14 PE AU DU BON. 7 BU eee 
them in quantities that provide great masses of color and texture, would 
require many pages. Illinois, of all states, should have a prairie state park, 
before it is too late.” 
Aldo Leopold said: “The outstanding scientific discovery of the 20th 
century is not television, nor radio, nor the atom bomb, but rather the com- 
plexity of the land organism. Only those who know most about it can ap- 
preciate it. ../What is the most valuable part of the prairie? The fat 
black soil, chernozem. . . built by the prairie plants, a hundred distinctive 
species of grasses, herbs and shrubs; by the prairie fungi, insects and bac- 
teria; by the prairie mammals and birds, all interlocking in one humming 
community of cooperations and competitions, one biota.” 
Groups in Iowa and Wisconsin are already making progress in presery- 
ing samples of their native landscape, including prairies. Can not we in 
the rich state of Illinois do likewise? By the cooperation of the Nature 
Conservancy, conservation societies, garden clubs, historical societies, 
Forest Preserves, and the State Park system, we can save some of these 
unique areas. Only conscious and determined effort will preserve a few 
islands of refuge for our native plants and birds from the tides of. destruc- 
tion that are rolling over them. 
Without native preserves easily accessible, civilized people tend to lose 
all sense of kinship with the- countryside that nourishes them and with 
their fellow creatures. Some even begin fearing and hating nearly every 
living thing, and trying with bulldozers, DDT, and weed-killers to reduce 
our country to the uniformity and death-like neatness of a cement pave- 
ment. If only for self-preservation, we must learn to understand and re- 
spect the real world, and not be satisfied with pictures, books and songs 
about ““Home on the Range.” 
For their beauty, their historic interest, their scientific value to botanists 
and ecologists, some of these prairie tracts must be preserved as a lasting 
inspiration to ourselves and our descendants, as “living museums of prim- 
eval America.” This is our final chance. If we hesitate, the virgin prairies 
will be lost for all time. 5725 Harper Avenue, Chicago 
ft ft ft 
In Memoriam: EDWARD R. FORD 
By Dr. ALFRED LEWY 
Epwarp Rk. ForbD, an honorary director of the Illinois Audubon Society, 
died in Winnetka, Illinois, January 138, 1951, after an illness of several 
years. He had been active until shortly before his death. 
Born in Malden, Massachusetts on December 27, 1875, Mr. Ford showed 
his love of nature early. He was engaged in the publishing business in 
various capacities from 1890 onward, becoming a publishers’ representative 
in 1915, and secretary-treasurer of the Periodical Publishing Company, 
Grand Rapids, Michigan, from 1922 to 1928, after which he retired and 
devoted himself largely to ornithology. He became a member of the Chi- 
cago Academy of Sciences in 1910, and was honorary curator of oology 
from 1931 to 1933, when he was elected honorary curator of ornithology. 
