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78 THE AMERICAN MIDLAND NATURALIST. 
which I glanced through. Much stress was laid, throughout the 
publication, upon conservation: And again, the illustrations which 
were very splendid photographs, played a very large part in exciting 
and stimulating the individual who read to an apperciation of the 
out-of-doors. An active appreciation which should lead to con- 
servative efforts. There were also some bits of minor qualitied 
poetry. It was quite distinctly local, but emphasized the conser- 
vation side of nature study. Beginning with “Birds and Nature”’ 
which emphasized the aesthetic side of the subject, going through 
the Califor Naturalist Club and Bluebird for the literary, the Nature 
Study Review for the economic and practical, now we reach the 
conservation period of our story. 
In 1917, the Iowa Conservation Association issued the first 
volume of its official organ, ‘‘Iowa Conservation.’ This represents 
another attempt and to me, a very successful one to unite literary, 
historic and naturalistic interests of a given locality. Traditions 
of places and things are preserved in the articles of this publication. 
Traditions such as will be woven in time into the literary values 
of that time and place. There is the potential literature there, just 
waiting to become an expression of reality. I think the magazine 
a very excellent success in its happy combination of interests, and 
in its final effects upon its readers. 
With this magazine our study in the evolution of periodical 
naturalistic literature must come to a close. We have followed the 
development of the nature theme from the stage of pure aesthetic 
delight, as an extra thing, a pure beauty phase which could find no 
place in the Puritanic code, down to the time when it was an econo- 
mic factor, a vital element in human environment, and finally to the 
place where it has been considered not merely the one nor the other, 
but both. That is, the literature upon nature, the naturalist’s 
expressions to-day are a combination of the aesthetic and the 
economic, the artistic and real, the scientific and the.poetic. 
That our periodicals have not made use of the writings which 
should have got into them is a fact which I think is greatly to be 
deplored. But it does seem to me as though a brighter future in 
this respect lies before us, and has been suggested by such maga- 
zines as the Bluebird, Iowa Conservation, and the Midland Na- 
turalist. Nature study started as a unit, then it divided into orni- 
thology, entomology, anthropology, etc. Now men are again going 
back and recognizing the unity of all of these. Some periodicals 
