1892.] ESSAYS. 113 



ten thousand trees are now growing in a thriving condition, 

 their greatest care and anxiety now, is their preservation from 

 injury by reckless drivers of all kinds of vehicles and their 

 utilization as hitching-posts for horses, by those of whom better 

 things should be expected. 



To the credit of the irrepressible small boy who has to bear 

 such a liberal share of denunciation in these matters, be it 

 said, that the injury from sharp-edged tools in their hands is 

 very meagre in comparison with the destruction wrought by the 

 teeth of hungry horses. Tree-guards of the strongest construc- 

 tion which are from seven to eig^ht feet in height are found of 

 little avail where a hungry horse is bent on a meal of the tender 

 growth of a thrifty Sugar or Norway Maple. 



While this destruction of the more recently planted trees is 

 trying in the extreme, the reckless mutilation of road-side trees 

 outside the city limits by the employees of the several Tele- 

 graph and Telephone Companies over-shadow every other line 

 of destruction. 



Some of the finest Oaks, Elms and Maples, along the routes 

 occupied by these corporations' wires have been mutilated and 

 disfigured beyond measure, while some specimens have been so 

 nearly ruined that they can never be restored to any degree of 

 symmetry. And what is the remedy? These companies have 

 acquired their franchise without cost, by the simple application 

 to City Council or Board of Selectmen, for leave to locate their 

 poles along certain thoroughfares. This privilege does not 

 carry with it the right to destroy a single tree that may come 

 in their way, yet the employees invariably get in their deathly 

 work before they are discovered, and their would-be prose- 

 cutors are unable to bring them to justice. 



There is room enousjh in the world both for the trees and the 

 wires but as trees do not root in the air, they must take the 

 lower strata in the premises, while the telegraph com[)anies by 

 using 50 and 60 ft. poles instead of those only 30 to 35 ft. in 

 height can carry their wires well above the tops of the average 

 shade or road-side trees without injury. Any branches to the 

 tree that will interfere with the wire of that height can safely 

 be removed without any injury to the tree or disfigurement to 



