REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF EDUCATION 249 



As was said before this shrub is indigenous in the sandhills, but I 

 have had it planted for four years in the clayey drift soil of Lincoln. For 

 one clump I prepared the soil by incorporating a quantity of sand, another 

 I have growing in the natural clayey soil. Both are thriving. 



I wish to commend Prunus besseyi, generally known as the western 

 sand cherry, as especially well adapted to the purpose of park and garden 

 planting, for its beauty of foliage, flower and fruit, for its hardiness, and 

 for its distinctive property of local character. 



REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF EDUCATION. 

 (Reprint from Conservation Congress Proceedings, 1912.) 



Your committee recognizing that in the field of education we must 

 for a time provide for a propaganda of suggestion and information, to be 

 followed ultimately, when the public mind has been adaquately wakened, 

 with plans for a campaign of aggressive activity, now presents the 

 following as a preliminary report. And while we feel confident that even 

 at this stage something may be done more than the inauguration of a 

 campaign of agitation, it is certain, nevertheless, that it is agitation more 

 than anything else that we can best promote at the present time. And 

 we must not belittle the importance of this stage of our work, for in 

 every great movement there is first the period of agitation during which 

 the "seers of visions and the dreamers of dreams" talk, and urge, and 

 plead, with increasing vehemence and increasing confidence. 



It is our privilege now to promote such a work of agitation. Accord- 

 ingly our suggestions are all made with reference to this preliminary 

 phase of our work. 



There are three principal lines along which this preliminary work 

 may be developed — namely, in the communities, in the schools, and in 

 our law-making bodies. 



I. WORK IN THE COMMUNITY. 



Here we have to change the feeling of apathy, and carelessness, and 

 irresponsibility, to one of active, conscientious responsibility. In this 

 task we have to deal with the men and women and children who consti- 

 tute the community. We must influence all of them. We must reach 

 them in such a way that there will grow up in the community a better 

 feeling with regard to the world we live in, and a clearer appreciation 

 of our relation to it in every way. They must be led to see that the 

 world is to be used, not destroyed. Just as the child has to be taught 

 that his toy is to be enjoyed, and played with, but not wantonly destroyed, 

 so we must bring the men and women in the community to see that 

 preservation, and not destruction, is the higher duty. That citizen is 

 the better one who leaves to the next generation a better world than he 

 found; whose use of Nature's soil, and water, and plants, and animals. 



