-3-

It takes several trips for city children to begin to settle down
and feel at home under natural surroundings, and to begin to overcome their
vague fears. However, they soon begin to see things for themselves and begin
to collect --- all sorts of things, -- bones, bugs, worms, leaves, crayfish,
fossils and frogs. These are carried back to the schools. Their teachers
say that the whole tone of these school rooms seem to be chaged. The children
take a more active interest, and make better average grades,not only in their
science subjects but in other subjects as well.
Another of our naturalists spends most of his time ping from school
to school talking to assemblies about the forest preserves, how they are main-
tained and how they can be used to the best advantage of all the four million
oeonle in Cook County.
Compared to the iuesthat we call mtropolitan Chicago, this whole
Rock River valley looks like a park, but not all downstate counties are so
fortunate. Most of them have no stream courses or lakes open to the Public and
no convenient publicly-owned areas where people can follow the workings of
nature.
It is true that most cities have Darks. But, too often they consist
of trimmed shrubbery, mowed lawns, and pruned trees - nearly as articifial as
city streets themselves, and too often dominated by neighbors who regard them
as mere extensions of their front lawns. City parks, or at least parts of them,
should be allowed to go wild and natural forces given free play. Then they can
be living textbooks. Then they can see that, as "Cap" Sauers says, "nature left
alone is always orderly."