90 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



injury noted elsewhere. There are undoubtedly other trees here 

 and there in the city which are dying from one cause or another. 

 It would be surprising were conditions otherwise. 



Our findings in connection with the major portion of the 

 injured maples are as follows : 



1 The trouble is practically limited to hard maples. 



2 It is confined very largely to the lower limbs or portions 

 of the tree most easily reached by spraying outfits of the usual 

 type. This phase of the injury attracted our notice at the out- 

 set. Small trees, those not more than eighteen or twenty feet 

 high, were more frequently killed than moderate sized ones. 

 The lower branches of these latter were usually in a dying condi- 

 tion; sometimes the lower third or the lower half of the limbs 

 were thus affected. On large trees, such for example as those 

 in front of Alderman Whitmore's residence, the injury was mostly 

 limited to a few of the lowest limbs. 



3 Only trees marked as having been sprayed or so recorded, 

 presented the characteristics common to all the hard maples 

 showing this sudden and severe injury, namely, dying branches 

 with withering, usually discolored leaves accompanied by a 

 brown, lifeless inner bark near the middle portion of the branches 

 and the trunk. 



4 A careful examination of the trees in the above mentioned 

 localities which, we were informed, were typical of conditions 

 obtaining in Mount Vernon, compels us to exonerate insects. 

 The injury is utterly unlike the work of any insect pest. There 

 is no connection between the abundance of the leopard moth and 

 the severity of the attack. Were this insect the cause we would 

 expect the trouble to show first on the silver or soft maples. 

 This opinion is based not only upon a superficial examination 

 of a number of trees, but also a detailed one of the tree cut 

 down on North Fulton avenue and also a number of limbs 

 which were removed from various other trees. 



5 The injury to the affected trees is restricted largely to the 

 trunk near the base of the larger limbs and to the lower branches, 

 places easily reached with the ordinary spraying equipment. 

 Repeated examinations of dying limbs showed green, apparently 

 vigorous bark at both the base and the tip, while for a variable 

 length of the branch the inner bark was brown and dead or nearly 

 so. Some limbs on the more badly affected trees had practically all 

 the inner bark dead, simply indicating that the injury had pro- 



