28 THE AUDUBON BULLE ETE 
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. 
