36 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



to prevent disease taking hold of the plants and 

 insects from finding an easy entrance to the in- 

 terior of the plant. Coal tar is preferable to paint 

 for this purpose because the tar has an antiseptic 



and extreme cold during the winter months will be found 

 helpful to the growth and even necessary at times. 



In the matter of protection from insects and fungi the 

 same principles apply here as to the other plants. The 



40-YEAR-OLD HEMLOCK HEDGE 



Thisisadense evergreen wall, as rich and mature as 100-year-old box- 

 wood; for a garden or service-court, you can consider this hemlock 

 hedge. It is 600 feet long, 11 to 12 feet high and 10 to 12 feet wide. 



as well as a protective influence on the wound, while the 

 paint only remains on the surface, drying up in course of 

 time and eventually peeling off. 



An annual mulch of leaf-mold or well-rotted stable 

 manure, put on before the ground freezes, is also desirable 

 for the maintenance of good hedges, and in case of boxwood 

 and the smaller evergreen plants, protection from wind 



AN( 



This treatment will give an effect similar to old yew hedge in Eng- 

 land. Their attractiveness is partly due to the long years of skilful 

 trimming . This hemlock hedge has had this trimming. 



scale or sucking insects will have to be sprayed with some 

 oil emulsion or fish oil soap, the leaf -eating insects with 

 arsenate of lead and the fungous diseases with Bordeaux 

 mixture. However, these are only general instructions 

 and the only effective way to meet insect and fungous 

 pests is to determine in each case individually just what 

 to do and how to do it.* 



ADVICE FOR JANUARY 



1. Remove the dead trees marked during the previous 

 fall for removal. 



2. Clear out cavities in diseased or injured trees and 

 dress the wounds with coal tar. 



3. In the wooded area, one can ait out all chestnut 

 suckers coming from the old stumps of the dead chestnut 

 trees. These suckers are likely to become re-infected 

 with the chestnut blight and had better be cut out to 

 prevent their smothering young trees of greater value. 



4. In the wooded area one can also do some light 

 thinning or improvement cutting, which consists of 

 removing all growth interfering with vigorously growing 

 specimen trees or with trees of greater value from an 

 aesthetic point of view. One can also take the young 

 shoots growing out of oak stumps or of stumps of other 



desirable species and by cutting off a few of the poorer 

 shoots the better ones can be encouraged to grow more 

 vigorously and straighter. 



5. The egg masses of the tussock moth and similar 

 insect pests can be removed and burnt to advantage in 

 this month. Some of these egg masses contain from 

 twenty-five to four hundred eggs and the destruction of 

 a single egg mass means the prevention of that many 

 caterpillars during the following summer. Do not drop 

 these eggs and cocoons on the ground because they will 

 hatch there in the spring just as well as they would on 

 the trees. 



6. Look over your tools, ladders, spraying apparatus, 

 hose and rope and do the necessary repairs before the 

 active work time of spring comes. 



QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 



Q. My neighbor uses arsenate of lead for spraying. Will 

 you please tell me what arsenate of lead is composed of, when 

 and how to use it and how I can make it? 



J. L, B., Mt. Vernon, New York. 



A. Arsenate of lead is a chemical appearing on the market 

 in either paste or powder form and is used in solution with water 

 as a spray against all leaf-eating insects, such as caterpillars, elm 

 leaf beetle, etc. It is generally used in a mixture of water at the 



rate of one pound to 10 or 15 gallons of water. By spraying the 

 leaves with it the leaf-eating insects feed on the poisoned 

 leaves and become poisoned themselves. A chemical analysis of 

 arsenate of lead shows the following constituents : Lead expressed 

 as lead oxid about 30 nej tent ; arsenate expressed as arsenic oxid 

 about thirteen and a half to sixteen per cent ; soluble arsenic oxid 

 about one-half of 1 per cent, and soluble impurities not over 3 per 

 cent, and water not more than 50 per cent. 



* Photographs by courtesy of Isaac Hicks & Sons. 



