely be some conservation to have the forests used and not abused especially by fire:  and the white man should remember that he is the worst of all in turning a land from green to black.  Except in the southwest and a few isolated spots, the country cannot be farmed.  At the same time, the urban population must have communications with the outside world, by which regular supplies can come in.  This will make the settlers independent of wild life for necessary food; and wild life, in any case, would be too precarious if exploited in the usual way.  The traders in wild-animal products, as well as the naturalists, sportsmen and tourists, are interested in keeping the rest of the country well stocked.  So that, one way and another, the human and wild-animal life will not conflict, as they do where farming creates a widespread rural population, or wanton destruction of forests ruins land and water, and human and animal life have to suffer for it afterwards.  All the different places required for business spheres of influence in the near future, added to all the business spheres of the present, can hardly exceed the area of one whole England, especially if all suitable areas are not thrown open simultaneously to lumbering, at the risk of the usual bad results.  So there will remain ten other Englands, admirably fitted, in all respects, to grow wild life in the most beneficial abundance, and quite able to do so indefinitely, if a reasonable amount of general protection is combined with well-situated sanctuaries.

The fauna is much more richly varied than people who think of Labrador as nothing but an arctic barren are inclined to suppose.  The fisheries have been known for centuries, especially the cod, which has a prerogative right to the simple word “fish.”  There are herring and lobsters in the Gulf, plenty of salmon and trout in most of the rivers, winninish in all the tributary waters of the Hamilton, as well as in lake St. John, whitefish in the lakes, and so forth.  Then, the stone-carrying chub is one of the most interesting creatures in the world....  But the fish and fisheries have problems of their own too great for incidental treatment; and I shall pass on to the birds and mammals.

Yet I must not forget the “flies”—­who that has felt them once can ever forget them?  Labrador is not a very happy hunting-ground for the entomologist.  But all it lacks in variety of kinds it more than makes up in number of individuals, especially in the detestable trio of bot-flies, blackflies and mosquitoes.  The bot-fly infests the caribou and will probably infest the reindeer.  The blackfly and mosquito attack both man and beast in maddening millions.  The mosquito is not malarious.  But that is the only bad thing he is not.  Destruction is “conservation” so far as “flies,” parasites and disease germs are concerned.