338 Bulletin 256. 



more, it is a difficult task to obtain the concerted action of property 

 owners which is necessary to insure the planting of the entire length of 

 a street with uniform and properly selected stock of a desirable species. 



To control the planting of street trees most economically and to 

 insure uniform material, each large city should have its own nursery in 

 which can be grown the species best adapted for its use. Nurseries 

 of this kind, supported from a municipal appropriation, are valuable 

 assets to the city, as has been proved by the experience of Washing- 

 ton, Paris, Philadelphia, and Chicago. Such nurseries may be made 

 to supply trees not only for street and avenue planting, but also 

 for city parks, squares and public gardens. Small cities and towns 

 cannot afford the expense of maintaining a nursery, and their only 

 resource lies in the judicious appointment of men to control the selection 

 of their shade trees. Such precautions will assure satisfactory results. 



Each citizen should be as deeply interested in the ordinances that 

 control the shade-tree conditions in his community as in those that 

 regulate the street cars or the telephone lines. The laws which 

 already exist in certain states are sufficiently well framed so that most 

 of the injuries to trees in cities and rural districts might be checked, 

 were these laws strictly enforced. One criticism of many of these laws 

 is that they do not deal severely enough with the offenders. A number 

 of cities, mainly in the states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, have 

 recently adopted special sets of city ordinances that place the control 

 of all the trees of the city under the jurisdiction of a special Shade Tree 

 Commission. The laws of these two states give the entire control into 

 the hands of the city authorities, and if these authorities feel disposed to 

 take such control, as evidenced by the appointing of these commissions, 

 then all offenders of the city ordinances are punished directly through 

 these commissions and their representatives. Such commissions have 

 full and undisputed power to plant, remove, spray, and prune any or all 

 of the trees within the boundaries of their jurisdiction. Special ordi- 

 nances, while not necessary in rural districts, are highly commendable; 

 they give to the municipal government a more personal control over the 

 work than would be given by the state laws alone. Such commissions 

 having been established, it then becomes the duty of the citizens annually 

 to make provision for the appropriation of sufficient funds to meet the 

 expenses of the commission. 



Special ordinances are particularly adapted to city problems. For 

 the rural districts, however, the state laws would at the present time 

 be the means of preventing the wholesale butchery of our trees, were 

 they strictly enforced. Here is where the citizens fail to use the 



