28 THE AUDUBON BULLETIN 



Preservation of Natural Beauty 



Miss Lena McCauley in the Chicago Evening Post for October 

 26th writes appreciatively of certain organizations which are 

 working for the preservation of natural beauty. In reference 

 to the autumn meeting of the Wild Flower Preservation Society 

 of America, (Chicago Chapter) which took place at the Art 

 Institute Saturday afternoon, October 28th, she observes that 

 this society works tirelessly spring, summer and autumn, to 

 save the wild flowers of the prairie and of the ravines of the 

 Chicago region from destruction. 



In the October sunshine the slave of the city, walled in by sky 

 scrapers, kept from nature by the distances to the country, for- 

 gets that Illinois beyond the city limits, is a beautiful world 

 with clear skies, handsome trees decked in crimson and golden 

 foliage, and that even today wild asters and closed gentians 

 are blossoming by the roadsides. Freedom, fresh air and liberty 

 abide in the country. 



The Wild Flower Preservation Society, Chicago Chapter, 

 exists like a persistent band of missionaries in the heart of 

 Chicago. Every little while it reminds citizens that the Lake 

 Michigan region is one of the richest in wild flowers of the north 

 temperate zone, of all the United States. Many of the plants 

 of early spring, blood root, trilliums, spring beauties, mertensia, 

 columbine and lady slipper are killed easily. If annuals are 

 plucked there are no seeds for next year ; if tender plants are up- 

 rooted that land knows them no more. 



Less than a quarter of a century ago the lovely sky-blue 

 fringed gentian, grew by the thousands between the sand hills 

 near Edgewater Beach and Loyola, and near the South Shore 

 Country club. South, west and north of the city, the shooting 

 stars, Virginia cowslips, marsh marigolds, gerardias, spring 

 beauties, trilliums, columbines, anemones and all the early 

 flowers listed in books, made gay the spring on the prairies, while 

 the wild crabapples and hawthorns blossomed in May, to be fol- 

 lowed by the flowering shrubs and field flowers of midsummer 

 and autumn. 



Today, few come with the signs of spring. The city covers 

 the land. Automobilists pluck those that are left, or tear them 

 out by the roots. More and more city dwellers are born who 

 know nothing of the beauty or inspiration of the country, and 

 who are cheated of their birthright by artificial pleasures. If 

 the devastation of roadside flowers continues, the next genera- 

 tion of children will hear of wild flowers only as things of the 

 past, and their inspiration will be lost to them. 



The Wild Flower Preservation society, Chicago chapter, has 

 a junior membership, and instructs its children in friendship of 

 the wild flowers by means of stereopticon pictures, exhibitions . 

 and pageants. 



