94 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY 



It is just as foolish to call in a butcher for a case of appendicitis 

 or a cement worker to fill a cavity in a tooth as to allow any sort 

 of man to prune your trees and cut and saw with no regard for or 

 knowledge of the simplest laws of tree growth. A man may call 

 himself a tree surgeon or a tree expert or what not, but that is no 

 reason why one should disregard the ordinary rules of common- 

 sense and let him do anything he wants to with your trees without 

 at least asking him first for a satisfactory recommendation from 

 some one you know is competent to judge. 



I see so much rottenness and injury resulting from careless 

 and ignorant pruning and so many trees through the city badly 

 treated and so many more absolutely neglected that I cannot but 

 feel strongly on this whole question of the proper care of our trees, 

 and when I say that the only remedy we have at present for the 

 chestnut bark disease is proper sanitary conditions I mean that 

 the disease is one we cannot cure directly and therefore we must 

 fall back upon prevention. 



Have the trees pruned thoroughly, taking particular pains to 

 remove all broken parts, cut off all dead stubs even when they are 

 not more than one-half inch across, clean out all borer holes, 

 examine all old cuts and chisel them out if necessary until nothing 

 but sound wood is left and then paint everything with some good 

 heavy paint like tar. There is nothing wonderful about this except 

 the amount of such work that one trustworthy man can find on 

 one chestnut tree. When the work in the trees is done pick up all 

 the brush and rake the ground carefully and see that all the refuse 

 is put on the fire. > 



If your trees have not been cared for in this way before you will 

 be surprised at the amount of attention that they need. But 

 having made this good start at last, don't make the common mis- 

 take of thinking that they will need no attention the next year. 

 Take Dr. Metcalf's advice on this point. In his lecture following 

 his criticism of the foolishness of elaborate tree surgery operations 

 he said that it is the man who goes over his trees once a year with 

 his pot of tar and creosote who will have sound and healthy trees 

 twenty years from now. If you take this good advice you will 

 never regret it and you will be doing all that any man can do at 

 present to fight the chestnut bark disease." 



