138 UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS 



looking like groups of drunken sailors at almost every junction of 

 our country roads should not be permitted. The highway officers 

 have full power to designate places for them and to require their 

 erection and maintenance in a proper, orderly, and sightly way. 



The nailing of signboards and political and other notices to trees, 

 telegraph poles, and fence posts need not be permitted. Public bulletin 

 boards of unobtrusive size might well be erected at selected locations 

 and their use allowed on permits, possibly after the payment of small 

 fees sufficient to provide for their erection and maintenance. The 

 many other small nuisances will, in most cases, each suggest an obvious 

 and ready way for its abatement. 



The lines of telegraph, telephone, and electric light poles are 

 unsightly things which we cannot at present do away with, but we 

 can at least require their being maintained in a neat and upright 

 position and prevent the unsightly bracing we so often see applied 

 to weak or improperly set poles. The tree mutilation which so fre- 

 quently accompanies the operation of such lines is a crime, to the lover 

 of beautiful trees. The courts have allowed punitive damages to the 

 owners of adjoining land who have planted the trees, in such cases; 

 and it is perfectly feasible for public officials having jurisdiction, to 

 prosecute and punish such offenses. 



In one Canadian province, at least, the pole nuisance is being 

 minimized by increasing the width of main highways from sixty-six 

 to eighty-six feet, placing the poles outside the trees in the added 

 strip of ground, thus rendering them less conspicuous and much 

 less likely to interfere with tree growth. Our Illinois country is much 

 more thickly settled and our farms of much greater value, so that, 

 except in unusually favorable locations and for short distances, it 

 woftld not seem feasible to adopt this desirable practise in our state. 

 So much for the negative, the easy and the obvious part, of our 

 great task. The other part, the constructive part, is not by any means 

 so simple a thing. It is always easier to tear down than to build, 

 always easier to take a blemish out of a picture than to create the 

 picture. 



We are to be makers of beautiful pictures just so truly as the 

 painter who works with his oils and his colors on the flat canvas. 

 Our colors are the trees, the shrubs and the flowers which we use. 

 The painter's colors dry to their final hue tomorrow, or next week; 

 ours, not for a generation or more. The little saplings which we 

 plant today will not fill the space we have planned for them, nor 

 give the ultimate effect desired, until, perhaps, after we are dead and 

 forgotten. We seldom see the finished result except in our mind's 

 eye. We shall therefore be wise if in doing this work we obtain the 



