In general form the sea otter, Enhydra lutris resembles the weasel and river otter, of which animals it is a large relative. The male attains a weight of 85 pounds, the female about 65 pounds; the young at birth weigh from 3 to 5 pounds. It is peculiar among members of its family, the Mustelidae, in having deserted dry land and fresh water to take up a marine life. Among marine mammals it is peculiar in its adaptation to the sea. It does not possess an insulating layer of blubber but is protected from the chill of North Pacific waters by a blanket of air trapped among the fine and closely packed fibres of its inch-long delicate fur. Unlike the river otter and fur seal, the sea otter has but little protective coating of guard hair. The fine guard hairs present add to its beauty but do not offer much protection to the soft under-fur. Unlike other maring mammals, the sea otter has never taken to the open sea. It usually feeds in shallow water from 5 to 50 feet in depth. Its food consist primarily of such sedentary forms as sea urchins, rock oysters, mussels, a variety of snail-like molluscs and, in California, abalones. Occasionally fish and octopus are eaten.

Readers are invited to refer to Oryx, III, 6, “What of the Serengeti?” and to Professor Pearsall's Serengeti Report in Oryx, IV, 4.

In June and July, 1957, soon after Professor Pearsall's report was published, the Tanganyika Government held a Committee of Inquiry on the Serengeti. Professor Pearsall was flown to Arusha to give evidence and was the most important witness at the Inquiry; indeed the Committee's recommendations published in November, 1957, were to a great extent based on his survey.

The caribou is a typical Arctic animal, like a reindeer but with longer legs. In late autumn both animals appear very sturdy because of lengthening hair and accumulating fat. The caribou is specially adapted to its environment in many ways; its large broad hoofs support its weight on crusted snow and the concavity of the sole of the hoof makes it sure-footed on ice.

One of the most important aspects of the conservation of nature is its relation to a world problem: that of producing food and raw material in quantities sufficient to balance increases in population. This problem may, of course, be considered from various points of view. I shall consider it mainly from the point of view of an ecologist, starting from the fact that because the amount of highly productive land under cultivation is diminishing rather than increasing, it will be necessary to turn to regions at present marginal or undeveloped in order to produce any considerable increase in production.

The objects of the tour were to keep the Society in personal touch with other bodies of like purpose and to give the Secretary direct knowledge of animals of the country, their habitats and the problems of their preservation.

There was a story told sometime during the last century of an old and impoverished North American prospector, who was asked on his return, what he had to show for all the time he had spent out west. His answer was “I have seen the Rocky Mountains”. I myself have recently returned from a tour of some of the national parks of North America and the impression of wildness, grandeur and beauty remains.

In May and June I spent three weeks in the Kruger National Park, staying at Skukuza, Letaba, Shingwedzi and Satara. Though all these places are intensely interesting, in many ways Shingwedzi is the best of all. Being the northernmost camp, except Punda Maria, it is less frequented, and the country more genuinely wild than the southern districts which are easier to reach and very crowded in the tourist season.

The world's first National Park was the Yellowstone Park in the United States of America, established by the United States Congress in 1872 “as a pleasuring ground for the benefit and enjoyment of the people”. This great Park, of over two million acres, was soon followed by others, first in America and then elsewhere, in a world-wide movement which has gradually been gaining impetus and which still continues, East and Central Africa being amongst the last and most tardy recruits to the field. Throughout, the emphasis has been on the preservation of wild land areas for public outdoor recreational and educational use. In 1933 the first move was made at international level to give tangible expression to this movement in the “Conference for the Protection of the Fauna and Flora of Africa”, held in London during that year and attended by delegates from all over the continent: other international meetings have followed.

The idea of national parks in Argentina started in 1903 with the gift of 7,500 hectares to the Argentine nation by Francisco P. Moreno, one of the earliest Argentine naturalists. But even this area, since greatly enlarged, did not receive legislative guarantee until 1934, after the late Dr. Hugo Salomon had repeatedly insisted that the integrity of national parks and reserves could only be assured by legal enactment. Fourteen areas, including three still only projected, are set aside as national parks or other forms of nature reserves in Argentina. Of the six northerly reserves all but Iguazú and Finca El Rey belong to the Chaco formation. All the southern reserves lie in the Cordillera of the Andes, except for Laguna Blanca in the Precordillera and the national monument Los Bosques Petri-ficados in the Patagonian plateau. Los Alerces, Nahuel Huapi, Lanin and Iguazú conform more or less to the requirements of national parks laid down by the Convention on Nature Protection and Wild Life Preservation in the Western Hemisphere 1940; this the Argentine Government has signed.

Until 1952 there was no agency in India directly concerned with the preservation of the country's wild life, and the Forest Departments of the various States were only able to extend a limited measure of protection within certain of the reserved forests under their jurisdiction.

At the end of 1952 the constitution of the Indian Board for Wild Life, consisting of non-officials as well as of officials, to advise the Central Government in New Delhi, was an important step forward in nature conservation in India. It was followed within a very short time by the constitution of State Wild Life Boards in nearly all the States of the Indian Union. By now several States also possess separate Wild Life Departments, within the Forest Department, concerned solely with the preservation of wild life.

For some twenty odd years I have been a photographer of wild life in the Malayan jungle with some measure of success in the daylight field. But not until eighteen months ago did I turn my attention to night photography—after watching a large sambar stag, hind and fortnight-old fawn one moonlight night from a hide near a salt lick.

My cameras are an Agiflex III, 2¼ × 2¼, with a 24 cm. tele lens and a 35 mm. Kine Exakta VX with a 13·5 cm. tele lens. These cameras are used side by side on a brass bar which is fitted on to a turn-tilt head on a very heavy solid tripod. The tripod is firmly established at one observation window of the hide. At the other window two flashguns are mounted either on tripods or posts driven into the ground. A third flashgun— an extension unit from one of the two main flashguns—is mounted on a post at the corner of the hide some 8 feet away from the cameras and 6 feet above them.

When I first visited Ruaneliya Estate in the Bingiriya area, 75 miles from the heart of the city of Colombo, 200 of its 1,200 acres were under coconuts, the rest was jungle. In spite of occasional raids by elephants, the coconuts did well; but as surrounding areas were opened up, the elephants became isolated in Ruaneliya and the surrounding jungles and their visits to the coconut plantation became more and more frequent.