The European Elm Scale 33 



from five to seven elms are choking the life out of one another in 

 front of a single 50-foot lot. Two good elms are twice as good as four 

 poor ones. Twenty-five feet in every direction is too little for a broad 

 and spreading tree like the cork elm. Two trees in front of one 50- 

 foot lot would not be very crowded at first. "We should not think of 

 planting more. 



The use of the grubbing hoe is a pleasant form of light exercise 

 in the spring time. It should be indulged in freely wherever the cork 

 elms have sent up thickets of young growth from the roots ; for these 

 unsightly thickets of young elms are nurseries for the scale. See 

 Plate XIV. 



"With the pruning saw the elms should be trimmed into an open and 

 spreading form of branching. Cuts should be made at the very base 

 of the limb which is cut leaving no stub whatever. The mutilated 

 stump of what was once a limb is unsightly, injurious to the tree, 

 and suggestive of ignorant and slovenly trimming. It is bad practice 

 to cut off the end of a branch; for on the remaining end a perfect 

 broom of twigs soon forms, making spraying and washing doubly 

 difficult. In Reno the elms are planted so close together that, deprived 

 by one another of their necessary air and sunlight, they shoot up in 

 spindling forms which in the course of time attract the attention 

 of even the owners, who instead of cutting down half or two-thirds 

 of their crowded trees, try to trim them all into shape by cutting off 

 the ends of the branches. This is simply ruinous to the appearance 

 of the elm and to its normal and healthy growth. The cork elm espec- 

 ially is a broad and spreading tree by its inherited habit of growth. 

 As a general principle of tree culture it is safe to say that an orna- 

 mental tree fails of its purposes unless it is given so much room that it 

 can spread out in all directions into its own characteristic shape. It 

 is going to be no easy matter to care for the elms which line our resi- 

 dence streets if the European Elm Scale and other insects continue to 

 spread. It is a very hard matter to spray a shaggy cork elm thor- 

 oughly even under the best of circumstances, but where they are 

 crowded together with interlocking branches as they are about the 

 Cai)itol Building at Carson City or along many of the residence streets 

 in Reno, it is simply impossible to do any effective spraying. 



HUMAN NATURE AGAIN 



Kow in all probabilty the plain, homely methods of destroying 

 Gossyparia spuria which are here suggested will fail to appeal to some 

 people. The garden hose may appear too simple a remedy to be effec- 

 tive. The dark brown color of the lime-sulphur and its sulphurous 



