JOURNAL 
OF 
The New York Botanical Garden 
VoL. V. April, 1904. No. 52. 
THE PROTECTION OF OUR NATIVE PLANTS.* 
For ages Nature worked upon a great bare continent, and 
slowly, so slowly that a passing century saw no change, she 
won her victory. Great forests softened the outlines of moun- 
tains ; vast reaches of waving grass made beautiful the monotony 
of plains, and everywhere flowers were scattered with lavish hand. 
She hid them in the deepest glades of the forest and sowed them 
broadcast on the meadows; she begirt the lakes, and bordered 
the streams, and hung the hillsides with their beaut 
And the making of a single flower! They were begun far 
back in the distant centuries, and some are not done yet; in- 
deed, perhaps none of them are. It would seem as if in color 
and structure and form Nature had tried every possible combina- 
tion; but the experiments are going on to-day with undiminished 
energy, and with the choicest results of a ages. For many 
were discarded long ago, some for reasons known to us, and 
more for those known only to herself. 
While it is true that the resources of Nature are unlimited, still 
she may be sadly hampered ; the results of the ages ma 
and the onward movement slackened. It took countless cen- 
turies to make this continent the land that Columbus found it, 
and in four hundred years, four trifling centuries, what havoc 
has been wrought! The tide of — rises higher with 
each succeeding year. To an alarming extent it has swept over 
the forests, and wherever it passes, the aan vegetation is 
nown no more 
* Awarded the first prize of twenty-five dollars, competition of ae oc the 
bch and Olivia Phelps Stokes Fund for the Preservation of Native Pla 
