306 PUBLIC PARKS OF IOWA 



vestige of natural beauty has been removed from sight, nor can a free 

 government rest upon an unhappy or discontented people. The French 

 revolution came when rural France was almost a desert. The German 

 loves the fatherland because of its beauty. England is a land of parks, 

 not in the great cities only, but everywhere from Land's End to John 

 O'Groat's, and we know what Englishmen think of England. If we 

 wish our own people to most speedily reach the maximum of con- 

 tented peace we shall exert ourselves to preserve to our God-given heri- 

 tage its original, wonderful features of surpassing natural beauty. 



CONSERVATION OF ANIMAL LIFE. 

 By E. D. Ball. 



The love of animals, pleasure in observing life's innumerable mani- 

 festations and realities is a primitive and fundamental charatcer in all 

 races of mankind. Evolution's processes have accentuated it in certain 

 races and subordinated in others. Civilization and progress are today the 

 heritage and those races in which this trait has been the most highly 

 developed. The love of animals, the ability to domesticate and develop 

 them to the growing wants of the race has gone hand in hand with 

 human development. The spirit of altruism, a desire to protect and fos- 

 ter has been the keynote of progress that has developed domesticated 

 animals to their present height of perfection and has carried the races 

 that have accomplished this to their present zenith of human power 

 and potentiality. 



The lands bordering that narrow strip of water, the English channel, 

 has developed the Clyde and Shire, the Belgian and the Percheron, the 

 four great breeds in horses; the Shorthorn, the Hereford, the Holstein, 

 the Jersey and the Guernsey, all, in fact, of the great breeds of the 

 cattle. Many breeds of sheep and hogs have also been cradled within 

 this area. 



The great war now ending has sifted the wheat from the chaff of 

 nations. The pqoples who patiently builded these magnificent creations 

 in animal life, established monuments to their altruism, humanitarianism 

 and the appreciation of life's manifestations and possibilities that will 

 endure forever. Their descendants, now stand as the champions of 

 liberty and democracy for all the people of the world and worthy de- 

 scendants of a noble race. 



Over against them are arrayed a people equally well situated from 

 every environmental standpoint, arrogantly boastful of their civilization 

 and "kultur," but who have lagged woefully behind in the development 

 of animal life. The German coach horse developed for war purposes, 

 and the Dachshund, misshapen and grotesque, are the highest expres- 

 sions of their dealings with the great biological forces. 



We have before us today as though thrown on a screen a picture of 

 "kultur" with its spiked mustaches drawn back and fixed in death's 

 leer, on its way to the grave, drawn by two magnificent German coach- 



