PUBLIC PARKS OF IOWA 283 



Artis, De Witt; Mrs. Bernice Lacey Sawyer, Osbaloosa; Mrs. Burt J. 

 Thompson, Forest City; Mrs. A. W. Murphy, Shenandoah; Mrs. Leonard 

 Everett, Council Bluffs: Mrs. J. C. Jackson, Iowa Falls; Mrs. John Mul- 

 hall, Sioux City; Mrs. J. L. Etzel, Clear Lake. Iowa Magazine, Jan., 1917, 

 pp. 15-16 and 42. 



CONSERVATION OF PRAIRIE 

 By Ada Hayden. 



Iowa is said to be a prairie state, but what is a prairie to the present 

 generation? Within 40 or 50 years, the broad stretches of tall shining 

 grass trembling in the sunlight or tossed by the breezes into billowy 

 waves, gorgeous as the season progresses with its pageant of brilliant 

 hued flowers. A flint now and then picked up from a gravelly knoll re- 

 calls the feathered, moccasined, swift footed dweller of the plains. But 

 he has passed on to happier hunting grounds and the prairie too is fast 

 passing. 



The goddess of agriculture has banished the prairie and over it spread 

 green fields of shimmering, rustling, yellow tasseled corn, acres of tawny 

 oat shocks, and ragweed covered pastures. The buffalo which sniffed 

 the iprairie fire and raced madly to shelter from this red tongued fury is 

 now succeeded by the cow, a dweller of the resplendent red and white 

 striped barn. A network of highways corrals the once wild expanse 

 and down the dusty way throbs the busy beetle-like car. 



Few but the farm boy and the meadow lark know where the swamp 

 now lingers, where the marigolds glitter in the marsh, where the red 

 brown knoll, fanned by the winds of March, turn pale lavender as the 

 pasque flower wakes in the spring. Then as the splashing drops of 

 April have carried the fragrance of these March flowers far, the grassy 

 slope as a magic carpet is blue with violets. With June, the scarlet lily 

 as torches, light the slope. The blazing star marks the zenith of July, 

 and sunflowers and golden rod herald the climax of the summer, and the 

 azure gentian, like pools of sky dropped down, bask in the warm October 

 haze. So passes the panorama. 



Now comes the plowman, and these little communistic bits of beauty, 

 the handiwork of a thousand years, which no man has yet created, is 

 folded away, to return only as corn and dollars. 



True it is, the people of the country-side have increased their wealth 

 and commodities through the produce of the soil and their prosperity 

 stimulates the pulse of industry. That there is a necessity for the in- 

 crease of food and fiber products is evident. Tillable land we already 

 have, but labor we have not, adequate for the proper care of already 

 broken land. 



The activities of life have increased in complexity and responsibility, 

 hence the greater the intensity of life, the greater is the need of in- 

 spirationial forces. An isolated patch of New England daisies along an 

 Iowa railroad right of way, drew throughout its flowering period a throng 

 of admirers from the town. Strangers unacquainted with the prairie 



