PUBLIC PARKS OF IOWA 209 



lay the great central valley of California, level and wide, five hundred 

 miles long, one rich furred garden." 



On the value of a study of trees, shrubs and flowers as a part of a 

 cultural education, my good friend, Dr. Macbride, one of the nestors of 

 this association, has well said: "You who have been effecting the classics 

 know, of course, that our present use of the word is entirely a figure of 

 speech. Culture, to start with, meant the care and development of a 

 plant. This significance still lingers in agriculture, the cultivation of 

 the field that is, of what grows there horticulture, the tillage of the 

 hort-yard or orchard, as we say, and so on. Thousands of years ago 

 men found that if they took a little care of a plant, gave it a good 

 place on which to grow, with plenty of air and sunshine and water, the 

 plant greatly changed, offered new characters, or at least new phases 

 of the old; the smooth-leaved wild mustard of Europe, on cultivation, took 

 on the form of cabbage, became a cabbage head in fact; the green, tough 

 fruit of a Persian shrub became a peach; the sour crab, an apple; the 

 wild grain, wheat; and so on; all this thousands of years before men had 

 ever written a word. Small brown men, as I think, away back yonder 

 in the forgotten years, in the childhood of humanity, made wonderful 

 discoveries; they discovered the culture of plants. So it happened that 

 when, at last, men did begin to think and to write, the culture of plants 

 had long been familiar as to you and to me. 



"As compared with the story of the plants, Cicero was a modern. He 

 looked out upon a civilized world and, full of genius and wit and all ac- 

 complishment as he was, it occured to him to compare the mental ex- 

 periences of men with the history of the plant; and so the famous orator 

 flashed all the mystery and the beauty of those natural, visible processes 

 among the plants into the richness of one fine metaphor 'Culture animi 

 philosophia est' philosophy is the culture of the soul." 



PRESERVATION OF PLACES OF HISTORIC INTEREST IN IOWA. 

 By G. Perle Wilson Schmidt. 



The importance of preserving places of historical interest seems as 

 obviously necessary in our big rich commonwealth of Iowa as any place 

 in the United States. But if we are to receive the necessary support for 

 such a move, we have first the task of creating the feeling among the 

 residents of the state the significance for such a movement. To make the 

 people feel that we too have history vital to future development and 

 coming generations if we are to maintain the same equilibrium and stable 

 status of enthusiasm for their native state as the eastern states have 

 done, this work must fall upon the shoulders of intelligent and enthusi- 

 astic citizens in every locality in the state. 



Many people say, "You have no history in Iowa," and how hard it is 

 sometimes for us to try to prove the fact that we in Iowa do have history, 

 potent history, and that we are doing much more for the preservation 

 of this history than any outsider realizes. How about our Floyd monu- 



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