198 PUBLIC PARKS OF IOWA 



diminished flood into the Mississippi. The same thing is true of the 

 Skunk river, the Coon, the Des Moines; and yet cities not a few are 

 dependent more or less entirely on these streams for water. This is aside 

 from all interests the farmers have in the streams, interest practical or 

 theoretical. It may be said that the cities have resources; they may 

 sink artesian wells. But we have yet to prove that this is practicable. 

 In fact it has been tried in some places and found impracticable. But, 

 wells or not, wet seasons or dry seasons, rainfall or no rainfall, Iowa 

 cannot afford to become at any time absolutely desiccated if in any way 

 such catastrophe can be averted. 



But, you say, how is this matter to be remedied? Can we turn back 

 the index on the dial-plate of time? No; it is not to be expected that 

 original conditions can. ever be restored. It is not even desirable to bring 

 them back at all. Public interest, public sanitation would doubtless de- 

 mand that the 'bogs be drained. Besides, some system of ponds or arti- 

 ficial lakes may probably be some day established, whose overflow may 

 avail somewhat to replace the lost surface reservoirs which our agricul- 

 ture has destroyed. More than this, if when we consider the fate of our 

 streams we take into account at once the woodland and the prairie, there 

 has been since the settlement of Iowa gain as well as loss. We have 

 lost on the prairie, and aside from recent destructive tendencies have 

 gainied in the wooded areas. The second growth thicket is a much bet- 

 ter retainer of moisture than were the primeval woods. Tliese were 

 in great measure open; they were fire-swept nearly every year, and the 

 stratum of leaves, mosses, and hum'bler plants which in true forest con- 

 ditions lie like a sponge over the whole surface, was entirely wanting. 



Our new forest has been until recently, actually much more extensive, 

 much more dense, much richer in leaf-mould and in every way fitter for 

 the true work of a forest in the direction of determining the volume of 

 local moisture. .We have but to emphasize this advantage to equalize at 

 least in some degree our manifest losses. 



My argument then comes simply to this: I contend that the narrow 

 measure of Iowa's woodland should as such be religiously preserved and 

 in a thousand places extended. Every rocky bank, every steep hillside, 

 every overhanging bluff, every sandhill, every clay-covered ridge, every 

 rain-washed gully should be kept sacredly covered with trees; every 

 gorge, sink-hole, should be shaded, every spring be- protected, every 

 streamlet and every stream and lake bordered and overshadowed. In 

 short every foot of untillable land, and even a little moire along creek 

 and river margins, should be clothed with woods, should be woodland, 

 land not devoted to pasturage at all, but land devoted to woods for the 

 conservation, as far as may be, of the state's supply of surface moisture. 

 By the voice of all authority, by the teaching of all experience, by every 

 presumption of science such treatment of Iowa lands and such only is 

 rational, wise and hope-inspiring for the future. 



But now the edict has gone forth that the woodland must be cleared; 

 every forest must be hewn down. We are told over and over again 

 that Iowa has less waste land than any state in the union, that she has 

 hardly an acre that may not pass under the plow; and in our effort to 



