PRUNING INFESTED TREES. 



173 



ter to the gypsy-moth caterpillars, which, by remaining in 

 such hiding-places instead of going to the burlap, may escape 

 destruction. At least seventy-five per cent, of the older 

 orchards in the region infested by the gypsy moth have been 

 either ruined or greatly injured by their owners' neglect or 

 improper pruning or by both. Thousands of trees have been 

 killed by having large limbs chopped or sawn off or other- 

 wise mutilated in such a manner that the exposed and unpro- 

 tected stubs have died and communicated decay to the hearts 

 of the trees. This condition of so many trees, by furnishing 

 numberless places of shelter for the moth, adds greatly to 

 the labor of extermination. 



Dangers of Bad Pruning. — One of the most fruitful 

 causes of hollows in trees in which the caterpillars may hide 

 is the neglect of the simplest precautions in the amputation 

 of large limbs. Wherever w^e go in the country, orchard 

 trees may be seen with trunks disfigured by unsightly protu- 

 berances and 3^awning cavities. Yet projecting dead stumps 

 such as have assisted in bringing the trees to this condition 

 are periodically left by the hand of the bungling pruner, who 

 will continue in this course until he has completed the ruin 

 already begun . Such trees are monuments to the ignorance or 

 negligence of those who have had them in charge. Intelligent, 

 capable men, careful of their other material interests, continue 

 year after year to ' ' butcher " their trees in this outrageous 

 manner, as their fathers did before them, even though the 

 results of such work are constantly before their eyes. 



The growth of many orchard trees has been badly directed. 

 They have been pruned up into the air," so that their long, 

 tall, slender limbs have been unable to withstand the fury 

 of the gale or support the loads of ice which form on them 

 during winter storms. Weakened as such trees are by decay, 

 the action of the wind has sent their greatest branches crash- 

 ing down in ruin. The ice storm of Nov. 5, 1894, which 

 visited the eastern part of this Commonwealth, destroyed 

 hundreds of apple trees by breaking down most of their 

 large branches ; yet we have not seen a sound, vigorous, 

 well-nourished and properly pruned tree that was materially 

 injured by that storm. Neither was it always the 9lder trees 

 which succumbed, for some of the oldest, having had good 



