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WIscONsIN STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY
WHO ARE THE FRIENDS OF OUR NATIVE LAND-
SCAPE
JOHN G. D. MACK, State Chief Engineer
It is a double pleasure f or me to attend a meeting of the
State Horticultural Society, first on account of having been
assigned a subject in which I am so greatly interested, and second,
because one of my early recollections is about such an association.
My father was a lawyer but had been a farmer until twenty-six
years of age, and he never lost interest in agriculture and horti-
culture, never missing a meeting of the County Horticultural
Society, so that I heard the subject discussed at home from the
time when I had but the most vague notion what it was all about
except that it had something to do with apples.
I am going to discuss an idealistic subject, "The Friends of Our
Native Landscape," an organization of universal appeal.
The word "Idealistic" is used with deliberation, for we are
so filled with the idea that in education everything but the so-
called "practical subject," a greatly overworked term by the way,
must be eliminated, rigidly excluding the theoretical and idealistic.
A disciple of the practical school is destined to meet many a
rude shock as he finds case after case in which the despised "theo-
retical trash" turns out to be more practical than anything taught
in the empirical school.
Scarcely an illustration comes to mind in which any one of the
great basic inventions which make the comforts of present life
what they are, but at some time past was the serious plaything of
a man whom his neighbors were sure was not quite right and who
was frittering away his time.
The future, even for a year, appears an interminable period,
but a year in the past seems but a moment.
The future being so long distant we do not realize that it will
soon be here and thus do not lay the proper plans.
We do not plan to broaden our streets, when it might be planned
with small expense, except in rare cases, until we suddenly find
the expense is prohibitive on account of development.
We have not protected nature's beauties. If we do not protect
them, critics of the future will Tegard us, who destroy the charm-
ing vista, the choice bit of woodland, thy marvelous rock founda-
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