143 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
ONE PEST THE BOTANISTS HAVE OVERLOOKED 
About every man, woman and child 
in the United States has, during the 
past few years, received a very lib- 
eral education in “bugology” and the 
whims and caprices of 'Brown Tail, 
Gypsy, Elm Leaf beetle have been 
noted and tabulated at more or less 
length. This has been a glorious and 
very necessary work, but the lis,t of 
injurious insects has not been made 
complete, enough'. While we have 
been very busy studying the above- 
named specimens, we have neglected 
to properly classify a very old and 
dangerous pest that has been with us 
for years and works incalculable dam- 
age on the unsuspecting. Every 
spring and fall it visits us. It does 
not light on our trees and shrubs and 
quietly destroy them, but comes right 
up to our front door, rings our bell 
hard enough to wreck it, shakes our 
hand and calls us by our first name. 
This pest does not belong to the in- 
sect world and for the want of a bet- 
ter name we must call it — man. 
He is the direct result of a certain 
kind of advertising adopted by many 
nurseries. This advertisement reads 
somethmg like the following; “Want- 
ed — Two hundred men to sell nur- 
sery stock, no experience is neces- 
sary.” No money is spared to place 
this “ad” in the most conspicuous 
places. It stands out before your 
eyes in the pages of the most expen- 
sive advertising publications, a tri- 
umph of the printer’s skill and per- 
fectly fulfills the mission for which it 
was designed — to attract the attention 
of people that are not busy. When 
the unemployed butcher and baker 
and his friend, the candlestick maket, 
see this “ad” beckoning them on, they 
make application to the firm and in 
due course of time they are instruct- 
ed how to sell nursery stock without 
the necessity of any knowledge of the 
stock they are selling. 
Talk about your sleight-of-hand 
work! No magic of the stage ever 
equaled this. They are armed with 
gaudy catalogues, out of which they 
commit to memory some of the most 
unpronounceable plant names found 
therein, and it is with these jaw- 
1. reakers that they hope to pass mus- 
ter. Before making the assault on 
their victims they trim themselves up 
to the most presentable condition 
through the aid of soap and scrub- 
bing brush, but even these sanitary 
performances do not remove the. ve- 
neer of fakir that will be evident to 
anyone wise to the trickery. 
To whom do they sell? To thou- 
sands that love plants but are too 
busy to give the time to knowing 
them better. It is on these that the 
fakir preys. He rings your door-bell 
and with his pretty flower pictures it 
is an easy matter lo hold your at- 
tention. He pours out his story, lib- 
erally dotted with the before-men- 
tioned stock of jaw-breakers. He 
promises everything in the way of a 
profusion of flowers. 
He will give you plants that will 
grow on your roof or in your cellar 
and these same plants he will assure 
you will do equally well in winter as 
in summer. He is so accommodat- 
ing that he will make all the stock he 
sells to you grow and flower at any 
time in the year and produce any col- 
ored flowers you may fancy, etc., etc. 
There is nothing that he will not 
promise you, for he has his keen 
butcher's eye on the great commis- 
sion that will be his after he has ac- 
complished his bunco on you. 
Another of his gentle manners: If 
in calling at a house he is met by the 
lady who refuses to buy, he will im- 
mediately look up the business ad- 
dress of her husband and call on him. 
His story will be that he called on 
his wife and she requested him to call 
on her husband. 
This sounds plausible enough and 
as the man is too busy to devote 
much time to a matter that he knows 
nothing about, he often falls an easy 
victim. This order might be coun- 
termanded after the wife and hus- 
band had compared notes, but the 
foxy agent has foreseen this and had 
the husband sign a little contract “that 
was only a matter of form.” This 
contract is a very closely printed af- 
fair in fine type that would take you 
fifteen minutes to read and its mean- 
ing is that you agree to accept and 
pay for what you have ordered with- 
out question. It repudiates any of- 
fers made by the agent and simply 
agrees to take your money. 
Now, if half of the promises that 
were made you were fulfilled you 
might have no cause for complaint, 
but the chances are that you will re- 
ceive a lot of truck that has cost you 
a big price. 
In nurseries that conduct such a 
questionable business there is what is 
known as a “sucker department,” and 
from this the poor unfortunate vic- 
tims are supplied. 
The amount of damage these men 
and nurseries do is very great, as 
their field of action spreads through- 
out the United States. The victims 
are to be pitied, for they feel that it 
is a matter of impossibility to find an 
honest nurseryman and consequently 
deprive themselves of the pleasure of 
having flowering plants about their 
houses. There is no way by which 
even a correspondence school can 
give you a knowledge of plants in 
twenty minutes and of course it is the 
lack of knowledge of these things 
that makes one a victim. 
If you will remember that a first- 
class nursery does not employ a lot 
of irresponsible runners and that if 
you want stock you must make direct 
application to them, you will be pro- 
tected. If you want nursery stock, go 
to a reputable house for it. They are 
in business for keeps, and if things 
do not turn out right they will rec- 
tify matters. Don’t trade with the 
man that pulls your door-bell. 
Luke J. Doogue. 
TREES INJURED BY GAS 
The liability of a gas company in 
damages to the owner of trees on a 
boulevard in front of his premises, 
caused by the escape of gas from 
mains on streets, the supreme court 
of Minnesota holds (Gould vs. Wi- 
nona Gas Company, 111 Northwestern 
Reporter, 254), is not determined by 
the doctrine of insurance of safety, 
but by principles of negligence appli- 
cable to authorized public works. 
Where such damage was caused by 
a leak due to the action of frost in 
the winter, and the escape of gas was 
not discovered by the company until 
June of the same year, the maxim 
“res ipsa loquitur” (the matter speaks 
for itself) applies. The failure of the 
trial court to give the plaintiff the 
benefit of the maxim was reversible 
error. 
The care to be exercised by the gas 
company is not ordinary care, as dis- 
tinguished from extraordinary care, 
but due care, or care commensurate 
.with the danger. 
Whether the gas company could 
have been held responsible, ' without 
reference to negligence, in an action 
for trespass, the court leaves an open 
question. It also leaves unsettled the 
question of whether the defense of 
contributory negligence of the plain- 
tiff in not notifying the defendant of 
the escape of gas could be asserted in 
a case where the defendant had no 
permission to go upon the plaintiff's 
premises. 
