EUCALYPTUS. 51 



error. The development being due to individual initiative 

 instead, as in Europe, to government authority, we find a 

 progress rapid and sound but with minor defects, such as 

 streets and roads connecting with nothing and often platted 

 into a confusion of no-thoroughfare and mixe<l direction 

 as in Los Angeles. The tree-planting on streets is one 

 of our systemic defects. Real estate men putting tracts 

 on the market will often plant trees on their new streets. 

 As a rule they select cheap ones that require little care. 

 Blue gum and pepper are from this view the most popu- 

 lar. Then conies the lot owner. Nearly always one 

 or more will be found on a stretch of road who do not 

 like the tree planted, no matter what it is. Occasionally 

 the kicker rebels against any tree and wants sunshine 

 instead. Thus we often find tract-streets and roadways 

 with well grown trees of Eucalyptus or pepper but with 

 the lines broken and the effects destroyed by lot-owners 

 here and there who chop out the established tree and re- 

 place it with something of their own fancy. We may all 

 hope that after awhile it will be recognized that an ave- 

 nue with one kind of tree well established may be a 

 thing of beauty and renown and, to be practical, a thing 

 of money value to the lot owner; while such a line, 

 broken here for a few grevillias, at another point for 

 palms, etc., loses all individual identity as a grand 

 avenue. Such a massacre leaves the avenue perhaps bet- 

 ter than if quite divested of trees, but the confusion and 

 barbarism of such treatment is so painful to one capable 

 of artistic feeling that an entirely fresh start on an har- 

 monious plan would be preferable to any such inconse- 

 quent muddling. Dr. Charles P. Murray, a road master in 

 the Sierra Madre district, was one of the few road officers 



