PUBLIC PARKS OF IOWA 297 



A few years ago the legislature of Iowa sought to encourage the practice 

 of forestry among individuals by providing for the exemption of forest 

 lands from taxation. Yet that law has failed to have an appreciable effect 

 upon the care and management of our woodlands. Neither are individuals 

 prone to look a generation or two ahead to the happiness and contentment 

 of their posterity. For this reason forestry and parks are primarily a 

 community, state, or national undertaking. 



The question of acquiring and maintaining county parks and forests is 

 too large to consider here. I will but suggest that the legislature should 

 (provide the counties with power to levy taxes for the purpose of acquiring 

 and managing the same, as has already been done in other states. Also, 

 the park and forest should find its place in the work of community or- 

 ganization. Let us supply as best we 'can those things which are draw- 

 ing our people outside the state. Along with the consolidated school and 

 community center idea, let us not forget the forest the greatest play 

 ground of all time, thereby maintaining a proper balance in the use of 

 our lands and aiding in the preservation of our wild plants, birds, and 

 game. Iowa Forestry and Conservation Association, Report 1914-15, 

 pp. 148-52. 



PRESERVING THE INDIAN MOUNDS ALONG THE MISSISSIPPI 



RIVER. 



By Ellison Orr. 



Most of you have heard, or read, at some time or other of a mysterious 

 race of people that lived and flourished in the valley of the Mississippi 

 long- prior to the coming of the white mfan, and that left over a territory 

 large enough for nine or ten states, evidences of a considerable advance 

 in civilization along certain lines over What it was believed people who 

 were considered as savages were capable of making. 



A vast amount of research work by archaeologists and others interested, 

 has in a measure, dispelled the mystery which at one time surrounded the 

 evidences of their occupancy, and it is now generally believed that such 

 are only the work of the more or less remote ancestors of the American 

 Indian. 



With one exception, these people had not advanced beyond the stone 

 age, that is, all weapons, implements, and ornaments, made by civilized 

 man of metal of some kind, were by them made of bone and atone. The 

 one exceptional use of metal was that of copper. A limited amount of 

 this, in sheets and nuggets of pure metal was mined in the Lake Superior 

 region and with stone hammers beaten into the desired forms. 



Everywhere about the fields we pick up arrowheads, knives, and spear- 

 heads of flint, quartz, and other suitable rock material, some of them 

 rough and imperfect, others finely wrought and beautifully symmetrical. 

 It was once quite generally believed that the making of these was a lost 

 art, but recently a member of the Wisconsin Archaeological Society has 

 made some very fine ones, some of them from glass, by the chipping 

 process. The secret appears to be the skillful hand. 



