406 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. L. No. 1296 



in rare and valuable flora and fauna speci- 

 mens has been prevalent in scientific circles. 

 The reservation of this region was formally 

 advocated in a report of Stephen T. Mather, 

 director of the" National Park Service at 

 Washington in 1917. The National Dunes 

 Park Association, of which Mr. William P. 

 Gleason, of Gary, Indiana, is now president, 

 has also taken up the matter and has secitted 

 a large membership of adherents who enthu- 

 siastically advocate the preservation of this 

 wonderland region. 



All of these movements have been largely 

 combated by the residents of Porter county, 

 in which the choicest of the dunes are located 

 because of an undercurrent of various mis- 

 imderstandings. It has been thought by the 

 Porter county residents, and notably the com- 

 mercial interests of Valparaiso, the county 

 seat, that through a setting aside of the dunes, 

 bordering its fifteen miles of lake front, for 

 a park, would deprive the county of its 

 industrial development which many have 

 held to be paramount to the preservation of 

 those " useless sand hills." The Valparaiso 

 Chamber of Commerce standing primarily 

 for the industrial and commercial develop- 

 ment of its valuable water front, strongly 

 opposed any movement looking to the secur- 

 ing of the former objective and the loss of' 

 the latter. 



Recently there has come into being a new 

 spirit of cooperation. Ex-State Senator 

 Bowser, of Chesterton, Porter county, a 

 director of the National Dunes Park Associa- 

 tion has laid a proposal before the Valparaiso 

 Chamber of Commerce, that both bodies 

 cooperate in the attainment of the objectives 

 which have hitherto been considered antag- 

 onistic. The bond of cooperation has been 

 formed through the appointment of a gen- 

 eral committee, a legal committee and a 

 boundary committee by President John 

 Sievers, of the Chamber of Commerce. Of 

 these the boundary committee consisting of 

 W. E. Harris, Herman Pollentske, Edward 

 Morgan, J. G. Johnson, Guy Stinchfield, 

 George Pearce, Frank R. Theroux have re- 

 ported in favor of a three-mile lake front 

 park dedicated to Porter covuity, but this 



committee wisely qualified their report by 

 stating that the final settlement of boundaries 

 could not yet be determined and many related 

 interests and questions would need to be con- 

 sidered before the limits could be fixed. 



It is significant that at a later meeting the 

 Valparaiso Chamber of Commerce passed the 

 following resolution which shows that the 

 business men of Porter comity appreciate the 

 importance of the dune conservation under- 

 taking. 



' The Valparaiso Chamber of Commerce recom- 

 aiend to the National Dunes Park Association that 

 a board of three consulting engineers be ap- 

 ■pointed before any final steps on ultimate boun- 

 dary lines are taken. An industrial engineer to be 

 selected by the American Society of Mechanical 

 Engineers, the American Institute of Electrical 

 Engineers and the American Society of Civil Engi- 

 neers; an engineer on town planning by the So- 

 ciety of American Architects; and a scientist by 

 the Agricultural Department and the Smithsonian 

 Institution to plan eoordinately for the proper 

 relation of the industrial, esthetic and scientific 

 Dune-Land heritage nature has placed in the lap 

 of Porter County. 



THE IOWA POLICY CONCERNING STATE 

 PARKS 



The thirty-seventh General Assembly of 

 the State of Iowa authorized the creation of 

 state parks out of funds from the fees ob- 

 tained from hunters license fees. It provided 

 that $50,000 be taken out of this fund and 

 on the recommendation of the fish and game 

 warden and the Iowa State Board of Conser- 

 vation to the executive council state parks 

 could be created and lakes improved. The 

 governor and executive council later (in 1917) 

 appointed L. H. Pammel, of Ames, Joseph 

 Kelso, of Bellevue, and John F. Ford, of 

 Fort Dodge, members of this board, the 

 curator of the historical department being an 

 ex-oificio member. The board met and elected 

 Mr. E. R. Harlan secretary and L. H. 

 Pammel chairman. 



This board and the fish and game warden 

 recommended the purchase of what is known 

 as the Devil's Backbone Park in northwest- 

 ern Delaware county. The executive coimcil 

 directed the purchase of some 1,200 acres 



