86 General Care of Trees 
Besides the trimming for form and equilibrium, all broken 
branches must be at once pruned in proper manner, to pre- 
vent location of fungus spores, for, as we have seen, branch 
stumps are the most prolific causes for the beginning of 
rot. 
The rules for proper pruning, although simple and based 
on a knowledge of tree physi- 
ology, seem most generally un- 
known or overlooked, because 
Fic. 16.—Sohd steel pruning the operation is left to ignorant 
shears. workmen. There is probably 
more loss of tree life due to unskilful pruning than to any 
other cause. 
Nothing can more pithily and impressively express the 
public attitude still prevailing to a large extent on this 
subject than Lowell’s words in a letter directed to the Presi- 
dent of Harvard University in 1863, a letter containing so 
much common sense on tree management that we quote 
fully from it. 
“Something ought to be done about the trees in the col- 
lege yard. . . . They remind me always of a young author’s 
first volume of poems. ‘There are too many of ’em and too 
many of one kind. If they were not planted in such formal 
rows, they would typify very well John Bull’s notion of ‘our 
democracy’ where every tree is its neighbor’s enemy and all 
turn out scrubs in the end, because none can develop fairly. 
...I think Hesiod (who knew something of country 
matters) was clearly right in his ‘half being better than the 
whole,’ and nowhere more so than in the matter of trees. 
. . . We want to learn that one fine tree is worth more than 
any mob of second-rate ones. We want to take a leaf out 
of Chaucer’s book and understand that in a stately grove 
every tree must ‘stand well from his fellow apart.’... 
