PAPERS PRESENTED AT GENERAL SESSIONS 47 



colored screams and rough stuff. Doc Calomel is losing 

 his best customers. The old folks are camping in the 

 woods, also the young ones and their school master. 



We scientific^ have a large influence with that virile 

 group who make the laws, levy the appropriations and 

 shape the policies of the state. Perhaps you have noticed 

 yourselves that a botanist or a geologist is viewed with 

 a peculiar awe or reverence by legislators and aldermen. 

 A scientific gent, to these law and constitution builders, 

 seems something above and beyond a common creature — 

 something ordained, a super thing, loaded for bear. With 

 busy people, also, toiling eight hours daily at a dollar 

 and a quarter per hour, or sweating around the bulletins 

 of a stock exchange two hours at a time, Coulter, Tre- 

 lease, a Chamberlin, Ridgeway, Doctor Evans and each 

 of a lot more of us is a larger man than some governors 

 of the state. Any old timer who can chop a log between 

 his feet with these hustling moderns is an architect, a 

 landscape authority or a wizard equipped to build a navy 

 or fix a clock. 



There is reason for much encouragement in Joliet play- 

 grounds, parks and an arboretum of 836 acres publicly 

 owned and the 70 acres in parks and forests owned by 

 the Street Railway, all free to everybody. About 330 

 acres of the arboretum is a matured forest of native trees. 

 Privately owned until recently, it had received five years 

 or more of excellent care and planting before given to 

 the public, and the planting and forest conditions will 

 now be continued. 



The Cook County Forest Preserve, within four miles 

 of the Joliet arboretum, is one of the very best enterprises 

 of this character, a splendid testimonial to the industry 

 and the courage of its promoters. Over thirty thousand 

 acres of the Cook County forest land has been purchased, 

 and the purpose is to secure at least forty thousand. To 

 preserve the native forests in their regular, natural or- 

 der, to build trails and roads in and between, to provide 

 shelters and picnicing conveniences, in short, to develop 

 an outer park belt of wild woods accessible to the people 

 of a greater Chicago is tho object of the Park Commis- 

 sion. The Joliet Park District intends to connect its 



