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needham] outdoor EQUIPMENT 95 



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 ever3rwhere: (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 ravaged 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 

 ravines are to be turned into rat-hatcheries by filling them 

 with garbage and rubbish; when sparkling streams are to be 

 fouled with stinking slops and oils by the slovenliness of 

 some streamside factory ; when public groves are to be cleared 

 without any intelligent supervision, merely to provide work 

 for a public labor-gang in the slack season:- whenever 

 these or any other such things, as are occuring daily all over 

 the land, are about to be committed, it is the duty of the 

 naturalist to speak out in protest. He should endeavor to 

 enlist the enlightened public sentiment of his community, 

 to have the esthetic and educational values of such places 

 considered, ere they are destroyed. They are sure to be under- 

 valued because they have cost the public nothing. In this 

 they are like all true gifts of heaven. 



