5^6 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



we shall have them, just as fast as we deserve them, and we shall not have 

 to pledge ten per cent per annum for the endowment either. 



But there is another side to our problem that is perfectly manageable 

 without the landscape artist, and without very much expense. Much of 

 the waste land about our towns is already grown up with native trees and 

 vines. I have been arguing for years that a park in its planting need not 

 be costly. We need to us only the vegetation which is native to Iowa to 

 make our town park as beautiful as any in the land, indeed more beautiful 

 than can be made in any other way. Our own vegetation, our oaks, our 

 lindens, our hazels, our sumacs, our wild grapes and creeper did once 

 clothe these hills and banks with summer beauty and autumn glory, and 

 the plants will make all such locations splendid once again if we but 

 afford them the chance. Minneapolis does not ask for tree ferns and 

 palm trees to make the parks the pride of the town and of the Mississippi 

 valley; she has used conditions as she found them with the results we see. 



But once again; the beauty of a town lies not wholly in its parks, or 

 lands set off as such. There is in a hundred instances no reason why the 

 whole town should not be a park. Of course, in our Iowa villages, there 

 must be the street for traffic, a few business blocks, but the larger part of 

 the town is given over to the purpose of homes. Now there is no reason 

 why these smaller towns of Iowa which are, by the way, her boast, should 

 not be each in its own way a park. Blue-grass and elm trees will grow in 

 every one of them, and with blue-grass and elms we can make any town 

 a delight to all beholders. The prevailing use of cement for walks is doing 

 a great deal to help the appearance of our cities; board walks are evil 

 and that continually, and it requires concerted action along any given 

 street to give regularity to the walks, regularity to the tree-line, the side- 

 walk line, the curb line. In our Quaker rectangular towns these lines 

 must be respected and our only hope of ultimate beauty is in mathematical 

 exactness. 



Our Iowa towns are just now in transition state. They were built of 

 wood. We all remember the little white painted store building with top- 

 heavy white front and cornice. These are rapidly disappearing, in every 

 town in Iowa, fast giving place to structures of brick and plate glass and 

 steel. We are passing from the temporary and imperfect stage of pov- 

 erty and uncertainty to that of permanence of substantial and abiding 

 commercial and social life. How rapidly our railways are replacing the 

 old box-like station houses of our early experience with more or less 

 elaborate, but always tasty and substantial permanent structures ; is there 

 any reason why a similar policy should not now apply to our tree planting 

 and the establishment of highway and street? The soft maple and box- 

 elder have been useful trees; no one more ready than I to yield them 

 appreciation, but the time is now at hand for the use of more graceful 

 and permanent species. 



As we are passing from wood to brick and stone and cement we should 

 pass from boxelders to oak and elm. 



A recent Japanese traveler in America has written in book form his 

 impressions of America and especially American cities. We cannot com- 



