CITY TREES AND THEIR RELATION TO FORESTRY 



By J. J. LEVI SON, M. F. 



Forester fob Brooklyn and Queens Park Department and for the American Associa- 

 tion FOB the Planting and Preservation of City Trees. 



(This address was delivered before the American Forestry Association, January 12, 1911.) 



'HE solution of every great public question depends ultimately upon the 

 majority of the people interested, and if forest legislation is to be 

 effected at all, then the interest of all citizens must be enlisted. Of 

 the ninety-one million inhabitants of the United States, thirty-five million or 38 

 per cent are living in cities of 8,000 or over. Whereas in 1900 there were only 

 54G such cities, there are this year 720 of them, showing a gain of 180 cities in 

 the last decade. The increase in the population of these cities amounted to 

 nearly ten million against a six million increase in rural population. All 

 this shows a striking tendency towards urban life and so if forestry is to 

 obtain its support from the people, the people of our cities must also be reached 

 and reached in cities, where they are. This is city forestry. 



That, however, is not the way our foresters and friends of forestry gen- 

 erally regard the city tree problem. In their enthusiasm to serve the nation, 

 they have in some respects overlooked the citizen. By all means conserve your 

 forests, conserve your mineral and coal lands, but do not exclude the conser- 

 vation of human qualities the strength and character of the nation and 

 there is no better medium of conserving those qualities than the medium of 

 trees around the homes of our citizens. I need not dilate at a meeting like 

 this upon the well known advantages of trees in a city. I need only point to 

 this, our capital city, of which every American is proud, and ask if it is not its 

 beautiful trees as much as its architectural beauty that you admire. The 

 wonderful progress of forestry in the last few years has fostered a strong 

 interest in city trees and now the two are intensely influencing each other. 

 For, as a matter of fact, when you analyze the situation carefully, you will 

 see that the average citizen must acquire his first lesson in forest preservation 

 from his own tree in which he is naturally most interested. His own tree has 

 a definite meaning to him while the forest problem of the nation is only an 

 abstract idea with which he is not familiar and for which he cannot have true 

 sympathj'. His own tree to him means better air, increased property value, 

 better sanitary conditions and more beautiful surroundings for himself and 

 his children. His love for his own tree soon reaches out to the other trees of 

 his neighborhood because he realizes that like his own interdependence with 

 his fellow citizens, his tree is most valuable only as a part of the others in the 

 vicinity; for if the others are diseased, his would not be safe, or if it stood 

 alone, the surroundings would not be half as charming and the tree could not 

 be cared for as cheaply or as elliciently as where all the trees of the com- 

 munity are cared for as a whole by some one person designated for that 

 purpose. The cause of all the trees in the neighborhood now becomes 

 a common cause, and with proper guidance that civic interest can 

 be directed to the interests of the whole city or state and from that 



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