DISEASES OF TREES LIKELY TO FOLLOW 

 MECHANICAL INJURIES. 



[Read before the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, March 7, 1891. Issued in December, 1891.] 



Ladies and Gentlemen — On several occasions you have listened to 

 addresses on the subject of diseases of plants and the nature of blight, 

 mildew, rust, and smut, and the habits of the fungi which cause them must 

 now be more or less familiar to you all. I, therefore, shall not attempt, 

 today, to speak in detail of any of the diseases just mentioned, but I am 

 glad that I have been able to accept your invitation to address you at this 

 particular time, because there is another subject of great importance, as it 

 seems to me, especially for the people of Massachusetts, on which there is 

 widespread ignorance and general indifference. If I can succeed, even to 

 a small extent, in diminishing popular ignorance of the matter to be dis- 

 cussed here, it is to be hoped that the present indifference will gradually 

 disappear, for, as has been the case hitherto, the members of this society 

 can be trusted to do missionary work in arousing the public to a sense of 

 what should be done to remove existing evils. 



So far as the diseases of fruit trees and garden plants are concerned, the 

 public have their eyes open and they require little urging to lead them to 

 seek proper means for checking the growth of the fungus-parasites which 

 affect the pocket by injuring the crops, or diminish our aesthetic enjoyment 

 by disfiguring our gardens and greenhouses. But with regard to our shade 

 trees and forest trees there is general indifference and, although what I 

 have to say may appear to be more appropriate for a forestry association 

 than a horticultural society, I have confidence that my hearers will allow 

 me to use the word horticulture in a large sense, and will recognize that 

 this community looks to them as the authorized promoters of all that tends 

 to the welfare, not only of fruits and flowers, but also of our shade trees, 

 which, if well cared for, are both beautiful and useful. 



It is a mistaken notion that shade trees do not need care and protection. 

 Nevertheless most persons believe that, unless a tree is to bear marketable 

 fruit, it can be left to take care of itself. Those who live in the remoter 

 country districts might, perhaps, be pardoned for holding this belief; but 

 those of us who live in thickly settled towns ought to know by this time 

 that the life of shade trees, exposed as they are to the unfavorable or even 

 injurious conditions of the soil and atmosphere of manufacturing districts, 

 is a precarious one. We have all seen the older trees killed off, and know 

 that with each succeeding generation the younger trees are inferior to the 

 older, for those which escape the injurious action of the soil and air are 

 too often injured by the wilful violence of men. 



Theoretically, if one is asked what the trees in our streets are good for, 

 he would say, to serve as shade in summer and to beautify the town at all 



