262 OUR FEDERAL LANDS 



For education, it allows a small fraction of a mill 

 per visitor in National Parks and nothing in other 

 reservations. 



Developing as it has from small local begin- 

 nings, without survey or prevision of the field, the 

 government educational service in the National Parks 

 perhaps fails to place sufficient emphasis on the fun- 

 damental Story of Creation, of which our System as 

 a whole is by far the greatest organized exponent 

 that the world possesses. It is natural, from the 

 sources of its beginnings and the circumstances of 

 its development, that this work should largely con- 

 fine itself to existing wild life. "That is what in- 

 terests the people who come here/' explained a Park 

 Naturalist. "The whole crowd will rush off from 

 a lecture on geology to follow some small animal, 

 and women constantly interrupt to know the names 

 of wild-flowers." One answer is that national parks 

 are not places for "lectures on geology." If experi- 

 enced teachers will dramatize the Story of Crea- 

 tion in words as Nature has herself dramatized it in 

 scenery, they will have no lack of enthralled listeners. 

 Another answer is comparison of the minute place 

 that the wild life of to-day occupies in the picture of 

 wild life from its beginnings which Nature has 

 painted so boldly and fascinatingly on the System's 

 great canvas. 



Another educational movement of interest and 

 importance, inspired by the need of better museums 

 in the parks than those built and conducted by rang- 



