SOME men of unbalanced minds have lately proposed deliberately and completely to obliterate all the artistic work of past generations of man in order, as they openly profess, that they themselves and their own productions may obtain consideration. Even were they able to make such a clearance, it may be doubted whether the consideration given to their own performances would be favourable. These obscure individuals have immodestly dubbed themselves "futurists," and the name has been at once adopted as a mystification and advertisement by a variety of art-posers--probably unknown to the originators of the word--who have ventured into one or other of the fields of art without even the smallest gift, either of conception or of expression, or even of imitation. They receive undeserved attention from a section of the public ready to dabble in every newly-made puddle. I am led to refer to them because the abolition of the supremely beautiful things slowly evolved by Nature in the long course of ages, and the substitution for them of man's fancy breeds and races and garden paths, is not merely a parallel piece of folly, but is due to a mental defect identical with that of the genuine "futurist," namely, an intellectual incapacity which renders its victim insensible to the charm of historical and evolutional complexity. The modern man who nourishes a real love for undistorted nature--that is to say, who is a true "naturalist"--has one or two resources even in these British Islands. There are ways of access to Nature unadorned by man which are open even to the town-dweller. The chief of these is the seashore. Even from London, in the course of a few hours, one may be transported to territory where there are no traces of man's operations. The region of rock and pool, sand-flat, and shell-bank, exposed by the sea as it retreats, is a real "nature-reserve"--effectually so is that deepest area only exposed at spring-tides. The locality chosen by the naturalist must be at a distance from any great harbour or estuary polluted by the cities seated on its banks, and should also be out of the way of the modern steam-driven fish trawlers, which have caused havoc in some sweet bays of our southern coast by pouring out tons of dead, unsaleable fish. The rejected offal has become the gathering-ground of carnivorous marine creatures, and the balance of Nature has been upset by the nourishment thus thoughtlessly thrown by man into new relations.