PARK AND CEMETERY. 
273 
IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATIONS. 
Conducted by 
Frances Copley Seavey. 
Leave the VVliII a pleasanter place tha7i you found it. 
A woman’s work. 
We take pleasure in devoting our space this 
month to a brief mention of the methods of Miss 
Mira Lloyd Dock, of Harrisburg, Pa., whose 
enviable reputation as a speaker on Forestry, 
Village Improvement and kindred topics is well 
known. O.ily a suggestion of the scope of her 
popularity and success as a public speaker. 
Thoroughness is her watchword and she attributes 
her success to the careful preparation that lies 
back of each address. This includes every phase 
of the subject in hand both for the talk and for the 
slides with which it is to be illustrated. No 
amount of research is too great for the one, and 
no difficulty in securing proper negatives for the 
other, too troublesome to be overcome. For in- 
stance, it is incidentally learned that preparatory 
work for a lecture on Forestry given last fall in a 
region frequently devastated by forest fires, in- 
cluded a careful study of root symbiosis (the action 
of fungi on the roots of forest trees) which enabled 
her to give a clear summary, even in what was 
wEr.i. man.\ged river ro.ad. 
ideas can be given in such limited space, still an 
nkling of their character and breadth must en- 
courage Improvement Societies, and impress in- 
dividuals with the dignity of such effort. 
Miss Dock is fortunate in posessing a know- 
ledge of Botany which forms a basis for her For- 
estry and Improvement lectures. Indeed, Botany 
is her first love and her Club lectures the natural 
outgrowth of her scientific work. To quote her 
own words: 'T would rather have a class of four, 
in plant physiology, than talk to an Opera House 
full of people.” It is fortunate for the public, 
however, that she has turned her attention to For- 
estry and Improvement lines, for her energy in 
getting at the foundation of existing evils, in con- 
junction with her scientific attainments make her 
work unique and invaluable. That these facts 
are generally recognized is attested by her 
accounted a popular lecture, of the root — speaking 
both figuratively and literally — of the difficulties 
to be met and overcome by those who listened to 
the address. Again, in speaking of a lecture on 
“Improvement Societies at Home and Abroad” 
given under the auspices of the Board of Trade of 
the city of Harrisburg, Pa., in December, 1900, 
Miss Dock mentions ‘‘the immense amount of 
careful study back of it, the miles and miles of 
walking and measuring” as well as of “garbage 
and topographic work.” The key note of her 
labors, and this also indicates the structural 
skeleton that underlies her conception of what 
constitute; correct methods in Improvement work, 
is given in the same letter (and I trust that she 
will forgive these quotations from personal letters, ) 
for she follows up the former phrase by saying: 
“In my mind the basis of all work of this character 
