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certain suggestions to prospective contestants — suggestions 

 which might apply equally well in any other similar contest; in 

 part with a view to setting forth a few fundamental ideas re- 

 garding wild flower protection. 



At the outset it is urged that all the contestants should enter 

 fully into the spirit of the wild life conservation idea, of which 

 wild flower protection is but one aspect. Much of the wild life 

 that formerly predominated in Connecticut has vanished. To a 

 large extent, of course, this has been brought about, as an un- 

 avoidable accompaniment of advancing civilization, through the 

 destruction or modification of the habitat conditions which orig- 

 inally prevailed. The clearing of land for settlement and agri- 

 culture, the cutting of the forests for lumber and firewood, the 

 devastation of vast tracts by forest fires, the draining of many 

 swamps and the flooding of others, the plowing up of the ground 

 for the production of crops, the introduction of grazing animals, 

 the laying out of highways and railroads, the establishment and 

 growth of towns and cities, the pollution of streams and lakes by 

 sewage and other waste products and of the air by gas and 

 smoke — all of these and various other more or less inevitable 

 effects of human activity have contributed toward bringing 

 about the disappearance of our native wild life. But they are by 

 no means wholly responsible. In no small degree this disappear- 

 ance must be attributed to the neglect of past generations in 

 failing to take adequate conservation measures, a neglect which 

 too often has found, and indeed still finds, deliberate expression 

 in actions bordering closely on vandalism. Fifteen years ago, 

 for example, in the northern Michigan cedar swamp where the 

 accompanying photograph (Fig. i) was taken, there were esti- 

 mated to be fully fifteen thousand showy lady's slippers in bloom. 

 Last summer there probably were not more than a thousand 

 blossoms, most of these back in the more inaccessible parts of the 

 swamp. The others had been carted away by the flower-pickers. 

 This beautiful orchid once abounded in a swamp within three 

 miles of the New Haven city hall, but the last recorded specimen 

 from that locality was collected in 1875. ^s late as the early 

 nineties the Arethusa grew In great profusion in the so-called 

 Beaver Meadows, New Haven; in 1904 we were able to find just 

 one single plant. Dozens of other showy plants might be cited 

 which have practically (and some completely) vanished from the 



