Now is the hour to rally all influences to save the dunes for a national 
park, and there should be no delay in getting forces to work. — Chicago 
Evening Post, September, 1916. 
Please write immediately to Secretary Lane urging that his report 
be favorable. 
A letter from you, personally, or from your Garden Club, or 
both will carry weight at just this time. The report will be made 
in December and expressions of opinion from the public at large 
may do much to influence it. 
Traffic in 
Ferns and Laurel for Florists' 
Use Increasing 
The matter of the preservation of ferns and laurel now being 
shipped in great quantities to the Florists of our near-by cities was 
brought up at the meeting of the Garden Club of America, at Lenox, 
in June. 
But the Wild Flower Committee of the Litchfield Garden Club 
wish to again bring the subject to the attention of all the member 
Clubs and Bulletin readers. 
The traffic in Christmas ferns and laurel is increasing most alarm- 
ingly in New England, and at many of the stations on the railroad 
bales of these, the most plentiful of our forest adornments, are con- 
stantly seen. 
In many cases, without doubt, these ferns and laurel are gathered 
and paid for by agents of the florists, for the New England farmer 
does not value what grows upon what he terms his "wild land." 
But in other instances they are taken without the consent of the 
owners of the forest land; usually from those whose winter homes are 
elsewhere. 
As the time required to educate the rustic Yankee mind to an 
appreciation of the aesthetic, as against the financial value of these 
"things beautiful," would doubtless be beyond the present advo- 
cates' alloted span of days, the suggestion is made that we aim 
to influence the demand for these particular "green things of the 
earth." 
The season is at hand when we are all having constantly come 
to us boxes of flowers in which are quantities of this very fern 
and laurel, to be used for the green demanded in all flower arrange- 
ments. 
