The idea of a Swiss national park originated with the Swiss Society for Nature Research and this Society played the leading part in its realization. In 1906 the Society set up as part of its own organization a Swiss Nature Protection Commission and charged it to search for an area in Switzerland suitable for establishment as a reserve, in which all the animal and plant life could be protected against interference by man and so could be left entirely to the play of natural forces. It was not easy to find in Switzerland a suitably large area which still retained its original characteristics, was virtually free from human settlement, and contained some wealth of fauna and flora. After a careful survey of the whole country it became clear that the most suitable region was the Lower Engadine, with its isolated valleys on the eastern border of the country. The district in which, at the beginning of the century, bears had still lived was the one in which primitive nature could be found in its truest state.

The Luangwa Valley Game Reserve, in the northern, eastern and southern provinces of Northern Rhodesia, covers approximately 5,000 square miles. It is in two separate sections, divided by a comparatively narrow corridor which is inhabited by an African community. This strip of country embraces the Munyamadzi and Mupamadzi rivers, two of the Luangwa's rare perennial tributaries and cuts north-east to south-west across the valley from the Muchinga Hills to the Luangwa river.

Around the seas of the far northern Atlantic coming under the influence of Arctic conditions lives, frequently on the wander, one of the most delightful of creatures, the harp seal or saddleback, Phoca groenlandica. Large communities migrate in the Newfoundland, Labrador, Baffin Land, Greenland sector; others through the area of Jan Mayen Island towards Spitzbergen. Gregarious for much of the time, they share their world of ice with the occasional bearded seal and ringed seal, walrus, and polar bear. The White Sea in northern European Russia is a great harp seal nursery, for an eastern community in the area of the Barents Sea.

The Legal Position.—The Wild Life Protection Act of 1936 is still in force. Section 6 affords complete protection to rhinoceros, tapir, peafowl, Argus pheasant and masked finfoot. But the provision to the said section reads as follows:—

“Provided that it shall not be an offence for any physician or druggist to possess or sell, or for any person to possess for private medical purposes rhinoceros blood or any preparation thereof.”

Devon has had the honour of being the venue for the first Annual Conference of the Mammal Society of the British Isles. Exeter, its county town, housed the conference and though it is not centrally placed for the country as a whole, it deserved consideration because Devon provided the Society with more members in its first year than any other county.

The long-tailed field mouse or wood mouse, Apodemus sylvaticus, is found over nearly the whole of the British Isles. It is a variable species, and scientists have divided it into a number of sub-species, of which the type is very common in the Box Hill region of Surrey where I live. Another mouse which some specialists regard as a sub-species and which is known as the yellow-necked field mouse, A. flavicollis, is said to occur in the district though I have never seen one. It would be interesting to know more about the distribution of these mice and amateur naturalists could make useful observations on their ecology.

It is of great interest to have confirmation from so experienced an observer as Dr. Peter Delap of apparent antipathy between roe and fallow deer in Lakeland, more especially as he suggests that the dominant species there is the roe. In every instance which I have investigated in the south where the two species have come into territorial collision, the successful contestant for “living-space” has been, in the long run, the fallow.