44 



Barring approi^riatious from city governments, then, here is a chance 

 for a private enterprise in which any intelligent man can engage. 



This, however, is only a fair substitnte for the general work under 

 the city forester. Perhaps I might more truthfully have said that it is 

 a rather poor substitute; for x)robably only a comi:)aratively small pro- 

 portion of the citizens of a town will feel like going to the expense of 

 having the work done in this way, and unless all trees in a neighbor- 

 hood are treated the work will have to be done over and over again 

 year after year. 



One word more must be said about the city appropriation. The 

 jurisdiction over the city parks and over the streets usually lies with 

 different officials, and of course as thorough work must be done in the 

 parks as on the streets, otherwise a part of the work will have been 

 rendered comparatively useless. 



Another word, too, about the undertaking of shade-tree spraying as a 

 private enterprise. It may pay an individual for a while to claim merit 

 for a secret comi^osition used in spraying, but in the long run it will not 

 pay. No patented or secret mixture has yet stood the test of compara- 

 tive experiment against the well-known remedies recommended by the 

 experiment stations. The advertised use of the best remedies known 

 to official economic entomologists will command the greater respect 

 of the most enlightened individuals. Moreover, in Connecticut at least, 

 the proprietor of a secret remedy may find in the near future less 

 than the usual amount of credulity to exist, particularly among those 

 individuals who were last year bitten by a tree inoculating comi)any. 



The operations of this company have undoubtedly been brought to 

 the attention of most of the members of this association, so that I need 

 not describe them at length. They bored auger holes into the trunks 

 of the trees to be protected and inserted a secret comj)ound which it 

 was claimed was taken up by the sap and would render the foliage dis- 

 tasteful to leaf-feeding insects. By ingeniously devised tests capital 

 was enlisted and confidence gained, and the company probably made 

 many thousands of dollars last year by inoculating elms at 75 cents a 

 tree, I am told. I am also informed that the State rights for New Jer- 

 sey were sold for $0,000. I wrote several letters to inquiring individ- 

 uals last year showing the probable absurdity of the claims made for 

 the remedy, and some of these got into print, with the effect of limiting 

 sales in certain directions. This year I have had an opportunity of 

 examining many trees which were inoculated last year and which were 

 quite as badly defoliated as neighboring trees w^hich were not inocu- 

 lated. I have further secured, through Mr. Bullard, a quantity of the 

 secret and mysterious substance used in the inoculations and which 

 was taken from nearly dead trees. This was anaylzed for me by tlie 

 Chemist of the United States Department of Agriculture, Dr. H. W. 

 Wilej^, who found that it was composed of nothing but flowers of sul- 

 phur disguised in color by the addition of carbon. 



