What more delightful avocation than to take a piece of land and by cautious experimentation to prove how it works. What more substantial service to conservation than to practice it on one's own land?

Only the mountain has lived long enough to listen objectively to the howl of the wolf.

There is yet no ethic dealing with man's relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it. Land, like Odysseus' slave-girls, is still property. The land-relation is still strictly economic, entailing privileges but not obligations.

Our grandfathers were less well-housed, well-fed, well-clothed than we are. The strivings by which they bettered their lot are also those which deprived us of [Passenger] pigeons. Perhaps we now grieve because we are not sure, in our hearts, that we have gained by the exchange. The gadgets of industry bring us more comforts than the pigeons did, but do they add as much to the glory of the spring?

We face the question whether a still higher "standard of living" is worth its cost in things natural, wild, and free.

Hemispheric solidarity is new among statesmen, but not among the feathered navies of the sky.

Land health is the capacity for self-renewal in the soils, waters, plants, and animals that collectively comprise the land.