544 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1962 



here in acute conflict with each other. While in some places the 

 heritage of a unique landscape is being destroyed by unplanned de- 

 velopment, in others new and magnificant landscapes are being 

 created. The T.V.A. stands as a supreme example of a landscape 

 manipulated for the full enjoyment of men as well as for the creation 

 of material wealth, while still conserving the richness of the natural 

 ecology. Yet perhaps America's best-known contribution to the recon- 

 ciliation of civilization and landscape lies in her national parks. 

 Because of her wealth, America more than any other nation is faced 

 with the problems raised by recreation. Townsmen long for the 

 contrast of wild country and for the release from city tensions which 

 it brings, yet in going to the country they destroy it. In an attempt 

 to reconcile this contradiction, the National Park Service of America 

 is doing two things : First, by care, knowledge, and devoted service, 

 the complete ecology of great areas of natural landscape is being 

 preserved; second, by education within the parks, town people are 

 learning to understand and respect wild nature. Thus landscape 

 reserves are being held inviolate by legislation and protected from 

 their admirers. Necessary and admirable as this service is, it must 

 be regarded as a holding operation; our civilization cannot claim to 

 be truly civilized until the respect now enforced by law is each man's 

 natural reaction to his surroundings. Moreover, the frantic urge to 

 reach the few remaining areas of peace and beauty, which now im- 

 perils them, can only be lessened when civilization has learned to 

 make the whole landscape a proper habitat for men. 



These few examples from different parts of the world, each with 

 its own problem, show how the idea of adjustment between men 

 and the landscape is slowly growing. It is indeed a discouragingly 

 small effort compared to the vast forces of destruction, but because it 

 is a positive ideal as opposed to a negative, it has the cumulative 

 strength of all living things, which must in the end prevail against 

 inertia. 



If this present civilization does not perish, it will be because it has 

 found the way to create a new ecology combining the emanations of 

 men's skill and brains with the ecology of organic nature and has 

 learned to fashion from this a new landscape within which men can 

 function not merely as economic units, but as men. 



