Slimmer Meeting. '83 



naturalists of every description. City parks are in their place a great 

 blessing for many people, but a city park is no wilderness and should 

 not be one. It is a different thing altogether; it harbors few wild 

 animals and gives a chance to others to adapt themselves to such condi- 

 tions as it offers, that is all. 



In Europe the indiscriminate cutting down of forests has been 

 stopped as long as a hundred years ago, and the governments see that 

 no tree is felled without permission of the forester. Here, too, the 

 national government has begun sylviculture, but this offers no substitute 

 for the original forest wilderness. Sylviculture resembles agriculture 

 in so far as the forester wants only those things to grow which have a 

 marketable value. He cuts down everything else and the result is a 

 very clean forest with certain kinds of trees growing to perfection, but 

 there is little or no undergrowth, no climbers, no dead treetops, no litter 

 and decaying logs on the ground. Such forests are almost as monot- 

 onous as a cornfield, with the only difference that trees take the place 

 of corn. They are poor in birds and flowers and no comparison at 

 all to our original Missouri forests with their fifty different kinds of 

 trees and an equally great variety of climbers, shrubs and smaller plants. 

 Here life of every kind abounds, birds of many species populate the 

 treetops, others the branches, high and low; others again make their 

 home in the undergrowth and some claim the ground floor itself for 

 their domain, making their nests and raising their young in safety among 

 ihe brush and brambles which so abundantly cover the ground and make 

 access difficult or impossible to their enemies. 



A forest preserve, which comes nearest to our ideal, is found in 

 the famous Yosemite Valley, a State Park within a National Park, where 

 firearms, herds and fires, as well as the axe, are barred, where the 

 policing is done by a state guardian assisted in summer by a detachment 

 of U. S. cavalry. And what a paradise it is for the nature lover ! It is 

 not its granite walls and waterfalls alone which make it so attractive; 

 it is the undisturbed natural beauty of its vegetable .and animal life, its 

 peace and quiet which make a sojourn within those high walls so exceed- 

 ingly pleasant. Last summer during a short stay of three and one-half 

 days I noted 57 different species of birds within those granite walls, and 

 some of them were in surprising abundance. Nearly all were song 

 birds and of extraordinary tameness. 



How different would all this be if the valley had not been a preserve 

 almost since its discovery. Man would have cut down the beautiful trees 

 to make fire wood ; they would have killed every living thing for gain or 

 sport; grazing animals and fire \vould have done away with every wild 



