Winter Meeting. 345 



20th — Increase of insect pests, even with all our millions spent an- 

 nually, threatens the whole vegetable world, unless a better and wiser 

 method is found and pursued. 



\\q know the small boy and the target rifle and the ignorant hunt- 

 ers who kill our insect eating birds for sport are directly to blame for 

 much of our trouble from tlie insects. I can only express my own opinion, 

 "He who kills in sport is more of a brute than he -who kills in passion." 



How are we to overcome all this array of ignorance, carelessness 

 and meanness so prevalent today? Only by education. Begin in the 

 primary grades ; teach it in every reader used ; teach it in every compo- 

 position read ; teach it by good examples on our school grounds ; teach 

 respects for trees as we would teach honesty, courtesy and industry. 



Look at the millions spent for city squares in our cities. Breathing 

 spots for the people. Think of the milhons spent in school grounds 

 that stand idle during the very time when parks and breathing spots are 

 most wanted. Think what it would mean to our Nation, our cities and 

 cur citizens // every school ground was enlarged, properly planted and 

 made an educational feature to our own children during nine months 

 of school and a breathing spot for the parents, the public and the school 

 children during our long hot summer months. I say, away with your 

 breathing spots separate, from our school grounds, away with this waste 

 of millions and its lack of education. 



From four o'clock until bed time, all day Saturday and Sunday, 

 all during the months of June, July and August, these grounds are 

 returning nothing for the millions invested. Where is a business man 

 who would invest his money in such non-productive investments. An 

 intelligent gardener in charge of our . school grounds would be a 

 teacher well worth his salary. 



Political ignorance in power would be destructive to plants and 

 their educational intentions. Look at the bad pruning of some, of the 

 beautiful forest trees in some of our parks if you want to see the doom 

 of all trees that are under the care of political ignorance. 



And then there are the streets to and from the school grounds, 

 trees in rows, half planted, unprotected, unfed, growing like so many 

 starved pot plants, between paved streets and paved walks, hungry, 

 thirsty and poorly clad with leaves, while we dump daily into our river 

 thousands of loads of valuable fertilizer, for which eastern cities pay 

 two and three dollars a load. 



Ninety per cent of our pruning is useless and fifty per cent is de- 

 structive to the life of the tree. Better spend the time cultivating and 

 feeding if we want healthy trees ; healthy trees are less subject to 

 insect pests and are more beautiful. 



