112 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 







Great Blue Heron and White Egret, 

 the heron is in the foreground, the egret further up the creek which is west cache creek on the wichita 



national forest, oklahoma. 



plains? Do we fully appreciate what 

 we owe to that great wilderness? For 

 a fvdl century and a half our forefathers 

 battled with it for mere survival, for 

 150 years they developed courage, 

 resourcefulness, hardihood and individ- 

 uality, and without a Aloses to lead 

 them on or a daily shower of manna 

 from heaven to feed them, they shook 

 off the habits of centuries of European 

 convention and developed the American 

 spirit that spoke in the Declaration of 

 Independence, in the War of the 

 Revolution, and that in another short 

 hundred years conquered and settled 

 this great country. For all that wonder- 

 ful achievement, for otir very American 

 nation today, we must thank the wilder- 

 ness. 



But today the great forests are gone. 

 We are city dwellers. Instead of our 

 noble frontier we have the tenements 



and the slums. Instead of the noble 

 Indian we have the degenerate gun man. 

 We face many serious social and econ- 

 omic problems which must be solved. 



Are we developing the high moral 

 standards, the individualism, the coiu"- 

 age and self reliance which as a nation 

 we must have to solve these problems ? 



Certainly we need the qualities of 

 Washington and Lincoln, of Daniel 

 Boone and Davy Crockett, — and they 

 were educated in the wilderness school. 



Our answer is this : We must preserve 

 some real wilderness, in parks of course, 

 for our coming generations. We must 

 give them a chance to know and love 

 the real woods. As far as we can we 

 must reintroduce them to the out of 

 doors and instill in them and keep alive 

 the spirit and love of the wilderness. 



You ma\' well wonder what forest 

 and game protection has to do with 



