ILLINOIS AUDUBON SOCIETY 



21 



Pine Creek flows by high, rocky, vine-and-flower-covered banks, mirroring them in its clear 



ripples as it eddies by. 



30 inches. A long distance, in the tract, from the nearest pine tree one 

 finds patches of young pine so dense as to be almost impenetrable, while 

 smaller numbers and individual young trees are scattered about everywhere. 

 A few years of care and good management would make this tract a beauti- 

 ful spot and a fine object lesson in forest preservation and regeneration." 



The purchase by the State of 700 acres, or even more, of this evergreen 

 tract would make it possible to have there a forest station for replanting 

 places over the state that have been made bare of trees, of whatever sort, 

 and of foresting unsightly lands and growing, in time, timber all over the 

 State on many acres of the lands not now good for any regular cultivation, 

 — growing forests both for commercial, practical use and for beauty. 

 Then, too, it is a region of all sorts of native plants, flowers and shrubs ; 

 and contains a complete flora of the State. An instructor in botany, Miss 

 Mildred Hinds, in Mount Morris College, in studying there with her 

 classes recently, made the following report: "I was surprised not only 

 at the great variety of flowers to be found, but also at the small area in 

 which each kind is found, this, in my opinion, being one of the strongest 

 arguments in favor of wild flower preservation." A large water elm found 

 there by the examining foresters in August, 1904, measured fourteen and 

 a half feet in circumference, and 1 1 5 feet in height. 



An effort to have the State purchase the White Pine Forest has been 

 made with each General Assembly since the one that passed the first bill 

 in 1903, excepting the last on account of war conditions, and the bill 

 has nearly every time had added to the arrangement for a State Park 

 clauses for establishing therewith a forestry experiment station. Illinois 



