The Enemies of Trees 



sides of the body. The whale-oil soap chokes and is also injurious 

 to the delicate body wall. So is the lime and sulphur solution. 

 Scale insects, plant lice and all soft-bodied insects of whatever 

 eating habits are thus treated. 



Fumigation chokes the insects with poisonous gas. Hydro- 

 cyanic-acid gas, confined by a canvas tent that completely covers 

 a tree, destroys all insect life in a few minutes. This is an ex- 

 pensive method, but it is used in orange groves in California as 

 the best means of checking scale insects. As these insects do not 

 fly nor walk, but settle down after birth, a tree once cleared of 

 the nuisance is not likely to become infested again for some time. 



man's damage to the forests 



Clearing of wooded lands was the pioneer's duty and necessity. 

 He had to make room for the civilisation that followed him. 

 The Eastern country was so generally covered with forests that 

 farms could be made only by clearing the land. This made 

 trees the chief enemy to be overthrown — the greatest of all the 

 weeds that the farmer battled against. 



Wasteful lumbering came next, and took the best logs from 

 the virgin forests, leaving all the "slash" behind to dry and feed 

 terrible forest fires. An unreasonable rate of taxation dis- 

 couraged the buying and holding of lands by lumber companies. 

 When the sawmills left, the land was waste, unfit for the use of 

 man. 



Fire is the greatest enemy of forests in this country. Hunters 

 carelessly leave their campfires still alive; cinders from locomotives 

 ignite dry rubbish; farmers burning brush over cleared land let 

 the fires get beyond control. Spite against the owners sometimes 

 finds expression in firing a forest. Lightning sets fires and 

 winds spread them. 



Fortunes are swept away each year in standing timber; lives 

 and property are destroyed in the track of the fire. Young 

 growth of seedling trees, the forests of the future, are wiped out. 

 Tree seeds are consumed, and the leaf mould, that precious porous 

 blanket that holds the food and drink for all the trees, that is the 

 nursery of seedlings and the anchorage of the old trees — this is 

 reduced to an ash heap. All the organisms of the soil that con- 

 verted the forest litter into loam are killed; and the litter is also 



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