68 ILLINOIS STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



my own town some time ago, the question arose as to 

 whether a certain nook about one of the public buildings 

 should be covered with concrete or set with plants, and 

 the care-taker was ordered to do whichever was cheapest ! 



Of all offenders against good taste in such matters, the 

 railroads are the worst. Though quick to see the ad- 

 vantage of planting the station grounds with beautiful 

 flowers, they are blind to the fact that the selfsame spe- 

 cies are doing their best to ornament the whole right of 

 way, and they send out laborers to cut them down. Great 

 clumps of lilies, acres of painted-cups, banks of anem- 

 ones, swamps of wild hyacinth, clouds of phlox, thickets 

 of laurel, sandy wastes blue with lupine and whole 

 galaxies of sunflowers fall before this untutored savage 

 with a scythe. In late August last year, I travelled more 

 than a thousand miles on our mid-west railroads without 

 seeing a single conspicuous patch of wildflowers on the 

 right of way. The mower had done his worst. The poorer 

 railroads through lack of funds may still allow some of 

 these wildlings to grow, but the better roads mow them 

 down and then dilate on the scenery through which their 

 lines run. 



Added to the other destructive agencies must be the 

 vandal out for a day's holiday. He not only devastates 

 the roadsides but invades private property as well. Much 

 of his transgressions must be ascribed to ignorance, for 

 the general public seldom considers flowers of any spe- 

 cial value and, indeed, supposes them to grow out of the 

 ground much as wool grows on a sheep and therefore to 

 be picked without compunction. It is to this individual 

 that the increasing rarity of the wildflowers in the vicin- 

 ity of cities and large towns is mostly due and now that 

 the automobile has widened the range of his activities, 

 no part of the country is safe. 



It has often been assumed hastily that the methods of 

 protection applied to birds so successfully need only be 

 extended to the wildflowers to have equally happy results, 

 but a moments reflection will serve to show that the 

 cases are far from identical. Birds, being able to move 

 about from place to place, are rarely if ever in the way. 

 They are peculiarly the property of the whole public and 



