COMMERCIAL SURGERY FOR StCK TREES. 25» 



As in all professions, there are reliable and unreliable men and 

 firms competing for contracts in tree surgery. In recent years so many 

 occasions have arisen when property owners felt the necessity of call- 

 ing in commercial tree surgeons to attend to their trees that there 

 are now numerous firms, both honest and dishonest, engaged in the 

 work. Usually tree surgery is practiced in connection with some 

 nearly related line, but often it is taken up as a business of itself. 

 When a blight such as the chestnut bark disease, infects the trees of 

 a district, the community, or individuals in it, will often spend consid- 

 erable money to control ravages which may rob the whole district of 

 its trees. An affection like the chestnut bark disease is contagious. It 

 requires scientific knowledge of the disease to know whether an aifected 

 tree should be destroyed at once or is worth treating. It requires 

 scientific training to understand the manner of growth of the fungi 

 causing the disease and what treatment is best. 



Many individuals who have had faith in tree surgery have lost 

 it through following the advice of unreliable tree surgeons who claimed 

 to be able to diagnose a case, but whose main interest was to collect a 

 good sum of money for their work. 



Misuse of Pruning Hoolis and Climbing- Devices. 



Besides the careless filling of decayed cavities in trees, there are 

 other practices of certain so-called "tree surgeons" that do the trees 

 more harm than good. Many of these "surgeons," as well as the peo- 

 ple who employ them, do not realize the danger arising from fresh 

 injuries to a tree. The tree owner should realize that prompt atten- 

 dance to fresh injuries will largely do away with the need of tree sur- 

 gery 15 or 20 years hence. The tree surgeons must realize that if 

 they make fresh injuries in the living bark, when treating decayed por- 

 tions, they are laying the tree open to more dangers of infection that 

 will result in further decay. 



Just as a person is subject to infection through cuts and 

 scratches, trees are rendered subject to infection by having their liv- 

 ing bark torn. Notwithstanding this, many tree surgeons use pruning 

 hooks and climbing spurs and cut fresh gashes in the tree. To break 

 off small dead branches a workman may use a long pruning hook as 

 though it were a club. In doing so the hook usually causes injury 

 to the young bark near by. Every new wound may furnish a new- 

 point of entrance for decay, even though the old dead branch may 

 have been removed. 



The use of climbing spurs should be particularly avoided on 

 trees in vicinities where there is a contagious infection. They simply 

 render the treated tree all the more liable to catch the disease which- 

 is "in the air." 



All properly equipped firms of commercial surgeons should have- 

 ladders that would reach forty or more feet into a tree. Ladders, 

 ropes, and rubber-soled shoes will allow a man to reach nractically- 

 every part. Reliable estimates indicate that it takes somewhat longer 



