Ornamental. 4-13 



TREE PLANTING IN OUR CITIES. 



Now that the city seems to have taken up the planting 

 of trees, attention is called to the fact that the protection of 

 those already planted is 'a subject of fully as much importance as the 

 planting. How many true lovers of trees have had their hearts made sad 

 by the ruthless destruction of some of our beautiful trees and the serious 

 injury of many others. I wish to call your attention to a few of these 

 cases. Only the other day I saw a crowd of telephone men cutting off 

 various branches and tops of trees. And why, forsooth? Because they 

 interfered with their putting up additional wires. These trees were dis- 

 figured, distorted out of shape, and injured so that they will have to be 

 either pruned back to an even head or be left unsightly for some years to 

 come. I took occasion to stop them just as I would were I to see a man 

 abusing his team. It hurt me just as much, this damage to trees, as 

 would the other, and I had just the same right to interfere. I wish every 

 one in our city knew of the decision made lately in Bucks Co., Pa., 

 \vherein Dr. John Marshall sued the American Telephone Co. for the 

 destruction of fifty trees, and obtained a judgment for $737.41 and a fine 

 of $50 each against the men who committed the vandalism. 



The city itself is responsible itself for this wanton injury and de- 

 struction of our beautiful trees. Another instance is as follows: "While 

 some graders were at work on a street, I saw them cutting down a beauti- 

 ful maple tree that had been planted twenty-five years, was eighteen 

 inches in diameter and had a spread of branches of over forty feet. This 

 tree was less than one foot above grade, stood inside of the curb, and 

 within enghteen inches of where it would have been planted if planted 

 after the grading had been done. Is it any wonder that true lovers of 

 trees shudder at such sacrilege? That tree was worth $200 to the prop- 

 erty on which it stood." 



Another instance. While some graders were taking out the sub- 

 grade from one of our streets where a lot of young elms had just been 

 planted on the newly opened street, they made of their horses walk on 

 the inside of the curb as they were plowing, and as the doubletrees came 

 to each troo, they tore the bark from them, some one foot, some two feet, 



