No. 4.] TREE SURGERY. 455 



that they are more expensive, and do not fill the seams in 

 the wood so well as tar. Lead paint is largely used by 

 orchardists, and is rightly considered superior to shellac or 

 grafting wax for a permanent dressing for wounds. Wounds 

 covered with lead paint should receive two or more coats. 

 The second and third coats should each be put on after the 

 previous coat has hardened and dried thoroughly. 



Where wounds do not heal, or heal slowly, the wood 

 nuist be treated from time to time, and every effort made to 

 prevent decay. Wounds caused by limbs breaking down, 

 or where the bark is torn off" by accident, may be smoothed, 

 the decayed wood, if there is an}-, removed, and the surface 

 of the wood treated with tar or paint. Where hollow limbs 

 are removed from a trunk already hollow, they may be 

 plugged with wood or covered with zinc, and well tarred or 

 painted. This phase of the subject has already been quite 

 fully treated in the report on the gypsy moth,* to wdiich 

 the reader is referred for the methods used. There is noth- 

 ing to add from later experience. Such expedients will not 

 fully arrest the decay of a tree which has become hollow. 



The Best Season for Pruning. 



Those Avho have a personal acquaintance with practical 

 foresters and orchardists will no doubt find qidte a diversity 

 of opinion as to the i)roper time of the 3'ear to prune trees. 

 If we turn to the literature on the subject, we shall find an 

 equal difference of opinion, the advocate of each season sup- 

 porting his claims with arguments satisfactory at least to 

 himself. There are some who believe that the season at 

 which pruning is done has no effect on the result, and who 

 agree with the aged farmer, who said that the best time for 

 pruning was when he "had the time to spare, and sharp 

 tools." 



The best season for removing limbs would seem at first 

 sight to be that in which the edges of the wound may soon- 

 est become covered with the living tissue, and thus be almost 

 at once protected from the weather. The returning sap is 



* "The gypsy moth," Forhush-Fernald, Massachusetts State Board of Agri- 

 culture, 1896. 



