Street Trees. 



313 



(3.) For the rural districts and the larger towns, these companies 

 might be required to lease a privilege to erect lines of wires across private 

 property ; such lines to be a specified distance back from the street and in 

 the rear of the buildings. Thus, to a great 

 extent, these localities would be able to 

 protect their trees. 



In the city of Lowell, Mass., the park 

 authorities have adopted an ordinance which 

 requires wires to be covered with wooden 

 tubes wherever they must be carried through 

 the trees. Another means of protection is 

 to fasten the wires to large branches by 

 means of an insulated "eye-pin," which 

 prevents the wire from rubbing against and 

 burning the bark. The chafing of the 

 branches by the wires during wind storms is 

 sometimes quite as fatal to the branch as 

 the burning. 



(2.) Tree butchery. 



When the writer mentions tree butchery, 

 he has no reference to a certain small but 

 capable group of men who are following 

 the occupation of "tree surgerv^" and 

 who, through the aid of careful methods, 

 are rendering valuable service to the public. 

 He has in mind those men, who, through 

 ignorance of the fundamental principles 

 which underlie the operations they would 

 perform and yet with the best of inten- 

 tions, have ruined whole avenues of valu- 

 able trees by the ver}^ process which was 

 intended to prolong the lives of these trees 

 and to add to their beauty and usefulness. 



This kind of injury is of course easily 

 avoided; and each year the perpetration of 

 such offenses against the lives of street trees 

 is becoming less and less pronounced, due 

 partly to the fact that special ordinances have been passed in cer- 

 tain cities, taking away from the individual property owners all direct 

 active control over trees adjoining their property. 



Fig. 229. — Construction work 

 may be the means of great 

 injury to street trees. 



