OUTDOOR EQUIPMENT 327 



In the cities where the pressure for room has been greatest 

 and the destruction of native wild life completest, men have 

 cried out for nature and for green things growing, and parks 

 have been made. But the average park is a stretch of grass 

 to be kept off from, and the best of parks are good and whole- 

 some and inspiring and informing in proportion as they repro- 

 duce the wildwood. 



So, before the last bits of wildwood near us have been 

 destroyed, it is time to think of preserving some of them for 

 the sake of those who shall come after us. This was not 

 necessary in the days of the pioneer, but with rising land 

 values and more intensive agriculture, the extermination of 

 the wild life is proceeding at an ever accelerating rate. The 

 rich life of the Illinois prairies is a memory. The streams in 

 all our settled parts* have been made barren and unclean. 

 The swamps — nature's own sanctuaries — are being drained. 

 In the better agricultural areas of America, we have almost 

 reached that day of desolation when the possession of a 

 natural grove, or of a wild-flower preserve, however small, is 

 enough to give a farm distinction — to mark it as a home of 

 culture. 



Three things a naturalist should do for the public good. 

 He should endeavor: (1) to prevent unnecessary and ill- 

 considered destruction of natural beauty ever>^vhcre: (2) 

 to aid nature in the restoration of beauty to waste places: 

 (3) to make the bits of nature near at hand more serviceable 

 in the education of the public. 



Saving the remnant. It will not do for those who best 

 know the esthetic and educational values of wild life to 

 merely sit back lamenting when its extinction is threatened. 

 When natural beauty spots are about to be ravai^ed and 

 stocked with artificial gewgaws; when the public roadsides 

 are to be shorn of their copses of flowering shrubbery, 

 only to be made into weed patches; when flower decked 



