Brought up in the school of German sportsmanship, I had later on to change completely my view as to our distinction between “noxious animals” and “beasts of prey.” The African wilderness swarms with _beasts of prey_, and yet also swarms with _useful wild animals_. The waters of Africa teem with the _fish destroyers_, and also teem with _fish_. We should not therefore act so short-sightedly and pedantically. We should not be so eager to hunt down the last fox, the last pine-marten. The nesting-places of herons and cormorants are becoming ever fewer; the places where the handsome black tree storks build in our German Fatherland can almost be counted on the fingers of one hand; and the same is nearly true of the nesting-places of our rarer birds of prey. The killing of a wild cat has already become an event; it is the same with the eagle-owl. Out of the mass of literature of recent date bearing on the subject, I take a single book. In a very readable essay, _Der Uhu in Böhmen_, Kurt Loos shows that only a few years ago this interesting and beautiful large owl (_Bubo maximus_) was to be found making its home to the extent of some fifty pairs in thirty-five districts of Bohemia; now only eighteen pairs are living there, in ten districts. The author demands protection for the surviving pairs of owls, as natural objects that should be preserved, and he makes out a strong case for his proposal. Röntgen-ray photographs are among the illustrations of this interesting work, and they suggest that in times when one can do one’s work with such excellent appliances, there is all the more reason for avoiding the thoughtless neglect of legacies left to us by Nature from the days of its primeval beauty.