94 
IOWA ACADEMY OP SCIENCES. 
public reserves be constituted, our so-called civilization will 
soon have obliterated forever our natural wealth and left us to 
the investigation of introduced species only, and these but few 
in number. It is a fact lamented, grievously lamented by all 
intelligent men, that in all the older portions of the country 
species of plants once common, to say nothing of animals, are 
now extinct. County parks, if organized soon, would enable 
us to preserve many of these in the localities where originally 
found. 
The objecuion to all this is that such parks as here 
broached are impracticable. Such objection can lie in two 
directions only: (1) The lack of suitable sites, and (2) the lack 
of suitable control. As to the first, it may be said that in a 
great number of our counties, especially eastward, such sites 
exist and have, in many cases, been long used and, I am sorry 
to say, abused by our people: 
“ The Caves,” in Jackson county; 
‘‘The Backbone,” in Delaware county; 
‘•Wild Cat Den,” in Muscatine county; 
“ Gray’s Ford,” in Cedar county; 
“ Finney’s Spring,” in Allamakee county. 
“The Palisades” in Cedar and Johnson counties, may be 
cited as illustrations both of the fact that sites exist and that 
people need and appreciate them. The “Backbone,” in Dela- 
ware, is ideal. Here are cliffs and rocks, woods, rivers and 
bountiful springs and, what is rare in Iowa, clusters of native 
pine. Hundreds of people visit the locality every year, and 
hundreds more would do so were the roads leading to the 
park in more passable condition, and especially were the 
grounds a park properly managed and controlled instead of, 
as now, a cow pasture, so stocked as to jeopardize everything 
green it contains. The “Dan” in Muscatine county might be 
referred to in the same way. I believe it is not yet too late 
to find in possibly three fourths of our Iowa counties, suitable 
sitps, grounds, for the purpose contemplated in this argument. 
The second count in the way of objection is a real difficulty 
whose gravity I do not for a moment attempt to minimize. 
How to secure, own and care for several hundred, or for that 
matter, several thousand acres of land to be used by all the 
people is a problem, especially under our form of government. 
Were we in the old world we should find no difficulty. Such 
locilities are owned by the king or his equivalent and are 
