100 THE CONNECTICUT POMOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



your town, lots of sio-ns on the trees in tlie hig-hway. and I 

 can testify that 55 of th<^se large board advertising signs are 

 now reposing quietly out in one of my barns, and in time thev 

 will get into the furnace. I have asked the owners if thev 

 wanted them, and I think they said they didn't want them, as 

 they thought there was a sentiment growing up in our state 

 against the putting of them out on trees any more. How manv 

 signs do you suppose there are on billboards between here and 

 New York? I can tell you, because I counted them to-day. 

 I went down to New York and counted all the signs on the 

 west side going down, and then counted them coming back on 

 the east side, and I don't mean little signs, but great big 

 advertising billboards that average 55 feet in length ; I found 

 that out by counting the number of sixteen-feet length boards 

 in them, and they averaged about 55 feet in length. Well, I 

 counted 1,097 o^ those signs. There are over twelve solid 

 miles of billboards between Hartford and the city of New^ 

 York, and we have to look at them every time we ride from 

 here to New York. We can prevent a man from setting up a 

 bone boiling contrivance out in front of our house in the high- 

 way and making an odor we don't like ; we can prevent a man 

 from ringing a bell and stop him under the law that he is 

 committing a public nuisance ; and the steam railways can be 

 made to stop blowing their whistles time and time again, as 

 they have in this and other states ; we can stop an offense to 

 our sense of hearing and smelling ; now can we not stop this 

 offense, an ofifense against our sense of sight, against that 

 God-given sense of beauty that is implanted in most of us — 

 can we stop that ? Certainly we can ; there is no question 

 about that at all. Let me tell you a little story about a decision 

 just rendered by the courts of the state of New York, and it 

 is upon that principle, gentlemen, that we have got to build 

 our hopes for a proper law. There was a man lived in a town 

 in New York, and he had lived all his life in the same place, 

 and opposite his house there had grown up two beautiful trees. 

 He had been familiar with those trees since his boyhood, and 

 they were friends of his, and a leaky gas main caused the 

 death of those trees, and so he sued for damages by loss of 

 those trees, and he based his claim for damages on the idea 



