PUBLIC PARKS OF IOWA 127 



may be successfully reared along these northern borders. Mr. Eugene 

 Secor has 'hundreds of conifers to show how easily the farmers of this 

 region may provide themselves with timber, even for lumber. The 

 primeval trees in all the forests named have nearly all long since disap- 

 peared. They were the product of centuries and were ripe for the har- 

 vest. Time has not elapsed for their successors to attain much value; 

 but there is no doubt that the most valuable hardwood trees of our north- 

 ern forests will yet again find place 'upon the hills and by the streams of 

 the countries to which they are native and in which history shows that 

 they find congenial skies and soil. Iowa Geological Survey, Vol. XIII, 

 pp. 110-2. 



PILOT KNOB SHOULD BE A PARK. 

 By Eugene Secor, Author. 



It is quite needless for me to discuss the subject of parks as assets of a 

 great state in the presence of those before me. The giving of your time 

 and your money to attend this meeting indicates that you are already in- 

 terested and realize the importance of securing and preserving some of 

 the beauty spots of Iowa before they are despoiled by unthinking men. 



You do not belong to that class who see nothing in a tree but cord- 

 wood, posts or lumber, and nothing in a winding bluff or quiet ravine, 

 altho vine-clad and tree-covered and shrub-adorned., except a bit of 

 scanty pasture. 



If some people had their way there wouldn't be a thing left to remind 

 us of our inheritance of grove and copse and wild flowers that once made 

 Iowa charming with wild life and beauty. You realize the danger that 

 confronts us, the tendency to sacrifice everything to the god of present 

 gain. 



I'm reminded of things I've seen in my native state. In one of my 

 trips to the home of my boyhood I saw a rocky, steep hillside that had 

 been recently denuded by the woodman's ax till nothing remained but 

 bare rocks with a bit of soil between them. Ninety per cent of the so- 

 called field was worthless for the agricultural purpose except to grow 

 trees. Evidently there was a scant pasture for one sheep to the acre. 

 But the piles of cordwood showed that the farmer had killed the goose 

 that laid the golden egg. 



This association was organized for the very purpose of discouraging 

 and preventing so far as possible the desecration of God's holy places, 

 spots that ought to be preserved in the natural beauty inherited from the 

 glacier or from the weathering processes of by-gone ages, clothed with 

 matchless draperies of many colors and tints before the advent of the 

 white man with his murderous ax. The pioneer is rarely a preserver of 

 natural beauty, he destroys. Fortunately a few things have escaped the 

 Hunish propensity of man to destroy works of art and the artworks of 

 God. 



