60 Wyoming Experiment Station. 



ion with Nature's visible forms. Becau. c e we lack know- 

 ledge concerning her we have been indifferent to her lan- 

 guage and her inspiring beauty. With the sterner 

 aspects that present themselves in bleak, wind-swept 

 plain, in the roaring blizzard, and in the beetling crag of 

 mighty mountain we are all familiar. We are often near- 

 ly strangers to her more lovely traits because these de- 

 velop outside the beaten paths. Yet some there are who- 

 have learned to know, and knowing have learned to love 

 her in her "gentler moods: have learned to know that 

 here beneath the bluest skies, softest breezes play; that 

 fragrant flowers of rare beauty deck every hillside; that 

 sweet streams murmur in every mountain valley; that 

 many a crystal lake mirrors sky and shore; that emerald 

 mosses occur in every shaded nooK and lichens cover 

 every rock and crag with gayest yellow and softest gray; 

 that stately trees crown many a hilltop and forests dark 

 and dense clothe in solitude every mountain side. 



We are rich in those elements of natural scenery 

 which appeal to the higher sentiments of our nature, but 

 too often we are forced to live so apart from them that 

 we miss much of the good that ought to come to us from 

 that source. Three-fourths of the people of Wyoming 

 live in towns upon the various lines of railroad. Two- 

 thirds of these towns are situated on the open and com- 

 paratively barren plains. In some of these many of the 

 first settlers thought of them simply as temporary places 

 of abode. This, added to the natural difficulties encoun- 

 tered in adorning the home and public grounds, left our 

 homes in desert-like places and our lives impoverished 

 from a lack of those things to which our sentiments would 

 cling through all the passing years. 



