PAPERS ON BIOLOGY AND AGRICULTURE 67 



PRACTICAL PLANT PROTECTION. 



\Villaed X. Clute. Editor. American Botaxist, Joliet. 



In the early days the wildflowers were so abundant 

 and widespread that the destruction of immense num- 

 bers was of no consequence, but with the growth of our 

 country, many of the more showy and attractive speci- 

 mens have been brought to the verge of extinction. A 

 few species have disappeared or are disappearing from 

 purely natural causes, such as the chestnut blight and 

 the pine blister rust, but the greatest enemy of the plants 

 is man. For every flower picked for a bouquet, he de- 

 stroys thousands by felling the forest, flooding the val- 

 leys, draining the swamps, burning the thickets and tear- 

 ing up the prairie sod to set a whole new race of plants in 

 the place of violet and shooting-star, puccoon and camas- 

 sia. phlox and gentian, sunflower and goldenrod. His 

 cattle trample them, all sorts of animals feed on them. 

 the mower lays countless thousands low, and yet in some 

 way little short of a miracle another year finds them 

 smiling from fence-row and thicket with the same trust- 

 ful innocence as of yore. Only when he finally stakes out 

 a factory village in the midst of all this loveliness do the 

 native plants give up the struggle. 



Such things have to be if our own race is to survive, 

 but we may well object to all unnecessary destruction of 

 our wild plants. The roadmaker has no sooner torn his 

 way through the wilderness than nature sets to work to 

 repair the damage with a cloud of wildflowers. The ugly 

 wounds of plow and scraper are healed with bom - t, 

 Joe-Pye-weed, clematis, bittersweet, asters, goldenrod 

 and a host of others. And then back comes the road- 

 maker to "improve" his work by removing all this love- 

 liness. To him the birds, the wildflowers, the sheltering 

 trees and the wild things that scurry from one thicket to 

 another are not to be compared with a carefully barbered 

 roadside bordered by a neat barbed wire fence. Law- 

 making bodies often encourage him in his efforts to lay 

 waste the countryside by requiring this annual slaugh- 

 ter of wildflowers. Beauty is no excuse for being in the 

 eyes of one who considers himself a practical man. In 



